by J. A. Jance
“So he’s not a suspect?”
“No,” Ernie said. “Not as far as I’m concerned.”
“Then why don’t we go see him?” Joanna suggested. “Just the two of us, you and I.”
“Right now?” Ernie glanced at his watch and grimaced.
“Why not?” Joanna asked.
“Because today is Tina’s birthday,” Ernie said. “Rose is having a party for her, and I told her I’d be home by three. I could call her, but . . .”
Christina Aguilar was Ernie’s granddaughter and the apple of his eye. She was also about to turn five. With two homicides on the table, Joanna needed all hands on deck. Still, a grandchild’s fifth birthday party was something that happened only once in a lifetime. As Joanna struggled to balance work and family in her own life, she wanted her people to achieve the same thing.
“Don’t worry about it,” she said. “Go to the party. We can talk to Jason later.”
“What about his parents?” Ernie asked. “After what happened the other evening, I don’t think the Radners will let us anywhere near their son. What if it turns out we’re both wrong about his being involved? Supposing we talk to him without having an attorney present. If he breaks down and admits to killing Junior, we’ll never be able to use his confession in court because anything we take away from that interview won’t be admissible.”
Joanna considered Ernie’s on-point objections for a moment before she replied. She had observed the changing expressions on Jason’s face. He had been genuinely grief-stricken about Junior’s death, but, like Ernie, she remained convinced that the boy had been lying about something. There was some bit of knowledge Jason wasn’t willing to share. Whatever that was might well be the key to what had happened.
“I guess,” Joanna said finally, “the possibility of not being able to use a confession in court is a risk I’m willing to take.”
CHAPTER 20
ON THE RIDE FROM DENVER TO ALBUQUERQUE, LIZA HAD RETHOUGHT her original idea of going to a car dealership in search of transportation. Buying a car privately was probably her best option. She had friends who had bought cars and furniture and plenty of other things through Craigslist and eBay and even from newspaper want ads. To do any of those things, however, she needed to be online. Once she exited the cab, she strolled into the Alvarado Transportation Center and deposited her luggage in a locker. After getting directions to the main library, she set out walking.
It was windy and cold. A surprisingly strong gust whipped off her scarf and sent it skittering down the sidewalk. Shocked by how cold the wind felt on her bare head, Liza raced after the scarf for the better part of a block before she finally managed to snag it. She paused at the entrance of the library and used her reflection in the plateglass doors to tug the scarf back into place. A man who was exiting waited patiently inside the lobby until she finished adjusting her head covering, then he pulled the door open and held it for her.
“Good luck,” he told her, smiling as she passed.
Knowing he was referring to her phantom cancer diagnosis, Liza blushed furiously as she walked away, but she also understood that she needed the stranger’s good luck wishes far more than he could possibly know.
Once William had finally given up on talking and had turned on whatever audiobook he was listening to as he drove, Liza had spent several hours mulling over her situation. Gradually the shock of learning about Candy’s death had worn off. What hadn’t worn off was her sense of culpability. She remembered Candy’s reaction when she had told him about her father and the bread truck—the tiny snippet of information that had been passed along to her by Jonathan Thurgard. That was what had pushed Candy over the edge and caused him to launch Liza off on this cross-country trek. With Candy dead, Liza wanted to know—needed to know—what else Jonathan could tell her. She was convinced he was the key to all this.
Intent on finding a car, she made her way to the rows of computer terminals. Since all the computers were currently occupied, she wandered over to the periodicals section and searched out the Sunday edition of the Albuquerque News. After locating the want ads, she combed through the autos-for-sale section. Sitting in the library on the far side of the country from where Aimee had given her the cell phone, Liza finally dared use it for the first time and for several times after that as well. She went down the list of ads one at a time and hit pay dirt on her fifth try.
“I’m calling about your ad in the paper,” Liza said tentatively, because all the vehicles in the previous listings had already been sold by the time she dialed the numbers. “Is the car still available?”
