including some that I’m sure were from Maggie’s paper.” He looked longingly at Joanna’s private entrance. “Is there any way you could get me back to my car out in the parking lot without my having to walk through them again?”
“Sure,” Joanna said. “You can go out this way. Chief Deputy Montoya here will give you a ride directly to your car.”
“Thanks,” he said, breathing a sigh of relief. “I’d really appreciate it.”
After Frank left with Ron Haskell in tow, Joanna sat at her desk, rewinding the tape and mulling over the interview. On the one hand, Connie Haskell’s widowed husband seemed genuinely grief-stricken that his wife was dead, and it didn’t look as though he stood to profit from her death. Ron Haskell may not have said so directly, but he had certainly implied that, considering the amounts of money he had squandered playing the stock market, a ten-thousand-dollar life insurance policy was a mere drop in the bucket and certainly not worth the risk of committing a murder. It also struck Joanna that he obviously held himself responsible for Connie Haskell’s death though all the while claiming that he himself had not been directly involved.
Those items were all on the plus side of the ledger. On the other side was the possibility that Ron Haskell could have had some other motivation besides money for wanting his wife out of the way, like maybe an as yet undiscovered girlfriend who might be impatient and well-heeled besides. Someone like that might make someone like Ron Haskell eager to be rid of a now impoverished wife. Haskell’s once seemingly airtight alibi now leaked like a sieve. He had chosen a course of action—a premeditated course of action—that had placed him in an isolated cabin from which he knew he would be able to sneak away at will and without being detected.
Forced to acknowledge that her original assumption about the isolation cabin had been blown out of the water, Joanna now wondered if some of her other ideas about Ron Haskell were equally erroneous. He had volunteered to conic in for DNA testing. Joanna had thought of that as an indicator of his innocence that it showed confidence that Ron Haskell knew his genetic markers would have nothing iii common with the rape-kit material collected during Doc Winfield’s autopsy of Connie Haskell. However, what if Ron Haskell had decided to divest himself of his wife by hiring someone else to do his dirty work? In that case, somebody else’s DNA would show up on the body. Ron Haskell wouldn’t be implicated.
Joanna picked up her phone and dialed Casey Ledford. “What do you think about Ron Haskell?” she asked.
“He seemed nice enough,” Casey replied. “Upset that his wife is dead, but eager to cooperate and wanting to find out who killed her. I took his prints, by the way,” she added. “For elimination purposes. Just looking at them visually, I can see they do match some of the partial prints I found in Connie Haskell’s Lincoln, but the ones I saw were mostly old and overlaid by far more recent ones. Based on that alone, I’d have to say that, unless he was wearing gloves, Ron Haskell hasn’t been in his wife’s car for weeks or even months.”
“Too bad,” Joanna said with a sigh. “I was hoping we were getting someplace.”
“Sorry about that,” Casey Ledford said.
Joanna had put down the phone and was still sitting and thinking about what Casey had said when it rang again. “Hi, George,” she said when she heard the medical examiner’s voice on the line. “What’s up?”
“Have you had a chance to talk to your mother yet?” he asked.
When George called Eleanor Lathrop “your mother” rather than his pet name, Ellie, Joanna recognized it as a storm warning. Not so far,” Joanna answered guiltily. “It’s been pretty busy around here today. I haven’t had a chance.”
“She left the house this morning before I woke up and she didn’t bother starting the coffee before she left. She was supposed to join me for lunch, but she didn’t show up,” George said. “I checked a few minutes ago, and she still isn’t home. Or, if she is, she isn’t answering the phone. I thought maybe the two of you had gotten together, and that’s why she ended up forgetting our lunch date.”
“Well, if you do,” Doc Winfield said, “have her give me a call. I’m worried about her, Joanna. She was really agitated about this Dora Matthews thing. I’ve never seen her quite so upset.”
“Don’t worry,” Joanna reassured her stepfather. “I’m sure mother will be just fine.”
“I suppose you’re right,” he agreed. “I’ll let you go.”
