by J. A. Jance
“Yes,” the man said. “That’s right. Robert Fletcher. Bobby.”
“Very well, Bobby,” Joanna said. “Let’s go into my office and discuss this. And if you don’t mind, I’d like to invite Detective Howell here to join us. She’s the detective who is most familiar with the situation out at Caring Friends. Would you care for a cup of coffee?”
The man seemed surprised and disarmed by her unexpected kindness. “Yes,” he said quietly. “Thank you. That would be very nice.”
“How do you take it?”
“Black. Just black.”
Joanna glanced in Kristin’s direction. Taking a cue from her boss, Kristin marched off to get coffee. Meanwhile Joanna ushered Fletcher into her office and motioned him into one of the captain’s chairs, where he very nearly didn’t fit. Deb took a seat in the other one.
“I’m sorry for your loss,” Joanna said.
To her surprise, Bobby’s eyes filled with tears. Nodding, he used a meaty paw to wipe them away. “Thank you,” he murmured.
“How long ago did you lose your mother?” Joanna asked.
“Six months,” he said. “Two months shy of her ninety-second birthday. Of course, mentally she’s been gone much longer than that. Alzheimer’s, you know.”
The office door opened. Kristin came in carrying a cup of coffee. With a wary look in Bobby’s direction, she placed the cup on the desk and then hurried back out as if worried that the man’s temper might flare up once more.
He took a sip of his coffee and cleared his throat. “Why?” he asked. “Why do you want to dig her up? Hasn’t she suffered enough? Can’t you leave well enough alone?”
“Some serious deficiencies have come to light at Caring Friends in the last few days,” Joanna explained.
“I know,” he said. “I heard about that. Philippa Brinson took off. I never met her. She must have arrived after Mother…”
The remainder of the sentence drifted away unfinished.
“There were problems with some of the other patients as well,” Joanna continued. “Serious health issues. Helpless patients were left alone and unsupervised. We need to see that the people who did this accept responsibility for their actions.”
“My sister started it, didn’t she,” Bobby declared. “Is Candace the one who came up with the bright idea that you should dig Mother up?”
Joanna glanced in Deb’s direction. Her detective gave a small nod.
“Yes,” Joanna said.
“It figures.”
“So you and your sister aren’t close?”
“You could say that,” Bobby replied, crossing his arms over his chest.
Joanna waited to see if he would say anything more. Finally he did. “Look,” Bobby said, “I admit it. I was stupid when I was young-really stupid. I ran with some bad people and did some really bad things. I ended up doing time. When I got out, I had nothing. I had no job, no education and nowhere to go, so I came home, carrying all my worldly possessions in a single duffel bag. My mother was still living in the little house on Black Knob where Candace and I grew up. She was living there on Social Security and her widow’s pension from PD.”
That meant Bobby’s father had probably been a miner-underground or open-pit-for Phelps Dodge.
“I’ll never forget the look on her face when she opened the door and saw me there. She just beamed. She was so happy to see me. She called me her baby. ‘Come in, come in,’ she said. ‘I’ve been praying every day that you’d come home and here you are.’ And so I stayed. Like I said, I didn’t have much of an education and I wasn’t really qualified to do anything other than make license plates-I was pretty good at that. But Mother helped me get odd jobs here and there-carrying out groceries at Safeway, cleaning people’s yards and garages, detailing their cars. That way I was able to help with the bills, and we got along fine. For a while. For quite a while.”
He paused for a moment, as if he wasn’t ready to go on with the story. Finally he did. “Then Mother started slipping,” he said. “At first it was just little things, like putting her purse in the freezer or not being able to remember whether or not she’d eaten lunch. Then, one night, I came home and found her in the living room cussing like a sailor and breaking up the furniture. That’s when I knew I couldn’t handle it any longer.”
“And that’s when you went looking for Caring Friends?”
