Trial by Fire Read online

  Months after their mother’s death, Ali had invited Reenie’s orphaned kids to spend the weekend at her house. They had spent the better part of three days going through the boxes of their mother’s goods, sorting out and repacking what they wanted to keep and getting rid of the rest. One of the boxes of reject books had held Reenie’s complete four-year collection of yearbooks.

  The last evening of the three, Ali and Reenie’s kids had gone through the yearbooks one by one, with Ali recounting stories about things she and Reenie had done together back then, laughing at their exploits and the weird clothing and the even weirder hairdos.

  “Until I saw this, I had forgotten all about that Halloween party our senior year,” Ali said, studying a photo in which she and Reenie had been dressed in sheets turned into Roman attire. Or maybe Greek.

  “How come?” Matt had asked. “Don’t you have a book like this?”

  Matt, the older of Reenie’s two kids, was red-haired, while his sister was blond. She was a lighthearted whirling dervish of a child. Matt was more reserved and serious, their mother’s death still weighed heavily on his spindly shoulders. Ali didn’t want to add anything more to his burden by mentioning how poor her family had been back then.

  “I think I must have lost mine somewhere along the way,” Ali had lied.

  “Why don’t you take this one then?” Matt asked. “I think Mom would like you to have it.”

  It was true. Reenie would have loved for her best friend to have it, and Ali had been overwhelmed by the little boy’s instinctive generosity.

  “Thank you,” she had said, brushing away a tear. “That’s very kind of you, but if you and Julie ever want it back, you’ll know where to find it.”

  With night falling outside the library windows, Ali had returned to her chair with the yearbook in one hand. On the way past the other chair, she paused long enough to scratch Sam’s furrowed brows. Sam opened her one good eye, blinked, and then closed it again.

  Back in her own chair, Ali browsed through the book, paying close attention to the photos of the people who had been seniors with her and trying to make sense of what she knew had become of some of them in the intervening years.

  She paused for a long time over the smiling photo of her best friend, Irene Holzer. It was difficult to comprehend that less than twenty years later, Irene’s loving presence would have disappeared from the earth. Reenie had died in a horrific nighttime car wreck in a vehicle that plunged off a snow-covered mountain road. For a time, officials had ruled Reenie’s death a suicide. They maintained that her recent ALS diagnosis had caused her to decide to end it all as opposed to putting herself and her loved ones through the devastating progression of Lou Gehrig’s disease. Only Ali’s dogged persistence had proved Reenie’s supposed suicide to be something else entirely.

  Leaving the senior class behind, Ali paged on through the remainder of the book. She recognized some of the underclassmen by both name and face, but she didn’t know as many of them and had no idea what had become of most of them either during high school or after.

  Halfway through the freshman class roster, Ali located the first photo of Sally Laird. Even in a low-budget, badly lit school photo, Sally was a knockout, with a straight-toothed smile and a halo of naturally blond hair.

  Several pages later, Sally Laird was pictured again. This time she was posed in a tight-fitting and revealing uniform as a member of the junior varsity cheerleading squad. The third and final photo showed Sally as that year’s homecoming queen. Dressed in a formal gown and wearing a rhinestone tiara, she managed to assume a regal pose while clinging to the arm of a beefy uniformed football player listed as Carston Harrison.

  Carston was someone Ali remembered. He had been a senior along with Ali and Reenie when Sally had been a freshman. Ali had been in a couple of classes with Carston over the years. He had been a less than exemplary student, long on brawn and athletic ability. He had scraped by with average to below-average grades while lettering in four different sports.

  That homecoming photo notwithstanding, Ali didn’t remember Sally and Carston being an ongoing item during the remainder of that year, but she now realized they must have been. Having a jock like Carston supporting her candidacy and lobbying in her favor could go a long way toward explaining how Sally Laird had packed off the homecoming queen title as a lowly freshman.

  As Ali closed the book, it occurred to her that Sally and Carston must have peaked early, and she wondered if anything the couple had done later on had matched their successes in high school.

