by J. A. Jance
“He realized early on that she often lashed out at the kids, but he had no idea of the real extent of it. When he tried to tell her he thought she was being too hard on them, she turned on him instead.”
“Hence the domestic-violence incidents,” Joanna said.
“Those, but there’s more to it than just that,” Jorge said. “Madison was working as a bartender at a bar when she and Leon first met.”
“The Nite Owl?” Joanna asked.
Jorge opened a file folder that had been lying on the conference table when they entered. He shuffled through several pages. “Yes,” he said. “That’s it—the Nite Owl. At the time Madison told him that she was an occasional marijuana user, but eventually he figured out that her drug use was more serious than occasional—and not limited to marijuana either. He tried talking her into going into rehab. She refused. When Leon found out Madison was carrying on with a boyfriend behind his back while he was at work, that pretty much did it for Leon, especially after he heard rumors that Madison had lost her job and that Randy was pimping her out. Leon was desperate to get away from her, but he was worried sick about leaving Kendall and Peter stuck in that kind of mess.”
Remembering what Deb had learned about Kendall’s bullying situation at school, Joanna felt half sick. The neighborhood kid who’d been teasing her hadn’t been wrong. Kendall’s mother really was a whore—regardless of how you spelled it.
“I advised both Leon and my friend Lyn here that if Leon had any hope of gaining custody of those kids, we couldn’t risk filing for a divorce until we had the goods on Madison. To that end I engaged the services of a private investigator—a Mr. Richard Voland. I believe you and he may have crossed paths at some time in the past.”
Joanna could barely believe her ears. Her former chief deputy had been Leon Hogan’s private eye?
“Yes,” she said aloud. “Dick and I worked together for a number of years.”
“Mr. Voland had been working behind the scenes to create a dossier on Madison Hogan and on her boyfriend, Randy Williams. By last week we had collected enough information about their activities that I thought we could move forward. I had expected to file within the next week or so, but then . . .” Jorge shrugged.
“But then Leon died.”
Jorge nodded.
“So if you were intent on moving forward, you must have thought you had sufficient evidence to prove that Madison was an unfit mother.”
“Not quite,” Jorge said. “We were waiting on one more interview. Leon told us that the next-best person for us to talk to would be his mother-in-law, Jacqueline Puckett. Mr. Voland told me that she’s currently in Sierra Vista and he’s hoping to interview her sometime this afternoon. Depending on the results of that interview, it’s my understanding that Lyn and Izzy here are prepared to go to court and sue for custody of the children.”
Joanna was stunned. Grandparents going to court to declare their former daughter-in-law an unfit mother wasn’t unheard of, but it would almost take an act of God for them to be granted full custody.
“Allegations against Madison are that serious?” Joanna asked.
“In my opinion,” Jorge Moreno said, “the answer to that question is yes. Leon thought she neglected them—that she often left them unsupervised and didn’t attend to their nutritional needs. Leon was the one who saw to it that they were vaccinated so they could enroll in school. Until he came along, neither Peter nor Kendall had ever seen a dentist. Then there was the situation with the dog.”
“What dog?” Joanna asked.
“Leon had a bluetick hound. He loved the dog, but when he moved out, he left the animal with the kids because Peter loved the dog so much. The next time he came to pick up the kids, the dog was gone. The kids told him Coon got hit by a car and died. Leon thought Madison just got rid of it. And when you consider the unsavory characters she brought into the household on a regular basis . . .”
Shaking his head, Jorge fell silent. It was a moment before he spoke again. “Let me ask you a question, Sheriff Brady, and I fully understand if you’re unable to answer, but do you think there’s a chance that Madison Hogan played an active role in what happened to Leon—in the events that led up to his death?”
Suddenly Joanna found herself between a rock and a hard place. Jorge Moreno had been more than accommodating, but he was asking a direct question about what was now an ongoing investigation. She could refuse to answer entirely, or she could hedge. She opted for the latter.
“It’s possible,” she said.
“And would the motive by any chance have had anything to do with the death benefits she expected to receive from Leon’s life insurance?”
