by J. A. Jance
“Now that we’ve called Mr. Blair’s bluff, that probably won’t be necessary,” Joanna said. “Anchor Air Conditioning has had a trouble-free ride up to now. I’m guessing Mr. Blair isn’t going to want to screw that up.”
Joanna and Frank left the jail complex and headed back across the parking lot. “Mind if I ask you a question?” Joanna said.
“What’s that?”
“Have you ever heard of someone named Ada Lovelace?” Joanna asked.
“You mean that smart lady who’s the mother of all computers?” Frank returned. “Sure, I know about her. Why?”
“Never mind,” Joanna said irritably, chagrined that her male staff knew far more about this female computer pioneer than she did. “Forget it,” she told Frank. “I’m going home for lunch. Hopefully I’ll be back before it’s time to move the prisoners outside. Tell the Double Cs that I still want to touch base with them later on this afternoon. Before five o’clock today, I want to know exactly where we stand on the Mossman case.”
“Will do,” Frank said, “but I need to warn you. Word is out about all those dead dogs. I’m afraid we’re going to take a hit on that subject once it’s in the papers.”
“What else is new?” Joanna asked.
Back in her office, Joanna found her devoted but as-yet-unnamed dog waiting just inside the door. The animal sprang to her feet and greeted Joanna as though the two of them were old friends. Looking at the dog, Joanna shook her head. “Maybe I’d better call Butch and give him a heads-up about you, old girl.”
She picked up her phone and dialed High Lonesome Ranch. “Would you happen to have a couple peanut-butter-and-jelly sandwiches lying around if I were in a mood to come home for lunch?” she asked when Butch answered.
“If you’ll give me ten minutes, I can probably do better than that.”
“Good. I’ll be there. How’s Lucky doing?” Joanna asked.
“Fine. At least I guess he’s fine. I’ve hardly seen him. He’s been with Jenny all morning. They’re evidently bonding. The good news is that so far Tigger hasn’t bitten the little guy’s head off.”
“I had to go by Animal Control this morning…” she began.
Somehow Butch Dixon knew instinctively where she was going. “No,” he said at once. “You didn’t. Not another one.”
“I had to,” Joanna said. “She’s such a sweet little thing. And her time was almost up. By tomorrow morning, if no one took her, they’d have put her down. Wait till you see her.”
“Well, all right then,” Butch said. “I suppose that makes us even.”
“Even?” Joanna asked. “What do you mean?”
“I invited your mother and George over for dinner tonight. I thought it would be better if the two of us were together when we drop the big news that we’re pregnant.”
Joanna thought about that for a few seconds. “Right,” she agreed at last. “I guess that does make us even.”
An hour later she was back from lunch with the dog once more stowed under her desk when Kristin came to tell her the extra deputies had been deployed in and around the jail complex. Unbidden, the dog emerged from her cave and greeted Kristin with effusive tail-wagging.
“I thought you were going to leave her at home this afternoon.”
“So did I,” Joanna said ruefully. “But as soon as she saw Butch she started jumping and bucking so hard, I could barely hold on to her leash. With him there, I would have had to bodily drag her into the house, so I ended up leaving her in the garage all through lunch. Jeannine Phillips warned me that the dog doesn’t like men, but this is more than not liking. You should have seen her, Kristin. The poor thing was scared to death.”
“What are you going to do?” Kristin asked. “Take her back to the pound?”
“I offered to, but Butch said no. He says he’ll figure out a way around her, but he thought it would be better for everybody concerned if I brought her back to work this afternoon. So I did. Obviously the dog is fine with you, Kristin, but you should probably let Frank, Jaime, and Ernie know she’s here so they don’t barge in unexpectedly.”
“I’ll tell them,” Kristin said. “By the way, Tom Hadlock said to tell you that the guy from Anchor called. They’ve hired Sammy Cotton’s crew to come work on the air-conditioning. They’ll be here by three this afternoon.”
“Good enough,” Joanna said. “Sounds like a win-win situation to me.”
