After sundown, I drove back to Tempe, where Susan Knightly’s studio was still locked and dark. Most of the afternoon, I’d sat at home in the cool dimness of Grandfather’s office, listening to Charlie Parker and listlessly grading badly written essays, waiting in vain for the phone to ring. Now I was antsy and needed to walk, even in the heat. In the lobby of the building that housed the studio, two security guards were talking as I walked past. I caught only the end of their conversation: “That’s what love means!” one said. I stepped out and walked down Mill Avenue. Just a tall dark-haired man, officially unemployed, too near middle age and carrying a large revolver.
The street is the main drag through the old part of Tempe, near the university, but it had been rebuilt since I went to school. Pricey new office buildings, tourist boutiques, a multiplex theater, and exotic restaurants sat along what had once been a quintessential college-town street. Sidewalk cafes were cooled by elaborate systems that shot jets of mist into the superheated desert air. Even in the heat, Mill Avenue was crowded with people, mostly young and female, achingly sexy, wearing as little as possible. The sexual flux was so real, you could feel it. Tall, long-legged, tan goddesses who said something about the value of American nutrition in the last part of the twentieth century. Sweet young objects of desire. They never studied history in college voluntarily. They paid me no mind. This would have been part of Phaedra’s world, at least when she got off work every day at the photo studio.
I started at one end of the street and worked my way south, hitting the bars and restaurants, showing the photograph of the redhaired woman with the intense stare. The bartenders, managers, and maitre d’s were all amazingly friendly and wanted to be helpful. One woman behind the bar of a seafood place wanted to know if this would be on America’s Most Wanted. They all seemed to be from somewhere else and were eager to tell you about how much they loved the Valley. There was just one problem: None remembered Phaedra. As one older woman said, “There are too many beautiful women in Phoenix. Who can keep track?”
Until I got to a coffee place across from the Gilbert Ortega Indian art store. There, a brooding young man with a goatee and three earrings in one ear nodded slowly when I showed him the photo.
“She’d come in for an iced grande mocha,” he said deliberately.
“You’re sure it’s her?”
“I remember. I have a thing for redheads.” He smiled vaguely and stared out at the street. “There’s something mystical about redheads. And I thought she had a cool name. It’d be a great name for a band.”
“You ever ask her out?”
He shook his head. “Didn’t have the guts. She seemed too intense for me. A real bagful of emotions, you know? A little voice in me said, You don’t want to go there.”
I asked him if she always came in alone. He rubbed his stubbled chin. “Once she came in with another red-haired woman. She was older. Had a bunch of photo equipment on her shoulder. Seemed like they were friends.”
He cleaned some metal canisters. “Then a couple of weeks ago, she met somebody here.”
“Phaedra came in with somebody?”
“No,” he said. “Phaedra came in alone and ordered. This woman came in after her and they talked at a table for a few minutes.”
“What did she look like?”
“Not bad-looking, if she hadn’t had such a hard look in her eyes. Older. Kinda light brown hair, straight, but pulled back.” He thought about it for a moment. “She called her Julie. Phaedra did.”
I felt a little sizzle at the back of my neck.
“You’re sure this was two weeks ago?” I asked. “Not a month ago, maybe?”
“It would have been the Monday before last,” he said. “I remembered how upset she seemed.”
“You okay?” he asked.
“Yeah,” I said. “Fine. What was Phaedra like? Glad to see the woman?”
“No, man. She seemed really agitated, now that I think about it. Spilled part of her coffee. They sat back there”-he pointed to a table-“for maybe five minutes. They were really into it. Phaedra was waving her hands, pushing back her hair-you know, the way pretty long-haired women do? Rubbing her eyes. Whatever this other chick was saying was upsetting her.”
“What happened next?”
“They left.”
“Together?”
He nodded.
“You have a good memory,” I said.
“I’m in criminology at ASU,” he said. “I want to get into the FBI. That’s all I’ve ever wanted to do.”
Lose the stubble and earrings, I thought. Or maybe not. The world keeps changing.
“You want to know who she was seeing? The redhead? My buddy Noah did ask her out, and I guess they hit it off. I didn’t know if I should tell you, but you seem okay.” I wrote down Noah’s address and phone number.
“I hope she’s not in trouble,” he said as I turned to go.
I walked out into the hot evening and finally had the “Oh shit!” moment I had been working up to for several days, since Julie first disappeared. I realized that, divorced from my sentimental feelings about her, I didn’t know Julie Riding very well at all. She’d told me she had joint custody of her daughter, but in reality, she had lost custody. She’d told me cocaine was in her past, but now I knew it was part of her present. She’d told me she hadn’t seen her sister for a month before Phaedra turned up murdered, but a witness had just placed Julie with Phaedra the night before the body was found. I had argued with Peralta to protect Julie-because I know her-but it occurred to me with sudden, awful clarity that I didn’t know her, not really. And I didn’t know what I didn’t know.
Oh shit.
Noah wasn’t home, so I headed back to my house empty-handed. I was already out of sorts when the phone rang a little after 10:00 P.M.
“I didn’t know if I should just leave you alone or not,” said Lindsey.
“I’m sorry,” I said. “I should have called.” It was a cliche. And there was an edge in my voice.
“No,” she said. “No reason for you to worry about that. But I heard about what happened last night.…”
“I’m okay. It was over pretty quickly.”
“I know,” she said, and the line was silent. Over the airconditioning, I could actually hear a train whistle from down at the Santa Fe yards.
“Oh, Lindsey,” I began. I thought, How I wish you were in my arms on this lonely, desolate night. Silence again.
“I think I may have found something you’ll be interested in,” she said finally, her voice different. “Something relating to Rebecca Stokes.”
“That’s great, Lindsey. What have you got?”
“Come by on Monday and I’ll show you.”
“Okay. Are you all right?”
“I’m fine, Dave. Get some rest.”
I started to call her right back, but the phone rang.
“Lindsey?”
“You’ve replaced me already, my love?”
I sat up uneasily. “Where are you, Julie?”
“I’m around, David. I can’t tell you right now. Soon we’ll be together.”
“Julie, we need to talk,” I said.
“I suppose Peralta is threatening to arrest me.”
“I don’t really know,” I said sharply. “I’d rather know why you met Phaedra down at a coffee place on Mill Avenue the night before she was found dead.”
“David, I don’t know what you’re talking about. I haven’t seen Phaedra for almost two months.”
“Why this game, Julie? Who are you running from?”
“Maybe the same man as you, judging from the story in the Republic this morning.” She was in the state at least, if she’d read the story today in the newspaper.
Julie said, “Haven’t you thought about what I said to you, David? I’m really in love with you.”
I said nothing. The line buzzed emptily.
“Don’t you think we could try to make something happen here?” she said. “I mean, finally make something go right in our lives?”
“Does the name Bobby Hamid mean anything to you?”
“No, David. You don’t understand. In time, I’ll tell you what I know.”
“Why can’t you tell me now, Julie?”
“I just can’t.” The line went dead.
I slammed the phone down and cursed the walls.