Murder in a Hot Flash

  Still, it was obvious that a patch of not quite opaque darkness hovered in the sky above the generator truck. Mike had panned back and forth across it several times and then it was gone, so nebulous that its disappearance was all that proved its existence.

  “Looks like the outline of a giant football,” Tawny murmured when Earl reversed the clip to show the panning frames again in slow motion. She snuggled deeper into Drake’s armpit. So he hugged her and Charlie tighter. Charlie fought the urge to burp.

  “More like a hot dog or a bratwurst,” Edwina said and turned to glare at Charlie. That’s who she was mad at. Why?

  “The shadow of a submarine without a conning tower,” Earl said, snapping his fingers. Charlie thought Earl’s description the most apt of all.

  And she noticed Mitch wasn’t even looking at the screen. He was still staring at her.

  Wouldn’t it be interesting if Mitch Hilsten was angry because John B. had his arm around Charlie?

  But Sheriff Sumpter arrived just then to arrest Charlie’s mother for the murder of Gordon Cabot and all else was forgotten.

  Chapter 11

  Mitch Hilsten drove Charlie into Moab in his Bronco, Scrag Dickens riding along in the backseat. Ahead of them, Edwina rode with the sheriff.

  “Where am I going to find a lawyer this time of night?” was all she could think of to say for miles. They were all pretty quiet. And then—“Will they let me see her tonight? I don’t think she’s feeling well.” Charlie was so numb she didn’t realize she was crying until Scrag reached over the seat back to stroke her shoulders in silent sympathy. “How could they tell it was her ax? That someone didn’t switch axes? Anybody could have left one of her cigarette butts there. I mean, if you wanted to kill Cabot and blame it on someone else, Edwina was the answer to a prayer. She knocked him on his ass right in front of the sheriff of Grand County. It’s such an obvious frame-up.”

  “You do love her,” Mitch said barely above a whisper.

  “I never said I didn’t love her. Just because I can’t stand her, doesn’t mean I don’t love her.” Edwina had accepted the handcuffs and been read her rights without a whimper or a four-letter word. In fact with no word, just that scary gray acceptance. “Which doesn’t mean she did it.”

  “Mom?” Charlie, accompanied by a female cop, stood in her mother’s cell in the Grand County Courthouse in the wee hours of the morning. Edwina sat on the edge of her bunk swaying with exhaustion.

  “We’re worried too,” the officer said. “Does she have any history of heart problems or other ill health? Do you want a doctor, Mrs. Greene?”

  “I’m not deaf,” Edwina snapped back. “And no, I don’t want a doctor.”

  “She’s not that old either.” Charlie was offended too. “You don’t have to treat her like she’s elderly.”

  “Why not, you do,” her mother’s voice croaked out of the partial darkness. And then, “Never learn, do you? Thought at your age and being a mother yourself you’d have learned something by now.”

  “Hello? Are we on the same planet here? You have just been arrested for murder. And like, we’re talking about what?”

  But Charlie knew. Sheriff Sumpter had counted noses while she and Mitch were on the supply run and Edwina had overheard John B. explaining where Mitch Hilsten and Charlie Greene were and why they should not be disturbed. That’s what her mother’d been so pissed about at dinner.

  “And you believed him. Just because I made a mistake years ago and so should never be trusted again?” Not to mention that at thirty-two I have the right to sleep with someone if I want to. But Charlie knew that argument cut no ice with a parent.

  “How was I to know what was bred into your genes?” her mother whispered with that hateful hiss. “Or who was into your jeans before I even knew the damn pants were hot?”

  Charlie churned with a familiar impotent frustration, knowing she was breeding the same cancer in her relationship with Libby and helpless to stop it.

  “And yesterday you went off with John B. to Moab. Charlie, I didn’t kill anybody, but they can hang me for this one and I don’t care. I’m worn out. So if you were planning on my raising Libby while you go off and have a wonderful life, you’re skunked, aren’t you?”

  “I wouldn’t let you raise Libby if you were the last adult on earth. And I’m not letting you take the fall for a stupid murder you didn’t commit and my jeans are my own goddamned business.”

