Joanna Brady 01 - Desert Heat (v5.0)

by J. A. Jance

  Milo nodded. “It’s going to be hard as hell, Joanna,” he said kindly. “And it’s going to take time. This is a terrible tragedy, not just for you and Jenny, but for the whole town. Feelings are running high. Don’t be surprised if folks choose up sides and throw stones.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “It’s times like this when you find out who your friends really are, Joanna, and I want you to know you can count on me. Is there anything I personally can do?”

  She looked him squarely in the eye. “There is, Milo. Tell me what’s going on. I was here when Adam York came out of your office. What was he doing here? What did he want? Was he asking you about Andy’s and my insurance?”

  Milo Davis frowned. “Not really, although I guess that was part of it. I didn’t tell him much, but I’ll have to eventually. He threatened to come back with a court order to examine my records, and my guess is he’ll make good on it.”

  “What kind of records?”

  “Payroll. Sales records. He wanted me to tell him exactly how much you make, to the penny. He asked about both of you, but it seemed to me he was actually more interested in you than he was in Andy.”

  “Why me? Did he say?”

  “I tried to press him on that, but he got real cagey about then.” Milo’s face was shadowed with concern. “My guess is that he’s looking for extra cash, unexplained expenditures that are over and above what you and Andy could afford on what you both make. My guess is that he thinks you’re involved in some kind of drug dealing.”

  “That’s preposterous!” Joanna exclaimed.

  “That’s exactly what I told him.”

  Joanna took a deep breath. “I caught up with him in the parking lot, and he gave me some kind of song and dance about insurance fraud. But the DEA’s conducting a war on drugs not insurance fraud.”

  “Damn!” Milo thundered. He slammed one meaty fist down on his desk top so hard that his crystal paperweight—a prize from the home office for some long-forgotten sales campaign—skittered dangerously close to the edge. Joanna caught it and returned it to its rightful place.

  For almost a minute the room was silent. “He’s a formidable adversary, Joanna,” Milo said at last. “Formidable and smooth. He’s one of those operators who, once he decides to send someone up the river, probably has enough horses behind him to pull it off. I’d be very careful around him if I were you.”

  “I’ll be careful, but I’m going to stop him.”

  “How?”

  She shook her head. “I don’t know yet. First I have to find out why he’s after me. He must have something that makes him believe I’m involved. I just can’t for the life of me think of what it might be.”

  “He did ask me about that ring of yours,” Milo said thoughtfully. “The one Andy gave you for your anniversary.”

  “You knew about that?” Joanna asked in surprise.

  “You’re the only one in the office who didn’t. Andy brought it by to show to me as soon as he picked it up from Hiram. He wanted us to put a jewelry rider on your homeowner’s policy. He asked me to handle it personally so you wouldn’t find out about it.

  “I told York flat out that I thought he was barking up the wrong tree concentrating on that ring. If Andy’d had anything to hide, he would have been a hell of a lot more secretive about it than he was. As far as I can tell, he told everybody in town but you, and that’s as it should be.”

  Hearing Milo talk about the ring brought it back to Joanna’s attention. She twisted it on her finger. “What else did you tell him?” she asked.

  “Mostly just general stuff. I told him Andy grew up in my Boy Scout troop, from the time he was a little shaver with a crew cut in Cubs right up through him getting his Eagle badge in high school. I told him Andy was one of the finest young men to ever grow up around these parts. I told him both of you were fine, upstanding, honest, hardworking young people.”

  “Tell me again exactly what he wanted to know about me.”

  “How long you’ve worked here, whether you’ve taken any long vacations, that kind of thing. I told him you’ve been here for over ten years now, since before Jennifer was born. In fact, I gave him a whole earful on that score, about how you worked for me and put both Andy and yourself through school at the same time. I told him how you used to commute back and forth to Tucson three days a week. I think he was impressed. He should have been.

  “And just before he left, I told him that this smear campaign about you and Andy had by God better come to a stop. It’s absolutely unconscionable.”

