"Maybe. Anyway, we were just getting to know each other."
As far as I can tell, the word "rad" roughly translates into something my generation would have called "cool." As for the words "getting to know each other"-those must have changed entirely since I was Kelly's age. The probing kiss I had seen Joey plant on Kelly's lips had been well beyond the glad-to-make-your-acquaintance stage of human sexual relations. I'm not so far out of touch that I'd mistake a kiss like that for a platonic one. My daughter and I were suffering from a classic case of failure to communicate.
"So what did the two of you talk about, Kelly?"
"You."
Her one-word answer surprised me. "Me?" I echoed.
"Joey was more interested in you than he was in me. He wanted to know exactly where you were a police officer and what kind of work you did. You know, robbery, homicide, that kind of thing. When I told him you had a lot of money, he said you were probably on the take. We almost had a fight about that, but I told him. You know…about Anne Corley."
She was finally opening up a little, telling me more than the bare minimum, but I knew the next question could turn her off again, just like a faucet, but she had brought up something that sounded like a common thread.
"Did he ask you for money, Kel?"
"No. Why would he do that?"
"I just thought he might have, that's all."
"Well, he didn't. He must have known I didn't have any."
I didn't know whether to be relieved or sad that my "common thread" had so quickly become a dead end.
"And then what happened?"
"We talked mostly and…"
"And what?"
"And stuff."
"What kind of stuff?"
"You know. I mean, you saw us."
"I saw you necking."
"Daddy, you don't understand. All the boys around here are such children, and Joey seemed so…"
"Experienced?" God help me, I couldn't keep from filling in the blank, although I wanted to bite my tongue as soon as the word passed my lips.
"Yes," Kelly whispered.
Joey Rothman was dead, but I think Kelly was still more than half infatuated with him. I wanted to shake her, tell her to wake up and smell the coffee. With any kind of luck, maybe she would grow up enough to see that being experienced is only half the battle. You also have to know what to do with those experiences.
"Joey was wrong about you, wasn't he, Daddy?"
"Wrong about what?"
"When he said you were working undercover for the DEA. I told him that was crazy, that you do homicide not drugs and that you were there for treatment just like everybody else." she stopped and took a breath.
"Yes, kelly," I answered wearily. "I was there for treatment. Period."
"And you weren't working undercover."
"No."
"That's what Mr. Joe said too. You know, the counselor back at the ranch? In his office that day he said you were a substance abuser just like the rest of them and that he was sure you didn't have anything to do with what had happened to Joey."
Suddenly, Scott's remark about good old Burton Joe being on my side clicked into focus.
"I've gotta go now, Daddy. My ride's waiting outside. Did that help?"
"As a matter of fact, it did," I told her. "A lot. Thanks."
"Okay."
"And, Kelly? One more thing."
"What's that?" A guarded wariness came into her voice, as though she dreaded what other intrusive questions I might ask.
"I love you, Kelly."
Her relief was apparent even over the phone. "I love you, too, Daddy. Bye."
For a long time, I lay there on the bed, thinking about Joey Rothman and his fruitless quest for money. He hadn't asked Kelly, but he had tried accumulating cash in at least two other places. From the sound of it, his relationship with Kelly had been nothing more than a cover for intelligence-seeking about me, but with Rhonda and Louise, he sounded as though he was gathering getaway money. Rhonda was probably right. In all likelihood he would have moved elsewhere and then reinvested his capital right back in the same business-whatever that was.
I may have dozed again for a little while. The next time I opened my eyes, I had left Joey Rothman far behind and found myself wondering what to do with this unexpectedly unstructured day. At Ironwood Ranch, every moment had been measured and accounted for. Now, here I was in a strange limbo where I wasn't exactly on vacation, wasn't exactly in treatment, and couldn't very well go home, not when Detective Reyes-Gonzales had given me strict orders to hang around. Maybe Ralph Ames would have some brilliant idea. Besides, I wanted to have a heart-to-heart chat with him and let him know about the dark underbelly of Ironwood Ranch.
I headed for the shower. Later, when I came back out to get dressed, I was chagrined to discover that I was down to my last clean set of underwear. The only socks I had left were the mismatched pair consisting of one blue and one black. It was time to do laundry. It was past time to do laundry.
Once I was dressed, I gathered up the small pile that contained my newest dirty clothes and went in search of a washer/dryer and coffee, not necessarily in that order.
In the kitchen, on Ralph Ames' snow-white Corian countertop, I found an insulated carafe filled with hot coffee, a glass of freshly squeezed orange juice, and a note. The note, written in Ames' precise script, told me that unfortunately he had a prior commitment that would keep him busy most of the day, but that he'd be back late in the afternoon. Together we'd do something about dinner.
So I was on my own, for the whole day. Knowing that, I had no reason to rush into doing the laundry. I opened a sliding pocket door off the kitchen far enough to see that the room behind it was indeed the laundry. It smelled rotten in there. The penetrating stench seemed dreadfully out of place, especially in Ralph Ames' otherwise immaculate house. Quickly I dropped my bundle on the floor and shut the door again to keep the foul odor locked inside, then I turned to the serious business of coffee.
Awkwardly, holding the carafe with my arm, the glass of orange juice in one hand, and an empty cup in the other, I pushed open a sliding glass door with my shoulder and ventured out onto the patio to soak up some of Arizona's much-touted autumn sunshine. It was high time.
I settled down at a glass-topped patio table beside the pool and leaned back in the chair, with my eyes closed at times, feeling the warmth of the bright, brassy sun on the side of my face. Behind me I heard the usual city sounds-muted tires scrubbing on pavement, the sporadic rumble of occasional trucks, and once the blaring squall of a passing ambulance. The city was there all right, at my back and out of sight behind the glaring white stucco of Ralph Ames' rambling house, while before me loomed the rugged majesty of Camelback Mountain.
Ames had mentioned it to me once or twice, talked about how he considered himself privileged to live with that giant mound of red rock and its occasional internal grumblings as one of his closest neighbors. Sitting there quietly, sipping the sweet pulpy orange juice, I gradually came to understand what he had meant. A soothing, almost palpable silence drifted down the jagged sandstone cliffs like a veil of dense fog, wrapping itself around me and, for a brief while, blocking out all the disquieting circumstances of the past few days.
I may have actually slept for a moment or two, but finally, I roused myself and poured a cup of steaming coffee. Alternating the hot coffee with cool sips of orange juice. I sat for more than an hour, allowing myself to think about each of the players in turn considering them individually and collectively:
Joey Rothman, a dead creep with no socially redeeming value, had evidently believed I was really some kind of undercover supercop sent to nail his ass. He had believed it enough, despite Kelly's protestations to the contrary, that he had sicced his pet rattlesnake on me. He hadn't tried to put the touch on Kelly in his search for investment capital, but I wondered how many others besides Louise Crenshaw and Rhonda had been approached in his quest for quick cash.