Damage Control

by J. A. Jance

  “You’re sure you’re talking about my mother?” Joanna asked.

  “Who else?” Butch returned.

  “When did she tell you that?”

  “This afternoon,” Butch said. “She stopped by a couple of hours earlier this afternoon, just after we came home from Jim Bob and Eva Lou’s. She wanted to know what I thought about Mazda Miatas. She’s evidently thinking of buying one—a convertible, bright red.”

  The fact that Eleanor wanted to come and run roughshod over Joanna’s household in Butch’s absence was bad enough. The rest was beyond belief. “Wait a minute,” Joanna said, holding up her hand. “You’re saying my mother came to you—to Butch Dixon—for car-buying advice? And she wants a convertible?”

  “That’s right. I told her she should probably talk the Miata situation over with George. She said ordinarily she would but that she isn’t speaking to him at the moment.”

  Joanna shook her head. “As you said earlier, whatever’s going on between them, we can’t afford to get in the middle of it.”

  “I’m afraid we already are,” Butch said. “George called here looking for her. Twice. I told him she had been here earlier but that I didn’t have a clue where she was headed after that. George asked me if she had given me any hint about what was going on with her. I told him no, because I didn’t know what else to say.”

  “Does that mean you do know what’s going on?” Joanna asked.

  “I think your mother is jealous,” Butch said.

  “Jealous!” Joanna repeated. “Of whom?”

  “The woman who works in George’s office. She didn’t mention any names, but she kept talking about ‘that woman in his office.’ Other than the car, that’s all she talked about.”

  “You mean Madge?” Joanna blurted. “My mother is jealous of Madge Livingston? Are you kidding? That can’t be.”

  “Why not?” Butch asked.

  “Have you ever met Madge Livingston?”

  “Never.”

  “She’s a sixty-something peroxide blonde who’s a bitch on wheels,” Joanna said. “She drinks too much, smokes too much—unfiltered Camels—and rides her Harley to and from work.”

  “Hey,” Butch observed mildly. “There’s nothing wrong with people who ride Harleys.”

  With his beloved Honda Goldwing safely under cover and stowed in his section of the garage, Butch had an opinion about motorcycles and their riders that was widely at variance with Joanna’s. There was nothing he liked better than to hit the road for a long solitary ride. Joanna, on the other hand, had adamantly refused Butch’s every invitation to accompany him.

  “Not on your life,” Joanna had told him the last time he asked her to come along. “I’m not getting on that thing until hell freezes over.”

  “Madge has worked for the county for years, even though she’s only been assigned to George for a matter of months,” Joanna continued. “Every year she times her vacation so she can go to that big motorcycle week in Sturgis, North Dakota.”

  “South Dakota,” Butch corrected.

  “Whichever,” Joanna returned. “But the point is, she and my mother are as different as night and day.”

  “Maybe that’s why your mother is so interested in buying a Miata,” Butch suggested. “Maybe she figures having a hot little convertible is one way of leveling the playing field with the competition’s Harley.”

  “That makes no sense,” Joanna said.

  “Jealousy is an emotion,” Butch observed. “It doesn’t have to make sense. In fact, it usually doesn’t.”

  He has a point, Joanna thought. Think about Sandra Wolfe and Samantha Edwards still feuding over Norbert Jessup. None of that made sense, either.

  Joanna reached in her pocket and pulled out her phone. “What are you going to do?” Butch asked.

  “Call her,” Joanna said. “Try to talk some sense into her head.”

  “Just don’t tell her I told you,” Butch said. “She swore me to secrecy.”

  “About Madge?”

  “And about her wanting to buy the Miata. Once she knows I’ve let the cat out of the bag, I’ll no longer be her favorite son-in-law.”

  “You’re her only son-in-law,” Joanna pointed out. Shaking her head in exasperation, she dialed her mother’s cell phone number. It rang and rang and finally went to voice mail. Joanna hung up without leaving a message.

  “She isn’t answering,” Joanna said.

