Richfield & Rivers Mystery Series 3 - Venus Besieged Read online

  At the checkout stand a lanky, mid-twenties boy in a sweat-stained T-shirt, with dirty fingernails and a finger tattoo in place of a ring, began to total our items. Noticing the fresh carrots rang up as $8.90, I stopped him and pointed that out.

  He paused to stare at me. "That's what it says." He pointed to the scanner display, which indeed read $8.90.

  "But we know that's wrong because carrots don't cost $8.90."

  "I have to go by what it says." He shrugged and I could see Callie out of the corner of my eye trying to conceal a smile.

  "Well, I don't. Call someone," I demanded.

  "No one's here except other checkers and they're busy."

  "Well, I'm not paying $8.90 for a bag of fresh carrots."

  "So you don't want them?" he asked amicably and cancelled the screen amount.

  "I do want them but—"

  The boy scanned them again and the scanner read $8.90. People behind us were beginning to shift their weight from side to side, the international sign for "Could you move the fuck along."

  "We could forget the carrots. I've got other vegetables," Callie said, sensing a war about to break out.

  I waved her off, leaned in conspiratorially, and whispered to the boy so the other people couldn't hear and he would be saved the embarrassment of my revelation. "Look, think about it. Do you really believe a small bag of carrots costs $8.90?"

  The boy paused to give this inquiry real thought and finally whispered back, "You know, I don't eat carrots, so I don't know."

  My body sagged into a worn and weary heap. Callie took the carrots out of my hands, the boy cancelled them from the screen, and the bag boy followed us out to the car.

  "How will they ever learn if we give up and let them keep the carrots? He can't figure out the scanner because he's high on something—did you see his eyes?"

  "It's a new generation. They go by what's on the screen."

  "And what if I go to the hospital for X-rays and the bill pops up 890 instead of $889? Will the twenty-year-old technician look at the screen and say, 'Yes, 890 for your X-ray. That's what the screen says'?"

  "He'll say 890. You must have eaten a bag of carrots." Callie chuckled and pushed me into the car. We drove home holding hands and singing along with a young woman insisting "There is no Arizona," and I thought she would have gotten along splendidly with the carrot boy.

  Back in our cozy cabin, I spent my time draped over Callie, kissing her soft shoulders, which I reached by different paths up the sleeve of her T-shirt and down the back of her neck as she tried to make me leave her alone while we prepared turkey dressing and cut up vegetables for an appetizer tray, treating ourselves like company, all the while laughing and drinking wine.

  "I forget what I've put in the dressing because you are so annoying," she teased.

  "Really? Having your lover kiss your neck and slide her hands up the arm of your T-shirt and massage your back..." She dropped the fork she was holding and swooned. "Is that the kind of annoying thing you're referring to.. .is that the thing that's distracting you?"

  She grabbed my arms, playfully pinning them to my sides, and kissed me, her mouth white hot moving to blue flame, an igniting kiss that melted everything below my belt buckle. I kept my lips on hers and slowly walked backward toward the bedroom, happy to desert the dressing for the undressing, and amused that we seemed to only enter the bedroom backward.

  The crunch of tires on rock startled us both into awareness that we had company. The sound of feet on the steps made my heart jump, and I signaled Callie to be quiet as I rummaged in a drawer for my gun. Glancing out the bedroom window, which was only a few feet left of the porch steps, I spotted a nicely dressed woman standing on the steps knocking lightly on the door. "Teague Richfield," the voice called.

  Callie and I exchanged puzzled looks. A svelte, older woman dressed as if she had left an upscale cocktail party, stood on the porch, in a light gray wool suit and matching cape, her beautiful, thick, silver hair blowing slightly in the wind, something about her familiar but out of context here in the woods. I walked across the living room and opened the door to greet her. My shock was total as the china blue eyes locked with mine.

  "Teague, do you remember me? Ramona Mathers?"

  Chapter Eight

  I was nearly speechless. Ramona, the wickedly enchanting attorney who had worked for Frank Anthony whose murder I'd investigated, the attorney who had hit on me at the Anthony mansion, then again at her estate right in front of Callie, prompting Callie to say Ramona would sleep with anything on the planet that had skin—that Ramona was standing in the Sedona woods on our doorstep.

