by J. A. Jance
Out in the kitchen, Jim Bob was spreading toast while Eva Lou carried mugs of steaming cocoa over to the breakfast nook. Jenny settled herself at the far corner of the table, and Joanna slipped onto the bench seat beside her.
“I’m sorry you had to come all the way down from Phoenix just because of what happened to Dora,” Jenny said as she began using her spoon to target and sink the dozen or so miniature marshmallows Eva Lou had left floating on the surface of the cocoa.
Absorbed in her task, Jenny failed to notice the momentary hesitation on her mother’s part. Jenny’s unquestioning belief in Joanna’s having responded in an entirely motherly fashion made Sheriff Brady feel more than slightly guilty. She had come to Bisbee on departmental business rather than in response to Jenny’s crisis. It would have been easy to take credit where it wasn’t due, but Joanna didn’t work that way.
“I didn’t find out about Dora until I was already in Bisbee,” she admitted. “I brought a woman down from Phoenix with me. It was her sister, Connie Haskell, whose body you found in Apache Pass last night.”
“You know who the victim is, then?” Jim Bob asked.
Joanna nodded, looking at Jenny and trying to judge if having brought up the topic of the murdered woman was having any negative effects. Jenny, meanwhile, continued to chase marshmallows. Her air of total detachment seemed to imply that the conversation had nothing at all to do with her.
“How are you doing on finding the killer, then?” Jinn Bob asked. Joanna’s former father-in-law had always taken a keen interest in Andy’s ongoing cases. Now, with Andy dead, he was just as vitally concerned with whatever cases Joanna was working on.
“Not very well,” Joanna responded. “The sister gave us a positive ID. She’s staying overnight at the Copper Queen. I’ll have to pick her up first thing in the morning and take her back to Phoenix.”
“So you’ll be there in time to see Butch be in the wedding?” Jenny asked. Having just been through her mother’s wedding to Butch, Jenny had been intrigued by the idea of Butch being the bride’s attendant and had teased him about whether he’d have to wear a dress.
“I had almost forgotten about the wedding,” Joanna said. “With everything that’s going on, maybe I should just turn around and come straight back home.”
“You’ll do no such thing!” Eva Lou exclaimed. “Jim Bob and I are here to look after things. Jenny’s fine. There’s no reason for you to miss it.”
Joanna glanced at Jenny. “Are you fine?” she asked.
Jenny nodded and spooned what was left of one of the marshmallows into her mouth. “Yes,” she said.
“You’re sure?”
“I’m sure. I’m still mad at Grandma Lathrop, but I’m fine.”
“See there?” Eva Lou said. “If you miss the wedding, you won’t be able to use Jenny as an excuse. Now what time do you plan on leaving in the morning? And would you like us to go home, so you can sleep in your own bed? All you have to do is say the word. We can be back here tomorrow morning whenever you want us to be.”
“You don’t have to do that,” Joanna said. “I’m perfectly capable of sleeping on the couch. And I want to be up and out early, by seven or so.
“Not the couch,” Eva Lou objected. “I won’t hear of it.”
“Me, either,” Jim Bob put in. “Those hide-a-bed things are never comfortable. There’s always that danged metal bar that hits you right in the middle of your ribs.”
Jenny gazed at her mother from under a fringe of long blond eyelashes. “If you want,” she offered quietly, “you can sleep on the bottom bunk, and I’ll sleep on top.”
There was nothing Joanna Brady wanted more right then than to be near her daughter. “Thanks, Jen,” she said. “What a nice offer. I’ll be happy to take you up on it.”
Half an hour later, still warmed by the hot cocoa, Joanna lay in Jenny’s bed, peering up through the glow of the night-light at the dimly visible upper bunk. She was thinking about all that had happened. In a little over twenty-four hours, Jenny had been through a series of terribly traumatic experiences and yet she really did seem fine.
They had both been quiet for such a long time that Joanna assumed Jenny had drifted off.
