was in mortal danger, as she had hinted to Linda Kimball, then the source of that danger had to be the people who were there in the house with her.
Other than the fact they were liars, Joanna had no other concrete charges to lay at the door of either Amy Baxter or Rex Rogers, but Rex’s lie about Holly falling off the terrace had been a direct falsehood.
Amy’s was more subtle. She had simply gone along with the idea that Harold Patterson had never showed up for his scheduled appointment with Holly when in fact he had. Both times. Holly’s attempt at vehicular manslaughter-regardless of whether or not the city of Bisbee called it negligent driving-had been based on that erroneous premise, Holly’s mistaken belief that her father had once again let her down.
Halfway up the cracked flagstone steps that led through the terraced backyard, Joanna pulled off her pumps and stuck them in the pockets of her blazer. Within three steps, she felt the distinctive crackle of a run that started at the back of her heel and stopped somewhere midthigh. So much for the brand-new pair of panty hose she had put on that morning.
She could see now the very real wisdom behind Ernie Carpenter’s system of stashing a selection of extra clothing wherever it might be needed. As soon as she had a chance and as soon as she had that many extra clothes-she’d have to follow his example with a suitcase of her own.
When Joanna reached the highest level of terraces, she saw Isabel standing beside what was evidently a basement door, beckoning her to hurry. “This way,” she mouthed.
“They’re in the front room talking,” she whispered, as soon as Joanna was close enough. “Arguing, really. If we go up this back way, they won’t hear a thing.”
The back stairs were long, steep, and uncarpeted. They had to walk close to the ends of the risers in order to keep the boards from squeaking noisily underfoot. At the second landing, Isabel paused to catch her breath. In the otherwise-silent house, the only sound was an eerie rhythmic creaking, a sound Joanna eventually recognized as coming from Holly’s rocking chair. It was there in the background, like the steady but annoying dripping of a constantly leaking faucet.
“I’m glad someone is helping Miss Patterson Isabel Gonzales gasped between breaths. “I feel sorry for her.”
“Why?”
The older woman shrugged. “I don’t know,” she said. “It’s like something is weighing her down and crushing the life out of her.”
“Maybe it is,” Joanna replied.
They climbed on then, coming out through a door in the upper corridor just across from Holly Patterson’s room. “I can handle it from here,” Joanna said.
“You go on back downstairs. Hope fully, they won’t know you helped me.”
Isabel nodded and started back down at once.
She didn’t care much for either Rex Rogers or Amy Baxter, but it would be a shame if she and Jaime lost their jobs with that nice Mr. Enders.
Cosa Viejo provided them both with a living wage as well as a free place to live. In a one-horse town like Bisbee, where mining had disappeared and jobs were scarce as hen’s teeth, that wasn’t some thing to throw away lightly.
Unsure how Holly would react to her sudden reappearance, Joanna waited several minutes before she emerged from the landing and crossed the hallway. She wanted to give Isabel plenty of time to distance herself from any difficulty that might arise.
And all the time she stood there waiting, the eerie rocking continued.
Finally, after checking the corridor, Joanna darted across the hallway. To her surprise, when she tried turning the knob, she found the door was locked. That gave some validity to the theory that Holly Patterson was indeed being held against her will.
A skeleton key lay on a nearby oak hall table.
Joanna tried it, and the door swung open, revealing a room in which nothing had changed. Joanna’s business card still lay exactly where it had fallen. Holly hadn’t moved at all. Her two scraped hands still lay hopelessly in her lap, while her Vacant eyes stared through the small opening in the otherwise-drawn drapes.
“Holly,” Joanna said softly, her voice barely rising above the incessant racket of the rocker.
Slowly, like a television camera doing a gradual pan around a room, Holly Patterson’s face and eyes swung away from the window. Her questioning gaze settled on Joanna’s face with a puzzled frown. “Who are you?” she asked.
The question startled Joanna. She had been in that very room scant minutes earlier, speaking to this same woman, asking her questions. But now Holly obviously had no memory of it. Joanna was as much a stranger as if she had never laid eyes on her. Joanna felt with rising certainty that chemicals of some kind were responsible for Holly Patterson’s faulty memory.
“I’m Joanna Brady,” she answered, speaking calmly, trying to instill confidence. “I’m the new sheriff. I came to talk to you, to see if there was anything I could do to help. Would you like to go for a walk?”
“A walk? No!” Holly shook her head vigorously. “Amy wouldn’t want me to do that. She doesn’t like it when I go for walks.”
“Amy wouldn’t have to know,” Joanna said conspiratorially. “We could just walk down the back stairs and out the door. She wouldn’t have any idea we were gone.”
“No, I’d better not. I’d get in trouble.”
Holly’s voice was plaintive, like that of a child who, while already being punished for one misdeed, fears the additional retribution of another.
As Joanna watched, two tears squeezed out of the corners of Holly Patterson’s eyes and ran down her sunken cheeks. There is something seriously out of whack here, Joanna told herself, but she still couldn’t quite put her
