by J. A. Jance
Thinking I must have dialed the wrong number, I dug the list of Ross Connors’s phone numbers out of my wallet and checked to be sure I hadn’t transposed some of the digits. No such luck. The number I had dialed was correct. I had no idea what was going on with my cell phone now.
Cochise County, Arizona, has to be the black hole of the telecommunications universe, I told myself.
I drove back into town and wandered around until I finally located a pay phone at a Chevron station by the selfsame traffic circle that had given me such fits when I had been trying to reach the sheriff’s office the first time. With the proliferation of cell phones, it seemed like years since I’d been reduced to using an outdoor phone booth. It felt a little weird to be standing there in the open—practically in public—and dialing Ross Connors’s super-secret unlisted phone numbers. Since it was Saturday, I tried the cell phone first. No answer. Then I tried the office and reached a machine. Finally I dialed his home number, where a woman answered after the third or fourth ring. To my eternal delight, she spoke English. “Is Mr. Connors there?” I asked.
“No. He’s out,” she said. “This is his wife, Francine. Who’s calling, please? Can I take a message?”
I recalled Harry I. Ball’s stern admonition. “No messages.”
“Please tell him Beau called,” I said. That seemed innocuous enough. “Tell him I’ll call back later. Any idea when he’ll be home?”
“It’s sunny today,” she said. “He’s playing golf.”
That figured. The rain had cleared up in Seattle and Ross Connors was out having himself a nice Saturday afternoon while J.P. Beaumont—the birthday boy—was stuck spending a very long day in Bisbee, Arizona, being kicked around by a pushy small-town sheriff and her entire department.
In the old days, that kind of feeling-sorry-for-myself misery would have sent me straight to the nearest bar, but the Blue Moon wasn’t calling me. Instead, I decided to stay right where I was and exercise the prepaid phone card the Washington State travel agent had thoughtfully placed in my travel packet. It certainly wasn’t my fault that none of my nearest and dearest could reach me by telephone to wish me many happy returns.
First I talked to Kelly, my daughter. She and her husband live in Ashland, a small town located in southern Oregon. When Kelly dropped out of school and ran away from home mere weeks before her high school graduation, I wouldn’t have bet a plugged nickel that she’d ever go back and finish, especially since she had taken up with a young actor/musician and was pregnant besides. But it turned out marriage and motherhood were good for her. She picked up her GED right after the baby was born. Kelly’s now two years into a bachelor of fine arts program at Southern Oregon University. Not only that, my son-in-law, Jeremy, seems to be a pretty good sort, too—for an actor, that is. At least he’s gainfully employed.
Kelly wished me a happy birthday and told me about her mid-term exams before turning me over to three-year-old Kayla, who spent the next several minutes babbling incoherently to her “Goompa.”
Next I called my newly graduated and only recently gainfully employed son, Scott. He’s a neophyte electronics engineer who lives and works in the Bay Area. He and his girlfriend, Cherisse, are up to their eyeballs in plans for a wedding that is scheduled to take place sometime next spring. As we chatted on the phone, he gave me some of the pertinent wedding details, but I forgot them as soon as he told them to me. As Father of the Groom, I know all I have to do is show up, pay for the rehearsal dinner, and keep my mouth shut. It’s a far better deal than the one you get as Father of the Bride.
Finally, I called Naomi Pepper. If I thought she’d be glad to hear from me, I should have had—as my mother would have said—another think coming. She was distant, to say the least.
“What’s going on?” I asked.
“I did what you said,” she told me.
“What’s that?”
“I suggested to Mother that maybe we should look into an assisted-living sort of arrangement for her. I told her about the one you mentioned, the place up on Queen Anne that takes dogs.”
“And?”
“She hung up on me. She even left the phone off the hook so I couldn’t call her back. I was so worried, I finally got in the car and drove over to check on her, just to make sure she was okay. When I got there, she had a whole line of pill bottles set out on the kitchen counter. She told me that if that was how I felt about it—if I didn’t care for her any more than that—there was no reason for her to go on living. If I hadn’t been there, Beau, I can’t imagine what she might have done.”
