J P Beaumont 16 - Joanna Brady 10 - Partner In Crime (v5.0)

by J. A. Jance

  “Once,” he said. “To feed Tigger and let him out. Other than that, I haven’t seen her.”

  “Did she eat dinner?”

  “Nope.”

  “Her light’s still on,” Joanna said. “Maybe I should go talk to her.”

  “Good idea,” Butch said. “You can try, anyway.”

  Hoping Jenny might be asleep, Joanna opened the door without knocking. Inside the room, Jenny lay on the bottom bunk, one arm wrapped tightly around Tigger, who was curled up next to her. Tigger thumped his tail when Joanna first entered the room, but he didn’t try to slink off the bed, where, under normal circumstances, he wasn’t allowed.

  “You awake?” Joanna asked, sinking into the creaking rocker next to the bed.

  “I fell asleep this afternoon,” Jenny said. “Now I can’t sleep. I’m lying here, thinking.”

  “About Sadie?”

  Jenny nodded. “She was just always here, Mom. I never thought she’d go away. She never seemed sick. She never acted sick.”

  “That’s the good thing about dogs,” Joanna said. “They don’t complain. The bad thing is, they can’t tell us what’s wrong with them, either. And they don’t live forever, Jen. What’s important is what you said this afternoon. We loved Sadie and took care of her while she was here with us. Now we have to let her go. And you were wonderful with her, sweetie. No one could have done more.”

  “Really?” Jenny asked.

  “Really.”

  There was a long pause. When Jenny said nothing, Joanna finally asked, “Are you hungry? Would you like me to fix you something?”

  Jenny shook her head. “No, thanks,” she said.

  For a time after that the only sound in the room was the creaking of Butch’s grandmother’s rocking chair. Jenny broke the long silence.

  “I think Tigger knows what happened—that Sadie’s gone and she isn’t coming back. Somebody told me that dogs don’t have feelings like we do—that they don’t grieve or feel sorry for themselves or anything. Do you think that’s true?”

  Joanna studied Tigger, who had yet to move anything other than his tail and his dark, soulful eyes. The usually lively dog was mysteriously still, as quiet as Joanna had ever seen him. If he wasn’t grieving, he was doing a good imitation.

  “I’m sure he does know something’s wrong,” Joanna said. “Maybe he’s simply responding to your unhappiness, but I believe he understands.”

  “I think so, too,” Jenny said. “He doesn’t usually like to cuddle.”

  Neither do you, Joanna thought.

  That was followed by yet another silence. At last Joanna sighed and checked her watch. It was after midnight. “All right, then,” she said. “If you’re not hungry, I guess I’ll go to bed.”

  She got as far as the door before Jenny stopped her. “Mom?”

  “What?”

  “I think I know what I want to be when I grow up.”

  Joanna’s heart lurched, grateful for this small connection with her grieving daughter. “What?” she asked, turning back.

  “A veterinarian,” Jenny replied. “Just like Dr. Ross. She couldn’t fix Sadie—she couldn’t make her better—but she was really nice to Sadie and to me, too. It was like, well, she really cared. Know what I mean?”

  “Yes.” Joanna returned to the bed and perched on the edge of it, close enough that she could rub Tigger’s ears. “I know exactly what you mean, Jen,” she said. “The way you love animals, I’m sure you’ll be a terrific vet.”

  “Is it hard?” Jenny asked.

  “Every job has hard things and good things about it,” Joanna said. “I’d hate to have to put a sick animal down and then try to comfort the owner.”

  “How long do you have to go to school?”

  “To be a vet? A long time. First you have to graduate from college, then it’s just like going to medical school. To get in, you have to earn top grades in math and science, chemistry especially.”

  “Do you think I can do it?”

  “You’re a very smart girl, sweetie. If you set your mind to it, you can do anything you want.”

  AT A QUARTER TO TEN the next morning, as Butch, Jenny, and Joanna were ready to walk out the door for church, the telephone rang. “Here we go again,” Butch grumbled, handing Joanna the receiver. “It’s Lupe Alvarez,” he said. “According to her, it’s urgent.”

