That night the rain came, watery inflections on the pavement. Seven inches of rain water this desert in an entire year, so every drop is memorable. Every streak from a seldom-used windshield wiper. Every patter on the bedroom window. Every misty sprinkle on my face on a cool December evening.
When the winter rains come, the sidewalk restaurants move inside. The Fiesta Bowl promoters worry. The resorts cover up the pool furniture, and the snowbirds grumble. But we Phoenicians quietly exult—that after all the punishing months of sun and heat, the sky brings back the healing water. That, after all, the desert is God’s chosen, sacred place.
More secular thoughts were on my mind as I cruised the parking lot at Biltmore Fashion Park for ten minutes before finding a parking place anywhere close to the Coffee Plantation. I had reluctantly turned down Gretchen’s offer of company tonight. Maybe it was the post-shooting jitters, or maybe it was the fact that the Yarnell kidnapping was still unsolved, and these loose ends, forgotten for decades, were still my loose ends. So I worked. The buildings were draped with white holiday lights and steam came out of the car exhausts. The cars glided across the wet parking lot like a dream. By the time I got inside, a familiar blonde in a smart suit with a high hemline was waiting for me. This time the suit was pink. She was sipping from a tiny espresso cup.
“I told you on the phone I shouldn’t even be speaking to you,” said Megan O’Connor, looking around as if bulky Yarneco security guards might spring from under the empty tables nearby. “I thought the crime had been solved. That awful young man, they ran his mug shot on the news tonight. Of course, it’s terrible you had to kill him, but I understand you were doing your job. In any case, I’m meeting my fiancé in just a few minutes. We need to do our Christmas shopping.”
I sat down with her. Taking time to get anything to drink seemed too risky. This skittish bird might fly.
“I didn’t shoot the kid.” Why was I making that point? “There are still a few things we need to clear up. I’m interested in a codicil to Hayden Yarnell’s 1942 will. Are you familiar with it?”
You would have thought I had caressed her fine inner thighs. Her eyes grew wide and she pulled back.
“You know of it?” I asked again.
She gave a slight nod and looked around again.
“Is someone following you?”
She laughed. She had a big, fun laugh and it made me smile. She said, “I’m sorry, Deputy Mapstone. I know this seems absurd. You work around a company like Yarneco for enough years and you get paranoid. Yes, I know about the codicil. Working for Max meant that I did a good deal of work with the Yarnell Trust.”
I asked her about that. She ran a long finger around the rim of the cup in front of her.
“The trust supports twenty-seven heirs of Hayden Yarnell and his sister. I know, must be nice. Few of them live in Arizona any longer. Anyway, the trust is entirely funded by the wealth that Hayden Yarnell left, plus the investments made since then by the bank, advised by an independent board. Not even Max or James Yarnell were given seats on the board.”
“It doesn’t sound like Hayden Yarnell trusted his family.”
“He was a self-made man,” Megan said. “And I guess he saw what a little mon
ey and leisure time did to his son, Hayden Jr.”
“The one they called Win.”
“Right. Anyway, this always struck me as strange. But when I started dealing with trust business, I heard about this codicil. I thought it was just a family legend. But one day I was researching something, and there it was. If it turned out that any family member had conspired or participated in the abduction of his grandsons, the conditions of his bequests would change. Among other things, the trust would be liquidated and given to charity.”
“That sounds extreme.”
“It’s very odd,” she said. “Before I went to work at Yarneco, I had worked at a big law firm that did a lot of estate planning. I never saw anything like it before. Kind of like vengeance beyond the grave.”
“Did Max ever talk about this?”
“Never. The one time I asked, he got really flustered.”
“Did he talk about the kidnapping?”
“No. It was understood that we didn’t discuss it.”
“You were close to him?”
She flashed angry eyes at me; they were green. “Not what you think, deputy.”
“I didn’t think anything. I’m just trying to understand.”
She kept sipping the espresso, but the level of the liquid never seemed to go down. I needed to develop that technique with liquor. After a moment, “Max said his grandfather died a bitter, crazy old man. He said the codicil was a result of that. He also doubted it could even be enforced by a court.”
If that were true, it made me wonder why he became flustered, to use her word.
“Max wasn’t close to his brother?”