Outlaw Mountain : A Joanna Brady Mystery (9780061748806)

by Jance, Judith A.

  “When the boss offers to meet for lunch, I figure it must be important,” Ernie countered.

  “Important,” Joanna agreed, picking up her menu. “But not a matter of life-and-death.”

  Nancy returned to the table and sloshed a brimming coffee mug onto the table in front of Joanna.

  “Is the mayor around?” Joanna asked.

  The hostess responded with a narrow-eyed glare. “Mr. Rogers wasn’t here five minutes ago, when he asked,” Nancy said, jerking her head in Jaime Carbajal’s direction. “And he still isn’t.”

  With that the hostess turned and flounced away from the table.

  “What’s the matter with her?” Joanna asked.

  Jaime shrugged. “Who knows? I asked about Clete when I first showed up, and the woman nearly bit my head off.”

  Whoever had designed the menu for the Grubsteak had been cute enough to create entree items with names that matched a selection of local mining claims. When the waitress came around with her pad, Joanna ordered a Lucky Cuss hamburger and coffee. Jaime settled for the Tough Nut steak sandwich, while Ernie decided on a bowl of Contention stew. When the food came, Joanna’s hamburger and Ernie’s stew were both fine, but from all the knife-sawing and necessary chewing, it was clear the steak in Jaime’s Tough Nut sandwich lived up to its name.

  During the course of the meal, Joanna had to endure some good-natured ribbing about her “doorknob” diamond, followed by a discussion of Dick Voland’s abrupt departure. Later on, Joanna brought the two detectives up-to-date with everything she had learned that morning, and they did the same. Susan Jenkins had turned up for the inventory meeting at Alice Rogers’ house, but Clete hadn’t appeared. Susan had verified that Alice’s television set and a VCR were missing along with several pieces of antique jewelry. In view of Clete’s possible involvement in his mother’s death, his failure to show up for the inventory seemed far more ominous.

  Ernie pushed back his chair. “I suppose we’d better get with it. Do one of you want to ask the lady where Clete Rogers is, or should I?”

  “You go right ahead,” Jaime said with a smile. “I believe in taking turns. This Bud’s for you.”

  The third time around, Nancy’s reaction was downright explosive. “What the hell’s the matter with you people? I’ve already told you, Clete isn’t here!”

  “How about telling us where he is then?” Ernie prodded gently. “It’s about his mother, you see. That’s why we need to talk to him.”

  To Joanna’s surprise, Nancy immediately collapsed onto the fourth chair at their table, buried her face in her hands, and then sobbed into them. “That’s just it,” she wailed. “I don’t know where he is! I haven’t seen him all morning. He’s usually here when we open for breakfast. I’ve called the house at least a dozen times now, but he doesn’t answer. I even went over there looking for him. His car’s there, but he isn’t. Or, if he is, he wouldn’t come to the door.

  “I’m scared to death something awful has happened to him. I thought about breaking the window in the door and letting myself in to see. But the thing is, if nothing’s wrong, he’ll be furious. He hates it when I fuss over him or when I do something he calls fussing. But what if he’s passed out, or even worse? What if he forgot to take his medicine?”

  “His insulin?” Joanna asked, innocently.

  “Yes. His insulin. Ever since that business with his mother, he’s been so upset that his whole system has been out of whack. He hasn’t been able to stabilize his blood sugar. What if he forgot to give himself an injection and he’s gone into a diabetic coma or something? Or maybe he got mixed up and gave himself too much. Either way, it could be bad for him—real bad. I know he’ll be all bent out of shape with me for telling on him like this, especially if it turns out to be a false alarm. He hates it when people treat him like an invalid. But you people are all cops, aren’t you? If you break into his house to check on him, it’ll be all right. It’s not like you’d be going in to steal something. I just want to know that he’s okay.”

  When Nancy finally stopped talking long enough to draw a breath, Joanna and Ernie exchanged discreet glances. The last thing they needed was to enter a prime suspect’s home without the benefit of a search warrant. Here in the restaurant, with a tearful Nancy begging them to go check on her boss’s well-being, the idea of breaking and entering seemed perfectly reasonable—necessary, even. But Joanna knew that if Clete Rogers was ever brought to trial for his mother’s death, even the most dim-witted of defense attorneys would be able to make hay out of what would then be considered an illegal search.

