“I won’t take long,” Dennis pleaded. “I promise. Now tell me what time you get off so I don’t miss you.”
Taking a deep breath, Angie relented. “Six,” she said.
“Good. I’ll be sure to call before then.”
Angie put down the phone. At the far end of the bar, Archie McBride and Willy Haskins exchanged knowing smirks.
Archie McBride shook his grizzled head and raised his nearly empty glass. “Damn those Boy Scouts anyway!” he said.
Mrs. Vorevkin led Ernie and Joanna through the house and showed them into a darkened study. David O’Brien was seated at a desk with only a single small reading lamp lighting the curtainshrouded room.
“Why are you bringing them in here?” he demanded irritably of the housekeeper. “I thought I told you all inquiries were to be directed to Katherine.”
“Mrs. O’Brien isn’t here right now,” Olga said. “She had to go uptown to the mortuary, remember?”
“Oh, all right,” O’Brien responded. “Come on in, then. What is it you want?”
Maybe it was only a trick of the dimmed lights, but the man hunched behind the desk seemed far less formidable than the arrogant swimmer Joanna had met on Saturday. Events in the two intervening days had taken their toll. By late Monday morning, all of David O’Brien’s seventy-odd years showed in the sun-etched lines of his craggy face. Even his peevish verbal response to Mrs. Vorevkin lacked some of his previous stridency.
“We asked to speak directly with you,” Joanna put in.
“I suppose it’s just as well you’re here.” O’Brien sighed. “I understand there have been deputies out front by the gate most of the morning, Sheriff Brady. What’s going on? Brianna’s been dead for days. Isn’t it a little late for you to come prowling around now?”
“We’re investigating another case,” Joanna said. “An assault. In fact, we’re actually looking for Alf Hastings. We’d like to ask him some questions about the incident.”
“What incident is that?” O’Brien asked. “And what do you want with Alf?”
“Has Mr. Hastings told you anything about what happened outside the entrance to your ranch on Saturday night?”
As they spoke, David O’Brien began sounding more and more like his old self—condescension, arrogance, and all. “You mean the one with the wetback he found sneaking around outside the gate? Fending off interlopers who are trying to gain access to my property is Alf’s job. Of course he told me about it. He gave me a full report.”
“Did he tell you this alleged wetback’s name?”
“His name?”
“Ignacio Ybarra.”
At once the fight went back out of David O’Brien. “Him?” he asked hoarsely. “Brianna’s boyfriend?”
Joanna nodded.
“What was he doing here?”
“He claims he was looking for your daughter,” Joanna said. “She wasn’t where he expected to find her. He was worried about her.”
“And I suppose you believe that?” David O’Brien asked.
“Until we hear Mr. Hastings’s version of what went on, I don’t know what to believe,” Joanna told him.
“In any case, you won’t be able to talk to Alf today. He’s out of town. Today’s his day off. He asked for tomorrow off as well. He said he had some pressing business out of town. He left the ranch early this morning. I don’t expect him back before tomorrow night.”
“You don’t know where he was going?”
O’Brien shook his head. “I have no idea. What my employees do on their own time is none of my business.”
“Would his wife know?”
“Maggie? Maybe.”
“Where would we find her?” Joanna asked.
“If she’s home, she’s most likely down in the workers’ compound. First trailer on the right-hand side of the road.”
“We’ll go see her, then,” Joanna said.
“Suit yourself,” O’Brien said with a wave of his hand. Dismissed, Ernie turned and left the room while Joanna hovered in the doorway. Thinking both his visitors had left the room, David O’Brien hunched back over his desk and buried his face in his hands. His shoulders heaved. A strangled sob escaped his lips. Joanna didn’t like the man, but she couldn’t help being moved by such abject despair.
“Mr. O’Brien?”
At the sound of Joanna’s voice, he started but didn’t lower his hands or look in her direction. “What?”
“Please accept my condolences about your daughter. I know how much it must hurt…”
“Thank you,” he mumbled almost inaudibly.
