Cactus Heart (David Mapstone Mystery 5)

“He wanted sons of strong character more than anything, more than the Copper Queen Mine or the largest ranch in the state. And it was the one thing that was out of his grasp.”

I thanked her and started the BMW.

“Cops must make a lot more money now.” She eyed the car.

“It’s a long story.”

“That’s what they all say,” she said. “Did you find anything else in that building with the skeletons?”

Damn. I had nearly forgotten. “A pocket watch was with them. Does that mean anything to you.”

She narrowed her eyes and shook her head. “Anything else down there?”

I shook my head. “There were tunnels under the building, but they didn’t seem to lead anywhere. Why?”

She stared toward the brown metropolitan cloud.

“I don’t know. Just thinking. Sometimes I think too much.”

Chapter Twenty-seven

I drove back to the city against the outbound afternoon rush, but the traffic was still miserable. The city limits went nearly to New River now, a good twenty miles north of where they sat when I had been in high school. I played the Heather Nova CD Lindsey had given me last summer. Now I was pricked by the lyrics of longing, love and regret. I had to stop midway through Avalanche. So I took it off and slipped in Sinatra. He got to “One More for the Road” as I blew over the Stack and into downtown. I shut the music off. I would rather have been thinking of Gretchen again, wondering about her next appearance.

I stopped off at the courthouse, where a plain envelope was sitting on the floor in front of the door. At least it wasn’t one of those damned dolls. I took it in, put it on the desk as the phone was ringing. It was James Yarnell.

“How are you?”

I told him how I was.

“I’m no worse for wear,” he said, his voice a little raspy. “The good ladies and gentlemen of the Scottsdale Police are keeping a twenty-four-hour watch on me.”

“No problems?”

“No, everything’s fine,” he said. “I should thank you for saving my life. I was three sheets to the wind last night.”

“Not a problem.”

“We’ll talk more,” he said and hung up.

The phone again. I was suddenly a popular guy.

“They didn’t find another doll.” It was Peralta. I muttered an obscenity.

“They checked two blocks around the Yarnell Gallery, even where the shooter probably stood.”

“Maybe he didn’t have time to leave the doll.”

“Maybe this attack isn’t connected to the Max Yarnell murder,” Peralta countered.

My own hands were shaking when he hung up. My heart was hammering in my chest. What the hell was wrong with me? I was alone in the room with my heartbeat and worries. It made me wonder why I had come into the office at all. I took out a legal pad and made more notes from my visit with Zelda Chain. Then I turned out the lights and locked up.

I drove through Ramiro’s, where you can eat like a king for five dollars, and ordered a chorizo burrito and a Diet Coke. Then I went over to Encanto Park and walked to the lagoon. In the distance, the late-afternoon sun was painting gold into the folds of the South Mountains.

Encanto was the classic city park, green and lovingly manicured, built when Phoenix was smaller. It was about half a mile from my house, and as a kid, I had fished in the lagoon on lazy, lost spring afternoons, watched the sky from the empty old bandshell, and ridden the little train in the miniature amusement park. Encanto was still a beautiful oasis, but most days now it was largely Latino. Maybe the sounds of Spanish frightened away my yuppie neighbors. Today, with a cool wind whipping in from the west and only an hour’s sun left, the place was nearly deserted.

I wanted to eat my burrito and try to clear my head of murder. I was about halfway through dinner when I heard lovely Castilian Spanish behind me. Then I turned and saw Bobby Hamid.

“I said, ‘History is a sacred thing, so far as it contains truth…’”