She hurried outside. She and Chief Deputy Montoya watched as the prisoners were allowed out of their cells and into the sun-drenched, razor-wire-surrounded rec yard, which, at this time of day, was at least partially shaded from direct sunlight by the jail itself. The inmates, apparently grateful to be allowed out of their ovenlike cells, helped themselves to paper cups of ice water and then moved in an orderly fashion into the long narrow sliver of shade beside the building or sat on the covered concrete picnic tables that lined the yard.
“The prisoners will be fine,” Joanna said. “They have some shade. It’s the detention officers and extra deputies I feel sorry for. None of them have any shade at all. Let’s make sure they have plenty of water, too. I’d hate to protect the prisoners and lose one of our deputies to heatstroke.”
“I’ll have Tom Hadlock take care of it right away.”
It wasn’t long before the blazing sun drove Joanna herself back into the relative cool of her office. With the dog curled contentedly at her feet, Joanna spent the next two hours dealing with routine paperwork. At three-thirty, her phone rang.
“Detectives Carbajal and Carpenter are here,” Kristin announced. “I told them you’d see them in the conference room.”
“Right. By the way, any sign of the air-conditioning crew?”
“They’ve been here for almost an hour now,” Kristin said.
“Great,” Joanna replied. “Sometimes it pays to be the squeaky wheel.”
Ernie Carpenter and Jaime Carbajal were already in the conference room. Frank Montoya arrived at the same time Joanna did. “Okay, guys,” Joanna said. “What do we have so far?”
“Doc Winfield says Carol Mossman was struck by two bullets—one in the gut and one in the shoulder. The wound to the midsection was the one that actually killed her. She bled to death,” Ernie Carpenter added. “No surprises there. All the shots, including the ones that missed the victim, were fired into the back door of her mobile home. The door was locked at the time from the inside, with her and all of her dogs…all but one of her dogs,” he corrected, “inside the house with her.”
“Why were they inside?”
“That I can’t say. There were food bowls everywhere. The victim may have brought them into the house to feed them, but there was no food in any of the dishes. Either the dogs ate it or she hadn’t finished feeding them before the killer arrived. We don’t believe her assailant ever gained access to the house. After being shot, Carol Mossman managed to drag herself as far as the living room. We think she was trying to reach the phone, but she passed out and died a few feet shy of it.”
“Wait a minute,” Joanna said. “I thought someone told me last night the electricity was turned off at the Mossman place. Now you’re saying the phone was still working. How’s that possible?”
Beetling his thick eyebrows into a frown, Ernie nodded. “It’s one of those old-fashioned Princess phones. Hard-wired. Unlike the new cordless phones everyone has these days, the old ones worked even with the power off. Not that it did Carol Mossman any good.”
“Time of death?”
“She was shot at seven twenty-eight yesterday morning,” Ernie said, consulting his notes. “Doc Winfield says she died some time after that, maybe as much as two or three hours.”
“Seven twenty-eight?” Joanna asked. “How were you able to pinpoint the time of the attack?”
“There was evidently a clock hanging on the wall behind her. When she went down, she took the wall with her and knocked out the clock’s battery.”
“Did you pick up any pertinent information from
Carol Mossman’s neighbors?” Joanna asked, turning her attention to Jaime Carbajal.
“I talked to a Rhonda Wellington. She has a place off the Charleston Road about half a mile away. She’s evidently the neighbor who called Animal Control two weeks ago to report that Carol Mossman’s dogs were running loose. Believe me, there’s no love lost there.”
“Is Wellington a possible suspect?” Joanna queried.
“I doubt it,” Jaime answered. “She says she was scared to death of Carol Mossman’s dogs and wouldn’t go anywhere near them. She said she reported them when they showed up loose on her property and chased her horses. She claims that a couple of times she had to run into her house to get away from the dogs. I doubt she would have gone over there on her own.”
“Maybe she would have if she’d been armed,” Joanna suggested.