Warned by some guiding instinct, Joanna glided away from the door and moved back into the room. She didn’t stop until she was standing directly in front of the desk. In a pool of golden lamplight she saw a single piece of paper—and a pen, a Mount Blanc fountain pen. Years of working over the counter in the Davis Insurance Agency had made Joanna Brady adept at reading words that were written upside-down. What she saw scrawled across the top of the single piece of paper chilled her. “To whom it may concern.”
“I thought you told me the other day that O’Briens aren’t quitters,” she said quietly.
O’Brien dropped his hands and glared up at her, his vivid blue eyes probing hers. “What do you mean?”
“I mean that suicide isn’t the answer. It never is.”
Hurriedly, David O’Brien covered the revealing paper with his hands. “What would you know about it?” he asked.
“When my husband died, I felt the same way. As though I couldn’t possibly go on.”
“No, you didn’t, Sheriff Brady,” David O’Brien interrupted. “You couldn’t have felt exactly the same way. You lost a husband. That’s different from losing a child. I’ve done that before. Twice. I’ve had three children, and I’ve outlived all three.”
“There must be a reason.”
“Oh, there’s a reason, all right,” he conceded bitterly. “I tried to outwit God, and this is what it got me. As far as I can see, I’ve got nothing left to live for.”
“What about your wife?”
“What about her?” He shrugged. “Katherine’s had one foot out the door all these years. With Brianna gone, there’s no reason for her to stay. And there’s no reason for me to hang around, either. I built all this for my daughter,” he added. “If I can’t give it to her, what’s the point?”
“There may be another answer,” Joanna told him. “One you’ve missed so far. The problem is, suicide is a permanent solution. If you’re dead, you’ll never have a chance to find out what that answer might be. Talk to a counselor, Mr. O’Brien. Or to Father Morris from St. Dominick’s. You need some help.”
“What I need is for you to get out and leave me alone,” David O’Brien said wearily. “You don’t know what you’re talking about.”
Ernie met Joanna at the door. “What happened?” he asked. “I got all the way to the door before I figured out you weren’t right behind me. What’s going on?”
“Where’s Mrs. O’Brien?”
“I’m pretty sure she’s home now. The Lexus was just driving into the yard when I started back to find you.”
“Good,” Joanna said grimly. “We’d better have a word with Katherine before we go see Maggie Hastings.”
“Why?” Ernie asked. “Is there a problem?”
“There will be if someone doesn’t do something to prevent it,” Joanna replied. “Unless I’m mistaken, David O’Brien is right on the brink of blowing his brains out.”
“What are you going to do about it?”
“I’m going to tell his wife.”
As it turned out, they met up with Katherine O’Brien in the entryway. She had just come in the door and was depositing her keys and purse on a gilded entryway table. She was dressed in a sedate navy blue shirtwaist dress. There was makeup on her face. Her graying hair was swept up into an elegant French twist. The cumulative result made Katherine O’Brien far different from the casually attired, makeup-free woman Joann
a had met on two previous occasions. The one thing that remained constant, however, was Katherine O’Brien’s ironclad emotional control.
“What’s going on, Sheriff Brady?” Katherine asked. “I saw two sheriff’s cars out in the drive. Has something happened? Did you catch Bree’s killer?”
“No,” Joanna said hastily . “Nothing like that. We’re here on another matter—to see your husband about Alf Hastings. But Mrs. O’Brien, I must warn you, I think your husband is taking your daughter’s death very badly.”
“Of course he’s taking it badly,” she returned. “It isn’t the kind of thing you take well.”
“I believe your husband is suicidal,” Joanna added. “You need to talk to him about this. Or find him some help, someone to talk to—a priest or a counselor. Unless you want to be planning two funerals instead of one.”
Katherine O’Brien seemed to draw back. Her eyes narrowed, her fists clenched. “God helps those who help themselves,” she said.
The woman’s brusque response was so different from what Joanna expected—so different from the concerned and hovering helpmate Katherine had appeared to be previously—that Joanna was momentarily taken aback. “What do you mean?”
