Two hundred feet away, a gaunt gray dog was stretched out on its belly, lazily tearing flesh from the carcass of a recent kill. It took me a moment to realize I was looking at a coyote. He regarded me without interest, but he did rise and pick up his prized bone before he trotted off. His coloring was so close to the muted desert hues that he vanished like a wraith.
I turned back to the nearest building and went in. The windows were gone and the doors had been removed from their hinges. The squatters hadn’t penetrated far. In what must have been intended as a lobby, mattresses now lined the walls like a hospital ward. Some sported ratty blankets, but most were bare. Cardboard boxes had been carted in and now served as bed tables for an assortment of ashtrays, drug paraphernalia, and empty beer cans. I toured, checking out the pharmaceutical fare. These kids were doing grass, hash, and cocaine, but the addiction of choice was still nicotine, with cigarette butts outnumbering the roaches four to one. A used rubber, draped across the toe of a lone high-top basketball shoe, just about summed it up. I tried to imagine the poor teenaged girls whose introduction to sex took place under such sorry circumstances.Maybe they were too drunk or too stoned to care what they were doing or what was being done to them.
Outside, I heard a racket like a flock of birds lifting into the air. I listened, struggling to identify the noise. It sounded like plastic flapping, as though a dust barrier had torn loose and was being blown by the wind. The rattle was unsettling, like someone shaking open a fresh garbage bag after taking out the trash. I crossed to the nearest doorway and ventured down the corridor, peering in all directions. There was no sign of the errant sheeting, only rooms opening off rooms, filled with merciless sunlight. I stopped, my senses acute. It occurred to me then what I should have realized right away: The Tuley-Belle was the ideal setting for a murder. The cries of the victim wouldn’t carry a hundred yards. If the killing took place outside, any blood could be concealed by turning the soil under with a spade. And if the killing took place inside, the floors could be swabbed down and the rags subsequently buried like strange soil amendments.
The Tuley-Belle reminded me of grand and ancient ruins, as though some savage civilization had inexplicably come and gone. Even in broad daylight, I could smell defeat. I knew I was alone. Because of the isolation, anyone approaching by car would be visible for miles. As for vagrants, they might be anywhere on the premises. There were countless places to hide, ways to remain concealed if the necessity should arise. I retraced my steps, trying not to run, scarcely drawing a breath until I’d tucked myself safely in the car. Stacey had to see this.
When I got back to the motel, he was pacing up and down in front of my door. I figured he was ready for another fast-food binge because I couldn’t think what else would generate such excitement. The minute he saw me, he scurried to the car. I rolled down my window. He leaned on the sill while he grinned and pointed to his face. “Well, am I glad to see you! I thought you’d never get here. Know what this is? This is me being as happy as I’m ever going to get.”
“What’s up?”
He stepped back, opening the car door so I could emerge. “Joe Mandel called. The fingerprint techs are working overtime. I told you, it looks like someone made an effort to wipe down the Mustang? Well, it turns out the job wasn’t very thorough because the techs picked up two sets of prints: one on the emergency brake, the gas cap, the inner rim of the spare tire, and the outside of the glove compartment. Looks like the driver leaned over to get something out and then pushed it shut. They lifted the second set of latents from a California road map shoved under the front seat.”
“They managed to get good prints after all these years?”
Stacey gestured dismissively. “These guys can do anything. It helps that the car’s been out of circulation and locked in that shed.”
“Whose prints?”
Stacey’s expression was pained. “Quit being so pushy and let me tell it my way. They compared both sets of prints with Charisse’s, but no luck on that score. It’s my theory she was already dead and in the trunk by then. The spare tire had been removed, probably stowed in the backseat to make room for her. Whoever wiped down the car actually did us a favor. All the incidental prints were eliminated and the ones he overlooked were as clear as a bell. Mandel got a pop on the first set within minutes. Guess who? You’ll never guess. This is so good.”
“Frankie Miracle.”