  “What is it?” Joanna asked.

  “There’s a lady here in the lobby,” Lupe replied. “Her name is Serenity Granger. She’s Deidre Canfield’s daughter. The ME’s office had the Cheyenne Police Department contact her last night. She wants to talk to you right away.”

  “All right,” Joanna agreed. “I’ll be there as soon as I can.” When she turned to Butch, he was shaking his head. “Sorry,” she told him. “You and Jenny go on without me. I’ll join you as soon as I can.”

  “I won’t hold my breath,” he said.

  While Butch and Jenny drove away in the Subaru, Joanna opted for her Civvie. Ten minutes later she entered her office through the back door. Once at her desk, she called out to the lobby. “Okay, Lupe,” she said. “I’m here. You can bring Ms. Granger back now.”

  Knowing Dee Canfield, Joanna was surprised by her first glimpse of Serenity Granger. She was the exact antithesis of her mother’s tie-dyed, let-it-all-hang-out splendor. Serenity, perhaps a few years older than Joanna, was tall and pencil-thin. She wore a business suit—the kind of smart, above-the-knee tailored model favored by the current crop of television heroines. The charcoal pin-striped outfit was complemented by matching two-inch gray sling-back pumps with an elegant Italian pedigree.

  Joanna realized that Serenity Granger must have traveled most of the night in order to make it from Cheyenne, Wyoming, to Bisbee, Arizona, by ten o’clock in the morning. The woman should have looked wrinkled and travel-worn, but she didn’t. The suit showed no trace of unwanted creases. The mass of bleached-blond curls that framed a somber face was in perfect order. Only her makeup, which had no doubt started out as perfection itself, was beginning to show a few ill effects. Her gray eye shadow was slightly smudged, and a speck of unruly mascara had dribbled down one cheek.

  “I’m Sheriff Brady,” Joanna said at once, standing up and offering her hand. “I’m so sorry about the loss of your mother. Please, have a seat.”

  “Thank you,” Serenity returned.

  Removing a small long-strapped purse from her shoulder, she eased herself into one of the captain’s chairs and folded her well-manicured hands in her lap. “I know this is Sunday,” Serenity began. “I’m sorry to interrupt your day off, but this is too important to let go until Monday.”

  “What’s too important?” Joanna asked.

  Serenity chewed her lower lip. “Please understand,” she said. “This is all very difficult.”

  “I’m sure it is. Take your time, Ms. Granger. Can I offer you something to drink—coffee, water?”

  “Water would be nice.”

  Without Kristin in the outside office, Joanna had no one to fetch it. “Hang on,” she said. “I’ll be right back.”

  When she returned a few minutes later, Serenity Granger sat in the same position. Now, though, under her still-folded hands Joanna spied a single piece of paper that hadn’t been there before.

  “I suppose I don’t have to tell you my mother and I weren’t close,” Serenity began again with a regretful half-smile. “We didn’t have much in common.”

  “There’s a lot of that going around these days,” Joanna offered encouragingly. After all, when it came to mother-daughter relationships, she and Eleanor Lathrop weren’t exactly shining examples.

  “We were at loggerheads as long as I can remember,” Serenity continued. “Whatever came up, we fought about it. My mother tuned in during the sixties, dropped out, and stayed that way. I couldn’t wait to join the establishment. My mother never completed high school. I did four years of college and finished law school with honors in a year and a half. Mother never voted in her life.
According to her, the Democrats are too conservative. Naturally, I’m a card-carrying Republican.” She shrugged. “What else could I do?”

  Joanna nodded.

  “Anyway, for years we weren’t in touch at all. In fact, for a time I didn’t know if she was dead or alive. Then, about a year ago and out of the clear blue sky, Mother sent me an e-mail. She had come into a bit of money, from my grandfather, I guess. She said she was moving to Bisbee and getting ready to open an art gallery.

  “I wasn’t necessarily overjoyed to hear from her. For a while I didn’t bother to respond, but my husband’s a psychologist. Mel finally convinced me that the best thing I could do for Mother and for me, too, was to figure out a way to forgive her. Eventually I wrote back. We started by sending little notes back and forth. To my amazement, e-mail ended up bringing us closer than ever.

