The Territory (Josie Gray Mysteries #1)(27)
“Here.”
“Don’t you work at the library?”
“Not yesterday. I was home sick.”
“Did you go to the doctor, talk to anyone throughout the day who can verify your whereabouts?”
“Nope.”
Josie stood from the couch and considered her a moment. “I’ll give you some advice from someone who grew up with a difficult parent. You don’t need to prove anything to anyone. It took me a long time to realize that, for the most part, people don’t judge me based upon my mother’s actions. I have no control over her, and I don’t owe anyone an explanation for her actions.”
The girl’s expression faltered for the first time. “You get my name, right? He named me for a gun. What kind of father names a newborn baby after a gun?”
Josie could think of no adequate response.
“I was nothing but a nuisance to him growing up. I didn’t kill my father, but I’m not going to pretend I’m sad he’s dead.”
FIVE
Dawn came slowly with the sun hidden behind a thick wall of clouds. The gray sky faded into the desert floor with no horizon line. Looking out her kitchen window that morning, Josie thought the day could have passed for January instead of mid-July. Clouds billowed around Chimiso Peak, causing the slow sloping mountain to appear massive. Josie let her gaze drift from the window to the small framed black-and-white photograph sitting on the kitchen counter: the only picture she had of her family. The photo was taken on a boat, with her mom and dad sitting on the backseat, Josie sitting on her father’s lap, both his hands resting on her shoulders. All three smiled widely at the camera, squinting into the sun. Josie couldn’t remember the day, but she loved the idea that she had once been part of a happy family.
Her father had been shot during a routine traffic stop after just five years as a trooper with the Indiana State Police. Josie had been eight. At twenty-seven, her mom had lost her protector and provider. She never took over that role herself.
Josie picked the photo up and placed it facedown in the kitchen drawer. For reasons she couldn’t explain, she didn’t want her mother coming to her home and seeing the picture on display. She dreaded the visit but had resigned herself to the fact that it would happen.
Josie twisted the can opener and poured out half a can of peaches into a bowl. As she ate her breakfast standing at the counter, she opened her cell phone and dialed Macon Drench, got him out of bed, and asked if she could stop by his home on her way to work.
Josie used her cell phone to clock in with Lou and drove the back roads past the mudflats, a long-ago dried-up lake bed that turned to mud during the summer monsoon season, then through the craggy Chinati Mountain pass north of town. The mountains in Arroyo County appeared larger and more imposing because the land between them was completely flat, with only spare sections of native grass and occasional patches of trees and scrub brush. The land looked to Josie as if a giant mountain range had split and separated, like the continental drift on a smaller scale.
Drench’s home sat at the base of the mountains and was surrounded on either side by ponderosa and pi?on pines. The steel and glass house was made up of three rectangular boxes stacked haphazardly on top of one another, extending up the side of the mountain. The excavation work alone had cost half a million dollars because of the equipment trucked in from El Paso for months on end. But the final effect was stunning, and among the pine trees, the villa could have passed for a home in Aspen, Colorado. Josie was looking forward to seeing the house. She’d heard stories but never been inside.
She parked her jeep in a spot sheltered in the pines and saw Drench standing beside the reflecting pool in front of his home. A formidable six foot five in cowboy hat and boots, often sporting leather chaps, he was dwarfed by his monstrous house.
“How do, Chief?” Drench called.
He had the ability to make a slight acquaintance feel like an old friend. Josie had talked with him on a few law-related matters through the years but had never felt intimidated by his wealth or position as the town’s founder.
She made her way around the granite boulders that had been dropped along the front walkway to look like a rockslide. The reflecting pool was surrounded by smooth black granite slabs flecked with white and gold that caught the light despite the cloudy day.
“Sorry to wake you this morning,” she said.
Drench waved her inside. “No worry. Come on in. Haven’t even had my coffee yet.”
Josie followed Drench into a vast minimalist space constructed primarily of concrete, glass, and steel. The couches were concrete slabs covered in gray and blue cushions. The space looked cold and uncomfortable, like she had fallen through a crag in an iceberg.
Drench noticed her look and smiled wryly. “Have you ever met my wife?”
“No, sir.”
“This is her floor.” He looked around the room with a wry smile. “She’s a fine woman, but a little chilly.”
Drench walked toward an angular stairway consisting of wide slabs of concrete that twisted up to a second floor; the middle box that was visible from the road. Thick floor-to-ceiling windows surrounded the room, large fur rugs were scattered about the space, and overstuffed black leather couches and armchairs encircled a bar and a fireplace on the other end of the room. Drench walked to the bar, where he poured two cups of coffee from a carafe.