The woman who answered the phone sighed. “Yes, it is,” she said. “It belongs to my mother. I had to take away her car keys this week when I checked her into an assisted-living facility. She just can’t see well enough to drive. As a consequence, I’m afraid her Camry has more than a few bumps and bruises on it. It’s fifteen years old, but it’s very low mileage—only about sixty thousand miles—and it’s in good shape mechanically. She’s had it in for all the scheduled maintenance, and there’s a book in the glove compartment to prove it.”
“How much do you want for it?” Liza asked.
“I’d like to get about thirty-five hundred,” the woman answered. “I was asking four thousand, but I’m willing to lower the price because I’m almost through cleaning out her house. We had the garage sale yesterday, and the junk people are coming to pick up everything else tomorrow morning. I’ve been using the car while I was here, but I’d really like to have it out of my hair before I fly home later this week.”
Liza felt a jolt of empathy. She understood what this woman was going through. She had been through a similar nightmare with her own mother.
“Where are you? Can I come look at it this afternoon?” Liza asked.
“Of course,” the woman said. “If you want to buy it, though, we’ll probably have to finalize the deal tomorrow. I couldn’t let you take it without my having a cashier’s check.”
“We’ll sort it out,” Liza said. “The car sounds like just what I’m looking for—old but reliable—and I may be able to lay hands on that much cash.”
“Good,” the woman said. As she reeled off an address, Liza heard the relief in the woman’s voice. “When do you think you’ll be here?”
“As soon as I can,” Liza said.
Twenty minutes later a second cab deposited Liza outside a small apartment building on Mesa Street SE on the far side of I-25. The car, complete with a hand-painted FOR SALE sign on it, was parked on the street outside a small, run-down apartment building. Calling the damage to the car “bumps and bruises” was understating the case. Liza remembered hearing that Camrys were the most stolen vehicle in the country. Obviously this one—dented or scraped on almost every panel and with one primer-covered door that didn’t match the rest of the color scheme—was considered beneath contempt by even the least ambitious of car thieves. It also explained why no one had taken it off the seller’s hands at the optimistic asking price of four thousand dollars.
Liza was prepared to bargain beneath the thirty-five-hundred-dollar mark. What she wasn’t prepared for was the woman’s very understandable questions about why Liza so desperately needed a car and why she was walking around with a purse full of cash. Liza was forced to spin a series of lies about being ditched by an abusive boyfriend and having to drive back home rather than fly because the boyfriend had stolen her ID. As she told that series of whoppers, Liza was embarrassed by how lame they sounded although the woman appeared to accept them without question.
Forty-five minutes later, after getting the paperwork done and listening to another daughter’s woes about having to clean up her mother’s messes, Liza drove away in the scuzzy Camry for thirty-two hundred cash on the barrel. She went back down the hill, parking as close as she could to the bus depot, where she retrieved her two bags. With them safely stowed in the trunk, she headed for the freeway. Knowing that William was headed south on I-25, she went back north to th
e junction with westbound I-40. She didn’t need a map to look at to know that I-40 would carry her west and into Arizona.
Despite its ratty appearance, the Camry seemed to be in good working order. After adjusting the seat, the first thing Liza noticed was that the gas gauge was riding on empty. In the past few days, she had come to value the pleasant anonymity of truck stops. At Candy’s, everyone had known everyone else. At truck stops, people came and went. Regulars were sometimes recognized and acknowledged, but no one tried to remember their individual orders the way the waitresses at Candy’s had remembered their cadre of customers. At Candy’s, the appearance of a hundred-dollar bill to pay a fifteen-dollar breakfast tab was a rarity and would have caused a stir. Liza had noticed that at truck stops, no one batted an eyelash when she dragged out one of her fragrant hundreds and handed it over to the cashier at a dining room cash wrap or at a travel shop counter, either. She guessed the same would be true at truck stop gas pumps.
