Dry Heat (David Mapstone Mystery 3)

I said, too loudly, “Amelia!”

Hardin stopped in the doorway, turned, and looked at me curiously.

“Stay just a sec,” I said, rising and quickly crossing to the bookshelves. “I just want to ask one last question.”

My finger raced across frayed book spines. There: a 1948 Phoenix city directory. I thumbed it. Found the page. And damned if the name wasn’t there.

Hardin had stepped back in the door. The hundred lines in her face seemed to deepen. I closed the book, with my finger keeping the place. I was afraid to move.

“Didn’t you tell me that you grew up here?”

“That’s right,” she said. “That’s a lot of what I paint. What I remember about this place, before they ruined it.”

“On Verde Lane, right? 2320 West Verde Lane?”

She nodded. “Before it was even in the city limits.” Then she gave a little drunken lean against the doorjamb, looked at me, and started out. But Peralta was there. The top of her head came up to the midpoint of his necktie.

“I need to go,” she said, trying to push past him. “I have to…” He gently herded her into the room.

“It’s funny you say that because the city directory lists an Aimee Weed at that address. And that’s the mother of the man we found carrying Pilgrim’s badge.”

Hardin’s mouth tightened, but she said nothing, refusing to look at me. Peralta said, “Let’s sit down for a minute,” and he guided her to a chair.

“Am I under arrest?” she asked quietly.

“We’re just talking,” Lindsey said, sitting on the edge of the desk. “You can go if you like.”

Hardin folded her arms tightly across her chest.

“Amelia,” I said. “I can get your birth certificate.”

“I always hated that name,” she said.

Big rooms hold quiet strangely. Sometimes it’s as if the quiet of decades ago still lives in the highest pockets of the high ceilings.

“I had a brother named George,” she said at last.

“Why did he have the badge?” Lindsey asked, her voice diamond-cutter gentle.

“My mother was a very stupid woman,” Hardin said. “After dad died, she had to go to work. She became a secretary in the federal building. That would have been 1947? I can’t believe how long I’ve lived.”

Then silence. Finally Lindsey said, “That doesn’t sound stupid. She did what she could, I’m sure.”

“She was stupid to fall for John Pilgrim.”

“They were lovers?” Lindsey asked.

“He promised her he’d leave his wife and marry her,” Hardin said in a louder voice. “And Georgie and I would have a new daddy.”

“So,” I said, “Pilgrim gave George the badge, maybe to hang on to for a few days?”

“No.”

“What then?”

“I didn’t know Georgie took it,” she said. “He was such a sweet little boy. The perfect little brother. I hate the world, the way it wads up people and throws them away…” She glanced at the photo of the dead homeless man on the bulletin board and quickly looked away.

Peralta said, “So let me get this straight: the homeless man was your brother? And you and he were children when your mother was dating this FBI agent?”