Who am I? Just the poor stupid schmuck who happened to get caught in the cross fire with live bullets flying in every goddamn direction. Why the hell would I need to know anything?'
'Don't get all bent out of shape,' Delcia cautioned. 'I'm scheduled to call the F.B.I. this morning. If I find out something you should know, I'll tell you. As soon as I finish with them, I'm on my way to Phoenix for the funeral. Maybe Ralph Ames is right and Rhonda's out getting ready for the funeral. If she shows up in the next hour or so, have the dispatcher put you through to me in the car. Otherwise, when I get there, we'll see what other courses of action to follow.'
'All right,' I said grudgingly, knowing full well it was the only sensible thing to do.
I understand how missing-persons reports work. Police jurisdictions don't much like receiving them when the person in question has been missing less than twenty-four hours. It generates too much wasted paperwork.
'One more thing,' Delcia added. 'I did have a call for her. It came in to the department last night. The guys on duty thought it might be important and called me at home.'
'A call for Rhonda?' I asked. 'What kind of call? Who from?'
'A man. Gave his name as Denny Blake. Said he was neighbor of Rhonda's up in Sedona. He said he was worried because he hadn't heard from her in several days.'
'Why'd he call you?'
'He read about the Joey Rothman case in the Sedona paper and knew I was working on it. He left a message with me to have Rhonda call him.'
'You didn't tell him where she was staying or give him this number, did you?'
'I'm a cop, Beau,' Delcia answered, a sudden chill creeping into her previously cordial voice. 'And I'm not stupid.'
'Sorry,' I said hurriedly. 'I didn't mean for it to sound that way. It's just that I'm worried, that's all. I'll see you when you get here.'
'Hopefully she'll be there by the time I am,' Delcia added, but she didn't sound totally convinced, and neither was I.
'So we wait?' Ames asked, peering at me over his raised coffee cup as I put down the phone.
'We wait,' I told him.
But as I said before, I'm terrible at waiting. It goes against the grain. I have a compulsion to do something even if what I do may not always be right. Ten minutes later, I picked up the phone, dialed Arizona information, and asked for Denny Blake's number in Sedona. There was no problem. The phone number was there, unlisted. When I dialed it, a man's voice answered on the second ring.
'Blake's residence,' he said.
I'm used to phone calls being much more difficult to make, people being harder to track down. Denny Blake answered before I had a chance to figure out what I was going to say.
'My name is Beaumont,' I stammered. 'J. P. Beaumont.'
'Oh yes,' he answered. 'Rhonda mentioned you. From the sound of it, you must be some kind of he- man.'
Denny Blake's sibilant s's allowed me to assume that he wasn't His words had a vaguely English cast to them that could have been real or could have been affected, I couldn't tell which, but what he said about Rhonda gave me cause for hope.
'You're talking about what happened yesterday?' I ventured.
'She told me all about it,' Denny Blake declared enthusiastically. 'Everything! From what she said, it must have been exciting. Too exciting for words!'
'It was exciting, all right,' I muttered, but I was beginning to feel better. Obviously Rhonda had been in touch with Denny Blake sometime during the course of the morning.
'Rhonda doesn't happen to be there right now, does she?' I asked cautiously.
'She didn't come all the way here,' he answered archly. 'I wouldn't let her do that. Not with the funeral this afternoon. I met her at a little place in Camp Verde, J J's. They make the most marvelous biscuits and gravy.'
For a moment I was speechless. 'So you met her there?' I finally asked. 'Why?'
'To give her the package, of course. I assumed it was important, since Joey had obviously gone to some trouble to send it. I was sure she'd want to have it. ASAP, if you know what I mean.'
'Package?' I asked stupidly. 'What package?'
'I didn't know it was from Joey, not for sure, but I assumed. It had the initials. J.R. penciled on it up in the left-hand corner where the return address is supposed to go, although it was post-marked Sierra Vista. I don't know how he could have gotten all the way down there to mail it, but he must have, poor thing.'
'The package. How did you get it?'
'The mailman left it with me. Saturday morning, I believe it was. He does that, you know. Leaves things for Rhonda with me if she's not home and stuff for me with her if I'm not. Yes, I'm sure it was Saturday morning, but Rhonda wasn't here. That's not like her, not at all. She usually tells me well in advance if she's going to be away or calls if her plans change. We're pretty much on our own out here-the last of the Mohicans, as it were. The two of us simply have to stick together.'
'But how did you find her, to let her know about the package?'
'I didn't. She called me. Around seven this morning. Said she'd just realized that when she came to pick up her thing, she'd forgotten to stop by and tell me she was heading back to Phoenix. She must have been positively wild, or she would have remembered. She called as soon as she remembered so I wouldn't worry That's when I told her, and we agreed to meet.'
'And did you?'
'I already told you. We had biscuits and gravy, at least I did, and I gave her the package.'
'What was in it?'
'It wasn't a package so much as an envelope. You know, one of those big zipper-type envelopes-the kind bookstores and libraries mail books in when you order them.'
'What was in this envelope?' I persisted.
'Why, books of course. Several of them, actually. What did you expect?'
'What did they look like?'
'Oh, you know. The blank ones.'
'Blank?' I asked.
'Haven't you seen them? They sell them everywhere in all the stores. Nothing but glorified notebooks really. People use them for diaries, I guess, or to scribble reams and reams of poetry. These had a frightfully ugly paisley design on the covers. A matched set, I'm sure.'
'Notebooks. Did she read them?'
'Don't be absurd. Not while I was there, of course not. Rhonda would never be so rude as to read them in front of me, and it would have been incredibly gauche of me to expect her to. As soon as I finished my coffee, I left her alone so she could read them in private. Words from beyond the grave, as it were.'
'Did you notice what kind of car she was driving?' I asked.
'I don't notice cars particularly. I suppose she was driving her little green car, whatever that ugly thing is. I could never see how an artist could own such an unsightly automobile.'
'So she was driving the Fiat? Did you see it?'
'Who are you?' Denny Blake asked, as though he'd suddenly lost track of the beginning of our conversation and couldn't remember who I was or what I wanted. 'Why are you asking me all these questions?'
'I'm trying to locate Rhonda, that's all,' I said placatingly. 'She left here driving a Lincoln Town Car, and now you say she's in the Fiat.'
'I didn't say anything of the kind,' he returned haughtily. 'I didn't notice what kind of car she was driving. Why would anyone pay attention to cars in Camp Verde? What an absurd notion!'
I heard some kind of racket in the background, a loud insistent buzzing.
'I've got to go now,' Denny Blake said energetically. 'That's the timer on my oven. I'm baking bread. The biscuits inspired me.'
He hung up. I didn't. I redialed the Yavapai County Sheriff's Department and asked to be patched through to Detective Delcia Reyes-Gonzales. ASAP.