“Mom? Are you still awake?”
“Yes.”
“You never said anything to me about the cigarettes.”
Butch’s counsel came back to Joanna. What was it he had said? Something about not making a federal case of it. “Should I have?” Joanna asked.
“Well, I mean, you never bawled me out about them or anything. “
“You already apologized to me about the cigarettes,” Joanna said. “Remember last night on the phone? You told me then you were sorry about that. It’s true, isn’t it? You are sorry?”
“Yes.”
“And you don’t plan on trying another one anytime soon, right?”
“Right.”
“Well then, I don’t guess there’s any reason to bawl you out.”
“Oh,” Jenny said. “Well, good night then.”
“Good night.”
Minutes later, Joanna was half asleep when Sadie crept onto the foot of the bed and flopped down between Joanna’s feet and the wall. She had long suspected that Sadie sneaked up onto Jenny’s bed once the bedroom door was safely closed behind them. Careful not to waken Jenny, Joanna shooed the dog off, only to have her clamber back on board just as Joanna herself was about to doze off. The third time it happened she gave up. The words Let sleeping dogs lie were drifting through her head as she finally fell asleep.
When Joanna awakened out of a deep sleep hours later, she was briefly disoriented by being in a strange bed and room. Then, gathering her faculties, she realized that what had roused her was the tantalizing smell of frying bacon and brewing coffee. The alarm clock on Jenny’s bedside table said six forty-three.
Joanna stumbled out of bed and hurried to the kitchen, where she found both Eva Lou and Jim Bob up and dressed and busily engaged in fixing breakfast. “You two!” she said, shaking her head. “You didn’t need to do this. I could have stopped off for breakfast somewhere along the way.”
Eva Lou looked back at her and smiled. “Yes,” she returned. “You could have, but you shouldn’t have to. Now come sit down and eat something. There’s no sense in waking Jenny this early.”
While Jim Bob left to do one more outside chore, Joanna settled into the breakfast nook.
“Oh, my,” Eva Lou said, as Joanna mowed through her very welcome bacon and eggs. “I forgot to tell you. Olga Ortiz called last night about Yolanda.”
Yolanda Ortiz Cañedo was one of two female jailers employed by the Cochise County jail. Only a month earlier, the young mother with two children in elementary school had been diagnosed with cervical cancer. She had undergone surgery at University Medical Center in Tucson and was now involved in chemotherapy.
“How is she?”
“Not well,” Eva Lou said. “Her mother says Yolanda’s back in the hospital. She’s having a bad reaction to the chemo. Olga didn’t come right out and say so, but I think she was hoping you might try to stop by the hospital.”
University Hospital was where Andy had been taken after being shot. It was also where he had died. It was one of the places Joanna Brady would cheerfully never have set foot in again. “I’ll try,” she said. “Maybe Butch and I can stop by there on our way back down tonight.”
“After the wedding? You’re planning to come back home tonight?”
“The wedding is late in the afternoon. I was thinking if we left at seven, maybe ...”
“Joanna,” Eva Lou said kindly. “You didn’t ask my advice, but I’m giving it too you all the same. Tomorrow’s Memorial Day, a holiday. You’ve made arrangements for the department to be covered, haven’t you?”
“Yes.”
“And we’re here to take care of Jenny and the ranch, right?”
“Right.”
“Then give yourself and that new husband of your
s a break. Spend the time with him.”
Jim Bob returned to the kitchen just then. He looked from his wife’s face to Joanna’s. “What’s up?” he asked. “Is something wrong?”
“Just girl talk,” Eva Lou said with a smile as she handed him a cup of coffee. “Now sit down and eat before it gets cold.”
An hour later, Joanna was standing at the front desk of the Copper Queen Hotel. “I’m sorry.” The morning desk clerk was responding to Joanna’s request that he ring room 19. “Ms. MacFerson has asked that she not be disturbed.”
“But I’m here to take her back to Phoenix,” Joanna objected.
