“Do you have children?” she asked in a voice that sounded like it hurt even to speak.
I told her I didn’t.
“Then you’ll never know,” she said. “You’ll never know what it’s like to lose your child, to outlive your child.” My eyes went to a large high school graduation photo of Phaedra on the wall.
Mrs. Riding avoided it, staring out into the backyard, a sunny, narrow space with a neat Bermuda grass lawn and low hedges.
“Julie and I aren’t close. We never have been, and we’ve hardly spoken the past three years. I don’t have any idea where she is. Why?”
“I think she knows something about what happened to Phaedra.”
I expected some reaction, but she continued in the same monotone. “I knew something like this would happen someday. I knew if Phaedra kept trying to help Julie, I’d end up losing both of them.”
“Mrs. Riding, I got the impression it was the other way around, that Julie was trying to help Phaedra.”
She snorted an unhappy laugh. “Julie was never sober enough to help anybody but herself, even if she would have been inclined. That’s what lost her her daughter. And it’s a good thing.”
“And you have no idea where she might be?”
She shook her head slowly. “Julie ran with a fast crowd,” she said. “Money, parties, powerful men. But it was all going to catch up with her. She couldn’t keep her looks forever.” She looked from the lawn to me. “She was so much like her father. She was her father’s daughter. Phaedra was my daughter.” Her voice skipped a bit, like a stone skimming water. “My hope.”
“I thought Julie and her father didn’t get along.”
“They hated each other,” she said, “because they were the same. Do you want something to drink?”
I said a diet Coke would be nice, and she brought me one. She poured herself Jack Daniel’s on the rocks.
“Both my daughters were very complicated, very smart young women. But Julie, Julie had something in her, something like what was in her father. It was something that you could never know, that made it possible for her to do things I could never do.”
“I’ve decided we never really know the people we’re close to,” I ventured.
“Maybe,” Avis Riding said. “Maybe so. I know that my husband-” She stopped herself. “That’s not the entire truth. I know we both did things that made life harder, more painful for the girls. Well, isn’t that what we’re supposed to believe? That whatever happened to Julie and Phaedra was ultimately the parents’ fault? That’s what all those women who call Dr. Sharon on the radio say.”
“I don’t think Sharon agrees with them,” I said.
“I don’t know what I think,” she said. “I know I was married to a cold, angry man with too many secrets, and it somehow seemed to bring out the worst in me, too.”
“What was Phaedra’s relationship with Julie?”
“Complicated. Phaedra was very strong, very independent. But she loved Julie unquestioningly, and so many times, Phaedra was there to get her out of a bad love affair, get her into detox for the cocaine.”
“You stayed in touch with Phaedra?”
She nodded.
“What about the month before her death?”
“She’d call. She seemed worried, didn’t want to talk. I told all this to those other men, the black detective and that annoying partner of his. I didn’t know she was in danger.”
“Did Julie call you in the past month?”
“Yes, she did,” she said. “It was probably the first time we’d even spoken in months.”
“What did you talk about?”
“She wanted to know where Phaedra was.”
“What did you tell her?”
“I told her if she wasn’t at her apartment, she could call Phaedra’s new boyfriend. Noah was his name. Do you want the number?”
“No,” I said a little too quietly, and then said I had to leave.
“Wait,” she said. “I’m a little surprised you don’t have a family of your own by now. You seemed like a nice boy.”
I smiled a little. “Life doesn’t work out like we expect.”
“I don’t mean to go on like a lonely old woman. I just haven’t talked to a soul for days, except the police. And I know you are the police, but you’re also someone I know.”
“I thought you never liked me.”
She spread her hands. “Oh, those were hard times. I know Julie used to bring you over to dinner to keep the peace, knowing with an outsider we’d all behave ourselves.” She smiled just a little. “I knew. But you were the only boy Julie ever brought home who seemed to have some substance to him. A little intimidating perhaps, but smart as a whip.”
I mumbled some thanks.
“I always loved to read, you know. That’s where I found Phaedra’s name. I always loved that name. I tried to instill that love of learning in my girls.” She looked me over for the first time. “You’re how old, David?”
“I’m forty.”
“I remember that time so well,” she said. “Everything will change for you now. I don’t mean you’ll buy a sports car and run off with a blonde. But over the next few years, things will change. I don’t know if it will be for the better. But maybe you can lose some of that anger and pain that’s inside you.”
I started to say something, but she smiled again. “Once upon a time, I thought you might be my son-in-law. I didn’t know what the hell we’d talk about, but I knew you and Julie would make smart children. It’s so funny the way life turns out.”
Outside, I thought of Avis Riding’s words: “It’s so funny the way life turns out.” I leaned against the side of the Blazer and cut and lighted one of Peralta’s cigars. So funny. I remembered the rages Julie would have about her father. I remembered the way she would cling to me in the night, when sleep took away her hatred and left her with nothing but fear. I am forty years old, I mused, and I honestly can’t say how I got to this point. My peers now have teenage children and careers and settled marriages and graying hair and maybe, maybe a sense of place, a truce with the dreams we have to give up, most of us anyway. I’m just me, here. The way things turn out. Funny.
As I drew the tobacco across my palate and felt sorry for myself, a cruiser slowly crept down the street and stopped by me. The shift snapped into park. The window came down. “You have business on this block, sir?” the deputy asked, her hand obviously down at her holster.
I handed her the wallet with my star and ID.
“Sorry,” she said. “Mapstone.” Then she lowered her sunglasses a bit and smiled-a nice smile. “Hey, you’re the history guy.”
Yeah, I’m the history guy.
Chapter Thirty-one
I reached Sedona a little after 3:00 P.M., and was able to throttle back the air-conditioning, being more than three thousand feet above the desert floor that holds Phoenix. Every few miles were signs warning about the high fire danger-the biggest reminder being the plume of smoke on the northwest edge of the Verde Valley, which the radio said was part of the wildfires that had consumed a million acres of forests in the West this summer. A million acres of fire. A million dollars in the trunk of Phaedra’s car.
I had lunch at a Mexican place on the Tlaquepaque, the town square near Oak Creek. I fortified myself with two Negra Modelos, a beer that tastes incredibly sublime when consumed with a plate of enchiladas in a dark, cool, adobe-protected space. Then I walked over to the Coconino County Sheriff’s Substation and asked for Deputy Allison Taylor. She was about my age, with light brown hair the style and texture of Lauren Hutton’s and a very
