“Look, George,” Joanna said. “I’m in a bit of a hurry here. Could you stop beating around the bush and tell toe what’s going on?”
“Eleanor called CPS early this afternoon.”
“She did what?”
“Ellie called Child Protective Services. She was concerned about Dora being out at the ranch, so she called CPS. An investigator went to Sally Matthews’s house up in Tombstone Canyon. No one was home, but she went nosing around in the backyard, where she saw enough telltale debris to make her suspicious. She tracked down a judge. This evening she cane back with a search warrant and reinforcements.” George paused.
In her mind’s eye, Joanna once again saw the pulsing emergency lights flashing off the sides of the canyon as she drove through the Bisbee end of the Mule Mountain Tunnel. “Don’t tell me Sally Matthews is dead, too,” Joanna breathed.
“No, I don’t suppose so,” George said. “Nothing like that. At least not as far as we know.”
Joanna wanted to shake the man to stop his hemming and hawing. “What do we know?” she demanded.
“It looks like Sally Matthews has been running a meth lab in her house, the old Pommer place up Tombstone Canyon. The Department of Public Safety Haz-Mat guys are up there right now, trying to clean it up.”
“What about Dora?” Joanna asked.
“That’s the part I didn’t want to tell you.” George Winfield shook his head sadly. “Jim Bob called me a few minutes ago. That same CPS caseworker just showed up out at the ranch and demanded that Jim Bob and Eva Lou hand Dora over to her. Which Jim Bob and Eva Lou did, of course—hand her over, that is. The caseworker told them they didn’t have a choice in the matter. Dora’s headed for a foster home out in Sierra Vista. I guess both Dora and Jenny were pretty upset.”
“I should think so,” Joanna said. “Wouldn’t you be?”
“Yes,” George Winfield admitted. “I’m afraid I would.”
Joanna turned on her heel and started away. Then she stopped and turned back. “There are times when that wife of yours is a meddlesome—” She bit off the rest of the sentence.
George Winfield sighed. “I know,” he said. “Believe me, I know.”
Coming out of George Winfield’s office, Joanna sat in her Civvie for a moment, calming herself and catching her breath. The anger she felt toward her interfering mother left her drained and shaken. She wanted to grab her telephone, call Eleanor up, and rail at her for not minding her own business, but yelling at her mother wouldn’t change a thing. Farther up the canyon, emergency lights still flashed and pulsed off the steep hillsides. Somehow, seeing those lights and knowing that the Haz-Mat team was still at work and probably would be for hours propelled her out of her anger-induced paralysis. It was time to focus on a course of action.
There was no question about what had to be done. Not only had Jenny found a body, she had also been traumatized by seeing one of her friends—someone who had done no wrong—taken into what must have seemed like police custody. Joanna had to go to Jenny, the sooner the better. If the choice was between comforting her daughter and attending a wedding with Butch, there was no contest.
But what about Maggie MacFerson? Joanna was the person who had brought Maggie to town, and it was her responsibility to take the woman—drunk or sober—back to Phoenix. The thought of Maggie wandering through a strange town on her own was enough to make Joanna start the engine and put the Crown Victoria in gear.
She caught sight of Maggie several blocks away, trudging determinedly downhill. The white bandages on her hands caught in the beams of passing headlights and glowed like moving, iridescent balloons. Joanna pulled up beside the walking woman and rolled down her window. “Where are you headed?” she asked.
Maggie MacFerson stopped walking and turned to glare at Joanna through the open window. “I didn’t see any watering holes as we came into town. I figure if I go downhill far enough, I’m bound to run into something.”
“Get in,” Joanna urged. “I’ll give you a lift.”
“No lectures?”
“No lectures.”
Joanna got out, went
