Damage Control

by J. A. Jance

  “In that case, I’ll ask everyone to hang around for a while. We’ll do the briefing once you’re here.”

  Twenty minutes later Joanna and Frank gathered in the conference room with all the members of her investigative team. It took only a matter of minutes to deal with the weekend’s other routine patrol matters. The four fatalities were something else entirely. At Frank’s suggestion they discussed them in chronological order.

  “Doc Winfield has Martha Beasley’s autopsy scheduled for one this afternoon,” Detective Howell told the group. “Depending on what he finds, he’s hoping to release the bodies to one of the daughters later on this afternoon or else tomorrow morning.”

  “Which one?” Joanna asked.

  Deb shrugged. “For now I suppose it’ll have to be the one who’s out of jail.”

  “You’ve warned Dr. Winfield that there’s a problem between the Beasleys’ two daughters?”

  Debra Howell gave her boss a rueful smile. “Yes,” she said. “He knows there are two of them. He also knows they’re at war. Final results from the toxicology screenings won’t be back for weeks, and for right now he’s found nothing. I’ve spoken to the Beasleys’ neighbors and to as many of their friends as I could find. One of them, Maggie Morris, mentioned that Alfred didn’t seem to be quite his old self in the last few weeks. Both he and his wife seemed to be slipping a little mentally, and recently there had been mention of their looking into a residential assisted living arrangement of some kind. As far as Ms. Morris knew, though, nothing definite had been decided. She said Alfred was shocked by how expensive that kind of care would be.”

  “Aren’t we all,” Ernie Carpenter muttered.

  “But Alfred didn’t talk to anyone about a possible Alzheimer’s diagnosis?”

  “Not that I’ve been able to find so far,” Deb said.

  “If it was something that worried him, Alfred probably wouldn’t have talked about it,” Ernie said. “Maybe not even with his wife. And with a pair of genuine fruitcakes for daughters, I can’t imagine that he’d talk to either one of them about it, either.”

  Ernie was Joanna’s elder-statesman detective who was still dealing with the aftermath of his own bout with prostate cancer. When it came to knowing what a man would or wouldn’t do in that situation, Joanna was glad to defer to him.

  “Was money a problem for the Beasleys?” Joanna asked.

  Deb shook her head. “They never earned a lot of money,” she said, “but from what I can tell, they managed what they had very well. Their house was paid for. They had no debts of any kind and lots of money in the bank.”

  “How much money?”

  “Over half a million,” Deb said. “Enough that they shouldn’t have had to worry about how much assisted living cost.”

  “There’s money cost and then there’s the cost of losing your independence,” Ernie said. “If I was in Alfred Beasley’s shoes, I’d have been a hell of a lot more worried about the second one than I was about the first.”

  “So everything we see so far still points to suicide?”

  Deb nodded.

  “With both of them gone, who gets the money?” Joanna asked. “Split fifty-fifty between the two daughters?”

  “That’s what everyone’s expecting, although no one has as yet laid hands on the will itself. It’s supposed to be at their attorney’s office, but Burton Kimball is on vacation this week and his office is closed.”

  Burton Kimball was Bisbee’s premier criminal defense attorney, but he also did a fair amount of estate planning work.

  “You can’t reach him by cell phone?”

  “He’s doing one of those river raft trips down the Colorado,” Deb replied. “That means he’s not reachable by cell phone. Alfred was so careful about planning everything else, you’d think he wouldn’t have done this when his lawyer would be unavailable, but Burton Kimball’s paralegal, Monica Jones, is due back from a weekend trip to California later today. She should be able to help out.”

  “What do you mean about Alfred Beasley’s careful planning?” Joanna asked. “What’s that all about?”

  “Their funeral service—a joint service, by the way—is all prepaid and all prearranged, down to the music, Scripture reading, and program, cremation arrangements and where to scatter the ashes,” Deb said. “The only thing missing was the actual date.”

