Tombstone Courage jb-11

by J. A. Jance

  Amy laughed. “Paul Enders, the painter. He’s a costumer really; he only paints for a hobby. We all call him Pauli. This is his house,” she continued. “He’s letting us stay here until this situation gets straightened out. As you’ll soon see, the privacy we’ve enjoyed here has been a real blessing.”

  At the top of the stairs, Amy Baxter turned to the right and led the way down a long corridor to the back of the house.

  “There are better rooms, and Holly could have had any one of them,” Amy said apologetically “but for some strange reason, this is the one she wanted.” Amy stopped in front of a closed door and knocked. “Holly,” she called. “Are you in there? May we come in?”

  Joanna heard no answering response, but Amy went ahead and tentatively twisted the old-brass knob on the door. The knob turned in her hand, and the door shifted open without protest.

  The interior of the room was dark and stiflingly hot compared to the rest of the house, with the look and smell of a sickroom. In the far corner, near tall, drapery-shrouded windows, sat a high backed rocking chair, creaking slowly back and forth.

  “Holly,” Amy said tentatively. “There’s someone here to see you.

  “Tell them to go away,” Holly muttered ‘I don’t want to see anybody. Leave me alone.”

  “It’s Sheriff Brady,” Amy explained. “She came to talk to you about your father.”

  The rocking ceased abruptly. Suddenly, Holly lurched to her feet. Out of a stark, pale face, two deeply troubled eyes stared at Joanna. “Where is he?” Holly demanded. “Tell me where he is. I have to see him. He was supposed to make arrangements for a settlement. He promised. But then he disappeared. No one knows where he is.”

  “I’m afraid your father won’t be able to carry through on any promises,” Joanna said quietly. “He’s dead. He died sometime between Tuesday night and now. They’ll be able to fix the time better once they do the autopsy.”

  “My father dead?” Holly Patterson repeated slowly, sinking back into the chair as though her legs no longer had the capability of supporting her. “He’s dead?”

  “Yes, you see…”

  Holly Patterson doubled over, as with a sudden attack of appendicitis, clutching her abdomen and sobbing. “Nooooooo. He can’t be dead. I won’t let him. I never wanted him dead. Never!”

  Amy Baxter moved forward quickly and knelt beside the chair.

  “It’s okay, Holly. Hush now. Everyone knows it’s not your fault.”

  “Oh, but it is,” Holly groaned. “Don’t you understand? It is my fault. All of it. I didn’t want him dead. I just wanted him to tell me to my face that he was sorry for what he did to me. That’s all. I never should have come back to this terrible place. Never!”

  “Please, Holly,” Amy begged, “don’t take it all on yourself. You didn’t do it.”

  “How did he die?” Holly was asking, her mouth still muffled by her hand. “Please don’t tell me he committed suicide. I can stand anything but that.”

  Joanna could see no sense in pulling punches. Better to let all the bad news out at once and give her a chance to start assimilating it while she had someone like Amy Baxter there to help as needed.

  “We’re investigating his death as a possible homicide,” Joanna answered carefully. “I wanted you to hear that from someone in an official capacity.”

  “You mean he didn’t kill himself then?” Holly asked, suddenly sitting up straight and pulling her hand away from her face. “You mean someone else did it?”

  “That’s the way it looks….

  Holly Patterson let out a long sigh. “Thank God. I couldn’t have stood it if he had done it himself. It would have driven me crazy, but if somebody else did it…”

  “Good girl,” Amy said, rubbing the back of Holly’s neck as if to remove some of the tension. “Let it go. Don’t hold on to it.”

  Holly Patterson closed her eyes and leaned back into the neck rub. “I should go see Mother about this,” she whispered softly. “Mother will know what to do.”

  Amy caught Joanna’s eye, shook her head, and held the fingers of one hand to her lips while she continued massaging Holly’s neck with the other. “You can’t go see your mother, Holly. I’ve already explained that to you. Your mother is dead, remember? She died five years ago. We’ve been over to the cemetery and seen her grave.”

  “But I saw her. The other day in town, remember?”

