by J. A. Jance
Detective Mumford was taking notes as Corrine spoke.
“Would you say there was trouble in your sister’s marriage?”
“I know there was,” Corrine said. “She was planning on leaving him.”
There was more Corrine could have said. She knew for a fact that Esther wasn’t blameless. She loved to spend money—had always spent money. She had also hinted to Corrine about having a “friend” on the side, but that was no excuse for murder. So rather than going into any of that, Corrine spared her dead sister’s reputation and made it all out to be Jonathan’s problem and Jonathan’s fault.
“Her husband lost his job months ago,” Corrine said. “According to Esther, they were about to lose the house. Jonathan had made plans to take money out of his 401(k). She had to sign so he could access it.”
“How much money?” Alex Mumford asked.
“I don’t know the exact amount. He was a middle manager for Thousand Oaks Federal before it merged with two of the big banks. He worked for them for the better part of fifteen years.”
“What about the timing on the payout?” Detective Mumford asked. “Any idea when it was due?”
“Soon, I think,” Corrine told her. “But Esther never mentioned to me if it came or not.”
“Go get some rest,” Detective Mumford advised. “When I know more, I’ll be in touch.”
Once Corrine was gone, Alex Mumford picked up the phone. Getting a court order to examine bank and telephone records at that hour on a Sunday morning wasn’t an easy sell, but she had been a homicide cop long enough that she knew who to call.
At that stage of the investigation, Jonathan Southard most likely should have been named as nothing more than a person of interest. But as far as Detective Mumford was concerned, there was very little doubt.
Southard had slaughtered his entire family. He had killed his wife and his children and even the family dog. It was up to Alex Mumford to make sure that the creep didn’t get away with it.
Tucson, Arizona
Sunday, June 7, 2009, 5:00 a.m.
62º Fahrenheit
Jack Tennant’s driver’s license info with the DMV yielded a brother named Zack Tennant with an address in Catalina Foothills Estates. Brian was there at 5:00 A.M. to give Jack’s relatives the bad news about what had happened on the reservation. Hearing about it seemed to hit the brother especially hard. While her husband went to collect address information for Jack’s son and daughter, Ruth Tennant gave Brian a hint as to why.
“Zack and Jack had been estranged for a while,” she explained. “Jack and Abby had one of those hot and heavy romances. Zack and I didn’t approve. In the course of their rush to the altar, some things were said that should have been left unsaid. The rift probably could have been healed, but now it never will be.”
When Zack returned to the living room, his eyes were red, but he brought with him contact information for Jack’s daughter, Carol, who lived in San Francisco, and his son, Gary, who lived in Chula Vista.
“You’ll be in touch with them?” Zack asked. “You’ll let them know what’s happened?”
“When it comes to something like this, I don’t believe in telephones,” Brian assured him. “I’ll be in touch with the local police departments. They’ll have officers go out and speak to them in person.”
“Good,” Zack said. “When they do, tell the kids to call me. I’ll do what I can to handle things on this end.”
After leaving the brother’s residence, Brian drove to Jack and Abby Tennant’s town home in a development called Catalina Vue. On the way he phoned in the next-of-kin information he had gleaned from Zack. He had mentioned that he thought Abby had a grown son somewhere, and Brian was curious why, rather than using her offspring as an emergency contact, Abby had used a woman named Mildred Harrison, who was evidently her next-door neighbor.
Just after 6:00 A.M. that morning, Detective Fellows stood on Mildred’s shaded front porch and rang her doorbell. A bathrobe-clad woman cracked open the front door.
“Who are you?” she demanded over a television set blaring in the background. “Do you have any idea what time it is? What do you want?”
“My name’s Brian Fellows, Detective Brian Fellows with the Pima County Sheriff’s Department. Are you Mildred Harrison?”
“I am,” she said. “What’s this about?”
In reply Brian, saying nothing, held up his ID wallet.
“Just a minute,” she said. “Let me get my reading glasses.”
