The Mosaic Murder. Lonni Lees

      BORGO PRESS BOOKS BY LONNI LEES

      Crawlspace and Other Dark Stories

      Deranged: A Novel of Horror

      The Mosaic Murder: A Maggie Reardon Mystery Novel

      COPYRIGHT INFORMATION

      Copyright © 2012 by Lonni Lees

      Published by Wildside Press LLC

      www.wildsidebooks.com

      DEDICATION

      For all the cops at all the police stations

       who put their lives on the line every day.

      CHAPTER ONE

      THE BURNING SKY

      Detective Maggie Reardon holstered her sidearm as she walked out of the locker room and into the hallway of the Tucson Arizona Police Department. Her short auburn hair spiked over her eyebrows threatening to stab her in the eyes, but trips to the beauty shop weren’t on her to-do list. There were more important things and a quick snip in front of the bathroom mirror served her just fine. It was quick, it was free, and it got the job done. Self-nurturing wasn’t in her vocabulary.

      A fellow cop passed her as she walked down the hall, accompanied by a young rookie she hadn’t seen before. He looked more like a high school kid than someone capable of protecting anyone, but looks could be deceiving. They could actually work to one’s advantage, giving an unexpected edge. The rookie gave her a double-take as they passed, turned and gave her a wink. She ignored him, but as they continued their walk in the other direction she overheard the seasoned cop comment to the kid under his breath.

      “Don’t let that cute turned-up nose and perfect mouth fool you. That little mick stings like a scorpion,” said Jerry Montana to the rookie beside him.

      “I can hear you, Jerry,” said Maggie.

      Hah, you reject one person’s advances and pretty soon they think they’ve got you pegged. She had her own rules and they served her well. No romantic involvement in the workplace, that was rule number one, especially with some married cop on the prowl like that jerk Jerry had been. At least he’d taken the hint and laid off. She gave him credit for that much, even if he had said some unkind things about her around the locker room. They were worse than teenagers. Well, let them think what they want. Life was complicated enough.

      She spat on her hand and shoved the unruly red spikes from her eyes as she exited the door and walked across the parking lot.

      It was going to be another triple-digit day.

      Maggie walked across the blistering pavement, opened the door to her car and slid in. The steering wheel was hot beneath her fingers and she took a deep breath. She wasn’t much for introspection, but it had been two years since her husband divorced her and two weeks since her last boyfriend, Marty, had yelled “uncle.” A part of her was relieved, but she still wondered how much of it was her own doing. She pushed the thought away. It was easier to focus on her job. And more satisfying. Maybe that was part of the problem. Her job came first and the men in her life came in second. A really bad second. If she wasn’t going to pamper herself she certainly wasn’t going to pamper some man. She wouldn’t baby-sit nor would she morph into the image of what they thought she should to be. If they didn’t get it, then they didn’t get it. And there were warning signs with her latest ex. Alarms rang that she’d refused to hear. Had she really been that desperate? Enough thinking on that subject, she thought with a dismissive shrug. Some people were meant to fly solo. She turned the key in the ignition, revved the engine, threw it into gear and edged her way into the traffic on Congress Street.

      Even in this heat things didn’t slow down. You’d think people would be too tired to raise hell but the escalating temperatures just shortened their tempers and quickened the speed of their trigger fingers. It didn’t take much to set them off, and with luck it just ended with a domestic disturbance call or a black eye and some bruises. Sometimes it ended with a dead body and a free ride to jail.

      The health nuts still rode their bikes up Gates Pass, slowing to a crawl the cars unable to pass them along the narrow road, oblivious to their surroundings and the honking horns. Hikers still challenged the burning desert, occasionally falling off a cliff or getting bitten by a rattler or stumbling over the corpse of an illegal. Sometimes one of those corpses might have a tell-tale bullet hole, but usually they just died of heat and exhaustion. Instead of reaching the promised land they ended up in the morgue, unclaimed and unidentified.

      * * * *

      Tall saguaro cacti stood like sentinels, arms reaching upward and outward, as if their prickly appendages protected their domain from the sun, the solitude, and the passage of time. The floor of the Arizona-Sonoran desert cringed under the late June blistering heat. It’s surface wore a myriad of cracks like the skin of an old Mexican woman, ravaged by time and indifference. As the late afternoon temperature rose to 108 degrees, lizards hid under rocks, snakes found refuge in stolen burrows, all was silent save for the whoosh and flap of vultures and hawks whose keen eyes scavenged the unforgiving landscape below for a scurrying rabbit or rodent. The desert was a brutal place that held little mercy, but the tough adapted, survived, and even flourished. Like the mythical phoenix rising from the ashes, come spring plants would flower and mesquite trees bloom, as would the blue palo verde trees before dropping their edible beans to the dry earth. If one took the time to stop and look, they would see that what, on the surface, appeared to be a long-forgotten graveyard teemed with life and promise.

      In the distance, the tall buildings of Tucson rose toward a smoke-filled sky. The ash from distance wild fires floated across the landscape, hiding the outline of the Catalina mountains to the north and the Rincon mountains to the east and covering the landscape like a dirty blanket of Los Angeles smog. The wind to the south stirred and spread the flames, devouring miles of brush and any buildings that stood in its path. Prayers for the welcome rains of the summer monsoon went unanswered.

      The Mosaic Gallery nestled among old Victorian houses and ramshackle commercial buildings in the heart of Tucson. The large, arched adobe entry that led to the gallery was a virtual canvas of tiles, some handmade by local artists, imbedded alongside shards of broken glass and ceramic and shiny little fragments of shattered dishes. The tiled archway was a group effort, anyone adding a found piece or two as the mood struck them. The result was both chaotic and beautiful. A woman in her forties squatted at the arch like a bullfrog, a small bucket of broken tiles at her side. One by one, she pressed them into the wet plaster with blistered hands. She wiped the perspiration from her face with the back of her arm and exhaled a disgruntled sigh. Adrian Velikson was a short woman, barely 5’ 2”, and nearly as wide as she was tall. She was masculine and sturdy and wore a determined scowl and a buzz-cut.

      Beyond the archway a cobbled walkway led to the building, crowned in Spanish tile, with a second story addition at the rear with a separate entrance to its private quarters. To the right of the walkway was a small area where two people stood holding their rakes, shaded from the scorching late afternoon sun by two gnarled mesquite trees. Rocco La Crosse cursed under his breath as he raked another huge pile of tiny leaves and lifted them into the trash barrel.

      “I swear, these things never stop dropping,” he complained as he raked around a large metal sculpture. “Those trees shed worse than a Dalmatian dog.” He raked around the foot of a statue that stood as tall as a full grown man, a welded hodgepodge of found metal, ranging from car parts to plumbing fixtures to an old metal bicycle wheel that served as its face. The sculpture was his handiwork, as hard and rough looking as Rocco himself. He was a large man, bulky arms tattooed from fingertips to shoulder, exposed by his wife beater sleeveless tee. A scruffy dark beard nearly hid his gentle smile while bushy eyebrows framed his twinkling eyes. His pot belly was hard as granite and jutted over the leather tooled belt that held up his jeans. A silver earring dangled from one ear. His dark hair was pulled back into a ponytail at the nape of his neck, damp from perspiration and matted with dust.

      “We’re almost done,” said Barbara Atwell. “It has to look good for tonight’s