J. Jance: Minor in possession

I've no idea how she got her nickname. That story had become lost in Ironwood Ranch's group memory. Her real name was Lucy Washington, and as near as I could tell, this huge, implacable black woman wasn't particularly saintly. She was also totally devoid of anything resembling a sense of humor.

I blinked my eyes several times, holding both hands over my face to shield my eyes from the glare. "You mean he's not here?" I asked innocently.

"You know damn good and well he's not here. Look for yourself. Does that bed look like it's been slept in? So where is he?"

"Believe me, Mrs. Washington, I have no idea. If I did, you can bet I'd be the first to tell you."

"Mr. Beaumont, I've been hearing all kinds of wild rumors about your roomie Mr. Rothman tonight, tales about him being out and around and doing things he shouldn't be doing. You wouldn't know anything about that, now would you?"

"Not a thing," I said.

Lucy Washington stared at me impassively. She didn't believe me, not for a moment, but at least she didn't call me a liar to my face.

"I see," she said finally, giving up. "I tell you what. When he shows up, you let him know he'd better drag his white ass down to the office and see me. On the double. Understand?"

"Got it," I said.

She switched off the light, turned, and stepped outside, banging the door shut behind her. I waited long enough for her to be well away from the cabin before I got up and looked out the window. I could see the wobbling beam of the flashlight as she trudged back up the hill toward the main ranch house.

"Damn," I said, under my breath.

I knew my not blowing the whistle on Joey's truancies would be yet another black mark that would go against J. P. Beaumont in the annals of Ironwood Ranch, and that my transgression, however minor, would be duly reported to Louise Crenshaw, the final arbiter of client affairs.

Louise Crenshaw had made it clear during my admission interview that since I hadn't come in as a destitute, homeless bum, I hadn't yet hit bottom in her book. As a consequence, I was nowhere near ready to get better. She missed no opportunity to throw juicy tidbits about my alleged misdeeds to the group, items she regarded as ongoing proof of my lack of serious intent as far as recovery was concerned. This incident would provide more grist for her mill, and it gave me one more bone to pick with Joey Rothman, once I managed to lay hands on him.

I stood there in my skivvies and tried to calculate my cabin's Grand-Central-Station potential for the remainder of the night. I figured chances were pretty close to one hundred percent that when Joey Rothman came to the surface, he would return home with Ironwood Ranch's version of a police escort. Without turning the light back on, I dragged my clothes out from under the bed and got dressed. Then, wrapping two blankets around me, I bundled up in the cabin's only comfortable chair and settled down to wait. I wanted him to know that I was waiting up for him, and I didn't think it would take long.

But that's where I was wrong. I woke up cold as hell and with a stiff neck and both feet sound asleep at four o'clock in the morning. Joey Rothman's bed was still empty. It was raining again, and the cabin was downright frigid. The heating system for each cabin consisted of an old-fashioned, wall-mounted gas heater that required a match each time it needed to be lit.

When the circulation returned to my feet, I hobbled over to my desk in the dark, still wary that turning on the light would summon Santa Lucia's immediate return. I pulled open the drawer and groped blindly inside, expecting to lay hands on one of several books of matches I had left in the front right-hand corner of the drawer. They weren't there. Throwing caution to the winds, I turned on the desk lamp.

As soon as I did, I could see that someone had hastily rummaged through the drawer. I'm not so fastidious that I know where each and every item is in a drawer, but I certainly knew the general layout, and the items in the drawer were definitely not as I'd left them. With a growing annoyance, I pulled the drawer wide open and examined it closely.

It's always tough to discover what isn't there. The things that are there are perfectly obvious. What's missing is a lot harder to see. I took several minutes, but finally I figured it out.

My keys. That's what was gone, the Keys to the rented Grand AM. Unlike some other treatment centers I've heard about, Ironwood Ranch prides itself on the fact that people come there and stay voluntarily. Instead of daily bed checks, we had intermittent ones. At patient check-in we were allowed the privilege of keeping our keys and personal property under what Louise Crenshaw described as Ironwood Ranch's atypical honor system.

Which is fine as long as you're dealing with honorable people, which Joey Rothman Obviously was not. I knew damn good and well he had taken my keys and probably the car as well. I had visions of him smashing up the rental car, turning it over in a ditch somewhere. On my nickel. With Alamo Rent A Car and American Express taking the damage out of my personal hide since Joey Rothman was anything but an authorized driver. The only way to prevent that was to get on the horn right then and report the vehicle as stolen.

Curfew or no, I pulled on my jacket and headed for the main building. Almost there, I decided to take a detour to the parking lot to see if the car might possibly have been returned in one piece. And sure enough, there it was, still in the same parking place where I had left it originally, but not in quite the same position. It was parked at an odd angle. Despite the chill, slanting rain, I walked around the car twice, examining it in the pale light of the parking lot's mercury-vapor lamps. As far as I could see, it didn't have a mark on it.

Stopping by the driver's door, I noticed it was unlocked. I opened the door and slid onto the seat. The keys with the rental company's cardboard tag still attached were in the ignition. Breathing a sigh of relief, I grabbed them and stuffed them in my pocket.

So Joey had taken the car out for a joyride, but it didn't look as though he'd done any damage. I wondered where he'd taken it. A glance at the mileage on the odometer told me nothing, because I didn't remember how many miles had been on the car when I picked it up in Phoenix.

I was about to back out the car when I remembered the rental agreement. It would have the mileage on it. I had tossed that in the glove box along with my holster and my. 38 before I ever left the airport. The Smith and Wesson is just like my gold card-I don't leave home without it, and I hadn't wanted to turn it over to someone else when I checked into Ironwood Ranch. Instead I had left it in the locked glove box of a locked car-which is fine as long as nobody else has the key.

Now, stretching full length across the seat, I dug the keys back out of my pocket and unlocked the glove compartment door. It fell open at once and the tiny light inside switched on.

I had put the gun in first and the rental agreement second, so the agreement should have been right on top. It wasn't. The gun was.

At first I didn't think that much about it. I pulled the Smith and Wesson out, intending to put it on the seat beside me long enough to retrieve the rental agreement, but as I brought it past my face, I smelled the unmistakably pungent odor of burnt gunpowder. The gun had been fired, recently. Sometime within the past few hours.

"What the hell has that goddamned fool been up to now?" I said aloud to myself. I swung out the cylinder and checked it. Two rounds had been fired.

Shaken, I put the gun back where I'd found it and relocked both the glove box and the car, then I went looking for Lucy Washington.

If Joey Rothman thought I wasn't going to report his car prowl to the proper authorities, he had another think coming.