Paradise Lost

needed to talk.”

He sighed. “I suppose you’re right there. But tell me about this case now, and how much farther do we have to walk?”

They had already passed the clearing containing the deserted house. “It’s only another quarter of a mile or so, but then we have to climb down a cliff. The car’s at the bottom of that.”

“And what’s this all about?”

“The victim is a guy named Rob Whipple. Just this afternoon, he_ turned into a suspect in the Connie Haskell homicide. Frank and I were on our way to talk to him when we found him dead.”

“Any idea who killed him?”

“It was probably his mother,” Joanna said. “A woman by the name of Irma Sorenson.”

“I was told this was a car accident. Something about it going over a cliff.”

“The victim is in a car that went over a cliff, but since there’s a bullet in the middle of his forehead, and since he wasn’t in the driver’s seat, I have a feeling he was dead long before the car went over the edge.”

“And you think his own mother did it?” George asked wonder­ingly. “I guess I’m not the only one who doesn’t understand women. But at least I’m still alive—so far.”

“Eleanor’s not going to kill you, George,” Joanna told him. “Even if she’s mad, she’ll get over it.”

George Winfield shook his head. “That’s easy for you to say. You don’t have to live with her.”

“No, but I’ve done it, and I’ve got the T-shirt!”

About then they reached the edge of the cliff. By the time Dave Hollicker and the two crime scene techs had strung a rope and helped lower George Winfield and his equipment to the ground, Jaime Carbajal and Ernie Carpenter had both shown up, accompa­nied by Frank Montoya.

Ernie peered down over the edge of the cliff and shook his head. “Looks like it’s time for more of Jaime’s crime scene pho­tography. Doc Winfield may have gotten down there, but I’m not climbing down that cliff on a bet.”

“Give me the camera then,” Jaime said. As he headed for the rope, Joanna turned to Ernie.

“Did you guys do any good today?” she asked.

“That depends on what you call good,” he groused. “We talked to Buddy Morns, the kid in Sierra Vista who supposedly saw Dora Matthews get into a car sometime Sunday night. Buddy’s fifteen years old. When I was his age, I knew every make and model of car on the road. When it comes to cars, Buddy Morris is practically useless. He doesn’t know shit from Shinola, if you’ll pardon the expression. He thinks maybe it was a white Lexus he saw, but he’s not sure. Not only that, he couldn’t tell us for certain if it was Dora Matthews he saw getting into the car because he doesn’t really know her, which is hardly surprising since she’d only been in the neighborhood for a little over twenty-four hours.

“Still, Buddy tells us, he thinks the girl was one of the kids front the foster home because they’ve got a special window at the back of the house that they use to sneak in and out of the house at all hours of the night. Why people volunteer to become foster parents in the first place is more than I can understand.

“Anyway, Buddy claims he saw a girl getting in the unknown car with a driver he couldn’t see and the two of them took off in a spray of gravel.”

“What about Walgreens?” Joanna asked.

“Didn’t have time,” Ernie said. “We got the call and carne straight here, but we do have the phone company checking the line at the foster parents’ house to see if Dora may have made any unauthorized phone calls from there. I’ve also asked for them to check the Bernards’ number for any calls going from there to Sierra Vista. Without Frank the phone wizard doing the checking, we probably won’t have results until tomorrow morning, hopefully before our appointment with Christopher Bernard and his Father and his lawyer, and not after. Which reminds me of something else. We were supposed to see them at ten A.M. but there’s a conflict with the doctor. The appointment has now been moved to two o’clock in the afternoon. So that’s all I know, and Frank’s pretty much told me what’s going on here, so why don’t I shut up, go back to the cabin, and get to work.”