High Country Nocturne (David Mapstone Mystery 8)

That had nothing to do with the weather. It was signaled by a pedigreed toss of her head. Like mother, like daughter. She indicated a glass display case holding a very old piece of pottery, geometric design, with a shard broken out near the middle.

Or it was a very good fake. Yet considering Elliott Whitehouse’s wealth and the abundance of various styles of large, ornate native pottery, Hopi Katsinas, and Mexican Day of the Dead figurines on the shelves, I knew it must be authentic.

“Beautiful,” I said. “Mimbres, with a kill hole.”

The Mimbres were part of the Mogollon culture, one of the prehistoric peoples of the Southwest. The “kill hole” was part of the burial tradition, placed with the deceased so his spirit could escape through it to the next world.

“Very good,” she said. “I asked Chris to send me his best detective. He told me he had a professional historian on his staff. I’m impressed but not surprised.”

I was not an archaeologist and the three thousand years of human habitation of Arizona was not my specialty. I had dated an archaeologist once, or at least that’s what she claimed to be. Instead, I was pretty sure she was a murderer and I very nearly fell in love with her. Talk about a footnote. No, I knew only enough in this field to be dangerous and yet impress Diane Whitehouse. But her comment made me wonder if she ever read the local newspaper when it reported on my successes working for Peralta?

“Chris is going places, you know,” she said. “You stick with him. Governor is next and beyond that, who knows?”

So she was a campaign donor. That was why Melton had roped me in.

“He’s such an improvement over Mike Peralta.” Diane recrossed her legs, idly stroking an ankle with her fingers. “I can’t believe Elliott contributed to his campaigns all those years.”

Every muscle in my face remained relaxed. Her expression grew intense. “I had intended to go to that jewelry show, you know? And Mike Peralta, our former sheriff, shoots a man, steals the jewels. This is such a dangerous place. One doesn’t want to be called a racist, but…”

She sighed and smiled.

Of course one didn’t even need to finish the sentence.

“Elliott took me to Antwerp once. I visited the old diamond district. Amazing place. The deals were done with a handshake. And generations of craftsmen did the cutting and polishing. Much of that has moved offshore now, where it can be done much cheaper.”

Like Jerry McGuizzo and Bogdan, she knew a good deal about diamonds.

“You don’t strike me as someone who would be interested in bling,” I said.

She laughed. “No. I thought Zephyr might like something. Maybe Tupac’s rings on a chain to take back to Stanford. Her birthday is coming up and it’s only been a year since Elliott died. She’s terribly spoiled but what can you do?”

Stop spoiling her, I wanted to say. Instead, “Is she your only child?”

Diane hesitated and pushed back her hair. “She was my child with Elliott. We were twenty-five years apart in age but it never felt that way. He had two sons by his first wife.”

“Do they live here?”

She shook her head. “It took some getting used to, for all of us. When Elliott and I started dating, I was seen as the home-wrecker. The boys resented me. How could they not? They couldn’t see into the reality of that marriage, how dead and passionless it was. Anyway…now they have their own families. There’s respect between us.…”

In another setting, I might have said something to show I understood or sympathized. But I was here on police business. Not only that, in the eyes of Diane and Chris, I was here as the hired help in his political aspirations, tending to a wealthy patron. It made me feel dirty.

I said, “The sheriff told me you found the wallet.”

Her forehead furrowed. “The wallet. Yes.”

She sat straight and stared into the white ceiling and her face relaxed. “You know, when the real-estate bubble collapsed in 1990, Elliott was one of the few local homebuilders who wasn’t wiped out. He was a survivor.”

“He was the last of his kind,” I said. “Now it’s all national builders.”

She nodded enthusiastically. “He had amazing business acumen. When I met him, I was only twenty-five and I thought he walked on water. The sophisticated older man and the malleable young woman.” She paused and watched over the big glasses to see my reaction. I was a model of empathy.

“That’s what it looked like on the surface,” she said. “He was weaker than the world knew and I was stronger. But we had a good marriage. A complicated marriage, but isn’t that redundant? I know this must sound terribly boring. An aging woman who’s lost her looks and can’t stop talking.”

“Not at all,” I said. The reality was that I didn’t want to be here and didn’t care about this case compared with Lindsey’s survival, finding her killer, and getting Peralta out of this jam. Less than a mile from here, I hoped, a SWAT team was taking down Strawberry Death at this moment.

But I had to play along for now, couldn’t let my agitation show. I gallantly added, “You are very attractive.” And she knew it.

“You’re so kind,” she said. “Do you have a Ph.D.?”