“Any possible I.D. on the skeleton?”
“None.”
“Cause of death?”
“Looks like a rock to the head to me, but that’s Just a wild guess.”
“Do you have any leads on either case?”
“Not really. But how could I? For Pete’s sake, I’ve been down in that damn hole mucking around in the mud all morning long.”
Joanna turned from Ernie Carpenter to the chief deputy. “All right then, Dick. That’s what you tell the press.”
“What?”
“Two separate homicides. One positive I.D one John Doe. No specific leads in either case at this time.”
“That’s all? You call a press conference and just give ‘em that little snippet of information? They’ll tear me apart.”
“Some information is better than no information,” Joanna countered. “They’ll have to make do. Tell them when we know more, they’ll know more.”
Shaking his head, a disgruntled Dick Voland took his coffee and headed out of the office. Ernie Carpenter made as if to follow, but Joanna stopped him. “Wait a minute, Ernie.”
Ernie sighed and reluctantly sat back down. “What now?”
“I picked up a few tidbits of information out at the Rocking P this morning,” she told him.
“Tidbits?” he asked with a disinterested shrug. “Like what?”
Joanna got up from behind her desk, walked over to the door and closed it. “Like who might have killed Harold Patterson,” she answered firmly. “And why.”
CARPENTER stayed in Joanna’s office for more than an hour. Once she started relating all she had learned out at the Patterson place and during her stop at Cosa Viejo, Ernie appropriated one of Joanna’s legal pads and pens and began scribbling notes.
When she finished telling him everything she could remember, Ernie studied his notes in silence for several moments. “You know,” he said thoughtfully, chewing one end of the pen, “what you’ve told me tallies with some of the things I picked up.”
“For instance?”
“For instance,” he replied, “near as I can tell, there were several sets of tire tracks in and out of that place for days. The only trouble is, they’re all from the same vehicle.”
“Which one?”
“Harold Patterson’s Scout.”
“That stands to reason.”
“But only up to a point,” Ernie said. “He could have driven it in one last time, but he sure as hell didn’t drive it out. According to the coroner’s preliminary look-see, he guesstimates time of death as sometime Tuesday or Wednesday, but Burton Kimball says he came to the Election Night party looking for his uncle because he saw his car in the convention-center parking lot.”
“So the question is, how did it get from the glory hole to the parking lot?”
“No way to tell, but presumably the killer drove it there.”
Ernie shook his head thoughtfully. “The part about all this that doesn’t add up is Ivy and her boyfriend spending the night in the Scout with Harold lying there dead a matter of a few feet away. That one just flat-out takes the cake!”
“It’s sick, all right,” Joanna agreed.
“And they’re getting married tonight?”
Joanna nodded. “That’s what they said. Seven o’clock at the Canyon Methodist parsonage. Marianne Macula is officiating.”
“I call that really rushing it,” Ernie said, frowning. “I mean, the old guy’s not even cold yet, and his daughter’s out banging her boyfriend in Daddy’s car. Next thing you know, she’s getting married. Couldn’t she hold off the celebration at least until after the funeral? And you say Burton Kimball didn’t know anything at all about the wedding until today?”
“That’s how it sounded-as though he’d never even heard of Yuri Malakov,” Joanna told him.
“So the Russian and Ivy were already engaged, but maybe no one in the family knew anything about it, including the old man.”
“Why keep your engagement a secret?” Joanna asked.
“Because you figure someone’s going to object,” Ernie answered. “So the next question has to be why there’d be an objection in the first place.”
Joanna nodded thoughtfully. “According to Marianne, Yuri is applying for U.S. citizenship. Wouldn’t Immigration have an application with fingerprints on it?”
“And with any criminal record as well,” Ernie said.
“Can we get a copy?”