  Joanna’s eyes brimmed with tears. “Thanks, Milo,” she murmured.

  “You don’t have to thank me. It’s the truth. I told York that, and I said the same thing to Jim Bob Brady when I ran into him at the post office at little while ago. These so-called experts from out of town come waltzing in here in their fancy cars and throw their weight around, when they don’t know up from down about what’s really going on. And it sounds to me…”

  There was a sudden urgent tapping on the door. Lisa stuck her head inside. “There’s a phone call for you, Joanna. Nina Evans from school. I tried to handle it myself, but she insists on talking to you personally.”

  Joanna’s heart went to her throat. “The principal? Is something the matter with Jenny?”

  Lisa nodded reluctantly. “They’ve got her in the office. Something about fighting.”

  “Jenny? Fighting? That doesn’t sound like her.” Joanna hurried to the phone. “This is Joanna Brady.”

  Mrs. Evans sounded relieved. “I’m glad you’re there. We need you to come take Jenny home right away. She’s totally out of control, and I don’t think she ought to be in school today.”

  “What’s wrong?”

  “She got in a fight at recess.”

  “Jenny never gets in fights.”

  “Tell that to the two boys she lit into on the playground.” Mrs. Evans returned. “One of them had a bloody nose, and the other’s at the emergency room right now because of his thumb. She dislocated it. I’m surprised she didn’t pull it completely out of the socket.”

  “I’ll be right there.”

  Joanna put down the phone and turned to see Milo Davis, standing in his doorway. “What’s the matter?” he asked.

  “It’s Jenny,” Joanna replied. “She seems to have dislocated a little boy’s thumb in a fight at recess.”

  Suddenly Milo’s broad face broke into its usual wide grin. “Sounds like a chip off the old block. That stunt with the thumb, it’s the same one D. H. taught you way back when he wanted you to be able to tell the boys no and mean it, isn’t it?”

  Joanna nodded.

  “And it’s the same trick you pulled on Walter McFadden yesterday in the hospital.”

  “Who told you about that?”

  “Walter did. This morning at breakfast over at Daisy’s. That’s one thing I appreciate about Walter. Good sense of humor. Likes a good joke even when it’s on him.”

  “I’ve gotta go,” Joanna said, heading for the door.

  She left the office shaking her head. That was the problem with living in a small town. For good or ill, everybody knew far too much about everybody else’s business.

  Dislocated thumbs included.

  Thirteen

  ANGIE HANDED Tony his newspaper and coffee. She watched while he searched out the same article she had read earlier that morning. Now he devoured it with avid interest. While Tony was preoccupied, Angie slipped out of the room and the house. Out in the backyard, disregarding the mid-September chill, she slipped off her robe and eased her body into the pool. For twenty minutes she swam one lap after another in the long, narrow pool. The steady series of measured strokes worked some of the kinks out of both her muscles and her nerves. Physical exercise was the only way she knew to hold the terrible anxiety at bay.

  At last, physically and mentally exhausted, she climbed out of the pool and lay in the sun to dry. She was lying there half-asleep when the phone rang. Forbidden
to answer it under any circumstances, she fully expected Tony to pick it up, but he must have been in the shower. Instead, the answering machine clicked into action. For some unaccountable reason, Tony had left the speaker option switched on, allowing Angie to hear the tinny voice.

  “Tony,” a man said. “I’ve got to see you right away. The usual time and place. It’s urgent. I think somebody saw you.” That was all. The man hung up leaving no name or phone number. Obviously Tony would know who it was and how to get back to him.

  Pulling on her robe, Angie hurried inside. She squeezed fresh grapefruit and put Tony’s breakfast on the table. By the time he came out of the bedroom, she ducked past him into the bathroom.

  “There’s a message on the machine,” she told him. “It must have come in while I was in the pool.”

  Filled with an uneasy and unexplained dread, Angie showered hurriedly. When she turned off the water, she could hear him rummaging around in the bedroom. Peering in the mirror, she saw that an open suitcase lay on the bed and he was heaving clothing into it. Her heart constricted. If he was packing up to go, that meant the money would go with him. She had missed her chance.

