by J. A. Jance
Sister Anselm gestured again at the paltry collection of items that had come from the box. “Look at this. The poor girl ran away with almost nothing—a jacket, a spool of thread, a scissors, a light jacket, and a Navajo blanket. She did that for a reason. Perhaps, if we can solve the puzzle before the sheriff’s department does, we can marshal the resources to protect both mother and child. In both cases, these two girls chose death rather than going back to face whatever life they had lived before.”
“Was there any DNA evidence collected in the course of that other case?”
Sister Anselm shrugged. “I wasn’t privy to much of the investigation, but I assume so. However, there was no sign of a sexual assault, if that’s what you’re asking.”
“And nothing was found with the first victim? No possessions of any kind?”
“None whatsoever. No shoes. No clothing. She was wearing a wedding ring—a simple gold band. The same kind of band last night’s victim was wearing.”
“You said you thought the Kingman Jane Doe was about seventeen?”
Sister Anselm nodded.
“So both of them were young, married, very pregnant, and very unhappy.”
Sister Anselm nodded again.
It didn’t take long for Ali to make up her mind. She was her mother’s daughter after all. Over the years Ali had seen what happened whenever one of Edie Larson’s friends asked for help. A request like that quickly morphed into a sacred duty.
“All right, then,” Ali said. “It appears to me that we have three important clues here. Do you have any way for me to reach out to that young man you mentioned, David Upton?”
In answer, Sister Anselm read off his phone number, and Ali keyed it into her iPhone.
“Next we have the blanket,” she said. Ali had taken off her latex gloves. Now she put them back on. Lifting the blanket off the table, she unfolded it, and held it up. “I’m no expert, but this one feels genuine. That makes it both rare and valuable. So how does a girl who has to knot her broken shoelaces together end up with a blanket worth hundreds of dollars? I want you to use my phone and take a picture of it.”
“What good will that do?” Sister Anselm asked.
“As I understand it, each Navajo weaver uses her own particular designs and dyes. I have a friend over at the museum who may be able to identify the weaver. If we can figure out where the blanket came from, maybe we can also learn how this Jane Doe came to have it in her possession.”
The picture-taking process took time. When it was finished, Ali carefully refolded the blanket and returned it to the box.
“And then there’s this,” she said, picking up the tiny scrap of paper. “I found this hidden in the corner of her jacket pocket.”
Sister Anselm looked at it but didn’t touch. “Irene,” she read aloud. “And that’s a Flagstaff telephone exchange.”
“So maybe someone here in Flagstaff was expecting Jane Doe to show up last night. For all we know, they may have already reported her missing. Would you like me to make the call?”
“Please,” Sister Anselm said.
Putting the scrap of paper down on the table, Ali keyed the number into her phone. It rang several times before the call was answered.
“May I help you?”
“I’m looking for Irene.”
The operator’s reply came as a shock. In a moment of astonishing clarity, Ali knew exactly who Irene was and also that she was totally unreachable.
“Sorry,” she mumbled into the phone. “There’s no need.” With trembling hands she ended the call, nearly dropping the phone in the process.
Sister Anselm frowned. “What’s the matter? Is something wrong?”
“I should have recognized the number before I dialed it,” Ali answered. “Irene’s not there. She’s dead. She’s been dead for years.”
12
Princess did not like Joe Friday. At all. She followed him everywhere, going from room to room, barking like crazy. Betsy didn’t attempt to shush her, because, for one thing, Betsy was more than half convinced that the dog’s assessment of the situation was correct.
When that nice young man from Arizona, Stuart, had called her earlier that morning to say that Joe Friday would be stopping by early in the afternoon, Betsy had more or less expected a Jack Webb look-alike to show up on her doorstep. In her mind’s eye, Jack Webb had never aged a day since she had first seen that handsome black-haired man on the black-and-white TV console Alton had installed in the living room. Even with an antenna planted on the roof, the images on the screen were hazy with snow, but she’d been able to see enough of the actor’s features to think he was just the cat’s meow.
The Joe Friday who rang her doorbell and later carted an immense tool kit into her living room did not resemble Jack Webb at all. He had black hair all right, but rather than being trimmed in a conventional manly way, it came all the way to his shoulders in shiny waves that a lot of women would have killed for. Joe had tattoos everywhere Betsy could see—which is to say everything that wasn’t covered by his red plaid flannel shirt and raggedy jeans. She theorized there were probably lots more tattoos in places she couldn’t see.
In other words, as far as Betsy was concerned, Joe Friday already had two strikes against him—long hair and tattoos—to say nothing of the nose ring. Why young people insisted on putting studs in their faces and rings in their noses was more than Betsy could understand. No doubt Alton would have sent Joe packing based on appearance alone. Unfortunately, Alton wasn’t here, and Betsy knew she needed help. As a consequence she did her best to overlook that first bad impression. It helped, of course, that Joe Friday was unfailingly polite.
“Mrs. Peterson?” he inquired, when she opened the door holding Princess in her arms to keep the dog from racing outside and tearing into the hem of his pant legs.
“Yes,” she said. “I’m Mrs. Peterson, and this is Princess.”
