Partner In Crime

Twelve

BY FOUR O’CLOCK THAT AFTERNOON I was back at the Cochise County Justice Center. “I’m sorry, but Sheriff Brady has had a family emergency,” the same public lobby receptionist told me. “She’s not available at this time.”

“What about her second-in-command?” I asked.

“Chief Deputy Montoya is on his line at the moment. When he’s free, I’ll let him know you’re here.”

“And my name is-”

“I know,” she returned. “You’re Special Investigator Beaumont. I remember you from earlier.”

I wondered about that. Did she remember my name because she just happened to remember it, or had her boss passed the word that I was persona non grata? For the next ten minutes, I cooled my heels in the lobby. The longer I waited, the more I fumed. It wasn’t as though I was in a hurry or had anywhere else to go. It was the principle of the thing. So far, Sheriff Brady and her department had been something less than cooperative.

I found myself once again studying the picture montage in that glass display case. Joanna Brady may have been cute as a button when she was a little kid, dressed in a Brownie uniform and selling Girl Scout cookies like mad. Maybe she still was, but cute wasn’t working on me.

Eventually the secured door to the back offices opened and out walked a late-thirty-something Hispanic guy. He wore the same kind of uniform the sheriff had been wearing when I last saw her, although his was free of curves. And his head was shaved absolutely smooth.

“Hello,” he said as he approached my chair. “You must be Special Investigator Beaumont. I’m Chief Deputy Frank Montoya. What can I do for you?”

He escorted me back to his office, which was in the same wing of the building as the sheriff’s private office. I thought maybe I could pull out the good ol’ boy card and jolly Chief Deputy Montoya out of some useful information. But Sheriff Brady had her people firmly in line as far as J.P. Beaumont was concerned. Montoya gave me diddly-squat.

“Look,” he said in answer to my direct question about the Bobo Jenkins interview. “I can appreciate your wanting to know about that, but our department is conducting what is becoming a more and more complicated investigation. Without Sheriff Brady’s express permission, I’m not authorized to give out any information. Period.”

“It is complicated,” I agreed, “what with the addition of not one but two missing persons cases.”

Montoya’s eyes narrowed when I said that. He didn’t like my knowing about the missing art dealer and her boyfriend.

Too bad, I thought. I found that out on my own, Mr. Chief Deputy Montoya. If you don’t like it, you’ll just have to lump it.

“If I were Sheriff Brady,” I said aloud, “I think I’d be glad to have an extra detective show up and lend a hand with all this.”

Frank Montoya’s lips curled into a tight smile. “I don’t think that’s quite how she views the situation,” he said. “And until I have a chance to talk to her about it…”

By then I had pretty well decided that Sheriff Brady’s supposed family emergency was nothing but a smoke screen to keep me out of her hair.

“When will that be?” I asked. “When will you be able to talk to her again? And how long is this so-called family emergency scheduled to last?”

That one pissed him off. “As long as it takes,” he replied, standing up. “Now, if there’s nothing else, I’m quite busy at the moment.”

With that he escorted me to the door, down the hall, and back into the public lobby. As he booted me out I realized that, years ago when I had the chance, I should have coughed up the six hundred bucks and taken myself through the Dale Carnegie course.

JOANNA DIALED THE HOTEL and was relieved when Cornelia Lester didn’t answer. She left word with the desk clerk and had just put down the phone when Frank called her back. “Losing a dog is tough,” he said. “How’s Jenny faring?”

Joanna liked the fact that everyone who knew about Sadie asked about Jenny. “Better than I would have expected,” Joanna told him. “She took Kiddo and Tigger and went for a ride. Now, tell me. What did Mr. Beaumont want?”

“Anything and everything,” Frank replied.

“I’m not surprised, but what exactly?”

“He asked about the Bobo Jenkins interview.”

It was something Joanna hadn’t anticipated. “How did he know about that?” she demanded.

“Who knows?” Frank replied. “I sure as hell didn’t tell him. He also asked if we were making any progress in locating Dee Canfield and her boyfriend.”

