J. Jance: Minor in possession

"Yes, ma'am."

"Later on, someone from this office will be in touch with either you or your attorney to settle your account."

"Does this mean I don't get another car? Over."

I already knew the answer to my question, but I had to ask, had to hear it from her own lips.

And Ms. Lucille Radonovich's reaction was exactly what I expected-no more, no less. A pause. A long pregnant pause, and then a slowly released breath like a dangerously stressed valve letting off excess pressure.

"Some things go without saying, Mr. Beaumont. Over and out!"

Without a word, I handed the keys to the Beretta over to the tow-truck driver. He looked at them for a moment, then walked away, shaking his head.

I watched him go and realized that it would be a hell of a long walk back to Ralph Ames' home in Paradise Valley some two hundred miles away.

I went back to where Rhonda sat waiting. She was chilled. Her teeth were chattering. I put my arm around her shoulder and she snuggled close to me.

"Are these the people who killed Joey?" she asked. "Or was it somebody else?"

I squeezed her shoulder and held her tight. "No way to tell," I answered, "at least not right now."

We sat there for another half hour and watched while the tow trucks began to haul away wrecked cars.

"How are we going to get home?" she asked, lifting her head off my shoulder to look at me as though the thought hadn't occurred to her before.

"I don't know. It could be a very long walk."

Rhonda Attwood must have been starting to feel better.

"You mean that nice Ralph Ames won't come get us the way he did for you up in Prescott?" she asked.

"We'll see," I said. "He may have run out of patience with me the same way Alamo has."

Fortunately, Ralph Ames is a forgiving man-a most forgiving man with an inexhaustible supply of good connections. Once alerted to our plight, he hired another helicopter and came to Tucson to get us.

By three the next morning he had successfully extricated Rhonda Attwood and me from the clutches of the F.B.I. By four he had dragged us home to Paradise Valley. When it was time to go to bed, Rhonda made not the slightest pretense of going to her own designated room. She undressed in mine, crawled into bed, snuggled contentedly against my chest, and instantly fell asleep.

There was no seduction, no game-playing. We were both far too tired. I drifted off within minutes as well and slept the heavy, dreamless sleep born of exhaustion. My body's resources had been driven far beyond the reaches of endurance.

My own noisy snoring woke me up the next morning. The sun was already well up behind the looming hump of Camelback Mountain, and I was in bed alone.

Guiltily, I wondered if my snoring had awakened Rhonda and driven her from the room, but a quick check of her room showed it was empty as well, the bed untouched. I glanced at the bedside clock. It was already almost ten-high time to be up and about, especially considering the fact that Joey's funeral was scheduled for three that afternoon.

I hurried into the bathroom, took a quick showed, dressed, and then went prowling Ames' house in search of intelligent life. There wasn't any. Rhonda Attwood was nowhere to be found, and neither was Ames, but the coffee carafe was full of hot, aromatic coffee. I was just pouring myself a cup when the phone rang.

"Detective Beaumont?"

I recognized Guy Owens' brisk voice at once. "Hello, Guy. How's Michelle?"

"Much better, thank you. They pumped her stomach. She's up and around."

"What about you? How's the leg?"

"In a cast, but it'll mend." He paused, sounding somewhat uncertain. "I need to ask you a question, Detective Beaumont. I never had a chance yesterday, but today I need to know the answer."

"Shoot."

"Why did you and Rhonda Attwood come to Sierra Vista?"

I could feel myself being painted into a corner. I sensed the hidden traps inherent in any answer I might give, so I waffled. "You should ask Rhonda that question, Guy, not me."

"Put her on the phone, then, and I will," he returned.

"Sorry. She's not here right now."

"But now is when I need the answer," Guy insisted stubbornly.

I heard a hard edge come into his voice, a tone that I recalled hearing once before during our long, fruitless wait in my cabin, that night seemingly eons ago. Then we had been linked by the mutual bond of outraged fatherhood. A lot of painful water had gone under the bridge since then. Now, five long days later, my connection with Rhonda Attwood had somehow, inexplicably, forced me into a separate camp. Guy Owens and I were no longer on the same team. I could hear it in his voice.

"I'm sure Rhonda will be back soon," I countered. "She may just have gone out to have her hair done or do some shopping."

Truthfully, neither of those two options sounded much like the Rhonda Attwood I knew, but they were the best I could come up with at a moment's notice, and Guy Owens didn't question them.

"There are decisions to make," Guy Owens replied stiffly. "Important decisions, and they need to be made now. This morning. So you tell me, Detective Beaumont. Why did she come to the house? What did she want?"

And suddenly all the responsibility for the future of Rhonda Attwood's single potential grandchild was thrust solely onto my shoulders. With Michelle Owens already a patient in a hospital where the lieutenant colonel's best buddy ran the show, I knew there wouldn't be any problem scheduling her for a bit of minor surgery. The innocuous diagnosis would say that some unspecified female difficulty had prompted a routine D amp; C. In the process, the embryo of Joey Rothman's posthumous progeny would be summarily scraped out of existence.

"Rhonda wanted to talk to you," I said lamely.

"What about?"

Guy Owens wasn't making it easy for me. "To try to talk you out of the abortion," I replied. "She's willing to help with the baby, financially, I mean, and with raising it too. Joey was her only son, you see, and-"

Guy Owens cut me off before I could say any more. "That's all I wanted to know," he said bluntly, hanging up the phone without bothering to say good-bye.

I stood there holding the handset, looking at it gloomily, listening to the empty buzz of dial tone, and knowing I'd blown it. Completely blown it! Maybe Rhonda herself could have convinced him, but I sure as hell hadn't. Feeling both powerless and inept, I flung the phone back into its cradle. Where the hell was she anyway? Why wasn't she here to handle her own damn problems?

Far away, in some other part of the house, I heard a shower turn on. It was a welcome diversion. It meant someone besides me was still hanging around. I settled down to drink a cup of coffee and to wait and see who would appear.

Ames, still bleary-eyed, stumbled into the kitchen a few minutes later. He headed straight for the coffee. "Rhonda's still asleep?" he asked.

I shook my head. "Up and gone already," I told him. "I thought you and she had taken off somewhere together."

"Are you kidding? Not me. I just woke up a few minutes ago. Where'd she go, and how?" he asked.

"Beats me." I shrugged, but I was beginning to feel uneasy about her absence. Walking over to the door that led out to the garage, I opened it and looked inside. Ames' enormous white Lincoln wasn't parked where we had left it.

"Did you give her permission to use your car?" I asked.

Frowning, Ames came over to where I was standing and looked out at the empty garage for himself. "No," he said, shaking his head. "Not that I remember."

He turned back into the room and checked in the cupboard drawer where he usually deposited the fistful of car keys whenever he entered the house.

"The keys are gone," he announced.