“Well, they’re not exactly clamoring for my input, Julie,” I said, nursing a martini. “They have to assume the worst because of where the body was found.”
It was as if I had physically struck her; she recoiled.
“‘The body.’ That’s my sister.”
“I’m sorry. It’s an old habit. A bad one.”
Julie excused herself for a long trip to the rest room. I sipped the martini and looked out at the palm trees swaying. A storm was coming into town. Maybe we would get an hour’s break from the monotonous heat.
When she returned, I asked, “Julie, I need to know if there’s more to this than you’ve told me.”
“What do you mean?”
“I mean, have you told me everything?” Like when you slept with Jim Ellis after that party when we were juniors but never told me. “We don’t know yet for sure, but it seems obvious that Phaedra was alive until very recently. So where was she? Had she been in danger all this time? Had she disappeared voluntarily, or was she kidnapped? What about those men who were watching you? Is there anything you haven’t told me?”
She shook her head, then said, “Sometimes Phaedra would just go away for a while, but never like this. It was her way of just shutting down when relationships or whatever got too intense. She might not let Mom and Dad know, but she’d always let me know.”
“Should you notify your mom?”
Julie’s eyes darkened and she shook her head vehemently. “You know, in a weird way, you’re lucky you never knew your parents, David. And I know how alone you must feel now that your grandparents are gone. But they did love you. I can’t say my folks ever loved any of us.”
She swirled the golden liquid in her glass. “We were the perfect family.” She laughed unhappily. “Once, when I was about fifteen, I was out with some friends and we ran into Dad with his girlfriend. He’d screwed around for years, I guess. But that’s kind of hard to handle when you’re fifteen. Finally, he just left and never came back. Moved to Florida. Married a bimbo. Not that it really mattered, because when I was growing up, he never had anything to offer but slaps and criticism. Nothing I ever did was enough to earn his love.”
I let the waitress refill our glasses. It had been years since I’d heard Julie talk about her father, but the bitterness was undimmed. Hers was a ghost-ridden family drowning in what Sharon Peralta would call “unresolved sorrows.” A brother killed himself when he was seventeen.
“Mom was useless,” Julie said. “Pills and booze. She was worse after the divorce. And”-she choked a bit-“Phaedra got the worst of it. Phaedra always felt that abandonment, so she was determined never to trust, always to be the first to leave.”
Outside, a sparse rain was starting to fall, hitting the palm trees with big dusty drops. It made me feel a little better. Even a little change from the constant oppression of the heat was welcome.
“I’m so tired, David,” she said, and she looked it. “I don’t know what else to tell you right now.”
We drank in silence. Then we walked through the dust and lightning back to the Blazer and I started to drive her to her car. Instead, we ended up at my place, where we drank too much. She cried a long time, then finally came to my bed, where we made love with the peculiar frenzy of the lost and the grief-stricken.
Chapter Eleven
I am running through my neighborhood in the eternal twilight of dreams. All the houses are familiar but darkened, and I can’t run fast enough to catch up with Phaedra. She has always just been there before I arrive. And she is in danger. I know this. And I run into my house, thinking I will find Mother and Dad and Grandma and Grandfather, and there is so much I need to tell them now, now that I’m a forty-year-old man.
But the house is empty except for the twilight, the loneliest part of the day, the lonely Sunday night of the clock. But then I know I’m not alone, and I see someone, and I know we are in danger. And I fire the Python and watch as the bullet moves too slowly, too slowly, and falls to the floor.
And then I am in bed, my legs entangled in Phaedra’s legs, exhausted from lovemaking. She laughs when she makes love. She runs that red hair across my chest. The neighbors keep pounding, pounding on the wall, but we laugh and don’t care.
The door. I sat up and pulled away from Julie, who was still out. I looked back again. Julie Riding in my bed. Last night had really happened. I pulled on a robe and walked to the front of the house. Peralta was at the door. The clock on the wall said 2:15-in the afternoon.
“Goddamn it, I’ve been banging on the door for fifteen minutes,” Peralta said, walking past me. “You never used to be a heavy sleeper.”
“Good morning to you, too.” God, my head hurt.
“It was a shitty morning, and now it’s a shitty afternoon. You have any coffee? Oh, shit, do you still not drink coffee?”
He was wearing a dark blue suit and a crisp white shirt, a grim expression on his face. I offered to make some coffee.
“I will.” It was Julie. She appeared in the hallway, wearing my ASU T-shirt.
“Julie.” Peralta waved a little wave. He seemed uncharacteristically awkward.
“Hello, Mike. Just like old times, isn’t it?” She ran a hand through her tangled brown-blond hair and padded into the kitchen. Peralta arched an eyebrow at me and nodded toward the living room.
“Where were you yesterday morning when I called you on the cell phone?” Peralta sat heavily into the sofa.
“I went up to Sedona to see Phaedra’s old boyfriend. I thought he might have a clue as to where she was.”
“And what made you do that?”
“What’s going on, Mike?” I began, but his look caught me short. “He called me the night before.”
Peralta sighed heavily. “Greg Townsend was found dead this morning.”
“What?”
“You heard me, David. Murdered. His cleaning lady found him this morning in the bedroom at his place in Sedona. He’d apparently been tortured with a raw electrical chord before he was given the business end of a twelve gauge. The Coconino County deputies found your name and phone number written on a pad on his desk. And naturally, they wanted to know what a Maricopa County deputy had been doing on their turf.”
I sat carefully in the leather easy chair. I told Peralta what Townsend had told me.
“Goddamn it, David, I told you to stay out of this case!” He was headed to the blowup point, which I didn’t want to see.
“It wasn’t anything but a missing persons case when I talked to Townsend, and you gave me permission to look into that. Remember?”
Julie walked in with coffee for Peralta and herself and a diet Coke for me. I patted her hand.
“Julie, sit.” It was Peralta. “I’m really sorry about your sister. But I have to ask you this. Where were you yesterday before David brought you downtown?”
“Is this an interrogation, Mike?” She tossed her hair a bit and sat opposite me. Her eyes were red and puffy.
Peralta sipped the coffee. “Good coffee,” he said, then: “It can be if you want. Should I read you your rights?”
“Wait a minute, Mike,” I said. “I picked her up at the Phoenician, where she works.”
I turned to Julie and said, “Greg Townsend was found murdered.” Peralta shot me a dirty look.
“I didn’t kill him, Mike, if that’s what you’re asking,” Julie said. “Not that I hadn’t thought about it, the way he treated Phaedra.”
“Julie! Jesus.”
Peralta said, “I think you should come downtown with me and talk to us about this.”
“Are you arresting me, Mike? Is that easier than looking for the son of a bitch who murdered my sister?”
He finished the coffee and stood. “David will be happy to drive you down when you two, uh, finish here.”
***
I was supposed to lecture at Phoenix College that afternoon. Instead, I canceled class to take Julie back to Madison Street. Not that I had taken any time to prepare the lecture. Not that I had made much progress on anything. I was no closer to selling the house than I had been two months ago. I was no closer to getting a new job. What I had accomplished was to land in this strange little drama with characters out of my past-my old partner, my old girlfriend. And the drama had a body count that was rising.