Before Mildred returned to the door wearing her glasses, she paused long enough to turn down the volume on the television set. Back at the door, she reached for Brian’s identification, which she examined in some detail before handing it back.
“All right,” she said, unlocking the security chain and opening the door. “It looks legit, but these days a woman living alone can’t be too careful. What’s this all about?”
“I understand your neighbor, Abby Tennant, listed your name as an emergency contact on her driver’s license.”
“Has something happened to Abby?” Mildred asked. “Yes, I know she put my name on her license, and she’s on mine, but that was back before she got married. The person you’ll need to contact now is her husband, Jack.”
“I’m sorry to have to tell you this,” Brian said. “Abigail Tennant is deceased and so is her husband. We’re attempting to notify Mrs. Tennant’s next of kin. We also need someone who can give us a positive ID.”
Mildred had returned to the door barefoot and carrying a porcelain coffee mug in one hand. That crashed to the floor, splattering coffee and pieces of broken cup in every direction.
“Dead?” she gasped, looking at Brian in horror, all the while backing away from the doorway. “Abby’s dead? That’s impossible! You can’t be serious!”
“I’m afraid I’m very serious, ma’am,” Brian said.
Mildred Harrison hadn’t invited him into her home, but when she wobbled and looked as if she was in danger of falling, he stepped over the threshold uninvited, took her by the arm, and led her to a nearby sofa.
“This is terrible,” she moaned. “I can’t believe it! I just can’t!”
As she rocked from side to side in a combination of shock and disbelief, Brian made himself useful. Returning to the open doorway, he began collecting pieces of broken mug. Once he had most of those in hand, he walked as far as the kitchen, where he located a trash can under the sink and a roll of paper towels on the counter. He returned to the living room carrying both of those and started mopping up spilled coffee.
“Thank you so much,” Mildred said, dabbing at her eyes. “You shouldn’t have to clean up my mess.”
“It’s not a problem, ma’am,” he said. “I don’t mind doing it at all, but I would appreciate your help.”
“Of course,” she said. “Whatever you need.”
“As I said, we’re attempting to do next-of-kin notifications. Does Abby Tennant have any near relations living around here?”
“No. Her son lives in California somewhere—I’m not sure where. His name is Jonathan, Jonathan Southard. I’ve never met the man, but he must have a screw loose somewhere. He somehow got it into his head that his mother was the cause of his parents’ divorce, even though his dad had taken up with another woman long before the divorce was filed. Jonathan blamed everything on Abby and hasn’t spoken to her in years. It broke her heart, I can tell you that much.”
“What about her ex-husband?”
“His name is Hank, Hank Southard. As far as I know, he still lives in Ohio. But tell me. What happened to them? Was it a car wreck, or what?”
Brian shook his head. “There was a shooting overnight . . .”
“Oh, my!” Mildred exclaimed. “Don’t tell me! Is this about those four people out on the reservation? That story was just on the news a few moments ago, but I never would have imagined in my wildest dreams that it was someone I knew.”
“Yes,” Brian said. “That’s where it happened. Ou
t on the reservation.”
“Who did it? Drug smugglers? Usually when people around here get killed like that, you can bet it has something to do with the drug trade, although why they’d go after Jack and Abby I can’t imagine. Abby barely uses aspirin, and I can’t see Jack shooting back. I never heard of him carrying a weapon of any kind. And why drug smugglers would go around doing that kind of thing with a baby in the car! That’s more than I can fathom.”
“What baby?” Brian asked.
“That’s what the reporter on the news said—that four people had been gunned down and that the only survivor of the incident was some poor little girl who had been transported to the hospital in Sells. I believe he said she was something like four years old.”
Great, Brian thought grimly.
He had wanted to keep Angelina Enos’s presence at the crime scene out of the public eye in order to keep her from being targeted. Obviously he had been overruled by someone higher up the food chain.
“When’s the last time you saw Mr. and Mrs. Tennant?” Brian asked.