“Cute dog,” he said, glancing at the dog, removing his worn baseball cap, and holding out his hand to the dog in greeting. “I’m Joe, the one who called earlier. Stuart Ramey sent me.”
He had indeed called earlier, asking a question that Betsy had considered odd—what color switch plates did she have on her light switches and electrical outlets? Were they black or white?
White was the answer. Decades earlier, when they had been doing a remodeling project, Betsy had lobbied for avocado-colored appliances and beige switch plates and outlet covers. Alton had vetoed both those ideas at once, saying they were just fads. Much as Betsy hated to admit it, Alton had been right on both counts.
Joe had repeated Ali’s suggestion that if anyone asked what he was doing there, she should tell people she had hired him to bring her electrical service into the twenty-first century, and that the work would most likely take a day or two.
When he bent down and started to unlace his boots before entering the house, she told him not to bother. “Having a little melted snow here and there never hurt anybody.”
Leaving his boots on, he picked up the heavy metal toolbox he had carted up onto her porch, lugged it into the living room, and opened the lid. Sitting on the couch and still holding tight to Princess, Betsy was amazed. Joe Friday may have been lacking in the dress-for-success department, but his toolbox would have won Alton over in an instant. It was neat as a pin.
“I have several more boxes to bring in,” he said. “Are you sure you don’t want me to remove my boots?”
“Your boots are fine. Just wipe them off on the mat before you come inside.”
He dragged in several loads of cardboard boxes, setting off a new set of noisy objections from Princess every time he reentered the house. “All right,” he said, setting down the last ones. “Show me where your breaker box is.”
Betsy led him into the laundry room and opened the door to the metal box that hung on the wall above her washer. Next to e
ach breaker switch was a neat label, printed in ink, in Alton’s own hand.
“Are the labels all accurate?” Joe asked.
“Of course,” she said indignantly without bothering to look. “My late husband labeled them, and Alton was a very careful worker.”
“I’m sure he was,” Joe said with a grin, “but I’ll check each outlet as I go, just to be sure.”
“What are you going to do exactly?” Betsy asked. She had expected that the surveillance system would require unsightly cameras placed in full view all over her house.
“I’ll show you,” he said. Back in the living room, he opened two of the boxes. From one he removed what looked for all the world like an ordinary switch plate—a white one—wrapped in clear cellophane. He passed it over to her. After examining it, she shrugged her shoulders.
“It’s a switch plate,” she said. “Just like the ones I already have.”
“Not quite,” Joe said. “The base of the hole for the switch has been slightly enlarged. Once I get the Wi-Fi up and running, I’ll wire pinhole cameras inside each switch plate with the lens aimed through that bit of extra space. Because the cameras will be wired directly into your electrical system, they won’t require any batteries, making the actual devices that much smaller. Whatever the camera records will go through your new computer by way of an invisible file, but it won’t be stored there. Instead, the material will be uploaded to High Noon’s servers. An alarm will sound on our end and the cameras will start recording whenever an unidentified image shows up.”
“But what Princess and I do won’t be visible?” Betsy asked.
“Not at all,” Joe assured her. “Once I do your 3-D photo shoot and have your images uploaded into the system, the two of you will be exempt. More people can be added to the exempt status at a later date, but we don’t recommend that immediately, especially not now while we’re still trying to ascertain who may have been here the other night and turned on the gas.”
Betsy had longed for someone who would believe her version of the other night’s disturbing events. Clearly Joe Friday did. You had to watch out what you asked for.
“What if I have company?” Betsy asked. “What if someone stops by for coffee?”
“Whatever they do inside your house will be recorded.”
“That seems like a terrible invasion of privacy,” Betsy objected. “I mean, what if one of my guests needs to use the powder room?”
“I understand your concerns about invading your legitimate guests’ privacy,” Joe said. “And I’m willing to go so far as to make the powder room a camera-free zone, but everywhere else is fair game because murder is the ultimate invasion of privacy, wouldn’t you say?”
He had her there. Betsy nodded. “I suppose so,” she agreed.
“Now,” he said. “First things first. Where do you want me to set up your new computer?”
“There’s a desk in my bedroom,” she said. “As long as I have to have the dratted thing, I don’t want it here in the middle of the living room.”
“All right, then,” Joe agreed. “That’s where I’ll start—the bedroom.”
Just then the doorbell rang. When Betsy opened the front door, she was dismayed to see her daughter-in-law standing on the front porch. “What’s going on?” Sandra asked, glancing over her shoulder at Joe Friday’s work van parked prominently in the driveway.
Betsy’s first instinct was to say what she really felt—It’s none of your business. But with Joe in the house installing his hidden cameras and with his toolbox and boxes spread out all over the living room, she couldn’t afford to get into a tiff with Sandra.
Biting back a sharp response and sticking to the story they’d agreed on, Betsy said, “I’m having some electrical work done, and I’m also getting a new computer.”
“A computer?” Sandra asked. “You hardly ever used the one you used to have. The sign on the van says your contractor is from Minneapolis. Couldn’t you find someone local? I’m sure Jimmy could have found someone to do the work at half the price.”
“Yes,” Betsy agreed. “I’m sure he could, but he’s so busy these days. I didn’t want to bother him with my concerns.”