“So he knows about the missing persons part of it, too,” Joanna mused. “Who all has he been talking to?”

“Beats me, boss,” Frank said. “Remember, though, the man’s an ex – homicide detective. He’s probably been all over town asking questions. You know how people here love to talk.”

Joanna knew that very well. Bisbee was a small place where everyone had a finger in everyone else’s pie.

“What did you tell him?” she asked.

“Nothing. Not without your approval.”

“Which I’m not in danger of giving anytime soon,” Joanna said. “Now let me tell you what Dave Hollicker found out.”

When she finished explaining about sodium azide, Frank Montoya was aghast. “Geez!” he exclaimed. “That stuff sounds scary!”

“You’ve got that right,” Joanna told him grimly. “It’s scary as hell.”

“You’re saying this sodium azide crap is lying around all over the place where any nutcase in the universe can lay hands on it?”

“That’s the deal,” she told him. “And,” she added, “unlike cyanide or arsenic, there aren’t any limits on who can have it.”

“There should be,” Frank said.

“Amen to that,” Joanna agreed.

There was a pause. “Maybe I should go on the Internet and check this out,” Frank suggested. “I’ll see what more I can find out about it.”

“Good idea,” Joanna said. “Unfortunately, we have no idea how much of it the killer still has in his or her possession. I’m guessing there’s some left over after loading up the sweetener packets in Latisha Wall’s kitchen.” Then, as an afterthought, she added, “While you’re surfing the Net, there’s something else I’d like you to check out, Frank. I want you to do some research on Anne Rowland Corley.”

“Wait a minute,” Frank said. “Isn’t she the young girl from Bisbee who, years ago, supposedly killed her father and then skated?”

At the time, the two Rowland deaths had been high-profile cases in southern Arizona, and they still were. Joanna wasn’t surprised to learn that, years later, their outcomes continued to be common knowledge in local law enforcement circles.

“She’s the one,” Joanna replied.

Frank frowned. “I seem to recall she died several years ago.”

Joanna nodded. “I vaguely remember that, too,” she said. “But the details escape me. That’s why I want you to check it out.”

“This Rowland thing is ancient history,” Frank objected. “Why the sudden interest?”

“Because Special Investigator Beaumont told me he used to be married to Anne Rowland Corley,” Joanna told him. “I believe he said she was his second wife, although he’s probably on number three or four by now.”

“Beaumont was married to her?” Frank asked. “That’s interesting.”

“Isn’t it, though,” Joanna agreed. “Very interesting.”

EARLIER AT THE HOTEL I had tried using my laptop to check my e-mail. Years ago, when Seattle PD dragged me kicking and screaming into the twentieth century and forced me to start using a computer, I hated the damned things. Now that I’m used to them, I can see they have some advantages. I’ve adjusted. On this day, however, not being able to make my connection work in the twenty-first century drove me nuts.

Frustrated, I had turned to my cell phone. I wanted to talk to Ross Connors and ask him who all had been in the know when it came to witness protection living arrangements for Latisha Wall. To my astonishment, I found that my cell phone didn’t work, either – not in Bisbee. The call wouldn’t go through. When I went downstairs and asked the desk clerk about the problem, he explained that maybe my cell phone’s poor signal strength was due to the hotel’s location deep inside the steep walls of what he called Tombstone Canyon.

Now, having been thrown out of Frank Montoya’s office, I sat in my Sportage in the Justice Center parking lot and considered my options. Reflexively checking the readout on my cell phone, I was delighted to see that I had full signal strength. Again I dialed the Washington State Attorney General’s home number. The phone rang once and was immediately answered by a woman speaking in a torrent of rapid-fire Spanish. After a couple of futile attempts to get her to switch to English, I realized I was talking to a recording.

Thinking I must have dialed the wrong number, I dug the list of Ross Connors’s phone numbers out of my wallet and checked to be sure I hadn’t transposed some of the digits. No such luck. The number I had dialed was correct. I had no idea what was going on with my cell phone now.