  “That was your sister, Ivy. She looks just like your mother used to look when you last remembered her.”

  “That can’t be my sister. Ivy’s a little girl. She’s a baby.”

  “Of course she is,” Amy said soothingly. “A little baby. Why don’t you rest awhile now, Holly? When you wake up later, maybe we can make better sense of this.”

  Holly nodded but said nothing. There was a minute or so of silence. By the end of it, Holly was sound asleep.

  Amy turned to Joanna. “I could call Mrs. Gonzoles, but if you don’t mind, would you help me get her back into the bed? She hasn’t been eating right, and she’s barely been sleeping at all during the night. After something like this during the day, though, she’ll nap for hours.”

  Holding Holly Patterson between them, Amy and Joanna wrestled the dozing woman from the chair to the bed, then Joanna followed Amy down both the hall and stairs.

  “What’s wrong with her?” Joanna asked.

  “What isn’t wrong with her is probably a better question,” Amy Baxter said. “It’s just what I was afraid of. Being here has been way too hard on her. You’re looking at a textbook case. Start with a dash of incest, add in a mostly dysfunctional family, stir in some recreational drug use and a fistful of self-loathing, and you end up with a very troubled woman.”

  “Ernie Carpenter is the homicide detective on her father’s case. He may need to talk to her. Do you think she’ll be able to handle answering questions?”

  Amy shrugged. “That’s anybody’s guess. He’s more than welcome to try, but I don’t know how much good it will do. Sometimes she’s better than others. Have him call first to see what kind of shape she’s in.”

  “She acts like she’s on drugs,” Joanna observed thoughtfully.

  Amy Baxter answered with a nod. “Not recently, though. She still suffers from flashbacks, occasional echoes of LSD from her misspent youth.” Amy Baxter and Joanna were standing at the bottom of the stairway with Amy Baxter’s hand still on the polished mahogany banister.

  “Thanks for all the help,” she said.

  “It was no trouble,” Joanna returned.

  “I hope you won’t think me too ungrateful, but I hope you never find out who did it. I’m glad that asshole father of hers is dead, and I’m hoping that whoever killed him gets away scot-free, because, whatever Harold Patterson got, that dirty old man deserved it!”

  “What exactly did he do to her?” Joanna asked reflexively.

  Amy Baxter had no business answering, but she did. “He raped her,” she answered, her words as brittle as shards of ice. “He raped his own daughter from the time she was two years old. So what ever happened to Harold Patterson is fine with me. He may be dead and out of the picture now, but you saw Holly upstairs. She’s an emotional cripple, and she’ll live with the damage he did to her for the rest of her life.”

  Leaving the sheriff to find her own way out, Amy turned and hurried back up the stairs. As Joanna drove out through Cosa Viejo’s swinging iron gates, she was thinking about what Amy had said concerning Holly’s past drug use.

  Was Holly Patterson really having drug-related flashbacks, or were her mental problems some thing else entirely, something more closely related to what had gone haywire with her mother years ago? Had Emily Patterson’s mental instability passed genetically from mother to daughter?

  Actually, from what Joanna personally had seen and heard during the course of the last few days, all the Patterson women seemed to be several levels out of plumb.

  It was only after she had started down Cole Avenue toward
the Warren Cutoff that Joanna remembered what she had forgotten to mention.

  Holly Patterson had been so upset by the news about her father that Joanna had failed to bring up the existence of that other victim.

  What exactly was the connection between those two bodies? Joanna wondered. Surely, more than sheer coincidence had caused both corpses to turn up in the same glory hole. But in order to discover the connection between them, it was necessary to understand the relationship between all the other pieces on the board.

  Joanna could have just left it alone. After all, it was Ernie Carpenter’s case. She could either go sit in her corner office and begin trying to understand next year’s budget, or she could try sticking her nose in where it didn’t necessarily belong.

  At the intersection of Cole Avenue and Arizona Street, it was decision time. If she drove down the Warren Cutoff, when she reached Highway 80, she could either go home or head back to the office Or she could go straight up Cole Avenue and keep right on not minding her own business.