She pulled into the next advertised truck stop, Poncho’s. After filling the tank, she bought a pair of maps, one for Arizona and another for New Mexico, then she settled into a booth in the restaurant, ordered lunch, and studied the maps, planning her route. She could see that taking I-25 to I-10 would have been a more direct route to Bisbee, but she was still concerned about possibly running into William along the way or else into someone who knew William and who might have heard about the scarf-wearing cancer patient passenger who had bolted from his truck in Albuquerque. No, even though this might be the long way around, she marked off a route that led her through Flagstaff and then south on I-17 through Phoenix and eventually to Tucson, from which she’d head southeast to Bisbee.
Her food came—surprisingly good meatloaf with an equally tasty side of mac and cheese. While she ate, she thought about Jonathan Thurgard and wondered how much more he knew about her father and how much he would tell her. All she had to do was pick up the phone and ask. Finally, that’s what she did. Still using her burner, Liza dialed information and asked for Stockbridge, Massachusetts. She had a pen ready so that when the operator gave her the number, she was able to write it down.
Moments later a distant phone rang in her ear. “Hello.”
Liza had expected a man to pick up the phone. Having a woman answer took Liza by surprise. “Is Jonathan there?” she mumbled.
“Who’s this?” the woman asked.
“A friend of his,” Liza managed feebly.
“What friend?” the woman demanded. “What’s your name?”
Not wanting to reveal her name, Liza made up one on the spot. “Mary,” she said. “Mary Frost. Could I please speak to Jonathan?”
“You can’t talk to him,” the woman responded brusquely, “and I’m guessing you must not be much of a friend. If you were, you’d already know he’s dead.”
“Dead?” Liza echoed faintly, not having to fake her dismay. “When? How?”
“Last Thursday night,” the woman answered. “Hit-and-run. Funeral’s tomorrow. The obituary is available online. I have to go now. There’s another call. The phone keeps ringing off the hook.”
The woman hung up, leaving Liza to stare in disbelief at the disconnected cell phone in her hand. Jonathan Thurgard was dead, too, along with Candy Small and Olivia Dexter? Who else? Liza wondered. And for the first time ever, she wondered about her mother’s death. The doctor claimed that Selma had died of natural causes. She had been in hospice, after all, and under a doctor’s care. When she had turned up dead, how carefully had anyone checked? There had been no autopsy. The body had been released to the funeral home immediately, and the remains had been cremated well in advance of the funeral. If Selma had been murdered, it was unlikely anyone would ever be held accountable.
Scarcely daring to look around, Liza left enough money on the table to cover her check and a generous tip. Then, gathering her purse and phone, she fled the restaurant. The people responsible for all those deaths were the ones who were looking for her. Liza was convinced that Jonathan Thurgard’s death wasn’t a random hit-and-run. It was a “hit” in the worst sense of the word. Just by speaking to Liza for those few seconds at Selma’s funeral, Jonathan Thurgard had signed his own death warrant. Clearly, anyone connected to Liza or who attempted to help her was in mortal danger.
As Liza sped westward on the freeway, her head was a jumble of questions. Why was all this happening? Was it just about the money? How could it be? After all, there was far less money in the roll-aboard now than there had been when she first began finding the squirreled-away bills in her mother’s moldering house, and yet people were still dying. Liza’s friends and acquaintances were still dying.
She glanced at the phone lying on the passenger seat beside her. She desperately wanted to talk to her brother. Maybe Guy would be able to answer some of her questions. Liza had put off calling him. She had wanted to show up unannounced so she could ask her questions without him having any advance warning that she was coming. Guy was five years older than she was. If he knew something about their father and those damned bread trucks, Liza Machett was determined that he was going to share that knowledge with her.
CHAPTER 21
LEAVING THE CONFERENCE ROOM, JOANNA STOPPED IN THE BREAK room long enough to collect a cup of coffee before going to her office. By now Butch and the kids would be well on their way home from Silver City. She felt a little guilty about that, but she couldn’t be in more than one place at a time.
She was in her office and still puzzling over what to do about Jason Radner when there was a timid knock on the door. “Come in.”
