J. Jance - Minor in possession

"Rhonda doesn't happen to be there right now, does she?" I asked cautiously.

"She didn't come all the way here," he answered archly. "I wouldn't let her do that. Not with the funeral this afternoon. I met her at a little place in Camp Verde, J J's. They make the most marvelous biscuits and gravy."

For a moment I was speechless. "So you met her there?" I finally asked. "Why?"

"To give her the package, of course. I assumed it was important, since Joey had obviously gone to some trouble to send it. I was sure she'd want to have it. ASAP, if you know what I mean."

"Package?" I asked stupidly. "What package?"

"I didn't know it was from Joey, not for sure, but I assumed. It had the initials. J.R. penciled on it up in the left-hand corner where the return address is supposed to go, although it was post-marked Sierra Vista. I don't know how he could have gotten all the way down there to mail it, but he must have, poor thing."

"The package. How did you get it?"

"The mailman left it with me. Saturday morning, I believe it was. He does that, you know. Leaves things for Rhonda with me if she's not home and stuff for me with her if I'm not. Yes, I'm sure it was Saturday morning, but Rhonda wasn't here. That's not like her, not at all. She usually tells me well in advance if she's going to be away or calls if her plans change. We're pretty much on our own out here-the last of the Mohicans, as it were. The two of us simply have to stick together."

"But how did you find her, to let her know about the package?"

"I didn't. She called me. Around seven this morning. Said she'd just realized that when she came to pick up her thing, she'd forgotten to stop by and tell me she was heading back to Phoenix. She must have been positively wild, or she would have remembered. She called as soon as she remembered so I wouldn't worry That's when I told her, and we agreed to meet."

"And did you?"

"I already told you. We had biscuits and gravy, at least I did, and I gave her the package."

"What was in it?"

"It wasn't a package so much as an envelope. You know, one of those big zipper-type envelopes-the kind bookstores and libraries mail books in when you order them."

"What was in this envelope?" I persisted.

"Why, books of course. Several of them, actually. What did you expect?"

"What did they look like?"

"Oh, you know. The blank ones."

"Blank?" I asked.

"Haven't you seen them? They sell them everywhere in all the stores. Nothing but glorified notebooks really. People use them for diaries, I guess, or to scribble reams and reams of poetry. These had a frightfully ugly paisley design on the covers. A matched set, I'm sure."

"Notebooks. Did she read them?"

"Don't be absurd. Not while I was there, of course not. Rhonda would never be so rude as to read them in front of me, and it would have been incredibly gauche of me to expect her to. As soon as I finished my coffee, I left her alone so she could read them in private. Words from beyond the grave, as it were."

"Did you notice what kind of car she was driving?" I asked.

"I don't notice cars particularly. I suppose she was driving her little green car, whatever that ugly thing is. I could never see how an artist could own such an unsightly automobile."

"So she was driving the Fiat? Did you see it?"

"Who are you?" Denny Blake asked, as though he'd suddenly lost track of the beginning of our conversation and couldn't remember who I was or what I wanted. "Why are you asking me all these questions?"

"I'm trying to locate Rhonda, that's all," I said placatingly. "She left here driving a Lincoln Town Car, and now you say she's in the Fiat."

"I didn't say anything of the kind," he returned haughtily. "I didn't notice what kind of car she was driving. Why would anyone pay attention to cars in Camp Verde? What an absurd notion!"

I heard some kind of racket in the background, a loud insistent buzzing.

"I've got to go now," Denny Blake said energetically. "That's the timer on my oven. I'm baking bread. The biscuits inspired me."

He hung up. I didn't. I redialed the Yavapai County Sheriff's Department and asked to be patched through to Detective Delcia Reyes-Gonzales. ASAP.

"The diary," Delcia murmured immediately, as soon as I told her about my conversation with Denny Blake. "That has to be what else those guys were after."

"Right," I said. "That's what I figured, too, the moment he mentioned it. Only Michelle didn't have it. By then it was already sitting in Sedona waiting for Rhonda to show up and take possession."

"Whatever's in it must be hot stuff for them to run the kind of risks they did to get it back."

"There was the money," I suggested. "Don't forget that."

"I'm not," Delcia replied, "but the diary may have been their primary target and the money almost an afterthought."

Delcia was driving between Prescott and Phoenix. Radio transmissions were somewhat spotty. At times I had difficulty hearing her.

"You said you saw Joey writing in his notebook while you were roommates?" she asked.

"Yes. One that matched that description, anyway."

"So given what we know about the Crenshaws…"

She paused. For a moment I thought she had gone out of range, but instead, she was thinking. "Maybe I'd better take a run over to Wickenburg to check on the Crenshaws before I come on into Phoenix. What kind of car is she driving?"

"I don't know, not for sure. There's some confusion about that. She left here driving Ralph Ames' white Lincoln Town Car, but she may have gone over to La Posada and picked up the Fiat."

"I need to know for sure, Beau," Delcia said.

"Right. I'll find out and let you know. What about the F.B.I.? Did you find out anything from them?"

"You were right. They never got close to either Michelle or her father last night. They plan to interview both of them this morning."

Again the transmission faded. "I'm losing you, Delcia. You're breaking up."

Delcia came back in, her words intermittently fading in and out."…try to find…about car…let me know."

"I will," I answered, unsure whether she heard me or not. I turned around to Ralph. "Where's the phone book?"

He took one from the cupboard and handed it to me. "Who are you going to call?"

"A taxi," I told him. "We've got to find out for sure about the car."

I called for a cab and was promised one within the occupational standard delay time of twenty minutes. Not wanting to waste those precious minutes in empty waiting, I tried reaching Raymond W. Bliss Hospital on base at Fort Huachuca.

I expected to be told that Michelle was either in surgery or in the recovery room, but I gambled that Guy Owens would feel enough obligation to Rhonda and me for saving his ass that he'd tell me what he knew, if anything.

Calling the hospital was an endlessly complicated process because the base telephone exchange was in the process of transferring from one set of prefixes to another. It was another sad case of the right hand not knowing what the left hand was doing. The phone company information operators kept sending me on wild-goose chases to numbers that were no longer valid or to phones that rang forever without anyone hearing or answering.

I'm a stubborn man, though, and I kept dialing away, one number after the other, all the while cursing the dimwits who broke up the Bell system. Those screwballs obviously never heard that old tried-and-true maxim: If it ain't broke, don't fix it.

At last I was connected to the base hospital. I asked to speak to either Lieutenant Colonel Guy Owens or his daughter Michelle. "They're both patients there," I said.

"I'm sorry," the operator returned smoothly. "We have no one listed by that name."

She was lying, stonewalling me, that was certain. On a fainthearted whim, I tried another tack and asked to speak to Colonel Miller, commander of the hospital, but occasionally even the most unlikely wagers pay off. The hospital operator didn't hesitate.