by J. A. Jance
“I’m so sorry to hear that,” Grandma said. “You really loved that dog, didn’t you?”
Peter nodded. “He always slept at the bottom of my bed and kept my feet warm.”
After IHOP they went to Walmart. Kendall was amazed. While she pushed the grocery cart, Grandma Puckett filled it up with all kinds of things—pairs of pants, shirts, socks, and underwear for both of them. They each got two new pairs of shoes, “one for school and one for dress-up,” Grandma Puckett said.
Kendall thought that the word “dress-up” really meant that those were the shoes they should wear to Daddy’s funeral. The same held true for the dress shirt and clip-on tie for Peter and the pretty new dark blue dress for Kendall—the nicest one she ever remembered having. Not only that, they both ended up with brand-new jackets—warm ones. There were other things, too, like new toothbrushes and tubes of toothpaste. Kendall thought this was way better than Christmas.
When they got to the checkout counter, Grandma didn’t complain about how much everything cost. She just got out her credit card, put it in the slot, and pretty soon the receipt came out. Kendall never remembered seeing one quite that long.
“Are you sure we couldn’t come stay with you?” Kendall asked once they were back in the car.
She kept hoping that between breakfast and now Grandma might have changed her mind. Instead, she just shook her head.
“Sorry, Kendall,” Grandma said. “The place where I live is only for old people. You’re too young.”
On the way home from Walmart, they stopped off at a place where Peter could get a haircut and Kendall a trim. Grandma said Peter’s hair was so long that he was starting to look like a girl. When they went back to the house, Mommy wasn’t there. Kendall and Peter helped unload the car. Grandma had them carry all the bags into the kids’ bedroom so she could help them take off the sales tags and put everything away. Instead of doing his share of the work, Peter climbed onto the lower bunk and fell asleep.
When it came time to hang things in the closet, Grandma started taking out the existing items she thought were too small for Kendall to wear. She was right—some of them had been too small on the day Mommy brought them home. But the deeper Grandma went into the closet, the more Kendall worried about what she’d find there, and it didn’t take long for that worry to become a reality.
Grandma Puckett leaned down. When she straightened back up, she was holding the empty peanut butter jar. “What’s this?” she asked with a frown.
“It’s for Peter,” Kendall said.
“Why would Peter need an empty peanut butter jar?”
“To pee in,” Kendall said quietly.
“Why not use the bathroom?”
“It’s for when Randy’s here,” Kendall said. “He gets mad if we come out of our room when he’s here.”
Grandma set the jar down and turned back to the closet. This time she emerged holding the almost empty package of graham crackers along with the bag containing the remainder of the marshmallows. Kendall said nothing.
“Well?” Grandma pressed.
“It’s food, I guess,” Kendall mumbled, staring at the floor.
“Food should be kept in a kitchen cabinet, not in a bedroom closet where it might attract mice or bugs or all kinds of other vermin,” Grandma said. “What’s it doing here?”
“Because . . .” Kendall began. Grandma’s voice had sounded angry, and Kendall was sure she was in trouble.
“Well?” Grandma insisted.
“Because sometimes Mommy forgets about dinner,” Kendall admitted quietly.
“You mean she forgets to feed you?”
Kendall nodded again.
And then something totally unexpected happened. Grandma turned around and returned the marshmallows, graham crackers, and even the peanut butter jar to their original hiding places in the closet exactly as she’d found them. The next thing Kendall knew, Grandma Puckett had pulled her into a fierce hug, holding her so tightly that Kendall could barely breathe.
“I’m so, so sorry,” Grandma whispered in her ear. It sounded like maybe she was crying, but Kendall couldn’t be sure.
“I didn’t raise your mother to be like this, you know,” Grandma said. “I thought your daddy would be a good influence on her—that maybe he could fix her. But he didn’t—couldn’t. What are we going to do about this, Kendall? What on earth can we do?”
Kendall didn’t answer, because she had no idea.
