The Fault Tree Page 2

  Dupree examined the wounds on her back and chest. Had she surprised someone? Tried to stop a burglary? “Any guess on time of death?”

  “Body temperature suggests sometime between eight and midnight last night. Can’t be sure with this summer heat. And she was wearing a heavy robe. That would have stalled it even more.”

  Wanda Prentice had been small but strong. Even at seventy-six, her crepey arms still held the definition of solid muscle beneath the skin. Dupree lifted one outstretched arm. He didn’t see anything under the dead woman’s nails, but they would bag the hands anyway.

  “Starting to come out of rigor,” the medical examiner noted. “Might err on the early side of that estimate.”

  Dupree nodded, rose with a groan, and followed the trail of blood into the kitchen. Although his childhood home had been tidier, the room reminded him of his mother’s kitchen back in Louisiana. The refrigerator was new enough to have sharp corners instead of the rounded silhouette he remembered, but all the appliances, along with the furniture in the living room, were firmly fixed in a forty-year-old time warp.

  “Find anything?” he asked his partner. The door to the freezer compartment stood open. Ice cube trays, coffee grounds, flour, and dry cereal had been dumped in the sink and scattered on the floor. One kitchen chair was overturned and the tablecloth pulled askew.

  Detective Richard Nellis picked up a flower-patterned green and orange apron with gloved hands, placed it in an evidence bag, and stood up. The junior member of the team, he towered over Dupree. “It looks like the fight started in here. And we may be looking for more than one suspect. Can’t be sure yet, but I think there are two sets of footprints leading out to the door.”

  “Does one of them belong to the victim?”

  “She had slippers on—lost one during the fight—and there’s plenty of blood on them. But no, these look like two different sets of shoes.”

  Dupree passed through the living room and into the bedroom. It was undisturbed, except that the light bedcovers had been thrown to the side as the woman had risen from the bed. Had she heard the intruders? If so, she probably hadn’t trusted her own senses, since she’d stopped to put on a robe and slippers and hadn’t been worried enough to call the police. Or maybe she had been expecting someone.

  He wandered back into the living room and picked up a washed-out framed photo of a younger Wanda Prentice on a fly-fishing trip with a bearded man who had his arm around her waist. Her smile, or maybe the sunlight, made her eyes scrunch into slits.

  There were three full shelves of fairy tales and nursery stories, the books arranged by height. A grandchild? Or had she entertained a gaggle of children here at the house? The spines of all the books were etched with the white creases of repeated readings.

  He pulled open the center drawer of a small desk next to the television. A checkbook, a bundle of seasonally appropriate greeting cards, a plastic bag full of rubber bands and another of paper clips. A well-organized woman. One used to taking care of herself after years alone.

  The drawer on the right held notepads, bills, and an address book. He flipped it open to P, looking for any family members. There were more cross outs than current listings. “Joe Prentice” might have been a brother. His listings had started as “Joe and Barbara,” then followed Joe alone after 1985. She’d crossed out and rewritten his address five times, noting the year with each change. His latest address had been crossed out with the addendum, “Died, April 2, 1998.”

  The only Prentice with a current address (well, current as of two years ago) was Priscilla, who lived north of Tucson in a tiny residential community in the shadow of the Catalina Mountains.

  He placed the book, Mrs. Prentice’s current bills, and what looked like recent letters in an evidence bag and called to Nellis, “Let’s canvass the neighborhood before everybody leaves for work. We can finish here later.” Nellis joined him at the front door and they edged past the forensic team dusting the door and threshold for prints.

  “She didn’t go easy,” Dupree said, swatting at the flies that had come to gather at the celebration of blood.

  Chapter 6

  That morning, at the very back of the bottom dresser drawer, I found the heavy-rimmed Ray Charles sunglasses and the telescoping red-tipped cane the rehab center had given me when I was first blinded eight years ago. The cane was lightweight and insubstantial in my hands, a magic wand with very little magic left.

  I made chorizo and scrambled eggs for breakfast, then stood under the hot water in the shower until my skin cried uncle.