  After only a moment’s hesitation, she switched off her left-turn blinker and headed for Eleanor Lathrop’s favorite haven, Helene’s Salon of Hair and Beauty.

  When Joanna entered the beauty shop, Helen Barco stood stolidly behind the shop’s single chair twisting pink plastic permanent-wave curlers into a client’s hair while the woman handed her individual pieces of tissue-paper wrappers.

  Both women glanced up in surprise as Joanna made her entrance.

  My land, girl!” Helen exclaimed. “Whatever did you do to your face?”

  In her hurry to dress that morning, Joanna had barely glanced in her own mirror. Now, seeing her battered reflection in Helen Barco’s brightly lit vanity, she was startled to see how readily apparent the damage was. Put simply, Sheriff Joanna Brady looked like hell.

  “It’s nothing much,” she said with a shrug. “Just a black eye.”

  “You call that nothing much?” Helen rolled her eyes. “People straight out of the emergency room look better than that. I know you don’t have an appointment, but if you can wait around a few minutes, maybe I could squeeze you in between Mrs. Owens here and my next lady. We should certainly do something about that eye of yours. What would your mother say?”

  “Thanks anyway, Helen,” Joanna answered, biting back a comment that was sure to go straight to her mother. “I really don’t have time today. I came by to ask a favor.”

  “What kind of favor? I’ve already donated a permanent and manicure to the senior citizen’s auction, if that’s what you’re here asking about.”

  “No. It’s nothing like that. You do get People magazine here, don’t you?”

  Helen nodded. “People, Good Housekeeping, and Ladies’ Home Journal. I tried that New Woman for a few months, but my ladies didn’t like it very much. They’re mostly older, you know, and don’t take to some of these newfangled ideas.”

  “Do you keep any of the back issues?”

  “Some. Why?”

  “Do you still happen to have the one with the article about Holly Patterson in it?”

  “Absolutely!” Helen answered. “I wouldn’t let that one out of my sight. It’s not every day that Bisbee gets that kind of coverage, thank the good Lord. Naturally, all the dealers in town sold out every last one of their copies. I was really lucky I had my subscription.”

  “Could I maybe borrow it from you?” Joanna asked. “I never had a chance to read it, and now I think I ought to.”

  “Sure,” Helen said. “As long as you promise to bring it right back. But how come you need to read it now? That was weeks ago. What’s going on?”

  Joanna knew from things her mother had told her over the years that Helen’s was a place where beauty often took a backseat to small-town gossip. It wouldn’t hurt Helen to have a real scoop for a change. It was possible that the useful flow of information might travel in more than one direction. Besides, the next-of-kin notifications had already been completed.

  “We found Harold Patterson,” Joanna said. “He’s dead.”

  “No. Heart attack? Stroke?”

  “We’re not releasing any information on cause of death at the moment,” Joanna replied in what she knew Helen would consider a deliciously tantalizing nonanswer.

  Helen’s eyes widened. “Really? Why, forever more! Who would have thought it! The strain musta been too much for the old duffer’s ticker for him to just up and keel over like that. You wait right here, Joanna. I’ll go get you that magazine.”

  Because flat lots are at a premium in Bisbee, Helen Barco’s house was built on a hill. The shop, built in what was formerly the garage, was in the basement, while the living quarters were upstairs.

  Huffing and out of breath from climbing stairs, Helen returned to the shop a few moments later and handed Joanna the dog-eared issue of the magazine. Written across the front cover in red Magic Marker were the words DO NOT REMOVE.

  “You’re sure you don’t mind if I take this?” Joanna asked.

  “Like I told you before, Joanna, honey,” Helen said. “You can take it wherever you like, just so long as you bring it back. I mean, after all, you’re the sheriff, aren’t you? If you can’t trust the sheriff…” Helen broke off in sudden confusion, thinking no doubt, of Walter V. McFadden who hadn’t been nearly as trustworthy as he appeared. “Well, anyway,” she continued. “I’d sure like to have it back when you finish with it. That issue could end up being a collector’s item someday. You’re positive you won’t let me do something about that face of yours?”