  “I’m not sure how it happened, but for the first time I can remember we weren’t at each other’s throats. Maybe part of it was not being in the same household and having some distance between us. We’d talk about what was going on in our day-to-day lives. Even though I had been married for seven years, Mother had never met Mel. I told her about him, about our house and garden, and about both our jobs. Mel has a private practice in Cheyenne. I’m a corporate attorney for an oil-exploration company. I thought hearing that would freak her out, but it didn’t. She never said a word.

  “She told me about what it was like to live in Bisbee, about the little house she had bought—the first one ever—and about the new man in her life, a guy named Warren Gibson. As a kid, that was one of the reasons I despised my mother. There was always a new man in her life. They came and went with astonishing regularity. But I could tell from the way she talked about Warren, this time things were different. She really liked the guy; really cared about him. I think she was finally ready to settle down to something permanent, and she believed Warren Gibson was it.

  “She told me about the work they did together on the gallery, getting it ready to open. She also told me about the upcoming showing of Rochelle Baxter’s stuff. Mother was really excited about it and proud of having discovered someone she fully expected to turn into one of this country’s up-and-coming African-American artists.”

  Serenity stopped long enough to sip her water before continuing. “She sent me this e-mail on Thursday afternoon. Unfortunately, I was out of town and didn’t read it until yesterday.”

  Unfolding the single piece of paper that had been lying in her lap, Serenity Granger handed Joanna the printed copy of an e-mail.

  Dear Serenity,

  Something terrible has happened. Rochelle Baxter is dead, murdered. She died last night sometime. The grand opening of her show is tonight. The caterer will be here in a little less than two hours. I found out about Shelley too late to cancel the food. Since I have to pay for it anyway, I decided to go ahead with the party.

  The problem is Warren. He and I were among the last people to see Shelley before she died. The cops wanted to talk to both of us. Detective Carbajal is with the sheriff’s department. He told me this afternoon that they’ll also need to fingerprint us since we’d both been at Shelley’s place earlier in the day. We went there to collect the pieces from her studio to hang them here in the gallery.

  When I told Warren about the fingerprint thing, he went nuts. We ended up having a huge fight. In all the months I’ve known him, I’ve never seen him so upset. He’s off doing some errands right now. I’ve been sitting here thinking about all this—thinking and wondering.

  Is it possible Warren could have had something to do with what happened to Shelley? I mean, we were both there in her house. I can’t think of any other reason why the very mention of fingerprints would

  The e-mail ended in midsentence. “Where’s the rest of it?” Joanna asked.

  “That’s just it,” Serenity returned. “There isn’t any more. It’s like Mother had to hit the ‘Send’ button in a hurry. Warren may have come into the gallery right then, and she didn’t want him to know about her suspicions or about her sending them along to me.

  “As soon as I accessed my e-mail yesterday evening, I started trying to call. I called both the gallery and the house several times and left messages. Naturally, there wasn’t any answer. Then, an hour or so later, when a Cheyenne PD patrol car stopped in front of our house, I knew what was up. The officer didn’t have to tell me Mother was dead. I already knew.

  “So where’s Warren Gibson, Sheriff Brady? I am convinced he killed my mother, and he must have murdered that other woman as well. I want him caught.”

  “I can assure you, Ms. Granger, so do we. Now, please excuse me for a moment while I make a phone call.”

  Joanna picked up her phone. It was Sunday, after all. Frank Montoya could have been home or at church. On a hunch, though, she dialed her chief deputy’s office number. He answered after half a ring.

  “You’d better come into my office, Frank,” she told him. “Dee Canfield’s daughter is here. I’m sure you and Detective Carbajal will both be interested in what she has to say. Is Jaime in, by the way?”

  “No,” Frank Montoya said. “But he will be as soon as I can reach him.”

  It took only half an hour for both Frank and Jaime to converge on Joanna’s office. For the next hour or so, they pumped Serenity for information.

  “Did your mother tell you anything in particular about Warren Gibson?” Jaime Carbajal asked.