  “I know,” Butch replied. “George already told me as much.”

  When she ended the call, instead of putting down the phone, Joanna dialed George’s number. He answered immediately and without bothering to say hello. “Have you heard from her?” he asked. “Is she all right?”

  “No,” Joanna replied. “I haven’t heard from her. What about you?”

  “She hasn’t called me, either,” he said morosely. “I’m here at the house. Ellie’s makeup is gone from the dresser. So are her toothbrush, hairbrush, and hair dryer from the bathroom. That means she’s packed up and taken off for somewhere, but she didn’t leave a note, Joanna, and she didn’t say a word about where she was going or when she’d be back.”

  “Do you know anything about her wanting to buy a Miata?” Joanna asked.

  “A what?”

  “A Mazda Miata. You know, one of those sporty little convertibles.”

  “A sporty convertible? No way. Ellie would never let loose of that big Buick of hers. She loves that car.”

  That pretty much showed how much George knew about the situation—which was to say, nada.

  Joanna decided to tackle the problem head-on—well, more or less head-on. “Butch seems to think Mom is jealous,” she said.

  “Jealous?” George repeated, as though the word were entirely foreign to him. “Jealous of what?”

  “Of you and Madge.”

  “You mean Madge Livingston, my receptionist?” George managed. “You’re saying your mother thinks something is going on between Madge and me? That’s ridiculous. You know the woman, Joanna. She’s a regular man-eater if I ever met one. Wherever would your mother come up with such a fruitcake idea? What’s she been smoking?”

  “You’ve been putting in some pretty long hours,” Joanna suggested. “In fact, she was complaining to me about that just yesterday. She said your department needed to have more help.”

  “That’s true. I could use more help, but believe me, when I’m working, I’m working. I don’t have time to screw around with anyone, especially with one of my employees. That would be professional suicide. In addition to which, why would I? Your mother’s more than enough woman for me. I knew that from the moment I met her. I also knew that she was the one. Compared with Ellie, Madge Livingston isn’t even in the same ballpark.”

  “So what is going on between you and Mom?” Joanna wanted to know.

  George’s response was guarded. “What makes you think something’s going on?”

  “For one thing, you’re calling here looking for her. For another, she’s not speaking to you. For a third, she’s suddenly treating Butch like he’s the Second Coming or something. She even offered to come here to babysit this September so he can go off on a book tour when Serve and Protect comes out. Does any of this sound like the Eleanor Lathrop Winfield you know and love? It doesn’t to me. I think someone’s pulled a switcheroo on us. Otherwise, she’s gone completely round the bend.”

  “She has been a little strange lately,” George admitted.

  “How lately?”

  “The last few months. Certainly the last few weeks. Ellie hasn’t been herself. She’s been out of sorts—snappish and unhappy.”

  That didn’t seem odd—or even out of character. As far as Joanna was concerned, snappish and unhappy was how Eleanor Lathrop Winfield was most of the time.

  “What about being overly emotional?” Joanna asked, thinking of Eleanor’s sudden bout of tears the day before.

  “Well, yes,” George agreed. “I suppose there’s been some of that as well, but wh
en the women in my life turn on me like that, I just assume it’s something I’ve done wrong. Usually, if I wait around long enough, they’ll let me know what it is. But the idea of Ellie taking off without saying a word about where she’s going? This is something altogether new.” He paused. “And as far as her talking about buying a new car? She’s never said a word to me about that, either.”

  That was one of the tricky things about being married, Joanna realized. You had to be aware of and understand what your spouse was saying. But you also had to understand what he or she wasn’t saying. And why. Text, subtext, invisible subtext. There was evidently a whole lot Eleanor hadn’t been saying to George. And probably vice versa as well.

  “I don’t suppose I should report her missing,” George mused at last.

  “There’s no sign of a struggle at your house?” Joanna confirmed. “Nothing to indicate that she didn’t leave of her own volition, right?”

  “No,” George replied. “Everything’s shipshape.”