“Just that. I mean David’s a grown-up. If he wants to find someone to talk to about this, he’ll have to find help for himself. It’s not up to me.”
“But isn’t—”
“Look,” Katherine interrupted, her eyes blazing with anger, “I spent eighteen years of my life walking a tightrope and running interference between those two. While Brianna was here, nothing she did ever quite measured up. No matter what, she wasn’t good enough to suit him. If he’s going to go off the deep end now that she’s gone, it’s up to him. He’ll have to come to terms with his own guilt for a change. I’m finally out of the middle, and I have every intention of staying that way.”
Looking at Katherine, Joanna couldn’t help remembering David O’Brien’s words. Katherine’s had one foot out the door for years. Was that what was going on here, then? Was this one of those cases where an incompatible couple had stayed married for the sake of a child? And, now that the child was gone, did that mean the marriage was over? Unfortunately, in trying to help David O’Brien, it seemed Joanna had only succeeded in pouring oil on the flames.
She decided to take one last crack at smoothing things over. “We all have to learn to live with the consequences of our actions,” she said.
Katherine nodded. “I figured that out a long time ago,” she said. “David never has. Now, if you’ll excuse me.” She turned toward the kitchen. “Olga,” she called, “I’m going to go lie down for a little while. Please don’t let me sleep past three. I have a four o’clock appointment with Father Morris.”
Left alone in the foyer, Joanna and Ernie let themselves out the front door. “Whew!” Ernie exclaimed, once the door closed behind them and they were alone on the verandah. “What the hell was that all about? Katherine O’Brien isn’t what I’d call your typical grieving mother.”
“Maybe there’s no such thing,” Joanna said thoughtfully. “Come on. Let’s go see Maggie Hastings.”
TWENTY-ONE
TAKING TWO separate cars, Ernie and Joanna drove back up the road to the Y that led off through the lush grass to the Green Brush Ranch employee compound. It consisted of five separate fourteen-by-seventy mobile homes. They were set in a slight hollow, out of sight from both the road and the main house. The mobile home sites were newly carved from the desert. The trailers were surrounded by raw red dirt punctuated by baby landscaping of reed-thin trees, tiny cacti, and leggy clumps of youthful oleander.
The first trailer on the left-hand side of the road was flanked by a six-foot-high chain-link dog run. As soon as Joanna stopped her Crown Victoria and stepped outside, the German shepherd she had seen on Saturday threw himself against the gate, barking and growling.
Ernie, joining Joanna beside her car, gave the dog run’s fierce occupant a wary look. “Let’s hope to hell the damned thing holds,” he said.
The dog was still barking furiously when a woman opened the door in answer to Ernie Carpenter’s knock. “Yeah?” she said, holding on to the doorjamb with both hands and swaying unsteadily on her feet.
“Whad’ya want?”
“Maggie Hastings?” he said, opening his wallet and displaying his ID. “Would it be possible to speak to you for a few moments? Could we come in?”
Maggie Hastings was a disheveled, dark-haired woman in her mid-to-late forties. Her graying, lackluster hair was pulled back in a greasy ponytail. She wore a soiled man’s shirt over a pair of too-tight shorts. She was also quite drunk.
Stumbling away from the door, she allowed Joanna and Ernie to enter. “Whaz this all about?” she slurred.
The room’s curtains were tightly closed. The difference between the interior gloom and the brilliant exterior sunlight left Joanna momentarily blind. The stench of booze combined with a lingering pall of cigar and cigarette smoke was so stifling that Joanna could barely breathe.
“Sorry the place is such a mess,” Maggie muttered, kicking something aside. “Haven’t had a chance to pick up today. Waddn’t ’xactly expecting company.”
From the sound, Joanna suspected that the invisible object was an empty bottle of some kind. As her eyes adjusted to the dim light, she was shocked by the disarray. To the outside world, Alf Hastings presented a neat, well-pressed countenance. It was hard to believe that his starched khaki uniform could have emerged from such filth. The living room wasn’t merely a mess. It was a disaster. Empty bottles—gin mostly, but some beer as well—littered the newspaper-strewn floor. The dining room table, visible from the living room, was covered with stacks of dirty dishes, milk cartons, margarine containers, and bread wrappers—several days’ worth at least. A line of what seemed like mostly can-and-bottle-filled garbage sacks lined one side of the room, marching from the kitchen doorway toward the front door.
