Judgment Call

by J. A. Jance

  “Tell Jaime I’m on my way inside to make an official announcement, then I’ll go back out to the scene. Check with my mother. Either she’ll have the official guest list or she’ll know who has it.”

  “Counting waitstaff, there have to be well over two hundred people here,” Casey objected. “We’ll never be able to talk to them all.”

  “Let’s hope someone saw something and will have brains enough to come forward. Now, do you happen to have an evidence bag with you?”

  Casey nodded. Joanna retrieved the pocket square with the wrecked lapel watch from Butch’s tux jacket and deposited it in the bag Casey had produced from one of the pockets in her own jumpsuit.

  “I’ll show you where I found it in a few minutes,” Joanna said, then she peeled off Butch’s tux jacket and handed it back to him. “Once I make the announcement, you’ll look after Mom?”

  Butch nodded. “I gave George a heads-up a little while ago. Everything has been going so well that she’s on a real high. Hearing about Maggie is going to blow her out of the water.”

  As she and Butch slipped back into the banquet room, Eleanor was in the process of leading Michael Coleman onto the stage, where he and the auctioneer stood smiling and posing in a congratulatory handshake while cameras flashed as people in the audience rose to their feet. Most were simply standing and applauding, although a few of them seemed to be edging toward the door.

  Seeing Joanna, Eleanor shot her daughter a small smile. When Joanna held up a hand as though it were a traffic signal, her mother frowned and looked puzzled. Joanna then held her hand as though she had a microphone in it and mouthed to her mother, “Ask them to wait.”

  With a shrug, Eleanor stepped to the microphone. “Thank you to everyone who made this auction such a success tonight, but I see my daughter stepping forward. Apparently she has something to say.”

  After meandering around in the parking lot in her heels, Joanna found the carpet in the ballroom a whole lot easier to manage. Butch handed her up the steps onto the podium.

  “I’d like to introduce my daughter,” Eleanor said. “Sheriff Joanna Brady.”

  Someone in the audience whistled. In her bright green gown, Joanna knew she didn’t look the least bit like a sheriff.

  “If you’d wait a moment before you leave, I have an important announcement to make,” Joanna said, “but first, I’d like another round of applause for my mother, who has done a remarkable job tonight under very difficult circumstances.”

  The request was answered with a rousing round of applause. Eleanor nodded and smiled, but she still looked puzzled.

  Joanna waited until the room quieted again. “Thank you for that,” she said. “Now I have the misfortune of having to deliver some shocking news. Maggie Oliphant, the woman who has been the mastermind behind the Bisbee Art League and the one who made this whole weeklong Plein Air celebration possible, was found dead in her car in the parking lot a short time ago. Her death is being investigated as a possible homicide.”

  A collective gasp shot through the room. Joanna glanced at her mother. Eleanor seemed to sway slightly on her feet, and Joanna was relieved to see both Michael Coleman and Butch step forward. They each took one of her arms and steadied her.

  “It’s possible that some of you may have witnessed something out of the ordinary as you were arriving here tonight,” Joanna continued. “It might not have seemed important at the time, but it could well mean the difference between our solving the case and our not solving it. So please, if you have anything to report, speak to one of the uniformed deputies you’ll find outside in the parking lot; to my lead investigator, Detective Carbajal; or to me. As you depart, we would appreciate your leaving contact information so we’ll be able to be in touch later should the need arise. As for the Plein Air participants, I’m afraid I’ll need you to hang around for a while longer. Once my homicide investigators finish up outside, they’ll want to speak to you individually.”

  “Do you know what happened to Maggie?” someone asked.

  Joanna shook her head. “I’m sorry,” she said. “This is an active investigation. I have no further comment.”

  By the time Joanna finished speaking, Butch and Michael Coleman had escorted an ashen-faced Eleanor down the steps and back to her chair. Joanna left the podium and slipped onto the chair next to her mother’s.