When Joanna looked up, she was surprised to see Sunny Sloan step through the door. Sunny had been working in the sheriff’s department’s public office for the better part of six months. Even so, each time Joanna encountered Dan Sloan’s widow, there was that awful instant of remembrance that took Joanna back to the night she and Father Rowan had come calling at Sunny’s door, waking the poor woman with the appalling news that her husband was dead. Looking up from her desk, Joanna wondered if the reverse wasn’t also true for Sunny—if seeing Joanna always took Sunny back to that terrible night as well.
“Someone’s out in the lobby asking to see you,” Sunny said.
“If it’s a reporter, send them to Chief Deputy Hadlock,” Joanna said.
“He claims he isn’t a reporter,” Sunny replied. “I already asked. His name’s Lyle Morton, and you’re the only one he’s willing to talk to.”
“Okay,” Joanna said. “Bring him back.”
Sunny nodded and disappeared. When she returned a few minutes later, she was followed by an elderly man riding a scooter. His craggy face, tanned and weathered, was topped by a headful of thinning white hair. The twisted knuckles on his hands went a long way to explain why he might have resorted to using a scooter.
Joanna stood and walked around to the front of her desk to greet him. “I’m Sheriff Joanna Brady, Mr. Morton,” she said. “I understand you want to speak to me?”
“I’m Lyle,” he said. “Nobody calls me Mr. Morton.”
“What can I do for you?”
“I own the Whetstone Mountain Retreat,” he said. “Guy Machett was a friend of mine.”
“I’m so sorry for your loss,” Joanna said at once, but in the momentary pause that followed, Joanna was dismayed to find herself imagining this angular old man riding a scooter in the nude.
Although she tried to suppress her consternation, Lyle seemingly read her mind and called her on it. He grinned at her. “I guess you know what kind of a retreat it is.”
She nodded.
“When people come to the retreat the first time, my scooter makes a bit of a stir, but they adjust. There aren’t many wheelchair-accessible nudist facilities on the planet, but ours is.” He gave the handle of his scooter a fond pat. “Living in the nude may seem a bit far-fetched to begin with,” he continued, “and being old and living in the nude even more so, but after a while what’s odd is having to put on clothes and come in
to town like I’ve done today.”
Joanna said nothing. Blushing, she simply nodded.
“I knew your dad, by the way,” Lyle added, surprising Joanna for a second time.
“You did?”
“Yup. When I first got here, the property was caught up in a family feud, and I was able to get it for a bargain basement price. Everything was hunky-dory until I started pulling permits to go from running a ranch to running a retreat. Some of my cattle-raising neighbors took exception to that idea. There were several instances of fences being cut and livestock being allowed to roam onto my land and cause trouble. There was even one occasion when the pump on one of my wells was damaged. Your dad was sheriff back then. I called him, and he took care of it. He came by in person and gave the miscreants—a couple of teenagers at the time—a lesson in the realities of owning private property. Nobody went to jail, but D. H. Lathrop put the issue to bed once and for all.
“I’m still not best of friends with those neighbors,” Lyle continued, “but we’ve learned to get along—live and let live. Last year, when we were all looking down the barrel at a forest fire, those same guys—all grown up now—came over to my place and helped build the fire line. The firefighters were there, dolled up in all their gear. The cowboys were there in their jeans and boots and hats, and my people were there in boots and hats and nothing else. You should have seen it. It was quite a sight!”
Lyle laughed heartily. Picturing the scene, Joanna chuckled, too.
“Please sit,” Lyle added. “Makes me uncomfortable when folks end up standing when I can’t do the same.”
Instead of returning to the far side of the desk, Joanna sank down on one of the captain’s chairs in front of it. “What can I do for you, Lyle?”
In a sudden transformation, all trace of laughter left the man’s face. “Like I said, Guy Machett was a friend of mine—a friend as well as a client. The report on the news said he was killed sometime Friday evening. Since he left the retreat late Friday afternoon, I may have been one of the last people to see him alive. I came to see if I could be of any assistance.”