Cactus Heart - [40]

“This is your last warning.” The voice had sounded strangely altered, like putting Harry Connick’s voice track through a blender. “If the mine isn’t stopped within a week, the criminal Max Yarnell will be executed.”

“That’s it?” Peralta had asked. One of the tough boys I first noticed in the oversized suit coats had nodded. Peralta had nearly spat on the carpet.

“And you didn’t think this was worth telling us about?”

He had just stared, slightly cross-eyed. “I was following orders, sir.”

How many times had we heard that in this bloody century?

I had thought the voice sounded male. Peralta had been sure it was a woman. He had it sent off to the FBI to be analyzed.

Yet outside of the security boys at his office, Max Yarnell wasn’t acting like someone who was afraid. Alarm company records showed the system at his house was not armed the night he was killed. Yarnell only armed it each night around midnight when he turned in, and while he was away. He left work early that day, saying he was going to work from home, but no, he hadn’t mentioned that he expected visitors that night.

All these thoughts kept replaying themselves as we sat in the restaurant.

“In a way,” Gretchen said, “it sounds like Frances had bad luck with men all her life.”

I savored a mouthful of cheese crisp.

“I mean, after Jack Talbott, she was kept in prison her entire life by the Yarnell brothers. That’s what you’re saying.”

“I guess so,” I said. “I guess one might take it personally if somebody kidnapped his brothers and they were never seen again.”

“We don’t even know they did it!” Gretchen shouted, holding my wrist tightly enough that it hurt.

“Sorry.” She let go. “When I drink, I get passionate.”

She was on her second margarita.

“Do you doubt they did it?”

“I don’t know, David. I don’t know.”

“The newspaper articles made it sound pretty open-and-shut.”

“The newspapers,” she said, her tone neutral. Then, “So what do you think happened with Max? Are you allowed to tell me?” The rich brown eyes fixed on me intensely. “Do you trust me, David?”

“You’re helping me on the kidnapping, so of course I trust you. On Max, we just don’t know much.”

“He sounded so powerful. So much money.”

“Didn’t do him much good in the end.”

Gretchen sipped her drink. “Do you wish you could have that kind of world? All that money? And you didn’t even have to work for it. It just seems like a madness nowadays. Twenty-five-year-old kids with millions in stock options. And here we are, two civil servants.”

“I envy the rich their options,” I said.

The waitress brought our check. One other couple came in and sat at the opposite end of the room. They weren’t talking to each other.

Gretchen said, “My dad’s a teacher, so I’ll never inherit much money.”

“Well, my grandfather was a dentist before dentists made big money.”

“And your parents?”

“They died in a small-plane crash. I was just a baby. Dad was a lawyer for the state. Mom was a music teacher. I didn’t really know them.”

“Oh, baby…”

“I was very fortunate with my grandparents. And who knows about great wealth. There’s that whole business about the rich man passing through the eye of a needle.”

She rolled her eyes. “Please, no religion during the holidays.”

I couldn’t tell if she was being ironic. How could you know these days?

Just then my cell phone rang. The number was unfamiliar.

I excused myself and went to the little alcove off the Los Olivos bar to return the call. A mariachi band was playing Christmas tunes in the sound system.

“Deb Boswell.”

“It’s David Mapstone with the Sheriff’s Office,” I said.

“Mapstone, you’re quite something.” Her voice was brighter than the dour academic I remembered from Hawkins’ office. “Your grandfather was a dentist?”

“That’s right.”

“And he treated these boys? Andrew and Woodrow Yarnell?”

“Apparently.”

“Why would that be? Why would he have treated them?”

Suddenly I felt like I was in an interview room with the cops, on the bad luck side of the table.

“He was a dentist,” I said. “Phoenix was smaller then. It probably had 40,000 people during the Depression, and not that many dentists. I don’t know.”

“Oh,” she said. “I’m from Detroit, so it’s hard for me to have a sense of this place.”

“I found the records stored among Grandfather’s files. I immediately logged them into evidence.”

“It was pretty unusual to see dental X-rays in 1940,” she said.

“These were rich people,” I said. “And Grandfather loved gadgets.”

I was bursting with anticipation, but something told me not to rush her.

“Well,” she said, “it’s the jackpot. Based on the dental records, the skeletons you guys found are indeed the remains of Andrew and Woodrow Yarnell. Each little boy had a silver filling in a molar.”

“And the DNA profile?”

“Both tests are telling us accurate information,” Boswell said. “Deputy, you have a mystery on your hands.”

25

I walked Gretchen to her truck, reveling in the cool, dry evening. She wore a lightweight leather jacket over a dark blouse and tight blue jeans. The leather felt soft and supple as I slipped my hand around her. She leaned into me. The Christmas lights were up in downtown Scottsdale, and tourists sauntered along window-shopping, pairs of shadows down the street.