Ava nodded. “But not well,” she said. “Amos was good friends with the guy I was dating back then, a fellow named John Lassiter. Johnny looked up to Amos, worshipped him practically. Johnny’s father died when he was a kid, and Amos acted like a father to him. When Amos left town—­at least that’s what we thought at the time—­it broke John’s heart. He went completely off the rails. That’s why I broke up with him—­he was drinking too much, fighting, and generally getting into trouble.”

“You said, ‘when Amos left town.’ That makes it sound as though you believed the same thing John did—­that Amos left of his own free will?”

“Wait,” Ava said. “You’ve talked to Johnny? How is he?”

“Mr. Lassiter is fine, as far as I can tell, but getting back to Amos . . .”

“Oh, yes, that’s what Johnny thought and it’s what I thought, too—­that Amos finally had it up to here with Johnny and just took off. Johnny mentioned there had been some kind of quarrel between them just before Amos went away.”

“Do you have any idea what the quarrel was about?”

Ava shook her head. “It was probably about their joint business venture. They collected stuff together, things they found out in the desert and sold to ­people who deal in those kinds of things—­gems and minerals, Indian artifacts, what have you.”

“My guess is they even found some turquoise from time to time,” Brandon suggested.

Ava looked down self-­consciously at the silver and turquoise bracelets dangling on her wrists and at the turquoise-­studded belt buckle that would have put more than a few professional rodeo riders’ buckles to shame. “That, too,” she said. “They always seemed to have plenty of turquoise.”

“This so-­called stuff,” Brandon continued, attempting to put the conversation back on track. “Do you have any idea where they kept it?”

“In a private storage unit inside a warehouse off Aviation Highway. At first Johnny didn’t bother checking on the storage unit because he assumed Amos was off in the desert on what they used to call ‘scavenging expeditions.’ Then, a few days later, Johnny went to the post office to pick up the mail.”

“Post office?”

Ava nodded. “Amos kept a post office box to use for business correspondence. He had a key to the box, and so did Johnny. Johnny picked up the mail and there was a letter from a towing company. It turns out Amos had abandoned his truck in the parking lot of a hotel near the airport, and the hotel had it towed. As soon as Johnny knew about the airport connection, he figured Amos had done a runner. That’s when Johnny and a friend went to the warehouse. It was empty, totally cleaned out.”

“A friend went with him?” Brandon asked. “What friend?”

“His name was Kenneth,” Ava answered. “Ken Mangum. He and Johnny hung out together. They played a lot of pool.”

“Any idea where Kenneth is now?”

She shrugged. “We lost touch a long time ago. Kenneth and Johnny were sort of roughneck guys. I stopped messing around with them when I decided to straighten up and fly right.”

“Let’s go back to the storage unit for a moment. Did you ever go there?”

“A ­couple of times—­before it was empty, not after.”

“You said it was locked. Do you remember what kind of lock?”

“A padlock.”

“One that took a key or was it a combination lock?”

Ava had to think for a moment, frowning before she answered. “I’m pretty sure there was a key.”

Brandon made a note of that. He knew for sure that no keys of any kind—­car, post office, or padlock—­had been found in the vicinity of Amos’s bones. But then, they hadn’t found a vehicle there, either. Chances were that the padlock key had ended up in the same place as the missing car keys.

Brandon examined his notes for a moment.

“Okay, I know Amos and John duked it out. I’ve talked to a number of ­people—­especially folks who were in the bar the night Amos and Johnny had their fight. Several of them seem to be of the opinion that John Lassiter is the guy responsible for Amos’s death. What do you think about that?”

Ava shrugged. “I don’t know, but after Amos disappeared, Johnny was a wreck and totally out of control. Scary, even.”

“What do you mean scary?”

She hesitated a moment before she answered. “He threatened me once,” she said quietly. “That’s why I broke up with him.”

“Threatened you how?”

“With a gun.”

“He had a gun?”

“Lots of ­people have guns,” Ava countered. “I have a gun. It’s no big deal.”

“What kind of gun?”

“I don’t know. Not a big one. A .22 maybe? A pistol, not a revolver.”

Brandon made an effort to contain his reaction. He had made no mention that Amos Warren had been shot, much less shot by someone wielding a small-­caliber weapon. John Lassiter, Amos Warren’s disgruntled former partner, had always been Brandon’s best possible suspect. Now Brandon knew, via a third party, that Lassiter had been in possession of a handgun at the time of the crime. This had to be a key bit of information. Brandon felt it was also important that when Ava had volunteered the information, it had been in regard to something else entirely, at a time when she’d had no hint from Brandon that Amos Warren had been shot to death.

“You’re saying you know the difference between a pistol and a revolver?” Brandon asked.

Ava shot him a withering look. “Of course I know the difference. Just because I’m a blonde doesn’t make me stupid.”

Touché, Brandon thought. Well played.

Ava glanced at her watch. “Look,” she said impatiently. “I have a luncheon engagement, and I’m about to be late. If you have more questions, could we please finish this some other time?”

Brandon took the hint. “Of course,” he said, rising to his feet. “You’ve been a big help. If I could just have a phone number . . .”

She gave him the number and showed him to the door. Brandon walked away feeling downright jubilant. He was getting somewhere. Sheriff Jack DuShane be damned, he was going to solve this case. Not then, Brandon told himself, but maybe now.

With that last thought about the years-­ago investigation and hours after Brandon Walker landed in his bed, he finally fell asleep.

CHAPTER 12

THE NEXT MORNING COYOTE TOOK the beads and went again to the house of Beautiful Girl and her brother. This time Coyote found the girl with her giwho—­her burden basket—­ready to go out into the desert and gather plants. She would not even listen to him. She took her basket and left Ban standing there alone.

When Big Man heard this he was very angry. He went to Wind Man—­Hewel O’odham—­and asked for his help. And so, while Beautiful Girl was alone in the desert, gathering plants, Wind Man came and found her. With a loud whoop, Wind Man gathered the girl up and took her to the top of a very steep mountain that stands all alone in that part of the country—­a mountain the Milgahn call Picacho Peak but the Tohono O’odham call Chewagig Mu’uk, Cloud Peak.

Everyone knows, nawoj, my friend, that Picacho Peak is very small, but it is also very steep, so steep that no one has ever climbed it.

In the evening, Beautiful Girl’s brother returned to the house and found it empty. He waited and worried. Finally he went out into the village and told the ­people that his sister was gone, and the ­people agreed to help him find her.

The next day the ­people followed Beautiful Girl’s tracks out into the desert. They found the place where she had stopped to gather plants, and they found her empty burden basket, but that is where her tracks stopped. The ­people held a council to decide what to do. Coyote came to the council and said that he’d been passing close to Cloud Peak that day and heard the noise of a woman crying. Ban knew that this was very bad trouble because the woman could not climb down.