“That’s what I said, but I was wrong. Guess again.”
“Stacey, if you don’t spit it out, I’m going to fall on you and beat you to death.”
“Pudgie.”
I felt myself blinking. “You think Pudgie was involved?”
Stacey laughed. “I don’t know yet, but there’s a good possibility. When Mandel first told me, I nearly dropped my teeth. However, if you think about it, it does make sense. When you talked to Pudgie at the jail, he must have started to sweat. He probably assumed the business was forgotten, but eighteen years later, it’s coming up again. He couldn’t have been sure how much we knew or how close we’d come to establishing his connection. He must have pondered his options and decided it’d be smart to implicate someone else. That’s how he knew the little details to seed into the tale. Doesn’t mean he killed her, but I think he knows who did.”
I said, “He was subtle about it, too. I remember when he mentioned that the body had been wrapped, he was so offhand about it, I thought it was just a minor part of Frankie’s jailhouse talk. The same with the fact she’d been stabbed.”
“You didn’t mention it yourself?”
“Of course not. He was fishing for information, but I never gave him that. No wonder he was so worried about word getting back. Frankie’d go berserk if he thought Pudgie pointed a finger at him. I take it the second set of prints wasn’t Frankie’s.”
“Nah, what a pisser. I felt bad about that.”
“Me, too. I just talked to the painting contractor, a guy named Lennie Root. He says Frankie and Pudgie both worked for him in early ’69. After six months, Frankie quit—this was approximately mid-June. Apparently, after that, he worked in Blythe for three weeks. That’s where he met and married Iona Mathis.”
“What about Pudgie? Where was he?”
“Don’t know, but I can go back and ask. I was focusing on Frankie.”
“So Root puts him in Quorum at the same time as Charisse?”
“Not Quorum, but Blythe, which is close enough,” I said. “By the end of July when she disappeared, Frankie’d moved to Venice, a five-hour drive. Here I was, just about to swing over to your view, thinking Frankie’s our guy, and now Pudgie surfaces, so there goes that.”
“Not necessarily. They could’ve been in it together. Pudgie told you they didn’t know each other, but that was clearly horseshit.”
“Yeah, right. Pudgie knew Iona, so why wouldn’t he know Frankie? She could have introduced them,” I said. “Or maybe it was the other way around and Pudgie was the one who introduced Iona to Frank.”
“Well, it doesn’t make much difference since the second set of prints wasn’t his. Personally, I hate to see him off the hook for this.”
“Well, someone was in the Mustang with Pudgie. Iona maybe?”
Stacey frowned, scratching at the underside of his chin. “Well now, wait a minute. Hold on. That’s a leap we can’t make. We’re putting Pudgie in the Mustang when the girl was killed, but the prints might have been sequential instead of simultaneous. Did Pudgie know the McPhees?”
“If he stole the car it wouldn’t matter if he knew them or not.”
“Problem is, if Pudgie knew Cornell or any one of them, he might’ve had legitimate access to the vehicle. The car came back in poor condition. Ruel might have asked him to move it into the shed or hose it down. Or he and Cornell might have gone out to the shed to sneak a smoke. There could be all kinds of explanations for his prints being there.”
I said, “Assuming they knew each other.”
“Right.”
I
thought about that briefly. “Pudgie did grow up in Creosote, which is only sixteen miles south. I think it’s down below Hazelwood Springs.”
“That’s my point.”
“But even if they knew each other, it still could’ve been Pudgie who stole the Mustang. When he was arrested in Lompoc, he was thumbing a ride. He could have stolen the car, driven it to Lompoc, dumped the body, and pushed the car into that ravine.”
“Why don’t we ask him? You said his sister brought him down here after he got out of jail. You have an address for her?”
“No, but we can probably get one.”