  “What do you think?” Ernie asked.

  It was a tough call. On the one hand, a man’s life might be at stake. On the other, a conviction. “We’d better go check,” Joanna said. “In and out. In the meantime, Jaime, how about if you streak back to Bisbee and pick up a search warrant. Just in case.”

  Ten minutes later they were standing in front of Clete Rogers’ modest tin-roofed house. It was a white clapboard affair that clearly dated from Tombstone’s mining heyday. On three sides the house was surrounded by a thicket of agave. Some of the cacti had done their century plant performance, leaving behind long skeletal stalks that still held shriveled and blackened seed pods while all around a new generation of tiny plants sprouted from the hardened earth.

  Seeing the dying cacti gave Joanna a weird feeling, as did spotting Clete Rogers’ much-dented F-100 Ford. The pickup, parked almost out of sight in a narrow-faced, one-car detached garage, had a forlorn, abandoned air about it.

  Joanna and Ernie stepped up onto the porch and Ernie knocked on the front door. It was an old-fashioned piece of antique craftsmanship with a glass window at the top. Etched into the window was a magnificent stag, standing on a promontory in the middle of a forested glade.

  Joanna and Ernie waited for several long moments before Ernie knocked a second time. This time, the old door shuddered under the force of his blows. Still no one answered.

  “I guess we’d better break it,” Ernie said.

  “Let’s try the back door,” Joanna suggested. “This one looks too much like a valuable antique for my taste.”

  The back of the house contained a shaky but fully enclosed utility porch. The door with its horizontal panels dated from the same era as the one at the front of the house, but here the etched glass had long since been replaced by a single pane of ordinary window glass.

  “Break away,” she told Ernie. “At least this one won’t cost as much when it comes time to replace it.”

  Seconds after shattering the glass, Ernie unfastened the inside latch, opened the door, and let Joanna into the house. “Hello,” she called. “Anybody home?” But there was no answer.

  With Joanna leading the way, they walked through the makeshift laundry room that had once been a back porch and on into the kitchen and living room. The whole house couldn’t have been more than eight hundred square feet. The tiny rooms all had the enormously high ceilings of houses built before the age of air-conditioning. The furnishings were threadbare, but everything about the place—from the worn linoleum to the brass push-button light socket—was spotlessly clean. Joanna had expected typical bachelor-pad debris—with clothing and trash littering the floor and with dirty dishes stacked on the counters and attracting bugs in the sink. She had visited several pits like that during her tenure as sheriff. It surprised her a little to see that Cletus Rogers didn’t play to type.

  While Joanna stood in the middle of the living room peering around, Ernie disappeared into what was evidently a bedroom. “Hey, boss,” he called. “I think you’d better come take a look at this.”

  The bedroom was crammed with furniture. Not only did it contain a bed, a huge mirrored dresser, and a nightstand, it also held a frail cherry-wood dining room table that evidently functioned as a desk. Here there were papers—neatly stacked and/or assigned to folders. In the middle of the desk sat a computer, an old desktop model that looked old-fashioned and clunky even to Joanna
.

  “What?” she asked.

  “Come around here and look. The screen’s so bad that you’ll have to stand directly in front of it before you’ll be able to read it.”

  Joanna squeezed her way between the table and the foot of the bed until she was standing beside Ernie. From that vantage point she could read the only two words printed on the sickly-green screen. “I’m sorry.”

  “Sorry for what?” Joanna asked.

  “Doesn’t say.”

  “What does that sound like to you?” Joanna asked.

  “Well,” Ernie said. “Taken with our suspicions about what happened to Alice Rogers, my guess would be it’s the beginning of a suicide note. Or else it’s a complete suicide note.”

  “That’s what I’m thinking,” Joanna agreed. “And since his car is here, he didn’t go far. Let’s go check the garage.”

  The pickup was not only unlocked, it was also empty. The single-car garage, most likely built in the era of the Model Ts, was too small for the whole of the truck to fit inside. Only the front hood and fender nosed into the garage’s darkened interior. At the front of the garage the two officers found a series of wooden shelves, sagging under burdens of neatly labeled boxes and paint cans. Paint and boxes, but no sign of the missing Cletus Rogers.