Cochise County, Arizona, has to be the black hole of the telecommunications universe, I told myself.

I drove back into town and wandered around until I finally located a pay phone at a Chevron station by the selfsame traffic circle that had given me such fits when I had been trying to reach the sheriff’s office the first time. With the proliferation of cell phones, it seemed like years since I’d been reduced to using an outdoor phone booth. It felt a little weird to be standing there in the open – practically in public – and dialing Ross Connors’s super-secret unlisted phone numbers. Since it was Saturday, I tried the cell phone first. No answer. Then I tried the office and reached a machine. Finally I dialed his home number, where a woman answered after the third or fourth ring. To my eternal delight, she spoke English. “Is Mr. Connors there?” I asked.

“No. He’s out,” she said. “This is his wife, Francine. Who’s calling, please? Can I take a message?”

I recalled Harry I. Ball’s stern admonition. “No messages.”

“Please tell him Beau called,” I said. That seemed innocuous enough. “Tell him I’ll call back later. Any idea when he’ll be home?”

“It’s sunny today,” she said. “He’s playing golf.”

That figured. The rain had cleared up in Seattle and Ross Connors was out having himself a nice Saturday afternoon while J.P. Beaumont – the birthday boy – was stuck spending a very long day in Bisbee, Arizona, being kicked around by a pushy small-town sheriff and her entire department.

In the old days, that kind of feeling-sorry-for-myself misery would have sent me straight to the nearest bar, but the Blue Moon wasn’t calling me. Instead, I decided to stay right where I was and exercise the prepaid phone card the Washington State travel agent had thoughtfully placed in my travel packet. It certainly wasn’t my fault that none of my nearest and dearest could reach me by telephone to wish me many happy returns.

First I talked to Kelly, my daughter. She and her husband live in Ashland, a small town located in southern Oregon. When Kelly dropped out of school and ran away from home mere weeks before her high school graduation, I wouldn’t have bet a plugged nickel that she’d ever go back and finish, especially since she had taken up with a young actor/musician and was pregnant besides. But it turned out marriage and motherhood were good for her. She picked up her GED right after the baby was born. Kelly’s now two years into a bachelor of fine arts program at Southern Oregon University. Not only that, my son-in-law, Jeremy, seems to be a pretty good sort, too – for an actor, that is. At least he’s gainfully employed.

Kelly wished me a happy birthday and told me about her mid-term exams before turning me over to three-year-old Kayla, who spent the next several minutes babbling incoherently to her “Goompa.”

Next I called my newly graduated and only recently gainfully employed son, Scott. He’s a neophyte electronics engineer who lives and works in the Bay Area. He and his girlfriend, Cherisse, are up to their eyeballs in plans for a wedding that is scheduled to take place sometime next spring. As we chatted on the phone, he gave me some of the pertinent wedding details, but I forgot them as soon as he told them to me. As Father of the Groom, I know all I have to do is show up, pay for the rehearsal dinner, and keep my mouth shut. It’s a far better deal than the one you get as Father of the Bride.

Finally, I called Naomi Pepper. If I thought she’d be glad to hear from me, I should have had – as my mother would have said – another think coming. She was distant, to say the least.

“What’s going on?” I asked.

“I did what you said,” she told me.

“What’s that?”

“I suggested to Mother that maybe we should look into an assisted-living sort of arrangement for her. I told her about the one you mentioned, the place up on Queen Anne that takes dogs.”

“And?”

“She hung up on me. She even left the phone off the hook so I couldn’t call her back. I was so worried, I finally got in the car and drove over to check on her, just to make sure she was okay. When I got there, she had a whole line of pill bottles set out on the kitchen counter. She told me that if that was how I felt about it – if I didn’t care for her any more than that – there was no reason for her to go on living. If I hadn’t been there, Beau, I can’t imagine what she might have done.”

