Watching in the passenger-side mirror, Joanna was happy to see that no one followed them. “It’s like a feeding frenzy, isn’t it,” she said.
Frank nodded. “Since the
“Maybe it
“Point taken,” Frank said. “In other words, if he’s done it before, we’d better nail the bastard quick before he does it again.”
“Exactly,” Joanna said, trying to keep the discouragement and dread out of her voice, because she was sure both George Winfield and Frank Montoya were right. If she and her people didn’t catch Connie Haskell’s killer soon enough, he would certainly strike again.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
Half an hour later they were nearing Elfrida when Joanna’s cell phone rang. “Hello, Jaime,” she answered “What’s up?”
“I’ve spent the last two hours of my life with a bitch on wheels named Mrs. Richard Bernard—Amy for short.”
“Chris’s mother?”
“Affirmative on that.”
“What about Chris himself? Did you talk to him?” Joanna asked.
“According to Mama Bernard, she has no idea where her son Christopher is at the moment and no idea when he’s expected home, either. He’s evidently out for the afternoon with some pals of his. In addition, she says nobody’s talking to him without both his father and his attorney being present. Ernie and I have tentative appointment with the Bernards for tomorrow morning at ten o’clock. But we did manage to ferret out the connection between Chris Bernard and Dora Matthews.”
“Really. What’s that?”
“When Dora was placed in foster care here in Tucson last summer, the foster family she lived with happened to be the Bernards’ next-door neighbors, some people named Dugan. I can tell you for sure that Mrs. Bernard is still ripped about that. The Bernards live in a very nice, ritzy neighborhood up in the foothills off Tanque Verde. In that neighborhood, they’re the new kids on the block. They happen to have more money than anybody, and they don’t mind flaunting it. When they moved in, they were dismayed to learn that the Dugans—Mr. and Mrs. Edward Dugan, who are the Bernards’ nearest neighbors—happen to be state-approved foster parents with a long history of taking in troubled kids and helping them get a fresh start.
“The Bernards were unhappy about the foster-parent bit and went before the homeowners’ association to complain. They asked the association to keep the Dugans from accepting any more foster children. As Amy Bernard told us, she didn’t like the idea of her son being exposed to
“But it turns out the Dugans are nice people who have been doing foster-care work for years. Most of the kids they’ve taken in have gone on to have excellent track records. When the Bernards’ complaint came before the homeowners’ association, the board ruled against them. Caring for foster children may have been against the neighborhood’s official CC and Rs, but that rule had gone unenforced for so long that the board just let it slide.”
“So much for neighborly relations,” Joanna said.
“Let me add,” Jaime continued, “that when it conies to plain old ordinary obnoxiousness, Amy Bernard is a piece of work. She doesn’t approve of the Dugans’ foster-care work, and from the way she acted, she didn’t much like having to talk to a Latino detective, either. It I had been on the homeowners’ board, I probably would have voted against the woman on principle alone. I’m sure she has lots of money—her hubby’s a radiologist—but she’s not exactly Mrs. Congeniality. When we told her Dora Matthews was dead, she said, and I quote, ‘Good riddance. She was nothing but a piece of trash.’ ”
“Not a nice way to talk about the person who was carrying your grandchild,” Joanna said. “And how old is Christopher Bernard?”
“Sixteen,” Jaime answered. “Just turned. According to his mother, he got his driver’s license in April.”
“That makes him three years older than Dora. So my question is, who was being exposed to whom?”
“Exactly,” Jaime