“I talked to Abby yesterday afternoon,” Mildred said. “She had just come back from having her hair and nails done. I thought for sure she’d be coming to the party at the park last night, but she told me that she and Jack had made other plans.”
“What party?” Brian asked.
“The Queen of the Night party at Tohono Chul. It only happens once a year. Abby Tennant has been in charge of that event for years. She was supposed to be this year, too, but she backed out at the last minute. She told me she had an unexpected conflict and she was overbooked.”
In a homicide investigation, Brian understood that it’s important to know everything about the victims, including any last-minute sudden changes of plans.
“Why did she back out?” Brian asked.
“It was their anniversary,” Mildred explained. “She and Jack met at the Queen of the Night party five years ago. According to Abby, Jack had come up with some out-of-this-world ‘big surprise’ for their celebration and Abby went along with it. Men are like that, you know,” she added. “When one of them comes up with some tomfool idea, it’s better not to make a fuss.”
“But Jack didn’t say anything to you about what he had in mind?”
“No. Not a word. All I know is it was supposed to be a big surprise. I think Abby thought he was taking her out for a nice dinner. I didn’t have the heart to tell her I had seen him loading all kinds of stuff in his car—a folding table, chairs, a picnic hamper, and a cooler. You don’t need a cooler to take someone out to a nice restaurant for dinner. If my husband had ever pulled a stunt like that, I don’t know what I would have done. When a woman goes to the trouble of having her hair and nails done, she doesn’t want to be dragged off to somebody’s godforsaken picnic.”
Brian had a pretty clear idea that an outdoor picnic wasn’t all Jack Tennant had had in mind. Before Law and Order arrived, Brian and Dan Pardee had followed the trail of footprints and the luminarias to that humongous night-blooming cereus. It occurred to Brian that Jack Tennant had gone to a lot of trouble to honor his anniversary by creating his very own Queen of the Night party. Brian was sure it had been a spectacular surprise, but that was before it turned into a massacre.
“Other than Jack Tennant loading stuff in the car, did you see anything else out of the ordinary?”
Using the arm of the sofa for support, Mildred Harrison hauled herself upright and then tottered over to a picture window that looked out on the street. In front of the window was an easy chair along with a small table. On it sat a pair of binoculars and a notebook.
She picked up the notebook, opened it, and brought it back to Brian, who had taken a seat on the couch.
“We had some break-ins around here a year or so ago and kids rummaging through mailboxes,” she explained. “So we started a neighborhood block watch program. I went out last night to the party at Tohono Chul, but most of the time I’m right here at home, so I volunteered to serve as block captain, and I do keep watch.”
Brian looked down at the open notebook, its lines covered in an old-fashioned spidery script. The writing was so shaky that it was almost illegible.
“Check out the last two pages,” Mildred advised. “The last entry is for yesterday, and the one before that is for the day before. See it there? I saw the same vehicle two days in a row—a light gray minivan with California plates—and I made a note of it each time.”
“Make and model?” Brian asked.
Mildred shook her head. “I have no idea. These days all those minivans look alike to me, but all the same, you can see I took down the plate information, just to be on the safe side. I did that because I hadn’t heard that anyone on the street was expecting company, not in the middle of the summer. Sure, out-of-towners come to visit in droves in January, February, and March, but most Californians have better sense than to show up in Tucson in June or July.”
“This may or may not be related,” Brian said, “but did you happen to get a glimpse of whoever was inside?”
“Both times I saw the vehicle, there was just one person in it—the driver.”
“Man or woman?”
“Definitely a man.”
“Race?” Brian asked.
“White, I’m sure. He was going bald, so probably middle-aged. He wore glasses—well, sunglasses, anyway.”
“Other than the minivan,” Brian said, “did you notice anything else out of the ordinary?”
“No,” Mildred said. “That’s about it. Unleashed dogs wandering around, garbage cans left out on the curb that should have been taken inside, and that sort of thing. Nothing else comes to mind.”
Brian stood up, took out a business card, and gave it to her. “If you’ll excuse me, I need to get back to that next-of-kin situation, but thank you. You’ve been most helpful. If you think of anything else, though, don’t hesitate to call.”