I was fairly certain that the pill bottles had been strictly for show. She wouldn’t have done a damned thing, I wanted to say, but Naomi was crying now, and I knew the poor woman had been totally outfoxed and outmaneuvered. As I said before, Naomi’s a nice person; her mother isn’t. There was no need for me to add to Naomi’s misery by telling her so.

“What are you going to do?” I asked.

“The only thing I can do,” Naomi replied shakily. “She’s coming to stay with me. Mother says she’ll call and start getting estimates from moving companies first thing Monday morning. I’ll have to put some of my stuff in storage to make room for hers. You’re not mad at me about this, are you, Beau?”

Heartsick, I thought. And disappointed, but not mad.

“No,” I said. “I’m not mad at all. You have to do what you have to do.”

“Thank you,” she said gratefully. “Thank you so much for saying that.” She seemed to gather herself together. “And now,” she added, “tell me all about your birthday. How’s it going?”

“About as well as can be expected,” I said.

JENNY CAME BACK FROM HER RIDE and headed directly for her room. “Are you going to want dinner?” Butch asked as she passed through the kitchen.

“I’m not hungry.”

“There’s plenty of food in the fridge if you want something later.”

“Okay,” she said.

“What about you?” he asked Joanna.

“I’m not hungry, either,” she said.

“In that case, the cook is taking the night off. We’ll all make do with leftovers.”

Joanna stretched out on the couch and covered her eyes with one hand. She was about to doze off when Cornelia Lester called. It was painful to have to tell the woman that although Joanna’s investigators were making progress on the case, they still had no idea who had murdered Latisha Wall.

“You say she was poisoned?” Cornelia asked in what sounded like disbelief.

“That’s what we believe,” Joanna said.

Cornelia absorbed that information. “What about her paintings?” she asked. “The ones in the gallery. Will I be able to see those anytime soon?”

“I’ll try to make arrangements for you to be allowed inside the gallery,” Joanna said. “But I’m not sure when that will be.”

“In other words,” Cornelia said, “you still haven’t located the gallery owner.”

Cornelia Lester was a stranger who wasn’t a former detective, yet she, too, seemed to be as privy to what was happening inside the Cochise County Sheriff’s Department as J.P. Beaumont was. What would it be like to work in a big city? Sheriff Brady wondered. To be able to do this job in a place where everyone didn’t mind everyone else’s business?

“No,” Joanna had admitted with a sigh. “We still haven’t located Dee Canfield.”

“What if you don’t?”

“If we don’t find her?”

“Or what if you do and she’s dead, too?” Cornelia persisted. “What happens to the paintings then?”

“As far as I know, they belonged to your sister,” Joanna said. “If something unfortunate has happened to Dee Canfield – and I’m certainly not saying it has – then the paintings would, either by will or by law, go to Latisha’s heirs. I’m assuming her heirs would be her family members, but let me remind you, Ms. Lester, that we won’t be able to release them to anyone so long as they’re part of an ongoing investigation.”

“Of course not,” Cornelia said. “But I’d still like to see them.”

“I’ll see what I can do.”

“Thank you.”

Joanna put the phone down and had actually fallen asleep before it rang again. This time Butch answered.

“It’s for you,” he said, scowling at the receiver as he handed it over. “Tica Romero.”

“Hello?”

“We just got another 911 call from Naco,” the dispatcher said. “Some kids were playing around in one of the old cavalry barracks down there. They’ve reportedly found a body – a woman’s body. Chief Deputy Montoya and Detective Carbajal are already on their way. Deputy Montoya wanted me to let you know as well.”

“Thanks, Tica,” Joanna said, sitting up and shoving her aching feet back into her shoes. “I’ll be right there.”

Joanna went into the bedroom and slipped on her soft body armor as well as her weapons. Once she was dressed she stopped by Jenny’s room. The door was ajar. When she peeked in, she saw Jenny and Tigger curled up together on the bottom bunk, both of them sound asleep.

Leaving them be, Joanna returned to the kitchen where Butch was at work on his house file.

