Phoenix Noir

“Oh, Pamela… now, Pamela says Tanqueray martini, hold the vermouth, red silk, hot jazz and hotter men, don’t bother to take your boots off at the door, and you can leave the lights on, mister, cuz I left shy behind in kindergarten.” She laughed, and I caught a glint of gold molar.

“Pamela.” I lifted my water to her, and we smiled at each other. Then she set her wine down; to business.

“I Googled you,” she said abruptly.

“That makes two of us,” I said, and she blinked, but then steadied. She’d already Googled herself; she thought there was nothing unfit for public consumption. DirtyScottsdale.com didn’t always have names attached to their photos; the shot of her as an anonymous cougar wouldn’t show up.

“If I say this is off the record …?” One plucked eyebrow rose.

“Then it is.”

Some people think speaking to a reporter “off the record” is like speaking to an attorney or a priest. I wouldn’t quote her. That didn’t mean I wouldn’t make use of whatever she told me.

“I want you to find my gardener.”

“What do you think I am, an employment agency?”

The cougar glinted briefly in her eyes, but she kept it on the leash.

“John Jaramillo. He’s been supplying my daughter with drugs from Mexico. Now he’s gone and I have a dead botanist in my swimming pool. Think there’s a connection there, Sherlock?”

“Yeah. Maybe not the same one you’re thinking of, though.” I took the photo out of my pocket and laid it on the table.

“Crap,” she said, sounding exactly like Tyrone. She frowned at the photo. “I really need to get to the gym.”

“Connection?” I prompted. “Like between you and the good doctor?”

She made a pfft! sound and flicked the photo back at me.

“He was better in bed than you’d think from his looks,” she said. “I hadn’t seen him since the night this was taken, though, until he turned up in my pool.”

“Right. And you don’t think the cops would like to know about this?” I tapped a finger on the photo, and the server, who was setting down my glass of Riesling, glanced at it.

“Wow,” he said. “Nice butt.”

“Thanks, sweetie,” she drawled, leaning back in her chair and giving him a laser eyeball. He glanced from the picture to her, and did a double-take.

“Is that you? Er … ma’am?”

“Meet me in the parking lot after work and find out.” The cougar stretched voluptuously, flexing her shiny pink claws. The server, who might have been nineteen, turned purple and fled.

She laughed, but was dead serious when she looked back at me.

“The cops know. I was rattled when he turned up in the pool, but once I had a minute to think, I realized that as soon as they identified him, they’d head for the DBG and find out I knew him. So I called them and fessed up. I didn’t know about that—” She cast a displeased glance at the photo. “And if I get my hands on the little shithead who took it—but never mind …” She waved a hand. “It’s Chloe.”

“Chloe took the picture?” It hadn’t looked as though Chloe were in any shape to hold a camera.

“No.” Pamela gave me a sharp look. “Chloe is why I want you to find John Jaramillo.”

Noticing that Chloe’s glazed eyeballs coincided with Chloe’s clubbing, Pamela had figured logically that she was getting drugs at one or another of the clubs, and thus had put on her cougar costume and gone prowling with her daughter.

“What did Chloe think of that?” I asked.

She shrugged. “If I didn’t go, she didn’t go. Besides, I took dates along—” She glanced at the photo of herself and ap Gruffydd. “I wasn’t following her around all night. Or at least I didn’t let it look that way.”

I’d already figured that Pamela was much shrewder and more observant than I’d originally thought. She was shrewder than Chloe too, and it didn’t take long for her to tumble to the fact that Chloe wasn’t getting drugs at the clubs—she was taking drugs to the clubs.

“I caught her dealing in the restroom one night.” Pam was rolling her empty wine glass slowly between her palms, looking down into the dregs. “Dragged her out into the parking lot and … made her tell me where she was getting it.”

“From the gardener.”

“Yep.” She looked up, fixing me with a hard gaze. “You have a reputation for digging things up, Kolodzi. And you’re a little less sleazy than the average private detective.”

“Gee, thanks.”

“And you want to know who killed Griff.”

“Griff?”

She sighed impatiently.

“It’s spelled Gruffydd, but it’s pronounced Griffith. He didn’t like Howarth.” For the first time, her voice betrayed a little emotion over the Welshman’s death. I was a long way from trusting her, but I was beginning to like her a little.

She shrugged. She was wearing a sleeveless pink top, and the hairs on her forearms were standing up in the chilled air.

“So. You find John Jaramillo, the cops convict him of murdering Griff, he goes down, Chloe’s source dries up, and you get a story—a story that doesn’t include Chloe.”

I considered that—but the other picture, of Chloe by the ladies’ room, bleary and undressed, with her sweet young breast adrift and vulnerable, was still resting in my pocket.