“Like why, all the time you were telling me about what happened to Connie, you never happened to mention to me that one of the two people who found the body was none other than your own daughter?”
“It wasn’t important,” Joanna said. “There was no reason to tell you.”
“There was no reason not to tell me,” Maggie retorted. “I wouldn’t know it even now if I hadn’t been chatting up the bartender last night. Just like I wouldn’t know that the local ME is a relative of yours. That strikes me as a little incestuous, Sheriff Brady. Taking all that into consideration, I’ve decided to hang around town for a while and ask a few more questions. No telling what I might turn up. Now go away!”
Without replying, Joanna started to leave the room. “One more thing,” Maggie added before the door could close. “You might want to check out the first story. It’ll be in late editions of the
“Great,” Joanna muttered, after slamming the door shut behind her. “I can hardly wait.”
Joanna left Bisbee seething with anger. Between there and Phoenix, she drove too hard and too fast. Twice she booted left-lane-hugging eighteen-wheelers out of the way by turning on the Civvie’s under-grille lights. Several times along the way she tried phoning Butch, but now when he didn’t answer she hung up before the voice-mail system ever picked up the call. She was tired of leaving messages in the room since he evidently wasn’t bothering to pick them up. A call to Dispatch told her that Detectives Carpenter and Carbajal were on their way to Portal, where they hoped to locate and question Ron Haskell. She also learned that there was still no trace of Sally Matthews.
A little past ten she pulled into the porte cochere at the Conquistador and handed her car keys over to the parking valet. Joanna let herself into their twelfth-floor room to find that the bed was made and the message light was flashing. She assumed that the room had been made up after Butch left that morning, but a check of the messages disabused her of that notion. The messages were all her messages to Butch. There were none from him for her.
She felt a sudden tightening in her stomach.
Turning on her heel, she hurried out of the room and lack down to the lobby, where she planned to buttonhole someone at the desk. By now it was verging on checkout time, so naturally she was stuck waiting in a long line. While there, she caught a glimpse of a copy of the Sunday edition of the
Leaving her place in line, Joanna went to the hotel gift shop and purchased her own copy of the paper and then sat down on one of the couches in the lobby to read it. There were actually two separate articles. Keeping an eye on the line at the front desk, she skimmed through the staff-written piece with three different reporters’ names listed in the byline. That one was a straightforward news article dealing with the murder of Constance Marie Haskell, daughter of a well-known Valley of the Sun developer, Stephen Richardson, and his wife, Claudia. Maggie MacFerson, a longtime
For years
The discovery late Friday night of Ms. MacFerson’s brutally slain younger sister and fellow heiress, Constance Marie Haskell, puts Maggie in the shoes of countless others who have suffered through the unimaginable horror of having a loved one murdered.
Ms. MacFerson’s reputation as a trusted investigative reporter allows her a unique position from which to write about the other victims of homicide—the relatives and friends of the dead—who have few choices to make and even less control in the aftermath of a violent death.
She has agreed to write a series of articles recounting her terrible journey, which began with the discovery of her murdered sister’s body two days ago in rural Cochise County. The first of those articles appears below.
Editor
