Phoenix Noir

“Okay,” I said. Reminded of photos, though, I pulled out the third one I’d brought—the shot of Cooney Pratt glaring at ap Gruffydd. “You seem pretty convinced that Jaramillo’s responsible. And I could see it happening by accident, maybe—the Welsh guy comes by to see you, and stumbles into the middle of a drug deal, maybe. But your husband would seem to have an actual motive.”

Pamela stared down at the wildflower in the photo, then flicked the shot back at me and stood up.

“Forget Cooney,” she said, and putting a hand on my shoulder, leaned down and whispered confidentially in my ear, “He really is a prat, you know.”

Not much happened for two days. The police released driblets of information, nothing helpful. A crane fell into a hole on a light-rail construction site. The D-Backs lost two games in a row. And Cooney Pratt’s alibi developed holes big enough to swallow a backhoe.

Pamela’s alibi was solid; she’d been at a killer bridge tournament at the Hyatt Regency Gainey Ranch, in sight of eighty other people. But Cooney had been with the noncombatants, who’d spent the night in the lobby bar, the spa, the giant heated pool … or one of the bedrooms. People had seen him, all right—but there were gaps. And it was a five-minute drive from the hotel to his house.

Meanwhile, John Jaramillo had dropped off the face of the earth. His wife refused to be interviewed, though gossip in his neighborhood said she wasn’t that broken up over his absence.

I was debating whether to try some of Jaramillo’s other gardening clients, or invite Cooney Pratt out for a drink and show him pictures, when the phone rang.

“I’ve found him!” Pamela’s voice was high, and nervous, for her.

“Who, Jar—”

“The gardener, yes.” She swallowed, audibly. “Do you want a story? Come right away—meet me at my house. Come now.”

“It was the damn squirrels,” she explained, leading me down her front drive. “I kept trapping more and more of the little buggers, and finally realized they were coming from the house next door, crawling through the breeze blocks in my wall.”

“Yeah?”

“So I looked at the house next door.” I looked too. The next-door house was vacant, with a realtor’s sign.

“And?”

“The morning it happened? The murder? I had a hangover, and I was drowning those fucking squirrels in the garage, and I was so irritated by the racket from the air conditioner next door. Then, of course, there was lots more racket from the pool deck, and I forgot all about it.”

I looked up at the roof. The AC unit now was off. The yard of the empty house was spiked with fried weeds sprouting through pink gravel. There wasn’t a soul in sight, bar a garbage truck cruising slowly, picking up the big round turquoise dumpsters, tossing the trash, then slamming them back on the pavement. Half the dumpsters had fallen over from the impact and lay on their sides, wheels spinning.

“Class warfare,” Pamela said, seeing me look. “The garbage guy hates rich people. Wait till he’s gone.”

We did, and she filled me in rapidly on her deductions. The house wasn’t being shown; nobody would show a house with the yard in that condition. But if the house was empty—why run the air conditioner?

“Jaramillo,” she said, narrowing her eyes at the empty house. “It’s got to be him. That’s where he keeps the drugs.”

It was possible. Obviously nobody was there now; not with the AC turned off. On the other hand, the cops took a dim view of breaking and entering. I mentioned this, and Pam pulled out a key, flourishing it under my nose.

“We traded keys with the people who used to live here—you know, in case of emergencies.”

The key was for the kitchen door. The house was unfurnished and silent, but I stopped dead, the back of my neck prickling. I’d thought she was imagining things, but she wasn’t. The air was thick and stifling and probably at least 115°, but it didn’t have that dead feel that abandoned houses have.

What it did have was one very bad smell. I thought it was time to call the cops right then, but Pam had gone ahead of me, through a door, and she gave a strangled scream.

I went after her and found myself in a narrow room furnished with a washer, a dryer, and a corpse.

There were flies and he’d been dead long enough that the flesh was sagging off his bones and had a greenish tinge. Pam was standing behind the body, holding a gun.

“Told you I found him,” she said.

“Yeah. Let’s put the gun away, shall we, and call the cops.”

She swallowed, and pointed the gun directly at me.

“Oh, come on!”

“I’m sorry,” she said, though she didn’t sound sorry. “I can’t let Chloe be arrested for killing him. Everybody knows you’ve been looking for him. So you found him, and he shot you, and you shot him. By the time anybody finds you, nobody will be able to tell how long either of you’s been dead, and …” Her voice was shaking, and so was her hand.