“That might be a good bet,” Joanna replied. “We know from questioning one of Leon’s former co-workers that Madison spoke to the employer’s HR department just yesterday inquiring about proceeding with a death claim.”
“Already?” Jorge asked.
“The very next day after Leon’s death.”
That statement was followed by another silence, a longer one this time. Finally Jorge heaved a heartfelt sigh. “I’m so sorry, Lyn,” the attorney said, addressing the Hogans listening in on the speakerphone rather than Joanna. “This is all my fault.”
For a moment a puzzled Joanna looked back and forth between the desk phone and the attorney. “How could that be?” she asked.
“I’m the one who advised Leon to change his beneficiary designation. He asked if he should tell Madison about it. I told him no, that for the time being he should just let that sleeping dog lie. But it would appear I was wrong about that. If he’d told her, Madison would have known she’d have nothing to gain by killing him, and maybe Leon would still be alive.”
Joanna could see that Jorge Moreno was hurting. She wanted to comfort him and to comfort Mr. and Mrs. Hogan as well.
“That might or might not be true, Mr. Moreno,” she said quietly. “Unfortunately, crystal balls are currently in short supply.”
Half an hour after leaving Jorge Moreno’s office, Joanna was seated across the desk from DEA Agent in Charge Eugene Autry. He was a careworn fiftysomething who didn’t seem overjoyed to have the sheriff of Cochise County visiting his office. Aware from other sources that the man had suffered a lifetime’s worth of teasing as a result of his mother’s enduring fan worship of the “Singing Cowboy,” Joanna was kind enough not to pile on.
“What can I do for you, Sheriff Brady?” he asked.
“This is actually a courtesy call,” she said. “One of my homicide investigations is about to intersect with one of your cases, and I wanted to be sure we’re all on the same page.”
“What case would that be?” he asked.
“Randy Williams,” she answered.
She could just as well have set off an M-80 in the middle of his office. The man actually blinked. Eugene Autry would never have made it as a poker player. Too bad for him—Joanna had been playing serious poker for years.
“Obviously, I can’t comment on ongoing cases,” he said, which was in fact an outright admission that there was an ongoing case. “What homicide?” he added a moment later.
“You may have heard about our officer-involved shooting last week,” Joanna said casually, “one in which a man named Leon Hogan was killed in a shoot-out with one of my deputies. The late Mr. Hogan and his estranged wife, Madison, were involved in a contentious divorce. I’ve just come from the divorce attorney’s office. While investigating the wife’s background, a private eye turned up the fact that she has an ongoing relationship with a Mr. Randall J. Williams. He also learned about your behind-the-scenes interest in Mr. Williams’s . . . shall we say . . . activities?”
“Who’s this private investigator?” Autry wanted to know.
Joanna forced herself to stifle a smile, but turnabout was fair play. “As you know,” she repeated, “I can’t comment on ongoing investigations.”
“So why are you here, then?” Autry asked.
“If you want to kee
p your involvement with Williams under wraps, we need to work together. Your call. My investigation is moving forward regardless, and his connections to the drug trade will be out in public for all to see.” With that, Joanna stood up and made as if to leave.
“Wait,” Autry said. “Sit.”
Joanna sat.
Autry took a deep breath. “I’m well aware that Randy Williams is the scum of the earth,” he said, “but in this business occasionally we end up having to work with guys like that.”
“You’re using him as a confidential informant?” Joanna asked.
Autry nodded.
Joanna’s Cochise County included eighty miles of U.S.-Mexico border. She understood that the DEA was trying to plug the holes that allowed illicit drugs to pour across that border. She also understood that having a CI inside the cartel-related drug scene could do a lot to interrupt the flow. But right now two innocent little kids were caught up in this drama as well.
“Okay,” she said. “All cards on the table. I’m aware that Williams has the potential of turning into a valuable asset for you, but I’m here to serve notice. If he is somehow connected to our homicide, we’re going after him full tilt. Do I make myself clear?”
