Life is complicated, as Sharon said. Lisa Cardiff-it was Lisa Cardiff Sommers now-had readily agreed to meet us anywhere but her home. I would have preferred a place like Tarbell’s down on Camelback Road, or even Tom’s Tavern downtown. But it quickly became clear that Lisa, like many north Phoenicians, rarely came down into the “old” part of the city. Anyway, we were on duty and, with my new job, I had a damned example to set. Now, at the entrance to the sports bar and dressed to blend in with chinos and sweatshirts, we greeted her and discreetly showed our IDs, which she studied at some length. After we were shown to a table, we absurdly ordered coffees and Diet Cokes while SportsCenter blared on half a dozen TVs.
Franklin Roosevelt had a mistress, despite his heavy leg braces and a world war to run. So did LBJ, and Kennedy and Clinton had racked up impressive body counts. Before us, if Sharon was to be believed, was a woman who had been involved with Peralta. It was a side of him that had utterly hidden itself from me for a quarter century.
Lisa Cardiff Sommers hardly looked like a saucy home-wrecker. But the journey from nineteen years old to the edge of forty was unpredictable. Lisa was shorter than Lindsey, and comfortably filled out, though not fat. She wore flat shoes with ill-fitting footlets. Her brown hair was short. Her face, tanned and pleasant in an unremarkable way, looked like it was comfortable smiling and laughing. Which she wasn’t doing now.
“I hope you understand how impossible this is for me,” she started out. “Whatever happened when I was a kid is so far in the past. I’m married and have two children, and there’s no way I should even be talking to you.”
My Diet Coke was flat and I was bone-tired. I said, “Do you understand Sheriff Peralta is in a coma and his assailant is loose? We don’t have time to ass around. We could have just shown up at your front door.”
“Screw you,” she said with vehemence, her lips suddenly draining of any color. “I don’t even have to talk to you!”
She started to rise, but Lindsey lightly touched her hand. “Please, Lisa, we need your help.”
Maybe it was classic good cop, bad cop, or maybe it was the way Lindsey could disarm and soothe people. Lisa Cardiff Sommers sat back down and took a long swig of coffee. I could have calmed her down with a martini at Tarbell’s.
She said, “Deputy, I can’t imagine anything I could tell you-”
“Call me Lindsey.”
“That’s my daughter’s name!” She softened, melted. I felt like such a heel. Lisa said, “It’s spelled L-y-n-n-s-y.”
“That’s nice,” Lindsey said warmly, although I knew she would hate the spelling.
Lisa ignored me and went on. “Lynnsy just turned six, and her brother Chance is eight. Do you have children, Lindsey? No? Oh, but I see you’re engaged.” Lindsey gave her a warm, single-family-detached-home smile. Lisa looked back at me and said, in a tone of motherly correction, “I hope she picked someone more sensitive and empathetic than you.”
“He’s a great guy,” I said. “I hate him.”
Lindsey tried to steer Lisa back on course, but she just started crying and talking, like some cheaply constructed dam had given way under pressure of a sudden storm.
“I love my husband and he’s a good man. Jim’s the southwest regional sales manager for Qwest Wireless. We have a good life. He’s a wonderful provider. But Jim couldn’t handle knowing about this. He just couldn’t. And I’m entitled to my privacy.” She sipped coffee and wiped her eyes with a paper napkin.
My God, I thought, she must think we’re here on some morals charge. But nobody thinks straight when the subject of old lovers comes up.
“I was nineteen years old when we became involved,” she said, a croupy whisper. “I was a kid, for God’s sake. I was just having fun. Didn’t you do things like that, Lindsey?”
“Sure,” Lindsey said. “It’s OK.” She held Lisa’s hand.
“How do you think it’s been since he became chief deputy and such a celebrity…,” She never said the words “Mike Peralta,” as if they had dangerous conjuring power. “People don’t usually get to be reminded on TV and in the newspapers about their youthful indiscretions. And that wife of his, on the radio!” She sniffled again. “Of course, I was sick when I heard he had been shot.” She looked at me, and drew herself up straighter. “But I just feel so dirty and violated that you’ve come here. I had to lie to my husband, tell him I had a girlfriend that was having trouble.”
Lindsey said, “Lisa, we’re not here to invade your privacy. We really just need your help remembering. It may be that some things going on in Sheriff Peralta’s life twenty years ago have something to do with the shooting.”
Lisa’s face softened again and she blew her nose loudly. She had green eyes that seemed speckled with other colors.
“Of course, I’ll try to help,” she said.
Lindsey tiptoed in. “Did Peralta ever seem like he was having trouble, back when you knew him? Anything at all?”
Lisa stared into the half-empty coffee cup. She gave a little smile. “He was very driven, very intense. I really got that danger charge out of being with him.” In a different voice, she said, “He wasn’t happy in his marriage. But what happened between us wasn’t his fault. I met him when he came to my apartment after there had been a break-in. Later, I found a reason to see him again. He was very shy and awkward, but in this very wonderful adult way. I picked him up. Threw myself at him, is more like it.”
I felt a queasy voyeuristic thrill, like listening to people make love loudly in the next room. I drank the flat Coke as penance.
“When did you guys break up?” Lindsey asked.
“January of 1979,” she said. “It was on a Sunday night. He said he had to stop seeing me. His wife…”
“And you didn’t see him again?”
“Once, years later, I saw him at a distance in Fry’s one night. I didn’t try to say hello.”
That ruled her out of any direct memory of Peralta after the Guadalupe shooting.
“What else was going on in his life?” Lindsey prodded. “Did he ever talk about work?”
“He had…” Lisa laughed out loud. “He had this partner who was, like, trying to become a college professor. He sounded pretty full of himself, this partner, with his big words and books. I don’t remember his name.” Lindsey kicked me under the table. Lisa said, “Mike was very down-to-earth.” She spoke the name tenderly.
“Now that I look back, it was a weird time,” she continued. “I was born in 1959, so I was too young to be with the real boomers. They had the sixties. Mike served in Vietnam. My sister, she got maced by the Chicago police at the Democratic Convention, and she lived in a commune for awhile. She was at Altamonte when the Rolling Stones played and there was the big riot. Kids her age had such a bond, I guess. My age, we got, like, the BeeGees…”
“Did you meet any people Peralta worked with?” Lindsey asked.
She shook her head. “We had lots of cops come to the coffee shop where I worked, but usually not deputies. I worked in Scottsdale. It was kind of cool, because he was my secret.” She suddenly sounded nineteen again.
Lindsey said, “Please don’t be angry if I ask this, but I assume you guys exchanged gifts?”
“He never gave me diamonds and pearls, if that’s what you mean.”
I felt the muscles in my back relax a bit.
“He gave me a mermaid, a little china thing you could have picked up at Los Arcos mall for ten dollars. I was going through a mermaid phase. I thought it was sweet of him.”
“Did he have any other friends?” I ventured softly. “Other than this stuffed-shirt partner?”
She thought about it and cocked her head in a wry smile. “I do remember one,” she said. “Because he had such a name. Nixon, like the president.”