Jaime shook his head. “I’m telling you, she was scared of the dogs, and with that many of them, one gun wouldn’t have done much good. Rhonda did claim to have heard what sounded like shots. She said she was outside hanging laundry on her clothesline when she heard a whole series of pops. With the Fourth of July coming up, she decided it was kids setting off firecrackers and didn’t give it another thought. It corroborates the time, though.”
“In other words,” Joanna said, “Rhonda Wellington is a busy-body who made a police report about loose dogs and ignored a flurry of gunshots.”
“Exactly,” Jaime agreed. “I checked with the other neighbors. So far, no one else saw or heard anything. When I finished that, I went out to Sierra Vista and talked to Alberto Sotomeyer, who owns the Shell station where Carol Mossman worked. He says she worked a double shift two days ago—her regular shift, which was four to midnight, and then she worked graveyard as well, from midnight to eight. Sotomeyer said she had some kind of important appointment yesterday and needed to have the whole day off.”
“Yesterday was the deadline for having her dogs vaccinated and licensed,” Joanna suggested. “Maybe she took off work so she could have that done.”
Jaime jotted himself a note. “I’ll check around with the local vets and see if she had an appointment,” he said.
“Has either one of you talked to Edith Mossman yet?” Joanna asked.
Both detectives shook their heads. “Not enough time,” Ernie said. “We’ll try to get to her first thing in the morning. How come?”
“I was just thinking about something she told me last night,” Joanna said. “She claims to have no idea where her son is.”
“Carol’s father?” Ernie asked.
“Right. I believe his name is Edward.”
“That’s what you put on the information you gave us earlier. You also mentioned that Edith and the son are estranged.”
Joanna nodded. “Her words, which she didn’t bother to mince, were something to the effect that if he were to turn up dead, she’d be ready and willing to take a leak on his grave. What I find interesting, however, is that it doesn’t sound as though she’s estranged from any of her granddaughters—from her son’s children. Maybe we should find out what that’s all about.”
The phone rang. Frank Montoya reached around to answer it. “Conference room,” he said. A moment later he passed it over to Joanna. “It’s Tom Hadlock,” he said. “Needs to speak to you right away.”
“What’s up?” Joanna asked.
“The air-conditioning guys expect to have us up and running in another hour, but once they turn the switch back on, it’s going to take time to cool the place off again—a couple of hours at least. Ruby’s wondering if she should make sandwiches so the inmates can eat out in the yard.”
Ruby Starr, a former restaurateur and chef, had been in the Cochise County Jail on a domestic-disturbance charge some three years earlier when the jail’s previous cook had absconded with that year’s supply of holiday turkeys. Ruby had been drafted directly out of her jail cell and into the kitchen. While still officially listed as one of the jail’s inmates, she had set about whipping the nearly derelict kitchen into shape. Under her supervision, sanitation had improved immeasurably, as had the quality of the food. Upon her release, she had stayed on as chief cook, now as a paid employee.
“Good thinking,” Joanna said. “Tell her to make enough sandwiches for the guards and the extra deputies as well. In the meantime, Frank, liberate some money from petty cash and go get a load of chilled watermelons from Safeway. Everyone seems to be behaving themselves. Why not reward them? And, since we seem to be having a jailwide picnic anyway, it might just as well include some genuine picnic fare.”
Frank gave Joanna a questioning look, complete with a single raised eyebrow that meant he didn’t necessarily agree. “Okay, boss,” he said. “If that’s what you want, I’ll get right on it.”
Half an hour later, Joanna was back in her office. Watching the clock edge toward five, she realized the day had slipped away without her ever calling her best friend, Marianne Maculyea, to deliver the earth-shattering news that Joanna was pregnant. She reached for the phone but then put it down again without dialing.
Butch is right. Better not tell anyone else until after we tell Mother.
“Come on, whoever you are,” she said to the dog. “It’s time to go home and face the music.”