Bobby shook his head. “Actually, no. Mother had already found it on her own. She had been looking for places to go if she ever needed to. She wanted something that wouldn’t break the bank, a place she could pay for out of her Social Security and her pension. And Caring Friends was it. She was already signed up and on their wait-list. Once they had an opening, they admitted her.”
“That was when?”
“Three years ago.”
“Your mother’s death certificate says she died of sepsis,” Deb Howell said. “Your sister claims she had bedsores.”
“How would Candace know anything about it? Was she there every day, holding Mother’s hand and feeding her lunch? No, ma’am, she was not, but I was. I went there every single day and I didn’t see any sores. This is all sour grapes, you know. That’s why Candace is doing this. She wanted me to take Mother home. When Caring Friends started going downhill, Candace said keeping Mother there was just a waste of money, but Mother liked it. The place was familiar. Besides, Candace doesn’t understand what Alzheimer’s does to people. You have to watch them like a hawk. They’re like little kids, you know. They get into everything.”
“So you knew the people running Caring Friends sometimes used restraints?”
“They had to,” Bobby said with a shrug. “Otherwise the patients would just run away-like that Brinson woman did the other night.”
“You said Caring Friends started going downhill,” Deb put in quietly. “Does that mean it used to be better than it is now?”
“Lots better,” Bobby said. “Then the new people took over. They started letting people go-you know, the workers-the aides and the cleaning ladies and the cooks. After they took over, the food wasn’t as good as it was before and the place wasn’t as clean. But Mother didn’t want to leave. And since Mother had put me in charge of her affairs, there wasn’t a thing Candace could do about it. Then when she found out about the house-”
“What about the house?” Joanna asked.
“Two days after mother died. We hadn’t even had the funeral yet, and Candace sent a real estate lady over to see about listing the house. I told her to take a short hike. You see, Mother had set up something that gave me a lifetime…” He paused, searching for the word.
“A lifetime tenancy, maybe?” Joanna offered.
Bobby nodded. “Yes,” he said. “That’s it-a lifetime tenancy. It means I can live in the house until I die. Then it gets sold and the proceeds are divided up among the remaining heirs.”
“And Candace thought this was a bad idea?” Joanna said.
Bobby half smiled. “I’ll say,” he said.
“Do you remember anything about your sister requesting an autopsy at the time?” Joanna asked.
Bobby shook his head. “Not a word. All she wanted was to get Mother buried as fast as humanly possible.”
Joanna glanced at her watch. The Board of Supervisors meeting would be starting in a matter of minutes.
“I’m afraid I’m going to have to go soon, Mr. Fletcher,” Joanna said. “I have another appointment.”
The man lumbered to his feet. “You do understand, don’t you?” he asked. “I just want my mother to be left in peace.”
“I think I do,” Joanna said.
He let himself out. “He’s a lot different from what I expected,” Debra said, once the door closed behind him.
“You mean he’s a lot different from what his sister led you to believe.”
Debra nodded.
“Do you have the sister’s address?” Joanna asked.
“Sure,” Deb said. “It’s right here in my notebook.”
&n
bsp; “Read it to me.” Joanna said, pulling her computer closer. “Let’s see what Zillow has to say.”
When Deb found the address and read it, Joanna typed it into a Web site. A few minutes later she nodded. “Interesting,” she said. “Look at this. The home at that address is currently valued at $784,000.” She did a few more clicks. “And here’s the photo from Google Earth. Foothills location. Swimming pool. This lady has way more money than her poor brother does, but she’s ready to sell the house out from under him.”
“If she has enough money to live in a house like that, how come she claimed she couldn’t afford to have an autopsy at the time of her mother’s death?”
“Because she didn’t really care that much back then,” Joanna answered. “But now she’s got a chance to get that autopsy on our nickel.”
“But why?” Deb asked.
