“I’ll check on that, too,” Frank said.
“How did the interviews go in Tucson?” Joanna asked.
All right, I guess,” Frank replied. At least we have some. Whether what we have will be enough to put the squeeze on the driver, I don’t know.”
And the little boy’s mother?” Joanna asked.
“We never had a chance to talk to her,” he said. “She had undergone surgery for a ruptured spleen and other internal injuries. The doctor says that it’s going to be touch-and-go for her for the next several days. She may not make it.”
“With her baby dead, she may not want to make it,” Joanna observed.
“That, too,” Frank agreed. “If that’s all, I’ll get on the horn 235
and see who I should call in the morning when offices open up. It’ll be easier if I know where to start.”
Jenny popped her head out the door. “Mom, can’t we go home soon?”
“In a while,” Joanna replied. “But first I want to help Grandma Brady with the dishes.
What’s the hurry?”
Joanna made a face. “It’s boring here,” she said. “Besides, Cassie and I want to go riding.”
At thirteen, Jenny was taller than her mother, although her fast-growing string-bean limbs had yet to fill out. It seemed only days ago when nothing had made Jenny happier than spending a long summer afternoon in the company of her paternal grandparents.
Those days were gone.
Joanna glanced at the sky, where the threatening clouds had grown even darker while she had been on the phone.
“You can’t go riding, Jenny. It’s going to rain.”
Jenny sighed, made another face, and flounced back into the house. When Joanna returned to the kitchen, she discovered that Butch had beaten her to the punch as far as doing dishes was concerned. The dishwasher was loaded and he was cleaning the last of the pots and pans by hand.
“Looks like I dodged KP,” she said.
‘Again,” Butch said.
They went home shortly after that. Jenny, still in a huff, closeted herself in her room. Butch and Joanna spent the remainder of Sunday afternoon in relative quiet.
They were halfway through 60 Minutes when the phone rang.
“Here we go again,” Butch said as he rose to answer it. “I knew this was too good to last. Oh, there, George,” he said into the phone. “No, hang on. She’s right here.”
236
“What’s going on?” Joanna said to Doc Winfield.
“We’ve got a problem with Ed Mossman.”
“Ed Mossman?” Joanna said. “Carol’s father? I thought he was in Mexico. As far as I know, he hasn’t even been notified.”
“He’s been notified, all right,” George Winfield observed. ‘And he’s on the warpath.”
“What about?”
‘According to the grandmother, she was Carol’s next of kin. At her direction, I had made arrangements for the body to be released to Higgins Funeral Chapel in the morning.
Edith wants Carol to be buried here in Bisbee. Ed Mossman claims he’s making arrangements to ship the body back down to Mexico. Not only that, when he called here to the house, he was rude to your mother and downright abusive to me. He even threatened his own mother.”
“He threatened Edith?”
“That’s right. He said she’s already caused enough trouble between him and his daughters and he’s not going to stand for her keeping him away from Carol now that she’s dead.
He wants her buried next to her mother in the family plot in Obregon.”
“Wanting to bury his daughter next to her mother is fine,” Joanna said. “Threatening Edith Mossman isn’t. What did you tell him?”
“To come by the office tomorrow morning. He said he’d be there at nine.”
“I will be, too,” Joanna said.
“There is one other thing,” George Winfield added.
“What’s that?”
“Speaking of next of kin, has anyone done anything to locate Carol Mossman’s child?”
“What child?” Joanna asked.
237