Mildred studied his card. “You probably think I’m just a nosy old lady,” she said. “That’s what Carl would have said. He was my husband. He’s dead now, but he was always after me to mind my own business.”
Brian smiled at her. “I’m not sure how old you are,” he said, “and I’m not so sure about your being nosy, either, but believe me, in my business there are times when we need all the help we can get.”
Brian hurried out to his car. Despite what he’d told Mildred, he doubted anything would come of the license information. Just to be on the safe side, though, he pulled out his cell phone and asked Records to check it out.
Sells, Tohono O’odham Nation, Arizona
Sunday, June 7, 2009, 8:00 a.m.
69º Fahrenheit
Just before Lani got off shift at 8:00 A.M. on Sunday morning, she took a detour past Angie Enos’s room, popped in briefly, just long enough to say hello. Now that Angie had been moved out of the ER, another physician was in charge of her case. The little girl was sitting up in bed eating breakfast.
Angie looked up at Lani from her dish of Lucky Charms. “Are you a leopard?” she asked.
“A leopard?” Lani asked, glancing in Dan Pardee’s direction for help. He shrugged his own bafflement.
“What makes you think I’m a leopard?” Lani asked.
“Spots,” Angie said.
Lani held up her bare arm where dozens of tiny white blemishes dotted her skin. Lani was so accustomed to them that she no longer noticed them.
“Ants,” Lani said.
Angie’s eyes widened. “Kuadagi?” she asked.
Lani nodded. “When I was little—younger than you are—the people who were supposed to be watching me left me alone for too long. I got into an ant bed and the ants bit me,” she explained. “There were so many ant bites that I almost died. I had to go to a hospital just like this one.”
“My mommy doesn’t like me to get near ants,” Angie said. “She said they can be bad.”
“It’s true,” Lani said.
She noticed that Angie still referred to her mother in
the present tense. The reality of her loss had yet to sink into Angie’s little brain.
“You’re not giving Mr. Pardee or Bozo any trouble, are you?” Lani asked.
Angie looked at the Shadow Wolf in his now somewhat bedraggled Border Patrol uniform. He looked tired. A dark five o’clock shadow bristled on his cheeks, but Angie gave him a sweet smile. “Even though he’s a grown-up, he says I can call him Dan.”
“I’d take him at his word then,” Lani said. “Come to think of it, maybe I’ll call him Dan, too. But I’m going off shift now, so I probably won’t see you again.”
“Okay,” Angie said with a shy wave.
Lani went outside. An irate charge nurse was waiting for her at the end of the hall. “What’s a dog doing in that room?” she demanded. “We have no business—”
“It is our business,” Lani interrupted. “That poor little girl’s mother was murdered last night. The dog is helping take her mind off her troubles, and believe me, that’s exactly what she needs.”
“When she goes, the dog goes,” the nurse declared.
“I’m sure,” Lani agreed.
“When will she be released?”
Lani glanced at her watch. She had more than half expected that Angie’s family would have arrived overnight to check on her. She was a little surprised that they had yet to put in an appearance, but she was sure they’d be there soon.
“My understanding is that someone is supposed to come pick her up this morning,” Lani said. “One of her relatives. Next-of-kin notifications were being done last night.”
The charge nurse picked up Angie’s chart. “Do we know who’ll be picking her up?” she asked.
“My guess would be the grandparents,” Lani said. “You’ll need to sort that out with her attending. I’m off.”
Lani left the hospital then. Weariness was catching up with her. She needed to get Gabe fed and on his way home, and then she planned to go to bed herself. Fortunately she had today and tomorrow off. That would give her a chance to catch up on her sleep. It had been a busy night in the ER. Once Jose Thomas had been shipped off to Phoenix Indian, Lani had treated two maternity cases, one of which had ended with the normal delivery of the infant. The other had required an emergency C-section. By the time Lani got off work, both mothers and both newborns were doing well.