J. Jance - Minor in possession

"I'll put you through," she purred, and did.

"Colonel Miller here," a gruff voice said into the phone a moment later.

"My name is Beaumont," I said. "J. P. Beaumont. I'm looking for a patient of yours, a Lieutenant Colonel Guy Owens."

"He's gone," Miller replied shortly. "Dismissed."

"Dismissed," I echoed. "What about his daughter? What about Michelle?"

"Mr. Beaumont," Colonel Miller said, "Guy mentioned you to me. In fact, he spoke very highly of your efforts on his behalf as well as his daughter's, but when he left here, he gave me very clear instructions that I wasn't to give any information to anyone other than to say they had both left the hospital. No exceptions. He seemed to think he and his daughter might still be in some danger."

"That's a distinct possibility," I agreed.

"When I talked to them, that's what the F.B.I. said as well, but I told them the same thing. Guy and Michelle are gone, and I don't know where. I can't tell what I don't know."

I could almost hear Colonel Miller smiling into the phone. He had gotten a charge out of telling the F.B.I. to go piss up a rope. Rank notwithstanding, stonewalling notwithstanding, he sounded like my kind of guy.

"I don't suppose that sat too well with the F.B.I., did it?" I observed dryly.

"Not particularly," he answered with a brief laugh. "As a matter of fact, I don't think they liked it at all. One thing I would like to say, though, Mr. Beaumont…"

"Yes? What's that?" I asked hopefully, thinking maybe he'd relent after all and tell me something useful.

"I personally would like to thank you for what you did for Guy and Michelle yesterday. Guy Owens and I have been friends, good friends, ever since 'Nam. As far as I'm concerned, I owe you one."

The cab arrived outside and honked twice.

"You're welcome," I said. "I've got to go. If you hear from Guy, tell him to get in touch with me right away. I need to talk to him. It's urgent."

"I certainly will," Colonel Miller replied. "You can count on it."

Instinctively, I knew I could. Miller hadn't given me any more information than he had given the F.B.I., but now at least I had some confidence that it was because he really didn't know anything more. And having somebody like him owe you one isn't all bad. You never can tell when that kind of obligation might come in handy.

Ralph had gone to the door to tell the cab driver I was coming. "Hurry," he urged. "The guy says the meter's running."

"Give me an extra set of keys for the Lincoln," I said.

"Why?" he asked. "If you're taking a cab, why do you need keys?"

"Because if the Lincoln's there in the lot at La Posada, I'll come back in that. If it's not, I'll hot-wire the Fiat. Or would you rather I hot-wired the Lincoln?"

"I'll get the other keys," Ames said.

He fished around in the drawer for an extra set, and I was out the door in a flash. At La Posada, the Lincoln was nowhere in sight. The Fiat remained parked exactly where we'd left it. I paid off the cabbie, hot-wire the Spider, folded myself inside, and drove home.

Back at Ralph's house, I got myself patched back through to Delcia, who had turned off Black Canyon Highway and was headed for Wickenburg.

"She's in the Lincoln," I said. "As far as we know."

"That still doesn't sound very definite," Delcia returned.

"All I can tell you is the make of the car she left here driving this morning. That's the best I can do."

"It'll have to do. I'll alert people to be on the lookout for it. Give me the DMV number."

With Ames' help I gave Delcia the license number as well as a complete description of the missing Lincoln, then I went on to tell her that Michelle and Guy had left the hospital at Fort Huachuca bound for an undisclosed destination.

"Is there a chance they went home?" Delcia asked. "We need to talk to her, to find out if she can help us shed any light on this diary thing. Have you tried calling their house?"

"I thought of it, but there's no point," I said.

"Why not?"

"Because the assholes who snatched Michelle also cut the phone lines. I doubt anyone has gotten around to fixing them. It's the weekend, you know."

"You're probably right," she said. "So what are you going to do?"

In the background, Ralph was hustling around the kitchen, juicing oranges, frying eggs, toasting bread.

"It looks like I'm going to eat breakfast before I do anything else," I said. "And then, if Rhonda doesn't show up here by two or so, we'll go over to the church and hang around. The funeral's scheduled for three. I can't imagine her missing that. What are you going to do?"

"I'll see the Crenshaws first, at least try to, and then…"

"Not without a backup, I hope."

"No," Delcia reassured me. "Not without backup. I've radioed for Mike Hanson to meet me there. You remember, the deputy from Yarnell."

"I hope he moves faster than he did the day I called him," I said glumly, still packing a grudge about my shabby treatment the day I had called for help.

"Don't worry. Mike'll be there in plenty of time. Whatever happens, I still plan on being at the funeral."

"Me, too," I said miserably, suddenly feeling left out of the action. "Whatever happens."

While Ames and I had breakfast, I finally had the opportunity to tell him what we had learned about Calvin and Louise Crenshaw's extracurricular sexual activities. Ralph was thunderstruck.

"I had no idea. They have such a good reputation in the recovery community, and they get such good press."

"We have an idea why, now, don't we? They have strings, secure puppet strings, on any number of people who go through that program, and my guess is they're not about pulling them."

"Choke chains is more like it," Ralph declared forcefully, "and I intend to see that something is done about it. Is everyone in on it? All the counselors, for instance?"

I thought about what Scott had told me about Burton Joe, and I thought about Dolores and Shorty Rojas. "No," I replied, "I think in this case the rot is localized pretty much with the Crenshaws themselves."

Ralph nodded and ate in thoughtful silence. God knows I should have been hungry, but the food landed in my stomach and formed into an indigestible lump. I toyed with it, pushing congealing egg yolk around on my plate with a piece of cold toast.

"You're not eating," Ralph observed. "I don't ever remember seeing you when you couldn't stow away a fullback's breakfast. Something's wrong. What is it?"

"I'm missing something in all this mess, something important," I said. "It's as though I'm trying to see what's happened through a thick, smoky haze. The pieces are all there, but I can't quite make them out. It's driving me crazy."

"Well," Ames said, getting up and beginning to clear away the dishes, "sitting here stewing isn't going to help. It's almost one now. How about if we get dressed and go on over to the church to wait. Rhonda's bound to show up there eventually. Surely she won't miss her own son's funeral."

And that's what we did. I didn't have many appropriate choices of dress available-one lightweight navy sport jacket, a pair of haphazardly dryer-creased trousers, a clean white shirt, and a clean pair of socks that matched. Ames appeared in a disgustingly proper gray three-piece suit with a maroon tie and matching silk scarf, precisely folded, in his lapel pocket. "Ready?" he asked.

And so, with Ralph Ames riding shotgun in his sober suit, and with my knees touching the bottom of the steering wheel, we drove in Rhonda Attwood's hot-wired Fiat to Joey Rothman's funeral at elegant St. John's Episcopal Church on Lincoln Drive. It all seemed suitably inappropriate.

The church, a thick reddish adobe affair set into a rocky hillside, was surrounded by mature natural vegetation-trees I recognized now as full-grown ironwood and palo verde. It looked as though the church had sprouted there, sprung up out of the ground like a man-made miniature of Camelback Mountain itself. St. John's Episcopal was backed by a high-walled patio. Ralph explained to me that the patio was lined with high-priced niches where, for a sizeable donation to the church coffers, family members could have their loved ones' ashes sealed away forever.