I was fairly certain that the pill bottles had been strictly for show. She wouldn’t have done a damned thing, I wanted to say, but Naomi was crying now, and I knew the poor woman had been totally outfoxed and outmaneuvered. As I said before, Naomi’s a nice person; her mother isn’t. There was no need for me to add to Naomi’s misery by telling her so.
“What are you going to do?” I asked.
“The only thing I can do,” Naomi replied shakily. “She’s coming to stay with me. Mother says she’ll call and start getting estimates from moving companies first thing Monday morning. I’ll have to put some of my stuff in storage to make room for hers. You’re not mad at me about this, are you, Beau?”
Heartsick, I thought. And disappointed, but not mad.
“No,” I said. “I’m not mad at all. You have to do what you have to do.”
“Thank you,” she said gratefully. “Thank you so much for saying that.” She seemed to gather herself together. “And now,” she added, “tell me all about your birthday. How’s it going?”
“About as well as can be expected,” I said.
JENNY CAME BACK FROM HER RIDE and headed directly for her room. “Are you going to want dinner?” Butch asked as she passed through the kitchen.
“I’m not hungry.”
“There’s plenty of food in the fridge if you want something later.”
“Okay,” she said.
“What about you?” he asked Joanna.
“I’m not hungry, either,” she said.
“In that case, the cook is taking the night off. We’ll all make do with leftovers.”
Joanna stretched out on the couch and covered her eyes with one hand. She was about to doze off when Cornelia Lester called. It was painful to have to tell the woman that although Joanna’s investigators were making progress on the case, they still had no idea who had murdered Latisha Wall.
“You say she was poisoned?” Cornelia asked in what sounded like disbelief.
“That’s what we believe,” Joanna said.
Cornelia absorbed that information. “What about her paintings?” she asked. “The ones in the gallery. Will I be able to see those anytime soon?”
“I’ll try to make arrangements for you to be allowed inside the gallery,” Joanna said. “But I’m not sure when that will be.”
“In other words,” Cornelia said, “you still haven’t located the gallery owner.”
Cornelia Lester was a stranger who wasn’t a former detective, yet she, too, seemed to be as privy to what was happening inside the Cochise County Sheriff’s Department as J.P. Beaumont was. What would it be like to work in a big city? Sheriff Brady wondered. To be able to do this job in a place where everyone didn’t mind everyone else’s business?
“No,” Joanna had admitted with a sigh. “We still haven’t located Dee Canfield.”
“What if you don’t?”
“If we don’t find her?”
“Or what if you do and she’s dead, too?” Cornelia persisted. “What happens to the paintings then?”
“As far as I know, they belonged to your sister,” Joanna said. “If something unfortunate has happened to Dee Canfield—and I’m certainly not saying it has—then the paintings would, either by will or by law, go to Latisha’s heirs. I’m assuming her heirs would be her family members, but let me remind you, Ms. Lester, that we won’t be able to release them to anyone so long as they’re part of an o
ngoing investigation.”
“Of course not,” Cornelia said. “But I’d still like to see them.”
“I’ll see what I can do.”
“Thank you.”
Joanna put the phone down and had actually fallen asleep before it rang again. This time Butch answered.
“It’s for you,” he said, scowling at the receiver as he handed it over. “Tica Romero.”
“Hello?”
“We just got another 911 call from Naco,” the dispatcher said. “Some kids were playing around in one of the old cavalry barracks down there. They’ve reportedly found a body—a woman’s body. Chief Deputy Montoya and Detective Carbajal are already on their way. Deputy Montoya wanted me to let you know as well.”
“Thanks, Tica,” Joanna said, sitting up and shoving her aching feet back into her shoes. “I’ll be right there.”
Joanna went into the bedroom and slipped on her soft body armor as well as her weapons. Once she was dressed she stopped by Jenny’s room. The door was ajar. When she peeked in, she saw Jenny and Tigger curled up together on the bottom bunk, both of them sound asleep.
