by J. A. Jance
Joanna felt her heart rate quicken. “How did he die?” she asked.
Daisy shrugged. “Budgie? Who knows how come birds die? I came out to the living room one morning, uncovered his cage, and there was Budgie, lying dead on the floor of the cage with his feet sticking straight up in the air.”
“Had he been harmed in any way?”
“Harmed?” Daisy asked. “How would I know? It’s not like somebody did an autopsy. Budgie was a parakeet, for Pete’s sake, and he died. We put him in a matchbox and buried it in the backyard. Why on earth are you asking me about Budgie? What does he have to do with what happened to Junior?”
“Did you ever observe Junior doing anything harmful to animals?”
Daisy’s fury, once focused on Moe, was now fully trained on Joanna. “Never!” she exclaimed. “Not one single time. Junior loved animals, and he was as gentle as can be with them. You saw how he was when Jenny brought that new puppy of hers into the restaurant. He absolutely loved it. But you still haven’t told me why you’re asking these idiotic questions.”
“Because Junior’s body wasn’t the only thing we found in the mine shaft,” Joanna explained. “There were several animals in there with him. Three of them were dead. The fourth, a kitten, is severely injured but still alive.”
Daisy seemed mystified “What kind of animals?”
“Pets, most likely,” Joanna answered. “A small dog or else a puppy, a rabbit, and two cats. The one that’s still alive shows signs of having been tortured. She’s at Dr. Ross’s office being treated.”
“You’re saying you think Junior had something to do with what happened to all those animals—the dead ones as well as a tortured kitten?” Daisy asked in disbelief. “Are you crazy?”
She stood up and made as if to leave. Until now Ernie had stood still and silent in the background. Now he stepped forward, notebook in hand, and blocked Daisy’s way. “Excuse me, Ms. Maxwell,” he said. “If you don’t mind, we still have a few more questions.”
Moe took Daisy by the hand. “Wait,” he urged. “We have to answer their questions. It’s the only thing we can do to help. Please.”
Reluctantly Daisy allowed herself to be guided back to her chair. Once there, she sat bolt upright, as if prepared to flee at a moment’s notice.
“When’s the last time you saw Junior?” Ernie asked.
Daisy closed her eyes before she answered. “About eight thirty, when we all went to bed. We have to get up early to open the restaurant. We’re usually in bed before nine.”
“Had you noticed anything out of the ordinary with Junior in the past few days?” Ernie asked. “Had he been out of sorts or upset about anything?”
Daisy leveled an icy glare in Ernie’s direction. “What do you know about Alzheimer’s patients?” she demanded.
Ernie shook his head. “Nothing,” he admitted.
“Trust me, anything and everything can upset them,” Daisy answered. “Even though Junior could no longer work, I took him to the restaurant with me anyway. He liked having a regular schedule. That way, even if I was in the kitchen and he was out front, I could keep an eye on him. His mood swings came and went, but they weren’t any worse than usual.”
“Was he aware of his condition?” Ernie asked. “Of his prognosis?”
“You mean since he already wasn’t quite right in the head, was he aware he was losing even more of his marbles?” Daisy replied sarcastically. “No, Detective Carpenter, one of the few blessings of his being developmentally disabled meant that those kinds of abstract concepts were beyond him. Moe and I knew, of course. Even though we told him to begin with, I doubt Junior ever understood what was happening. I wanted him to have as much time as he could, and I wanted it to be as good as we could make it. The idea of taking his own life would never have occurred to him.”
With that, Daisy lapsed into uncontrollable sobs. Moe absently patted her shoulder, but the woman was beyond comforting. Eventually Moe turned to Joanna. “What happens next?”
“There will have to be an autopsy, of course.”
“When?”
“Not until Saturday. Dr. Machett is out of town.”
“When will we be able to schedule the funeral mass?”
“Not until Dr. Machett releases the body. You can go ahead and talk to the people at the funeral home and do some tentative planning—maybe for sometime early next week—but you won’t be able to finalize those plans until the M.E.’s office gives you the word.”