  The next morning Ali had gone straight to the Sugarloaf to pick up the promised sweet rolls. By the time she got there, the restaurant was in full breakfast mode, so there wasn’t much opportunity to visit with her mother. She grabbed the sweet rolls and a cup of coffee and headed for Prescott, where she hoped Edie Larson’s delectable treats would make Ali Reynolds the hit of the break room, if not the department. Mindful of her father’s advice about keeping her enemies close, Ali drafted none other than a grudging Holly Mesina to help carry the trays of rolls from the car, through the lobby, and into the break room.

  The construction flagger now came over and tapped on Ali’s window, startling her out of her long reverie. “Pilot car’s here,” he said, pointing. “Get moving.”

  When Ali finally arrived at the Congress substation, both of the deputies she had been scheduled to meet—Deputies Camacho and Fairwood—were nowhere around. The only person in attendance was a clerk named Yolanda, who looked so young that Ali wondered if she was even out of high school. The clerk may have been young, but when Ali introduced herself, Yolanda had the good grace to look embarrassed.

  “Are you kidding?” she asked. “When they left, I reminded them you were coming today. They said they’d call and let you know they’d been called out and that you probably shouldn’t bother.”

  Ali understood that it wasn’t Yolanda’s fault that the two deputies she was stuck working with happened to be a pair of jerks who had deliberately stood Ali up.

  “They probably got busy and forgot,” Ali said easily, excusing them and thereby letting Yolanda off the hook. “Don’t worry about it. But since I’m here anyway, where did they go?”

  “A rancher busted some cactus smugglers down along the Hassayampa River a few miles north of Wickenburg,” Yolanda answered. “We have a lot of that around here. It takes a long time to grow saguaros—like a hundred years or so. That’s why people try to steal them.”

  “Tell you what,” Ali said. “Why don’t you get their location for me? This sounds like something that would make an interesting press release.”

  She wasn’t sure that releasing information about a cactus-rustling ring would do much to bolster Sheriff Maxwell’s image in the community, but it was a start. While Yolanda waited for information from Dispatch, Ali put on a winning smile and plied her for more information.

  “When did all this go down?” she asked. “And how did it happen?”

  “Earlier this morning. The rancher is an old guy named Richard Mitchell. His deeded ranch is up by Fools Canyon, but he leases a lot more BLM land to run his cattle.

  “Anyways, he was out checking fence lines on his Bureau of Land Management lease this morning and came across two guys in a rental truck loaded with cactus. He told them to stop, but they didn’t. When they tried to make a run for it, they, like, ended up getting stuck in the middle of the river.”

  Ali thought about her days working in the east. People unfamiliar with the desert southwest might have jumped to an immediate and erroneous conclusion at hearing the term “middle of the river.” If you grew up near the Mississippi or the Missouri rivers, for example, you would most likely assume that someone “stuck” in the middle of any river would be over their head in water and swimming for dear life.

  That wasn’t true for the Hassayampa. As the sheriff had said a day or two ago, “It’s a white horse of a different color.” For one thing, most of the time the riverbed was bone dry. T
here was no water in it—not any. A few times a year, during the summer monsoon season or during winter rainstorms, the river would run for a while. If it rained long enough or hard enough, occasional flash floods coursed downstream, liquifying the sand and filling the entire riverbed with fast-moving water that swept away everything in its path. People in Arizona understood that their very lives depended on heeding warning signs that cautioned, Do Not Enter When Flooded.

  On the other hand, when longtime Arizonans saw the highway sign in Wickenburg that stated, No Fishing from Bridge, they understood that was an in-crowd joke, because there hadn’t been fish in the bed of the Hassayampa for eons.

  In this instance, six weeks or so from the first summer rainstorms, Ali knew that the term “middle of the river” really meant “middle of the sand.” No one would be drowning, but in the heat of the day, if people had ventured into the desert with an insufficient supply of water, they could very well be dying of thirst.

