any light on this diary thing. Have you tried calling their house?'
'I thought of it, but there's no point,' I said.
'Why not?'
'Because the assholes who snatched Michelle also cut the phone lines. I doubt anyone has gotten around to fixing them. It's the weekend, you know.'
'You're probably right,' she said. 'So what are you going to do?'
In the background, Ralph was hustling around the kitchen, juicing oranges, frying eggs, toasting bread.
'It looks like I'm going to eat breakfast before I do anything else,' I said. 'And then, if Rhonda doesn't show up here by two or so, we'll go over to the church and hang around. The funeral's scheduled for three. I can't imagine her missing that. What are you going to do?'
'I'll see the Crenshaws first, at least try to, and then…'
'Not without a backup, I hope.'
'No,' Delcia reassured me. 'Not without backup. I've radioed for Mike Hanson to meet me there. You remember, the deputy from Yarnell.'
'I hope he moves faster than he did the day I called him,' I said glumly, still packing a grudge about my shabby treatment the day I had called for help.
'Don't worry. Mike'll be there in plenty of time. Whatever happens, I still plan on being at the funeral.'
'Me, too,' I said miserably, suddenly feeling left out of the action. 'Whatever happens.'
While Ames and I had breakfast, I finally had the opportunity to tell him what we had learned about Calvin and Louise Crenshaw's extracurricular sexual activities. Ralph was thunderstruck.
'I had no idea. They have such a good reputation in the recovery community, and they get such good press.'
'We have an idea why, now, don't we? They have strings, secure puppet strings, on any number of people who go through that program, and my guess is they're not about pulling them.'
'Choke chains is more like it,' Ralph declared forcefully, 'and I intend to see that something is done about it. Is everyone in on it? All the counselors, for instance?'
I thought about what Scott had told me about Burton Joe, and I thought about Dolores and Shorty Rojas. 'No,' I replied, 'I think in this case the rot is localized pretty much with the Crenshaws themselves.'
Ralph nodded and ate in thoughtful silence. God knows I should have been hungry, but the food landed in my stomach and formed into an indigestible lump. I toyed with it, pushing congealing egg yolk around on my plate with a piece of cold toast.
'You're not eating,' Ralph observed. 'I don't ever remember seeing you when you couldn't stow away a fullback's breakfast. Something's wrong. What is it?'
'I'm missing something in all this mess, something important,' I said. 'It's as though I'm trying to see what's happened through a thick, smoky haze. The pieces are all there, but I can't quite make them out. It's driving me crazy.'
'Well,' Ames said, getting up and beginning to clear away the dishes, 'sitting here stewing isn't going to help. It's almost one now. How about if we get dressed and go on over to the church to wait. Rhonda's bound to show up there eventually. Surely she won't miss her own son's funeral.'
And that's what we did. I didn't have many appropriate choices of dress available-one lightweight navy sport jacket, a pair of haphazardly dryer-creased trousers, a clean white shirt, and a clean pair of socks that matched. Ames appeared in a disgustingly proper gray three-piece suit with a maroon tie and matching silk scarf, precisely folded, in his lapel pocket. 'Ready?' he asked.
And so, with Ralph Ames riding shotgun in his sober suit, and with my knees touching the bottom of the steering wheel, we drove in Rhonda Attwood's hot-wired Fiat to Joey Rothman's funeral at elegant St. John's Episcopal Church on Lincoln Drive. It all seemed suitably inappropriate.
The church, a thick reddish adobe affair set into a rocky hillside, was surrounded by mature natural vegetation-trees I recognized now as full-grown ironwood and palo verde. It looked as though the church had sprouted there, sprung up out of the ground like a man-made miniature of Camelback Mountain itself. St. John's Episcopal was backed by a high-walled patio. Ralph explained to me that the patio was lined with high-priced niches where, for a sizeable donation to the church coffers, family members could have their loved ones' ashes sealed away forever.
'A mini-condo cemetery,' I said.
Ames nodded. 'A high-priced mini-cemetery,' he agreed, 'and no about very lucrative to the ongoing building fund.'
We were the first guests to arrive, turning up in the midst of a flurry of delivery vehicles. Van after van pulled up and dropped off flower arrangements. Near the fellowship hall, a caterer's crew was busily unloading tables, chairs, and massive amounts of food.
JoJo and Marsha Rothman maintained a certain position in the community, and that position was not to be taken lightly. Honor was to be paid, proper decorum observed, even over the death of an admittedly ne're-do-well son. Joey Rothman's funeral was going to be done right whatever the cost.
An anxious white-haired and white-collared minister arrived about one-fifteen. He gazed at the massed flower delivery vans with a frown of disapproval. I caught up with him as he turned back toward the church preparing to go inside.
'Excuse me,' I said. 'You wouldn't happen to be officiating at the Rothman funeral this afternoon, would you?'
He rounded on me. 'What do you want?'
I backed away, put off by his surly attitude. 'My name is Beaumont, J.P. Beaumont. I'm a friend of Rhonda Attwood's. You haven't happened to hear from her, have you?'
'The last I heard, Mrs. Attwood was staying at La Posada, but all the arrangements have been made through Mr. and Mrs. Rothman. The present Mrs. Rothman,' he added meaningfully.
He turned and started away from me before I quite realized what had been said. 'You said Mrs. Attwood was staying at La Posada? How did you know that?'
His voice hardened. So did his eyes. 'My good man, the Rothmans are good parishioners of mine. If you have any questions, I suggest you address those questions to them.'
With that he turned on his heel and stalked away. The message was clear. JoJo and Marsha Rothman's churchly contributions were paying his wages and keeping the building fund afloat. Rhonda Attwood's weren't. So much for Christian charity. And beyond that, if the minister had known where Rhonda Attwood was staying, any number of other people could have found out that information as well.
It was another bit of the puzzle to chew on.
By two o'clock the vans were gone. The altar area inside the dimly lit church was banked with flowers. Only in the kitchen and adjoining fellowship hall did the feverish activity of preparation still continue. A party, I thought, a party after the funeral. I've never understood those, and probably never will.
I was looking at my watch and still worrying over Rhonda's whereabouts when Delcia Reyes-Gonzales came striding across the gravel parking lot. I hadn't seen her pull in and park. She waved at the occupants of Buick Regal that was just parking in a handicapped area near the main door of the church.
Delcia hurried over to the driver's side, opened the back door, and brought out a pair of crutches, which she handed to the driver as he opened his own door.
Puzzled, I watched, wondering who it could be. Delcia was talking animatedly, so it was obviously someone she knew. Then she went around to the rider's side of the car and opened the rider's door to help someone out. I could see it was a female, but that was about all. Meanwhile, the driver got out of the car, head bent as he slowly maneuvered on the crutches.
Only when the three of them started moving toward the church did I finally realize who the new arrivals were-Lieutenant Colonel Guy Owens and his daughter Michelle.
'I'll be damned,' I said aloud to Ralph Ames. 'I will be damned!'
CHAPTER 23
