Remains of Innocence

by J. A. Jance

  “Everyone here is saying the same thing—that she and Guy were estranged. We did find a single call placed from Liza Machett’s cell phone to a number in Bisbee that we’ve just now verified as the number for Guy Machett’s office. That call was placed after Selma Machett was moved to hospice care and before she died. There’s no sign that Liza made any effort to contact him by phone after Selma’s death, at least not from her home or cell-phone numbers and not from any of the numbers associated with the restaurant where she worked, including the pay phone there.”

  “If she has a cell phone, have you tried locating her with that?”

  “Yes, we did and came up empty. The last ping from her cell came through the cell tower closest to Candy’s house. That was early Friday morning. Since then it’s gone dead silent.”

  “What about e-mail?” Joanna asked.

  “If Liza had a computer at home, we didn’t find it,” Detective Franklin answered. “It could be that it was taken during the break-in at her apartment. Without the computer, we don’t know her search engine history, but she did have an e-mail account that we’ve been able to access. There’s a lot of spam on it, mostly shopping sites, but most of her online correspondence was chatting back and forth with friends and some of the other waitresses at work. In other words, Liza Machett wasn’t much of a social butterfly.”

  “No mention of the money or where it came from?”

  “Not a peep. Not a single mention to anyone.”

  “Given all this,” Joanna said, “what’s your best guess about what’s going on?”

  There was a small pause before Franklin answered. “As I said before, one way or another, Liza came into a sizable sum of money, most likely money her mother had in her possession for some time. Other people may have become aware of that money, especially her contractors. It occurred to me that maybe one of them got greedy and thought Liza would be an easy target. I was in the process of looking into the whereabouts of all those guys last night when you called to tell me Liza’s brother had been murdered. By the way, so far all the workers are present and accounted for.”

  “What happened the other night when you brought Liza in for questioning?” Joanna asked.

  “I asked all the usual questions. Did she know who might have a grudge against her mother or her or her landlady? She claimed she had no idea, which, I’m now sure, was a straight-out lie. By then she must have figured out that whoever broke into her apartment was really after the money. If she’d had a brain, she would have come clean and given me a chance to help her. Instead, she chose to go into hiding. Given what happened to Olivia Dexter and now Candy Small, whoever is sheltering her isn’t likely to come forward.”

  “You think she’s still there?”

  “That’s what I think,” he said.

  “But this sounds as though you no longer consider her a suspect.”

  Amos Franklin sighed. “Unfortunately not. I thought for sure that she was behind the first fire, the one at her mother’s house. She couldn’t have set it herself, but she could have hired it out and walked away with the insurance proceeds. The fire investigators tell me that both of these fires—the one at Selma Machett’s house and the one at Candy Small’s place—were set by the same arsonist. I can’t find any reason why Liza would have turned against Candy, so now I’m forced to admit that Liza has most likely been targeted, too, the same as her brother was. In fact, there’s another possibility. Maybe Liza isn’t in hiding at all. Maybe she’s already dead, and we just haven’t located her body.”

  “As far as we know, then, what your banker friend calls ‘coffee money’ is still the only motivating factor,” Joanna theorized. “Will she let you know if any more of it surfaces?”

  “Yes, and so will any of the other bank branches in town,” Franklin replied. “I’m in the process of alerting all of them, but I wish I knew more about what the deal was between Guy Machett and his sister. Obviously something was out of kilter. Knowing what it was might help us. Did he ever confide anything to you about his family background?”

  “Guy Machett and I worked together, but we were hardly pals,” Joanna responded. “Our relationship never developed to the point of sharing confidences. He kept his distance. The people who worked most closely with him are Madge Livingston, the woman who was his secretary, and Ralph Whetson, his assistant up at the morgue. My people have already spoken to both those individuals. In the light of what you’ve just told me, we’ll talk to them again. If you’d like to speak to them directly, I’ll be happy to send along their contact information.”

  “Please,” Detective Franklin said.

