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  A DEAD RED ALIBI

  By RP Dahlke

  #4 in the DEAD RED MYSTERY SERIES

  When Lalla Bains is given the unusual wedding gift of property in Wishbone, Arizona, she never expects to actually see the place, much less discover her father has been keeping company with the local police chief—at the bottom of an abandoned mine pit.

  Join Lalla, Dad, Caleb and Cousin Pearlie Bains for another rollicking good mystery.

  vers. 9.6.14

  Cover Design: Karen Phillips karenphillips.com

  Formatting: Debora Lewis arenapublishing.org

  Editors: Lisa Cox and Beth Lake

  Experts: Cochise County Sheriff’s department: Kenny Bradshaw, Jail Commander, Ariel A. Monge, Detention Lieutenant, Sgt. Tal Parker, and Jim Adams.

  Cochise County Search and Rescue, Karen Paquette, Cochise County SARS Canine Unit, Evonne Ohlensehlen, and all the members of the Cochise County Search and Rescue Team.

  Guns ‘n’ Jeeps: Lutz Dahlke

  Beta Readers, Elizabeth Englehart, Jennifer Wing, Gail Hall, Belle Cook, Terry Skaug, Debby Kelly

  Julio Castillo’s name was kindly loaned for this book from actor and husband of author Holli Castillo

  Karen Paquette and her dog, Matilda are members of SARS and Karen has allowed me to use her name as a fictitious character in this book.

  Any foobahs, typos, misspells, incorrect interpretations of facts are mine.

  Table of Contents

  Dedications:

  To my forever Flyboy, Daniel John Shanahan 1964-2005

  And to my beloved granddaughters,

  Simone Shanahan Proctor, and Hanna Shanahan

  .

  Chapter One: Wishbone, Arizona

  Except for a lank rope and ancient boards loosely sheltering a deep hole in the desert terrain, my dad’s brand new four-wheel-drive Jeep Wrangler sat coolly detached and totally unconcerned that its driver was nowhere around.

  “It’s an abandoned mine pit,” Karen Paquette said, sliding off her backpack and pulling out a coiled length of nylon rope. “He probably fell in. Call to him, see if he answers.”

  With trepidation coloring my voice, I leaned over the hole. “Dad?”

  A stone rolled down the side and someone cursed.

  “I think he’s down there,” I whispered.

  She nodded encouragement and I called again. “Can you hear me, Dad?”

  His pale, dirt-smeared face came into view. He looked miserable, poor old guy.

  He coughed, his voice echoed up the sides, weak and scratchy. “Yeah. I’m here.”

  “Are you okay? Is anything broken?”

  “Back away from the damn hole will ya? You’re knocking dirt in my face!”

  “It’s my dad all right,” I said, and backed off from the edge. “Dad. Talk to me. Are you hurt?”

  “I’m just fine and dandy.”

  I grinned. Since sarcasm and my dad were best friends, I figured he was simply embarrassed to be stuck in the bottom of a deep hole with no way out.

  “If he’s injured,” Karen said, “I’ll have to call for reinforcements.”

  “Trust me,” I said, relief washing away my earlier tears. “If he’s able to cuss at me, he’s okay.”

  I wasn’t supposed to be in Wishbone, Arizona, fearfully scouring the desert for my missing father.

  I was supposed to be on my honeymoon, married at last to my sweetie, Sheriff Caleb Stone.

  .

  Chapter Two: One week earlier: Modesto, California

  Long time patrons of Roxanne’s Truck Café, my home away from home, had a pool going as to when, not if, Caleb Stone and I would get hitched. Then, when it looked like the wedding might actually happen, another pool was started as to when, not if, I might back out of the deal. Funny thing about that pool, no one thought to consider that it might be my fiancé who would, at the last minute, be the no-show.

  What began as a cheerful gathering of friends and family soon deteriorated into heartbreak for me and embarrassed silence for our friends.

  At thirty-five minutes past the appointed hour of our nuptials, one of the deputies slipped outside, only to announce what we already knew; Sheriff Stone was off-duty and unavailable because he was getting married today.