“There must be some mistake then,” he replied, riffling through the file of registration cards. “Ms. MacFerson has extended her stay for two and possibly three days.”
“Really,” Joanna said. “I believe I’ll go check on that. Since I’m the one who’s responsible for bringing her to town, I’m also the one who’s responsible for getting her back home.” With that, Joanna strode across the lobby and started up the carpeted stairway.
“Please, Sheriff Brady,” the clerk pleaded. “You shouldn’t ...”
By the time he completed his sentence, Joanna was out of earshot. At the door to room 19, Joanna took one look at the DO NOT DISTURB sign hanging from the doorknob and then knocked anyway. “Housekeeping,” she called.
“Housekeeping!” Maggie MacFerson croaked. “At this ungodly hour? What the hell kind of place is this, anyway?”
Remembering the bandages that had turned both of Maggie’s hands into useless fists, Joanna guessed correctly that she wouldn’t have locked the door.
“Oh, it’s you,” Maggie said, when Joanna let herself into the room. Maggie was still in bed, groaning and cradling her bandaged hands. “I told them I wasn’t to be disturbed. I finally managed to get some sleep, but now my hands hurt like hell.”
“Sorry to disturb you, but I thought I was taking you back to Phoenix this morning,” Joanna said.
“I changed my mind. I’m a reporter, remember?” Maggie replied. “There’s a story here, and the Reporter’s sending a team to cover it. I’m part of that team. I’m an investigative reporter, Sheriff Brady, which means I’m used to asking tough questions and getting answers. Which reminds me. I happen to have one of those questions for you.”
“Like what?” Joanna asked.
“Like why, all the time you were telling me about what happened to Connie, you never happened to mention to me that one of the two people who found the body was none other than your own daughter?”
“It wasn’t important,” Joanna said. “There was no reason to tell you.”
“There was no reason not to tell me,” Maggie retorted. “I wouldn’t know it even now if I hadn’t been chatting up the bartender last night. Just like I wouldn’t know that the local ME is a relative of yours. That strikes me as a little incestuous, Sheriff Brady. Taking all that into consideration, I’ve decided to hang around town for a while and ask a few more questions. No telling what I might turn up. Now go away!”
Without replying, Joanna started to leave the room. “One more thing,” Maggie added before the door could close. “You might want to check out the first story. It’ll be in late editions of the Reporter. I phoned it in last night, too late to make the statewide editions, but it’ll be in the metropolitan ones.”
“Great,” Joanna muttered, after slamming the door shut behind her. “I can hardly wait.”
Joanna left Bisbee seething with anger. Between there and Phoenix, she drove too hard and too fast. Twice she booted left-lane-hugging eighteen-wheelers out of the way by turning on the Civvie’s under-grille lights. Several times along the way she tried phoning Butch, but now when he didn’t answer she hung up before the voice-mail system ever picked up the call. She was tired of leaving messages in the room since he evidently wasn’t bothering to pick them up. A call to Dispatch told her that Detectives Carpenter and Carbajal were on their way to Portal, where they hoped to locate and question Ron Haskell. She also learned that there was still no trace of Sally Matthews.
No surprises there, Joanna told herself.
A little past ten she pulled into the porte cochere at the Conquistador and handed her car keys over to the parking valet. Joanna let herself into their twelfth-floor room to find that the bed was made and the message light was flashing. She assumed that the room had been made up after Butch left that morning, but a check of the messages disabused her of that notion. The messages were all her messages to Butch. There were none from him for her.
She felt a sudden tightening in her stomach. What if something’s happened to him? she wondered. What if he’s been in a car accident or was struck while crossing a street?
Turning on her heel, she hurried out of the room and lack down to the lobby, where she planned to buttonhole someone at the desk. By now it was verging on checkout time, so naturally she was stuck waiting in a long line. While there, she caught a glimpse of a copy of the Sunday edition of the Arizona Reporter held by a man two places in front of her. “Murder Strikes Close to Home,” the newspaper headline read. Beneath the headline was a black-and-white photo of two women, one of whom was unmistakably a much younger version of Maggie MacFerson.
