High Country Nocturne (David Mapstone Mystery 8)

“None of this makes sense, Mapstone. Peralta shot a guy, some old man who has a PI license, he stole the diamonds, stashed them in some woman’s old Toyota, and disappeared. He doesn’t even have the stones.”

Maybe Strawberry Death doesn’t know that. Maybe she’s simply out for revenge, whether the diamonds were recovered or not. I speculated out loud without giving away too much. I was relieved that she discounted Ed Cartwright as “some old man.”

She said, “Where is that suitcase? Does Chandler have it? I want to go through it. Maybe the shipment wasn’t even the real diamonds…”

The gears were catching correctly. I told her Horace Mann had taken it into evidence.

“Fuck! Is Peralta guilty or is he running some kind of operation?” Her eyes bore into me.

I didn’t dare even blink. “He’s not guilty of a robbery. Lindsey checked his finances on Saturday. He’s got plenty of money. There’s no motive. If he’s running an operation, he never told me.”

“FBI?” she said. “Peralta and Eric Pham were tight.”

“Pham’s been sent to the Arctic Circle.”

“Then DEA or ATF. The ATF chief lives right down the street from you.”

“She took a post in France.”

“So what?” Vare said. “This th

ing has cartel written all over it. They use diamonds as a substitute for currency to pay for cross-border shipments of drugs, or to settle drug debts.”

“Peralta hates the cartels,” I said. “But he never told me he was doing anything more than working as a guard on the diamond shipment.”

“Maybe he wanted to protect you?”

I shrugged. “It didn’t succeed.” I waited a few beats. Then, “Who is the go-to diamond fence in Phoenix?”

I already knew the answer. The only surprise was that she wasn’t already thinking that way. She shook her head and promised to find out.

“If you find that person, the pieces might come together,” I said. “But you’re poaching in a federal case.”

“Fuck them.” Her tone was adamant. “This is my town.”

She started the car but didn’t leave.

“Did you know that Mann and Sheriff Meltdown are friends?”

My cheek and eye started burning insistently. “No.”

“Oh, yeah. They were in the Bureau together, both stationed in Minneapolis and Chicago at the same time. They were partners for seven years. Meltdown was best man at Horace Mann’s wedding. I asked around. Something is really wrong here. No offense, but Meltdown didn’t bring you back to the Sheriff’s Office because you’re such a brilliant cop. He…”

This time I interrupted to finish her sentence: “He did it because Horace Mann wants me out of the way.”

I stared out at the shabby streetscape, felt like the idiot she had described.

Vare pushed my elbow. “You are good at finding trouble, Mapstone. So go do it. Get in the way. But keep me in the loop. One more thing. If this Amy Morris is out there, she’s not going away and she’s coming for you. So as much as you love that wheel gun, you’d better carry more firepower. Now go find trouble. Call me, Mapstone.”

She stomped on the gas and fishtailed out onto Twenty-fourth heading south as the sprinkles turned into a hard rain.

Chapter Thirty-one

Lindsey’s color had returned and the medicos were happy with her vital signs. For the first time, the hard realist inside me began to have hope.

I read her some favorite Emily Dickinson. But not about death kindly stopping for me.

When the nurses left, I said, “I almost got her. But she escaped. I let you down. They say her name is Amy Morris. But the name doesn’t lead anywhere. Her driver’s license is bogus. If you were up and around, you’d identify her in a heartbeat.”