  With no answer on his cell or office phone, nothing on the police band radio Roxanne’s husband kept in the kitchen, and no natural or man-made disasters to indicate a genuine excuse, where the hell was he?

  With sweat rings circling a pattern of nerves in my two-piece linen suit, I shifted my wedding bouquet of white lilies from one hand to the other and glared at the clock on the wall.

  I waited as the hour resolutely marched farther and farther away from the “I do” moment. Exactly an hour and thirty minutes later, I tossed the wilted bouquet in the trash and ran out the door.

  My family tracked me as far as our ranch just north of Modesto, and watched while I tossed clothes into the trunk of my vintage red 1958 Caddy.

  Aunt Mae was the only one brave enough to interrupt my fit of temper. “He showed up five minutes after you ran off.”

  I slammed the trunk closed. “He had an hour and thirty-five minutes to call and explain, but thanks for taking his side.”

  My dad huffed out an exasperated sigh. “Someone has to take his side.”

  Caleb Stone was always meant to be my dad’s son, if not by birth, then by proxy—all he had to do was marry me. But now even that seemed to be slipping away.

  Aunt Mae put her arm around me. “My girl, I only loved two men in my life. The rest came in as poor seconds. It’s a rare thing you know, men like your Caleb.”

  “He’s a rare one alright. Did they all get cold feet before the wedding?”

  She snorted. “The first one did. I had to hunt him down, sober him up, and we were late for our own wedding, but after that we lasted almost twenty years.”

  “The aero-ag business is sold and I really can’t see myself sticking around just to hear his excuses, can you?”

  “Well, married or not,” she said pulling an envelope out of her purse. “I think this might be just what you need.”

  I tried to refuse the gift she shoved into my hand, but as if to keep the envelope from escaping, she closed her wrinkled hands over mine. “This was always meant for you. Open it.”

  I read and reread the document, then looked up, laughed and put my arms around her small, bony shoulders. “You’re absolutely right, Aunt Mae. You couldn’t have given me a better gift if you tried.”

  Too short to read over my shoulder, Cousin Pearlie reached up and grabbed the document out of my hands.

  “Oh that old thing,” she said. “It’s way out in the middle of nowheresville. What would you do there, anyways?”

  “Think. Not think. Take long walks. Whatever I want.”

  Though my cousin Pearlie appeared to be a man-crazy, plump piece of blond and pink taffy, I had recently discovered that she was also smart, independent, clear headed, and when I needed her most, a crack shot with a handgun. Unfortunately, it was times like this when old habits crowded in front of her better judgment.

  Most of her insecurity came from the death of her parents in a car crash, leaving her unmoored and adrift. But when she discovered a grandmother she didn’t know existed, Pearlie set about to look up the selfish woman and give her a piece of her mind. What she got was a dose of reality and the stability she’d always yearned for in a family.

  “Well,” Pearlie sniffed, “if you say so. I suppose you want me to go with you.”

  I glanced over my shoulder at the Ag Cats, forklifts and trucks lined up in stark relief against the rim of western hills lin
ing the San Joaquin Valley. It was all going to the outfit in Merced later this week, and what customers who weren’t already retired, or dead, would go with them. While my dad and his lady friend had plans to fence off some of the property for a herd of milk goats, I was going to be out of a job as an aero-ag pilot. I was not looking forward to living on a ranch with goats. So if I wasn’t going on my honeymoon and moving into Caleb’s house, then I’d go to Arizona and look at my new property.

  “No, no. I’m good,” I said.

  “Whad’ya mean, good? Granny says Arizona is wilder than Texas. Besides, I just got my Lady Smith back from the Sacramento Sheriff’s office, and I hear Arizona has reciprocal carry for personal sidearms.”

  “Yeah, but you still have to take Aunt Mae home to Texas and then you promised to come back and nurse Mad-Dog to health, remember?”

  Leaving her with that little nugget to chew on, I took off for the house, my dad trudging after me.