Leaving her place in line, Joanna went to the hotel gift shop and purchased her own copy of the paper and then sat down on one of the couches in the lobby to read it. There were actually two separate articles. Keeping an eye on the line at the front desk, she skimmed through the staff-written piece with three different reporters’ names listed in the byline. That one was a straightforward news article dealing with the murder of Constance Marie Haskell, daughter of a well-known Valley of the Sun developer, Stephen Richardson, and his wife, Claudia. Maggie MacFerson, a longtime Arizona Reporter columnist and investigative reporter, was listed in the article as a sister of the victim. The other article carried a Maggie MacFerson byline and was preceded by an editor’s note.
For years Arizona Reporter prizewinning staff member Maggie MacFerson has distinguished herself as one of the foremost investigative reporters in the nation. Now, after years of being on the reporting side of the news, she finds herself in the opposite camp.
The discovery late Friday night of Ms. MacFerson’s brutally slain younger sister and fellow heiress, Constance Marie Haskell, puts Maggie in the shoes of countless others who have suffered through the unimaginable horror of having a loved one murdered.
Ms. MacFerson’s reputation as a trusted investigative reporter allows her a unique position from which to write about the other victims of homicide—the relatives and friends of the dead—who have few choices to make and even less control in the aftermath of a violent death.
She has agreed to write a series of articles recounting her terrible journey, which began with the discovery of her murdered sister’s body two days ago in rural Cochise County. The first of those articles appears below.
Editor
Years ago I stood in a rainy, windblown cemetery in south Phoenix talking to a grieving mother whose sixteen-year--old son’s bullet-riddled body had been found iii the garbage-strewn sands of the Salt River four days earlier. Her son, a gang member, had been gunned down by two wannabe members of a rival gang as part of an initiation requirement. I’ll never forget her words.
“Cops don’t want to tell me nothin’,” she said. “Just what they think I need to know. Don’t they understand? I’m that boy’s mother. I need to know it all.”
That woman’s words came back to me today with a whole new impact as I tried to come to grips with the horror that someone has murdered my forty-three-year-old sister, Constance Marie Haskell.
I didn’t hear the news over the phone. The cops actually did that part right. Connie’s body was found Friday night in Cochise County, near a place called Apache Pass. Cochise County Sheriff Joanna Brady herself came to see me Saturday to give me the terrible news. But somehow, in the process she neglected to tell me several things, includin
g who it was who had found the body.
I suppose that oversight should be understandable since, in addition to being sheriff, Joanna Brady is also the mother of a twelve-year-old-daughter, and mothers—even mothers who aren’t sheriffs—are known to be protective, sometimes overly so.
Jennifer Ann Brady and an equally headstrong friend, Dora Matthews, slipped away from a Girl Scout camp-out on Friday night to have a smoke. It was while they were AWOL from their tent that they discovered my sister’s naked and bludgeoned body.
Most of the time juveniles who find bodies are interviewed and made much of in the media. After all, in reporting a crime they’re thought to be doing the “right thing.” Sheriff Brady told me none of this, but the information was easy enough for me to discover, along with a possible explanation for Ms. Brady’s apparent reticence.
After all, what law enforcement officer wants to reveal to outsiders that his or her offspring is hanging out with the child of a known criminal? Because that’s exactly what Dora Matthews is—the daughter of an alleged dealer in illegal drugs.
The fact that convicted drug dealer Sally Lorraine Matthews was reportedly running a meth lab out of her home in Old Bisbee may have been news to local law enforcement authorities who called for a Department of Public Safety Haz-Mat team to come clean up the mess last night, but it certainly wasn’t news to some of Sally’s paying customers, the drug consumers who hang out in city parks or wander dazedly up and down Bisbee’s fabled Brewery Gulch.