Dry Heat (David Mapstone Mystery 3)

One side of his mouth started to smile. He said, “Not always. Look at Lindsey’s big score.”

“So I heard,” I said, missing her even more.

“One of the biggest credit card fraud operations, taken down by her work with a federal task force.”

“I read about it on the plane. The New York Times carried the story.”

Peralta’s large black eyes fluttered. I could see his publicity meter running. That was the most obvious reason to get me involved in this case: good press meant more resources from the citizens of Maricopa County. “Anyway,” he said, “the feds are in trouble since 9/11. They’ve had to shift over to preventing terrorism. They really could use our help.”

“When did you get generous?”

“Be a good soldier, Mapstone. Your bride cut the nuts off the most profitable worldwide operation of the Russian mafia. You should be proud. It should motivate you to outdo her.”

“We’re not in competition. She’s a lot smarter than me.”

“Don’t play games, Mapstone. No fucking April Fool’s.” I could sense his mood withdrawing into a darker basement. “This is a serious investigation. The feds need an independent third party to investigate this. And I want the sheriff’s office to come out looking good.”

“Sure,” I said, gratefully feeling a hot breeze interrupt the blazing stagnant atmosphere. “And everything will be dandy and collegial with Kate Vare.”

“You just have to know how to handle her.”

“She can’t be ‘handled,’” I said sarcastically. “Why the hell does she hate me?”

Peralta paused. We’d reached an intersection maybe two hundred yards from the drama at the orange-striped ranch house. The street was completely empty. “Because,” he said, “you’re the enemy.”

I started to speak but a wall of dust slapped me in the face, stinging my eyes.

“Hope they get that scene secured,” Peralta said, rubbing his heavy jaw. “We’re gonna get a helluva storm.”

Chapter Three

The dust storm rolled in from the west. I drove east, home to central Phoenix, trying to outrun it. Behind me hulked the dust cloud: rising ten thousand feet and stretching across the horizon, looking like diluted chocolate. The White Tank and Estrella mountains were swallowed up and disappeared. Flags at car dealers and distribution warehouses stood straight out. Bits of the desert slapped against the windshield. Even though it was four in the afternoon, streetlights were coming on. Any small clue left in the yard in Maryvale was now in the atmospheres, traveling east in th

e hot, particle-drunk wind.

I was driving a 1968 Olds 442 convertible, “borrowed” from the impound lot by Peralta and lent to me after a previous case involved the destruction of my beloved BMW. A drug dealer had been good enough to restore the car, painting it a discreet bright yellow, and the big engine wasn’t as sweet as the big air conditioner. “You’ll like driving a piece of history,” said Peralta, who enjoyed making me uncomfortable. So I was encased in what seemed like a football field of General Motors steel, the dearest dream of any kid being shipped off to Vietnam in the summer of Sgt. Pepper and the assassinations of Martin Luther King and Bobby Kennedy. Now it was in the new millennium, an ancient machine surging across the hot concrete. I was socialized enough by my years as a college professor to be almost ashamed to like a car that was so big, so wasteful, so laden with the baggage of American excess. Lindsey approved, however, reminding me of the difference between a porcupine and a BMW-“With a BMW, the pricks are on the inside.”

After I got to the Papago Freeway it was a straight shot home, the ragtop flapping violently in the wind. But by the time I crested the Stack, the big freeway interchange on the northwest side of downtown, the skyscrapers and mountains that should have been ahead of me had vanished. The horizon closed in, turning from milky to brown. Slowing below sixty, putting some space between me and the sea of red taillights ahead, I felt the big car getting strafed by brush and garbage blown into the freeway. I slowed just in time to avoid an SUV that crossed two lanes and plunged into the tunnel under Hance Park doing maybe ninety. When I took the exit to Seventh Avenue, my hands relaxed enough to make me realize how tightly I had been gripping the wheel. Seventh took me the half a mile to Cypress Street, to the 1924 Monterey Revival house in the Willo Historic District, where the lights blazed welcome through the dusty murk of the street.

We left a trail of clothes from the front door to the bedroom. Not a long distance: up a step, through an arch, down the hallway. Our bedroom faced the street on the first floor, and you could look out the window and see the front door. We made love face-to-face while, on the CD player, Charlie Parker enchanted the saxophone and the wind jangled the Soleri bell outside. Then, after I made Bombay Sapphire martinis and she slipped on one of my starched white dress shirts, we lay on the big rumpled bed, legs entangled, and we talked.

“I’m sorry you had to go alone,” she said, running her hand light and slow across my chest. Lindsey draped a fine, long leg across my thigh, her five-foot-eight-inch length neatly fitting my six-two. The twilight made her fair skin seem to glow. Her dark hair was, as always, worn in a simple cut parted in the middle and falling to brush the tops of her shoulders. Her eyes were their familiar incandescent dark blue.

I had gone alone to Portland, to say good-bye to a dying friend. His name was Dan Milton-my mind was still getting used to the past tense in referring to him. Once upon a time, he had been one of my professors. He was the one who made me think I could make a mark in the world as a historian. Now he was dead, and up to the moment I was in Lindsey’s arms I had been besieged by all manner of devils bearing regret, guilt, and mortal fears. I said, “I wish I could have been here for you.” I sipped the martini, feeling the cold liquid turn hot as it went down my throat. “I worry.”

“I worry about you, Dave. Mine was just work.”

I stroked her hair. “But did you get Mr. Big?”

Lindsey’s full lips opened into a smile. “Meester Beeg!” She shot off a string of Russian sentences, her face animated and lovely.

“Come again?”

“In time, Dave.” She ran a hand up my thigh. “I said, ‘Mr. Big’s name is Yuri, and nobody has ever seen him. We don’t even have a photo. He’s very mysterious.’ Unfortunately we got everybody but Yuri. Maybe I just said ‘surface-to-air missile’ instead of ‘mysterious.’ That’s what happens when you learn Russian in the Air Force.”

“Yes, one of your adventures. Sgt. Lindsey Faith Adams, USAF.”

“My adventures pale beside yours, my worldly lover,” she said. “Besides, it’s Lindsey Faith Mapstone now. Detective Sgt. Lindsey Faith Mapstone.”