Arizona Dreams (David Mapstone Mystery 4)

“Get control of those dogs now or I’ll shoot them,” I said above the barking, forcing my voice down as I felt a giant pool of sweat form on my back. I put my hand on the butt of the Colt Python .357 Magnum holstered on my belt. But I didn’t retreat out of the doorjamb.

“No, no!” Dana said quickly. “I’ll put them away. Come on, Precious, come on, Brownie.” She pulled Precious and Brownie away with difficulty and dragged them down a hallway. I gradually took my hand off the butt of the pistol and surveyed the foyer. Everything looked expensive and impersonal, as if bought whole from displays at Scottsdale stores. Then she reappeared and walked quickly toward me, and then we were outside. She closed the door behind her.

“What are you doing here?” she said, all the butterscotch gone from her voice. “You can’t be here! I’ve got to go pick up Madison from band practice!” I didn’t budge.

She grimaced. “My husband might be home any minute.”

“We’ll bring him into the conversation, too,” I said.

“You don’t understand,” she said, taking me by the arm and starting to walk toward the car. I stayed put. She had a wild look. “Do you have any idea who my husband is?”

“Considering you lied about who you are, no.”

“He’s Tom Earley.”

At first it didn’t sink in. I shrugged my shoulders and started to speak.

She cut me off. “County Supervisor Tom Earley.” She said it emphasizing every syllable.

I drew in a breath and looked at her. This was the guy who had been questioning my job to Peralta. I felt a strange caution shiver from my spine up into my brain. I set it aside.

I said, “So? That’s not my problem. Sheriff Peralta has put politicians in jail before. And he has nice facilities for their wives, too.”

I thought she was going to faint. “Mapstone,” she stuttered, “I can’t…I didn’t…”

“You did,” I said. “You filed a false report. That’s against the law.”

“But I…” She grabbed my arm again, her eyes glistening in near-tears. “Please give me a chance to explain.”

“I am. Invite me inside. We can have a nice long talk. Reminisce about the days at Miami. That beautiful campus in Oxford. What a great teacher I was.”

She shook her head vehemently. “I cannot let Tom find you here! Please…meet me tomorrow. I promise I’ll tell you everything. Please!”

I was ready to be a hardass, but something in her plea softened me. I’m a patsy. So we agreed on a time and place for the next day. I told her I would be back on her doorstep with uniformed deputies if she failed to show up. Even inside my car, I could still hear the dogs barking.

I drove back downtown on the Price Freeway, watching the hardening of the traffic arteries going in the other direction. What a lifestyle. Out to the suburbs. Out to safety. That was the theory, at least. Yet the paper that morning told of a girl being abducted and raped not a half mile from the walled subdivision I had just left. And the running gunbattle down Chandler Boulevard the night before. A fourteen-year-old girl had guns at home and a plan to shoot up her school in Gilbert. And the armored-car guard gunned down in Ahwatukee. So no place was safe. Which was good for job security in law enforcement, unless you were the freak with the Ph.D. in history who was a patsy for wives with excuses. Somewhere in the gridlock, County Supervisor Tom Earley was headed back to his lifestyle, and his Dana with secrets. I wondered if he still wanted to X me out of the sheriff’s budget. He probably would really want to now. I was on the way home to Lindsey and a martini, a much preferable destination.

17

Business was strong at the Home Depot on Grand Avenue. That was true, at least, on the curb at the edge of the parking lot, where the independent contractors that comprised Phoenix’s piece of the global economy did what they could. They were lean brown men in jeans, with ball caps and cowboy hats, their number fluctuating around a dozen depending on the traffic. I watched as a Ford pickup stopped, engaged in a curbside negotiation. Three men then jumped in the truck bed and

it drove off to whatever construction or landscaping work was to be done. I wondered what was the going rate? Five bucks an hour? A tidy fortune compared to the men’s poor villages in the interior of Mexico or Central America. Dana watched me watching the commerce.

“They should send them all back to Mexico,” she said primly. “That’s what my husband says.”

“That will be a neat trick,” I said, “considering there are probably half a million illegals in just a few miles around us.”

Dana looked at me with alarm.

“They won’t hurt you,” I said. “Anyway, how would you be able to buy so much house for the money without illegal immigrant labor.”

“You’re such a cynic, David,” she said. “I keep wanting to call you Dr. Mapstone.”

We were sitting inside her gray SUV. It was called an Armada, and seemed at least two stories above ground and suitably armored to protect us from the Home Depot parking lot. We were far from Gilbert, hard by the railroad tracks and the ever expanding west side barrio, far enough for Dana to feel safe meeting me. I said, “I don’t care what you call me. We’re not friends. You’re lucky I didn’t arrest you yesterday.”

Her face flushed further, a neat trick. It started to match the scarlet blouse she was wearing.

“I really was at Miami,” she said. “And you really were my teacher.”