  Back out in the yard, Joanna and Ernie made their way around the whole of the agave hedge, but there was no sign of a body there and no hint that anything had been disturbed. Once back in the front yard, Joanna stopped and looked back. “I think it’s time to call in Search and Rescue,” she said.

  “Good,” Ernie replied. “That makes two of us.”

  From the moment Joanna called Dispatch and summoned Mike Wilson and his Search and Rescue team, she knew it would be at least an hour, maybe even an hour and a half, before the team could rendezvous at Clete Rogers’ house. Forced to wait outside lest they be accused of doing anything improper, Joanna found herself frustrated with the idea of just standing around. Finally she opened the small suitcase she kept in the back of the Blazer. From her selection of “just-in-case” crime scene clothing, she removed a pair of tennis shoes, put them on, and laced them up.

  “I’m going to walk around a little,” she told Ernie. “You don’t need a search warrant for that.”

  Tombstone may have been the Town Too Tough to Die, but the same couldn’t be said for municipal infrastructure. Within three blocks on either side of the main drag, thin layers of long-ago-laid asphalt had now reverted to potholed gravel trails. As Joanna set out walking, she had to keep her eyes glued to the disintegrating pavement in order to avoid falling in one of the holes and twisting her ankle. The necessity of watching her feet meant she didn’t necessarily notice where she was going. Two blocks from the house, a large shadow intersected with hers. Glancing up, she saw a huge buzzard riding the updrafts.

  In the desert, a circling buzzard carries its own ominous message of death and dying. Sighting in on the bottom of the bird’s lazy circle, Joanna found herself staring at a small concrete complex carrying an identifying sign that said, TOMBSTONE MUNICIPAL SWIMMING POOL. Joanna made her way toward the pool, suspecting in advance what she might find there.

  The fully clothed body of a man lay sprawled face-down on the bottom of the deep end of an empty swimming pool. There was no question about whether or not he was dead. Joanna could tell from the rag-doll way his head canted off to one side that his neck had been broken.

  “Ernie,” Joanna yelled over her shoulder. “Come here. Quick!”

  Moments later, the detective came huffing down the hill. “What is it?” he demanded as he caught up with her. “What’s going on?”

  “Call Dispatch and cancel Search and Rescue. I’m pretty sure we’ve found Clete Rogers.”

  For Joanna, the next part of the scenario was achingly familiar. George Winfield had to be summoned. The crime scene investigation team had to be called out once more. As curious onlookers gathered around and as the screen of crime scene tape went up, Joanna sat in her Blazer and waited for the wheels of bureaucracy to grind. Watching all the activity, she felt terribly sad.

  Alice Rogers was dead and now so was her son. What does it take, Joanna wondered, for a son to kill his mother? How much money could stimulate that much greed? And after the deed was done, how much regret would cause a remorseful killer to take his own life?

  Sitting in the Blazer, Joanna realized that answers to some of those questions were well within her reach. All she had to do was talk to Dena Hogan, the attorney who had handled the writing of Alice Rogers’ will. Dena Hogan most likely would know the general amounts of money and other assets that were part of Alice Rogers’ estate. Glancing at her watch, Joanna saw there was still plenty of time to make it to Sierra Vista for her tentative appointment with Dena Hogan.

  Joanna’s purpose in making the appointment had been to discuss the Mark Childers’ case—to see if any of the financial records subpoenaed in Monica Foster’s divorce case would shed light on what had happened at Oak Vista Estates. But since Dena Hogan was connected to both investigations, one excuse for seeing her was as good as another. Besides, with the two homicide detectives already at the scene of Clete Rogers’ apparent suicide, there was no need for Joanna to hang around.

  “I’m leaving,” Joanna told Ernie Carpenter. “I’m going to go out to Sierra Vista and see Dena Hogan. While I’m at it, I may even pay a call on Karen Brainard.”

  “Do you want some backup on that?”

  Joanna thought about it. “I don’t think so,” she said. “For right now, I think what I have to say to Karen Brainard is best said in private.”