  “Are you going someplace?” she asked innocently.

  “We both are,” he said. “I’m going out. While I’m gone, I want you to pack.”

  “Pack?” she repeated.

  “What are you, stupid? Yes, I said pack.”

  “Where are we going?” she asked. “For how long?”

  She looked at him, trying to assess his mood without giving away the fact that she knew something she shouldn’t. He glowered at her. “A week. Ten days. Take enough clothes for that and leave the rest.”

  She might have believed him, if she hadn’t heard the message, if she hadn’t known something was wrong. No, they were leaving for good. What they left in the house would only delay anyone starting a serious search. It was a time-honored way of skipping town without sounding the alarm for someone who might not want you to leave or, more likely, someone who was hot on your trail. Angie had pulled it a time or two herself.

  “How soon will you be back?”

  It was an innocuous enough question, but it seemed to drive Tony into a rage. “How the hell should I know? An hour, three? All you have to do is be ready when I get here.”

  He stalked from the room without even bothering to hit her on his way past. She followed him, expecting that he’d go by the hallway closet and pick up the briefcase, but he didn’t. He went out through the door that led to the garage, locking the deadbolt behind him.

  With the bath towel still wrapped around her, she hurried on out to the patio and stood listening, straining to hear the garage door open and close and for the tires to crunch down to the end of the gravel driveway. When she was sure he was gone, she raced back into the house and wrenched open the door to the closet. The briefcase was still on the shelf. Hardly daring to hope, she lifted it down. It was still heavy. Maybe she wasn’t too late. With trembling fingers, she worked the lock. It took three or four tries before the lid popped open. The money was still there. She could do it.

  She had thought about running away often, fantasized about it for months. If she was ever going to do it, now was the time to put her plan into action. Later she would figure out exactly what to do after she was free of him, but for now, escape was the only issue. If she didn’t get away clean before Tony came back to get her, she never would.

  She closed the briefcase and hefted it with one hand. It was heavy, but manageable if she wasn’t carrying much else. On legs frail as toothpicks she raced back down the hallway to the bedroom. There, forcing herself to calm down, she went into the bathroom for a self-inflicted make-over. She applied her makeup unerringly and pulled her blonde hair up on top of her head. Then she dressed in a stylish red silk jumpsuit with a matching hat which she wore at a rakish angle.

  From the back corner of her closet, she pulled out one of the few possessions that had made the transition from L.A. to Tucson—an old, frayed straw beach bag. She emptied the money into it except for a selection of bills, large and small, which she wadded into her pocket. On top of the money, she loaded in two pairs of shorts and two nondescript shirts as well as her makeup kit and a pair of thongs. She zipped the bulging beach bag shut and placed it inside a medium-sized, tapestry-covered suitcase.

  She took the briefcase back to the entryway closet and then walked through the living room. For only a moment, she felt a twinge of regret. Angie Kellogg had been a prisoner here, but it had been a very nice prison, a comfortable one, better than any place she had ever lived. At times, when Tony was out of town, she had almost been able to pretend it belonged to her. Now she found herself dreading leaving it. Prison or not, at least it was familiar. She was plunging off into the unknown.

  It wasn’t until then that she ventured into Tony’s office. What she wanted was there, concealed in the top drawer of his locked desk. Using a nail file, she quickly picked the desk lock and removed the little black leather-bound notebook. It seemed like such a small thing, really, hardly worth the trouble, but Angie knew instinctively that the collection of names and addresses and phone numbers contained inside it was her one real insurance policy, her ticket out. She hadn’t quite thought through how she could use such a thing, but she understood beyond a doubt that the notebook was valuable. Somewhere there was a willing buyer for such an item, and once she found him, Angie Kellogg could probably name her own price.

  With the book safely in her purse, Angie made one last tour of the house to see if there was anything else she wanted to take. Picking up her worn copy of the Field Guide to North American Birds, she slipped that into her purse as well. For her personally, that was the single item in the entire house that she couldn’t bear to leave behind.