  “That’s careful planning, all right,” Joanna agreed. “Keep after it, Deb. If and when there are copies of the will available, bring me one if you can.” Joanna turned to Ernie Carpenter. “You’re up next, Ernie,” she said. “You were the last one at the fire scene. What’s up with the Lenny Sunderson case?”

  Ernie slid a set of papers across the table. “That’s Ted Carrell’s preliminary report,” he said. “Ted’s the Department of Public Safety arson investigator,” he explained for everyone else’s benefit. “What he found is consistent with an electrical fire. There was a room air conditioner running, assorted medical equipment, and probably a few other devices as well. The load was too much for the aluminum wiring and it started to smolder. Flames finally broke through the wall, causing the oxygen tank to explode. But Sunderson didn’t burn to death. According to Doc Winfield, he succumbed to smoke inhalation long before the tank blew.”

  “Aluminum wiring?” Dave asked. “Not copper?”

  “That’s right,” Ernie said. “That particular model of mobile home was built back in the sixties, when they still used that junk because it was cheaper than copper. It’s also not nearly as safe.”

  “Does Mrs. Sunderson know about this?” Joanna asked.

  Ernie nodded. “I talked to her about it at length yesterday afternoon. She said she had noticed that the light switches in that room were warm to the touch, and she had sent a note to her landlord about it with her last rent check, asking if it was something she should be worried about.”

  “It turns out it was,” Joanna said.

  “Looks like.”

  “And this is most likely going to be ruled accidental.”

  “Yes.”

  “How was she when you saw her?” Joanna asked.

  “Mrs. Sunderson? Broken up but coping. The kids were fine. They were actually outside playing in the motel pool and having a blast. She was inside trying to figure out where they’re all going to live once they have to leave the motel. I’ve heard that some of the local churches are banding together to help them, but when you’re having to start over from scratch like that—when you’re left with nothing but the clothes on your back, it’s not going to be easy.”

  When attending the briefings, Joanna always carried a leather-bound notebook with her. She jotted a note to herself. “See Tom McCracken.”

  “All right, then,” she said. “That’s three down. Two suicides and an accidental death. What’s happening with Wanda Mappin?”

  Dave Hollicker raised his hand. “I’ve spoken to the owner of the locket we found with her body,” he said. “Richard Logan, the man who placed the Lost and Found ad on Craig’s List, is actually the great-grandson of the people whose monograms are on the locket.” Dave paused long enough to consult his notes. “HRC and KML stand for Helen Rose Campbell and Kenneth Michael Logan. The locket is a family heirloom that has been passed from one generation to the next. It would have been passed on to Richard’s daughter, eventually, but it disappeared from his mother’s home sometime in the last year or so. He doesn’t know when or how.

  “They live in Tucson with his mother in a casita on their property. There was no break-in that anyone knows about, but Mama Logan evidently isn’t the greatest at keeping her doors and windows locked. Months ago she told her son that she was sure someone had been in her house and had taken a carton of cigarettes out of her freezer. If someone was prowling through her house, that might have been when it happened, but nothing else was found to be missing at the time and no police report was filed. Mr. Logan wasn’t at all sure that his mother wasn’t mistaken. The woman’s evidently a chain smoker. He thou
ght she was claiming someone had stolen her cigarettes rather than admitting she had smoked them herself. Then, three weeks ago, when Logan’s daughter was about to get married, his mother wanted the locket to be the ‘something old’ the bride wore on her wedding day. The problem is, the locket couldn’t be found.”

  “Because it was buried in a plastic bag along with Wanda Mappin’s body,” Joanna observed. “But we have no idea when it was taken or by whom.”

  “I asked Mr. Logan about that,” Dave said. “He couldn’t remember exactly. He seemed to remember the missing cigarettes incident was early in the year—shortly after Christmas.”

  “And where do these people live again?” Joanna asked. “Anywhere near Wanda’s group home?”

  “It’s several miles away,” Dave said. “The Logans’ place is in a neighborhood called Sam Hughes, which is a few blocks east of the university. The group home is on Copper, several grids to the north and east of there. That’s a long way for someone like Wanda to travel on her own, to say nothing of finding her way back home again.”

