operating under the 312
assumption that her father, Ed Mossman, had murdered his own daughter, Carol, and that he posed a danger to his other surviving children as well.
Andrea had asked Joanna to warn Stella. What kind of connection existed between Stella and her father? Were the two of them on better terms than he had been with Carol and Andrea? Ed Mossman claimed Stella was the one who had notified him of Carol’s death. Stella might have placed calls from someplace other than her own home, but Joanna had little reason to doubt that Stella Adams’s telephone records, once found, would back up that claim. Unless, of course, Ed Mossman had already been only too well aware of his daughter’s murder.
How do you go about delivering this kind of news? Joanna asked herself. It was hard enough to tell someone that their loved one was somehow unexpectedly dead. What could she say-what should she say-to Stella Adams? And how could she go about warning Stella without necessarily revealing that Ed Mossman was coming into view as a prime suspect in three separate homicides?
The safety of Stella Adams and her family was important, but so was Joanna’s responsibility-her duty-to bring a killer to justice. Her investigators were counting on Sheriff Brady to conduct herself in a fashion that didn’t interfere with the successful resolution of the case. So were the voters of Cochise County. Now was no time for her to go Lone Rangering into a situation that might very well blow up in her face.
Joanna glanced at the clock on the dash. Two o’clock. That meant that both Frank Montoya and Ernie Carpenter might still be up to their eyeballs in the Ramon Sandoval meeting. This was no time to interrupt them, either.
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She radioed into Dispatch. “See if you can hook me up with Deputy Howell,” Joanna told Tica Romero. “I want to know how she’s doing with keeping an eye on Ed Mossman.”
When her phone rang a few minutes later, she thought it might be Debbie Howell getting back to her. Instead it was Butch. “Where are you?” he asked, sounding annoyed.
“Coming back from Tucson.”
“You missed your appointment with Dr. Lee.” It was a statement rather than a question.
An accusation, really.
“Yes,” Joanna admitted. “I did. I had to cancel it. Something came up-something important.”
“This baby’s important, too,” Butch said. “Dr. Lee’s office just called to verify that the appointment has been reset for tomorrow morning at ten. I told his receptionist that you’d be there on time if I have to bring you in myself.”
“I’ll be there,” Joanna said. There was a long pause. “Any word from Drew Mabrey?”
Joanna added, more to fill up the uneasy silence than anything else.
“Nothing,” Butch said. “But I’ve got better things to do than just hang out by the telephone waiting for it to ring.”
That was when Joanna figured out that the annoyance in Butch’s voice had far more to do with his case of nerves about what was going on with the manuscript than it did with his being upset about her missing a doctor’s appointment. During the long months when Drew Mabrey had reported one rejection after another, Butch had resigned himself to the idea that the manuscript might never be sold. Now, with a glimmer of hope, the anxiety was excruciating.
“Will you be home for dinner?” he asked.
“Yes,” Joanna replied, without mentioning the fact that she 314
had missed lunch altogether. “I’ll be home as close to six as I can make it.”
Tica radioed back only seconds after Joanna finished the call with Butch. “Deputy Howell says to tell you Mr. Mossman has been holed up in his room out at San Jose Lodge all afternoon. She says she’s been keeping an eye on him, and he isn’t going anywhere without her.”
“Great,” Joanna said. “Tell her to keep up the good work.”
By then the towering clouds had mounded ever higher in the sky. When she came through St. David, a black curtain of rain had settled over the Dragoons, completely obliterating the mountain range from view. By the time Joanna started through Tombstone sixteen miles later, rain was pelting so hard against the windshield that the wipers barely made a dent in the water. Even at the posted limit of twenty-five miles per hour, she could hardly see to drive. At least an inch of water covered the roadway, and every passing vehicle raised a blinding spray in its wake.
Then, as suddenly as Joanna had driven into the cloudburst, she emerged on the far side of it into blazingly bright sunlight that turned the pavement surface a shimmering silver. Switching off the air-conditioning, she opened the windows and left them open. In the aftermath of the storm, outside temperatures had dropped a good twenty degrees. The distinctively refreshing smell of summer rain on sun-warmed creosote bushes washed through the Civvie. It wasn’t enough to dispel all her concerns about the impending visit with Stella Adams, but it helped.
When Joanna reached the Divide outside Bisbee, the storm clouds had been replaced by bright blue, rain- washed skies. The pavement on the road was still slightly wet, while hundreds of tiny waterfalls cascaded down the rocky cliffs of the Mule Mountains.
On both sides of the Divide, washes ran bank to bank with 315
muddy, swiftly moving water. As a lifelong resident of southern Arizona, Joanna knew how treacherous those fast-moving floods of water could be. Every year someone, usually a hapless visitor from out of state, would drown after being surprised by floodwaters from a downpour that had happened miles away.
Ignoring the turnoff to the Justice Center, Joanna drove straight to Stella and Denny Adams’s home on Arizona Street, just across from Warren Ballpark. There were no cars parked in the driveway or on the street in front of the low-slung iron fence, but Joanna parked along a concrete-lined drainage ditch. It, too, was running with several inches of swiftly moving water. Then she walked across a narrow footbridge, through a gate, and up onto the front porch, where she rang the doorbell.
