Arizona Dreams Read Online Free PDF Page B

father’s letter.
    â€œDo you remember her?”
    I shook my head. “Maybe I remember her voice. I don’t know.”
    â€œShe’s a strawberry blonde, Dave,” Lindsey teased. “You used to have a weakness for those strumpets.”
    â€œI have a weakness for you. And she looks like some soccer mom from Ahwatukee.”
    â€œSoccer moms can be hot,” she said.
    I said, “ Cherchez la femme .” Lindsey wrinkled her nose. “Look for the woman. The subtle power of a woman.”
    Then, a teasing gleam came into her blue eyes: “Did you ever sleep with your students, professor?” By this time, we were at the built-in breakfast booth at the back of the kitchen.
    â€œDo you really want to know?”
    â€œI’m not sure.” Lindsey was something of a moralist, in a gentle way.
    â€œWell, I didn’t sleep with my students. Although that certainly happens.”
    â€œDr. Mapstone, the dutiful teacher. But, Dave, you really think there’s a body out there?”
    â€œI saw those rocks. And the father wrote in the letter that he buried this ‘Z’ under rocks. They could have sat undisturbed there for forty years, the place is so isolated.”
    â€œExcept today.”
    â€œExcept today,” I agreed. “And what the hell were they doing out there, saying ‘private property,’ when that land belongs to Dana.”
    â€œMaybe they’re really aggressive real-estate agents.”
    â€œMaybe,” I said, and sipped the martini. “But nobody gets killed over real estate. Not even in Arizona.”
    â€œSo what are you going to do now? Tell Peralta?”
    â€œAre you kidding? He’ll go postal. I don’t need to be reminded again, in his special way, what a complete failure I am. I’m going to quietly turn it over to the detectives. I’m going to call her and have her come in and make a statement, then go back to my book work.”
    â€œWell, call her now. Maybe you can find out who those goons were. Then, I can nurse you with a healthy dinner. Later, I’ll examine your privates, just to make sure they came through your ordeal. It might take some time…”
    So after I finished my drink, I retrieved Dana’s phone number from my old black briefcase, and sat in the study to call her. When Lindsey came in, she saw my face.
    â€œWhat’s wrong, History Shamus?”
    â€œThe number she gave me is wrong. It goes to Arturo’s Llantera in Mesa.”
    â€œMaybe she’s a big wheel.”
    â€œHa-ha. I’m sure that’s the number she gave me. Now I dial it and get a hubcap store. I tried the phone book—no Dana Underwood.”
    It made no damned sense, but I was already thinking what Lindsey now said.
    â€œMaybe she didn’t want you to contact her again.”

7
    I leaned against the fender of the Crown Vic and watched a county jail inmate walk past with a shovel. Except for the orange jumpsuit, he looked nice enough. Those are the ones who will bash in your brains with the shovel and drive away with your county-issue vehicle. This guy only wanted to use the latrine. He set his shovel on the ground and climbed into the porta-john with all the gravity of an astronaut preparing to leave the moon. The porta-john had a sheriff’s star on it, was painted in sheriff’s office colors, and towed by a sheriff’s cruiser. It went with the chain gang that was five hundred feet away removing the cairn-shaped boulders that might be the grave of a man known only as “Z.”
    Once again the lush desert spread out in every direction, with our view drawn to the misshapen butte, the result of a lava flow that was way outside my expertise to discuss. Sweeping up toward the butte, the ground seemed planed smooth, as if carved by some desert glacier that had left behind all manner of geological debris. I kicked the heel of my boot into the soil: too hard to bury