We picked up Pudgie’s home address from the administrator at the Santa Teresa county jail. We decided to take the rental car since Dolan’s smelled like cigarette smoke. Driving south on Highway 78, I pointed out the Tuley-Belle, telling Stacey what I’d seen. As I’d predicted, he was interested in seeing it and we decided to stop off as soon as time allowed.
Creosote wasn’t as big as Quorum, but it was ten times larger than Hazelwood Springs, which we passed through en route. The sign said POP. 3,435, but the Chamber of Commerce might have been inflating the facts. Given its close proximity to the Arizona state line, the town had opted for a Western look and resembled nothing so much as a cheap movie set where, at any moment, a cowboy might be shot and sail, tumbling, from the roof of the saloon. The commercial properties on the narrow main street were all wood frame, two- and three-story structures built side by side, with tall, fake facades, steep outside wooden stairs, and plank walkways between buildings instead of the usual sidewalks. It might have been an actual mining town or it might be masquerading as a place with a more interesting history than it had.
Stacey’d donned his red knit watch cap, claiming his head was cold. I suspected he was suffering a rare moment of vanity, but I could have been wrong. Pudgie’s sister’s house was on A Street near the corner of Third, a small, square box set on a square patch of lawn. Three concrete steps led to a small porch. From inside, we could hear a vacuum cleaner droning away. Stacey rapped smartly to no particular effect. He knocked again, and this time we could hear the vacuum cleaner being turned off. A woman opened the door, barefoot, dressed in jeans and a T-shirt, with a dust rag hanging from a belt loop. She was a tall, big-boned redhead with a blue bandanna tied around her head, Cinderella-style. Her eye makeup was dramatic. Both her upper and lower lids were lined with kohl. A fringe of false lashes set off the blue of her eyes. “Yes?”
“We’re looking for Felicia Clifton. Is that you?”
“Yes.”
“I’m Stacey Oliphant, with the Santa Teresa Sheriff’s Department, and this is Kinsey Millhone...”
Felicia closed her eyes. “If this is about Cedric, I’ll kill myself. I swear to god, I will.”
“He’s not in trouble, Ms. Clifton—at least as far as I know—but we’d like to have a word with him if he’s here.”
“Well, he’s not. He went out late last night or first thing this morning. I’m really not sure which. He didn’t even leave a note about where he was going or when he’d be back.”
“Would you mind if we stepped into the house?”
Felicia hesitated, scanning the street as though the neighbors might be peering through their curtains at us. “I guess I can’t have you standing in the yard.”
We found ourselves stepping directly into the living room, which was probably ten feet by ten. We could see the kitchen from where we stood, and I was guessing the rest of the house consisted of two small bedrooms with a bath between. The air was scented with cleaning products. I could see where she’d swabbed a wet mop across the kitchen floor, leaving residual streaks of Pine-Sol. I picked up whiffs of Pledge furniture polish, Comet, Lysol toilet bowl cleaner, and perhaps a soupçon of household bleach.
“Have a seat,” she said.
Stacey settled on the couch while I chose a bright yellow molded-plastic chair to his left. Felicia couldn’t quite settle down, and I wondered if she cleaned to calm her anxieties, as I sometimes did. She’d worked hard to make the place attractive though the furnishings seemed to be an odd assortment of seconds, thrift shop finds, and discount sales.
“What sort of work do you do?” Stacey said, trying to strike a friendly tone.
“I manage a dry-cleaning establishment. My whole life’s about that—cleaning up other people’s messes.”
Stacey said, “I imagine Cedric’s been a problem.”
“Oh, go ahead and call him Pudgie. Everybody else does. I don’t know why I insist on ‘Cedric.’ It’s ridiculous given the sort of person he is.” She perched on a plastic chair that was a mate to mine. She reached out and straightened a stack of magazines, then idly, took out her dust rag and ran it around the table, picking up unseen particles of dust.
Stacey cleared his throat. “Is it just the two of you?”