  I had promised that I’d have the Lugosis’ pickup truck ready by noon. If I got to work this early, I sure as hell wasn’t going to stay till nine o’clock again, not with the aches and pains that had already taken root. I fingered the scrape on my chin. Still sensitive but no longer bloody.

  It was cool on the porch, not even ninety yet. I leaned the stubbed end of the dog’s-head cane against the terra-cotta pot in the corner as I’d promised Kevin, thinking again about the morning’s planned work. The truck was misfiring and it needed new brakes, especially with the way their teenage son drove.

  The tenderness under my eye and across my cheekbone had probably developed into a bruise by now. Sunglasses would hide some of that but would also make me look like I was on the ragged end of some boyfriend’s beer punch.

  I tried for long, even strides to stretch out the kinks and soreness from last night’s swan dive across the street, the cane swinging and tapping ahead of me like a town crier.

  The block was a bustle of activity when I arrived: dogs barking, tense conversations in male voices at the street corner, and the thump-thump of a helicopter in the distance. A couple of conversations stopped when I neared the speakers, but I’m used to that. Would the blind lady be offended if we notice her disability? Would our talking distract her and make her trip? Nobody stopped me as I tapped my way to the front door of the shop.

  I crossed the first lube bay and headed toward the office, where I heard the squeak of Walt’s swivel chair. “What’s happening out front?”

  “Dunno. Just got here myself, but I came in the back way. You got a new cane?”

  He hadn’t noticed the bruises. “Almost got myself run over last night. Smashed Lucy.”

  “That so?” Walt’s voice was faint, as if he was busy with something on the desk and wasn’t looking at me. “Tsk, tsk, tsk.” Offered in a distracted cluck that suggested he hadn’t heard a word I’d said.

  I smothered a smile, grabbed my coveralls from the hook, and turned away from him to step into them. Six years ago, Walt had laughed when I’d asked him for a job. But at least he’d listened that time, even if he’d treated my inquiry like a joke. “I’m going to hire a female auto mechanic? And a blind one at that?” He shared the joke with the rest of the shop. “You hear that, Turbo? This lady here wants your job.”

  Two young male voices had laughed, then one of them—most likely not Turbo—said, “I’d work with her. She’s probably better than Turbo and she’s a damn sight easier on the eyes.” He swallowed the last word. The shop was quiet.

  “Back atcha.” I smiled in his direction. I was just as likely as the next person to use sight-oriented words. Look at this. Here’s how I see it. A sight for sore eyes. And I knew that if I were going to work with these guys, they’d have to quit watching their language, quit tripping over themselves to get out of the blind lady’s way.

  This morning the shop was already humming. The click-click of tightening lug nuts to my left. The whir of loosening other lug nuts at the back of the shop. Danny gave Turbo a bad time about which end of the wrench to use. Turbo suggested a place to put it. Somebody revved an engine in the far-left bay and pegged it at about five thousand RPM.

  I shrugged into the uniform, double-checked the block print letters over the pocket, and zipped it up. Everybody else’s name badge was sewn in cursive letters. It was easy to find mine.

  The first pair of coveralls had been Walt’
s welcome present when I started work there. “I had to get the badge sewn special,” he said. “The suppliers didn’t have any that said ‘Cadence.’” He shouldn’t have bothered. Nobody at the shop used my real name anymore.

  “Mornin’, Stick,” Turbo called from my left. “What’s with the Stevie Wonder look?”

  I offered him a raised middle finger and headed for the old pickup I had promised for noon. I folded the cane and put it and the sunglasses on top of my tool kit. Reaching behind the truck’s grille, I yanked the release and lifted the hood.

  By now, Danny and Turbo were both comfortable asking me to use my ears and fingers as diagnostic tools. And they didn’t watch their language anymore.

  “Oh, yeah?” Turbo replied to my upraised finger. “Hey, you want help setting the timing?”

  “No, I’ll just play it by ear.”