  Ernie looked at her and shook his head. “You go on ahead,” he said, “but don’t say I didn’t warn you.”

  By two o’clock Joanna was out of her tennies, back in her heels, and standing in front of the receptionist’s desk in Dena Hogan’s office on Fry Boulevard in Sierra Vista. The receptionist was young and vague.

  “She’s not in,” Joanna was told when she announced her name.

  “Not in,” Joanna echoed. “I called this morning. I made an appointment.”

  “Ms. Hogan went home sick at lunchtime. She said she may not be back before Monday,” the receptionist added. “I probably should have tried to call, but I didn’t know where to reach you.”

  “You might have tried the sheriffs department,” Joanna said icily. “I did give my name as Sheriff Joanna Brady. That’s usually where sheriffs hang out.”

  Steamed, Joanna made her way out of Dena Hogan’s office. Standing in the cold but sunny November afternoon, she decided to disregard Ernie’s advice and go see Karen Brainard after all. If nothing else, the drive from Sierra Vista to Huachuca City would give Joanna a chance to cool off.

  It turned out that Karen Brainard didn’t live in Huachuca City proper. The Brainard place was on Sands Ranch Road in the foothills of the Whetstones. Her house was a sprawling adobe affair—new construction with carefully contrived landscaping that made it look far older and more well-established than it was. A FOR SALE sign sat next to the mailbox.

  The silver-haired woman who answered the door resembled Karen Brainard. “I’m Sheriff Brady,” Joanna said. “I’m looking for Karen.”

  “She isn’t here right now,” the woman said uneasily. “I don’t know when she’ll be back.”

  The wary way the woman responded put Joanna on guard. “And you are?” she asked.

  “I’m Maureen,” the woman said. “Maureen Edgeworth. Karen’s mother.” She opened the door wider.

  “Won’t you come in?”

  Stepping inside, Joanna was surprised to see that the house was almost entirely devoid of furniture. All that was left in the living room was a single end table with a lamp. “There are chairs in the kitchen,” Maureen explained. “If you don’t mind sitting there.”

  Following Maureen Edgeworth through the house, Joanna could see shadows on the walls where paintings had once hung. It looked as though someone was in the process o
f moving out. The kitchen, too, was missing artwork, although a table and chairs remained. Maureen Edgeworth motioned Joanna into one of those.

  “You say you don’t know when your daughter will return? You are aware that with the ongoing investigations into Lewis Flores’ and Mark Childers’ deaths, your daughter was told not to leave town.”

  “But she had to,” Maureen Edgeworth replied. “She didn’t have a choice.”

  “Where is she?”

  Maureen Edgeworth bit her lip. “I don’t want to tell you,” she said. “She hasn’t gone far, and she will be back eventually. I promise. Her father and I are taking care of Derek and the house in the meantime.”

  “Who’s Derek?” Joanna asked.

  “Karen’s son. Our grandson,” Maureen said. “He’s only sixteen, you see. This has all been awful for him. It was all I could do to get him to go to school today. He didn’t want to, and I don’t blame him. He’s embarrassed. I feel the same way when I have to go to the grocery store. I don’t know what I’ll do when Sunday comes around and I have to go to church. That’s the most difficult thing—seeing people you know and knowing they know. It’s so hard—so very, very hard.”

  “Where is your daughter?” Joanna persisted.

  “In Tucson.”

  “Where in Tucson?”

  “Ed drove her there. Ed’s my husband—Karen’s father. He’s checking her into a treatment center—a drug treatment center. We knew some of this when Paul left. Paul’s our son-in-law, you see. When he moved out, he tried to tell us what was going on—that Karen was mixed up in some pretty wild stuff. But Ed and I didn’t want to believe it. Not Karen. Not our own daughter.

  “But when she called last night and told us what had happened and that she’d had to resign from the board of supervisors, there wasn’t any choice. We had to believe her then. And Ed did the only thing that made sense. He made arrangements to check her into the center first thing this morning. She’ll be there for six weeks. We’ve talked to Paul—we’re on very good terms with him, you see—but he’s doing a consulting job and is out of the country for the next three weeks at least. Ed and I assured Paul that we’ll look after Derek at least until he gets back.”