  “Just that he was good with his hands. He could put up drywall, plaster, install wiring, and do any number of things she would have had to spend money on otherwise.”

  “She didn’t say where he came from?”

  “Not that I remember. At the beginning, I think she maybe hired him to do a couple of days’ worth of odd jobs. Before very long, though, he had moved in with her. As far as Mother was concerned, that’s typical. It also goes a long way to explain why I was a twenty-six-year-old virgin when I got married.”

  The sardonic self-deprecation in that sentence lodged like a sharp-edged pebble in Joanna Brady’s heart. Dee Canfield and her daughter had spent a lifetime locked in almost mortal combat. Serenity Granger’s strategy had been to look at what her mother did and then do the opposite. The same was true for Joanna and Eleanor Lathrop.

  What will happen with Jenny? Joanna wondered. Since I’m a cop, does that mean she’s destined to end up a crook? Or will she really turn into a veterinarian?

  Joanna was drawn out of her reverie, not by the continuing questions and answers, but by a sudden urgent knocking on her office door. Why was it that just when she had something important going on—just when she needed a little peace and quiet—her office turned into Grand Central Station?

  Not wanting to disrupt Jaime’s interview with Serenity Granger, Joanna hurried to the door. Casey Ledford stood outside holding several pieces of computer-generated printouts.

  “What is it, Casey? We’ve got an important interview going on in here.”

  “Yes, I know.” Casey nodded. “Lupe told me, but this is important, too. I got a hit from one of the prints I took off a hammer I found in a drawer up at Castle Rock Gallery. Everything else was pretty clean, but whoever wiped the place down must have forgotten about the hammer or maybe didn’t see it. Anyway, here’s the guy’s rap sheet. I thought you’d want to check it out.”

  Joanna took the paper and looked at the mug shot. The name said Jack Brampton, but the photo was clearly Dee Canfield’s boyfriend, the man known around Bisbee as Warren Gibson. Joanna’s memory flashed back to when she had last seen him, standing in Castle Rock Gallery, glaring threateningly at Bobo Jenkins and tapping the head of a hammer—perhaps the very same one—in the open palm of his hand. Brampton had served twenty-one months in a medium-security Illinois prison for involuntary manslaughter committed while driving drunk. He had previously worked as a pharmaceutical salesman.

  That might be enough for him to know something about sodium azide, Joanna thought. Enough to make him very dangerous.
>
  “Good work, Casey,” she said. “Can I keep this?”

  Casey nodded. “Sure. I’m making copies for everyone who’ll be coming to the one-o’clock meeting.”

  “Terrific. Drop one off with Dispatch as you go. I want an APB out on this guy ASAP. He’s got a good head start on us, so we may have a tough time catching up. We’ll assume, for right now, that he’s still driving Deidre Canfield’s Pinto. It’s distinctive enough that it shouldn’t be hard to find.”

  While Casey hurried away, Joanna turned back into her office. The interview was coming to an end. Serenity Granger, purse in hand, stood just inside the door. “So you think it’s going to be several days before Mother’s body can be released?”

  “Several for sure,” Jaime Carbajal said. “First there’ll have to be an autopsy. The medical examiner won’t release the body until well after that. If I were you, I’d find a hotel room where you can settle in and wait.”

  “Any suggestions?”

  “Probably the Copper Queen back uptown in Old Bisbee,” he told her. “But regardless of where you stay, please let us know where you’ll be.”

  Serenity Granger nodded. “Of course,” she said.

  Joanna wished Jaime Carbajal hadn’t suggested the Copper Queen. Pretty soon everyone staying at the old hotel would be connected to this case, one way or the other. But she didn’t voice her objection aloud. After all, the only thing Joanna wanted was for Serenity Granger to leave her office. The information about Warren Gibson’s criminal past was far too important to blurt out with a civilian present, even if that civilian was vitally concerned with finding the person under investigation.

  “I’ll walk you to the lobby,” Frank Montoya offered.

  “Don’t bother,” Serenity said, turning him down. “I can find my way.”

  As soon as the door closed behind her, both Frank and Jaime turned to Joanna expectantly. “All right,” Frank said. “Give.”