“Duty calls,” she said when she bent over to collect a good-bye kiss.”

“Don’t say I didn’t tell you so,” Butch said, but Joanna was relieved to see that he was smiling.

“I won’t,” she said.

I HAD HUNG UP after talking with Naomi and was wondering what to do next. It sounded like the Naomi Pepper door in my life was about to be slammed shut in my face. It came as no surprise that I immediately went back to thinking about Anne Corley.

I recognized I’d gone slinking off to Bisbee, Arizona, without mentioning it to my friend Ralph Ames. If I had been willing to ask him questions about Anne Rowland Corley’s history, I’m sure he could have given me answers, chapter and verse. As her attorney, he had known everything about her. Well, almost everything.

The problem with asking Ralph about Anne is that he knew her too well. Not only that, he had cared for her almost as much as I had. Ralph and I are friends, good friends, so whatever he might tell me would automatically go through those two distinctly separate filtering processes. I had no doubt that Ralph would tell me the truth – up to a point – but I suspected he might leave out a detail or two, if only to spare my feelings.

I was wavering between calling him and not, when I heard a siren. I looked up as a patrol car came racing up to the traffic circle from Highway 80. I’m always conscious of cop cars. It’s something I notice wherever I go. While in town, I had spotted several city of Bisbee patrol cars. They were white with a blue shield on the door. The fast-moving Crown Victoria making its way around the traffic circle sported a gold star on the door. That meant it belonged to the Cochise County Sheriff’s Department.

I watched it go and wondered about it, but then I heard a second siren coming from the direction of Old Bisbee. This one was a cumbersome Ford Econoline van, but the same star was emblazoned on the outside. Something was up, something serious. The sheriff’s department was being summoned en masse.

Should I follow or not? I wondered.

Then, barely seconds later, a third vehicle came along – this one a second Crown Victoria. It followed the same path as the first one. As it slowed to negotiate the curve of the circle, I caught a glimpse of bright red hair behind the wheel. This Crown Vic was being driven by Sheriff Brady herself. Whatever had happened was serious enough to summon her away from her family emergency. That did it. Moments later I was in the Sportage and trying to catch up.

Of course, there was never any question that the underpowered Sportage would catch up. The best I could hope for was to keep the Crown Vic in sight. It rounded the traffic circle and took off in what I judged to be a southwesterly direction. As I turned off the traffic circle myself, I thought at first that I’d lost her. Then, after coming through two subdivisions, past a mysterious no-visible-reason stoplight and through what looked like a genuine slum, I caught sight of her again.

From what I could tell, Bisbee is made up of little separate knots of tumbledown buildings strung together by strips of failing blacktop. In between are big chunks of undeveloped desert. By the time Sheriff Brady made it to the next little burb, I had closed some of the distance between us. Signaling for a left-hand turn, she paused at yet another traffic light. That slight delay gave me time enough to draw even nearer.

I, of course, had to stop at the light, too, and wait for what seemed an interminable length of time. Eventually, though, when the light changed, I could still see Joanna Brady’s car, speeding away on a straight downhill stretch. We seemed to be headed toward a solitary mountain that rose up in front of us some distance away.

Going downhill, the Sportage did a little better. After a few more little pieces of town, we were in desert again. What I wouldn’t have given to be driving my 928 about then. Barring that, it would have helped to have a police radio with me. At least I would have had some idea what was happening.

The next time the Crown Vic made a turn it was onto a smaller road that bordered a golf course. I guess I was surprised to see a golf course sitting there like a little emerald-green oasis in the middle of an otherwise unremittingly brown desert. There was a marked golf-cart crossing at the entrance. Naturally I had to stop and wait for not one but two golf carts to dawdle their way into the small but jam-packed RV park that faced the course. In the process I really did lose sight of Joanna’s Crown Vic.

Cursing under my breath, I drove to the far end of the course and looked around. Still I saw nothing. Then I stopped the car, got out, and listened.