  “Anyways,” Yolanda said again, warming to her story and losing track of her grammar in the process. “Mr. Mitchell chased after them. Once they were stuck, he hauled out his shotgun and held ’em at gunpoint. Then he used his cell phone to call for help.”

  Picturing the action in her head, Ali couldn’t resist allowing herself a tiny smile. In the old days, and probably faced with cattle rustlers rather than cactus rustlers, Mr. Mitchell would have been left on his own to deal with the bad guys. Now, through the magic of cell phones, he could run up the flag and call for help when he was miles away from the nearest landline phone.

  A radio transmission came in from Dispatch and Yolanda jotted down a note. “Okay,” she said. “Got it.” When she finished writing, she handed the note to Ali and then turned to a nearby file drawer, where she retrieved another piece of paper, which turned out to be a map. Using a blue felt-tipped pen, she outlined the route Ali would need to follow.

  “Here’s a detailed map of the area,” Yolanda added, pointing. “Just follow the blue lines. According to Dispatch, they’re right here where this little road crosses the river. The bad guys are in custody, but the deputies are waiting for a tow truck to come drag the rustlers’ rented truck out of the sand.”

  “Good,” Ali said. “If you happen to talk to one of the deputies, you might let them know that I’m on my way.”

  As she started for the door, Yolanda seemed to reconsider. “Maybe you shouldn’t drive there. It’s rough country. What if you get stuck, too?”

  “I have four-wheel drive,” Ali told her. “I can manage.”

  She had to drive almost all the way into Wickenburg before she found the narrow dirt track that led back out to the river and the stalled rental truck. The intersection was easy to find because she arrived at the junction at the same time the summoned tow truck did. All Ali had to do was follow the truck with its red lights flashing, and that’s exactly what she did, keeping back just far enough so her Cayenne wasn’t engulfed in the billowing cloud of dust kicked up by the vehicle.

  The tow truck ran down into a dip and came to a stop on the edge of a trackless desert wasteland. Ali stopped, too. When she did so, a uniformed police officer sauntered up to her SUV. She opened the window and let the early summer heat engulf her.

  “You’ll have to move along,” the officer told her brusquely as she rolled down the window. “You need to go back the way you came. We’ve got an incident playing out here,” he continued. “We can’t have civilians involved.”

  The name tag on his uniform read F. Camacho. Ali had done her homework. That would be Deputy Fernando Camacho, a six-year veteran in the sheriff’s office.

  “I’m not a civilian, Deputy Camacho,” she answered, flashing her own official sheriff’s office name tag in his direction. “I believe we had an appointment earlier. I’m your department’s new public information officer. What’s going on here?”

  The deputy straightened. “Glad to meet you,” he said with obvious insincerity. “Sorry about not letting you know. We had an emergency call out and didn’t have time.”

  That, of course, was a lie. From the information on Yolanda’s note, Ali knew exactly when the call came in. They could have contacted Ali while she was still in Prescott. Traveling between the substation and here they would have had time enough to make a dozen separate calls. The deputies had done this on purpose, to inconvenience Ali and make her look stupid.

  “I guess you’ve been drinking the water, then?” she asked innocently.

  “Water?” Deputy Camacho repeated blankly, looking off across the half-mile-wide expanse of sand. A quarter of a mile away, a U-Haul truck sat mired hubcap-deep in fine, hot sand. “What water are you talking about?”

  “The water in the river,” Ali answered. “According to legend, people who drink water from the Hassayampa never tell the truth again.”

  Deputy Camacho was lying. Ali knew he was lying, and he knew she knew he was lying. As far as evening the score, that was a good place to start. “So how about you tell me what’s going on?” she said.

  Just then, a gnarled old man carrying a shotgun and accompanied by a white-faced blue heeler came walking up to the Cayenne. Sinewy and tough, he didn’t look the part of crime victim. Neither did his equally grizzled dog.

  “Hey, lady,” Richard Mitchell called. “Is this here deputy giving you a hard time?”

  “Not at all,” Ali returned. She gave Deputy Camacho a winning smile. “This looks like Mr. Mitchell himself,” she said, opening her car door and stepping out. “If you don’t mind, I believe I’ll have a word with him.”

