Desert Run Read Free Page A

him.” I gestured toward Lindsey, who was staring at the car salesman as if he’d lost his mind. “Ask Lindsey. She interacted with Ernst more than anyone.”
    As much as Kryzinski wanted to stay and question me further, his own professionalism dictated he do otherwise. After telling me to leave the homicide investigation to the Scottsdale PD, he asked me to come into the station later that afternoon and make a full statement. When I promised I would, he walked over to question Lindsey, the Journal reporter hot on his heels.
    While we’d been talking, the uniformed officers had finished sealing off the perimeter, but that didn’t stop one neighborhood looky-loo from ducking under the bright yellow crime tape and swiping a handful of gravel from Ernst’s desert landscaping. Apparently he felt that Death was a celebrity, too. The man’s efforts went for naught when a nearby cop made him toss his treasure, then ordered him away. Grumbling, the man faded into the crowd.
    â€œYou a movie star, honey? You look awful familiar.” I turned to see an elderly woman, her back bent almost into an “L” as she leaned on her cane. She might have been pretty once, but now her skin sagged from her cheeks and chin, and her varicosed legs appeared too thin to support her body.
    I shook my head. “No, ma’am, just a private detective.”
    She cocked her head and stared at me through thick bifocals. “I remember now. You’re Lena Jones. You were on TV a couple of months ago when you saved some woman from burning alive.”
    That case, which involved the death of a Scottsdale publisher, still bothered me, so I changed the subject. “Did you see anything suspicious last night?” Experience had taught me that the elderly, for all their physical problems, could be excellent observers.
    â€œYou could say that.”
    At that point I should probably have directed her to Kryzinski or one of the detectives, but my curiosity trumped my willingness to follow orders. “Why don’t you tell me about it, Mrs…”
    She limped closer. “I’m Carol Hillman, dear. I live right next door to the Kraut and I always sleep with my window open. Before you start to lecture me, let me reassure you there’s bars on the window, so it’s safe enough. Anyway, around two this morning, a woman started banging on his door and the racket woke me up. She was a redhead, almost as pretty as you, but she dressed, well, cheap. Tight miniskirt, tiny bodice top. Implants.”
    Kraut? Deciding she might have lost a family member overseas during WWII, I didn’t comment on her use of a pejorative term you almost didn’t hear any more. However, I also doubted that this myopic woman could see whether someone had implants at a distance of twenty-five feet, especially in the wee hours of the morning. “You are very observant, Mrs. Hillman.”
    She frowned. “Don’t condescend to me, young lady. The porch light was on and those implants were real bazookas. A blind man couldn’t miss them, not that he’d want to.”
    Properly chastised, I apologized. “You should tell one of the detectives about this. I’m not part of the investigation.”
    â€œI’m telling you. After the Kraut—we weren’t on first-name terms, and I’ll be damned before I ever call him Das Kapitan like he wanted everyone to—after the Kraut let the woman in, things were pretty quiet for a while, so I started drifting back to sleep. But all at once I heard yelling, most of it from her, something about him being responsible for everything.”
    â€œYou heard all this?”
    The frown again. “Didn’t I just tell you I sleep with the windows open? So did the Kraut. Difference is, he didn’t have any bars. It’s a wonder the idiot wasn’t murdered long before now.”
    An interesting thing for her to say. The memory of Ernst’s