My brief warning to Ames on the way into the restaurant hadn't included Rhonda Attwood's exact words about intending to "take out" the people responsible for her son's death, so he wasn't playing with an entirely full deck, but I was still astounded at the conversation shifting back and forth across the table between them.
I had the sickening feeling that Ralph Ames was being royally suckered, neatly led into the trap, and there I sat, watching but helpless to derail the process. Sentence by sentence Rhonda Attwood deftly plied him for information, asking innocent-sounding questions that drew him further and further into what I saw as her own private vigilante agenda.
It galled me to watch Ralph Ames, my trusty, sophisticated, man-of-the-world attorney who should have known better, be led like a lamb to the slaughter, smiling and laughing all the while. After all, it wasn't the first time. For either one of us.
"What about Michelle's father?" I asked ingenuously. I folded my arms across my chest and waited to see how Rhonda would respond to that one.
"He wasn't invited," she responded carefully.
"I'll just bet he wasn't."
There was a sudden flash of anger in Rhonda Attwood's eyes, one that wasn't masked by the flattering candlelight. "What's that supposed to mean?" she demanded.
Our waiter reappeared as if on cue. It seemed like a deliberate plot. "Are you ready now?" he asked.
Together, Ralph and Rhonda settled for something that roughly translated into mesquite grilled rack of lamb seasoned with thyme and garlic and served with jalapeno jelly and a still-burning sprig of rosemary. I ordered the Cornish game hen. Ralph insisted that we each try one of the appetizers-the tamales, cucumber soup, and red and yellow bell pepper soup.
The food was fine, but I would have enjoyed the dinner a whole lot more if I could have eaten without the sense that the artistic bullshit that passed for conversation around our table was nothing but a convenient camouflage for Rhonda Attwood's keg of emotional dynamite.
The fuse was already lit. The best I could hope for was to keep it from blowing sky-high and taking an unsuspecting Ralph Ames right along with it.
CHAPTER 12
While Rhonda and Ralph continued to talk about art and things artistic, I contented myself with people watching. The dining room grew crowded and noisy with fashion-plate people, including several who were evidently deeply entrenched in city politics. The women, dressed to the nines, were there to see and be seen. The men were there because the women were.
Our table afforded me an almost unobstructed view of the small grill area where no fewer than six men dove back and forth in a complicated ballet that was almost comic to watch although I have no quarrel with the quality of the food that ultimately ended up on our platter-sized plates.
Dessert, an unpronounceable creme brulee, consisted of three flavors of custard served in sweet miniature taco shells and topped with a rich raspberry sauce. Ames must have cued someone about my birthday, because my chocolate-glazed plate arrived with a lit candle stuck right in the middle of one of my custards. Thank God they didn't light all the candles I deserved.
I kept waiting for Rhonda to steer the conversation back to her son's murder, but that didn't happen, nor was there any further reference to plans for Joey's funeral. Two and a half hours after we had been seated, we were waiting outside for the valet to retrieve our cars. He brought the Fiat first. As Rhonda was getting in, she turned back to Ralph.
"Thank you for getting me the room," she said, almost as an afterthought. "It's so convenient, but…"
If she was going to voice an objection, Ralph waved it away. "Don't worry about it. It's my pleasure."
"What room?" I asked, once Rhonda had roared out of the parking lot past a waist-high sign that through some inexplicable coincidence said "Beaumont Properties."
"At La Posada," Ralph said. "The manager and I are good friends. We trade favors back and forth all the time. It's just up the street from the church. I told her to stay there until after the funeral."
The drive to Sky Harbor in Ames' Lincoln was thorny. When I tried to recap some of what Rhonda had told me the night before, Ralph listened politely enough. When I finished, he brushed aside my concerns, telling me I was completely off base, out of my head. When I hinted that he might be losing his objectivity in regard to Rhonda Attwood, he came as close as Ralph Ames ever comes to losing his cool.
"Look," he said finally, sounding somewhat annoyed. "I appreciate your concern, Beau, but give me a little more credit than that. Right now Rhonda Attwood is a woman beset by numerous legal difficulties. She also happens to be a gifted artist whose work I've admired for some time. Certainly I jumped at the chance to be of service, but just because I've decided to help her, don't assume there's a whole underlying agenda for either one of us, because there isn't."
"So you're not interested in her personally?"
"Professionally, not personally."
"And you're not worried that she might try to draw you into the fray?"
"I don't believe there's going to be any ‘fray,' as you put it, but I'll take your warning under advisement."
That was the best I could do.
At the Alamo office near the airport, Ames started to park and come inside with me, but I told him not to bother, that wouldn't be necessary. Promising to see him at home, I trudged into the office prepared to face down the folks at the rental desk. They treated me with an air of less than cordial distrust, regarding me as an auto-renting leper who, however inadvertently, had managed to involve one of their precious Grand AMs in a homicide investigation.
A supervisor, not the same one I had talked to earlier on the phone, was summoned from a back room. She subjected me to a lengthy and public lecture on my general automotive character and deportment. The lecture concluded with a recitation of rental agreement no-nos, the strongest of which was a forcefully worded prohibition against taking my Subaru anywhere into the wilds of Old Mexico. I received my keys only after promising, cross my heart, that I had no such evil intention.
Relieved to escape the office, I retreated to the welcome solitude of the Subaru, even though, compared to the luxury of Ames' Lincoln with its car phone and liquid-crystal dashboard instrumentation or to my own Porsche, the modest four-wheel-drive station wagon represented a big step downward. It seemed gangly and awkward, but it still beat walking.
As I left the airport area, my first inclination was to drive directly back to Ralph's place, but by the second stoplight, I rethought that plan. I had slept away most of the day, and it was far too early for bed. I certainly didn't want to resume my non-conversation with Ralph Ames regarding Rhonda Attwood's questionable intentions.
My second inclination was to turn in at the very next HAPPY HOUR sign on the right-hand side of the street and buy myself a drink, a double, but the place turned out to be a topless joint in an exceedingly marginal neighborhood. Repelled, I kept on driving. Besides, did I really want to stop there with the dust of Ironwood Ranch still sticking to the heels of my shoes? That thought brought me abruptly back to the business with Calvin and Louise Crenshaw.
According to Ames, Louise herself was spreading the story that the snake in my cabin had somehow wandered in from the wild. She was, was she? Maybe it was time to see about that.
I glanced at my watch and saw that it was only nine o'clock, still plenty of time to drive the seventy miles or so to Wickenburg and beard the lions in their cozy ranch-style den. With any kind of luck, I'd manage to see both of them at once. I turned left at the next intersection and headed west on McDowell, a major east-west arterial, figuring correctly that eventually I'd run into Interstate 17 headed north.