  “I’m outside my office right now and late going into a meeting,” Joanna said. “Either I’ll e-mail you what you need once the meeting is over, or one of my people will be in touch.”

  “Fair enough,” Franklin said.

  Feeling that news about Candy Small’s murder signaled a sea change in the investigation, Joanna hurried inside, where she found her investigations people assembled in the conference room along with Alvin Bernard and his detective, Matt Keller. Chief Deputy Hadlock was there as well, taking copious notes and preparing for the next journalistic assault. Having seen the collection of media vans in the parking lot as she passed, Joanna suspected that he had called another press conference, which was due to happen soon.

  “Sorry I’m late,” she apologized as she hurried to the empty chair at the head of the conference table next to Chief Bernard’s.

  “We figured you’d turn up sooner or later,” Alvin observed with a grin. “You look like someone with something important to say. Care to share?”

  Joanna nodded. “I just got off the phone with Detective Franklin back in Great Barrington. Clifford Small, also known as Candy—the guy who used to be Liza Machett’s boss and the one who took her into his home early Friday morning after she was questioned by the police—was found dead this morning in the burned-out wreckage of his house. He had been tortured and murdered.”

  “Liza’s mother’s house was burned down,” Deb Howell said. “This is a second case of arson?”

  Joanna nodded. “According to Detective Franklin, both fires were likely set by the same arsonist. Presumably whoever set the fire also murdered Mr. Small. According to the autopsy, the victim was dead before the fire started.”

  “What about the torture?” Ernie Carpenter asked. “Same M.O. as what we’ve got here?”

  “No,” Joanna answered. “For one thing, no stun gun was involved. Instead, the victim’s fingers and toes were cut off over an extended period of time. Whether or not the bad guys got what they wanted, when it was over, they stabbed the victim to death and then burned down his house with his body inside. So we’ve got two questions for you to consider: Did Mr. Small tell them what they wanted to know? If so, what was it?

  “According to Detective Franklin, Liza Machett has been handing out loads of cash for the past month or so in amounts that don’t seem to jibe with her hand-to-mouth waitress existence. A local banker became suspicious about the money because the serial numbers were so old.”

  “How old?”

  “Most of it came from the late seventies; some earlier. Oh, and it all smells of coffee.”

  “Coffee?” Ernie asked, as if not quite trusting his ears.

  “Coffee,” Joanna verified.

  “How much money?” Jaime Carbajal asked.

  “No way to tell,” Joanna said, “but it’s enough to cause a three-time killer to come calling.” Turning her attention to Dave Hollicker, she continued. “Detective Franklin says Liza and Guy were estranged. Has your background check given you any clues about the Machett family dynamics?”

  Dave opened his computer and stared at the screen. “As far as I can tell, he was an outstanding citizen. The only thing on his record was a speeding citation when he was eighteen. He owned his own home and carried very little debt. His car was paid for. In contrast, his sister works for minimum wage and just barely makes ends meet.”
r />   “In other words, you’ve been doing background checks on both of them.”

  “Pretty much,” Dave agreed. “Guy’s mother died when he was young. His father, Anson, remarried a few years later. Selma, Liza’s mother, was Anson Machett’s second wife. From what I’ve been able to learn, Anson deserted the family when Liza was a baby. Guy was your basic overachiever—smart, voted most likely to succeed, class valedictorian. He attended Harvard on a full-ride scholarship. On his college applications, he listed his father as deceased, but so far I’m unable find any verification that Anson Machett is dead.

  “It looks like Liza never measured up to her older brother scholastically. She made it through school with only average grades and went to work in Clifford Small’s restaurant shortly after high school graduation. There’s no indication of any schooling beyond high school.”

  “It sounds like we have a golden boy on the one hand and an overshadowed sibling on the other,” Joanna observed. “That could make for a dicey family dynamic.”