  I loosened the bolt that held the distributor in place, then moved around to the driver’s seat and reached past the steering column to the ignition. Like an old man on a bean tostada diet, it started up with the round, flatulent pop of a misfire. I set the emergency brake, put the gear in neutral, and returned to the front of the truck.

  Keeping my hands well away from the spinning fan blades, I pushed down the carburetor linkage until it was revving at about three thousand RPM. I made minute adjustments to the distributor, wrenching it left, left again, and then a little tweak to the right until I heard that perfect pitch and harmony of a well-tuned engine.

  “Sure you don’t want me to check it with the timing light?” Turbo asked, offering to verify that the strobe flash matched up to a painted stripe on the pulley.

  “I think I’ve got it. But I’d appreciate it if you’d take it for a test drive when I’m done.” The Tucson PD would frown on my style of driving.

  “Will do.”

  “Thanks. Let me know if you need my Ferrari fingers. And I don’t mean just the middle one.” It was a running joke. You need really long, thin fingers to reach the back spark plug on Ferraris, and my hands fit the bill. Long-fingered work was one way I could pay the guys back for the “sight” work they helped me with. Of course, we never got fancy Italian race cars in the shop—Walt’s customers were mostly the Ford truck and dented-Camry crowd—but I still joked about filing my nails into Phillips head and regular screwdriver shapes.

  I had done the rest of the tune-up yesterday and replaced all the fluids. Testing the engine again proved that the misfire was gone. I was ready to get started on the brakes. I rolled the jack under the rear axle, found the sweet spot, and started pumping.

  Footsteps. Then a clipped voice carried from across the shop.

  “I’m Detective Nellis and this is Detective Dupree.” I heard the soft slap of his wallet—maybe his badge holder—closing. “Can you help us with some information?”

  “Sure.” Walt’s footsteps crossed the shop to meet the detective.

  “What time did you close last night?” He was carrying more weight than his lungs would have liked and his voice had the rasp of a longtime smoker.

  “Six o’clock, thereabouts.”

  “You see anything unusual in the neighborhood?”

  “Why? What happened?”

  “Mrs. Prentice, your neighbor down the street, was killed in her home last night. Like to know if you saw anything.”

  “Nothing. What time did it happen?” Everyone in the shop had stopped to listen.

  “Sometime between eight and midnight.”

  “Nah, we were long gone.” Walt paused, then his voice boomed in my direction. “Stick, you were here for a while last night. Did you see anything?”

  He had already forgotten my story of the demonic car, and that was fine with me. But now the police thought they might have lucked into a witness, and that wasn’t fine.

  Two sets of footsteps approached, one with hard-soled shoes and one with squeaky gum rubber. Nellis, the one who had spoken to Walt, was the smoker with the hard-soled shoes. From the angle his voice was coming from, I guessed his height at about six three. Couldn’t tell about his partner yet.

  “Miss, were you here, did you see—” His voice shorted out midsentence. Must have just noticed the red-tipped cane on the toolbox.

  I tilted my head up toward his face. “No, I’m sorry, I didn’t see anything.”

  “What time did you leave last night?”

  “About nine-thirty.” I turned back to the truck and pulled new brake pads from their boxes.

  “Thanks anyway.” Their footsteps crossed the garage.

  “Wait a minute.” I stopped their retreat. “You said the name was Prentice. Which house is that?”

  “Four houses to the south. This side of the street.”

  “Does it have a line of bricks—just one brick high—around the yard?” That was right about where I’d heard that idling engine.

  “That’s it.”

  “Thanks. Sorry I can’t help you.” They wrote down my name, address, and phone number, and walked back to the shop entrance.

  I moved a jack stand into position under the truck, wiped the sweat off my face with a clean shop rag, and called out to Walt, “How about turning the fan on out here, boss?”

  I hadn’t known Mrs. Prentice’s name, but we’d become friendly through the years. She’d call out if I passed by while she was watering the plants on her front porch. And I could tell by the smell that she made a mean meatloaf.

  I was sorry she’d been killed, but those voices I heard and my near accident probably had nothing to do with her death. The location of that idling car was right, but, hell, those people were laughing.