  “Mom,” she said, “are you all right?”

  “This can’t be true!” Eleanor declared. “Are you sure there hasn’t been some terrible mistake?”

  “Sorry,” Joanna said. “It’s no mistake.”

  “I talked to Maggie just before the dinner started. She said she was going out for a smoke.”

  “She did that,” Joanna said. “That’s on the security video. She was murdered sometime after that.”

  George Winfield made it through the crush of people. When he put a comforting hand on Eleanor’s shoulder, she rose to her feet and melted, sobbing, into his arms.

  “There, there, Ellie,” he said, holding her. “It’s okay.”

  With her mother in George’s capable hands, Joanna decided it was time to bail. “I’ve gotta go, Mom,” she said, but she doubted Eleanor heard a word of it.

  Grabbing her overnight bag and slipping out of her heels for better traction, Joanna made a beeline for the nearest restroom.

  Inside one of the stalls, she shed her slinky dress like a snake slipping out of its skin. Usually she wore the jumpsuit over her uniform. This time there was no uniform—only the jumpsuit and a grubby pair of tennis shoes. Once Joanna had her jumpsuit on, she retrieved both her badge and her Glock from the beaded purse. The badge went over the jumpsuit’s breast pocket. With no small-of-the-back holster, the Glock went into one of the deep side pockets. That wasn’t the safest way to carry it, but it beat putting it inside her bra or the elastic of her underwear.

  Emerging from the restroom with the green dress slung over one arm, she found Butch waiting for her. “How about if I take care of the dress,” he suggested.

  “And the purse, too, please,” she said, handing it over.

  “I’ll hang around long enough to do whatever your mother needs to have done. After that, do you want me to wait around or do you want me to go home?” he asked.

  Joanna leaned over and kissed him on her way past. “You’re wonderful, but go home,” she said. “I’ll be there when I can.”

  CHAPTER 18

  GRATEFUL TO BE IN TENNIES RATHER THAN HEELS, JOANNA WENT back outside and was relieved to see that Jaime had taken charge of the scene, marking it off with crime scene tape, turning on generator-powered lights so the area around the car was completely illuminated. Joanna noticed that the Mark VIII’s passenger-side door was open, and Dave Hollicker seemed to be examining the door handle.

  Joanna walked up behind Dave just as Jaime appeared at her elbow. “What have we got?” she asked.

  “The Mark Eight is a two-door,” he said. “There’s no sign of forced entry. It’s an older model from the midnineties when they still used a keypad locking system. So either the vehicle wasn’t locked or the perp knew the combination. I think the killer may have concealed himself in the backseat and then attacked her from behind. It could be nothing more than a crime of opportunity. We found at least a dozen of what appear to be picture-hanging wires in the floor well of the backseat, so it may be the killer simply used whatever was handy. Afterward he let himself out through the passenger door, leaving the front passenger seat leaning forward.”

  “Like he left in a hurry,” Joanna suggested.

  “Exactly. Luminol showed us some blood on the passenger-door handle. Dave is collecting it right now. We don’t know if it belongs to the victim or the perpetrator. What was it you sent out in that evidence bag with Casey?”

  “It’s the remains of a watch,” Joanna said, leading him over to the spot where a tiny debris field of watch crystal had been ground to pieces in the gravel. “The hands were stopped at seven thirty-five, but that’s such a cli
ché that I don’t quite believe it.”

  “But that explains where Machett is getting what he’s calling the time of death,” Jaime mused. “I thought it was early in the process for him to be able to be that definite. Casey said you were checking the security tapes.”

  “They give us zilch,” Joanna replied. “No one coming to and going from the party at the time in question, if seven thirty-five turns out to be the right time. No one before that or after that, I noticed, either. The car itself is parked outside the range of any of the cameras.”

  “So it could be an outsider,” Jaime suggested. “Someone who came to the party to see what he could rip off from the parked cars of a bunch of well-heeled guests.”

