I shook my head. “It happened within weeks of her being released from the hospital, just prior to her marriage to Milton Corley,” I said. “How do you suppose she did it? How did she pull it off?”
Joanna shrugged. “I have no idea,” she said kindly. “But remember, we could both be wrong. We don’t have any actual proof. It might have been someone else.”
I wasn’t prepared to give either Anne or me that kind of break. “No,” I said. “I don’t think so.”
“Then you’re right,” Joanna said finally. “The real miscarriage of justice happened when they released her. And you were right about something else, too,” she added. “Look.”
She’d been holding something in her hand, but I had been too preoccupied to notice. Now she passed me a new set of phone logs. Putting on my reading glasses, I scanned through the listings. They included literally dozens of phone calls from Francine Connors’s cell phone to Winnetka, Illinois. Some I recognized as going to Louis Maddern’s office number, while a few of the others went to his residence. Most of them, however, had been placed to a third number I didn’t recognize.
“Maddern’s cell phone?” I asked.
Joanna nodded. “You’ve got it,” she said. “Frank just checked.”
The last call had been placed on Sunday night. Looking at the time, I realized it had been placed within minutes of my call to the Connors’s home. That one, lasting over an hour, originated from Francine’s cell phone. After that there was nothing.
I closed my eyes and tried to remember exactly what had gone on during that critical call. I was sure Francine Connors had answered the phone and had asked who was calling. Had I told her who I was? I couldn’t remember, but I wondered now if she had somehow stayed on the line and listened in on my conversation with her husband. I tried to recall exactly what Ross had said. The only thing that stuck in my head was that he had planned on calling in the FBI to track down the leak.
Bearing all that in mind, there could be no question about what I had to do next. “May I use this phone?” I asked, although I had already used it once without having asked for Sheriff Brady’s permission.
“Sure,” Joanna said. “Go right ahead. Do you want me to leave?”
“No,” I told her. “That’s not necessary.”
I searched through my wallet until I once again located the list of Ross Connors’s telephone numbers. By then I should have known them by heart, but I didn’t. I dialed his office number first.
“Attorney General Connors’s Office,” a crisp voice replied. “May I help you?”
“Mr. Connors, please.”
“I’m sorry, he’s not in. May I take a message?”
“No,” I said. “That’s all right.”
I dialed his cell-phone number. After ringing several times, the call went to voice mail. Hanging up, I tried the home number last. A woman answered. I wasn’t sure, but the voice didn’t sound like Francine Connors’s voice.
“Ross, please,” I said easily, hoping to pass for an acquaintance if not a friend.
“He’s not here,” the woman said, her voice quavering slightly. “He’s at the hospital. I’m Christine Connors, Ross’s mother. Is there a message?”
“Hospital?” I asked. “Has something happened to him? Is he ill?”
“Oh,” she said. “You must not have heard then. It’s not Ross. He’s fine. At least he’s okay. No, it’s Francine.”
“What about her?”
“She’s dead. She and Ross went to lunch together. He had a wonderful time, and he thought Francine did, too. But then, when she came home, and, without even changing her clothes, she went out in the backyard and just… just…” Christine Connors stifled a tiny sob. “The gardener was working out front. He heard the shot and came running. He called an ambulance and they took her to the hospital, but they couldn’t save her. I can’t imagine why she’d do such a thing. I just can’t.”
I was stunned. I remembered the sound of tinkling glassware in the background – the sounds of fine dining at a luncheon meeting. I hadn’t thought that Francine might be there, but she must have been. And from that and the call on Sunday night, she must have known the jig was up.
“I’m sorry,” I murmured into the phone. “I’m so very sorry.”
“Well, if you’ll leave your name, I’ll be sure to let Ross know you called.”
“No,” I told her. “Don’t bother. I’ll be in touch.”
When I put down the phone, Joanna Brady was staring at my face. “She’s gone, isn’t she?” she said.
IN NO MORE THAN TEN MINUTES, J.P. Beaumont looked as though he had aged ten years.
“Is there anything I can do?” Joanna asked.
Beaumont shook his head. “I don’t think so,” he said. “No, wait. There is something. I’m going to need a ride. First I have to go to the hotel and check out. Then I need a lift as far as Tucson. My plane’s first thing tomorrow morning.”
“Come on,” Joanna said. “We’ll take my Civvie.”
Beaumont followed her through the building and out the office door without exchanging a word with anyone. Only when he was fastening the seat belt in Joanna’s Crown Victoria did he have second thoughts.
“That was rude,” he said. “I should go back in and tell Frank how much I appreciated his help.”
“Don’t worry,” Joanna told him. “I’ll pass it along.”
“He’s a good man to have on your team.”
“Yes,” she agreed. “I know.”
When they reached the entrance to the Justice Center, Joanna sat there, hesitating, even though there was no traffic coming in either direction. Finally, making up her mind, she turned left.
“Wait a minute,” Beau objected. “Where are we going? I thought the Copper Queen was the other direction. I need to check out.”
“We’re taking a detour,” Joanna told him. “There’s something I want to show you.”
After heading east for a mile or so, she turned right onto a road labeled warren cutoff.
“What’s Warren?” he asked.
“It’s another Bisbee neighborhood,” she explained. “Until the 1950s, when Bisbee was incorporated, Warren and all these other places were separate towns.”
“Oh,” he said and lapsed into silence.
Coming into town, Joanna turned right at the first intersection and then gunned the Civvie up and over two short but relatively steep hills. At the top of the second one the road curved, first to the left and then back to the right. Beyond the curve, Joanna pulled over onto the shoulder, stopped the car, and got out. Beaumont followed.
“What’s this?” he asked.
Joanna pointed to a massive brown stucco mansion lurking behind a curtain of twenty-foot-high oleander. The house stood at the top end of what had once been the lush green of Vista Park. Now the park was little more than a desert wasteland – a long, desolate expanse of dry grass and boulders with houses facing it on either side.
“I thought you’d want to see this,” Joanna told him quietly. “This was Roger Rowland’s house. It’s where Anne Rowland Corley grew up.”
She saw him swallow hard. Tears welled in his eyes. A sob caught in his throat. There was nothing for her to do but try to comfort the man. As she wrapped her arms around him, hot tears dribbled down his cheeks and ran through her hair. His arms closed around her as well. As they stood there holding each other, it seemed to Joanna like the most natural thing in the world.
Twenty-two
I DON’T KNOW WHAT came over me. It was more than a momentary lapse. I remember crying like that when my mother died of breast cancer, and again when my first wife, Karen, succumbed to the disease, too. But Anne Corley had been gone for a very long time.
I should have thought that by now the hurt of losing her would have been scabbed over and covered with a