  “Between the campers needing a break from filth and gnat bites, canoers, whitewater rafters, your generic tourist, religious people here for an experience, reporters on the trail of a Hollywood ax murder, and two film companies ‘lensing’ (God, I hate that word), Scrag and I could come up with one motel room. It’s not that great but it’s yours for tonight. We’ll be back tomorrow morning with your car and your toothbrush, take you out for breakfast, and help you find a lawyer. You gonna make it, Charlie?”

  “Hey, you guy types just don’t realize how strong we females are when it comes to chin-deep feces.” But she hugged them both long and hard before they left her for the night in one of the grossest motel rooms she’d ever smelled.

  An old-fashioned double bed, not even a queen size. And the odor—decades of chemical cleaners and air fresheners and cigarette smoke decomposed to stale. And probably other things Charlie refused to think about.

  She had the presence of mind to wash out her underclothes in the bathroom sink before crawling naked between the sheets. Despite a gut-gnawing fear for the health and sanity of her mother Charlie slept like a tank.

  She was so deeply out of it that she had to answer the door, when Mitch and Scrag returned in the morning, wrapped in the limp bedspread that smelled like discount-store perfume. They’d brought the Corsica and, when she’d dressed, walked her down to the main street for breakfast. Charlie sucked in great thankful gulps of chilly fresh air.

  Roses climbed trellises, fences, porches. They sat in clumps and on bushes. Glorious shades of red, peach, pink, and yellow. And poor Edwina sat in jail and couldn’t see them. Somehow, unreasonably, Charlie felt it was all her fault.

  “How old a woman is Edwina?” Scrag asked.

  “Let’s see … she must be … about fifty-seven.”

  Both men stopped to gape at her.

  “I know, she looks ten years older.” That’s all supposed to be my fault too.

  “More like twenty,” Scrag said indelicately.

  The River Palace Café and Grill was doing a good business but they managed to snag a booth just vacated by the window. Everyone in the room stared at Mitch Hilsten, even the waitresses, not one of whom was under sixty, nor anything other than scrawny with dyed hair molded into place. Maybe the younger ones were out at Dead Horse Point getting eaten by giant rats. Mitch pretended not to notice the attention. Their waitress brought an extra menu for him to autograph and somebody behind Charlie snapped photos using a flash.

  But it was Sheriff Ralph Sumpter who came up to the table, bill in hand. With the other he shook Mitch’s. “Mr. Hilsten.”

  “Sheriff.”

  The lawman gave Scrag a curt nod and turned to Charlie, who sat across from her escorts. “And Miz Greene.”

  Charlie couldn’t tell you what a sneer sounded like but she knew one when she heard it.

  “I have just learned something of your history, Miz Greene, and I want you to know I am not impressed. Are you impressed, Arthur?” he said to the big vacant-faced deputy behind him.

  Arthur was not impressed. He had his sunglasses on indoors and they reflected a van with a kayak roped on top running the stoplight outside the window.

  What, you’ve learned I’m an UM instead of divorced? UM stood for unwed mother, a label Libby inflicted when in need of heavy artillery.

  “I have just learned from a newspaper reporter from Los Angeles that you are a famous psychic. I would like to make it clear that my temperament, my religion, and my common sense do not allow for such foolishness. Any special powers bestowed
around here are bestowed by Jesus and I don’t believe He believes in psychics either. Do I make myself clear?”

  “You do, Sheriff, and I want you to know I think you and Jesus have got it dead right.”

  “You religious, Miz Greene?”

  “No, but I don’t believe in psychics. That’s a silly rumor that got started for the same reason most silly rumors do and I’ll be the first to declare it isn’t true. But let me point out, Sheriff, that no one has to be psychic to see you are holding the wrong person for the murder of Gordon Cabot and I intend to prove it.” Charlie’s shins ached from the kicks the men across from her delivered under the table, accompanied by agonized looks of warning.

  “I look forward to watching you do that, Miz Greene. Enjoy your eggs, folks.” He slapped his Smokey Bear hat on his ancient-astronaut crew cut, nodded to Mitch, handed his deputy the bill, and grabbed a toothpick at the counter on his way out.

