Jon Talton - Cactus Heart

“A good man,” James Yarnell said. “So how can I help Doc Mapstone’s grandson?”

“I assume your brother told you about the DNA test.”

“Yes, and he also told me about you. You must have made quite an impression.”

“I’m afraid so.”

“Oh, Max is a prick, he always has been.” James Yarnell laughed from deep inside his fine suit.

“Mr. Yarnell, is there any reason the test would have turned out the way it did? Your mother was also the mother of the twins?”

“We all fell from the same tree,” he said evenly. “My uncle Win, now he was the bounder in the family. Hayden Winthrop Yarnell Jr. was his given name, but everyone called him Win. His brother, my dad Morgan, he was the straight arrow.”

“I wasn’t trying to imply…”

“Don’t worry, Mapstone,” he said. “We’re both old Arizonans here. We can speak frankly. Nobody wanted this crime solved more than me, believe me. Is there any chance they could have made a mistake?”

I told him it seemed unlikely, based on the DNA report that I spent the afternoon reading.

“What do you remember about the kidnapping?” I asked.

He looked out over the city lights. “I was sixteen years old, the older brother. The protector. I always looked after Andy and Woodrow. They were the sweetest, gentlest kids in the world, and I don’t just think that’s the treacle of sentimental memory fogging up my head.

“Anyway, we all went out to Grandpa’s for Thanksgiving. I remember how cold it was, and you know how none of us desert rats is prepared for cold weather. Grandpa had this huge fireplace at his hacienda. The hearth was made from stone quarried on his ranch in southern Arizona, Rancho del Cielo. It was framed in copper from the Yarnell Mine near Globe. And it was so wonderfully warm that night.

“I remember after dinner, all the men adjourned to Grandpa’s study to smoke cigars, drink brandy and talk politics. For the first time I was invited along, and I really felt like I was a man. Max was already asleep, he was only five. Grandpa took Andy and Woodrow to bed, and sat up with them for a while. Then he came down, and joined the talk. He was convinced Japan was going to jump on us.” He paused and swallowed. “I never saw Andy and Woodrow again.”

“Who else was there that night?”

“My mom. My dad, Morgan, and Uncle Win.”

“Any domestic help?”

James Yarnell bit his lower lip and dropped his age another five years. “Grandma died in 1936, so Grandpa had a cook. What was her name…Maria, I think? And he had a gardener named Luis. Luis Paz. He was a great guy, like a second father.”

“What about Jack Talbott?”

James Yarnell shook his head. “He was trouble. I didn’t know much at that age, but I knew he was trouble. He was Grandpa’s driver and handyman. I don’t know how he got the job. Maybe Uncle Win hired him. I don’t know.”

“Was he there that night?”

James Yarnell looked up into the torchlight and then shook his head. “I don’t believe he was.”

The sun slipped behind the mountains and the city became a vast sea of undulating blue and white and yellow diamonds.

“So what will you do?” he asked.

“I don’t know,” I said. “If the DNA test was correct, then I guess we have a totally different homicide case. But your brothers are still missing.”

Reflected in the primal orange light of the torch and the sunset, his fine features seemed to sag.

“I guess I was hoping for some answers,” he said. He groped for the word. “Some justice. But it’s not going to happen, I guess. This kidnapping began the most terrible years for my family. Dad and Uncle Win were both dead before the war was out. Bad hearts, the doctor said. Grandpa died in 1942, and his hacienda burned, this lovely stone house down by South Mountain. I was overseas in the Army by then. People started talking about a Yarnell curse.”

“You seem to have come out all right,” I said.

“Well, I’m not Max,” he said. “I’ve been lucky to be able to do what I want, which is collect and preserve Indian art. But I can’t say there are no regrets. I wasn’t there for Andy and Woodrow. And even though I was blessed with a wonderful daughter and three grandsons, I can never see little boys without thinking of Andy and Woodrow.”

He stopped and I could see the slightest mist across his eyes. Or maybe it was across mine.

I stood, thanked him and offered my hand. He shook it with both of his and thanked me for coming. Even in his sadness he had more warmth than I could ever imagine from his brother.

“One more thing,” I said, pulling a snapshot from my coat pocket. “Have you ever seen this before?”

He tilted the photograph into the light from one of the torches. “That’s my grandfather’s pocket watch.” He tried to hand back the photo.

“Are you sure? Check again.”

“It’s his. I’d know it anywhere. Where did you get this?”

When I told him, he walked a couple of steps away, staring out at the lingering Sonoran Desert twilight. I heard him say, “My God.” Then he walked back and recomposed his fine features.

“Come by the gallery sometime.”

“I’d like to,” I said. “I grew up two blocks from the Heard Museum, so I come by my love of Indian art honestly.”

“You would have loved Grandpa’s collection,” he said. “He realized the value of this art long before it became popular. In the 1920s and 1930s, he would take trips out to the reservations to buy art.”

I had written a paper in grad school on Hayden Yarnell but this was new to me.

“Oh, yes,” James Yarnell said. “It was an amazing collection. It would have been on the order of the Heard.”

“What happened to it?”

He stopped and look at me. “Why, it disappeared during the war. When Grandpa’s hacienda burned, the family was afraid it was all lost. But when they went through the ruins, there wasn’t even a trace. It was gone. It’s never been found.”

“My God,” I said. “Why?”

He rubbed his jaw as if an old ache had come back. He said, “The Yarnell curse.”

I came back to the courthouse from Scottsdale and pulled out a legal pad. I could hear Lindsey’s voice telling me to use the Mac, but I needed the comfort of pen on paper. Lindsey. I was sending prayers and good thoughts to her, yet I had this feeling that some terrible breach had come upon us like a shipwreck on the unsuspecting. Don’t worry, Dave. I was a worrier, and now I felt like something akin to a bad cold was coming over me, my heartbeat too noticeable, my brain full of dread. I shifted in the creaky old desk chair and started making notes on the case, what I knew, what I didn’t know. The latter list was a hell of a lot longer. By the time I left, it was nearly midnight. I was tired and getting nowhere on a fifty-eight-year-old double-murder. The BMW’s fuel gauge was nearly on empty, a little needle stuck in the festive dash display.

At the light on Roosevelt, a VW Jetta full of Asian teenagers pulled up beside me. They flashed me clean-cut smiles and then one showed me a little machine gun, just like it was prized artwork he had bought at First Friday. I thought very clearly: am I supposed to show you mine? I smiled back stupidly. Then they drove away going the speed limit, signaled, turned right and disappeared down a side street. I didn’t feel scared or brave or outraged, or even like calling PPD on the cell phone. It was time to get some sleep. All day I had been hoping I would find Lindsey waiting for me.

But Peralta was sitting in my driveway.

We walked into the kitchen in silence and I handed out beer. Sam Adams, love it or leave it. I told him about James Yarnell in Scottsdale.