There was a long pause. Finally Eugene nodded his assent. “Do what you have to do, Sheriff Brady,” he said. “Let the chips fall where they may.”
“Fair enough,” Joanna replied, rising to her feet. “Thank you.”
She left his office feeling considerably taller than five-four. She was a small-town sheriff who had just told the feds to back off, and wonder of wonders they had!
Chapter 25
When Jenny finished with her final, she went back to Conover Hall and was relieved to see that Beth wasn’t in the room. She had at least one final that day, maybe two. Jenny didn’t remember how many exactly, but that’s probably where she was. Outside, the weather was clear, yet warm enough that some of the accumulated snow was starting to melt.
With her last final still several days away, Jenny decided that spending some time outside was better than being locked up inside, so she put on riding clothes and headed off to see Maggie. The horse-boarding facility Jenny and several other rodeo-team members utilized for both boarding and training was on the Lazy 8 Ranch, located several miles out of town, partway between Flagstaff and Munds Park. There were barns and stables for boarding, along with both indoor and outdoor arenas for practice. The Lazy 8 was also home to Equine Helpers, a horse-therapy program for special-needs kids. In order to accommodate their activities, during the winter the ranch maintained a network of snowplowed trails that allowed less capable riders to enjoy wintertime riding adventures.
Jenny and Maggie spent the better part of two hours doing barrel-racing practice runs in the indoor arena. At the end of practice, though, sensing that Maggie was restless after being cooped up for so long, Jenny stripped off the saddle and the two of them ventured out into the still-snowy landscape. Giving Maggie her head, the two of them trotted along at a distance-eating gait for close to half an hour.
Jenny loved being out in the snowy quiet with her horse. It was exactly the break she needed from the pressure of finals and the continuing drama with Beth. When it was time to reverse directions, Maggie was ready to go at a full gallop. Only toward the end did Jenny pull the horse back to a cool-down walking pace.
Once in the barn, Jenny was delighted to run into Nick Saunders, her best friend on the rodeo team. Nick and his coal-black gelding, Dexter, were standing outside the horse’s stall, where Nick was giving Dex a thorough grooming. Jenny slipped off Maggie and prepared to brush her down as well.
“How’re you doing, Saras,” Jenny called over Dexter’s back.
“Sponda,” Nick replied with a grin.
Nick, a junior at NAU, hailed from St. George, Utah, originally. His mother, Lorene, was a widow in her early sixties. His father, Marvin, a big-animal vet and once a prizewinning bull rider in his own right, had died of a heart ailment when Nick was a senior in high school. When Nick was offered a rodeo scholarship to NAU, the family jumped at the chance. And no matter where the competitions occurred, you could count on Lorene to be there in her camper with her two feisty Pekingese along to keep her company.
Lorene was not just a fan, she was the team’s volunteer den mother. The door to her RV was always open, and she always had a pot of stew or soup available for hungry team members in need of sustenance. The first time Jenny met Lorene had been over a plateful of spaghetti covered with mouth-watering meat sauce at the table in the RV’s tiny kitchen. In the course of the meal, Jenny and Lorene discovered a bit of common ground—they’d both been involved in Girl Scouts, Lorene as a troop leader and Jenny as a Scout.
By the time dinner ended, they were sitting at the table singing rousing versions of songs they’d learned at troop meetings and camp-outs—“Girl Scouts Together,” “My Hat, It Has Three Corners,” “White Coral Bells,” “Kookaburra Sits in the Old Gum Tree.” Much to their mutual surprise, they both loved the same round, which featured the lyric “Sarasponda, ret, set, set.” By the time Jenny and Lorene finished belting it out together, Nick loved it, too.
Between Nick and Jenny, one of the nonsense words from the song became a traditional greeting between them. It was like a secret handshake, a code none of the other team members had so far been able to decipher.
“Cold enough for you?” Nick asked.
“Better than it was,” Jenny said, slipping down to the ground. “I’m tired of being locked up inside, and so is Maggie.”
“How are finals going?” Nick asked.
