Rhonda Attwood, Joey's mother, seemed convinced that he was responsible for the attempt on my life, but despite the fact that nothing in her son's grubby life made his death seem worthy of revenge, and despite good advice to the contrary, Rhonda persisted in the illogical notion she could or should single-handedly take on whoever was responsible for her son's death. There was a good chance that her bungling around in the case would backfire and drive the killer or killers to ground.
Michelle, the dead man's pregnant "fiancee" had been jilted twice-once by Joey's behavior with Kelly and once by a bullet fired form my. 38. I had asked Kelly if she had known about Michelle, and now I wondered if Michelle had known about Kelly. If so, what had been her reaction? On the surface, Michelle Owens had seemed insubstantial, almost a will-o'-the-wisp, and yet pulling the trigger on a handgun doesn't require much physical strength. Anger does wonders for itchy trigger fingers.
That brought me back to the lieutenant colonel, father of the pregnant non-bride. He was a definite possibility, having both motive and opportunity, but there was part of me that hoped it wasn't him. The two of us were too much alike, had too much in common.
Finally, I came around to the Crenshaws, those wonderful horrific folks, scum parading under the guise of small-town middle-class respectability. Louise had snared the unsuspecting Joey for an insignificant sexual dalliance, with her impotent husband watching from the sidelines and urging her on. No wonder those two had been totally impervious to Joey's clumsy blackmail attempt. Of the three, I had a tough time choosing who was the most reprehensible.
And here was I, poor old J.P. Beaumont who never did anything to anybody, involved in this mess all the way up you my eyeteeth, stuck in the middle of this rogue's galley briar-patch. The more I tried to get away, the deeper I sank, trapped in muck, hoping against hope that Detective Reyes-Gonzales would find a way to bring this impossible muddle to some kind of satisfactory conclusion. With any kind of luck, the lady would be good at her job.
Maybe I was no loner a prime suspect, but until Detective Reyes-Gonzales straightened things out, she wasn't likely to let me get on an airplane and go back home. The prospect of hanging around Arizona indefinitely with nothing to do but wait wasn't one I relished.
With the thought in mind, I put down my emptied coffee cup and went to start the washing machine. The smell in the laundry room hadn't gotten any better. Shorty Rojas or whoever had gathered up my personal effects from the cabin at Ironwood Ranch had evidently dumped my wet sandbagging clothes into the laundry bag and tied the damn thing shut. Anyone who's ever had the misfortune of forgetting a wet bath towel in a clothes hamper for a day or two knows what I'm talking about. There was another smell, too hovering in the background, but the odor of the moldy clothes was so overpowering that at first I couldn't quite identify the other one.
My mother always insisted on sorting clothes into three stacks-whites, light-colored, and dark-colored. After first locating a large plastic bottle of bleach and pouring some into the filling washing machine, I began the sorting process. The ones on top, still dank and wet and shot through with sand, came out first and fell into a sodden heap. I left them there, figuring I'd wash those separately.
Next came a fistful of socks and underwear. I sorted out the socks. Loose sand had sifted down form the wet things at the top of the bag. When I shook a T-shirt to get rid of the sand, something small and white came free from the material and flew across the room like a guided missile, landing with a tiny soft thud several feet away on Ralph Ames' surgically clean kitchen floor. Not wanting to leave a mess, I went to retrieve whatever it was, and it turned out to be a mouse. A dead white mouse. A reeking dead white mouse.
For a sickening moment I was back in the cabin at Ironwood Ranch looking down at a regurgitated pile of fur and tail. I'm not scared of dead mice, but if a mouse could be concealed in my dirty clothes bag, I wondered what else could.
Dreading what I might find, I left the mouse where it was and went back to the laundry room. Gingerly I shook out the entire bag, emptying the contents onto the floor and then kicking through the resulting heap to see if there were any other unwelcome surprises. There weren't. The only things left in my dirty clothes bag were moldy, dirty clothes.
By now the machine was full of hot soapy water, agitating wildly because no clothing had been added. I gathered up the white clothes, stuck them in the machine, and closed the lid before going back to the kitchen to deal with the mouse.
I located a plastic sandwich bag and put the mouse inside, lifting it by its tail when I picked it up. The plastic didn't succeed in containing all the odor, so I took bag and mouse outside and placed the malodorous package on the patio table.
For some time I stood looking down at it, trying to sort out what it meant. It was a clue of some kind, a message, but where had it come from and what was it trying to tell me? How had it gotten in my laundry bag? Who would have put it there when, and why? Inarguably, the mouse had something to do with Joey Rothman, his rattlesnake Ringo, and hence the murder itself. But what? And what did all of that have to do with me?
Feeling more than a little silly, I went back into the house, picked up the kitchen telephone, and dialed information to get the number of the Yavapai County Sheriff's Department in Prescott. What the hell was I doing? Calling a goddamn homicide detective to report finding a dead mouse, for Chrissake? But gut instinct told me that the mouse was, somehow related to Detective Reyes-Gonzales' case, and I couldn't afford to piss her off by withholding information no matter how trivial that information might seem at first glance.
The dispatcher told me the detective wasn't in. As a matter of fact, she was on the road, possibly somewhere between Wickenburg and Phoenix at that very moment. I left my name and phone number on the off chance that sooner or later Detective Reyes-Gonzales would check in with him.
"If it's an emergency of some kind, I can try patching you through," he offered helpfully.
An emergency? About a dead white mouse? Not likely. Not even I had that much nerve.
"Don't worry about it," I said quickly, giving him my name and number. "And don't go to any extra trouble. But if you do hear from her, tell her I called. There's no big rush."
I hung up the phone, drained the final cup of coffee from the carafe, and paced around in the kitchen, thinking and trying to decide what to do. Sitting still and doing nothing would drive me crazy. Homicide cops are action junkies, but in this instance, taking any kind of action at all could get me in a whole shit-pot of trouble.
I kept thinking about the dead mouse, cooking now in its plastic bag on the sunny patio table, and Ringo, the rattlesnake, starving to death somewhere on the banks of the swollen Hassayampa River. A dead mouse and an equally dead snake. Suddenly those two thoughts collided in my head, and a light bulb came on. Surely Marsha or JoJo Rothman would know when and how Ringo left their house. Why hadn't I thought to ask them about it earlier?
Quickly I searched through Ames' white laminated kitchen cabinets until I located a drawer full of telephone books. The number for James and Marsha Rothman listed a Carefree address. I dialed. Jennifer Rothman answered on the second ring.
"Hello, Jennifer, this is Detective Beaumont, from Ironwood Ranch. Remember me?"
"I know you. you're the one who helped me get to ride the horse."
"That's right; Are either one of your parents home?"
"No, they both had to leave for a while. The babysitter is here, but she's watching television. Cartoons. Want to talk to her?"