“Well,” Sandra asked in her usual pushy fashion, “are you going to ask me in or not?”
“Not,” Betsy said. “This isn’t a good time, not with the power going on and off all over the house. I was about to call Marcia to see if she could pick me up and take me into town to pick up a few items from the store. Since you’re here now, maybe you wouldn’t mind. I could even treat you to an early dinner at the diner.”
Unaccustomed to being told no, Sandra was momentarily taken aback. Then she glanced at her watch. “I could take you into town, I suppose, and wait while you have something to eat,” she agreed reluctantly. “But no dinner for me. We have plans.”
“All right, then,” Betsy said. “You go wait in the car. I’ll put Princess in the laundry room and get my purse.” With that, Betsy closed the door in Sandra’s face, leaving her standing on the porch, thunderstruck and sputtering.
Harold, Betsy’s neighbor, had come by late in the afternoon the day before, apologizing for his tardiness in getting her driveway plowed and her walkway and wheelchair ramp shoveled and deiced. With her coat on and her purse on her arm, Betsy was happy to use the cleaned-up ramp to walk out to Sandra’s Volvo. Cataracts or not, once in the passenger seat, Betsy had no difficulty in seeing the tight-lipped expression on her daughter-in-law’s face as she jammed on the gas and shot past Joe’s van.
“I can’t believe you’d go off like this and leave a complete stranger working in your house.”
“He’s not a complete stranger,” Betsy said. “He’s a friend of Athena’s.” That was close enough to the truth to sound plausible.
“Oh,” Sandra fumed. “I suppose that explains it.”
Betsy took her own sweet time in the grocery store and the pharmacy both, using her magnifying glass to examine labels and making a show of having trouble making up her mind. She couldn’t resist. Having Sandra pacing in the background and checking her watch was just too much fun. With a little thought she was able to stretch her errands until well into the afternoon.
When Betsy finished shopping, she insisted they stop by the café. Betsy ordered a roast beef sandwich and Sandra her cup of black coffee. Only then did Sandra finally get down to business and broach the conversation Betsy had been expecting.
“Donald came by and talked to James last night,” Sandra said. “They’re both very concerned about you, you know. We all are.”
Betsy knew exactly where all this was going, but she played dumb. “Concerned?” she asked innocently.
“Of course we’re concerned,” Sandra said. “It’s one thing for you to lose your hearing aids or misplace your glasses, but it’s quite another to have the kind of episode that ends up involving law enforcement.”
“Ah,” Betsy said, as if only now realizing what this was all about. “The situation the other night where Donald Olson thinks the burners on my stove came on either by magic or else all by themselves. Which is wrong, of course. I think someone tried to murder me.”
Sandra didn’t actually say that she doubted Betsy’s version of the story, but the message came through nonetheless. “That’s what has us so worried—that you’ll have a moment of forgetfulness or confusion and come to some kind of harm. James wants you to go see Dr. Munson and have a complete evaluation.”
Betsy considered that last comment in silence. Elmer Munson was another one of Jimmy’s good pals. He had earned a certain reputation among some of her fellow bingo players down at the VFW as the go-to guy in town when recalcitrant parents needed to be brought to heel by their baby-boomer offspring. In fact, some of the more outspoken retirees suspected that Munson had been the driving force behind having his own mother declared incompetent.
Betsy’s
food came. She tried a taste of it before she replied. The sandwich was just the way she liked it, thinly sliced beef on a piece of plain white Wonder bread instead of on a slab of whole-wheat cardboard some restaurants tried to pass off as “healthy eating.” And the rich brown gravy slathered over the top was thick and tasty.
“When exactly would you and Jimmy like me to schedule this checkup?” Betsy asked at last.
The whole time they had been together that day, Betsy had noted a kind of nervousness in Sandra that she had never exhibited before. Jimmy didn’t like rocking boats, and Betsy wasn’t surprised that her son had sent Sandra to do the dirty work rather than facing the music himself. No doubt Sandra had expected Betsy would object to the very idea, but Betsy’s apparent willingness to consider it sent a look of relief flashing across Sandra’s face. Betsy found that look more disturbing than the whole Dr. Munson scheme.
Sandra reached into her pocket and pulled out a business card. “James already called Dr. Munson’s office and booked an appointment for you,” she said, sliding the card across the table. “Monday afternoon—two-thirty. I’ll be glad to pick you up and bring you into town for the appointment if you like.”
Which was no doubt Sandra’s way of making sure Betsy didn’t ditch the appointment.
“Oh, no,” Betsy said casually, pretenting to examine the handwritten time on the back of the card and then slipping it into her own pocket. “That’s not necessary. I don’t like causing you any inconvenience, especially since you were kind enough to bring me into town today. I’ll call Marcia. She’s always happy to earn a little extra cash by driving me around. With this much notice, she’ll have no difficulty working me in.”
Sandra took the rejection in stride. “If you want to have Marcia pick you up, that’ll be fine,” she said with a smile. “All the same, I’ll plan on being at the appointment, too. For moral support, you know.”
“Of course,” Betsy agreed with a nod. “For moral support.”