Moe nodded.
“Did Junior have any particular friends?” Ernie asked. This time he addressed his question to Moe rather than Daisy.
“He knew lots of people in town from the restaurant. He sometimes played checkers and dominoes with the kid from next door, Jason Radner. Jason was always great with Junior. He never teased him or made fun of him, and he didn’t let the other kids pick on him either.”
“Detective Keller from Bisbee PD already talked with the Radners,” Joanna told Ernie. “I believe he interviewed both parents early this morning and maybe Jason, too.”
After jotting this down, Ernie turned again to Moe. “Is there anything you can add to what your wife already told us about Junior’s situation in the days and weeks before this happened? She didn’t notice anything out of the ordinary. Did you?”
“Not really,” Moe said. “For months now we’ve been dealing with a new normal, which means everything was out of the ordinary. Junior would wake up in the morning talking about people being in his room during the night—people we never saw or heard. We often heard him pacing back and forth in his room overnight, awake and restless. That’s why we had to start locking the doors with the dead bolt—to keep him inside. It never crossed my mind that he might crawl out a window. What was I supposed to do, put bars on it? Turn him into a prisoner in his own home?” With that, Moe Maxwell, too, dissolved into uncontrollable sobs.
In the interim, Daisy’s tears had subsided. This time she was the one who reached out and offered a comforting hand to her husband. Joanna took heart from that small gesture. As waves of sorrow and blame ebbed and flowed around the couple, she hoped that Daisy and Moe would manage to form a united front in the face of their mutual tragedy—that Junior’s death wouldn’t become an insurmountable wedge that would drive them apart. Unfortunately Joanna knew that all too often the death of a loved one, especially the death of a child, could doom the marriage of the parents.
“Those people he talked about,” Daisy offered, taking up where Moe had left off. “The nighttime visitors weren’t real, you understand; they were more like hallucinations. Junior would tell us that his family had come to see him. He didn’t have any birth sisters, but I understand there were girls in one of the foster families where he lived when he was younger.
“Not one of those people have ever visited here, at least not in real life, but that’s what happens with Alzheimer’s patients. Their minds slip back to some long-ago time in a way that turns the past into the present. And what Moe said is right. Junior wasn’t upset about anything. Yes, he’d had occasional angry outbursts recently, but the last one of those was several weeks ago when he dropped a dish at the restaurant and it broke.”
“Nothing since then?”
“No,” Daisy said.
“Aside from Junior’s mental deficiencies,” Ernie continued, “did he have any physical ailments? Was he in pain, by any chance?”
“He was getting older,” Daisy conceded. “He had some joint pain in his lower extremities and some difficulties walking. His doctor suggested we use over-the-counter medications. We were limited in what we could give him because the wrong combinations of drugs might have added to his confusion and made his Alzheimer’s symptoms worse.”
“Was he ever violent?” Joanna asked. She had seen Junior in full meltdown mode at the restaurant once. Daisy had ultimately been able to calm him down, but at the time Joanna had been startled by how angry he had been and how seemingly out of control.
“Do
you mean, was he violent with us?” Daisy asked.
Joanna nodded.
“No,” Daisy said firmly, shaking her head. “Not ever.”
“How was he with other people?”
“He threw the checkers board at Jason once,” Moe admitted. “Junior didn’t like to lose.”
Ernie made another notation in his notebook.
“He may have thrown the checkers, but he didn’t hurt Jason,” Daisy offered quickly as if attempting to minimize Moe’s last comment. “Junior never hurt anybody, not ever.”
Joanna’s phone rang just then. Glancing at the caller ID and seeing Casey Ledford’s name on the screen, Joanna walked out of Father Rowan’s study to take the call.
