I asked, “Alan Cordesman?”
She pursed her lips and shook her head.
“How about Earl Rice?”
She kept shaking the head. “As I say, I’m afraid I just can’t help you. Do you realize what Arizona Dreams is? If not, I may have to fire our marketing person.” Her mouth and cheeks struggled to turn their surgical smile into a genuine insincere smile. “This is a project unlike any Arizona has ever seen. We’ll be the size of a small city…”
We were getting nowhere when Lindsey said, “Well, you must feel pretty good having Dana Earley…”
Shelley Baker said quickly, “As I say, there’s nothing I can disclose about our investors.” And her right cheek twitched. As we walked out into the lobby, workmen had removed the plastic dome over the giant model of Arizona Dreams, no doubt to add more houses.
28
We walked out into the blast furnace of a morning. I’m usually not a fast walker, but I felt Lindsey take my hand to slow me down.
“Dave, are you okay?”
“Sure,” I said.
“Dave.” She stopped me and took both my hands. “You’re not okay. And if you don’t want to talk about it right now, that’s okay, too. I’m just a little concerned. You seemed angry in there...”
“I just hate the summer,” I lied, and kissed her, which was no lie. A pair of office workers walked by and smiled. I smiled at Lindsey. Even in the intense sunlight, her eyes were their usual soothing dark blue.
She said, “We’ll reschedule that trip, Dave. I promise. I’m sorry. Don’t be angry.”
“I’m not mad at you,” I said, and stroked her soft hair. My hand caught on plastic. A tiny headphone.
“Sorry,” she said. “You’re married to gadget girl.”
I stroked her face and we walked to the car. I wasn’t lying: I do hate Phoenix in the summer. I just wasn’t being completely honest. I wasn’t mad at Lindsey, really. It was Robin who had planted this ugly feeling in me. The secret child, unrevealed by the woman who claimed she could tell me anything. The old boyfriend who still had the power to move her unlike any other man. The sister who carried this news like a Typhoid Mary, and yet for a moment I was kissing her back, willing to walk on that wild side. An ugly feeling, made in the kiln of late-night insomnia. It was powerful enough to crack through all the walls that adults painstakingly build around primal emotions. It surprised me and scared me. David Mapstone, sophisticated intellectual, was just as insecure and jealous as the next guy. All of it was made worse in the echo chamber of my thoughts—but I was uncharacteristically wary of raising any of it with Lindsey. I hated revisionist history when it got personal.
We waited for the air conditioning to cool the inside of the car, and Lindsey asked for a shady spot so she could see her computer screen. It was no easy task. New Phoenix buildings were there to make money, not waste it on shade structures or rediscovering the cool spaces of old Spanish or Moorish architecture. Even in tony north Scottsdale every surface was exposed, and the only trees were ineffective palo verdes. I finally found a building to hide behind, the sun went away, and the temperature seemed to drop ten degrees.
“I’m always afraid this will melt,” she said, retrieving her laptop computer from its case stashed behind the passenger seat. “Let’s find out about Earl Rice. All you have is a name?”
“Yes, it was written on a piece of paper that was along with the stash in the school bus.”
“I could do more with a Social Security number,” she said, opening the laptop and booting it up.
“Can’t you find it with all your government spy stuff?”
“Oh, Dave,” she said. “Now I have to kill you. But for you, it will be the petit mort.” She rubbed a hand across my thigh. “This is just my regular G-4 Mac. I can’t use the super-duper stuff for mere sheriff’s work. They monitor every keystroke, and I’d be no fun in a federal prison.”
I rubbed her neck while she typed.
“Oh, God, I missed that while I was in Washington,” she sighed. “This is interesting. Earl Rice is a hydrologist, and it j
ust so happens he did some work for Arizona Dreams LLC. He’s listed in their prospectus. Hang on. Wireless reception sucks up here…”
While we waited we talked about the house, the stray cats of Willo, the next book we would read to each other now that she was back. It was comforting, part of our life without Robin, without these new revelations. Then Lindsey said Robin had asked her if she could rent the garage apartment for a few months. She asked me what I thought.
“I don’t know,” I said slowly, wishing she were gone.
“I don’t think it’s a good idea,” Lindsey said. Then, “Check this out. Rice is listed on documents that Arizona Dreams had to file with the Department of Water Resources, attesting that the land has a 100-year water supply.”
“Researching my dissertation would have been a lot more fun with you,” I said.
“You probably used dead trees, too,” she said. “So there are two things in that envelope that connect to Arizona Dreams—Baker’s business card, and Earl Rice’s name written down.”