  “Then I’d say there’s no reason to report her missing just yet,” Joanna told him. “Adults have every right to come and go on their own. You simply wait to hear from her. We all do.”

  “But it’s not like her to be so unreasonable.”

  That, Joanna thought, is a matter of opinion.

  “If she calls here, we’ll let you know, George,” Joanna assured him. “And if she calls you, you do the same.”

  “I still can’t get over it,” George said. “Ellie thinks I’m carrying on with Madge? That’s unbelievable.”

  As Joanna hung up, she turned to look at Butch, who was busy plucking Dennis out of his high chair. “Now you’ve done it,” her husband said. “We’re right in the middle of it.”

  Joanna shook her head. “We already were,” she replied.

  Once the baby was down and Jenny closeted in her room, Joanna was kind enough to share her pecan pie with Butch. Lying in bed later, Joanna was still puzzling over her mother’s odd behavior.

  “Did Mother come straight out and say she thought George was carrying on with Madge?”

  Butch had already rolled over on his side. “No,” he said. “Not by name. She never mentioned anyone by name. Just ‘that woman from George’s office.’”

  Joanna started to say something more, but by then Butch was already snoring. She lay awake for a long time thinking about it, and before she fell asleep she’d made up her mind. The next morning, as soon as she dropped her purse and briefcase in her own office, she made her way to Frank Montoya’s.

  A longtime deputy, Frank had been one of Joanna’s original opponents when she ran for office the first time. Her decision to make him one of her chief deputies had been a wise political move. From an administrative standpoint it had been absolutely brilliant. Frank had a good eye for detail. He was her chief IT guy and a bulldog when it came to keeping track of budgetary concerns. For the two years since Dick Voland’s departure, Frank had served ably as Joanna’s sole chief deputy. He had a reputation for being the first one at his desk each morning, but not that particular Monday morning, when she was especially in need of his IT skills.

  Joanna wrote a Post-it note and left it on his desk. “See me,” the note said.

  Out in the lobby, Kristin handed Joanna a stack of correspondence that was topped by that morning’s edition of the Arizona Daily Sun. The paper was folded open to reveal a highlighted article headlined “Missing Group Home Patient Found Slain.”

  “Thanks,” Joanna said. “Let me know when Frank shows up.”

  Back at her desk, Joanna disposed of most of the correspondence before finally turning her attention to the designated article.

  Saturday morning, when Luis Andrade, a fourteen-year-old Naco resident, took himself out for an early-morning walk after the previous evening’s torrential downpour, he had no idea that he would soon be embroiled in the homicide investigation of a developmentally disabled woman who disappeared from her Tucson home in March.

  While walking in the desert northwest of Naco, Arizona, Luis stumbled upon the remains of a person who has now been identified as Wanda Louise Mappin, age thirty-one, a developmentally disabled woman who was reported missing from a Tucson area group home in late March. Ms. Mappin disappeared from Holbrook House, one of numerous facilities operated by the Tucson-based Flannigan Foundation.

  “I was out walking and saw one of those black yard bags. I thought it might have something valuable in it, like clothes or something,” Luis said. “I poked it with a stick to see what was inside. When a skull fell out, it scared me to death.”

  Luis immediately reported his disturbing find to his uncle, Cochise County homicide detective Jaime Carbajal. With the help of dental records, the Cochise County medical examiner, Dr. George Winfield, was able to identify the remains as belonging to Ms. Mappin, whose mother, Lucinda, lives in Eloy.

  “I put her in that place because her father was dying and I couldn’t take care of both of them,” Ms. Mappin said. “They were supposed to take care of Wanda. They were supposed to look out for her. Instead they lost her, and now she’s dead.”

  There was a tap on the doorjamb. Joanna looked up to find Frank Montoya standing in the doorway. “Sorry I’m late,” he said. “Overslept. Did you need something?”

  “Come in,” Joanna said. “Have a seat. I wanted to talk to you about my mother.”

