“I had to head-butt my way out of trouble today,” Joanna said.
George grinned. “Was that before or after you shot the tire?”
“Before,” Joanna replied, digging through her purse to retrieve her compact. She rubbed some of the powdery cake makeup onto her face and added a dash of lipstick for good measure, but another check in the mirror proved that her makeup efforts had done little to disguise the damage.
“That’s as good as it gets,” she said, closing the compact. “I’m not a very good example, am I?” she added. “Jenny’s been suspended from school for fighting. I’m her mother and supposedly a grown-up, but just look at me. Not only that, Mother’s going to have a fit.”
“Let her,” George said. “It won’t be the first time. Besides, you were only doing your job.”
Joanna settled into the front seat of George’s new county-owned car, a Dodge Caravan with temporary plates and the new-car smell of new leather. How he had managed to finagle leather out of a tight-fisted county budget was more than Joanna could understand. When he switched on the ignition, however, none of the dash lights lit up. He had to lean forward and squint to read the shift dial as he moved the van into gear.
“Brand-new car,” George complained. “The dealer made me a good deal-maybe even a little too good. But here it is less than a week after I drove it off the lot, and I’m having some kind of mysterious problem in the electrical system. It’s probably just a fuse. I was supposed to take it into the dealer today, but I ended up having to go to Tombstone instead.
So this afternoon, I tried calling to switch the appointment to tomorrow, and the place is closed.”
“On Friday?” Joanna asked. “Is it a holiday or something?”
“No, according to the message on the answering machine, it must be more serious than that. The announcement says the dealership is closed until further notice. For service work, there’s a referral number to a dealer up in Tucson.”
“Wait a minute,” Joanna said. “Where did you buy this vehicle?”
“Fort Apache Motors in Sierra Vista.”
“From Ross Jenkins?”
“Do you know him?”
“Know him! He’s the guy who took a shot at me today-the one who’s in the hospital right now having his bowel sewn back together.”
“Small world,” George marveled. “Well, small county, anyway. But still, why would they close the dealership?”
“He was on his way out of town,” Joanna replied. “To Rio de Janeiro. I’ll bet he stripped the dealership clean of money before he went.”
Once the two detectives and the prosecutor had locked themselves in the interview room with Dena Hogan, Joanna had deliberately stayed away. If and when it came time to testify about what had happened on Kino Road that afternoon, Joanna didn’t want to have muddied the waters by being involved in the interview. She had written up a full report of what had happened from her point of view and would let that stand on its own. Still, it seemed that this new bit of information was something Ernie and Jaime needed to know.
“I need someone to go tap on the interview room door,” she told the desk clerk who answered her phone call. “I need to talk to either Detective Carpenter or Detective Carbajal.” “The double Cs,” as the two detectives were sometimes called.
Ernie came on the phone a few moments later. “What’s up?”
“You may want to find out if Dena knows what happened to Ross Jenkins’ auto dealership,” Joanna suggested. “According to George Winfield, it’s shut down until further notice.”
“Will do.”
“How’s it going with Arlee?”
“Sounds to me as though he’s going to strike a deal. I think Dena will cop a plea for Alice Rogers. By the time Ross Jenkins gets out of the hospital, he’ll wish he hadn’t.”
“If she’s ready to admit to Alice Rogers, what about Clete? Has she said anything about that?”
“Not so far. If Ross Jenkins took out his brother-in-law, maybe he did that one on his own. I’d better get back in there so I don’t miss something important. Anything else?”
“No,” Joanna said. “That’s all. See you in the morning.” She turned off the phone.
“You sound tired,” George said after a moment. “It’s been a rough week around here, even without getting engaged.”
“Have you done the Clete Rogers autopsy yet?” Joanna asked.
George shook his head. “That’ll have to wait until tomorrow morning.”
“Any initial observations?”
“Yes,” George Winfield said. “Some readily visible contusions. Those are always possible signs of a struggle. Been dead since sometime last night. It sounds to me like you’re thinking that whoever killed Alice also killed her son.”
“That’s the way it looks,” Joanna told him. “Right up until Ross Jenkins tackled me, Clete was our prime suspect in Alice’s death. So now Cletus Rogers is innocent, but he’s also dead.”
“Who stood to benefit most from Alice’s death?”
“Her children,” Joanna said. “Clete and his sister, Susan. There’s also a brand-new husband, if he’s still alive, that is. Farley Adams disappeared sometime Sunday afternoon and hasn’t been heard from since.”
“Her husband!” George exclaimed. “I was under the impression that she was a widow.”
“So was everybody else, including her kids. According to Alice’s sister, Jessie Monroe, Adams and Alice were already married. Jessie even has a wedding picture to prove it. But when Alice talked to her daughter and son-in- law about Adams on Saturday night, she didn’t exactly play straight with them. At that point Alice claimed she was only
“Let me get this straight,” George Winfield mused. “If Alice Rogers died prior to marrying again, her two kids would have split the take fifty-fifty. And if Clete had been fingered for Alice’s murder, then Susan and Ross Jenkins would have taken the whole wad.”
“That’s about it,” Joanna agreed.
“Ungrateful kids. Do you think the daughter was in on it?”
“Susan Jenkins?” Joanna thought about it. “Maybe, but it doesn’t seem likely that she’d throw in with her husband and her husband’s mistress in a plot to murder her own mother. Still, stranger things have happened. And this is a strange bunch. I feel like we kicked over a rock and a whole den of vipers came slithering out from underneath. These are people who took bribes, cheated on their spouses, used drugs, and didn’t blink an eye when it came time to kill someone. They’re a dishonorable, despicable lot without a conscience among them. Just knowing that people like that exist makes me sick. Makes me feel dirty.”
George pulled over behind Butch Dixon’s Subaru and switched off the engine. “Look, Joanna,” he said, “the fact that people like that
Eleanor Lathrop Winfield lived up to her reputation. She was appalled by her daughter’s black eyes and didn’t mince any words in saying so. The fact that Joanna had earned her injuries in the process of apprehending two possible murderers did nothing to mitigate Eleanor’s tongue-clicking disapproval. Jenny thought her mother looked neat-like somebody wearing a Halloween costume. Butch stayed close, held Joanna’s hand and said very little.
Joanna tried to let herself be caught up in the celebration, but it didn’t work. For the first time in his life, Jim Bob Brady had gone out and purchased champagne, although, when it came time for the before-dinner toast, he and Eva Lou joined Jenny and Junior in drinking sparkling cider. Still, even the champagne failed to lift Joanna’s mood.
The things that had happened to her in the past few days-the evil and greed she had seen at work in other people-had changed her somehow, had set Joanna apart. She was no longer sure she could accept anyone at face value. When she walked in the door, Junior had greeted her with effusive de-light. Now his greeting itself was tinged with sadness. After all, Junior was stuck in Bisbee for one reason and one reason only-he, too, had been betrayed by someone who should have been trustworthy and wasn’t.
After dinner, as Jenny passed around slices of Eva Lou’s incomparable pumpkin pie topped with mounds of homemade whipped cream, Joanna’s cell phone rang. Eva Lou looked at it as Joanna dragged it out of her purse. “If