  “What do you want to do, get your mother hanged?” Mitch said. “Jesus.”

  “Jesus doesn’t believe in Charlie.” Scrag sat back so the waitress could deliver his order of steaming oatmeal; a plate heaped with huevos rancheros plus an extra side of beans and another of tortillas. He obviously was not expecting to pick up his own tab. “Wait a minute,” he said, the brown sugar suspended over his oatmeal. “I heard about you I think, wasn’t it last year? You with that agency on Wilshire where the receptionist was a witch and they found her body in the alley?”

  “Something like that.”

  “What agency you with?” Mitch dug a pious spoon into a granola, yogurt, fresh fruit combination.

  “Congdon and Morse.”

  “Never heard of it.”

  “Well, thank you very much.” Charlie dumped the poached eggs out of the bowl onto her toast order and poured the hot milk over it all. “Pass the salt and pepper.”

  “And one of the agents was a psychic and solved the murder.”

  “Not because she was a psychic and the Beverly Hills PD did most of the work.”

  “That’s not what I heard.”

  “Hey, I’m sorry,” Mitch broke in. “I’m sure there’re lots of little agencies I never heard of. And I wouldn’t put down psychics if I were you. I’ve known a few who were good.”

  Oh boy. “So how about you, now that your part in Ecosystem is done? Are you leaving?”

  “I’d planned to stick around for a short river trip with John B. and Earl. Scout out sites for another documentary he’s got in mind that I’m thinking of backing. Long as we’re here. Now with the murder and Edwina in jail I don’t know what’s going to happen.”

  “Edwina’s my problem.”

  “I already have a lawyer,” Charlie’s problem told her. This time they sat across a table from each other in a small interrogation room with the same lady cop supervising. “You just go on home and tend to more important business.”

  “Edwina, you know I can’t go off and leave you in this mess.”

  “Sure you can. Now I’ve got a lawyer I don’t need an agent.” Her color was better this morning or else it was the indoor lighting. “Oh, but before you go, tell John B. he can’t use the critter footage we shot last night.”

  “Can’t use it? Edwina, that’s box office. People eat that stuff up.” Next to watching Mitch Hilsten bat his eyelashes, they’ll remember seeing those critters doing their critter thing. “How often do you get creatures in the wild to sit still for a camera like that?”

  “That’s just it,” Edwina said. “You don’t.”

  “You don’t expect me to go out there and try to tell him those weren’t real rats and bats and that fox wasn’t really a fox like this isn’t really a desert?”

  “They’re real enough, but that’s not the way they really act. The bat would have taken off when we shone a light on it while it was eating the moth. The fox, maybe, was acting normally. He was young and he was curious about the lights and all that food was sitting there waiting for him. But rats don’t sit still like that for foxes to catch and eat them.”

  “Look, those jets flying over just before dark probably upset the critters’ habits but the point is you can’t expect John B. Drake to keep from taking advantage of it. Who’s going to know the difference? Besides, what’s a dumb rat know anyway?”

  “Never underestimate the intelligence of a rodent.” Edwina pushed her glasses up on her nose. “In my lab there isn’t a one that isn’t more intelligent than the grad student feeding him.”

  “Then how come the rats are in the cages and the students run free?” Here we are having a totally stupid argument and you’ve just been charged with murdering a man with an ax.

  Edwina peered blankly over her glasses. “Why would anybody want to study a grad student?”

  Chapter 12

  “You mean she really doesn’t have a lawyer?” Mitch stood in the bathroom door of Charlie’s smelly room, clean clothes draped over his arm. They’d agreed, since he’d found the last room in town for her, he could use her shower. Since the murder had been “solved” everyone was free to leave Dead Horse Point but no longer allowed to use the precious water hauled in to bathe.

  “She’s going to let the court appoint one.”

  “She can’t do that.”

  “She says she doesn’t care what happens to her. All she wants to talk about is persuading Drake not to use the critter footage he was so proud of last night because the animals wouldn’t have acted that way normally. I’m going out to the Point to ask some pointed questions of the Animal Aliens crew while they’re still around. But first I’m going to call home and buy some clean clothes.”

