once more in the harsh light from the overhead fixture.
'You have to understand, Mr. Beaumont, Joey Rothman was my son, but I lost him years ago. I had to emotionally disassociate myself or be a party to my own destruction. No. I didn't promise him the money, and I told him he wasn't welcome to come live with me, either. I couldn't afford to be drawn into his machinations.'
Hers was an odd perspective. She seemed to differentiate between her loss of Joey and his death. They were two separate and distinct occurrences. For some reason, his death hurt her less than whatever had happened years earlier, although the anguish in her voice was real enough.
'How did you lose him?' I asked, following her lead.
She shrugged hopelessly. 'That question has plagued me for years. The divorce, I guess, although sometimes it seems like the trouble started well before that. At the time of the divorce, I couldn't take him, not in good conscience. I didn't have the money. I never would have been able to provide for him financially the way JoJo could-private schools, the swimming pool, his friends.'
'Money isn't everything,' I said.
'If you don't have any, it seems like it. If I had fought for it hard enough, the court probably would have ordered JoJo to pay child support, but collecting it would have been something else. It was easier to give in. By my letting his father have custody, Joey was able to have some continuity in his life, to stay in the same school system, have the same friends. It hurt like hell, but at the time I thought I was doing what was best for all concerned.'
She paused and bit her lower lip. Talking about her divorce and losing custody still bothered her. She smiled sadly. 'I wish you could have seen Joey when he was little, when he was smart and kind, both. He was only five when he rescued a Gila monster that came washing by on a piece of driftwood during a flash flood. I was standing on the bank and watched him do it. He managed to catch the branch as it floated by and drag it to high ground.'
'A Gila monster?' I asked. 'Aren't they just as dangerous as snakes?'
She laughed then. The memory of that experience seemed to ease her pain. 'That one wasn't. It was so pale I thought it was dead, but Joey said it would be all right. And sure enough, after the sun warmed it and it dried out, it got up and wandered away.
'And that was the beginning of Joey's interest in snakes and lizards. He pored over books, begged us to take him to zoos and museums. He wanted to be a herpetologist when he grew up. A herpetologist or a writer. He caught Ringo that same year, up near our summer cabin in Pinetop. The snake was just a baby then. Joey dragged it home in a quart jar. I didn't find out until years later that it's illegal to keep snakes in captivity, but by the time I figured it out, it was too late. I didn't live there anymore. It was no longer any of my concern. Marsha said he could keep it.'
'I see,' I said.
'Do you?' she demanded, her voice rising until it verged on shrill. 'I'm not so sure I do. Marsha got everything-JoJo, Joey, the house, although they have a different house now-with another child they needed a bigger one-and the cabin in Pinetop.'
To say nothing of the snake, I thought. I said, 'Where did she come from?'
'Marsha? She was my babysitter once.' There was no concealing the bitterness in her answer. 'I had begged JoJo to let me go back to the university and get my degree. Marsha lived two houses up from us in Paradise Valley. She was still in high school when they started screwing around behind my back. It took me three years to figure out what was going on. I'm a slow learner.'
'Nice guy,' I said. 'Like father, like son.'
'I've wondered sometimes if Joey didn't know about it before I did. I asked him once. Of course he denied it, but that's about when he started going haywire. By the time I got the divorce, even if I had gotten custody, I'm not sure it would have made any difference. I think by then the damage with Joey was already done. Besides, by then I had too many problems of my own.' Close to tears, she stopped, swallowing hard.
'Giving up isn't a crime,' I said.
She smiled gratefully. 'Thank you for saying that, Mr. Beaumont. Maybe it isn't, although I've blamed myself for years. I tried to get him back later, after I got through school and was back on my feet financially and emotionally, but whenever he came to stay with me, he lied and stole and cheated. At first I chalked it up to genetics. Later on I told myself it was because of the drugs. It would kill me if I had to think that it was my fault.'
I tossed her the nearest, handiest platitude. 'I'm sure it wasn't.'
'Maybe not. I hope not,' she added.
Rhonda Attwood sat quietly for a moment before continuing. 'So that's how it happened. I locked Joey out of my heart so he couldn't hurt me any more, the same way I locked out his father. And now, I don't have anything else to lose. Nothing.'
'And with nothing left to lose, you're forming a one-woman posse, is that it?'
'Why not?'
'Because it's illegal for one thing and dangerous for another.'
'I don't have any faith in the criminal justice system, Mr. Beaumont. They let my son off, and they'll let his killers off the same way. That's why I came to you for help.'
'You haven't been listening, dammit. I can't help you. You need to go to the detective on the case. The one from Prescott. Talk to her.'
'A lady detective?'
'Her name's Delcia Reyes-Gonzales. She's with the Yavapai County Sheriff's Department up in Prescott. She seems to know her stuff. I ought to talk to her myself and let her know where I am.'
Abruptly, Rhonda Attwood stood up. 'Let's go, then,' she said.
'Go where?'
'I'll take you there, to Prescott. We'll talk to the detective together, if that's what you want.'
'Now?'
'Yes. Why not? They say the phones here could be out of order all the rest of the night. I want to get moving on this.'
That wasn't exactly what I'd had in mind, but it did give me a way to get out of Wickenburg. 'Tell me one thing,' I said. 'What exactly do you intend to do once you catch up with these characters, the drug suppliers or whoever the people are you think are responsible for Joey's death? What are you going to do then? You said earlier that you planned to ‘take them out.' You didn't really mean that, did you?'
'Didn't I?' she returned.
It wasn't a reassuring answer. In fact, it was a downright crazy answer. Nice middle-aged ladies don't go up against big-time drug dealers, at least sane middle-aged ladies don't. Fortunately, I'm not a psychologist, and it wasn't my job to talk her out of it.
Still, crazy or not, Rhonda Attwood had wheels and she was offering me a one-way immediate departure ticket out of Wickenburg, Arizona. Maybe in Prescott I could rent another car and still get to Phoenix before morning to see old Mr. Fixit, Ralph Ames.
'So let's go,' I said. 'What are we waiting for?'
I knew at the time that I was misleading her some, offering an implied alliance that I had no intention of honoring, but I let her draw her own conclusions. If anyone asked me later, I'd tell them that I had just gone along for the ride. Literally.
It turned out not to be such a wonderful bargain.
Happy to escape my one-night sentence at the flea-bitten Joshua Tree Motel, I left the room key on the table, locked the door behind us, and followed Rhonda Attwood outside to her Fiat for what turned out to be one of the most hair-raising rides in a lifetime of hair-raising rides.
To begin with, my six-foot-three body was never intended to fit inside a 128 Spider. At first I thought I'd have to spend the entire trip sitting with my head cocked to one side. Fortunately, once the car was moving, the convertible's canvas top ballooned up enough that I was able to put my head into the bubble created by air movement. That way I could sit up straight, but it also cut my line of vision down to a few feet in front of the car and an acute angled view of what was directly outside the rider's window.
Highway 89 climbs abruptly up from the desert floor, winding around the flank of a mountain locals call Yarnell Hill. That's what they call it, but believe me, it's a full-fledged mountain.
