High Country Nocturne (David Mapstone Mystery 8)
She kept her hands on my shoulders long past appropriate and looked at me smoothly.
“Who did that to your eye? You don’t look like a brawler.”
“I’m not, usually. Who are you?”
“Zephyr.” She tossed her hair, which glistened in the bright room.
“The west wind.”
Her lips curled up. “You know your mythology. I like you.”
I knew more about trains. The Denver Zephyr had been a premier passenger train before America decided it wanted to throw away its great rail patrimony. They stayed on life support with Amtrak, which operated the California Zephyr. Lindsey and I had ridden it through the Rockies.
This Zephyr started to say more when a new voice came behind us.
“Zephyr, dear, leave the gentleman alone. He and I have to talk.”
She finally removed her hands. “Of course, Mother. Have fun. He’s good looking and I bet he knows it.”
Now I was being played. Women her age had rarely found me attractive, not even when I was twenty.
Zephyr sauntered through an archway and disappeared.
“She’s very mischievous. Do you have kids?”
“No.” I introduced myself and showed her my badge and identification.
 
; She gave me a firm handshake. “I’m Diane Whitehouse.”
Diane Whitehouse was petite with thick dark hair cut to her jawline and parted on the left. She wore black Prada jeans, a simple white sweater, and diamond studs in her ears. She appeared to be about my age, with big eyes behind the black plastic-framed glasses that were fashionable again.
Her forehead was defined by natural wrinkles. I respected that. Being rich in this town almost mandated a trip to one of the pricey plastic surgeons in Scottsdale, “Silicone Valley.” A large solitary diamond sat on a ring, the only other piece of jewelry she wore.
She was also the widow of Elliott Whitehouse, the last of the old generation of local residential builders, who had died last year.
I had never met the man but he made his fortune laying down suburban tract houses all over the Valley. When I was young, his corny flag-draped billboards promised, “You don’t have to be president to live in a Whitehouse.”
I was surprised he had chosen to remain here after selling Whitehouse Homes and retiring. The usual playbook was to leave the city for coastal California or the San Juan Islands. Of course, this was probably only one of his homes.
Like so many of its custom-designed cousins that ran from here across to Paradise Valley and up into the slopes of the McDowell Mountains, this one managed to appear expensive and trashy at the same time.
Diane led me through one of the arches into a study lined with light-brown built-in bookshelves, interspersed with a marble fireplace, a large mirror, and French doors leading to a terrace. All of this except the mirror was colored butterscotch. A heavy black wrought-iron chandelier hung from a snowy ceiling. The room had too much furniture. She invited me to sit on a sofa and settled across from me in a chair, crossing very slender legs.
“This rain is so depressing.”
“I love it,” I said.
She nodded like a scientist whose experiment had produced something unexpected. “You must be a native.”
“Fourth generation.”
“Not many of you,” she said. “That must be lonely.”
I thought about that and decided she was right.
“I’ve lived here long enough that I should appreciate the rain,” she said. “But I don’t. What do you think about that?”