Leaving them be, Joanna returned to the kitchen where Butch was at work on his house file.
“Duty calls,” she said when she bent over to collect a good-bye kiss.”
“Don’t say I didn’t tell you so,” Butch said, but Joanna was relieved to see that he was smiling.
“I won’t,” she said.
I HAD HUNG UP after talking with Naomi and was wondering what to do next. It sounded like the Naomi Pepper door in my life was about to be slammed shut in my face. It came as no surprise that I immediately went back to thinking about Anne Corley.
I recognized I’d gone slinking off to Bisbee, Arizona, without mentioning it to my friend Ralph Ames. If I had been willing to ask him questions about Anne Rowland Corley’s history, I’m sure he could have given me answers, chapter and verse. As her attorney, he had known everything about her. Well, almost everything.
The problem with asking Ralph about Anne is that he knew her too well. Not only that, he had cared for her almost as much as I had. Ralph and I are friends, good friends, so whatever he might tell me would automatically go through those two distinctly separate filtering processes. I had no doubt that Ralph would tell me the truth—up to a point—but I suspected he might leave out a detail or two, if only to spare my feelings.
I was wavering between calling him and not, when I heard a siren. I looked up as a patrol car came racing up to the traffic circle from Highway 80. I’m always conscious of cop cars. It’s something I notice wherever I go. While in town, I had spotted several city of Bisbee patrol cars. They were white with a blue shield on the door. The fast-moving Crown Victoria making its way around the traffic circle sported a gold star on the door. That meant it belonged to the Cochise County Sheriff’s Department.
I watched it go and wondered about it, but then I heard a second siren coming from the direction of Old Bisbee. This one was a cumbersome Ford Econoline van, but the same star was emblazoned on the outside. Something was up, something serious. The sheriff’s department was being summoned en masse.
Should I follow or not? I wondered.
Then, barely seconds later, a third vehicle came along—this one a second Crown Victoria. It followed the same path as the first one. As it slowed to negotiate the curve of the circle, I caught a glimpse of bright red hair behind the wheel. This Crown Vic was being driven by Sheriff Brady herself. Whatever had happened was serious enough to summon her away from her family emergency. That did it. Moments later I was in the Sportage and trying to catch up.
Of course, there was never any question that the underpowered Sportage would catch up. The best I could hope for was to keep the Crown Vic in sight. It rounded the traffic circle and took off in what I judged to be a southwesterly direction. As I turned off the traffic circle myself, I thought at first that I’d lost her. Then, after coming through two subdivisions, past a mysterious no-visible-reason stoplight and through what looked like a genuine slum, I caught sight of her again.
From what I could tell, Bisbee is made up of little separate knots of tumbledown buildings strung together by strips of failing blacktop. In between are big chunks of undeveloped desert. By the time Sheriff Brady made it to the next little burb, I had closed some of the distance between us. Signaling for a left-hand turn, she paused at yet another traffic light. That slight delay gave me time enough to draw even nearer.
I, of course, had to stop at the light, too, and wait for what seemed an interminable length of time. Eventually, though, when the light changed, I could still see Joanna Brady’s car, speeding away on a straight downhill stretch. We seemed to be headed toward a solitary mountain that rose up in front of us some distance away.
Going downhill, the Sportage did a little better. After a few more little pieces of town, we were in desert again. What I wouldn’t have given to be driving my 928 about then. Barring that, it would have helped to have a police radio with me. At least I would have had some idea what was happening.
The next time the Crown Vic made a turn it was onto a smaller road that bordered a golf course. I guess I was surprised to see a golf course sitting there like a little emerald-green oasis in the middle of an otherwise unremittingly brown desert. There was a marked golf-cart crossing at the entrance. Naturally I had to stop and wait for not one but two golf carts to dawdle their way into the small but jam-packed RV park that faced the course. In the process I really did lose sight of Joanna’s Crown Vic.
