“I hope you won’t think me too ungrateful, but I hope you never find out who did it. I’m glad that asshole father of hers is dead, and I’m hoping that whoever killed him gets away scot-free, because, whatever Harold Patterson got, that dirty old man deserved it!”
“What exactly did he do to her?” Joanna asked reflexively.
Amy Baxter had no business answering, but she did. “He raped her,” she answered, her words as brittle as shards of ice. “He raped his own daughter from the time she was two years old. So what ever happened to Harold Patterson is fine with me. He may be dead and out of the picture now, but you saw Holly upstairs. She’s an emotional cripple, and she’ll live with the damage he did to her for the rest of her life.”
Leaving the sheriff to find her own way out, Amy turned and hurried back up the stairs. As Joanna drove out through Cosa Viejo’s swinging iron gates, she was thinking about what Amy had said concerning Holly’s past drug use.
Was Holly Patterson really having drug-related flashbacks, or were her mental problems some thing else entirely, something more closely related to what had gone haywire with her mother years ago? Had Emily Patterson’s mental instability passed genetically from mother to daughter?
Actually, from what Joanna personally had seen and heard during the course of the last few days, all the Patterson women seemed to be several levels out of plumb.
It was only after she had started down Cole Avenue toward the Warren Cutoff that Joanna remembered what she had forgotten to mention.
Holly Patterson had been so upset by the news about her father that Joanna had failed to bring up the existence of that other victim.
What exactly was the connection between those two bodies? Joanna wondered. Surely, more than sheer coincidence had caused both corpses to turn up in the same glory hole. But in order to discover the connection between them, it was necessary to understand the relationship between all the other pieces on the board.
Joanna could have just left it alone. After all, it was Ernie Carpenter’s case. She could either go sit in her corner office and begin trying to understand next year’s budget, or she could try sticking her nose in where it didn’t necessarily belong.
At the intersection of Cole Avenue and Arizona Street, it was decision time. If she drove down the Warren Cutoff, when she reached Highway 80, she could either go home or head back to the office Or she could go straight up Cole Avenue and keep right on not minding her own business.
After only a moment’s hesitation, she switched off her left-turn blinker and headed for Eleanor Lathrop’s favorite haven, Helene’s Salon of Hair and Beauty.
When Joanna entered the beauty shop, Helen Barco stood stolidly behind the shop’s single chair twisting pink plastic permanent-wave curlers into a client’s hair while the woman handed her individual pieces of tissue-paper wrappers.
Both women glanced up in surprise as Joanna made her entrance.
My land, girl!” Helen exclaimed. “Whatever did you do to your face?”
In her hurry to dress that morning, Joanna had barely glanced in her own mirror. Now, seeing her battered reflection in Helen Barco’s brightly lit vanity, she was startled to see how readily apparent the damage was. Put simply, Sheriff Joanna Brady looked like hell.
“It’s nothing much,” she said with a shrug. “Just a black eye.”
“You call that nothing much?” Helen rolled her eyes. “People straight out of the emergency room look better than that. I know you don’t have an appointment, but if you can wait around a few minutes, maybe I could squeeze you in between Mrs. Owens here and my next lady. We should certainly do something about that eye of yours. What would your mother say?”
“Thanks anyway, Helen,” Joanna answered, biting back a comment that was sure to go straight to her mother. “I really don’t have time today. I came by to ask a favor.”
“What kind of favor? I’ve already donated a permanent and manicure to the senior citizen’s auction, if that’s what you’re here asking about.”
“No. It’s nothing like that. You do get People magazine here, don’t you?”
Helen nodded. “People, Good Housekeeping, and Ladies’ Home Journal. I tried that New Woman for a few months, but my ladies didn’t like it very much. They’re mostly older, you know, and don’t take to some of these newfangled ideas.”
“Do you keep any of the back issues?”
“Some. Why?”
“Do you still happen to have the one with the article about Holly Patterson in it?”
“Absolutely!” Helen answered. “I wouldn’t let that one out of my sight. It’s not every day that Bisbee gets that kind of coverage, thank the good Lord. Naturally, all the dealers in town sold out every last one of their copies. I was really lucky I had my subscription.”
“Could I maybe borrow it from you?” Joanna asked. “I never had a chance to read it, and now I think I ought to.”
“Sure,” Helen said. “As long as you promise to bring it right back. But how come you need to read it now? That was weeks ago. What’s going on?”
Joanna knew from things her mother had told her over the years that Helen’s was a place where beauty often took a backseat to small-town gossip. It wouldn’t hurt Helen to have a real scoop for a change. It was possible that the useful flow of information might travel in more than one direction. Besides, the next-of-kin notifications had already been completed.
“We found Harold Patterson,” Joanna said. “He’s dead.”
“No. Heart attack? Stroke?”