Five
Leaving Chief Deputy Montoya to oversee the outdoor jail operation, Joanna took her family’s latest canine member and headed home right at 5 P.M. It surprised her a little to realize what she was doing. In those first frantic months after being elected sheriff, she had hardly slept whenever her department had been sucked into a homicide investigation. Wanting to be more than a figurehead sheriff, she had thrown herself into each and every case. No one had placed greater demands on Joanna Brady than she herself had.
That was still true now, she realized. She had personally been to the scene of Carol Mossman’s murder, but it pleased her to realize that she no longer had to be there in person in order to keep her finger on the pulse of every aspect of the investigation. Gradually she was learning to delegate. She was also learning to separate her personal life from her work life. In that regard, she had her stepfather, George Winfield, to serve as an example.
As Cochise County Medical Examiner, George dealt with many of the same cases Joanna did and more besides, doing doctor-and relative-requested autopsies for deaths where the victims had not died as a result of foul play. But when George Winfield wasn’t actively at work, he lavished his wife—Joanna’s mother, the demanding Eleanor—with devoted attention. He did his work at work and he left it there. Just because he had to deal with dead bodies during the day didn’t mean he couldn’t go to a classical music concert in Tucson that evening. Not only go—but go and enjoy as well.
For years Joanna hadn’t left her office without a briefcase full of homework, but soon after their wedding Butch had raised an objection.
“Look,” he had said, “you work long hours, and I don’t mind that. And I don’t mind that you get called out evenings and on weekends. But when you’re home, you should be home. When it comes to getting your attention, Jenny and I shouldn’t always have to be last in line.”
And then George Winfield himself had pushed her over the edge. He and Joanna had been doing dishes after Easter Sunday dinner when he brought it up.
“You work too hard,” he said.
Joanna had paused, dish towel and glass in hand. “Who put you up to saying that?” she asked. “Butch or Eleanor?”
“Neither,” he had said. “I came up with the idea on my own.”
“How come?” she asked.
“When I was a young doctor in private practice, I was ambitious as hell and wanted to be the very best there was. I wanted to make plenty of money so I could support Annie and Abigail in style. But then, once I lost them both, I found out the money didn’t mean a thing, Joanna. Not a damn thing! Life doesn’t always give people second chances, but it seems to me you have one. And now you have to make some decisions. You can spend all your time at work, but wh
o’s going to benefit from that? Once you’ve missed out on time spent with your family, you don’t get it back—not ever. Once it’s gone, it’s gone. I’m glad to have my work right now. It’s rewarding and I’m good at it. But I’m also glad to have your mother. I have no intention of neglecting Ellie the way I did Annie when I was so busy chasing after the almighty dollar.”
Joanna had thought about George’s comments all Easter Sunday night. What he had said wasn’t exactly what a visiting out-of-town detective, J. P. Beaumont, had told her during their brief encounter last fall, when he had advised her to pay attention to what was important, but the advice was close enough. And close enough to hit home, as well.
Joanna had already lost Andy. Nothing could mend the quarrels they’d had when she and Andy had fought over things too unimportant to remember. Nothing could bring back the years when they had both been working so hard at their two separate jobs that, other than sleeping together in the same bed, their paths had barely crossed on a daily basis. Joanna could see now that too much of her precious time with Andy had been frittered away on things that meant nothing. Now, like George with her mother, she had a second chance—with Butch and Jenny. And soon there would be another little someone to take into consideration.
So Joanna had been working on it. Daily she made a conscious effort to leave her work at work—to put it behind her when she drove out of the Justice Center parking lot. Of course, with the campaign heating up, that wasn’t always possible, but when she did come home from her latest rubber-chicken banquet, she didn’t duck into her home office and open a brimming briefcase. And she didn’t turn on her home computer, either.
Now the five-mile drive from work to home served as a very real decompression chamber. Once again it worked its magic as she let go of her worries about the prisoners eating their picnic dinner in the rec yard and concerns about solving this latest homicide. As she turned up the newly bladed drive and saw their rammed-earth house nestled in among the brilliant greens of Clayton Rhodes’s towering cottonwood trees, Joanna felt truly at home.
