“What do you mean? How did that happen?”
“He was waiting for me out at the ranch when I got home after Kiwanis,” Joanna explained. “He was drunker ‘an nine hundred dollars and pissed because I had gone and gotten myself engaged to you when all the time he was waiting for me to give him the go-ahead so he could ask me out.”
“Why didn’t you tell me about this earlier?” Butch asked.
“I didn’t have a chance.” Joanna paused. “No, that’s not true,” she added. “I didn’t want to tell you. I was afraid you’d be upset, and I didn’t want to worry you.”
“You fired him?”
“He gave me his resignation, and I accepted it.”
“At the ranch,” Butch said. “While you were there alone.” “I handled it,” Joanna said.
“What if he comes back tonight? What if he’s there now, waiting for you?”
Joanna grinned. “He’ll have a long wait, then, won’t he?” Her lame attempt to diffuse the sudden tension didn’t work.
“You know what I mean, Joanna,” Butch continued. “If Voland is so obsessed over losing you that he quit his job, it’s serious. You may think he’s just going to go away and leave you alone, but he won’t. I know how these guys work-how they think.”
“Butch, please-”
“No. You shouldn’t be out at the ranch by yourself. You should come stay at my house, or else Junior and I can come there.”
“That isn’t going to work.”
“At least let me ride down to Douglas with you. Or let me follow you down and back. That way I can be sure you’re all right.”
“Wait a minute, here,” Joanna objected. “You’re talking to a woman who already has two black eyes. I can take care of things, Butch. I’m not some helpless little woman, you know. If push conies to shove, I think I qualify under the heading of armed and dangerous.”
“Armed and bull-headed is more like it,” Butch said.
A stiff silence fell over the car. Thinking back, Joanna couldn’t quite figure out how the quarrel had started, but she did know that by the time Butch whipped the Outback to a stop beside her private back-door entrance, it still wasn’t over.
“I’ll call you as soon as I get home,” she said.
“Sure,” he muttered.
‘‘And I’ll be all right, Butch. Honest. Don’t worry.”
“Right.”
Once Joanna stepped out of the car and slammed the door, he sped away, leaving her standing in a hail of gravel.
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
In the office, it took only a few minutes to formalize the paperwork to have Dena Hogan admitted to Southeastern Arizona Medical Center. Once Joanna had managed to locate the necessary forms, she typed them up herself. Twenty minutes later, she was part of a two-car caravan headed for Douglas. Handcuffed and shackled both, Dena rode in a patrol car accompanied by two deputies. Joanna drove the aging white Bronco that had, for years, been assigned to Deputy Dick Voland.
S.A.M.C., was still called County Hospital by locals, situated just outside the town of Douglas. As Joanna drove there, she couldn’t help thinking about Alice Rogers and those first few chapters of her memoirs-the ones that dealt with her happy childhood years spent in Douglas. Reflecting about Alice inevitably led Joanna to the missing Farley Adams.
Her investigation had determined that Adams wasn’t his real name. That meant that he, like some of the other people Joanna had encountered in the past few days, had played fast and loose with the truth. If there were people in North Las Vegas who were looking for him and wanting to kill him, maybe Jonathan Becker had good reason to lie about his name. What Joanna wondered was, had he lied to his wife or not? Had he told Alice the truth about his past, or had Becker been as dishonest with Alice as Dena Hogan had been with Rex? Had he married Alice in hopes of inheriting a portion of her estate, as Susan Jenkins believed? Or was it possible that the man who called himself Farley Adams had really loved Alice Rogers and that the look captured on his face in Jessie Morgan’s postcard wedding portrait had been one of real affection rather than a supreme job of acting?
Keeping one eye on the road, Joanna dug around in her purse until she located the copy of that picture she had stowed there. Switching on the reading light, she held the picture close to the light and glanced at it several times. There was no getting around it. Both people pictured looked incredibly happy. Neither of them seemed to be faking it.
Joanna put the piece of paper down on the seat.
Joanna suspected that the people looking for Jonathan Becker were prepared to go to a good deal of trouble to find him and get rid of him. And there was always a chance that they had already succeeded in doing so. But if they hadn’t, and if he had really loved Alice Rogers, would he simply turn his back and walk away, or would he be there for her-even in death?
Once at the hospital, Joanna turned Dena Hogan over to the emergency room people and directed the deputies to take turns guarding her. Meanwhile, Joanna went to work on the admissions process. Even though she had come armed with all the necessary information and documents, it still took the better part of an hour before Dena Hogan’s admission was complete. And all the while the watch on Joanna’s arm and the clock over the admission clerk’s head continued to tick.
Free at last, Joanna raced out to the Bronco. It was eight-thirty. No doubt Alice Roger’s visitation at the funeral home would end at nine. With no time to lose, Joanna started the Bronco and switched on the pulsing blue emergency lights for the next several miles. Once she hit Douglas proper, she turned off the flashing lights and slowed to a more reasonable pace. By the time she drove under the railroad underpass, she was actually driving at the speed limit.
Garrity’s Funeral Home had once been a massive old house on G Street. It was situated only a few blocks from Jessie Monroe’s Golden Agers Nursing Home, and only a few more blocks from where Alice Monroe Rogers and her brothers and sisters had played hide-and-seek as children.
Joanna shivered as she stepped out of the Bronco and walked toward the mortuary. It was a cold, brisk night, but the chill she felt was more than that. Joanna knew from reading Alice’s own words that she had lived her whole life trying to escape Douglas. Now, at the end of her life, here she was again, mere blocks from where she had started. To Joanna, it all seemed pointless somehow, and, at the same time, inevitable.
With her copy of the wedding picture folded into a small square in her hand, Joanna walked into the plushly carpeted lobby of the mortuary. A man in a suit and tie met her at the door. “Are you here for Mrs. Rogers?” he asked.
“Yes.”
“Second door on the right,” he directed. “But the visitation is almost over,” he added. “I’m not sure if you’re aware of it or not, but there’s been another tragedy in the family today. As a result, most family members had to leave earlier than expected. There are only a few stragglers left.”
The man’s politely unspoken message was clear:
“That’s fine,” Joanna said. “I won’t be long.”
She walked into the room. Like the lobby, the small, chapel-like room was plushly carpeted. An open casket, eerily lit, sat at the front. Glancing around the room, Joanna realized that the man in the lobby was wrong. Besides
