I spoke.
'What's wrong?' I asked.
Before the session started, I had been ready to tear into the deputy for putting me off, for not calling me in to talk to him as soon as he arrived at Ironwood Ranch, but the emotional roller-coaster of the past few minutes had left me hollow and drained. I didn't want to fight anymore, but I did want to know what was going on. Calvin didn't answer right away. He seemed to be having some difficulty in making his lips work.
'Where's the deputy?' I asked. 'I know he showed up, but I still haven't seen him.'
'Up there,' Calvin croaked, waving his hand vaguely in the direction of the path that detoured around the ranch house and led up to the parking lot. He swallowed then, as if recovering control of his voice. 'Where are your car keys, Mr. Beaumont?' he asked.
'Excuse me?'
'Your car keys. Where are they?'
Something about the way he spoke, the timbre of his voice as he asked the question, put my interior warning system on yellow alert. 'Why do you want to know?'
'Just tell me.'
'They're not in my desk,' I said, stalling for time, hoping for a hint of what was really behind the question.
Through the four weeks Calvin Crenshaw had come across as a fairly easygoing guy. He seemed content to linger in the background while Louise hogged center stage. Not everybody would have caught the slight grimace of impatience that flashed across his face in reaction to my answer. I could see in his face that Calvin Crenshaw already knew that the keys to the rented Grand AM weren't in my desk. Someone had already looked.
'What were you doing in my room?' I demanded.
Calvin turned to walk away, but not before I caught the giveaway blink of his eye that told me I was right. There was something else there as well, a hardened line of resistance that I had never seen before. He started up the path, but I strode after him and caught him by the arm.
'Look, Calvin, I asked you a question.'
'Go talk to the deputy,' he replied. 'He's waiting for you in the parking lot. I hope you have the keys with you.'
Saying that, he shook off my restraining hand and hurried away. For a moment I stood there watching him go, then I did as I was told, heading up to the parking lot with the car keys in my pocket. Unwilling to give Joey Rothman another chance at making a damn fool out of me, I had carried them with me when I left the cabin.
Once I reached the parking lot I saw a lanky man wearing a khaki uniform and a wide-brimmed hat standing next to my rental.
'You Detective Beaumont?' he asked as I approached.
I nodded. No one at Ironwood Ranch had called me Detective since my arrival four weeks before. For reasons of personal privacy, I had played down the police officer part of my life as much as possible. As I came closer I noticed that the leather snap on his holster had been loosened. He held one arm away from his body in a stance that would allow immediate access to the handle of his weapon. His bronze-plated name tag said Deputy M. Hanson. He studied me appraisingly for a moment or two and then relaxed a little.
'What seems to be the problem?' I asked.
'Is this your vehicle?'
'Not mine. Rented, yes.'
'Mind opening it up?'
'Not at all, but what seems to be the problem?'
'Let me ask the questions, please, Detective Beaumont. Unlock the door and then step away from the vehicle.'
I did as I was told. As soon as I turned the key in the lock, Hanson pulled a penknife from his pocket and gingerly lifted the latch. When the door swung open, he leaned inside, carefully examining the floor mats of both the front and back seats. When he was finished, Hanson straightened up and stepped away from the car, studying me carefully.
'Did you disturb the vehicle in any way when you found it here in the lot this morning?' he asked.
'I got in it,' I said. 'On the driver's side. The keys had been left in the ignition. I took them out and put them in my pocket.'
'Did you touch anything else?'
'I unlocked the glove box to check the rental agreement. I wanted to see how far the car had been driven. What exactly is going on here?' I asked, exasperated. 'I call to report a car prowl. You turn up three hours later and act as though the case has suddenly turned into a major crime and I'm somehow at fault for stealing my own car.'
'It has turned into a major crime, as you call it,' Deputy Hanson said seriously. 'It's my understanding that you believe your roommate, Joseph Rothman, took your vehicle, drove it?'
'Joey. That's correct. I left the keys in my desk drawer. He must have lifted them from there.'
Hanson nodded. 'That could be,' he said 'We'll have to check all that out later. In the meantime, I'll have to impound this vehicle. I'll need you to ride along up to Prescott with me after a bit. We'll need your fingerprints.'
'Impound my car! Take my prints! What the hell are you talking about? I tell you, I didn't steal my own damn car!'
Hanson looked at me first with a puzzled frown and then with dawning awareness. 'I'm sorry. I thought you'd been told.'
'I haven't been told a goddamned thing except to get my butt up here and bring my car keys along.'
'Your roommate is dead, Detective Beaumont.'
That stopped me cold. 'Dead?' I repeated.
'That's right. A rancher just up the road found the body hung up on a mesquite tree along the bank of the river about six-fifteen this morning. That's why I'm so late getting here. It was right on the boundary, so it took a while to figure out if the body was found in Maricopa or Yavapai County. The line runs right through Don Freeman's ranch. Don's an old geezer, ninety-one if he's a day. He got all confused and thought it was on the Maricopa side. Then, when Mrs. Crenshaw called to report one of her residents missing, we started putting two and two together.'
The news staggered me. Joey Rothman dead? A parade of one-word questions, detective questions, zinged through my head like so many bouncing Ping-Pong balls in a lottery bottle: How? When? Who? Where?
'You said they pulled him out of the water. Drowned?'
Deputy Mike Hanson shook his head. 'Nope.'
'What then?' I demanded, feeling a clammy sinking in my gut, remembering the acrid odor of burnt gunpowder in the car when I opened the glove box of the Grand AM at four-thirty in the morning, the smell that had told me the Smith and Wesson had been fired sometime within the previous few hours, to say nothing of the two missing rounds.
'You can tell me,' I insisted. 'I'm a homicide cop.'
'Not here you're not,' Hanson replied decisively.
He didn't add that here in this god-forsaken corner of Nowhere, Arizona, I was just another one of the suspects. Hanson didn't have to say it, because I already knew it was true.
Desperately my mind swung back and forth as I tried to decide on the best path to follow, given the incriminating circumstances. It seemed as though I'd be better off making full disclosure right away than I would be letting Deputy Hanson find out about the gun later-the recently fired gun with my fingerprints on it and hopefully the killer's as well. If I told Hanson first, it might look a little less as though I was withholding information.
'Deputy Hanson,' I said quietly, 'you should probably know that my departmental issue. 38 is locked in the glove box.'
The startled look on Deputy Hanson's face confirmed my worst suspicions. Joey Rothman hadn't drowned. Somebody had plugged him. And I knew with dead certainty that the murder weapon had to be my very own Smith and Wesson.
Just then I heard the sound of laughter and approaching voices. Finished with the Round Robins, early