  “What about the victim?” Joanna asked. “We know the killer tore off her watch. Was she wearing any other jewelry?”

  “Yes, she was. A diamond ring and what looks like an emerald.”

  “So it’s not a robbery, then.”

  “Maybe an interrupted robbery.”

  “Cell phone?”

  “As near as we can tell, that’s the only thing that’s missing.”

  “Leaves two rings behind and takes the cell phone?” Joanna asked. “That doesn’t make sense.”

  The M.E.’s van arrived. As Machett and his helper prepared to transport the body, Myron Thomas came hurrying across the parking lot. He stopped abruptly when he reached the boundary of crime scene tape laid out in a wide circle around Maggie Oliphant’s Mark VIII.

  “Folks are getting restless in there,” he said. “Is there a way to start letting some of them leave? My people need to get into the dining room so they can start cleaning up.”

  “Right,” Joanna agreed. “We can’t keep everybody waiting all night.” She turned to Jaime. “As people leave, ask them if they’ve had any dealings with Maggie in the last two weeks or so. Anyone who says yes, we’ll contact later for a more detailed interview. We’ll talk to the Plein Air participants after everyone else leaves.”

  “Sounds good,” Jaime said.

  With Joanna posted at one entrance to the dining room and Jaime at the other, people began to file out of the room. It took the better part of an hour for most of the guests to be allowed to leave. Several of the women who had served on the Plein Air committee were noted as needing follow-up interviews, but none of them or any of the other guests admitted having seen anything unusual.

  Once the other guests had been handled, Jaime took responsibility for interviewing the artists as well as the major players—Eleanor Lathrop, Michael Coleman, and Myron Thomas. He did that upstairs in Myron’s office, while Joanna handled the spouses and significant others at the golf pro’s desk in the pro shop.

  Joanna’s introductory query about recent dealings with Maggie Oliphant was enough to take most of the spouses and significant others out of the equation since Maggie’s focus had been directed primarily at the artists. The only real exception to that came when the last person in line, Michael Coleman’s wife, Sheri, took her seat in front of Joanna.

  “This isn’t my first rodeo,” Sheri said with a smile. “Michael does several of these events in any given year. He takes them in stride, while the organizers end up being nervous wrecks. That seemed to be the case with Maggie Oliphant. She was wound very tight to begin with, and she seemed to become more so as the week went on.”

  “Was there anything in particular that set her off?”

  “I heard her apologizing to Michael several times, saying she had discovered that one of the people in the master classes had gotten in under false pretenses. He didn’t have the skill or background necessary to take advantage of the kind of instruction Michael was giving them.”

  Joanna remembered hearing Eleanor’s side of what must have been a similar conversation.

  “Did she mention anyone in particular?”

  “Not really. Just that she was embarrassed about it and didn’t want Michael wasting his efforts on someone who had no business being in the class to begin with. She was afraid that if the guy’s stuff at the juried show tomorrow is really bad that it would somehow reflect badly on Michael.”

  “Would it?”

  “No, but Michael suggested that if she was really worried she might consider giving the guy the option of bowing out of the show gracefully.”

  “To not have his work in the juried show?” Joanna asked.

  “Exactly.”

  “How did that turn out?”

  “Maggie didn’t say—at least not to me. She might have mentioned it to Michael.”

  “If one of the participants was really unqualified, wouldn’t Michael have been able to notice based on the work they did during the week?”

  “That’s the thing,” Sheri said. “Most of the artists haven’t shown what they’ve been working on to anyone else. Their stuff for the show is supposed to be dropped off at Horace Mann tomorrow morning at ten. It’ll take an hour or so to get it all hung. Then the judges will come in to view what’s on the walls and make their decisions. The end-of-conference show starts at two in the afternoon.”

  “Isn’t that the point?” Joanna asked. “Didn’t they come here to get help from Michael and from their fellow artists?”