  “Yeah,” Dave continued. “I don’t think they’re especially close. Guy’s phone records came in this morning, a day earlier than I expected them. I found only one call from Massachusetts to him in the six months preceding his death. That one was placed to his office and came from what I’ve determined to be Liza’s cell phone. That call was made about the middle of last month.”

  “According to Detective Franklin, that’s also about the time Selma was moved into hospice care,” Joanna supplied. “But that’s all? No other telephone backing and forthing between them?”

  Dave shook his head. “None, and that seems odd. When someone’s dying, that’s usually when the relatives—even feuding relatives who hate each other’s guts—bury the hatchet temporarily, rally round, and burn up the phone lines. I suppose there could have been e-mail correspondence between them, but so far I haven’t been able to get information from Doc Machett’s Internet provider. That should come tomorrow.”

  Joanna noticed that without Guy being there to object, he had been summarily demoted from Dr. Machett to Doc Machett by Dave, and most likely by everyone else in the room as well. He would not have been pleased.

  “Anything else interesting?” Joanna asked. “Since Liza came into some money, did he come into a windfall as well?”

  Dave clicked over to still another screen. “Not that I can see. His bank records showed up last night. I’ve been going over them, but there’s no sign of any irregular deposits. We did learn a few interesting things, however. For example, we were able to establish the names of both his former cleaning lady, Carmelita Ortiz, and his new one, Carmelita’s granddaughter, Josie. Carmelita is having some health issues. Doc Machett left a check for Josie on the kitchen table, which she cashed on Saturday morning. This was only Josie’s first week, and she came on Friday. Jaime’s going to talk to both Carmelita and Josie later today.”

  “A new cleaning lady would help explain why the alarm access code was there on the wall,” Deb offered. “It was posted so Josie could let herself in.”

  “The bank records do reveal that our upstanding Doc Machett did have one dirty little secret,” Dave added with a mischievous grin.

  “Enough of a secret to get him killed?” Alvin Bernard asked.

  “I doubt that,” Dave said. “Turns out the M.E. was a nudist who visited nudist colonies all over the Southwest. His favorite is one called the Whetstone Mountain Retreat. According to his credit card records, he spent a lot of his spare time and a good deal of his money there.”

  “A nudist colony in the Whetstones?” Alvin Bernard repeated. “Are you kidding? I didn’t know we had any of those around here.”

  The Whetstone Mountains, one of the smaller mountain ranges in the area, lay between Sierra Vista and Tucson. Joanna didn’t know the Whetstones boasted a nudist colony, either.

  “Turns out there’s more than just one nudist facility,” Dave continued, “and Doc Machett seems to have visited them all. There’s one on the outskirts of Tucson, up near Saddlebrooke, and another near the Boulders north of Phoenix, but the one on the Whetstones, north of Huachuca City, is where he evidently spent the bulk of his time.”

  Despite the seriousness of the situation, the people seated around the table couldn’t quite contain their mirth or their grins. The idea of Guy Machett strutting around in the great outdoors and doing whatever nudists do without benefit of his upscale suits seemed to have tickled everyone’s funny bones. Joanna felt obliged to bring her people up short.

  “What is said inside this room is entirely confidential,” she warned them. “If I hear of any leaks about the victim’s having visited nudist colonies, there will be serious consequences. Understood?”

  The grins disappeared. Everyone nodded in turn. “Yes, ma’am,” Dave said, “and that’s about all I have.”

  “All right,” Joanna said. “After the meeting, I want you to get back to Detective Franklin in Great Barrington. Give him whatever he needs.”

  “Will do,” Dave said.

  Joanna glanced around the table. “Anyone else?”

  Deb Howell raised her hand. “Doc Machett had a girlfriend. Her name’s Amber Sutcliff, and she called me earlier. She told me the two of them were together at the Whetstone Mountain Retreat on Thursday and Friday. When she said that, I had no idea it was a nudist colony, but she’s probably a nudist, too. She said she’d been trying to reach Doc Machett all day yesterday by phone and by texts. She was worried when he didn’t respond, but she had no idea what had happened until she saw the story on the news this morning. She called in immediately, and Dispatch put her through to me. I asked her to come down here to do a formal interview. She’s due any minute. I also told her we’d need a DNA sample. She said that would be no problem.”