  Finally, after checking in the phone book, she called a cab. Taking a deep breath, she gave the dispatcher the address of a neighboring house, one three doors down the street which she had memorized for just such an emergency. When he asked where she was going, she told him the airport.

  As Angie put down the phone, wild trembling once more reasserted itself. She had irretrievably set her plan into motion, If Tony came home and caught her now, she was doomed for sure.

  Clutching the suitcase, her beach bag, and a pair of three-inch, red high heels, she hurried out of the house and dashed across the backyard to the place where the dry wash ran under the fence, the place where she had watched the rabbits come and go, and had envied them their freedom. She had measured the opening with her eyes, but she had never dared approach it with a measuring tape for fear Tony might catch her at it and guess her intentions.

  Weak with relief, she found it was easy to push the suitcase, hat and high heels through the high spot under the fence. It was much harder to wiggle under it herself. Once, as she squirmed along, she felt the fabric of the pantsuit hang up on the bottom of the fence, but she managed to free herself without tearing the delicate cloth. At last she found herself standing upright outside the fence, brushing sand and gravel from her clothing and hair and laughing uproariously. She had done it. Despite all of Tony’s deadbolts and alarms, despite all his precautions, Angie Kellogg was out. The funny little rabbits had shown her the way.

  She may have been out, but she wasn’t home free. Even now, Tony might drive up and catch her waiting beside the road. Resolutely, she crammed her feet into the heels and went tripping across the rough terrain that led to the road and to the house where she was supposed to meet the cab. If anyone saw her like this—and she hoped someone would—they were bound to remember. That was the whole idea. She wanted them to notice. It was important that Tony pick up the trail and follow her—up to a point.

  Her feet were out of practice wearing high heels, and she was limping by the time she reached the place where she was supposed to wait. The cab arrived after what seemed like an eternity, although Angie’s watch said that only twenty minutes had elapsed. “Where to, lady?” the driver asked.

  S
he threw herself into the back seat, letting her head fall as far back as possible so her face was less visible to other cars they might meet along the way.

  “The airport,” she said. “As fast as possible. I’ve got a plane to catch.”

  The cab driver took her at her word and drove to Tucson International at breathtaking speeds. “What airline?” he asked her, as they approached the terminal.

  “United,” she said, hoping that was an airline that actually flew into Tucson. She breathed a sigh of relief when she saw the airline’s sign in the departing passenger lane.

  “Are you gonna check your luggage?” the cabby asked.

  “No. There’s not enough time.”

  Angie Kellogg had been to O’Hare once, and she had been a regular commuter to L.A.X. She was shocked at the size of Tucson International. It was tiny by comparison.

  Once she was in the terminal, she scanned the listed departures. The next plane scheduled to depart was one for Denver that was due to leave within fifteen minutes. With an astonishingly expensive one-way ticket in hand, one she purchased with a fistful of Tony’s cash, she headed for the gate. This was the part she wasn’t quite sure about.

  The flight was already boarding when she reached the gate. She hurried inside and found her seat. Then, when the flight attendants were coming down the aisles, closing the over-head luggage doors in preparation for departure, Angie suddenly leaped to her feet, grabbed her bags, and with one hand covering her mouth, bolted for the door. The flight attendants were only too happy to let her go. After all, the flight would be busy enough without taking along a passenger who was clearly too sick to fly before the plane ever left the runway. When she wasn’t in the jetway by the scheduled departure time, the attendants didn’t spend any time waiting for her, either.

  Angie didn’t stop running until she was inside the stall of the nearest ladies’ restroom. There, she stripped out of the pantsuit and hat in favor of a T-shirt, shorts, and thongs. She pulled off the single identifying luggage tag and left the suitcase in the locked stall by slipping out under the door when the coast was clear. With her purse inside, she carried only the shabby beach bag. She shoved her former finery into the nearest trash container then set about letting down her hair and scrubbing off the deftly applied makeup.