Cursing under my breath, I drove to the far end of the course and looked around. Still I saw nothing. Then I stopped the car, got out, and listened.
The place was quiet. At first all I heard was a stiff breeze blowing from the west. But then, carried on by the wind, I heard the faint but familiar chatter from a nearby police radio. Even if the radio wasn’t Sheriff Brady’s, she wouldn’t be far from the one I was hearing.
I got back into the Sportage and drove. I roamed through several blocks of gravel-topped streets where a series of very old wooden and red-dirt buildings seemed intent on melting back into the desert. I found what I was looking for when I came to where a patrol car with flashing lights was parked astride a red-dirt trail. The officer signaled for me to stop. I pulled up next to a big bony dog who lay beside the road, unconcernedly observing the action. His shaggy black coat was tinged red by a layer of dust. The officer, who was now engaged in putting out a string of flares, booted the dog out of the way. Shaking off a cloud of dust, the dog sauntered off.
With the dog gone, the scowling deputy turned his illtempered gaze on me. “Sorry, buddy,” he said. “This is a crime scene. No unauthorized personnel allowed beyond this point.”
“My name’s Beaumont,” I said, passing him my badge. “Special Investigator Beaumont. It’s okay,” I added. “Sheriff Brady knows I’m here.”
He squinted at the badge and compared my face to the picture on my ID. “All right, then,” he said. “Pull over to one side so your vehicle’s not blocking emergency access.”
Poor guy, I thought, feeling almost guilty as I followed his instructions. She’ll have his butt for letting me through.
I decided my best course of action was simply to act as though I belonged. I left the car with the keys in it. Mimicking the dog’s unconcerned attitude, I sauntered past the deputy who, by then, was busy turning someone else away. I walked through several blocks of what looked like old-time military barracks. And I do mean old. The place came complete with a long, dilapidated building that had clearly been a stable. It took a few minutes for me to realize that I hadn’t wandered into a moldering Western movie set. This was truly the genuine article—an old U.S. Cavalry station.
By then I could see Sheriff Brady. She stood in a huddle with Frank Montoya and a plainclothes guy I hadn’t seen before.
She caught sight of me while I was still fifty feet away. Breaking out of the huddle, she marched toward me, furious and practically br
eathing fire.
“What have we got?” I asked casually, thinking that my well-placed “we” might mollify her just a little.
It didn’t. “What the hell are you doing here?” she demanded.
I expect women to yell when they’re upset. That’s what I’m used to, anyway—ranting and raving, if not outright screaming. That wasn’t Joanna Brady’s style. She barely whispered her question, but the effect was the same.
“Look,” I said reasonably, “I’m trying to do my job. Your deputy back there told me there’s been another homicide. I thought maybe it might have something to do with those two missing—”
“Get out!” she ordered.
“But Sheriff Brady, I thought we were supposed to be working together on—”
“I said, ‘Get out!’ and I meant it.”
“I just—”
“You just nothing! Go!”
More officers were showing up by then, and I could see she wasn’t going to change her mind. So I left. I put my tail between my legs and beat it back to the Sportage. A woman wearing golf course duds was chatting with the unfortunate deputy. No one could have overheard what Sheriff Brady was saying to me, but her hand gestures had spoken volumes. By then the deputy had figured out that he had made a potentially career-stopping mistake in letting me through. He shot me a disparaging look as I passed, but I ignored it. What did he expect me to do? Apologize?
I had folded myself back into the Sportage and was wondering what to do next when somebody tapped on my window. When I rolled it down, the lady in the golf clothes, who wore her blond hair in a wild frizz of curls, gave me a bright smile.
“Yes?” I said.
She reached in through the opened window and handed me a card. “Marliss Shackleford,” the card said. “Columnist. The Bisbee Bee.”
“Glad to make your acquaintance,” she said, batting her eyes.
Under normal circumstances, I wouldn’t be caught dead talking to a reporter. But I was currently at war with Sheriff Joanna Brady. That meant all bets were off.