Cactus Heart (David Mapstone Mystery 5)

God, I wished it were true. “I didn’t, Gretchen. I never told you that.”

She didn’t protest. She ju

st watched me. We stared at each other a long time, until I looked away.

“If I call the city archaeologist’s office, am I going to find out that there’s no Gretchen Goodheart on the staff? That’s what I will find, isn’t it?” I swung out of bed and reached for my clothes.

“David, please! You’re going to start the bleeding in your foot. What are you doing? It’s the middle of the night.”

“I’m going down to Phoenix PD and see if they have a city staff directory.” In agony, I pulled my pants over my injured foot, then slipped on the sweatshirt.

“I don’t work for the city.” She sat back against the headboard and pulled her robe tightly around her. “I did help you, David. I helped you in ways you don’t even know.”

Why the hell was I starting to cry? I whispered, “You probably don’t even wear a cowboy hat.”

“I thought eccentricity would be disarming,” she said.

“I was disarmed.”

I waited for her to protest, to say she could explain, oh, God, how I waited. She just leaned forward, put her arms around her legs and rocked. With every throb of my foot the room and the world were collapsing around me.

“And the dolls. That was you.”

Silence.

“So what organization, Gretchen? Who are you with?”

“What?”

“The FBI has been obsessed with eco-terrorism, and I thought they were overreacting. Apparently I was wrong. You used me to get close to Max.” I was talking in short bursts. I couldn’t do more. “That night, you probably used my name to get him to let you in. Tell me a former smoke jumper isn’t strong enough to knock a man down with a kick or a punch, and then…” God, my foot was throbbing in pain. “…And then pick up an ornamental piece of petrified wood and plunge it into his breastbone.”

“It’s not like that.” Tears were streaming down her cheeks. “I’m not with anybody but me!”

My clothes were on and I should have left. But I just sat on the other side of the bed, our body language nothing worse than a couple having a fight.

She said, “I never meant to hurt you.”

The damned pulse against my eyes.

She came over, bent down and kissed me on the forehead, and then on the lips. I let her do it.

“I really love you,” she said. “I thought you hungered for justice like I did.”

“What are you talking about?”

“Do you know Max offered me money?” she said. “As if that could make up for anything.”

All I could muster was a deep sigh. She took my hand and stroked it. I felt so tired.

“Three years ago, I learned that my dad had been adopted. He didn’t know anything about the circumstances. It happened when he was a baby, so he has no memory of his real mother. A year ago, I learned I could never have children. It became really important to me to know where I came from. So it took some time. It took some money, and some other things. But I finally found Frances. She’s my grandmother.”

My foot was caught somewhere between the worst cramp you can imagine and the deep pain of a broken bone. I just let it throb.

“I said I was a law student looking into wrongful convictions, and they let me visit her. I knew she was my grandmother, my flesh and blood, immediately. But she was so far gone, she didn’t even realize who I was. And then I learned the whole story. How the Yarnells had kept her in there for all those years. What they had done to her.”

“So you murdered Max.”

“Those are your words.”