Frank homed in on her lack of enthusiasm. “What’s wrong?” he asked.
“I don’t know where to start,” she responded. “But maybe you should get Ernie in here before I do.”
Frank and Ernie listened in almost total silence. When Joanna finished, Ernie nodded.
“You could be right about all this,” he observed. “It’s not like it used to be in the old days. Now, having an out- of-wedlock child is no big deal, but this is incest.
And if all of this is a result of Stella Adams trying to conceal the boy’s real parentage, it might not be over yet. Who else would know?”
“The grandmother, Edith Mossman,” Joanna replied. “Ed Mossman himself, and the sister, Andrea.”
“You said Andrea was going into hiding.”
“Most likely she’s hiding from the wrong person,” Joanna 322
answered. “But, yes, I think she’s out of harm’s way for the moment.”
“Should we send an officer to look after Edith?” Frank asked.
Joanna nodded. “Absolutely,” she said. “The same goes for Ed, once we locate him again. What about the phone situation, Frank? Any luck there?”
“Not really,” Frank replied. “It’s a case of having too much information rather than too little. It turns out there are several phone calls going back and forth from Stella’s home number to her father, both in the days and weeks preceding the three murders and in the days afterward. So there’s no way we can point to a single individual call and say this one is significant. Mossman said Stella called and told him about Carol’s death sometime on Wednesday. He claims he doesn’t remember the exact time.
Unfortunately, there are several different calls during which that communication might have taken place.”
Ernie’s fingers drummed an impatient tattoo on the surface of Joanna’s desk. “We’ve got plenty of suspicion, but zero probable cause,” he said. “So far there’s nothing that would merit getting a search warrant, so how about this? What if I track Denny Adams down in Tucson and find out if Stella could possibly be in possession of one of those old Deportation Colt forty-fives? If he works for FedEx, they’ll have a local phone number and address for him.”
“Good thinking,” Joanna said.
‘Anything else?”
“That’s fine for a start.”
“I’ll get on it then,” Ernie said, lumbering toward the door. “One other thing. Do we know when Jaime will be back?”
“Not so far. I’ve tried calling him, but I can’t get through to him.”
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“Too bad. If we knew when he was coming in, we could have him go talk to Adams,”
Ernie said. ‘As it is, I guess I’ll do it.”
“You could always do a phoner,” Frank suggested.
Ernie shook his head. “Not me,” he said. “Phones work fine for some people, but I’d rather be eyeball-to-eyeball and belly-to-belly. I get a better feel for things that way, and better information, too.”
Ernie went out and closed the door behind him. “I should have known,” Frank said with a laugh. “I knew Ernie disapproved of computers, but this is the first I realized telephones are also suspect.”
Joanna laughed. “Give the man a break, Frank. Ernie Carpenter’s just an old-fashioned kind of guy.”
Frank left, too, and since there was no other excuse to avoid the paperwork on her desk, Joanna knuckled under and went to work. A whole hour had passed before her phone rang again. This time it was her private line.
“I thought you said you were going to call me back,” Eleanor Lathrop Winfield huffed.
“That was days ago now.”
Joanna’s first instinct was always to grab hold of the guilt her mother was so willing to pass out, but for a change she caught herself. “It was only yesterday,” Joanna said. “And I’ve been incredibly busy.”
“If you’re this busy now, how will you ever manage with a baby thrown into the bargain?”
“Mother,” Joanna said quietly, “Butch and I are going to have this baby. And, if the voters are willing, I’m going to go right on being sheriff.”
“In other words, like it or lump it.”
“I didn’t say that,” Joanna countered. Although it’s exactly what I meant, she realized.
“I suppose that is what I mean. I want
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you to be happy about this with us. I want you to be involved, and George, too. But, Mom, you’re going to have to get used to the idea that I’m a grownup. This is my life, and I’m going to do things my way.”
“That’s almost exactly what George said,” Eleanor replied tearily “George Winfield is a very smart man.”
‘All right,” Eleanor replied. Then she paused, but only for half a beat. “So have you been to see the doctor yet? You shouldn’t let that go too long, you know.”
