Arizona Heat. Linda Lael Miller
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hot cider.
All I wanted was coffee, damn it. Plain, ordinary, simple coffee.
Again I missed my apartment and the chortle-chug of my own humble brewing apparatus. Heebie-jeebies or not, I was going to have to bite the bullet and go back. All this luxury was getting to me in a big way.
I wrestled a single cup of caffeine from the sleek monster machine, with all its shining spouts and levers, and headed back to the living room, blinking blearily at the TV screen as the theme shifted from fat kids to Gillian Pellway’s murder investigation.
Tucker Darroch’s harried face appeared, close up, then the camera panned back. He was wearing a blue cotton work shirt, sleeves rolled to the elbows, along with jeans and Western boots, and he looked as though he’d like to be anywhere else but in front of the sheriff’s office with a microphone practically bumping his lower lip.
“An arrest has been made, and yet the investigation continues?” the reporter asked. “Does that mean you aren’t sure you have the right man in custody?”
“Mr. Erland hasn’t been formally charged,” Tucker answered, tersely patient. “He’s being held for questioning.”
“He’s been in the county jail for almost a week,” the reporter pointed out helpfully. She was ultra-skinny—obesity clearly wasn’t rampant among media types—and wore a pink suit with a pencil skirt and fashionably short jacket. Her hair was blond and big. “Doesn’t that indicate that Mr. Erland is a prime suspect?”
Personally, I thought she was standing a tad closer to Tucker than absolutely necessary. I get sidetracked by things like that.
I took another slurp of coffee and reminded myself that I had no claim on Tucker Darroch. Oh, no. He still belonged to Allison, the divorce notwithstanding. While I’d tossed and turned in my lonely bed the night before, dreaming about dead people, he’d probably been snuggled in his ex-wife’s arms.
I almost choked on the coffee.
“Mr. Erland,” Tucker said evenly, “is a person of interest, not a suspect.”
Copspeak, I thought. Tucker couldn’t make a definitive statement regarding Erland’s innocence or guilt—I knew it, Tucker knew it and so did the reporter, along with most of the viewing audience, a few flakes excepted. It was all rhetoric to fill airtime.
Translation: nobody knew jack-shit.
The interview ended.
The telephone rang.
A wild fantasy overwhelmed me. It was Tucker, I decided, calling to ask if I’d seen him on TV.
As if he’d ever do that.
“Hello?” I cried into the cordless receiver I’d snatched up from the coffee table.
“Who is this?” an unfamiliar female voice demanded.
I bristled, disappointed. “You first,” I said. “After all, you’re the one who placed the call.”
There was a short standoff, and I was about to break the connection when the caller relented.
“My name,” the woman said, “is Mrs. Alexander Pennington. And I’m looking for Mojo Sheepshanks.”
I hadn’t had all that much coffee. It took a moment for my brain to grope past Greer, the only “Mrs. Alexander Pennington” I knew, to the ex-wife with the drinking problem. I’d met her once at Fashion Square Mall, and her image assembled itself in my mind—overweight, expensively dressed, too-black hair worn Jackie O bouffant.
“This is Mojo,” I said, against my better judgment. “What do you want?”
All right, maybe that question was a little abrupt, but it was direct and to the point. The first Mrs. Pennington knew I was Greer’s sister, and that meant she’d probably called out of some codependent need to harangue the trophy wife in a flank attack. It’s always better to be direct with that kind of person.
“I understand you’re a private investigator now,” Mrs. Pennington #1 said with drunken dignity. I wondered if she was still under the influence of last night’s cocktail hour, or if she subscribed to the hair-of-the-dog-that-bit-you theory and had started the day with a Bloody Mary.
I closed my eyes. Damn all that TV coverage, anyway. Why had I touted myself as a P.I. every time I got in front of a camera? Now people actually expected me to solve things. “How did you get my number?” I asked.
“You’re in the book.”
Right. And I’d programmed my phone at the apartment to forward calls to Greer’s guesthouse. I needed more coffee.
“Yes,” I said, scrambling for a little dignity of my own.
“I’d like to hire you.”
“That would be a conflict of interest, Mrs. Pennington,” I said, intrigued in spite of myself. “As you know, your ex-husband is currently married to my sister.”
“I’m aware of that,” she replied moderately. “Believe me. This is a separate matter, and it’s delicate, which is why I would prefer not to discuss it over the telephone.”
It finally occurred to me that Mrs. Pennington-the-first might be one of Greer’s blackmailers. As I said, I hadn’t had enough coffee.
While it seemed like a stretch, hell hath no fury like a woman scorned and, besides, you can dig up dirt on just about anybody if you have the resources to hire enough muscle to do the shoveling.
Suffice it to say that an instinct kicked in. There was something important going on under the surface here, and I had to find out what it was.
“When did you want to meet?” I asked.
“Noon today,” Mrs. Pennington answered readily, reeling off a posh address not that far from Greer’s. “I’ll have Carlotta serve her special lobster salad, so don’t eat before you get here.”
I wasn’t sure eating anything prepared under the grande dame’s roof would be smart, but I liked lobster, and my budget didn’t allow for much of it. I had my stash in the bank, thanks to Margery DeLuca, but I didn’t plan on blowing it on seafood.
“Noon,” I repeated cautiously. I’d scrawled the address on the front of a TV Guide.
“I’d rather you didn’t tell your sister about this meeting, if you don’t mind,” Mrs. Pennington went on. “At least, not immediately.”
“I can’t promise that, Mrs. Pennington,” I said, frowning. Elsewhere on the TV Guide cover someone had written, in lopsided, childish letters, “DOG.”
Gillian, of course.
She could write? Not much, probably, since she was only seven. Still, the word opened up a whole new realm of possibilities. Mentally I added an item to the shopping list in my head.
“Call me Beverly,” Mrs. Pennington said.
I wasn’t planning an ongoing relationship with Beverly Pennington, but calling her by her first name would certainly be less awkward, given that on the rare occasions the words Mrs. Pennington came to my mind, it was always in reference to Greer.
“Beverly it is,” I agreed.
We said our goodbyes, and I hung up. After a glance at the clock I took a quick, cool shower, donned a blue-and-white-print sundress with spaghetti straps and a pair of sandals and subdued my hair with a pinch clip. Tufts stuck up on my crown, giving the do a decidedly undone look, but hey, it wasn’t as if I was a TV reporter or anything. I was a detective, Tucker’s snide remarks about my mail-order license aside.
I was sort of expecting Gillian to materialize in the front seat of the Volvo as I backed out of the driveway, but it didn’t happen. I hoped she hadn’t returned to the graveyard to hang out. I was no expert on ghost behavior—maybe she’d gone home, the way Justin had, or to her school, or any one of a