“My guess is that once Caring Friends hit the news, Candace saw a chance to make some money out of the deal. She’s hoping we’ll help her make a case for a wrongful death suit. And she probably figures she won’t have to go to court-that just threatening to do so will be enough to get Alma DeLong to send some money Candace’s way just to get her to shut up. And I’m guessing if we scratch Candace’s surface, we won’t have to go very deep to find a personal injury lawyer.”
“No wonder Bobby Fletcher is pissed,” Deb said. “I would be, too.”
Joanna stood up and grabbed her purse from the credenza behind her. “Gotta run,” she said. “I’m off to do my weekly song and dance with the Board of Supervisors.”
As I put down the phone, Mel came into the room, sat down beside my desk, and crossed one shapely stocking-clad leg over the other.
“I just spoke to Marcella’s brother, Mr. Carbajal. The family is eager to make funeral arrangements. He’s planning on coming up later today to collect the remains. I told him to send us his flight time and number-that one or both of us would be glad to pick him up and drive him to Ellensburg.”
“Picking his brain all the while.”
Mel grinned. “Sure,” she said.
We both know that it’s often easier to elicit information in a casual setting than in a more formal one.
“Any luck locating Paco Castro?” I asked.
Mel shook her head. “None so far,” she said.
Just then Brad Norton poked his head into my tiny office. “Is it safe to come in?” he asked. “No office hanky-panky, right?”
Being the only newlyweds on the S.H.I.T. squad leaves Mel and me open to a lot of good-natured teasing from our associates.
“None whatsoever,” I said. “What’s up?”
“I just had a call from Frances Dennison, the woman who’s the registered owner of that abandoned 4-Runner. She said when her grandson brought it down to Tucson, it was a mess-full of trash and garbage. She said when they cleaned it out, she found a man’s wallet. She didn’t tell me about it when I first talked to her because she had put it away somewhere and wasn’t sure she could find it again. Now that she has, she wanted to know if she should open it and tell me what’s inside. I told her to leave it be, that opening it or handling it might destroy possible evidence. I also told her that I’d send someone by her place to pick it up and log it into evidence. Here’s the address. She lives on East Helen Street in Tucson.”
“Tucson?” Mel repeated. “How far is that from where your friend Joanna Brady is? Maybe she could go by and pick it up.”
I could have gone into a whole song and dance about Joanna Brady being a colleague rather than a friend. After all, I had already come clean with Mel about Joanna Brady. But then I remembered that old line “Methinks she doth protest too much.” I certainly didn’t want to make that mistake. Instead, I picked up the phone and dialed.
My spotty remembrance of Arizona geography told me that the state is a lot like Washington in that it’s bigger than you think. And it’s a lot farther from Tucson to Bisbee than it appears when you’re looking at it in your handy AAA Road Atlas.
Joanna answered on the second ring. She sounded stressed and not the least bit happy to hear from me, which may have been because (a) she really was busy; or (b) she wasn’t particularly interested in hearing from me ever again.
“Hey, Joanna,” I said cheerfully. “We’ve got a situation here. We’re hoping you can give us a hand.”
“All right,” she said after I explained what I needed. “I’m on my way to a meeting right now. I have a detective who’s currently on his way to Tucson on another matter. His name is Ernie Carpenter. I’ll have him give you a call.”
CHAPTER 14
Joanna placed the call to Ernie while pulling into a parking place in the county government complex on Melody Lane. It was only after she got out of the car and was walking toward the building that she noticed Marliss Shackleford’s RAV-4 parked three spots away from her Crown Victoria.
That in itself seemed odd. Marliss seldom attended “Board of Stupidvisors” meetings, as she sometimes playfully referred to them in her column. Had Joanna been more on her game, she might have sensed a trap, but she’d had a very complex past several days.
The meeting was already well under way when she stepped into the room and slipped into the last row of chairs reserved for heads of departments. Her arrival, however, didn’t go unnoticed. The door had made a slight swishing sound as it closed. Several people looked up and glanced in her direction. Marliss, seated in the second row, gave her a smile and a tiny wave. The smile especially should have been ample warning, but it wasn’t.
