decided it was kids setting off firecrackers and didn’t give it another thought. It corroborates the time, though.”
“In other words,” Joanna said, “Rhonda Wellington is a busybody who made a police report about loose dogs and ignored a flurry of gunshots.”
“Exactly,” Jaime agreed. “I checked with the other neighbors. So far, no one else saw or heard anything. When I finished that, I went out to Sierra Vista and talked to Alberto Sotomeyer, who
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owns the Shell station where Carol Mossman worked. He says she worked a double shift two days ago—her regular shift, which was four to midnight, and then she worked graveyard as well, from midnight to eight. Sotomeyer said she had some kind of important appointment yesterday and needed to have the whole day off.”
“Yesterday was the deadline for having her dogs vaccinated and licensed,” Joanna suggested. “Maybe she took off work so she could have that done.”
Jaime jotted himself a note. “I’ll check around with the local vets and see if she had an appointment,” he said.
“Has either one of you talked to Edith Mossman yet?” Joanna asked.
Both detectives shook their heads. “Not enough time,” Ernie said. “We’ll try to get to her first thing in the morning. How come?”
“I was just thinking about something she told me last night,” Joanna said. “She claims to have no idea where her son is.”
“Carol’s father?” Ernie asked.
“Right. I believe his name is Edward.”
“That’s what you put on the information you gave us earlier. You also mentioned that Edith and the son are estranged.”
Joanna nodded. “Her words, which she didn’t bother to mince, were something to the effect that if he were to turn up dead, she’d be ready and willing to take a leak on his grave. What I find interesting, however, is that it doesn’t sound as though she’s estranged from any of her granddaughters—from her son’s children. Maybe we should find out what that’s all about.”
The phone rang. Frank Montoya reached around to answer it. “Conference room,” he said. A moment later he passed it over
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to Joanna. “It’s Tom Hadlock,” he said. “Needs to speak to you right away.”
“What’s up?” Joanna asked.
“The air-conditioning guys expect to have us up and running in another hour, but once they turn the switch back on, it’s going to take time to cool the place off again—a couple of hours at least. Ruby’s “wondering if she should make sandwiches so the inmates can eat out in the yard.”
Ruby Starr, a former restaurateur and chef, had been in the Cochise County Jail on a domestic-disturbance charge some three years earlier when the jail’s previous cook had absconded with that year’s supply of holiday turkeys. Ruby had been drafted directly out of her jail cell and into the kitchen. While still officially listed as one of the jail’s inmates, she had set about whipping the nearly derelict kitchen into shape.
Under her supervision, sanitation had improved immeasurably, as had the quality of the food. Upon her release, she had stayed on as chief cook, now as a paid employee.
“Good thinking,” Joanna said. “Tell her to make enough sandwiches for the guards and the extra deputies as well. In the meantime, Frank, liberate some money from petty cash and go get a load of chilled watermelons from Safeway. Everyone seems to be behaving themselves. Why not reward them? And, since we seem to be having a jailwide picnic anyway, it might just as well include some genuine picnic fare.”
Frank gave Joanna a questioning look, complete with a single raised eyebrow that meant he didn’t necessarily agree. “Okay, boss,” he said. “If that’s what you want, I’ll get right on it.”
Half an hour later, Joanna was back in her office. Watching the clock edge toward five, she realized the day had slipped away without her ever calling her best friend, Marianne Maculyea, to
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deliver the earth-shattering news that Joanna was pregnant. She reached for the phone but then put it down again without dialing.
Butch is right. Better not tell anyone else until after we tell Mother.
“Come on, whoever you are,” she said to the dog. “It’s time to go home and face the music.”
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Leaving Chief Deputy Montoya to oversee the outdoor jail operation, Joanna took her family’s latest canine member and headed home right at 5 p.m. It surprised her a little to realize what she was doing. In those first frantic months after being elected sheriff, she had hardly slept whenever her department had been sucked into a homicide investigation. Wanting to be more than a figurehead sheriff, she had thrown herself into each and every case. No one had placed greater demands on Joanna Brady than she herself had.
That was still true now, she realized. She had personally been to the scene of Carol Mossman’s murder, but it pleased her to realize that she no longer had to be there in person in order to keep her finger on the pulse of every aspect of the investigation.
Gradually she was learning to delegate. She was also learning to separate her personal life from her work life. In that regard, she had her stepfather, George Winfield, to serve as an example.
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