Partner In Crime

I drove back into town and wandered around until I finally located a pay phone at a Chevron station by the selfsame traffic circle that had given me such fits when I had been trying to reach the sheriff’s office the first time. With the proliferation of cell phones, it seemed like years since I’d been reduced to using an outdoor phone booth. It felt a little weird to be standing there in the open – practically in public – and dialing Ross Connors’s super-secret unlisted phone numbers. Since it was Saturday, I tried the cell phone first. No answer. Then I tried the office and reached a machine. Finally I dialed his home number, where a woman answered after the third or fourth ring. To my eternal delight, she spoke English. “Is Mr. Connors there?” I asked.

“No. He’s out,” she said. “This is his wife, Francine. Who’s calling, please? Can I take a message?”

I recalled Harry I. Ball’s stern admonition. “No messages.”

“Please tell him Beau called,” I said. That seemed innocuous enough. “Tell him I’ll call back later. Any idea when he’ll be home?”

“It’s sunny today,” she said. “He’s playing golf.”

That figured. The rain had cleared up in Seattle and Ross Connors was out having himself a nice Saturday afternoon while J.P. Beaumont – the birthday boy – was stuck spending a very long day in Bisbee, Arizona, being kicked around by a pushy small-town sheriff and her entire department.

In the old days, that kind of feeling-sorry-for-myself misery would have sent me straight to the nearest bar, but the Blue Moon wasn’t calling me. Instead, I decided to stay right where I was and exercise the prepaid phone card the Washington State travel agent had thoughtfully placed in my travel packet. It certainly wasn’t my fault that none of my nearest and dearest could reach me by telephone to wish me many happy returns.

First I talked to Kelly, my daughter. She and her husband live in Ashland, a small town located in southern Oregon. When Kelly dropped out of school and ran away from home mere weeks before her high school graduation, I wouldn’t have bet a plugged nickel that she’d ever go back and finish, especially since she had taken up with a young actor/musician and was pregnant besides. But it turned out marriage and motherhood were good for her. She picked up her GED right after the baby was born. Kelly’s now two years into a bachelor of fine arts program at Southern Oregon University. Not only that, my son-in-law, Jeremy, seems to be a pretty good sort, too – for an actor, that is. At least he’s gainfully employed.

Kelly wished me a happy birthday and told me about her mid-term exams before turning me over to three- year-old Kayla, who spent the next several minutes babbling incoherently to her “Goompa.”

Next I called my newly graduated and only recently gainfully employed son, Scott. He’s a neophyte electronics engineer who lives and works in the Bay Area. He and his girlfriend, Cherisse, are up to their eyeballs in plans for a wedding that is scheduled to take place sometime next spring. As we chatted on the phone, he gave me some of the pertinent wedding details, but I forgot them as soon as he told them to me. As Father of the Groom, I know all I have to do is show up, pay for the rehearsal dinner, and keep my mouth shut. It’s a far better deal than the one you get as Father of the Bride.

Finally, I called Naomi Pepper. If I thought she’d be glad to hear from me, I should have had – as my mother would have said – another think coming. She was distant, to say the least.

“What’s going on?” I asked.

“I did what you said,” she told me.

“What’s that?”

“I suggested to Mother that maybe we should look into an assisted-living sort of arrangement for her. I told her about the one you mentioned, the place up on Queen Anne that takes dogs.”

“And?”

“She hung up on me. She even left the phone off the hook so I couldn’t call her back. I was so worried, I finally got in the car and drove over to check on her, just to make sure she was okay. When I got there, she had a whole line of pill bottles set out on the kitchen counter. She told me that if that was how I felt about it – if I didn’t care for her any more than that – there was no reason for her to go on living. If I hadn’t been there, Beau, I can’t imagine what she might have done.”

I was fairly certain that the pill bottles had been strictly for show. She wouldn’t have done a damned thing, I wanted to say, but Naomi was crying now, and I knew the poor woman had been totally outfoxed and outmaneuvered. As I said before, Naomi’s a nice person; her mother isn’t. There was no need for me to add to Naomi’s misery by telling her so.

“What are you going to do?” I asked.

“The only thing I can do,” Naomi replied shakily. “She’s coming to stay with me. Mother says she’ll call and start getting estimates from moving companies first thing Monday morning. I’ll have to put some of my stuff in storage to make room for hers. You’re not mad at me about this, are you, Beau?”

Heartsick, I thought. And disappointed, but not mad.

“No,” I said. “I’m not mad at all. You have to do what you have to do.”

“Thank you,” she said gratefully. “Thank you so much for saying that.” She seemed to gather herself together. “And now,” she added, “tell me all about your birthday. How’s it going?”

“About as well as can be expected,” I said.

JENNY CAME BACK FROM HER RIDE and headed directly for her room. “Are you going to want dinner?” Butch asked as she passed through the kitchen.

“I’m not hungry.”

“There’s plenty of food in the fridge if you want something later.”

“Okay,” she said.

“What about you?” he asked Joanna.

“I’m not hungry, either,” she said.

“In that case, the cook is taking the night off. We’ll all make do with leftovers.”

Joanna stretched out on the couch and covered her eyes with one hand. She was about to doze off when Cornelia Lester called. It was painful to have to tell the woman that although Joanna’s investigators were making progress on the case, they still had no idea who had murdered Latisha Wall.

“You say she was poisoned?” Cornelia asked in what sounded like disbelief.

“That’s what we believe,” Joanna said.

Cornelia absorbed that information. “What about her paintings?” she asked. “The ones in the gallery. Will I be able to see those anytime soon?”

“I’ll try to make arrangements for you to be allowed inside the gallery,” Joanna said. “But I’m not sure when that will be.”

“In other words,” Cornelia said, “you still haven’t located the gallery owner.”

Cornelia Lester was a stranger who wasn’t a former detective, yet she, too, seemed to be as privy to what was happening inside the Cochise County Sheriff’s Department as J.P. Beaumont was. What would it be like to work in a big city? Sheriff Brady wondered. To be able to do this job in a place where everyone didn’t mind everyone else’s business?

“No,” Joanna had admitted with a sigh. “We still haven’t located Dee Canfield.”

“What if you don’t?”

“If we don’t find her?”

“Or what if you do and she’s dead, too?” Cornelia persisted. “What happens to the paintings then?”

“As far as I know, they belonged to your sister,” Joanna said. “If something unfortunate has happened to Dee Canfield – and I’m certainly not saying it has – then the paintings would, either by will or by law, go to Latisha’s heirs. I’m assuming her heirs would be her family members, but let me remind you, Ms. Lester, that we won’t be able to release them to anyone so long as they’re part of an ongoing investigation.”

“Of course not,” Cornelia said. “But I’d still like to see them.”

“I’ll see what I can do.”

“Thank you.”

Joanna put the phone down and had actually fallen asleep before it rang again. This time Butch answered.

“It’s for you,” he said, scowling at the receiver as he handed it over. “Tica Romero.”

“Hello?”

“We just got another 911 call from Naco,” the dispatcher said. “Some kids were playing around in one of the old cavalry barracks down there. They’ve reportedly found a body – a woman’s body. Chief Deputy Montoya and