The place was quiet. At first all I heard was a stiff breeze blowing from the west. But then, carried on by the wind, I heard the faint but familiar chatter from a nearby police radio. Even if the radio wasn’t Sheriff Brady’s, she wouldn’t be far from the one I was hearing.

I got back into the Sportage and drove. I roamed through several blocks of gravel-topped streets where a series of very old wooden and red-dirt buildings seemed intent on melting back into the desert. I found what I was looking for when I came to where a patrol car with flashing lights was parked astride a red-dirt trail. The officer signaled for me to stop. I pulled up next to a big bony dog who lay beside the road, unconcernedly observing the action. His shaggy black coat was tinged red by a layer of dust. The officer, who was now engaged in putting out a string of flares, booted the dog out of the way. Shaking off a cloud of dust, the dog sauntered off.

With the dog gone, the scowling deputy turned his illtempered gaze on me. “Sorry, buddy,” he said. “This is a crime scene. No unauthorized personnel allowed beyond this point.”

“My name’s Beaumont,” I said, passing him my badge. “Special Investigator Beaumont. It’s okay,” I added. “Sheriff Brady knows I’m here.”

He squinted at the badge and compared my face to the picture on my ID. “All right, then,” he said. “Pull over to one side so your vehicle’s not blocking emergency access.”

Poor guy, I thought, feeling almost guilty as I followed his instructions. She’ll have his butt for letting me through.

I decided my best course of action was simply to act as though I belonged. I left the car with the keys in it. Mimicking the dog’s unconcerned attitude, I sauntered past the deputy who, by then, was busy turning someone else away. I walked through several blocks of what looked like old-time military barracks. And I do mean old. The place came complete with a long, dilapidated building that had clearly been a stable. It took a few minutes for me to realize that I hadn’t wandered into a moldering Western movie set. This was truly the genuine article – an old U.S. Cavalry station.

By then I could see Sheriff Brady. She stood in a huddle with Frank Montoya and a plainclothes guy I hadn’t seen before.

She caught sight of me while I was still fifty feet away. Breaking out of the huddle, she marched toward me, furious and practically breathing fire.

“What have we got?” I asked casually, thinking that my well-placed “we” might mollify her just a little.

It didn’t. “What the hell are you doing here?” she demanded.

I expect women to yell when they’re upset. That’s what I’m used to, anyway – ranting and raving, if not outright screaming. That wasn’t Joanna Brady’s style. She barely whispered her question, but the effect was the same.

“Look,” I said reasonably, “I’m trying to do my job. Your deputy back there told me there’s been another homicide. I thought maybe it might have something to do with those two missing-”

“Get out!” she ordered.

“But Sheriff Brady, I thought we were supposed to be working together on-”

“I said, ‘Get out!’ and I meant it.”

“I just-”

“You just nothing! Go!”

More officers were showing up by then, and I could see she wasn’t going to change her mind. So I left. I put my tail between my legs and beat it back to the Sportage. A woman wearing golf course duds was chatting with the unfortunate deputy. No one could have overheard what Sheriff Brady was saying to me, but her hand gestures had spoken volumes. By then the deputy had figured out that he had made a potentially career-stopping mistake in letting me through. He shot me a disparaging look as I passed, but I ignored it. What did he expect me to do? Apologize?

I had folded myself back into the Sportage and was wondering what to do next when somebody tapped on my window. When I rolled it down, the lady in the golf clothes, who wore her blond hair in a wild frizz of curls, gave me a bright smile.

“Yes?” I said.

She reached in through the opened window and handed me a card. “Marliss Shackleford,” the card said. “Columnist. The Bisbee Bee.”

“Glad to make your acquaintance,” she said, batting her eyes.

Under normal circumstances, I wouldn’t be caught dead talking to a reporter. But I was currently at war with Sheriff Joanna Brady. That meant all bets were off.

I held out my hand. “Special Investigator J.P. Beaumont,” I said. “Glad to make your acquaintance.”