  And even if that car did have something to do with her murder, it wasn’t my business. I didn’t want to be responsible for anybody else. I had already shown I couldn’t be trusted with that.

  Chapter 7

  Dupree finished the canvass of the neighborhood without finding any good witnesses. He mopped his neck with a pale yellow handkerchief. There must have been plenty of traffic last night, but no one driving past had noticed the open screen door and the woman’s body just inside. And there would have been few people on foot after eight or nine.

  “Want to do next of kin?” Nellis asked. “I found this in with the letters and bills you picked up at the house.” He handed Dupree a birthday card. One of Hallmark’s cheapest, the front of the card showed pastel-colored robins carrying a banner that said “Happy Bird-day Grandma!” It was signed, “XOXO, Priscilla.”

  Dupree checked the return address on the envelope. “Might as well.” He hated doing the family notifications. There was either an immediate denial of the possibility of death (“But I just saw her yesterday!”) or a sucking vacuum and emptiness at the thought of being left alone. And Dupree wasn’t far away from the day that his own daughters would have children sending him cards.

  They cranked up the air conditioner and traveled twenty miles north on Highway 77. Nellis pulled out a pack of unfiltered cigarettes and dug into his pocket for a lighter.

  “I thought you were quitting,” Dupree said.

  “I am. Quitting but not quit yet. I’m down to five a day.”

  “Good. Then you can save that one for when you’re not in the car with me.”

  Nellis grimaced and tucked the pack back into his pocket. “You ever been out this way before?” he asked, a few miles down the road.

  “Not that I recall.” Dupree had lived in Tucson for ten years, but there were still neighborhoods and small outlying communities that were new to him. And, given the rate of new building and development in town, there always would be.

  Catalina was a small residential community of eight thousand—a little older and sadder than the closer-in developments in the foothills. The strip malls looked like they’d taken the rejects from the offered franchises, and the houses were neat, but scrubbed down to the bones by decades of sun, heat, and dust devils.

  Priscilla Prentice’s house backed onto Twentyseven Wash, a shallow, dry riverbed that ran north
to south through town. A paloverde tree screamed for water in the dusty front yard.

  “You ever heard the name Wanda Prentice before today?” Nellis asked as they approached the front door.

  “No. Why?”

  “I remember the name from somewhere.” Nellis knocked on the door.

  “Are you Priscilla Prentice?” Dupree asked when the bouffant blonde answered. He wondered if you had to be twenty-something to live on Twentyseven Wash.

  “It’s Strout now.”

  “Are you related to Wanda Prentice, of Tucson?”

  “That’s my grandmother. Why? What’s wrong?” She had bands of blue and purple shadow arching over her eyes like some kind of tropical bird.

  He told her the news, then followed her inside and took a seat in the living room. Nellis stood behind him.

  Priscilla Strout wore short, tight cut-off jeans, a man’s cotton shirt tied at the waist, and high heels. She had an intricate gold ring with a large, square yellow stone on her right hand and a plain silver band on her left.

  She tucked one leg under her thigh, scratched her leg where her shorts ended and the couch’s itchy brown upholstery met her skin, and pulled a fresh cigarette from the pack, even though she already had one going in the ashtray.

  There were no tears. No display of unspoken regret. Strout wasn’t showing any of the concern or grief that Dupree expected from the closest relative of a murder victim. But grief showed up differently in some people, or maybe she’d never been close to her grandmother.

  He glanced at his partner, who was admiring the framed paint-by-numbers landscape that hung on the far wall. Nellis had grown up in Tucson but couldn’t stand the heat. His short-sleeved shirt was already ringed with dark sweat stains. Nellis eyed the woman’s cigarette and patted his pockets.

  Dupree tugged his cuffs back into position. Arizona heat couldn’t hold a candle to the wet, sucking summers he remembered from growing up in Louisiana. Dry heat? That’s a vacation. Hell, he was happy with any day that the temperature was lower than his LDL cholesterol level.