“Just us. He’s been a source of aggravation as long as I remember. Our parents split when he was only eighteen months old. Mom ran off with this guy who sold galvanized pipe. Daddy drank himself to death a little over two years ago. I was eight when my brother was born. Daddy was useless by then so I raised him myself. You can imagine how that went.”
“Tough job at that age.”
“You can say that again. I must not’ve done too good a job because Cedric’s been in trouble since he was nine. I know I should quit coming to his rescue, bailing him out, trying to get him on his feet again. It doesn’t do any good. His only talent is avoiding work; plus he sometimes steals cars.”
I said, “What’s he been doing since he got out of jail?”
“Same thing he always does. Drinks, smokes, borrows money from me, and lies around on his butt. Occasionally he helps out, but only if I scream loud enough. Then he’ll sometimes do dishes or he’ll grocery shop. I guess I’ve been waiting for the other shoe to drop.”
“Has he been looking for work?”
“Says he has, but in this town, there isn’t much to do.
There’s an opening at the Dairy Queen, but he thinks that’s beneath him. I don’t know where he got that. He’s down so low, there’s nothing under him as far as I can see. It’s only a matter of time before he blows it again. I don’t get how that works. Every time a guy screws up, there’s always some gal around to feel sorry for him. In this case, it’s me.”
“I know one of those,” I said, thinking of Iona.
“It’s guilt,” Stacey said.
“Is that it? Well, I guess. He always seems so sincere. Every time I look at him, I see him at nine. He got caught when he stole two silver picture frames from a neighbor lady across the street. What in hell did he want with two silver picture frames? Then he cried like a baby and swore up and down he’d never do it again.”
“How long did that last?”
“About a month. I forget what he stole next—something equally useless. I can lecture him all I like; scream and yell. He knows exactly what to say to reel me in again. He’s not dumb by any stretch, but he’s lazy as all get out. He does whatever works in the moment without a thought in his head about the consequence. I’m sorry, I don’t know how I got off on that. You want me to have him call you when he gets back?”
“If you would, that’d be great,” Stacey said, taking out a ballpoint pen. “You have a piece of paper? I can give you the number.”
“You can write it on the cover of that Cosmopolitan. I never throw those out.”
Stacey jotted down the name of our motel, the number, and our two room numbers on the cover of the magazine.
“You might write your names down so I don’t forget,” she said, meaning that she already had.
Stacey scribbled our names, then clicked his pen and tucked it away. “When he goes out, do you have any idea where? We’ll be happy to scout around and see if we can find him ourselves.”
“There’s a tavern—just a little hole-in-the-wall—over on Vine. You might try there. I can’t think where else he might be, unless he drove into Blythe.”
/> “Who’s he hang out with?”
“No one that I know. He’s been in jail so many times, he doesn’t have many friends left. He did get a couple of phone calls Thursday night. The first, I don’t know about. He took that himself. The second time I answered and it turned out to be a woman he dated years ago . . .”
“Not Iona Mathis,” I said.
“That’s exactly who. You know her?”
“I met her a few days ago.”
“She’s nice. I like her. Too bad he didn’t end up with her. I hear she married someone else.”
“Why’d she call him?”
“I don’t know, but she must have been pissed because I heard him backpedaling like crazy, swearing up and down he didn’t do whatever it was she was so aggravated about. Then some guy got on the line and it started all over again.”
“Frankie Miracle?”
“Could be. I think so. I wasn’t paying that close attention. Phone’s in the kitchen. The call came during my favorite TV show, so after a few minutes of his yammering, I got up and shut the door.”
“After the call, he didn’t say anything about going out last night?”
“No, but then it’s not like he tells me half of what he does.”
“You think he might have gone off to meet Iona?”
“Oh god, no. I sincerely hope not. As mad as she was? He’d be smart to keep his distance.”
“I don’t like the sound of that,” I said when Stacey and I were in the car again. “Why don’t you find a gas station and we’ll see if there’s a pay phone.”
“Who’re you going to call?”
“Annette up in Peaches. Iona’s mom.”