  Jaime cut into the conversation. “And even if she did, I doubt she was the one pilfering from Logan’s mother’s house. As soon as Dave told me about this, I called Lucinda Mappin and asked her. She was adamant. Wanda never smoked. She hated the fact that her mother did. Lucinda says Wanda never would have taken something that didn’t belong to her and she most especially wouldn’t have taken cigarettes. But she did mention something intriguing. Lucinda remembers Wanda telling her that her friend—that imaginary friend of hers named Wayne—smoked.”

  “The friend who disappeared smoked.” Joanna mused. “The one who didn’t exist.”

  “Right.”

  “So we need to find him.”

  “Yes,” Jaime agreed. “We do.”

  “Have you talked to the people at the group home?”

  “Flannigan Foundation? I’ve tried talking to them. It turns out they run all kinds of group homes, everything from Alzheimer’s to halfway houses for sex offenders and druggies. They started out about twenty-five years ago as your basic do-gooders providing homes for people like Wanda whose families, for whatever reason, could no longer care for their loved ones. In recent years, though, Flannigan Foundation has expanded like crazy. They still take some private placements, as they did with Wanda, but mostly they’re paid by the state. Apparently state contracts like that can be very lucrative.”

  “What do you mean, you’ve tried talking to them?” Joanna asked.

  “Most of what I’ve told you so far I’ve been able to track down on the Internet,” Jaime answered. “I have a call in to Donald Dietrich, Flannigan’s executive director. So far he hasn’t bothered to call back. The people I’ve spoken to on my way up the chain of command to his office have been less than cooperative. Based on that, I doubt Mr. Dietrich will be, either.”

  “Have you learned anything else about Wanda’s disappearance?”

  “I pulled a copy of the original missing persons report.”

  Jaime slid a set of papers across the conference table. While Frank passed copies to all the others, Joanna glanced through hers. The report pretty much squared with what Lucinda Mappin had told them earlier—that Wanda had missed her midnight bed check and had been reported missing to Tucson PD forty-five minutes later.

  “No video surveillance?”

  “Not at the group home,” Jaime said. “And if there was video surveillance from any other businesses in the neighborhood, those are most likely taped over and gone now. I get the feeling that Tucson PD didn’t waste a whole lot of manpower, time, or effort looking for Wanda Mappin.”

  “They didn’t know she was dead,” Joanna said. “We do.”

  Joanna turned to Casey Ledford, the latent fingerprint tech, who had been sitting quietly throughout the briefing. “What about you, Casey?” Joanna asked. “Anything on your end?”

  “I’m going over the bags inch by inch,” she said. “There’s a chance that the place where the two bags were taped together didn’t get as degraded as the parts that were exposed to the sand and water. But so far, nothing.”

  “Keep looking,” Joanna said. Before she could say anything more, the conference room door opened and Kristin beckoned to her. Kristin seldom interrupted the morning proceedings. Assuming this to be something important, Joanna gathered up her notebook and other paraphernalia and followed her secretary out into the lobby.

  “What’s going on?” she asked.

  “Dick Voland is here to see you,” Kristin told her. “He says it’s urgent. He came in the back way and asked to wait in your office.”

  “In my office?” Joanna asked in dismay. “You left him there on his own?”

  “Sorry. He told me it was important,” Kristin said. “Important and confidential.”

  Joanna approached her closed office door and stopped outside long enough to compose herself before turning the handle. Joanna had never discussed with anyone the exact nature of the circumstances under which Richard Voland had left the sheriff’s department. She had sent him packing when she’d come to realize that he had a romantic interest in her that made their working together impossible.

  Since that abrupt departure, Dick had moved on. Not only had he opened his own private investigation business, he had also courted and married Marliss Shackleford. Because they all attended the same church, that meant there were occasional public encounters in what was mutually neutral territory. Over time those had become less difficult, but this was different. Having him show back up on Joanna’s home turf and bluff his way into her office without an express invitation was an entirely different matter.