  "Ramona!" I swooned effusively the way people in the South do when surprised by someone they don't want to see and are afraid that their internal horror will be externally conveyed in an unguarded facial expression, so they make an exaggerated attempt to exhibit joy to throw the visitor off. "What are you doing here?" I dragged out the words, another sign I was faking it.

  "Do I have to stay out on the porch until I fully account for myself, or may I come in out of the cold and have a brandy?"

  "Come in. You know Callie."

  "Not as intimately as you," she gave us a catlike smile, "but yes."

  "Hello, come in." Callie smiled back and took Ramona's cape, heading for the bedroom to lay it on the bed, an odd genteel custom, taking coats from people and making the coats lie down in other rooms when closets were lacking.

  "Quite a little love nest you've found here, very chi-chi little nook down by the creek. I love it here. You're looking good, Teague." Ramona eyed me like the last piece of cherry pie on the plate but, like a good guest, left it for the hostess. "Wade Garner called to ask if I could help you, and I laughed when he told me where you were because I'm a mile away." She slid out of her matching gray wool suit jacket and tossed it over the back of the couch, revealing firm breasts and a small waist for a woman of her years. Under one gray cashmered arm she held a stuffed toy in the shape of a basset hound.

  "Something for you, Elmo." Ramona handed it to him, smiling up at me as if to say she'd remembered his name and everything else about me. "I couldn't resist this. Everyone needs a girlfriend."

  "That's what I was telling him on the way in from L.A.," I said, thanking her and making a mental note that I'd never told Ramona I had a basset hound, much less his name and sex. Elmo examined the stuffed basset toy, a cute twelve-inch fake-fur body, almost a replica of himself wearing a pink bow around its neck. Nudging its plush body, he finally punched it with his nose, dragged it by the leg over to a corner of the room, and settled down to sniff it.

  "I think he likes her, he's licking her leg." Ramona smiled. "At least that was always my first clue."

  "Ramona, a drink?" Callie asked.

  "Please. I see you're about to molest a bird." She eyed the turkey in its pan. "Whoever thought of taking a poor bird and sticking its neck up its ass, packing its vagina with bread, and calling it a celebration?" She arched an eyebrow and I laughed in spite of myself.

  There was something about Ramona's knowing blue eyes, sly smile, and witty charm that forced me to ignore her chronological age and find her sexy. Something about the way she looked into me and smiled as if she knew a secret she'd like to share if she could only get me alone for a moment.

  "So who are you trying to dig up?" Ramona languidly plucked a black olive from a relish tray Callie offered.

  "A Native American woman who was reportedly attacked by a wolf and when she tried to escape went over a canyon wall and fell to her death," Callie said.

  "They must have recovered the body with a spatula," Ramona said, dangling the word in a way that made me laugh even though I didn't want to, recovery with a spatula appealing to my comic sensibilities—life as cartoon.

  "Reportedly tribal people recovered the body and buried her in a cemetery at the base of the vortex plateau," Callie interjected over the chuckling.

  "And why do you want to dig up the body?"

&nb
sp; "I don't believe she's dead and, therefore, I don't believe she's buried," Callie remarked.

  "So the grave holds someone else?" Ramona reached for another olive.

  "Or no one," Callie said.

  "What does the family say?" Ramona sounded more like an attorney with every passing phrase.

  "I've only spoken to Nizhoni's partner. Nizhoni is the woman whose grave we're discussing. The partner is Manaba, who says the family buried Nizhoni."

  "And you think otherwise because..." Ramona elongated the words.

  I suddenly felt compelled to vouch for Callie. "Because she's a psychic and a good one. She knows things. They may seem like crazy things to you and me, but they turn out to be dead-on.. .so to speak."

  "Spoken like a woman in love," Ramona said and I was suddenly shy. "Well, dead is the operative word, it seems. Maybe my old friend Cy Blackstone could lend a hand."

