J. Jance - Minor in possession

"I can buy that, but in the last two days, her reactions as far as I'm concerned have been totally out of proportion to what's been going on. Joey Rothman was my roommate. Luck of the draw. I sure as hell didn't ask for him. He's dead, and frankly I don't care that much one way or the other. But Louise Crenshaw is carrying on like Joey was the Second Coming himself. How come?"

"I don't know," Ralph said, standing up and moving toward the door, taking his half-filled coffee cup with him. "Get up and shower, Beau. We've got things to do."

"What am I supposed to wear?"

"I almost forgot to mention it, Louise had someone pack up your stuff. She sent it down with somebody named Shorty. He dropped it off about an hour ago. The dirty clothes are out in the laundry. The suitcase is in the closet. Shorty said for me to tell you that the sandbags held."

"Wait a minute. You mean the Crenshaws sent my luggage? Before or after somebody from the sheriff's department went over the room?"

"I wouldn't know about that," Ralph answered. "Shorty didn't say. Neither did Louise. Get a move on, Beau. I have to go by my office for a little while. After that, we have dinner reservations between five-thirty and six. It's a good thing Scott called. Otherwise I might not have remembered your birthday."

Fuming with frustration, I crawled out of bed and headed into the shower. Over my objections, Louise and Calvin Crenshaw had ordered someone to pack my things and send them to Phoenix. There was no point in calling Ironwood Ranch to raise hell or to check to see if anyone from the sheriff's department had gone over my room searching for evidence. They hadn't. Louise hadn't let it happen.

Ringo was gone, let loose to starve in the desert somewhere, and my room had been stripped clean of all personal belongings. Any trace of evidence my attempted killer might have left behind would have disappeared as well. If, after our talk in Prescott, Detective Reyes-Gonzales went looking for something, there wouldn't be anything left to find.

The problem with credibility is that once gone, it's hard as hell to regain. I didn't much relish the idea of some bright female homicide detective in Prescott, Arizona, thinking about J. P. Beaumont as a complete fruitcake.

I stood in Ralph Ames' steaming shower and vowed that one way or another Calvin and Louise Crenshaw were going to have to eat their words. Somehow I'd force them to admit that I had indeed been the victim of an attempted homicide. Once they agreed to that sticky stipulation, once they admitted that, they might take me back as a client. They might have thrown me out once, but I'd graduate from their pukey little program or know the reason why.

I was still lost in thought as I stepped out of the shower and toweled myself dry. Something was out of kilter with Calvin and Louise Crenshaw, but I couldn't quite put my finger on what it was. It was enough of a thought to file away for later consideration. After all, that's what we homicide detective look for-things that are slightly out of place.

Just then a light tapping on the door cut short the thinking process. Ralph was champing at the bit and ready to go. I hurried into my most respectable shirt and sport jacket. Ralph had brought along one of his own ties, which he tossed in my direction. "You'll need it," he said. "For dinner."

Ralph, my friend as well as my attorney, drives an automotive anachronism, a huge whale on wheels-a white Lincoln Town Car. Unlike Rhonda Attwood's Spider, the Lincoln had plenty of headroom and legroom both, even for the likes of me. The smooth gray leather interior was plush and classy enough to suit even the most fastidious of clients, but as one who is making heavy monetary contributions to Ralph Ames' personal lifestyle, I appreciate the fact that he buys American. (After all, the Pcrsche 928 was given to me.) I don't want to pay the freight on the kind of conspicuous consumption that thrives on Mercedes or Jaguars.

We drove first to Ralph's office, a brass-and-glass high rise at Indian School and Central, an area that seems to be close to but not exactly in downtown Phoenix. I'm not sure there is a downtown Phoenix, but the city had plenty of mid-afternoon stop-and-go traffic without a freeway or bridge anywhere in sight.

I'm accustomed to the steep, tree-studded glacial ridges of Seattle and the Pacific Northwest. Driving through Phoenix, I was struck by the unremitting sameness of it all. The city seemed brown and flat, an endless panorama of urban blight. Here and there, on the periphery, stark rocky ramparts, blue and gray in the distance, rose up abruptly from the desert floor into a hazy, smoggy sky. I had been in Arizona for more than a month, but the desert still had an alien look about it, alien and forbidding and full of snakes.

When we reached his office, Ralph disappeared into his inner sanctum, leaving me to linger in the finely appointed reception area, where I used the phone to negotiate a temporary peace treaty with Alamo Rent A Car.

It wasn't easy. They were not happy to hear that their vehicle was in the hands of the Yavapai County Sheriff's Department as part of the evidence in a murder investigation, and they weren't eager to rent me a substitute vehicle, either. The first three people I spoke to insisted that I was responsible for daily charges regardless of whether or not the vehicle had been impounded by a law enforcement agency, and none would agree to place a clarifying phone call to Detective Reyes-Gonzales. Finally, on the fourth try, I connected with a supervisor who did make the call. With some additional prodding, she reluctantly allowed as how I could have a Subaru station wagon if I came back to Sky Harbor International Airport that evening to pick it up. I told her I'd be there.

When Ralph emerged from his office an hour later, he was wearing a self-satisfied smile that put me on guard as soon as I saw it.

"What are you grinning about?" I asked.

"Oh, nothing," he said offhandedly, which worried me that much more. "We have an early dinner reservation. We're meeting someone."

"Who?"

"It's a surprise."

The surprise got unwrapped as soon as we pulled into the parking lot of Vincent's on Camelback. The car idling roughly in front of us under the valet parking canopy was a familiar one, a dark green Fiat Spider.

"Rhonda Attwood's here too?" I asked.

Ralph Ames grinned smugly. "That's right. She called and left a message this morning. When I got back to her this afternoon with the information she needed, she said she wanted to speak to you as well. I suggested that she meet us here."

"Information? She asked you for information? What kind?"

"You know I can't answer those kinds of questions, Beau. She asked me to make some simple inquiries for her, that's all."

Ralph's suddenly choosing to duck behind a curtain of professional confidentiality surprised me. Since when had Rhonda Attwood become a client of his?

"You know what she's up to, don't you?" I asked.

"Up to? She's trying to bury her son, and not getting a whole lot of cooperation from her former husband," Ames replied confidently, as though he hadn't a doubt in the world that he knew the whole truth of the matter. I had been too worn out on our trip down from Prescott to Phoenix to give him many of the disturbing details from my hours alone with Rhonda Attwood, but I could see now that I should have warned him.

"Don't get mixed up with her," I said.

The parking attendant parked the Fiat and came back for the Lincoln. Ames got out and handed him the keys.

"What's that supposed to mean?" he asked me over the car's roof as the attendant got inside to drive it away.

"She's dangerous, for one thing," I said.

Ames shook his head in obvious disbelief.

"Look, what if I told you she's another Anne Corley waiting to go off? What would you think of that?"