"Did Jennifer tell you what day she spoke with him?"
"No, and I didn't think to ask. The babysitter was bugging her to hurry and get off the phone."
Delcia made another note. I was sitting there watching her write when an odd thought occurred to me, one I hadn't considered before. Maybe I had jumped to the wrong conclusion. What if Joey's leaving the snake in the room had been nothing more than an ugly practical joke? According to Rhonda, he hadn't been above that sort of thing.
"What's going on?" Delcia asked.
That's why I never play poker. My face always provides a dead giveaway of whatever's going on behind it.
"Just a thought, that's all."
"What kind of thought?" she insisted.
"Is it possible he did it as a joke after all, to see what I would do? Remember what Rhonda told us about him turning Ringo loose in the house and her finding it a week or so later?"
"I remember all right," Delcia said with certainty, shaking her head, "but this is no practical joke, Beau. The two incidents happening in such proximity have to be related. I can feel it in my bones. All we have to do is figure out the connection."
"We?" I said.
"I," she corrected.
But her comment had made me feel better, less paranoid somehow. And it was apparent that her earlier skepticism about me and my story had been replaced by belief. During our interview in Prescott, Delcia Reyes-Gonzales had clearly doubted my veracity. Now she was on my side.
Something had changed her doubt to trust, and I wanted to ask what, but instinct cautioned me to be wary. If I tried horning in where I wasn't welcome, I risked pushing her away. As the official investigator on the case, she needed to know about my conversation with Calvin Crenshaw, but if I told her, would she climb my frame for interfering? After all, she had just shot down my "we" and turned it into a singular "I." On reflection, though, it seemed worth the gamble.
"I talked to Calvin Crenshaw last night," I ventured cautiously.
"You what!" Delcia exclaimed. Her initial reaction wasn't good, but I forget on anyway. The damage was already done. What more did I have to lose?
"I drove up to Wickenburg last night and talked to him at home. It was a personal matter, Delcia," I said reassuringly. "Louise had told my attorney that I was a permanent persona non grata at Ironwood Ranch. I wanted to get that situation straightened out."
Delcia's face relaxed. Her sudden flash of anger dissipated. After all, my being thrown out of Ironwood Ranch wasn't her problem. "Did you come to some agreement?" she asked.
"Not exactly, because, based on what I found out, I don't ever expect to darken their doorstep again."
Alert and listening, she waited attentively. "And what exactly did you find out?"
"Louise Crenshaw was screwing Joey Rothman, among others. Calvin knew all about it. It was their own kinky little joke on the world."
Delcia Reyes-Gonzales seemed to rise in her seat by a good three inches.
"Who told you this?"
"Calvin," I said. "Good old Calvin Crenshaw himself. But he also warned me that if I tried to pass any of it along, he'd deny it. My word against his. No way to prove it."
Delcia sat forward in her seat with her dark unsettling eyes drilling into mine. "Tell me precisely what he said, verbatim, as much as you can remember."
And so I did, stumbling as witnesses sometimes do in an attempt to remember everything. Delcia seemed to hang on every word, not taking notes, but assimilating every detail. When I finished, she was nodding.
"In that case," she said quietly, "Joey Rothman's diary could be dynamite."
Before I could say anything more, she signaled for the waitress to bring the bill.
I had hoped my recitation would result in her returning the favor and letting me in on some of what she had going, but that was not to be. She reached for her purse and headed for the cashier with me trailing along behind.
"Wait a minute. Where are you going? What's going on?"
"I'm beginning to see a pattern here," she said, stopping in front of the cashier's desk. "One I don't like. I'm going to check it out."
The cashier ran Delcia's credit card through the machine while I waited impatiently in the crowded vestibule, which had filled up with lunchtime diners waiting for tables.
"But can't you tell me what it is?" I pleaded when we were alone outside, standing in front of her car.
"No," she said simply.
"You seem to be forgetting something, Beau," Delcia Reyes-Gonzales returned sweetly, favoring me with a dazzling smile.
"What's that?"
"That is Arizona, not Washington, remember? Keep in touch."
With that, she got in her car and drove away, leaving me fuming in the parking lot.
An old drinking buddy of mine once told me that when it come to women, men don't know shit.
He sure as hell got that right.
CHAPTER 15
The way Delcia Reyes-Gonzales wheeled out of the asphalt parking lot leaving strips of rubber in her wake told me that she was a woman with a definite purpose in mind, a lady with a fire lit under her slender butt. I must have said something that jibed with information she already knew or suspected, something important enough to merit her immediate attention. It pissed me off that she hadn't bothered to tell me what that something was.
Frustrated, I got in my rented Subaru and drove home to Ralph Ames' house, intent on finishing the laundry. At the very least, sorting and folding clean clothes was a job with some resolution to it, with a tangible beginning and end, both of which were firmly under my power and control. That was whole lot different from the people and circumstances surrounding Joey Rothman.
There were two messages on Ames' answering machine, both from Rhonda Attwood, both anxiously trying to reach Ralph, and both saying she'd call back later. Hearing her voice made me crabby as hell. It reinforced my suspicions that she was up to no good and made me wonder what kind of subterfuge she was going to use to sucker Ames into helping her. I was sorely tempted to erase the messages entirely, but I didn't. My mother taught me to be a better houseguest than that.
MYOB, Beaumont, I told myself firmly. MYOB.
I had completed the only crossword puzzle in the house and was just folding the last load of wash, the once-muddy sandbagging clothes, when the doorbell rang. I saw the green Fiat through the sidelight windows. What the hell is Rhonda Attwood doing here? I thought as I opened the door.
She smiled up at me. "Is Ralph back from the golf tournament yet?"
"No," I answered with some vexation. Again I was odd-man-out. Ralph hadn't told me about being in a golf tournament, but he had told Rhonda.
"He said he thought he'd be done by three-thirty or four," Rhonda continued easily. "Mind if I come in and wait?"
"No," I said. "Come on in."
Someone else might have noticed my annoyance, but Rhonda didn't. She followed me into the spacious living room, where I motioned her toward the long white leather couch. Once again, Rhonda didn't take the hint. Instead of sitting down, she prowled around the room, examining the various pieces of artwork on the walls and tables, frowning at some and nodding in appreciation at others.
Finally she turned and looked at me. "Ralph certainly has the eye of a connoisseur, doesn't he," she said.
"I wouldn't know about that," I answered brusquely. I thought she had a hell of a lot of nerve to meander uninvited around Ralph's living room, treating it like a goddamned museum.
"Would you like a drink?" I asked, attempting halfheartedly to assume the role of stand-in host.
She glanced at her watch before she answered. "A Crown Royal if you've got it, Neat."