  "We met Cy Blackstone at some kind of evilway-payday-hooray ceremony," I said, and Callie looked at me as if she was keeping track of my irreverent remarks, perhaps having some limit in mind, after which she would simply crack me over the head with a ceremonial rock.

  "Cy loves being a friend to Native Americans while he develops their land right out from under them," Ramona said.

  "How do you know Cy?" I asked.

  "Everyone knows Cy Blackstone. He's an old retired politico rumored to have fixed more elections than anyone else in U.S. history," Ramona said. "He has something on everyone and uncanny timing in knowing when to hold it over their heads. Cy and I go Way back."

  Callie glanced in my direction as if to say I could chalk Cy Blackstone up as another Ramona Mathers conquest—she was seemingly drawn to men of power and money.

  "He was on the news talking about the new mall," I said.

  "Cy gets press. A lot of people owe him. The mall came about as a result of a debt for which his family took possession of the land in kind."

  "Who owed him?" I asked, and Ramona shrugged noncommittally.

  "Cy's probably gotten his hands on more land formerly owned by Indians than any white man in Arizona. I represented an Indian fellow who nearly lost his hunting grounds to Blackstone."

  "Did you win?" I asked.

  A pause while Ramona looked me up and down to make me squirm, I was certain, for asking such a question, but then she smiled benignly. "I always win."

  The sound of a car door slamming nearby jarred us all out of our conversation, and Elmo looked up from his stuffed toy and growled. I went to the door without a weapon. We were three women and a slobbering dog, the sight of which should keep the most nefarious out of our living room. Three loud bangs on the outside and I opened the door.

  "Barrett!" I said, my mind reeling.

  Barrett Silvers stood on the porch looking as if an eruption of some sort was imminent. Judging by her breathing and body tension, I had entirely caused the inconvenience of Barrett having to be on this porch, which in turn had apparently produced enough bile in her belly to sustain her current state of insanity through a glacial thaw.

  "What in the goddamned hell do you think you're doing?" she yelled into my face, despite the fact that my face was only two feet from hers.

  "Greeting madwomen on my doorstep," I said flatly, taking two steps back to avoid having to share her breathing space.

  "Don't get smart with me! Do you realize what this means? Do you realize what this means?" she repeated an octave above the first question. "This means..."

  "...you'll never work in this town again," I repeated, in sync with Barrett, unable to resist mocking the cliché Hollywood executives couldn't stop themselves from invoking even when, at the moment, they weren't in Hollywood.

  "Ahhh!" Barrett threw her arms up in the air as if to hurl my personal being into the stratosphere. Her appearance in a place nearly five hundred miles from L.A. in search of me was a sure sign she believed I'd compromised her reputation with Jeremy Jacowitz, and she apparently had decided beating my lips off would somehow restore it.

  "I have driven all the way from L.A. simply to let you know that this is one of the largest fuckups of your entire career. You dumped Jeremy Jacowitz. No one dumps Jeremy Jacowitz!" Barrett was shouting again.

  "Come in, Barrett," I offered, realizing I hadn't quite dodged every bullet related to my ankling Jacowitz. Barrett entered the cabin without seeming to know where she was, as if she'd been rehearsing this outburst for seven straight hours on the drive here and now wanted to give it to me unedited at high volume.

  "You have made me look like a fool. I told him you were terrific to work with, so professional, so quick, and then you tell him that you quit because he wants to make a few small changes in your fucking screenplay."

  That was the flick of the Bic that set my ass on fire. How dare she suggest they were small changes, and how dare she refer to my work as a fucking screenplay.

  "Not a few small changes in my fucking screenplay. He wanted to change the fucking characters, the fucking plot, and the entire fucking movie!" My vehemence rocked Barrett back, catching her by surprise; however, like all studio executives, immune to battering, she quickly recovered.

  "And most likely make it better. He's won an Academy Award, while you on the other hand have not!"

  "You and Jacowitz can stick his Academy Award up your collective ass!"

  "Yes, well, you've made one of youself!"

  "Really, well, as a person who's had her face in every female writer's ass in Hollywood, I guess you would recognize us all!"

  "Fuck you, you ungrateful little—"

  "Fuck you, back!"

