leaving behind twin tracks of dark brown mascara.
One-handed, Linda fumbled in her massive purse long enough to extract a packet of tissues. After dabbing her eyes and blowing her nose, she forged ahead.
“Do you ever go to yard sales?” she asked.
“Not often,” Joanna answered. “I usually don’t have either the time or the money.”
“I shouldn’t go to them myself, but I do,” Linda said. “It’s one of those things that drives Burton crazy. He really disapproves. He says it’s not dignified for people in our position to go around buying other people’s cast-off junk, but I can’t help it. One of my hobbies is refinishing antiques, and going to those private sales is how I’ve found some of my very best pieces. Do you remember when Grace Luther died?”
Joanna nodded. At the time ninety-six-year-old Grace Luther passed away, her death had been the talk of the town. Since it happened while Hank Lathrop was still sheriff, Joanna knew more of the gory details than she probably should have. Every one in town had thought Grace was up in Tucson visiting her niece, but it turned out the niece had brought her back to Bisbee and left her off at home. Somehow word of her return didn’t get passed along to Grace’s at-home caretaker.
While everyone in Bisbee continued to believe that Grace was out of town, the old lady was actually dead as could be, lying flat on her back in her own bed with the thermostat cranked up to eighty-some degrees. The corpse was three weeks old and pretty well cooked by the time people realized something was wrong and broke into the house. It wasn’t a pretty sight. Or smell. After investigating the scene, Hank Lathrop had come home and burned all the clothes he had been wearing.
Afterward, there was a protracted battle among a bunch of feuding heirs, including the scatter brained niece who had dropped the old lady off at home without letting anyone know. For years, while lawyers battled back and forth, the house sat vacant-boarded up but crammed full of a century’s worth of junk.
“I went to that estate sale,” Linda Kimball continued. “The house was a shamble stacked with trash from floor to ceiling. But there were some treasures buried in there as well. In fact, I found that wonderful ivory-inlay table I still have in my living room. And down in the basement, I found everything from her husband’s office.”
“That’s right,” Joanna said. “I remember that, too. Wasn’t Dr. Luther a dentist with an office somewhere in Upper Lowell?”
Linda nodded. “Right where the open-pit mine is now. Doc Luther was already dead in the early fifties when they tore the building down to make way for Lavender Pit. Grace had Phelps Dodge haul all her husband’s equipment and everything else from his office down to her house in Warren. They loaded it into her garage and basement, chairs, drills, and everything-and there it stayed. I don’t think that woman ever in her life threw anything away.”
Once again Linda Kimball reached for her purse.
This time she extracted a small white envelope.
“This is the part that’s so embarrassing,” she said, “I still can’t believe I did it. Promise me you won’t tell Burton. He’d have a fit.”
“Tell him what?”
“While I was down in the basement that day, the day of the sale, I was rummaging around looking for antiques when I came across a huge stack of Dr. Luther’s old files that had been dumped out of a file cabinet. I knew he was the dentist Burton had gone to as a young child. I thought it might be fun to have his earliest dental records, just as sort of a keepsake. But while I was looking, I found this-and I stole it.”
With visibly trembling fingers, Linda Kimball handed the envelope over to Joanna, who hesitated only a second before ripping it open. Inside was a yellowed three-by-five card. The cardboard was stiff and brittle and turning brown around the edges. Printed on both sides were old-fashioned dental records, complete with predrawn diagrams of human teeth. Handwritten comments as well as arrows pointing to fillings and cavities had been added to the margins.
As she looked at the diagram, it was a moment before Joanna noticed the name written at the top of the card.
“Thornton W. Kimball’s dental records!” Joanna exclaimed.
“I know it’s not like modern X rays or any thing,” Linda Kimball was saying, almost apologetically, “but I thought it might help.”
“It’ll help, all right. If you don’t mind, I’ll go to work on it right away.” Joanna reached out and punched the button on her intercom.
“Yes?” Kristin was still all ice.
“Have Dispatch raise Ernie Carpenter on the radio. Find out where he is and tell him to stay there. Tell him I’m bringing him something important.”
Even though Joanna considered the interview over, when she looked back at Linda Kimball, the other woman had not yet moved.
“Is there something else?” Joanna asked.
Linda nodded. “I’ve tried all afternoon to put myself in Burton’s shoes. Which do you think is worse?” she asked.
“Which what?” Joanna returned.
“Knowing or not knowing? Is he better off thinking his father is still alive somewhere and that he deserted his wife and his unborn son? Or is he better off knowing for sure his father is dead? That he left and didn’t come back because he didn’t have a choice, because he was lying dead in a glory hole on Harold Patterson’s ranch?”
Joanna pondered carefully before she answered. “That’s a tough call,” she said finally, “but I think most people would rather know the truth, how ever painful it might be.”
Linda Kimball groped for her purse and hefted it into her lap. “That’s what I decided, too,” she said. “This afternoon. But that’s why I wanted to bring the envelope today. I wanted someone else to have it, before I had a chance to change my mind.”
