“Get that stuff out of here, guys,” he ordered over his shoulder to the deputies serving as evidence techs. “You’re not supposed to discuss this with anyone-no one at all.”
As the deputies scurried away to deposit their respective loads in the back of an unmarked patrol car, Patty turned her attention from the postal boxes to the newcomer. “What’s going on, Detective Zambrano?” she demanded.
“I’m investigating a homicide,” he replied. “As it happens, you’re one of the people I’m going to need to interview. When’s the last time you saw Phil?”
“Saturday,” Patty said. “At work. But where did the marijuana come from? How did it get into a flat-rate box?”
“I’m sure Phil could have answered that question,” Zambrano answered. “Unfortunately, he’s dead. It’s possible Christine could have told us, too. Unfortunately, she’s a raving maniac, and she’s not talking to anybody. She’s a lot more into screaming than she is into talking. Bottom line, I’m assuming Phil’s the one who put it there. You always think of drug dealers having exotic smuggling arrangements. I have to say, packing it up and sending it through the mail has a certain understated elegance.”
“Phil Tewksbury was not a drug dealer,” Patty Patton said.
“Look, Patty,” Zambrano said with a sigh. “I’m sorry. I’m sure you thought you were close to the guy, but we don’t always know nearly as much about other people as we think we do. If you were to ask me about Jose Reyes, the same thing happened to me with him. I would have sworn Jose wouldn’t be caught dealing drugs. Turns out I was just as wrong about him as you are about Phil.”
“But this makes no sense,” Patty objected. “Besides, Phil knew the ropes. Border mail gets spot-checked by sniffer dogs right along with everything else. The boxes wouldn’t have made it past the dogs.”
Zambrano sighed again. “Look, Patty, we found the drugs right here in Phil’s garage, packaged and ready to tape shut and ship. We’ve lifted prints off the boxes. I’m willing to bet you any amount of money that those prints will turn out to belong to Phil Tewksbury. Maybe his wife figured out what he was up to and decided to put a stop to it. Or else maybe after all those years of living as a recluse, she finally blew a gasket and beat the crap out of him.”
“Christine did not do this,” Patty declared. “No way. Couldn’t be.”
“If you’d been the one she came chasing after with a bloody baseball bat in her hand, you might be singing another tune.”
“Softball bat,” Patty said.
Zambrano nodded. “Softball,” he agreed.
Watching this exchange from the sidelines, Ali wondered how it was that Patty knew what kind of a bat it was.
“I don’t care if she came after you with a broomstick,” Patty said. “Christine definitely didn’t kill Phil, not if he died in the garage. Is that where it happened?”
Zambrano nodded.
“Well, then,” Patty said, “trust me. Christine hasn’t left the house for years, hasn’t so much as stepped outside. It’s what, forty feet from the back door of the house to the door to the garage? She wouldn’t go that far on her own. Ever.”
“Look,” Zambrano said, “I’ve heard all about that-the whole deal with the dead daughter and the Christmas tree and not leaving the house. I’m not buying it.”
“Where is she?” Patty asked.
“Christine? She refused to respond to police orders. When we tried to remove her from the residence, she became combative and had to be restrained. She’s been transported to the hospital in Nogales. From there she’ll most likely go to Catalina Vista in Tucson, where she’ll undergo a psych evaluation.”
“What’s wrong with you people?” Patty demanded. “You’re dealing with a woman who hasn’t set foot outside the four walls of her house in at least the past ten years, that I know of, so you can be pretty sure she’s troubled to begin with. Then you turn up-burst into her house-and tell her that her husband is dead. What would you do in that situation, Detective Zambrano? Maybe you’d go berserk, too, especially if someone was bodily carrying you out of your own house. I’m pretty sure I would.”
“We felt she was a danger to herself and others,” Zambrano countered. “We did what we had to do.” His cell phone rang. “Right,” he said after a pause. “I’ll go get ’em. On my way.” He turned back to Patty. “Sorry,” he said. “I need to go. If it’s okay, I’d like to stop by the post office in the morning to do an official interview.”
“Knock yourself out,” Patty muttered as he walked away. “I don’t care what you say. Christine didn’t do it.” She turned to go to her car and ran directly into Ali. “Oh,” she said. “I forgot you were here.”
“I’ve been listening to every word,” Ali said. “It sounds as though, despite the evidence, you don’t believe your friend was dealing drugs.”
“I don’t,” Patty said. “Absolutely not! Phil was a worker, not a dealer; a saver, not a spender. It nearly killed him a couple of months ago when he had to cough up money to replace the windows on his house. Drives an old Ford pickup. Drove,” she corrected. “Doesn’t anymore.”
“So not a flamboyant lifestyle.”
“Hardly. As for Detective Zambrano’s idea that Phil was trying to ship drugs in flat-rate boxes? Ridiculous. They’d never pass muster at the Border Patrol checkpoints. Phil wouldn’t be that stupid.”
“What about his wife?” Ali asked. “Would she be involved in any of this-the drug dealing, any of it?”
Patty shook her head. “No.”
“And what about her husband’s death?”
“Christine may be a lot of things, but she’s not a killer. I believe somebody did this and they’re trying to make it look like she’s responsible because they know she’s incapable of defending herself.”
“Why?” Ali asked. “What’s the matter with her?”
“With Christine?”
For the next little while, Patty recounted what she knew about Phil and Christine’s history together, about the death of their only child and the painful aftermath. Patty didn’t count it as gossiping, exactly. Other people might be busy pointing the finger at Christine, and the only way she could make that stop was to tell what she knew.
“And she never left the house after that?” Ali asked.
“Not as far as I know. Wouldn’t set foot outside, including walking as far as the garage. That’s how come I know for sure she didn’t kill Phil.” Patty ground out her last cigarette. “I’d better go,” she said. “I need to track Jess down and let him know what’s happened.”
“Who’s Jess?” Ali asked.
“My substitute driver,” Patty said sadly. “My permanent substitute driver. And I’ll be back at work in the morning so I can talk to that damned detective, if nothing else. If you want to get hold of me to help organize that cleanup, that’s where I’ll be-at the post office. If you need to call me, my number’s in the book.”
41
2:00 P.M., Monday, April 12
Fountain Hills, Arizona
Humberto Laos had become an old crook by being a smart crook. He paid his people good money, and he expected them to earn it. When Tony and Sal had come back from dumping the girl’s body, he had taken them at their word and hadn’t given the matter another thought. They’d told him she was dead; he believed the girl was dead. He had told them to dump her in the desert. With any kind of luck, it would be months before someone stumbled across her body.
Because Humberto had plenty of money, he had plenty of sources of information. There were people in various cop shops and media outlets who, for a hefty cash payment made by a discreet third party, would provide the inside scoop on things that interested him, in this case the murder investigation into the death of Chico Hernandez. When Humberto heard from one of his informants that a person of interest in the case was a seventeen-year-old girl who had been missing for three years, that made sense. The girls Chico pimped hadn’t fallen