For years the war on drugs had been the gift that kept on giving as far as high-tech budgetary items at the Cochise County Sheriff’s Department were concerned. Before the well went dry, Joanna’s department had been given a latent fingerprint setup that had lain fallow for months because she had no one trained to run it. Then Casey Ledford had come back home to Bisbee as a single mother with a relatively useless fine arts degree that offered few opportunities for supporting her daughter, Felicity. Joanna had been smart enough to hire her on the spot. In the years since, Casey’s skill at drawing had made her a whiz at enhancing partial prints and uploading them into AFIS, the national Automated Fingerprint Identification System. Together Casey and Dave Hollicker made up Joanna’s CSI unit.
“Hi,” Casey said when Joanna came on the phone. “I just talked to Larry Kendrick and heard about Junior. I’ll bet Moe and Daisy are wrecks.”
That was one of the disadvantages about small-town law enforcement—everyone knew everyone else.
“They’re taking it pretty hard,” Joanna agreed.
“Sorry to be late to the party,” Casey continued. “My dad had surgery at the VA hospital in Tucson early this morning, and I wanted to be there with my mom. Dad came through the surgery with flying colors, and I’m just now coming back into town. Is there anything you need?”
Joanna thought about that and about what she had heard from Moe and Daisy.
“Do you happen to have your equipment with you?”
“Yup,” Casey said. “You know what they say—never leave home without it. I’ve got everything I need in the trunk of my car. Why?”
“Moe and Daisy are still at St. Dom’s with Father Rowan right now,” Joanna answered. “Junior evidently left the house in the middle of the night by climbing out a window. That’s where Terry and Spike picked up his trail. Do you know where their house is?”
“Sure,” Casey answered. “The Maxwells live just up the hill from my folks.”
“There’s an element of animal abuse in all of this, something that seems out of character for Junior,” Joanna said. “Daisy says that since he was scared of the dark, his leaving the house on his own to take a hike in the middle of the night seems off. I’d like you to call Terry Gregovich and get a fix on which window Junior used to exit the house. Then I’d like you to go to the Maxwells’ place and dust the windowsill, the screen, and whatever else you deem appropriate. I’m wondering if anyone else was involved in Junior’s going AWOL.”
“Got it,” Casey said. “I’m on the far side of the Divide, but I’ll get right on it.”
As Joanna ended the call, Moe and Daisy emerged from the study with Marianne right behind them. Lost in their own world of hurt, the grieving couple walked past Joanna without even noticing her. Marianne stopped.
“They’re on their way to the mortuary,” she explained. “Father Rowan and I both offered to come along as backup, but they said they’d manage on their own. How are you doing?”
Joanna’s phone rang again. This time Jenny’s number appeared in the caller ID screen.
“It’s not true, is it?” Jenny asked when her mother answered. She sounded close to tears.
“What’s not true?”
“I just heard about Junior,” Jenny said, “and I heard about that poor kitten, too. Someone said Junior is the one who hurt it, but I can’t believe that, Mom. Junior wouldn’t do something like that, would he?”
“How do you even know about all this?” Joanna asked. “Has word of what happened already spread to the school?”
“I’m not at school,” Jenny corrected. “The teachers have an in-service meeting today. We got out early—at noon. Dad picked me up and took me to work so I could get in a few extra hours because we’ll be gone this weekend. When I got here, Detective Carbajal’s patrol car was parked outside, and Amy, the receptionist, told me what was going on.”
One of the ways Joanna maintained her sanity was by trying to keep her work life and her home life completely separate. When she was at work, Butch kept the home fires burning. That meant he routinely handled most of the afterschool travel arrangements, including ferrying Jenny to and from her part-time job at Dr. Ross’s office.
At the time Joanna had sent the injured kitten there and dispatched Detective Carbajal to keep watch, it never occurred to her that Jenny would be there, too. And Jenny’s remark about the weekend was a reminder that Joanna had somehow forgotten that the whole family was scheduled to trek over to Silver City, New Mexico, that weekend, leaving on Friday. The three-day excursion to a rodeo would include Jenny and Kiddo’s participation in a barrel-racing competition.
“Well?” Jenny asked impatiently. “Would he?”
Brought back to the present, Joanna answered. “I don’t know for sure one way or the other. Maybe he did; maybe he didn’t. That’s what we’re looking into right now.”