When the chairman announced it was time for new business, Peggy Whitehead surged to her feet and walked briskly over to the speaker’s podium, unfolding a piece of paper as she stepped in front of the microphone.
“I’m here today to lodge an official complaint against Sheriff Joanna Brady,” she announced, reading from a prepared text. “Her actions this past week and those of her officers have deliberately undermined my department as well as my ability to do my job. As head of the county health department I’ve been hired by this board to look out for the health and well-being of our citizenry. This is an important endeavor and a complicated one. Sheriff Brady seems to be under the impression that her job is the only one of any importance. As an elected county official she seems to be under the mistaken impression that she’s won some kind of popularity contest, one that gives her the right to be rude and disrespectful to the rest of us.
“Two nights ago, at Caring Friends, a fully licensed Alzheimer’s care facility in Palominas, her people, supervised by an inexperienced chief deputy, grievously overstepped their authority. Without consulting anyone other than Sheriff Brady-without consulting medical personnel or family members, I might add-they moved several frail and at-risk patients to other facilities. When the owner of the facility attempted to object to those precipitous actions, she was verbally attacked by Sheriff Brady and physically assaulted by several of Sheriff Brady’s senior officers. They went so far as to jail her overnight.
“Caring Friends is a health-care facility and it falls in my area of responsibility. It may be that there are and were serious deficiencies at Caring Friends, but it’s impossible for me or my people to do a proper investigation with Sheriff Brady and her officers running roughshod over the premises. I don’t get in the way of how Sheriff Brady does her job, and I respectfully request that she stay away from mine.
“I am placing my words in the minutes of this meeting as a way of expressing my dismay about the manner in which this was handled and to officially serve notice to the board that I expect you to properly supervise Sheriff Brady and her officers in the future. Thank you.”
Stunned to momentary silence, Joanna was about to stand up and respond to Peggy Whitehead’s charges when Claire Newmark, the chairman of the board, unexpectedly came to Joanna’s defense.
“It’s my understanding that the sheriff’s department was summoned to Caring Friends the other night on a missing persons call. Is that correct?”
Peggy h
ad been about to sit down. Now she returned to the podium. “Yes,” she said. “That’s right. One of the patients had walked away from the facility.”
“How did that happen?” Claire asked.
“I understand there was a staffing problem,” Peggy answered.
“And was this patient found safely?”
“Yes, but-”
“As for those patients who were moved. Where were they taken?”
“Two of them were admitted to the hospital in Sierra Vista, one went to the Copper Queen Hospital in Bisbee, and one to Tucson, Tucson Medical Center, I believe.”
“And did Sheriff Brady’s deputies drag those unfortunate people out of their beds and force them into patrol cars in order to transport them?”
A titter of laughter went through the room. This wasn’t going the way Peggy had intended, and she flushed angrily. “No,” she said. “Of course not! They were transported in ambulances.”
“Presumably ambulances accompanied by EMTs,” Claire added drily. “Which means that there was some agreement on their part that the patients in question required further medical assistance. And isn’t it true that what you refer to as a ‘staffing problem’ was actually a situation where the patients were left entirely on their own for a number of hours? And weren’t the conditions found there something less than sanitary?”
“Yes, it was unstaffed,” Peggy admitted. “But when the nurse on duty arrived and tried to intervene, she, too, was waylaid and manhandled by Sheriff Brady’s overzealous deputies.”
That nurse was drunk, Joanna wanted to say. But she didn’t have to.
“Thank you, Ms. Whitehead,” Claire Newmark said, dismissing her. “That will be all. Now, is there any other new business?”
A few minutes after getting off the phone with Joanna Brady, I was speaking to Detective Gerald Lowell with the Shasta County Sheriff’s Department. When I identified myself, he didn’t sound any happier to hear from me than Joanna Brady had been. My lack of popularity was almost enough to give me a complex.