  I gathered up boots and a few miscellaneous items while he jingled the change in his pockets.

  “So are you really going to Arizona?” he asked.

  “Yep,” I said, knowing how unhappy my leaving without Caleb must make him feel.

  “Swallowing your pride won’t cause indigestion,” he said.

  I rolled my eyes. When backed up against an argument he couldn’t win, my father’s best defense was to resort to one of the arcane adages he kept for every occasion.

  “You’ve got Mrs. Hosmer to keep you company,” I said.

  “Ah, well, she’s a nice lady and all, but her time is taken up these days with her new grandbaby.”

  I guess Dad and the goat business would have to take a back seat to Shirley’s grandchild. I thought about it for a minute, then said, “Aunt Mae said the property has a gold mine on it.”

  “It’s that place down by the Mexican border, isn’t it?” he asked.

  “I don’t know, I’ve never been there, have you?”

  “My pappy and I took a road trip to Arizona when I was about ten or so. As I recall, that property backed up to some real pretty mountains. There were cottonwoods next to a stream, and a big adobe ranch house. I always wondered what happened to that property.”

  His sigh sounded a little like regret to me.

  “How about a road trip to Arizona?” I asked.

  My father’s eyes momentarily brightened, but then his responsibilities crowded the moment aside. “I should stay. Merced Aero-Ag is coming this week to pick up the airplanes and equipment.”

  “That’s what you hired Mad-Dog to do, right?”

  Though Mad-Dog Schwartz was still recovering from the knife wound he sustained while attempting to corral a killer, Dad and I agreed that if anyone deserved the extra pay to ferry the airplanes and see to the equipment, it was Mad-Dog.

  My dad plucked at his lower lip, looking like he was giving it some thought. “Well, the money is in the bank.”

  “And you don’t want to be here when they haul away all those memories, do you?”

  “What about the goats Shirley ordered?” he asked.

  I had an answer for that, too. “We’ll be back in a week.”

  “A week? Oh, well, that might work. She’s going to be pretty busy for at least a week. But I don’t think I could find the place after all these years.”

  “We have a map, a GPS, and Aunt Mae has the phone number of the property manager; he’ll give us directions.”

  “Well, then what vehicle should we take?” he asked. “The Caddy is a gas hog and my truck, as you well know, is totaled.”

  I was the one driving his old Ford truck when it was T-boned, and the only reason I was alive today was because, in spite of my teasing, that old rust bucket was built like a tank.

  “Yes,” I said. “We still have the rental, or my gas-guzzling Caddy. Either would be okay for a road trip, but Aunt Mae says the road to the property is in pretty bad shape.”

  “Wait,” he said, bumping his skull with an open palm. “I completely forgot. I bought a Jeep two weeks ago. They called yesterday and said it’s ready to be picked up.”

  This was good news. After sealing the deal with the new owners of his aero-ag business, he must’ve decided to get one of those nice Jeep Grand Cherokees, the ones with plush leather seats, back-up camera, and Bluetooth. It was about time he got something luxurious.

  “Great,” I said, “We’ll get to Arizona in style. How about we stop over in Las Vegas?”

  “Vegas? Oh, I don’t know about that. You know I’m not much of a gambler. I leave that sort of thing to your great-aunt Mae and cousin Pearlie.”

  My dad always said he’d spent too many years gambling on the weather to consider putting down his hard-earned money in a casino.

  I laughed. “There’re lots of things to do besides gamble. We’ll go see the fancy cars at the Wynn, then maybe get tickets for a Cirque du Soleil.”

  His indifference would suggest he knew what I was talking about. The truth was my dad was new to vacations, having taken his first when he went on an Alaskan cruise last year with his lady friend, Shirley. But after a couple of phone calls, one to assure Shirley he’d be home in a week, and the other to confirm that Mad-Dog was on the job, he went to pack his suitcase.

  Pearlie was annoyed that I would choose my dad over her for a road trip, even if it was to “no-wheres-ville,” Arizona.

  “But Lalla, if you’re not going to get married, we should start looking for offices right away.”