“Almost over. One to go—sociology—and that isn’t until Friday.”
“Want to grab a burger on the way home?”
“Sure,” she said, “if you don’t mind waiting until I finish grooming and feeding Maggie.”
He didn’t mind. There was a café in Munds Park that was popular with the rodeo set, and that’s where they went for dinner. It was after dark by the time Jenny got back to Conover Hall. When she stepped into the room, she was surprised that the lights were off and no one was home. That was unlike Beth. She wasn’t someone who hung out with friends. If she wasn’t in class, she was usually in their room. Looking around, Jenny noticed that Beth’s purse was there, so she must not have gone far. Maybe she was just down the hall doing laundry.
Jenny showered and pulled on the pair of sweats she usually wore as pajamas. She settled down on her bed and stared at her class notes for sociology. No matter how hard she tried, nothing seemed to penetrate, because by now a niggle of worry was starting to form in her head. Time slowed to a crawl. Her eyes kept going from her notes to the clock on her bedside table, which was now showing 7:46. Still no Beth. She wouldn’t be doing laundry this long, so where was she? Since her purse was in the room, was it possible she was still in the dorm? Maybe she was really hanging out with friends, but did Beth Rankin have friends? Jenny didn’t know of any.
Jenny’s mind kept returning to how upset Beth had been over the weekend—upset but unwilling or else unable to talk about it. Was it a problem with the boyfriend, or was it part of the continuing problem with her mother? Jenny had no idea about that, either.
Picking up her phone, Jenny dialed Beth’s number. It rang several times before going to voice mail. “Beth here. I’m unable to take your call right now. Please leave a message.”
Jenny did so. “Hey, Beth, I’m back in the room. Where are you? Give me a call.”
Hanging up, Jenny looked around the room again. There was nothing out of the ordinary and there was no sign of any disturbance. Beth’s laptop sat on the desk where it belonged. Except for her down jacket and boots, her clothing all hung in the closet. Her makeup laid out on the counter in their shared bathroom was undisturbed.
Telling herself she was just being silly, Jenny finally gave up trying to study and turned on her small television set, more for the company than to actually watch anything. A cop show was just coming on. Jenny did
n’t watch enough TV these days to know where it was set, what the storyline was, or even who was starring in it, but as the credits rolled, she found herself thinking about her mother.
Years ago her mother had mentioned the abbreviation JDLR—cop shorthand for “just doesn’t look right.”
“Whenever that happens,” Mom had told her daughter, “it’s time to pay attention to your instincts, because if something inside you is telling you something is wrong, maybe it is.”
And that’s what this is, too, Jenny thought. It just doesn’t look right. That’s when she remembered her last conversation with her mother. Mom had said that if Jenny was worried about what was going on with Beth, maybe it was time to reach out to the boyfriend in order to get to the bottom of it.
Over the course of the evening, Jenny had tried Beth’s number several times, always with the same result. Just after nine thirty, she tried again one last time while walking to Beth’s desk. Again there was no answer, and by now Jenny’s small tweak of worry had grown a lot more serious. Maybe something really was wrong. Initially her plan was to log on to Beth’s computer and locate Ron Cameron’s name in the contacts list. But then Jenny remembered something else.
Earlier in the fall, shortly after Beth had purchased her new laptop, she’d been sitting outside one afternoon enjoying the crisp fall weather when her phone had slipped out of her jacket. When she finally noticed that the phone was missing, Jenny had shown her how to use her computer’s Find My Phone app to do just that. A few minutes later, they’d located the missing phone, lying in the grass exactly where it had fallen. Dismissing the idea of talking to Ron, Jenny decided to go looking for the phone instead.
When Beth had first purchased both her phone and her computer all those months ago, she’d been completely inexperienced in their use and had turned to Jenny for help. Jenny had aided her roommate in setting up her devices, including creating accounts and establishing the necessary collection of passwords. Worried about possibly forgetting passwords, Beth—against Jenny’s advice—had written all of them down on a single Post-it, which she kept in the top drawer of the desk.