  “Tell you what,” Mitch said. “I’ll scout out a lawyer for Edwina and take your dirty clothes with mine to the Sudzy Duds if you’ll let me take you out to dinner tonight. Deal?” He closed the door on his gleaming smile and his dirty bod.

  “Maggie, guess what? I’m in a motel room in Moab, Utah, with Mitch Hilsten.”

  “Oh, right, Greene.”

  “He’s in the bathroom, taking a shower. We’re at the Pit Stop Motel, Room Eight.”

  “Charlie, can I take this call to mean you won’t be home today either?”

  “Yeah. What’s happening back there?” You tell me your bad news and I’ll tell you mine.

  “I would like to apologize for all those cracks I made about you learning to trust your daughter.”

  “I expected something Saturday night. But Monday? She’s not hurt or in jail?”

  “No, in fact she’s the one who called the police. Just that she should have done it sooner. The damage to your place isn’t as bad as we thought at first—that’s Larry and me … your assistant? He’s been so much help. And the cat showed up this morning. I was worried he’d been killed or something and … Charlie?”

  “Maggie … just what was it that happened last night?”

  “Too many kids over there and things got out of hand. Nothing meaner than a bunch of immature drunks.”

  “I told her no drinking and she could have no more than three friends in at a time when I’m not there.” Hell, I make a lot of rules, like any good mommy.

  “That’s all she did at first, but apparently word got out you were away and suddenly half the football team drops by. Of course, she couldn’t turn them down. You know how she likes to be popular. I got in about eleven-thirty and the cops were just pulling up. Larry has scheduled a carpet cleaner who’s coming in tomorrow and most of the furniture is all right. Some blinds will have to be replaced. Hey, in a few days you’ll hardly know anything happened. Larry boarded up the window over the kitchen sink and he’s finding somebody to put in glass. And you’d be proud of me, I stood right over Libby and made her clean up the puke herself. Charlie … you don’t really have Mitch Hilsten in a motel room?”

  “When you come in from a campground all you can think about is a shower.” MY GOD WHAT’S THE DAMAGE GOING TO COST ME?

  “If I were in a motel room with Mitch Hilsten, a shower’d be the las
t thing I’d think about. Is he why you’re not coming home today?”

  Charlie explained about Edwina.

  “That’s totally ridiculous.”

  You’re always telling me I should trust her more too. “Too bad the sheriff doesn’t think so.”

  “That sucks. You take care of your mom and I’ll see to the little cheerleader. She’ll spend her nights over here till you get back. And, Charlie, Libby really does feel awful about her friends trashing your place.”

  “You mean guilty. She comes by it naturally.” And she wasn’t little. She was taller than either Charlie or Maggie. But Libby liked Maggie and just maybe enough to obey the order to spend the night there.

  While Charlie was out buying another set of clothing, she found Scrag Dickens lounging on a street corner and agreed to give him a ride back to Dead Horse Point. So, while a superstar was washing her panties with his shorts at the Sudzy Duds, she was driving alone with a prime suspect in an ax murder across lonely desolate no woman’s land.

  And she thought her mother was crazy.

  “So, where do you keep your ax, Scrag?”

  “Don’t have one. Carrying the damn things makes it real difficult to get a ride when you’re hitching. That was your mother’s ax I had Friday night.” Was it just Charlie or did he sound smug?

  “So, where’s your home?”

  “Oh, I got some parents in L.A. and a brother in Oregon and a sister in Florida and an ex-wife in Kansas. I stop in places more than live in ’em. Hang out a lot around location sites. Pick up work. I enjoy the milieu.” A surprising vulnerability softened that last sentence, followed by a nervous glance.

  “Acting work?”

  “Bit parts, dead bodies, doubles, whatever. Sometimes I’m an extra, gofer … done some stunt work. John B. and Earl and I go way back and I met Hilsten years ago too. When he was in Tortured Prince. How about you? Mitch tells me you’re adopted. Ever had the urge to look up your birth mother?”

  “God no, one’s enough. Ever done anything else besides travel and hang out?”