  "Alright, enough. I will not have that kind of negativity in this cabin!" Callie shouted, startling me because I'd never heard her raise her voice in anger above my own.

  Ramona applauded Callie as if the curtain had rung down on a very exciting play she'd directed.

  At the sound of hands clapping, Barrett and I sagged to a stop and both took a deep breath as I turned to Ramona, her rakish grin reminding me I hadn't made introductions. Barrett's gaze must have followed mine and, for a moment, we shared one emotion, seeming embarrassment over having had a brawl in front of a virtual stranger.

  "Barrett." My tone was intentionally supercilious. "I would like to introduce you to Ramona Mathers, attorney for...well, actually for your studio, Marathon. Ramona, this is Barrett Silvers, your executive vice president of worldwide talent, who is here to berate me for killing my studio deal."

  "You don't have the power to kill a studio deal. I'm here to berate you for killing your career." Barrett flipped me the verbal bird, but her eyes were locked on Ramona's and her larger, visibly stronger hand clasped Ramona's long and slender one. They remained in that tableaux for a full ten seconds until Barrett, of all people, actually ducked her head and backed away in acquiescence of the alpha position.

  "I apologize, but this is a deal that is good for the studio and good for Teague if—"

  "If I would only prostitute myself along with my character," I interjected.

  "Please proceed." Ramona's voice had taken on a deep purr like a well-built engine in a classic chassis, causing me to whip my head around to see what in hell was going on. "It's fascinating to think that you drove all this way to abuse a writer," Ramona said with a wry but velvet twist to her voice.

  "I spent a solid year setting her up." Barrett spoke of me as if I'd vanished from the room. "Getting her pitched, finding the right director, and she's here in Sedona to write the screenplay. When Jacowitz called from Paris and gave his notes—"

  "They weren't notes. They were his sexual fantasies—aliens raping an abused housewife. Now would either of you two buy a ticket to watch that?" I addressed Callie and Ramona, making them my audience.

  "You're very talented, Teague, and you have to write what makes you happy," Callie said, jumping to my rescue, and her support emboldened me and fueled my anger toward Barrett.

  "This is what women get caught up in—helping men succeed at things that
don't benefit women!" I was pumped. "I'd just as soon write a freaking Viagra commercial."

  Barrett's expression clearly communicated that she wouldn't lower herself to argue further and dismissed my behavior as childish, so I moved to the kitchen counter to help Callie with the drinks.

  Apparently worn out from shouting, Barrett slumped onto an armchair. Her short black Eisenhower jacket open at the chest, the V-neck of her silk blouse falling seductively low, and the gold cuff links twinkling at the edges of the French cuffs, she was a stunning adversary, I thought as Callie and I returned to the living room and gathered in the surrounding chairs.

  Barrett's passion for her work, or perhaps the way Barrett looked, apparently stoked a fire in Ramona, whose eyes glistened, and for a split second I thought I saw them travel up and down Barrett's chest performing a breast scan, perhaps as a result of Callie's having made rather stiff drinks.

  "Where did a psychic learn to make martinis?" I whispered, taking a sip of mine, amused as she muttered something about not bruising the gin.

  "Martinis and high rollers seem to go together," she said, referencing her married life, and as I headed to the kitchen for a tray of cheese and crackers I wondered if I'd ever stop hating her ex-husband Robert Isaacs.

  Over my shoulder Barrett, having unleashed all her venom, was now socially relaxed and inquiring where Ramona was staying. Ramona said only that she lived a mile down the road and had stopped by to visit.

  "I met you on the drive to Waterston Evers's estate with Frank Anthony." Ramona's eyes became languid pools of longing as she addressed Barrett. "I made a mental note to contact you after that, and I honestly can't recall why I didn't."

  "I suspect you're very busy and move in rather elevated circles," Barrett remarked, and for the first time I realized that Barrett Silvers was admitting she was outranked. Barrett Silvers, who'd had every hot writer and many a starlet, was actually deferring to whom—a woman who had to be rocketing toward her late sixties? A woman with a shock of silver hair, a trim figure, a funny wit, and okay, great tits, but come on.