Camelback Falls (David Mapstone Mystery 2)

Beth sat down on a bench. “Joyride,” she said. “Stupid kid joyride. My boyfriend and I hooked up with some bad people. We didn’t know they were escaped from prison. Then those officers stopped us…”

“Why did they stop you?”

“I don’t remember,” she said. “I was high.”

“Are you sure they stopped the car you were riding in?” I went on.

“Yeah,” she said. “We were stopped. The guys started shooting. They just shot those officers…”

I went back again. “So you hooked up with these two guys and went riding. What were you doing before you were stopped?”

She didn’t answer at first, just stared at the hardwood floors with the closed-in expression of her daughter. All those hidden codes and customs in our genes, whether we wanted them there or not.

“I was high,” she repeated. “I don’t remember much.” Then she stood, reared on me, her face suddenly flushed. “Jesus. It has been twenty-one years! I have tried to forget it! I was a kid!”

“What about Leo?” I asked.

“What about him?”

“When was the last time you had contact with him?”

Her lower lip tightened just a millimeter. “Not for years. He was like a high school boyfriend, for God’s sake. Do you stay in touch with your high school girlfriends? He went to prison.” She sighed. “My dad made it so I couldn’t even talk to him, after we were arrested. Dad never liked Leo. And then life went on…”

“You haven’t heard from him lately?” Lindsey asked.

“No.” This said with firm shakes of the head. “Of course not”

“Do you know he escaped from prison recently?”

“No,” she said, louder. “I didn’t know that.”

Lindsey said, “Tell us about Camelback Falls?”

“What?” Beth said, a seamless conversationalist.

“Camelback Falls,” Lindsey said. “Dr. Jonathan Ledger and his house on the mountain?”

“I don’t know what that is,” Beth said.

I fished out a card and handed it to her. “You can leave a message on the voice mail if you think of anything,” I said. “We’re at the Hyatt up the street, and we’ll be here a few days. If you remember anything.”

“I’m sure I won’t,” she said. “Would you like to take the cheese and fruit with you?” Sweetness returned. We demurred.

As she let us out into the cold, Lindsey said, “So you’ve never been on any of the prison pen pal Internet sites, in touch with Leo O’Keefe?”

The winter light cut a harsher profile of Beth. She stared at Lindsey and whispered, “No.”

I started down the two steps to the street, but Lindsey held back. She said, “By the way, your daughter said to tell you she misses you, and wishes you’d come home early tonight.”

Chapter Twenty-five

Monday morning. It was two hours later in Boston, and my call caught Lorie Pope just as she was going out the door. I asked her if she could talk.

“If you’ll give me about thirty minutes to get all these coats off me,” she grumped. “Every time I start to miss the East and think I want to live back here, I remember how cold it is in January. What’s the temperature in Phoenix now?”

“Probably 75,” I said. “But I’m in Denver right now, so I feel your pain. Actually, I kind of like the cold. I just don’t have a good coat.”

“Well, you’re a native Zonie,” she said. “You probably thought snow was fallout the first time you saw it.”