“At this moment, my darling Dana, some very shrewd cop may be checking out some small slip M’Gruder made. The death of Patricia has to require he be checked out. So they grab him for murder first. Do you think he would maintain a chivalrous silence? He would want to lay all the facts on the line, with little distortions here and there, to try to show justification or at least a plausible excuse for murder.
“Once they round up Cass and Carl and Martha Whippler and start questioning them one at a time, how long do you think Lysa Dean would stay in the clear. Make up a headline, honey. Star Implicated in Orgy Murder. She’d be even worse off. I have to find out how good these guesses are. If she’s going to be in the soup, the best I can do is warn her. Maybe she can take some steps. Long-term contracts. Public relations advice. Something.”
Dana frowned. “I see what you mean. But he could have just said Phoenix.”
“I think he’s there. It’s close. I want to check it out.”
“All right, dear.”
I patted her on the foot. “I like obedient women.”
She yawned. “I just feel terribly passive, I guess.”
“Entirely, completely passive?”
She pursed her lips. She tilted her head. She laid a finger alongside her nose. “Well… I wouldn’t go so far as to say that.”
Thirteen
I HAD the random idea of poking around the Four Treys to see if I could find small hint of a visit from Vance M’Gruder the night of Patty’s death, but my few small memories of the hardnosed vigilance of the Las Vegas cops outweighed the impulse. They deal, day and night, with every kind of spook and hustler in the world, and they would be focused very intently on this murder, and I did not relish the prospect of being bounced up and down while trying to explain my passing interest.
Besides, if M’Gruder was as bright as I imagined, he would not have put in an appearance in the stage lighting of any of the downtown casinos. He would have her Desert Gate address. Once he got to town it would be no great feat to find out when her shift ended.
As I shaved I tried to guess his most plausible mode of transportation. It was just about three hundred miles to Phoenix. I decided that if I were doing it, I’d settle for a good fast car. With enough muscle under the hood, and the right kind of springing for the mountain curves, you could safely call it a five-hour run.
Leave Phoenix at six and arrive at eleven. Spend an hour hunting her down and killing her. Back by five-thirty in the morning. Sneak into the bridal bed. A private car was safer than a bus, a scheduled flight or a private plane. Cash for gas. No records, no fellow passengers.
Properly done, casually done, he could have people convinced he had never left at all. If he had the cold nerve necessary to make that earlier run to Santa Rosita…
We walked to the dining room for breakfast, my lady wearing that green which was all she happened to have. My drowsy lady walked close at my side, without haste, her smile as inward and bemused as that of the Mona Lisa. She hugged my arm and beamed up at me and gave me a sleepy wink. And then she yawned.
Between us we ate a mountain of wheat cakes, a bale of bacon.
I found a Phoenix paper in the lobby rack, checked through it and found a society editor by-line. I coached Dana and put her into a phone booth with a fake name and a reasonably plausible cover story. I stood outside the booth and saw her eyes go fierce and bright. She gave me a savage little nod.
When she came out, she said, “What a sweet woman! The M’Gruders are staying with a couple named Glenn and Joanne Barnweather. She spake their names with social awe. Old friends of his, apparently. They flew in from Mexico City about five days ago, she thinks. She had an item on it. They’re staying at the Barnweather ranch out beyond Scottsdale. You were sure, weren’t you?”
“Not completely. But I’m beginning to be. So let’s go take a look at them.”
We went back to the room and packed. A tremendous chore. She made a housewifely ceremony of it, trotting around the room in a charade of seeing that no meager possession was overlooked, earnest frown between her eyes, white teeth biting into the fullness of underlip.
I caught her as she went by, planted a kiss upon the frown lines and told her that she was a fine girl. She said she was glad I thought she was a fine girl, but it might be a pretty good Idea to just leggo of the fine girl or maybe we wouldn’t be out of there by noon, which she had happened to notice was checkout time.
We were on our way with the top down heading toward Boulder City by noon, after one quick stop at a department store for a stretch denim skirt and halter top and bright yellow scarf for her, white sport shirt for the driver.
The car was heavy and agile. The day had a honeymoon flavor. The sun and the dry wind baked us. We laughed. We made bad jokes. She slanted dark eyes at me, lively with her mischief. This was the way I had wanted her to be. Totally alive and free, not tucked back into her own darkness.
But, totally alive, she was an impressive handful. This was not some pretty little girl, coyly flirtatious, delicately stimulated. This was the mature female of the species, vivid, handsome and strong, demanding that all the life and need within her be matched. Her instinct would immediately detect any hedging, any dishonesty, any less than complete response to her-and then she would be gone for good. Wholeness was all she could comprehend or accept. For now there were no shadows in her eyes, no hesitations as a bad edge of memory stung her. Even in this pursuit of murder, it was a fine fine world.
When we stopped for lunch in an outdoor patio in heavy shade, I looked at her and said, “Why?”
She knew what I meant. She scowled into her iced coffee. “I guess way back after you came back to the room after seeing Carl Abelle. I don’t know. You could have stomped around, the hard-guy grin and all that. But you felt bad about hurting and humiliating him. And he isn’t much, certainly. So I figured out you don’t go around proving you are a man because you are already sure you are. It isn’t all faked up. And in the same way you didn’t have to try to use me to prove what a hell of a fellow you are. Even though we were both… being attracted in a physical way. I know this sounds as if I’m some kind of an egomaniac, but I just thought well… heck, if being a man is a good and valid thing, then there should be like an award of merit or something, an offering. In Abner-talk, namely me. As if I’m so great.”
“Don’t do that to yourself, Dana. You are implausibly… astoundingly, unforgettably great. And I don’t mean just in a…”
“I know. It isn’t me, and it isn’t you. Let’s not talk about it. It’s the total of us, the crazy total. I’m not going to talk about it, or think of what comes after. Okay? Okay, darling?”
“No talk. No analysis.”
“We are kind of beautiful,” she said. “It’s enough to know that, I guess. Alone I’m just… sort of efficient and severe and a little heavy-handed. Defensive. Alone you’re just sort of a rough, wry opportunist, a little bit cold and shrewd and watchful. Cruel, maybe. You and your sybarite boat and your damned beach girls. But we add up to beautiful in some crazy way. For now.”
“For now, Dana?”
“I’m no kid, Travis. I know hurt is inevitable, always-”
“Shut up.”
“I talk too much?”
“Only sometimes.”
So off we went, to Kingman, to Wikieup, to Congress-up into cold places, down into heats-to Wickenburg, to Wittman, and down into the richness of the old Salt River Valley where Phoenix presides over the boom that threatens never to quit. It has become a big fast rough grasping town, where both the irrigation heiresses and the B girls wear the same brand of ranch pants.
The sun was low behind us as we came in, breasting the outgoing traffic of the close of Friday business. I cruised and settled for a glassy sprawl called The Hallmark, a big U of stone, teak and thermo-windows enclosing a great green of lawn and gardens, a blue of water in a marbled pool in the shape of a painter’s palette.