“Junior never seemed like that kind of person,” Jenny objected. “Anybody who would do horrible stuff like that to a helpless animal has to be really sick.”
“Yes,” Joanna agreed. “Whoever did it was sick, all right. The problem is, sometimes people you know—even people you think you know well—don’t show their true colors in public. They present one face to the world while, underneath, they’re somebody else entirely.”
There was a brief silence after that. Finally Jenny said, “I still don’t think Junior did it.”
In that case, Joanna thought, you and Daisy Maxwell are of one mind.
CHAPTER 7
LIZA MACHETT STOOD ON THE SHOULDER OF THE ROAD, LEANING against Candy Small’s comforting bulk and staring at the clot of emergency vehicles blocking her mother’s driveway. Beyond the vehicles was the still-smoldering heap of wreckage that had once been her mother’s house. Liza’s weeks of intensive labor, to say nothing of the thousands of dollars she had spent on cleanup and repair bills, had literally gone up in smoke. Firefighters were still on the scene, putting out hot spots, but Liza already knew the place was a total loss. Even the garage had caught fire and burned. All that remained standing was the newly installed garden shed.
While Liza watched, one of the vehicles in the drive, a bright red SUV, detached itself from the others, executed a U-turn, and then sped in their direction. It stopped next to where Liza and Candy stood. When the driver’s door opened, Great Barrington’s fire chief, Roland Blakely—ham and cheese omelet, cottage cheese, tomato slices, hold the toast—stepped out, doffing his hat to Liza.
“Someone told me you were here,” he said. “Sorry about all this. It’s a tough break. I know you’ve invested a whole lot of time and effort in this over the last few weeks. Unfortunately, both the house and garage were completely engulfed before the first units arrived on the scene. I knew you were at the funeral. Nobody else was in the house, were they? None of your coworkers?”
Liza shook her head. “They were all at the funeral,” she answered. “Why do you ask?”
“Was anyone working here with equipment that might have caused a short or a spark or something like that? When you’re dealing with a fire at a construction site, that’s what we often find—that one of the workers screws up and does a faulty installation or some new piece of equipment suffers a case of infant mortality.”
“No,” Liza replied. “As f
ar as I know, no one was working today, and I wasn’t here, either. I went straight from my apartment to the funeral.”
Chief Blakely nodded. “Let’s say for argument’s sake that it turns out the fire wasn’t accidental.”
“You’re saying it might be arson?”
Blakely nodded. “Since both structures burned, that’s a possibility. Do you know of anyone who bears a grudge against either you or your mother? Maybe there was a property dispute of some kind with one of the neighbors?”
Liza shook her head. “No,” she said, “nothing like that, and I can’t think of anybody who would wish us ill.”
That wasn’t true, of course. Even as she said the words, Liza was thinking about the warning she’d been given just that afternoon when Jonathan Thurgard had spoken to her in the cemetery. Was this what he had meant? Did the fire have something to do with the people he had mentioned, the ones her father had dealt with, the ones who didn’t forgive or forget? Or—and this seemed far more likely—was it something to do with the money Selma had kept hidden away in the house? Liza had already suspected there had to be something wrong with the money. Otherwise, why would Selma have kept it hidden? Now whatever that was had come back to bite her in the butt—starting with burning down the house.
“Do you have home owner’s insurance?” Blakely asked.
Liza nodded. She had renewed the policy only two weeks earlier. She’d had to wait until the cleanup was done and the remodel far enough along before an insurance underwriter could come through and assess the situation. He had checked on all the permits and had carefully inspected the new plumbing and electrical work.
“You’ll need to call, report the loss, and get a claims adjuster out here,” Chief Blakely said. “If you call my office in the morning, we can give you our file number as well as the one for the police report.”
Since the policy had been reinstated so recently, Liza couldn’t help but worry. What if the fire did turn out to be arson? Would the insurance company assume that Liza herself was behind it? Would they accuse her of burning down her own home in order to collect on the insurance? In that case, the insurance company might balk and refuse to pay the claim altogether.