  “Most of the people here are still at the point where they worry that someone will steal their ideas or try to copy their work. They haven’t figured out that if you point a group of artists at the same rock and tell them all to paint the same thing, what’s going to come out of that exercise will be as many different paintings as you have people doing the painting.”

  “Hasn’t anyone explained that to them?”

  Sheri laughed. “That’s not something you can tell someone. They have to learn it on their own.”

  “That was the only specific thing you heard her being upset about—that at least one of the participants didn’t measure up?”

  “The rest of it was all logistical details—where were people staying, where were they having meals, whether anybody needed anything. She was excellent at sorting out all those little items.”

  “Did you see any confrontations between her and anyone else?”

  “Only the man here—what’s his name, the owner?”

  “Myron Thomas?”

  “Yes, I heard her on the phone with him several times during the week, adjusting the number of guests as people who were late about RSVPing finally got around to doing so. He evidently wanted to shut down the guest list. She wanted to include as many people as possible.”

  That gave Joanna something to think about. Until that moment, she had neglected to see that Myron Thomas might need to be considered as a suspect.

  “What about at dinner tonight?” Joanna asked.

  Sheri frowned. “I never saw Maggie tonight, not once. I was surprised that your mother was asked to take such a commanding role. I don’t think any of us had met her before she came up and introduced herself during the cocktail hour. That’s not to say she didn’t do a good job,” Sheri added quickly. “It’s just that there’s usually a whole bunch of people making something like this come together, while Maggie had struck me as something of a lone ranger.”

  “My mother is more of a background person,” Joanna said. “I admit, I was a little surprised, too.”

  By the time Joanna and Sheri emerged from the pro shop, Michael Coleman was still there waiting for his wife, while everyone else had gone home, including George and Eleanor.

  “Myron and Detective Carbajal are in the kitchen, interviewing the waitstaff and kitchen help,” Michael explained. “He said we can go, that he’ll be in touch with us at the hotel tomorrow morning if anything else is needed. Your husband went home, too. He said he expected someone would give you a ride home if you need one.”

  “Yes,” Joanna said with a weary smile. “That’s one of the advantages of being sheriff. When I need a ride, I get a ride.”

  The Colemans walked away, leaving Joanna alone in a dining room that had been stripped bare. The dishes and tablecloths were gone. Left b
ehind was a roomful of scarred banquet tables. On a tall cocktail table near the denuded podium sat an immense coffeemaker and a few clean cups and saucers.

  Joanna helped herself and waited. With her minimal skills in Spanish, she knew she’d be less than no help in the kitchen. The kitchen at the Rob Roy was definitely a place where English took a backseat, and Jaime’s fluent Spanish would do far more good than Joanna’s textbook Spanish.

  It was almost one in the morning before Jaime and Myron emerged from the kitchen.

  “I thought you’d be gone by now,” Jaime said.

  “So did I. Now you’re stuck taking me home.”

  “You mean Dave is stuck taking us both home,” Jaime said. “I got dropped off, too. He came in his Tahoe.”

  Jaime turned to shake hands with Myron. “Thanks for all your help. It’s been a tough way to end what must have started out as a nice evening. I’m glad you were there when I was asking the questions,” Jaime added. “If it hadn’t been for you, the guys in the kitchen wouldn’t have given me the time of day.”

  “I’m a little surprised to hear that they did,” Joanna said.

  “They’re so worried about immigration coming along and checking their papers that their first response was no response. Myron runs a tight ship. He told them that having someone die in the parking lot was bad for business. If they wanted to save their jobs, they needed to help out.”

  “Did anyone see anything?”

  “Maybe. One of the guys who was out on a smoking break around seven said he thought he saw a man get into the Lincoln. It was parked close enough that he could see the man walk up to the car but too far away to see who it was. He walked up, did something to the door, then got inside.”

  “As in maybe used the keypad?”