Remembering all too well how many bugs the new cook had rousted from what supposedly had been a clean jail kitchen, Joanna shivered. No doubt there were plenty of well-fed but currently invisible bugs hiding in this very room.
Turning her back on her visitors, Maggie staggered as far as the end of the couch and then fell onto it. She picked up a remote control and muted the droning television set, turning an afternoon talk show into a wordless pantomime of moving lips and wagging heads. She stared at it with such avid interest, however, that Joanna wondered if she even remembered that someone else was in the room.
“This is about your husband,” Joanna said.
Maggie Hastings’s eyes never wavered from the set. “What about him?” she asked.
“Do you know where he is?”
“Work.” Maggie’s reply was little more than a grunt.
“No, he’s not,” Joanna told her. “Mr. O’Brien told us your husband went away for a day or two.”
“Well, that’s news to me,” Maggie said with a non-committal shrug. “If he was going somewhere, don’t you think he’da told me?”
Not necessarily, Joanna thought. And even if he did, who’s to say you’d remember? “This is serious, Mrs. Hastings,” she said aloud. “Do you have any idea where he might be?”
The firmness in Joanna’s question somehow must have penetrated Maggie Hastings’s drunken haze. “Why all the questions?” she asked, finally glancing away from the television set for the first time. “Whaz going on?”
“On Saturday night, a young man was severely beaten outside the gate to Green Brush Ranch,” Joanna replied. “Not only was he beaten, but burned, too, with the lit end of a cigar.”
Joanna said no more than that, but it was evidently enough. Maggie Hastings’s response was instantaneous. Her face seemed to collapse. Her mouth went slack while her eyes brimmed with tears. “Oh, no,” she wailed. “Not that. Not again.”
“What do you mean?”
“I can’t believe it. How could he? What if we lose this job, too?” Maggie whisp
ered brokenly but with far less drunken slurring. “And the roof over our heads, too, just like the other time. You don’t know what it was like then. We lost everything—our house, our furniture, our friends. Stevie will kill him when he finds out. He’ll just plain kill him.”
Overcome with a combination of emotion and booze, she fell into a long series of racking sobs. For several minutes, she was totally incapable of speech. Joanna had no choice but to wait until the sobs subsided before she could ask another question.
“Who’s Stevie?”
Maggie took a ragged breath, blew her nose, and wiped her eyes. “Stephan Marcovich,” Maggie answered. “Alf’s cousin up in Phoenix. He’s an old friend of the O’Briens. He’s also the one who arranged this job for us. If it hadn’t been for Stevie, once the lawyers got done with us, we’da been sunk. We had no place to go. Alf couldn’t find a job anywhere in Yuma, not even flipping burgers. It was like we had a disease or something. We were one step away from living on the street when Stevie sent Alf here. Oh, my God. And now he’s done it again. I can’t stand it,” she wailed. “I just can’t.”
Once more Maggie’s voice trailed off into a torrent of hopeless tears.
“Mrs. Hastings, would your husband’s cousin have any idea where Alf might be?”
Blowing her nose again, Maggie shook her head.
“I don’t think so,” she said. “If I don’t know where he is, how would Stevie?”
“Just the same, can you give us his number?”
“Stevie’s? Up in Phoenix?”
Joanna nodded. “Please,” she said.
“I guess so.” Unsteadily, Maggie Hastings hoisted herself off the couch, then she wobbled across the room and staggered down a short hallway. For several minutes, Joanna and Ernie could hear her in a room down the hall, mumbling and cursing. Finally she returned, carrying a frayed business card.
“Here it is!” she announced triumphantly, handing it over to Joanna. “Alf says I never can find anything in all this mess, but he’s wrong, you know. There’s a system around here. He just doesn’t understand it, that’s all.”
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