  When I tilted my head in confusion, she playfully punched me in the arm. “We’re going to start a P.I. business here in Modesto, remember? Well, we will soon as I get my license. You promised we’d start looking right after you got back from your honeymoon.”

  “I did no such thing.”

  “You did too! The only thing we haven’t decided was the name on the door.”

  I groaned. “Calling ourselves The Blonde Job for a P.I. firm is just asking for trouble. We’d get calls to show up for bachelor parties. Or worse.”

  Aunt Mae looked from her granddaughter to me and before we got into one of our childhood hair-pulling matches, she said, “I’m going upstairs to pack. When you two decide how I’m getting back home to Texas, let me know.”

  When she was gone, I said, “You still have a job at the ranch and you agreed to show Nancy and Jim Balthrop the ropes.”

  Instead of going into witness protection, the newlyweds had eagerly accepted management positions at Aunt Mae’s ranch. And, in a generous moment, Pearlie had offered to familiarize Nancy and Jim with their new jobs. She could return to California and get to work on her private investigator’s license—without me.

  Pearlie looked up at the ceiling as if weighing the possibility that no-wheres-ville Arizona might just be a lot more fun than Texas.

  “How long do you think you’ll stay out there?”

  “A few days, maybe a week.”

  “A week? That’ll work. I’ll fly Gran home. Nancy and Jim can hang out with the help till I get back. You can come pick me up at the nearest airport.”

  Pearlie was sure she might be missing something important. Jeez, didn’t she have enough excitement in the last couple of weeks?

  Guess not, because the last thing she said to me before she climbed into her granny’s Cessna was, “… and don’t get into any trouble until I get there.”

  Pearlie had a really screwy idea of what was fun.

  .

  Chapter Three: Wishbone Arizona

  Since the property manager’s office for my new home was in downtown Wishbone, we had lunch in a cute little café on Main Street. I snagged a card for the next time I wanted a quick and tasty meal in town and wrote, Cornucopia. Best place for soup and sandwiches.

  It was a quick walk to the real estate office. The property manager handed us a county map with red markers to show us the route, pointing out the difficulties with a stubby finger.

  “So you’re heading east toward the Mules, uh, that’s the Mule Mount
ains. You’re lucky it’s the dry season. Summers, we get Monsoon weather, and the gully washers will make that road impassable.” He looked up, searching hopefully for a sign that we were rethinking the idea, but seeing my dad nod, he shrugged and continued.

  “Well, anyway, I haven’t been up there in, um, a few months.”

  I was now grateful that my dad’s choice for a Jeep was a sensible off-road Wrangler instead of the luxurious Grand Cherokee.

  “Look for the green stripe of vegetation coming off the eastern hills—turn up toward it on Red Mountain Rd. There’s electricity to the house, but I’ll call and make sure it’s turned on for you by tomorrow.”

  While he rolled up the map, the real estate manager openly admired my assets. I had him by a couple of inches, but if my height and cheekbones weren’t enough, I had realistic windblown blond hair, courtesy of my dad who preferred open windows to A/C.

  My dad took possession of the map. “How long has it been empty?” he asked.

  “Um, maybe six months? By now, it’s probably got field mice or packrats inside, and where there are mice, rattlers follow. You’ll want to keep an eye out for the snakes. Now if you’d like to consider selling, I’d be obliged if you’d allow me to list it for you.”

  Dad’s head snapped up. “What? Sell a rare piece of property like that? Not likely!”

  When he wasn’t driving, Dad was reading about Arizona mining, sure that there was gold left in Uncle Ed’s gold mine.

  I picked up the man’s card, and before my dad could ask where to buy gold mining equipment, I dragged him outside.

  ~~~~~~~~~~

  With afternoon heat shimmering across the arid landscape, we followed the real estate manager’s map across the last rock strewn gulley and onto a potholed and seldom used private road. At the end of the road, a small dun colored adobe house was surrounded by a weed-choked, cracked adobe wall. Beyond the house, a weary barn and shed completed the impression that the property had been abandoned.