  “Hello, Dick,” she said, forcing her voice to remain even. “You needed to see me?”

  He was seated in one of the two captain’s chairs. “Do you mind closing that door?” he asked.

  “I don’t see why—”

  “Sheriff Brady,” he said formally. “I believe what I have to say is best said in private.”

  Reluctantly, Joanna pulled the door shut behind her and then made her way to her desk.

  “If this is about the situation with our former tenant,” Joanna began, “you should probably be talking to Butch. He’s the one who hired you.”

  “It’s not just about Bob Baker,” Dick said. “It’s also about you.”

  “Have you found him, then?” Joanna asked.

  “I’ve located his vehicle,” Dick said. “It’s parked in the long-term lot at Tucson International. I’ve also managed to trace his movements beyond that. He left a week ago on a flight to Mazatlán on a one-way ticket, by the way. I’m assuming he has no intention of coming back.”

  Dick Voland’s competency had never been in question.

  “It sounds as though you’ve done what Butch wanted you to do, then,” Joanna said. “If you’ll stop by the house, I’m sure he’ll be glad to give you a check.”

  “There’s more,” Dick said.

  His tone of voice was dead flat. That was worrisome.

  “What?” Joanna asked.

  “Before he took off, Baker had come under the scrutiny of the FBI. They were getting ready to bust him for smuggling, but he gave them the slip before they got their ducks in a row.”

  “So?” Joanna asked.

  “Now the FBI is trying to wipe the egg off their faces, and they’re investigating you,” Dick said quietly. “You and Butch.”

  “They’re investigating us?” Joanna asked.

  “That’s right,” Dick said. “I stumbled on it by accident, and I certainly can’t say how, but with Baker gone, the feds are looking into whether or not you and Butch knew what he was doing out of the house he rented from you. They’re trying to see if you were in on it.”

  “That’s appalling!” Joanna exclaimed.

  “Yes,” Dick Voland agreed. “That’s what I thought, too. It’s also why I decided to come to you with it. It seemed only fair to let you know. And now that I have, I should be going.” He got to his feet. “Do
n’t bother,” he added. “I know the way.”

  Dick let himself out through Joanna’s private entrance. Stunned to silence by his words, she let him go. Bob Baker had been using their rental property for illegal purposes, so now Joanna and Butch were under investigation? The whole idea left Joanna with a pain in her gut.

  Wanting to talk it over with Butch, she reached for her phone and punched the speed-dial number for the house, but she ended the call before it connected. If they were being investigated, what were the chances their phone calls were being monitored as well? After putting the phone down for a moment, she picked it up and redialed.

  “How about lunch?” she asked when Butch answered.

  “Lunch? Are you kidding?” he asked. “You’re inviting me to lunch even though I’ll show up with a squalling baby and dribble on my shirt?”

  “Yes.”

  “Jenny can’t come. She’s over at Cassie’s, but Dennis and I will be there. Where and when?”

  “Daisy’s,” she said. “Eleven-thirty.”

  Joanna’s Monday mornings were usually devoted to routine administrative matters. She tried to do some of that now, but she had difficulty concentrating. The idea that she and Butch were under suspicion was profoundly disturbing. They had rented property to someone who had come with a whole raft of good references, but now that Bob Baker had taken off, she and Butch were somehow guilty by association. Regardless of the outcome, the fact that an investigation had been initiated could result in far-reaching complications. If Joanna came under a cloud of suspicion, so would her department. The actions of her investigators and deputies would all be called into question. Individual suspects were supposed to be considered innocent until proved guilty. Joanna knew that law enforcement agencies weren’t always accorded that same consideration.

  As sheriff, Joanna had occasionally worked on investigations that included various federal entities. Many of those relationships had been prickly at best. How likely was it that someone whose toes she had stepped on in the past was now looking for wrongdoing on her part?

  Exasperated by her inability to concentrate on her work, Joanna left the office for lunch several minutes early. Junior Dowdle, smiling and holding a handful of menus, met her at the entrance. “Dennis?” he asked.