Tucson. We’ll deliver the clothing to the crime lab so they can get started processing it. After that, we’ll track down Chris and talk to him.”
“Before you go, you need to know that Sally Matthews is about to turn herself in to MJF. Burton Kimball is bringing her in. They’ll be here in a few minutes. I told them to use the back door. She wants to know what’s going on with Dora’s case, and I’m going to tell her.”
“So she knows?”
Joanna nodded. “How much she knows remains to be seen.”
Ernie Carpenter left to find his partner. With a subdued Jenny following behind, Joanna returned to her office and made a futile attempt to straighten the mess on her desk. Meanwhile, Jenny slouched in one of the captain’s chairs. For several minutes, neither mother nor daughter said a word.
Joanna finally broke the lingering silence. “What’s wrong?” she asked.
“Are you mad at me?” Jenny returned.
“Why would I be mad at you?”
Jenny bit her lip. She had chewed on it so much during the course of the interview that morning that it looked chapped and swollen. “For not telling Grandma and Grandpa about Dora talking to Chris on the phone. I didn’t think she was serious about running away. I thought she was just talking big again, you know, like bragging. But maybe, if I had told ...”
Joanna went over to Jenny’s chair and knelt in front of her. “Jenny, honey, you’re going to have to decide that what happened wasn’t your fault. And now that we know a little more about what went on, it probably isn’t Grandma Lathrop’s fault, either. From what you said, it’s clear Dora Matthews was determined to run away. She would have done it anyway, whether she was at our house or at her own home up in Bisbee or in foster care.”
“You really think so?” Jenny asked.
“Yes, I do.”
“What about Chris? Do you think he’s the one who killed her?”
“It could be,” Joanna said. “At this point in the investigation, anything is possible.”
There was a knock on Joanna’s private entrance. “Is that them?” Jenny asked. “Mr. Kimball and Dora’s mother?”
“Probably.”
“I don’t want to see them,” Jenny said urgently.
“Of course you don’t,” Joanna said. “Come on. You can wait outside in the lobby with Kristin. Butch will be here in a few minutes to pick you up.”
Still clutching her book, Jenny retreated, closing the lobby door behind her, while Joanna went to open the outside door. Through the security peephole Joanna saw Burton Kimball, overdressed as usual in his customary suit and tie. With him was a desperately thin woman who must have been about Joanna’s age but who looked much older. Sally Matthews was gaunt and looked worn in her bottom-of-the-barrel thrift-store clothing. A loose-fitting baggy dress two sizes too large covered her bony, emaciated frame. On her feet was a pair of old flip-flops. Bedraggled, ill cut brown hair dangled around a thin face that was mostly obscured by a huge pair of sunglasses. In one knotted fist she clutched a soggy hanky.
“Good morning, Sheriff Brady,” Burton Kimball said when Joanna opened the door. “May we come in?”
Joanna held the door open and beckoned them inside. By the time she returned to her desk, she found that Sally Matthews had shed her sunglasses to reveal a haggard, homely, and entirely makeup-free face.
“You can go ahead and put me under arrest if you want,” Sally said, in a harsh voice that trembled with suppressed emotion. “I don’t give a damn what happens to me. All I know is, your department took charge of my daughter, and now Dora is dead. Who’s responsible for that, Joanna Brady? Are you the one?”
As she spoke, the agitated Sally Matthews had leaned so far forward in her chair that, for a moment, Joanna was afraid she was going to clamber across the expanse of desk that separated them. It must have seemed that way to Burton Kimball as well. He laid a restraining hand on his client’s arm. “Easy,” he said. “Take it easy.”