Mommy came home a little while later. She was acting weird, staggering a bit and not exactly talking straight. Kendall had seen her like this before, but usually not in the middle of the day. It was the kind of thing that happened late at night, when the beer was flowing and people—mostly strangers—were out in the kitchen talking and laughing.
Kendall was on her way to the kitchen, but when Grandma and Mommy started arguing, she froze where she was and went no farther.
“How often do you forget to feed the kids dinner?” Grandma demanded.
“What makes you think I don’t feed my kids?” Mommy asked right back. “Who told you a story like that, tattletale Kendall?”
“It doesn’t matter who told me. What matters is whether it’s true. Do you forget to feed them or not?”
“It’s none of your business. You can’t show up at my house and call me a bad mother to my face. You may be my mother, but you’ve got no right to do that, none at all.”
That’s when the front door opened. Kendall held her breath. If it had been anyone else, the doorbell would have rung first, but Randy never used the bell or knocked. He always barged right in as though he owned the place.
He must have heard the sound of raised voices. “What’s going on?” he wanted to know.
“It’s my mother,” Mommy said. “She has nerve enough to come into my household and accuse me of being a bad mother—of not taking care of my kids, of not feeding them.”
“You said that to her?” Randy demanded. “You said that to your own daughter?”
Kendall recognized the menace in his voice because she’d heard it before. She crept back into the room and cowered against Peter’s bunk.
“Yes I did,” Grandma said defiantly. “I not only said it, I meant it. Maddie may be my daughter, but she isn’t a fit mother.”
“Get out of here, you old cow!” Randy bellowed. “You get the hell out of here and don’t come back!”
“Believe me,” Grandma said. “I’m going.”
Huddled next to the bottom bunk, Kendall heard Grandma walk past on her way to the guest room. Minutes later she came back, dragging her Rollaboard. She slammed the door as she left the house, without having exchanged another word with either Mommy or Randy.
A few minutes later, a brokenhearted Kendall climbed onto the bottom bunk next to Peter. With Grandma Puckett also gone now, everything was lost. It would be just the two of them from here on—Kendall and Peter—against everyone else.
After a time, with Peter’s warm body snuggled against hers, Kendall fell asleep, too.
Chapter 23
By the time Beth awakened the next morning, Jenny was already gone, but for the first time in weeks Beth felt rested and ravenously hungry. She went straight to the food court and treated herself to a huge breakfast. She had two back-to-back finals that day. When the second one was over, she felt as though she’d done well, which—considering how miserable the weekend had been—was pretty much miraculous.
She was trudging back to Conover Hall when a text came in on her phone. The phone had been in her pocket with the ringer turned to silent during the exams. She knew that other kids sometimes used their phones to cheat during tests, but Beth didn’t. Feeling the familiar buzz in her pocket, she pulled the phone out—dreading that the incoming text might be from Ron while at the same time hoping that it would be. When she looked at the phone, however, she was surprised to see that the message was from Conrad Milton, a kid in her humanities class. In fact, he had waved at her a few minutes ago as she was leaving
the room after finishing the test. She didn’t know Conrad all that well. During the course of the semester, they’d shared class notes a couple of times, and that was the only reason he was in her contacts list. But when she read his message, she was beyond stunned.
Hey, there, Sweet Betsy from Pike. Thank you for the guided tour. I never knew you were such a hot mama. Care to go out sometime?
Horrified, Beth stood stock-still, as if frozen to the ground, unable to comprehend the words she’d just read. How could Conrad possibly know to call her Sweet Betsy from Pike? And he had seen her “guided tour”? That could only mean that Ron had sent Conrad the photos—the ones that showed her naked body. Feeling as though the phone were suddenly on fire, she pitched it into the nearest snowbank.
The depths of Ron’s betrayal momentarily robbed Beth of the ability to breathe, leaving her close to fainting dead away. As she stood there swaying, an older gentleman, probably a professor of some kind, must have noticed her distress.