  “What about her?” Frank asked.

  “She and George seem to be having a bit of a wrangle,” Joanna said. “And she seems to have taken off without letting anyone know where she went. Since I haven’t heard from George this morning, I’m assuming she didn’t come back home overnight. He’s not wild about doing a missing person report and neither am I, so since you always seem to have plenty of backdoor sources, I was wondering if you had any secret way—short of a court order, that is—of tracking her cell phone calls or maybe her credit card activity.”

  Instead of answering, Frank gave Joanna a long, searching look. Then, shaking his head, he flopped into one of the captain’s chairs on the far side of her desk. He sat there studying his shoes, like an errant kid unceremoniously summoned to the principal’s office.

  “What?” Joanna said.

  Frank raised his gaze and looked Joanna in the eye. “I know exactly where your mother is—or at least where she was up until about forty-five minutes ago. But I’m not sure I should tell you. There are some things you’re better off leaving alone.”

  Joanna was dumbfounded. “You know where my mother is, but you’re not going to tell me?”

  “I don’t want to tell you,” Frank said. “I probably will, but I don’t want to.”

  “What the hell is going on?” Joanna demanded.

  Frank sighed. “Is it possible your mother is having an affair?”

  “An affair? My mother?”

  Frank nodded miserably.

  “What would make you say such a thing?”

  “You know the Westmoreland Hotel out on Highway 92?”

  Joanna nodded. She knew a little about the Westmoreland. It was a nice enough place. She’d been to a couple of Kiwanis meetings there—in the restaurant part. For rubber-chicken fare, the food had been more than decent.

  “I saw your mother’s car parked there when we checked in last night,” Frank said. “It was still there this morning when I left to come to work a little while ago.”

  There were two things in Frank’s statement that didn’t compute—the part about Joanna’s mother’s car being parked at a Sierra Vista motel and the part about Frank spending the night there.

  “We?” Joanna asked.

  For the first time, Frank glanced at her and grinned. “I finally got lucky,” he said.

  Over the years Frank Montoya had endured plenty of teasing for being a confirmed bachelor. Maybe that was about to change.

  “Dr. Marcowitz,” Frank continued, looking a little sappy. “Dr. LuAnn Marcowitz. She’s the new ER doc at Sierra Vista Community Hospital. Well, relatively new. We met
a few months ago when I did that presentation for the Sierra Vista Chamber of Commerce. She was the one appointed to introduce me, and the two of us really hit it off. We’ve been having fun ever since. She’s divorced, with her mother and a couple of kids at home. LuAnn was on call last night, but it wasn’t all that busy at the hospital. We were able to get away for a few hours without raising any red flags with her mother and the kids. That’s why we went to the Westmoreland. I didn’t expect to see anyone there I knew. I’m sure your mother thought the same thing.”

  “I’m sure,” Joanna told him. Without another word, she pulled her phone book off the credenza behind her and began thumbing through the pages.

  “What are you doing?” Frank asked.

  “I’m going to call the hotel.”

  “Don’t do that,” Frank urged. “Can’t you just leave it be?”

  “Would you?”

  “Probably not.”

  Moments later, the hotel operator answered. “I was wondering if Eleanor Winfield is still registered there,” Joanna said.

  “Yes, she is. Would you like me to ring her room?”

  “No, thanks,” Joanna said. “No need.” She put down the phone and picked up her purse, all in one smooth motion.

  “But what about the morning briefing?” Frank began. “With everything that’s gone on before—”

  “You handle it, please,” Joanna said. “This won’t take long. I’ll be back as soon as I can. In fact, I can probably read my mother the riot act and be back here long before you’re done.”

  The Explorer she had taken home the day before had only the lamest of air-conditioning, so Joanna had stopped by the garage and retrieved her Crown Victoria on the way into the office. Heading for the highway, she was tempted to use her lights and siren, but she didn’t. Instead, she turned the air-conditioning to full blast and hoped the cool air would help calm her down.