High Country Nocturne (David Mapstone Mystery 8)

I handed her my card and started to leave.

“David, about what happened back there in the closet…”

“Don’t give it a second thought, Mrs. Whitehouse.”

That smile again. “It’s Diane. I wasn’t going to apologize. I see something in you, David. You’re special. I feared that Chris would send some knuckle-dragger and he sent you, instead. I always fell for brains. It’s not as if I throw myself at men.”

I tried to smile back. “I’m very honored. I also love my wife.”

“To whom you’ve been unfaithful before. Only children confuse passion with love.”

She handed me her card and stroked my fingers. I let her do it.

“Call me if there’s something you want, David.”

What I really wanted was someone who could find millions in missing rough diamonds and lead me to Peralta. Most of all, I wanted Lindsey to get better.

She watched me closely, this compact still-lovely woman, in her expensive black jeans and huge house and ancient pottery with kill holes, who had deposited this secret on Chris Melton’s doorstep.

Until Ed Cartwright told me otherwise, until we knew Peralta was safe, it was my doorstep, too.

I left her in the bedroom and let myself out.

Chapter Thirty

I got half a mile when the phone rang. Kate Vare. Would I meet her?

She was sitting in an unmarked Chevy Impala in a parking lot off Twenty-fourth Street and Osborn. The homely one-story building nearby had once been a home-cooking restaurant named Linda’s. Now it was a Mexican eatery. I pulled next to her in the timeless cop fashion, driver’s door to driver’s door.

Her elbow was resting on the doorframe, window down, and she looked me over. “Why are you so dressed up?”

“I went to see Diane Whitehouse.”

She cocked her head and I gave the elevator speech about Tom Frazier’s wallet.

“Jeez.” She laughed, a strange sound coming from her. “Old Man Whitehouse in the closet? He hit on me once, you know. Years ago when I was a uni. Went to a burglary call at one of his subdivisions under construction. He talked to me about how hard it must be for me, being tough all the time, and I wouldn’t have to be that way with him. It was a smoother come-on than it sounds.”

I took it in and said nothing. Even though it was getting toward noon, the streets were slick and moody, the rain clouds low and misshapen like boiling lead.

“I’d love to be there when you log in those photos as evidence,” Vare said. “Do you like him for this?”

She meant did I think the late Elliott Whitehouse, the legendary Phoenix homebuilder, had murdered his lover. Oh, and the lover was a young man.

I shook my head. “Frazier was found dead of a heroin overdose, but there’s no evidence he was a user. If he was Whitehouse’s lover, this seems like a lot of bother. Why not simply bludgeon him with a piece of rebar and dump the body in a mineshaft or bury it under a concrete slab? Hire a hitman. It doesn’t make sense.”

“And why keep the wallet?” she said. “Maybe he thought it would make identification more difficult.”

“Except Frazier’s car was within walking distance.”

“We almost caught your girl.” She changed the subject suddenly.

“Almost?” My stomach felt as if it had dropped five inches.

“She was at a house by the Biltmore. Up on Biltmore Estates Drive, with those lovely older places? This one was foreclosed on during the worst of the bust, only the neighbors wouldn’t allow a sign out front. It was bank-owned and sat empty. Somehow she found it and was using it as her base.”

I looked straight at her and asked how they almost found her.

“Crime Stoppers call early this morning. We set up a perimeter and called in SWAT. Made entry at eight a.m. She was gone. But she’d been injured. Maybe a gunshot. She had performed surgery on herself, stitched it up. Left a bunch of bloody gauze and a suture kit. She was moving fast. Looks like she made it out through the golf course before we secured the perimeter.”