“Way to go,” Joanna breathed. “You wouldn’t be interested in putting in for detective, would you?”
“No, thanks,” Casey Ledford replied with a grin. “I’m perfectly happy being an AFIS tech. I have zero interest in watching autopsies. But there is one more thing.”
“What’s that?”
“Doc Winfield sent over Dora Matthews’s clothes. I found something interesting in the pocket of her shorts, something the Doc evidently missed.”
“What’s that?”
“A cash receipt from Walgreens in Sierra Vista. It was dated Sunday and contains two items—a Snickers bar and one Know Now Kit.”
“So?” Ernie Carpenter asked with a frown.
“Ever heard of Know Now?” she asked.
“Never,” he replied.
“It’s a home pregnancy test,” she said. “Gives you results in three minutes.”
“In our day, Rose had to go to the doctor to find out whether or not she was pregnant,” Ernie said.
Casey Ledford shook her head. “That may have been true in the good old days,” she told him with a laugh, “but not anymore.”
“Doc Winfield already told us she was pregnant,” Ernie said. “All that receipt means is Dora must have known, too.”
“It was dated Sunday?” Joanna asked.
Casey nodded.
“It gives us something else,” Joanna says. “It gives us one more bit of information about what happened
Ernie nodded. “We’ll check into it,” he said.
CHAPTER TWELVE
“So this Alice Miller must know something,” Joanna said to the others after Casey Ledford had returned to her lab and the group’s attention had veered away from pregnancy testing kits in favor of the mysterious 911 call.
“If that’s even the woman’s real name,” Ernie Carpenter grumbled. “After all, if she gave a phony address in making the report, what makes you think she’d give the 911 operator her real name?”
“Point taken. So how do we flush her out?”
“How about checking with the phone company and seeing if any other phone calls were made from that same pay phone about the same time?” Jaime Carbajal suggested. “Maybe she made more than just that single call. If we find any other numbers dialed right around then, they might give us a lead as to who she is.”
“Good thinking,” Joanna said.
She glanced in her chief deputy’s direction. Frank Montoya was the department’s designated hitter when it came to dealing with telephone company inquiries. Joanna was grateful to see that he was already making a note to follow up on it.
“What about this cabin at Pathway to Paradise where you say Ron Haskell was in isolation from Thursday afternoon on?” Ernie added. “Just how remote is it?”
“Pretty,” Joanna replied.
“But you said no one saw him from Thursday on. Isn’t there a chance he could have slipped away from the cabin, done one murder or maybe even two, and then come back again to his cozy little isolation booth without anyone at Pathway being the wiser?” the detective asked. “There may be an armed guard posted at the gate, but who’s to say someone coming and going on foot would have had to go anywhere near the gate?”
Joanna could tell Ernie was reluctant to drop Ron Haskell from his position as prime suspect in
