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“You mean there’s more?” Edith demanded. “What else can you possibly want to know?”
“We need to know everything,” Jaime told her. “Everything you can tell us.”
“It’ll have to wait, then,” Edith said. “I’ll go over to Stella’s house and take a little nap. I’m no spring chicken, you know. If I don’t get my rest, I’m the next best thing to worthless. Maybe, after that, I’ll feel up to talking some more. Right now I’m completely worn out.”
Me, too, Joanna thought.
“Sure thing,” Jaime said. “Later this afternoon will be fine.”
Twenty minutes later, Joanna slid into a booth at Daisy’s, across the table from where Marianne Maculyea was already sitting.
“How are you doing?” Marianne asked.
“Fine until I smelled the food,” Joanna said.
“Queasy?”
“You could say that.”
“Try the chicken noodle soup,” Marianne suggested. “When I was pregnant, chicken noodle was one of the few things that didn’t bounce back up the moment I swallowed it.”
“I take it you’ve forgiven me for not telling you first thing?” Joanna asked.
Marianne grinned at her. “Let’s just say I’m over it,” she said. “I’m thrilled to know jeffy is going to have someone to play with.”
“You may be over it, but I’m not,” Joanna said. “I’m still pissed at Marliss.”
Even as she said it, Joanna knew she was putting Marianne in a difficult situation, since Marliss Shackleford was also a member of the Reverend Maculyea’s flock at Tombstone Canyon United Methodist Church.
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“Don’t be,” Marianne advised. “Marliss was just doing her job. Or what she sees as doing her job.”
Daisy Maxwell, owner of Daisy’s Cafe, approached the booth with pad and pencil in hand, ready to take their order.
“Good afternoon, Sheriff Brady,” she said with a smile. “And congratulations. What’ll it be, now that you’re eating for two?”
Word is definitely out, Joanna thought.
“My friend here recommends the chicken noodle soup,” Joanna replied. “I guess I’m having that.”
“And you?” she asked Marianne.
Once again, Marianne favored Joanna with an impish grin. “Well,” she said, “since I’m not the one who’s expecting, I’ll have a hamburger. With fries!”
Forty-five minutes later, Joanna was back in her office when Ernie Carpenter knocked on the doorjamb. “Back from Tucson already?” she asked.
He nodded, came into the room, and eased his portly frame into one of the chairs.
“If the jail’s still under lockdown,” he said, “I think you can tell Tom Hadlock to ease up.”
“How come?” Joanna asked. “What’s the verdict?”
“Fran Daly’s preliminary conclusion is that Richard Osmond died of undiagnosed pancreatic cancer.”
Joanna closed her eyes and whispered a small prayer of thanksgiving that George Winfield had wisely suggested bringing in an unbiased third-party medical examiner. The same information coming from Joanna’s own stepfather would have been far easier to view with skepticism.
“Undiagnosed?” she asked. “You mean Richard Osmond was that sick and no one had any idea?”
Ernie nodded. ‘According to Doc Daly, that’s the way pancreatic cancer works sometimes.
It’s like a time bomb that goes
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off with zero advance warning. Even if doctors find it, Fran says there’s not that much that can be done about it.”
“What I want to know is whether or not we had any warning,” Joanna declared, emphasizing the first person plural pronoun. “Whether the Cochise County Sheriff’s Department had any warning.”
“What do you mean?”
‘According to Frank, Richard Osmond has a child with a girlfriend whose father is a litigious kind of guy. Before Frank even finished doing the next-of-kin notification, Gabriel Gomez was already threatening us with a wrongful- death lawsuit. I want to know for sure that we’re covered on this, Ernie. I want you to check the jail records and find out if Osmond ever asked to go to the infirmary on a sick call or asked to see a doctor. I also want you to check with the two guys in his cell; what are their names again?”
Ernie hauled out a pad of paper and checked his notes. “Brad Calhoun and John Braxton,”
he supplied.
“I want you to see if Osmond ever complained to either one of them about not feeling well. I want those