  Deputy Camacho did mind, and he looked as though he was about to object. Then, thinking better of it, he backed off.

  “Be my guest,” he said gruffly. “Knock yourself out.”

  CHAPTER 4

  Ali made it back to Prescott by two, in time to jot off a press release about the incident along the Hassayampa. It turned out that the alleged cactus rustlers had warrants and were working for a landscaping company in Phoenix that was helping finish up a cut-rate remodel on a once thriving hotel in downtown Scottsdale. Now under new ownership, some of the hotel’s former reputation remained, but Ali suspected that the contractor’s use of illegal saguaros wasn’t the only corner that had been cut in the makeover process.

  Remind me never to stay there, she told herself, and don’t encourage anyone else to stay there, either.

  In the break room the two baking sheets were empty—empty of rolls but still dirty. Even though there was a kitchen sink only a few steps away, no one had bothered to rinse out the mess. Ali cleaned the trays herself using dish detergent she found under the sink and drying them with a handful of paper towels. Then, for good measure, she wiped down the tables and countertops.

  Her DNA dictated that she leave the kitchen spotless. That’s what her father did for her mother every day before he finished his afternoon shift at the Sugarloaf.

  Ali was rearranging the chairs around the tables when Sheriff Maxwell himself showed up in the break room doorway and leaned against the frame. At five foot ten, Ali had always thought herself tall. Gordon Maxwell made her feel downright petite.

  “You really believe in pitching in, don’t you,” Maxwell observed affably. “When Dave Holman first mentioned you as a candidate for this job, I was afraid you’d turn out to be stuck-up. You’re not.”

  You might consider mentioning that to some of my coworkers, Ali thought.

  “That was a great piece you sent out about the incident down along the Hassayampa. Did any of the media outlets bite on it?”

  “Not so far,” Ali told him, “but it’s early days. They probably have this evening’s broadcasts racked up and ready to go. Maybe tomorrow.”

  “I don’t suppose following up on cactus rustlers was what you thought you’d be doing when you signed on.”

  “No, I didn’t,” Ali agreed, “but I loved meeting Richard Mitchell and his blue heeler wonder dog, Trixie.”

  Sheriff Maxwell grinned. “Ol’ Rich
is one of a kind, all right,” he said. “They don’t make ’em like that anymore. Those guys would have been well advised to pick on someone a little less self-sufficient. They’re lucky he called us. Twenty years ago Rich would have handled it on his own, and the devil take the hindmost.”

  “As in shoot first and call for help later?” Ali asked.

  “You got it.” Then, nodding in the direction of the baking trays, he added, “Were those you mother’s sweet rolls?”

  “Yes,” Ali said.

  “Tell her thanks from me. I helped myself to one before they all disappeared. Pure heaven.”

  “I’ll let Mom know you liked them,” Ali said.

  Ali had headed home to Sedona a little past three-thirty. Once there, she changed into jeans and headed to the library for another session of hitting the books. When it was time for dinner, she ventured into the kitchen. In the fridge she discovered the artfully arranged plate of Caprese salad Leland had left her. The sliced tomatoes were plump and fresh, the mozzarella smooth and creamy, and the fresh basil delightfully tart, especially once they were doused with a generous helping of balsamic vinegar and olive oil. Ali wasn’t sure where in Sedona Leland Brooks managed to find such wonderful produce, but he did so day after day and week after week. For that Ali was incredibly grateful.

  She had settled back in for what she had anticipated to be a long, quiet evening of reading. When her phone rang at nine, she thought it might be Chris or Athena, but caller ID said Restricted. That meant it was more likely to be an aluminum siding salesman.

  “Ms. Reynolds?”

  “Yes.”

  “This is Frances Lawless with Yavapai County Dispatch.”

  Ali felt her heartbeat quicken.

  “There’s a serious house fire burning just south of Camp Verde. Fire crews and deputies have been dispatched to the scene, but Sheriff Maxwell said you should be summoned as well.”