  “No,” Joanna said, heading for the door. “Not today. I’m in too much of a rush.”

  It was well after one by then, and Joanna’s growling stomach was complaining too much to be ignored. She resisted the temptation to go straight back to the department. After all, even the sheriff deserved a lunch break. With as much haste as the posted limits allowed, she hurried out to the High Lonesome, stripped out of her clothing, grabbed one of the world’s shortest showers, and gulped down a peanut-butter-and-jelly sandwich.

  Still eating the last half of the sandwich, she headed for the Cochise County Justice Center dressed in some of her old insurance agency work clothes.

  This business of what to wear and what not to wear was fast becoming a pain in the neck.

  Once at the Sheriff’s Department, she noticed that several news vehicles were parked in front of the building. Driving around back, she pulled into the reserved parking spot marked SHERIFF. It was empty and waiting for her Eagle.

  It would have been nice to use her own private entryway, but no one had as yet given her the push-button code. Instead, she had to buzz before she could be allowed in through the common entryway marked EMPLOYEES ONLY. She walked into the reception area of the back suite of offices just in time to catch Dick Voland railing at the unfortunate Kristin.

  “Don’t ask me what to do with all those reporters out in the lobby. It’s not my problem anymore. Ask Sheriff Brady.”

  “Ask me what?”

  Voland turned the focus of his irritation on her.

  “We’ve got a swarm of killer-bee media out there in the lobby, all of ‘em wanting to know what the hell’s going on. Somebody should have called a press conference.”

  “What a good idea,” Joanna said amiably. “Why don’t you go ahead and do it?”

  “Me?” Dick Voland objected. “Why me?”

  “Why not you? Didn’t you handle media relations back when Walter McFadden was in charge?”

  “Yes, but…”

  “And you can do it again,” Joanna interjected. “With a major story like this, we’re a lot better off having someone experienced controlling that aspect of things. Kristin, call out front. Have them tell the reporters there’ll be a press conference in fifteen minutes. By the way, where’s Ernie? Is he back yet?”

  “He’s in his office,” Kristin put in. “He said he wasn’t to be disturbed. I think he’s working on his paper.”

  “Tell Ernie to come to my office anyway.
It won’t take long, but I want to see him before Chief Deputy Voland’s press conference. I want you there as well, Dick. Before you talk to those reporters, the three of us need to put our heads together.” Without waiting for either a reply or an argument, Joanna headed for the private corner office, the one she knew belonged to the sheriff. She more than half expected to find it still occupied by Dick Voland’s messy paraphernalia, but she was wrong. Overnight the piles of stacked papers and accumulated junk had entirely disappeared. Even the collection of Al Freeman yard signs was gone. The wooden surfaces of the desk, credenza, and coffee table were all polished to a high gloss. The over flowing, freestanding ashtray had been replaced by a heavy, velvet-bottomed marble one that sat in clean and solitary splendor on the upper right hand corner of the desk.

  Joanna paused in the doorway and then turned back to the receptionist’s desk where both Dick Voland and Kristin Marsten still stood motionless as if frozen in place.

  “And, Kristin,” Joanna added, “after you give Ernie my message, I need a supply of yellow pads, pens, and pencils in here.”

  Joanna waited long enough to see whether or not the young woman would move. With a defiant scowl and an extra toss of her big hair, Kristin turned and bent over to use her telephone. “Detective Carpenter,” Joanna heard her say a moment later. “The sheriff wants to see you in her office. Right away.”

  Leaving the door open behind her, Joanna walked over to the desk and sat down in the massive leather chair behind it. The outsized chair was far too big for her. The tall back made her feel dwarfed and inconsequential. The office had the expectant, empty feel of a vacant apartment, but now was no time for Joanna to bring in her meager box of possessions or to think about putting her own personal stamp on the place. That would have to wait.

  Moments later, the miniskirted Kristin flounced into Joanna’s office and unceremoniously dumped a stack of legal pads and three pens on the desk.

  “We’re out of pencils,” she mumbled through a mouthful of gum.