Cactus Heart (David Mapstone Mystery 5)

When I told him, he walked a couple of steps away, staring out at the lingering Sonoran Desert twilight. I heard him say, “My God.” Then he walked back and recomposed his fine features.

“Come by the gallery sometime.”

“I’d like to,” I said. “I grew up two blocks from the Heard Museum, so I come by my love of Indian art honestly.”

“You would have loved Grandpa’s collection,” he said. “He realized the value of this art long before it became popular. In the 1920s and 1930s, he would take trips out to the reservations to buy art.”

I had written a paper in grad school on Hayden Yarnell but this was new to me.

“Oh, yes,” James Yarnell said. “It was an amazing collection. It would have been on the order of the Heard.”

“What happened to it?”

He stopped and look at me. “Why, it disappeared during the war. When Grandpa’s hacienda burned, the family was afraid it was all lost. But when they went through the ruins, there wasn’t even a trace. It was gone. It’s never been found.”

“My God,” I said. “Why?”

He rubbed his jaw as if an old ache had come back. He said, “The Yarnell curse.”

Chapter Twenty

I came back to the courthouse from Scottsdale and pulled out a legal pad. I could hear Lindsey’s voice telling me to use the Mac, but I needed the comfort of pen on paper. Lindsey. I was sending prayers and good thoughts to her, yet I had this feeling that some terrible breach had come upon us like a shipwreck on the unsuspecting. Don’t worry, Dave. I was a worrier, and now I felt like something akin to a bad cold was coming over me, my heartbeat too noticeable, my brain full of dread. I shifted in the creaky old desk chair and s

tarted making notes on the case, what I knew, what I didn’t know. The latter list was a hell of a lot longer. By the time I left, it was nearly midnight. I was tired and getting nowhere on a fifty-eight-year-old double-murder. The BMW’s fuel gauge was nearly on empty, a little needle stuck in the festive dash display.

At the light on Roosevelt, a VW Jetta full of Asian teenagers pulled up beside me. They flashed me clean-cut smiles and then one showed me a little machine gun, just like it was prized artwork he had bought at First Friday. I thought very clearly: am I supposed to show you mine? I smiled back stupidly. Then they drove away going the speed limit, signaled, turned right and disappeared down a side street. I didn’t feel scared or brave or outraged, or even like calling PPD on the cell phone. It was time to get some sleep. All day I had been hoping I would find Lindsey waiting for me.

But Peralta was sitting in my driveway.

We walked into the kitchen in silence and I handed out beer. Sam Adams, love it or leave it. I told him about James Yarnell in Scottsdale.

“Stay on the case,” he said, sipping reluctantly from my loathsome yuppie brew.

“And do what?” I was getting cranky from lack of sleep.

“What’s the next step in a case like this?” Peralta the academy instructor.

I threw my hands in the air and walked out. “I’m too fucking tired to employ the Socratic method on the chief fucking deputy.”

He appeared in the bathroom doorway as I was preparing to brush my teeth.

“Did you hear from your little friend today?”

“Lindsey. No.”

I didn’t answer beyond that.

“Sharon and I are having problems.”

I just started brushing, nice circular strokes that would make Grandfather happy.

“Do you know what it’s like to be in the spotlight all the time.” he said. “No, you don’t. It’s not like I can just go check into a hotel, without this showing up in New Times next week.” That was the alternative paper that had waged war with the sheriff for years.

He went on, “They’ve already got me as the next sheriff. Shit, I haven’t even decided to run. Anyway, my personal life is none of their business.”

I would leave the First Amendment arguments to Lorie Pope. I just kept brushing. Circular strokes. Rinse. Spit. Floss.

“I guess I should get a place of my own, quietly,” he went on. “I just…Hell, it seems like such an irrevocable step. I can’t figure out what she wants. How the hell can any man figure that out nowdays?”