“Excuse me, my dear,” he said, approaching her with concern written on his face. “Are you all right? Do you need help?”
Beth shrank away from him with a look of abject terror on her face, as if he were reaching out to drag her into some dark abyss, as though he, too, a complete stranger, had somehow seen her naked.
She turned and raced up the sidewalk and back to Conover Hall, with tears streaming down her cheeks and with her heart hammering in her chest. It was all she could do to make the key work in order to enter the room. Thank God, it was empty. Jenny wasn’t there.
Beth threw herself facedown on the bed and lay there sobbing. Gradually the sobs subsided as the terrible truth dawned. She had defied Ron, and he’d struck back, humiliating her in public in a way that robbed her of every shred of dignity.
How did Ron know Conrad Milton? Were they friends or acquaintances somehow? And how did Ron know that Beth and Conrad were connected? And then she figured it out. It was because of her phone and the contacts list in her phone. Ron was a cybersecurity expert. Somehow he must have gained access to her phone and to the information inside it. So had he sent copies of the video to everyone in her contacts list? To Jenny, even?
And if that were the case, how would Beth ever be able to look anyone she knew in the face without wondering if they’d seen the pictures, too?
For the first time in her life—for the first time ever—Beth Rankin wanted to die. She lay in bed for a long time after her tears finally abated, but she knew she couldn’t stay there. She didn’t want to be in the room when Jenny came back. She didn’t want to face her. She didn’t want to face anyone.
At last Beth stood up. She hadn’t bothered removing either her jacket or her boots when she came in. She simply got off the bed and left. She took nothing with her, not even her purse. Like a wounded animal, she simply fled—first out of the room and then out of the dorm. She had no idea where she was going or what she would do when she got there. She simply knew she was leaving and she wasn’t coming back.
Chapter 24
Jorge Moreno called Joanna before she made it as far as the Tucson city limits. “I’ve just spoken to Lyn Hogan,” he said after introducing himself. “He tells me you’d like to speak to me and that you’re coming to Tucson today.”
“I am,” she answered. “I need to pay a visit to one of my deputies at Banner Medical first, but I could drop by after that if it would be convenient.”
“About two?” Jorge asked. “My office is on Broadway, in a low-rise between Alvernon and Swan.” He gave her an address.
“Two it is,” Joanna said. “See you then.”
When Joanna arrived at Armando’s room, the place was still awash in flowers, but the mood was decidedly less somber than it had been the last time she was there. Armando was actually eating lunch when she came in, and Amy, looking decidedly less stressed, greeted Joanna with a smile.
“You’re looking a lot more chipper than you did on Saturday,” Joanna said to Armando.
He nodded. “This is the first time they’ve given me actual food,” he said. “Chicken noodle soup and red Jell-O may not sound especially appetizing to most people, but it feels like a feast to me.”
“Still no signs of an infection,” Amy put in. “The doctors said that if he stays clear, he may be able to go home early next week.”
Joanna understood that taking Armando home with a colostomy bag would be a challenging issue for everyone concerned, but the fact that he would be going home at all helped make the complexities fade into the background.
“I have some more good news for you,” Joanna announced. “The DPS investigation has concluded. Based on their recommendations, Arlee Jones has declared that you fired in self-defense. That means the shooting is justifiable and you’re in the clear.”
“I may be in the clear, but Leon Hogan is still dead,” Armando said bleakly. “And he’s dead by my hand.”
Joanna understood that, too. She also realized that the guilt of having taken another person’s life was something that would stay with Armando Ruiz for the remainder of his days on earth. She hoped what she said next might lighten that burden, but it wouldn’t erase it—nothing would.
“You may have pulled the trigger, but it’s not your fault,” Joanna said. She went on to explain the M.E.’s findings and the presumption that at the time of the shooting, Leon had been operating under the influence of scopolamine.
“I thought he was drunk out of his mind,” Armando said when she finished.
“He was out of his mind,” Joanna said. “He just wasn’t drunk.”
