“Where to next?” Frank asked, turning his key in the ignition. “Home?”
“Sounds good to me. It’s been a very long day.”
Frank took her as far as the Justice Center, where she moved from his Crown Victoria to hers. By the time she got home it was after eleven and the household was asleep. Only Lady came to the door to greet her, and Butch didn’t budge when she crawled into bed beside him.
She woke up late to the smell of frying bacon and waddled out to the kitchen. “I won’t even ask how your day was yesterday,” Butch said, kissing her good morning. “I think I already know. How’d you sleep?”
“Like a brick. I was too tired to do anything else.”
“Are you going in to work today?”
“Not if I can help it.”
“What about church?” Butch asked.
“I need a robe day,” Joanna said. “Call me a backslider, but I just want to sit around in my nightgown for a change.”
“You’ve certainly earned it,” Butch said, “but you might want to give your mother a call before it gets much later. She phoned yesterday.”
“Annoyed because she hasn’t heard from me?”
“You must be psychic,” Butch said with a grin.
“Are you in labor?” Eleanor Lathrop Winfield demanded as soon as she heard her daughter’s voice.
“No, Mom, I’m not.”
“Oh,” Eleanor said. “Since you couldn’t be bothered to call with the news that you’re having a boy, I thought this must be really important.”
“I’ve been busy,” Joanna said. “I’ve been working.”
“I don’t know why,” Eleanor sniffed. “Someone in your condition shouldn’t be traipsing all over hell and gone and getting involved in shoot-outs, for Pete’s sake. It was all over the news. I can’t imagine what you’re thinking.”
Eleanor’s disapproval of her daughter’s continuing to work during her pregnancy was a long-standing bone of contention between them. Forget the fact that the “shoot-out” had most likely saved a little girl’s life. Detective Newton‘s snide references to Joanna’s condition had been annoying. Eleanor’s were far more hurtful.
“I was doing my job, Mother,” Joanna said. “And I intend to continue doing it.”
“I don’t understand how DNA works,” Eleanor said. “You’re just like your father and nothing at all like me.”
“But now that I have you on the phone, do you and Butch want to come over for dinner? George is all hot to trot to fire up his barbecue. It’s only March, but as far as he’s concerned it’s the beginning of summer.”
“I’ll check with Butch and let you know.”
Butch, it turned out, was agreeable. “It’ll give us a chance to do a little fence-mending,” he said. “Find out what time.”
After making arrangements with Eleanor for them to go to dinner at six, Joanna spent the rest of the morning at the desk in her home office. She called into the department and talked to Frank, who brought her up-to-date on the latest happenings. There was still no word of any kind from Joaquin Mattias. Dolores had now filed a formal missing-persons report. Antonio Zavala had undergone surgery at UMC to repair his damaged foot, and Jail Commander Tom Hadlock had made arrangements to hire two off-duty Tucson PD officers to stand guard duty at Zavala’s hospital room. Jeannine’s condition, meantime, had been upgraded once again. Frank had even managed to speak to her on the phone. Pain meds or not, Jeannine had been thrilled to hear that Millicent was moving forward with the pitbull rescue project.
“You are coming in, aren’t you?” Frank asked once he finished with his telephone briefing.
“No,” Joanna said. “I hadn’t planned on it. Why?”
“Millicent Ross just came back from Tucson and dropped off her truckload of pet supplies. Tom has guards unloading and distributing those right now. Millicent expects to be back here around two to start delivering puppies to inmates, but the reporters are already here.”
“What reporters?”
“The pit-bull-rescue guy-the guy who paid for all the puppy goodies-evidently has media connections out the ying-yang. He issued some kind of press release. So far we’ve got TV camera crews and print media here from Phoenix and Tucson, but a crew from
Joanna sighed. “I guess you called that shot.”
“What shot?”
“You said this was going to be a PR bonanza.”
“Remind me to be careful what I wish for,” Frank said ruefully. “This is nuts.”
“All right,” Joanna returned. “I’ll be there about the same time the puppies are, and not a minute before.”
The briefcase she had carried with her from place to place the day before was now a jumbled mess. While sorting through it, she stumbled across the
As soon as Joanna introduced herself on the phone, Barbara Petrocelli was nothing short of cordial. “I read about Bradley’s death in the paper last week,” she said. “It made me terribly sad. I remember that time like it was yesterday. According to what my parents told me, Lisa left the cleaner’s that day in mid-shift. She left the money in the till, turned off the lights, locked the door, and disappeared. The next thing I knew, Bradley was being charged with murder. It was such a horrible waste. Now he’s gone, too.”
“Mrs. Crystal said you and Lisa Marie were friends.”
“I felt sorry for her to begin with,” Barbara admitted, “but we became good friends.”
“She confided in you?”
“Absolutely” Barbara returned. “The same way I confided in her.”
“Did she mention anything to you about being unhappy in her marriage?” Joanna asked.
“To Bradley? Anything but,” Barbara answered. “She adored him. She may have been worried about his drinking, but she was looking forward to raising a family with the man. She loved him so much. I could never understand how he could betray her like that.”
“As far as you know, then, there wasn’t any particular quarrel that would have provoked him to attack her?”
“Not really, but by the time the murder actually happened, I had been back at school for several weeks. I just wish I had been here. Maybe I could have done something to help Lisa the same way she helped me.”
“What do you mean?”
“If things were going badly with her husband, I could have listened to her, offered her a shoulder to cry on the same way she did for me during my breakup with Rory I mean, if he had been treating her badly and was turning violent or something, maybe I could have helped her find a place to go, a shelter or something.”
At first Joanna was afraid she had been mistaken. “Did you say Rory?” she asked.
“Sure,” Barbara returned. “Rory Markham, notorious snake in the grass, and one of my worst youthful transgressions. I met Claudio and started dating him while I was still on the rebound. Fortunately, it’s a rebound romance that defied all the odds and is still working very well, thank you.”
“Wait a minute,” Joanna said. “You were dating Rory Markham?”
“Yes,” Barbara returned. “And I broke up with him, too. I might not have caught on if Lisa hadn’t warned me about him.”
“Warned you? About what?”
“About his coming into the cleaner’s and flirting with her when I wasn’t around.”
“You’re saying he knew Lisa Marie Evans?” Joanna asked. “That they were acquainted?”
“Of course he knew her,” Barbara said. “I was the one who introduced him to her when he came by to take me to lunch.”
Joanna took a deep breath. No one had ever made any kind of connection between Rory Markham and the
