onto paper, so Irma can sign it and get the gun in to Ballistics. Deputy Raymond will bring Irma back to Bisbee. If you need to ask her any more questions, have Frank sit in with you, since he was in on the other interview.”
“What are you going to do?”
“Jaime and I are going to go do that interview with Christopher Bernard.”
“Look, Sheriff Brady,” Ernie began, “with all due respect ...”
“Ernie, with the caseload we’ve got going, the department is at least two detectives short. For right now, until we can hire or train more, Frank Montoya and I are going to fill in as needed. Do you have any objections to that?”
“No ma’am,” Ernie said. “I guess not.”
“Good.”
By one twenty-five, Ernie Carpenter was on his way back to Bisbee, but Frank and Irma had yet to emerge from Tex Mathers’ office. “What time did you say that appointment was?” Joanna asked Jaime Carbajal.
The detective glanced at his watch. “Two,” he said, “and their house is a ways from here.”
“We’d best get going,” Joanna told him.
Thirty minutes later, Jaime stopped the Econoline van in front of a closed wrought-iron gate. Beyond the gate sat an enormous white stucco house with a red tile roof. The house looked like a Mediterranean villa that had been transported whole and dropped off in the middle of the Arizona desert.
“Quite a place,” Joanna commented. “Whereabouts do Dora’s former foster parents live?”
Jaime pointed at a much more modest, natural adobe-style house that was right next door. “That’s the Dugans’ place right there,” he said.
In addition to size, the other major difference between the two residences was in the landscaping. The Bernards’ place was newly planted with baby trees, shrubs, and cacti. The mature shrubbery around the Dugans’ house showed that it had been there far longer.
“There was evidently another house on the Bernards’ lot originally,” Jaime Carbajal explained. “They bought it as a tear-down and had their own custom design built in its place.”
A phone was attached to the gatepost. Jaime picked up the handset and announced who they were. Moments later the iron gate swung open, allowing them admittance. The garage doors were open, revealing two cars parked inside. Scattered around the circular driveway were several more vehicles, including an obviously new silver Porsche Carrera.
“Get a load of the rolling stock,” Jaime said. “The Porsche, a BMW-Z3 Roadster, a Mercedes S-600, and a ... I’ll be damned. Look at that—a Lexus 430. That’s what the kid in Sierra Vista told us. Buddy Morris said he thought he saw Dora Matthews getting into a white Lexus. But I don’t remember seeing one when we were here yesterday. By the time Ernie and I finished up in Sierra Vista, all hell had broken loose in Portal. We never had time to check with the DMV.”
“It’s all right, Jaime,” Joanna said. “Just keep cool.”
The blue-eyed, blond-haired woman who answered the door was only a few years older than Joanna, but she was so polished and cool-looking that she made Joanna feel dowdy in comparison. Amy Bernard was pencil-thin. Her navy-blue pantsuit and white silk shell accentuated her slender figure and made Joanna wish she had been wearing something other than a khaki uniform.
“I’m Amy Bernard,” she said. Then, without giving Joanna a second glance, she added, “Come in. This way.”
The woman of the house led Jaime Carbajal and Joanna through a spacious foyer and into a formal dining room. Under an ornate crystal chandelier stood a long, elegantly carved table surrounded by twelve matching chairs. Three people were seated at the far end of the table in front of a huge breakfront. Two were serious-looking men, both of them wearing the expensive but casual dressed-down attire that had long since replaced suits and ties among members of Tucson’s upper crust.
Next to the man at the head of the table slouched the only incongruity in the room, a homely gangly young man with braces and spiked purple hair. A series of gold studs lined the edges of both ears. What looked like a diamond protruded from one side of his nose.