“So who drugged him, his wife?”
Joanna nodded. “We think she might have come there planning on killing him, but he ended up wresting the gun away from her.”
“Can you prove it?”
“Not so far,” Joanna said.
“So I end up killing the guy for her and getting shot while she gets away with murder?”
Joanna nodded again. “That’s how it looks.”
“I just found out from my friend Katie that the Hogan kids go to my school—to Carmichael,” Amy interjected from her chair in the corner.
“Katie?” Joanna asked.
“Katie Baird,” Amy said. “We both teach second grade. Kendall Hogan is in her class. From what Katie said, it sounds like the situation in the Hogan household is a bit of a mess.”
“More than a bit,” Joanna allowed, but she didn’t say any more than that. She left a few minutes later. Casey Ledford called as Joanna headed back to her car in the parking garage.
“I’ve got news,” Casey said.
Joanna recognized the excitement in her CSI’s voice. “What kind?” she asked.
“After we learned about the scopolamine, I took another look at the contents of Madison Hogan’s purse. It was collected from the crime scene, and I had previously inventoried what was inside it, but this morning I started to wonder about that scopolamine. If it turned up at Leon Hogan’s residence, how did it get there?”
“And?”
“I remembered there was a bottle of over-the-counter eyedrops in the purse. On a hunch I ran an analysis, and guess what? No eyedrops—scopolamine.”
“With Madison’s fingerprints on the bottle, I hope?” Joanna asked.
“You’ve got it,” Casey answered.
“So we might be able to get her on attempted homicide at least.”
“And maybe even more,” Casey said. “Deb’s been talking to one of her pals over at the DEA. They’ve been keeping an eye on Madison’s boyfriend, Randy Williams. He’s suspected of being a small-time drug dealer with delusions of grandeur. He’s in the process of attempting to set up a network with a cartel-related smuggler. The cartel guy is the one the DEA really wants to nail, so they’ve been keeping hands off as far as Randy is concerned. They’re hoping we’ll do the same.”
“They expect us to just leave him alone?” Joanna demanded.
“That’s what it sounds like.”
“I hap
pen to know Eugene Autry, the local DEA agent in charge,” Joanna said. “He’s based right here in Tucson. As soon as I finish up with my next appointment, I’ll be dropping by Gene’s office for a surprise visit.”
She hurried into Jorge Moreno’s office at the stroke of 2:00 p.m. The man who came out to the desk to greet her wore cowboy boots under a suit with a distinctly western cut. Joanna had known attorneys who assumed western attire in order to make a statement. She suspected that as far as Jorge and Lyn Hogan were concerned, they both dressed as cowboys because that’s what they were, born and bred.
“I hope you don’t mind,” Jorge said as he ushered Joanna into a conference room. “Lyn Hogan asked me if he could be a part of what’s being said here, and since he’s paying my fees, that seemed only fair. I told him we’d put him on speaker.”
Having Leon’s father involved meant that Joanna wouldn’t be able to discuss any of what she’d just learned from Casey, but that was all right. She was happy to forge ahead with what she had so far.
“I don’t mind at all,” she said. “I think we’re all on the same page here. My primary concern is for the kids.”
Jorge nodded seriously. “Mine, too,” he said.
Once both Lyn and Izzy Hogan had been added to the mix via speakerphone, Jorge turned to Joanna. “So what do you want to know?” he asked.
“Our understanding is that Leon Hogan retained you to represent him in a custody fight connected to divorcing his wife, Madison.”
Jorge nodded. “He came to me when he discovered that his wife was conducting an affair with someone he thought to be an especially unsavory character.”
“Randy Williams?”
Jorge nodded again. “You’re aware that after Leon married Madison, he went to court and adopted her kids?”
“Yes,” Joanna said, “Peter and Kendall.”
“Leon adored those kids from the start, but after he and Madison married, he started to see a whole other side to the woman.”
“The violence, you mean?”