  “How did she strike you on the phone?” Joanna asked.

  “Very upset but also very cooperative.”

  “Was Guy out of sorts or worried about anything the last time she saw him?”

  “She said he had mentioned earlier this month that his stepmother was sick and most likely dying, but he also said they were estranged and that showing up for her funeral would be hypocritical.”

  “Did Amber have any knowledge of Machett’s family situation?”

  “She mentioned there was a dying stepmother and a half sister named Liza. That’s about all she knew—the half sister’s name and the fact that Doc Machett and the sister weren’t close.”

  Joanna turned her attention to Casey. “Other than driving two hundred miles this morning, what do you have to say for yourself?”

  “When I showed up this morning with another load of evidence, the people at the crime lab in Tucson weren’t exactly happy to see me. They asked if I had to pick one case over another, which one should take priority, I said this one. I hope that’s all right.” Casey looked at Joanna questioningly.

  As far as Joanna was concerned, it wasn’t all right. She didn’t want Junior’s case to get lost in the shuffle, but she also didn’t want to contradict Casey with the whole investigation crew gathered in the conference room. “That’s fine,” Joanna said.

  “I also heard back from Taser International,” Casey continued. “The microdots I swept up in Doc Machett’s living room lead back to a Taser that was reported stolen in a residential burglary in Tucson two months ago. I have a call in to the detectives on that case. So far I haven’t heard back from them.”

  Joanna said, “At this point we believe we have three linked homicides—two in Massachusetts and one here. Since time and distance make it unlikely that one person is responsible, we’re apparently dealing with two separate killers or teams of killers. That also means there’s probably one individual behind all of it. He’s the one standing offscreen and pulling the strings. The Taser connection may be our best lead to whatever local talent was used in the homicide here. Jaime, how about if you follow up on that? Property crimes don’t get a lot of attention, but we might get lucky. Maybe we’ll stumble into evidence
that will lead us back to a known criminal operating in this area.”

  “I keep wondering about the money situation,” Alvin Bernard said thoughtfully. “Shouldn’t we be checking with banks around here for more of that coffee money?”

  “I’ll do that,” Dave Hollicker volunteered. “I’m not much good right now when it comes to limping around talking to witnesses, but I can work on the phone and on the computer.”

  “Fair enough,” Detective Keller said. “And I’ll keep after Machett’s neighbors. This is a small town. Someone must have seen something.”

  Deb’s phone rang. She listened, hung up, and turned to Joanna. “Amber Sutcliff is here,” she said. “Are we done?”

  “As far as I’m concerned.”

  Deb stood up and then tapped Casey on the shoulder. “Could you come do the swab?”

  Casey Ledford and Deb Howell left the room together.

  Jaime stood up, too. “On my way to see Carmelita and Josie,” he said and sauntered out of the room.

  As the meeting disbanded and people filed out, Joanna counted them off in her head. Seven of the people in attendance, including Chief Deputy Hadlock, were totally preoccupied with Guy Machett’s homicide. That left Joanna alone focused on Junior Dowdle, and she knew she needed help. Ernie Carpenter, who had paused long enough to hold the door while Dave maneuvered through it on his crutches, was the last to leave.

  “Wait, please, Ernie,” Joanna called after him. “I wanted to talk to you about your interview with Jason Radner.”

  Ernie came back into the room. “It’s in the report,” he said. “I didn’t make much progress. The kid was lying about something, but Burton Kimball stepped in just when I was starting to get somewhere.”

  “I know,” Joanna said. “I was watching, and that was my impression, too—that the kid was lying. Do you think he’s responsible for what happened?”

  “Are you asking if I think Jason killed Junior?” Ernie said. “No, I don’t, but I do believe he knows something that he hasn’t seen fit to tell us.”