Dead Wrong

Chapter 15

By the time Joanna got back to High Lonesome Ranch, Butch and Jenny were watching a movie in the family room with all three dogs scattered around them. Lady came into the kitchen to keep Joanna company while she reheated her dinner in the microwave. She was finishing eating when the program ended and Butch joined her.

“That’s the great thing about green chili casserole,” he said. “The older it gets, the better it tastes.”

“You’re right,” Joanna agreed. “It was great.”

“So how’s it going?” he asked. “You look upset.”

“I am upset,” she said. “Sometimes being a cop sucks.” Sitting down at the table, Butch took her hand. “What’s wrong?”

Joanna shrugged. “In the process of investigating a homicide, I’m about to blow someone’s life wide open.”

“Presumably not the killer’s,” Butch said, “or you wouldn’t be concerned about it.”

It was gratifying that Butch knew her so well.

“That’s right,” she agreed. “Not the killer’s. We’re about to tell a totally innocent twenty-five-year-old real estate agent out in Sierra Vista that she isn’t who she thinks she is, that the people who claim to be her biological parents aren’t even related to her.”

“Lots of people don’t find out they’re adopted until they’re grown,” Butch suggested. “It’s not fatal.”

“In this case the biological mother evidently pulled a phony disappearing act. She handed her baby off to someone else to raise and then left the child’s father to go to prison for the alleged ‘murder’ of his wife and child. The biological father did his time and was finally released a couple of years ago. The trouble started when he accidentally ran into the daughter, who looks spookily like her mother. As soon as he tumbled to the fact that the baby probably didn’t die, he did. Someone murdered him. To make matters worse, the faux father, who may turn into a likely homicide suspect, happens to be a much respected member of the Arizona Supreme Court-Justice Lawrence Tazewell.”

“Not good,” Butch said. “What are you going to do about it?”

“I have no idea. In fact, that’s what I’m sitting here trying to noodle out. Someone needs to go up to Phoenix to interview him, but Ernie is off on medical leave, and Jaime and Debbie are busy tracking down the people who beat up Jeannine Phillips. With the department so shorthanded-”

“No,” Butch interrupted.

“What do you mean, no?” she asked.

“I mean the baby’s due within the week. I don’t want you traipsing all the way to Phoenix to talk to a homicide suspect. Get Frank to do it or one of the other deputies.”

“But the man is a state supreme court justice,” Joanna objected. “I can’t very well send one of my deputies to talk to him.”

“Yes, you can,” Butch declared. “You’re pregnant. Who would end up interviewing the guy if the baby were already here and you were off on maternity leave?”

“I don’t know,” Joanna said gloomily.

“Well,” Butch returned, “get used to it. You’re going to have to let go sometime.”

“That’s what Frank said.”

“That you’re going to have to let go?”

“That I’m going to flunk maternity leave.”

“He’s right,” Butch observed. “That’s a distinct possibility, but in the meantime, what are you going to do about this?”

“Keep on thinking, I guess,” Joanna said. “Maybe even sleep on it.”

Butch collected her plate and silverware and took it over to the sink. “That’s right,” he said. “I almost forgot. I have a message for you from Eva Lou and Jim Bob. They said to tell you that you’re not allowed to have the baby until after they get home tomorrow night.”

“Where did they go?” Joanna asked. “I didn’t know they were planning a trip.”

“Neither did they,” Butch said. “They took Monty to Albuquerque.”

“Monty?” Joanna asked. “Who’s Monty?”

Butch shook his head and rolled his eyes. “Monty the python. That’s what Jim Bob says you called him, Monty Python.”

“The snake!” Joanna exclaimed. “I’ve been so busy I’d forgotten all about him. What happened?”

“It turns out there’s a python rescue guy over in Albuquerque who’s willing to take on the one from here, and Manny Ruiz was very eager to unload the snake and get him out of the kennel. He said the python was driving the other animals nuts and the receptionist as well.” Butch paused and then added, “Speaking of Animal Control, what do you hear about Jeannine Phillips?”

“Not much,” Joanna said. “As far as I know, she’s still in the ICU. Jaime Carbajal and Debbie Howell are working full-time to track down whoever did it. So far they don’t seem to be making a lot of progress.”

“What you need more than anything,” Butch said, “is a decent night’s sleep.”

“You might tell that to that son of yours,” Joanna replied. “He seems to spend half of every night kicking the daylights out of me.”

“Speaking of baby Dennis,” Butch said with a grin, “before they left, I told Jim Bob and Eva Lou that we now know we’re having a boy. And I told your mother and George as well. I knew there’d be hell to pay if one set of grandparents found out far in advance of any other set of grandparents. Did your mother call you?”

“Not yet,” Joanna said. “That means she’s probably pissed because she didn’t hear the news directly from me. No matter what we do, there’s no way to win with that woman.”

“You shouldn’t be so hard on her,” Butch said.

He had finished loading the last of the dishes into the dishwasher when Jenny came into the kitchen carrying the phone with her hand held firmly over the mouthpiece. “It’s your office,” she said with a frown. “Cassie and I were right in the middle of a conversation. Could you please hurry?”

Cassie Parks was Jenny’s best friend. Joanna had noticed that the older the two girls grew, the harder it was to pry the telephone receiver out of Jenny’s hand.

“I’ve got Justice Tazewell’s unlisted number,” Frank Montoya announced as soon as Joanna answered. “Do you want to call him or should I?”

“I will,” Joanna said. “Give it to me.”

Minutes later she was dialing Lawrence Tazewell’s number in Paradise Valley. The woman who answered the phone sounded Hispanic. “Justice Tazewell isn’t here,” she told Joanna.

“Could I speak to Mrs. Tazewell then,” Joanna asked. “This is Sheriff Joanna Brady from Cochise County.”

“Mrs. Tazewell isn’t here, either. Would you like to leave a message?”

Joanna was reluctant to leave a message, but there didn’t seem to be any other option. “Yes,” she said finally. “Please ask him to call me. It’s not an emergency, but it is about his daughter.”

After relaying her numbers, Joanna returned the phone to her daughter. Five minutes later, a frowning Jenny was back in the kitchen, once again handing her mother the phone.

“Sheriff Brady?” a man’s voice asked. “This is Justice Lawrence Tazewell. You called? What’s this about my daughter? Is she all right?”

Joanna had expected Tazewell to be a distant and indifferent father, but there was nothing indifferent in his tone of voice.

“Your daughter’s fine,” Joanna said.

“Oh,” Tazewell uttered with obvious relief. “Thank God for that. What’s this all about then?”

In the background Joanna heard a buzz of voices. Tazewell was returning her call from a relatively public place-not the best kind of environment to pose the kinds of questions she needed to ask.

“We’ve learned that someone’s been stalking her,” Joanna said, hedging her bet. “Taking Leslie’s picture without her knowledge. Her husband suggested to my investigators and me that the stalking might have something to do with your possible nomination to the federal bench.”

“I doubt it,” Tazewell answered. “And for the record, I wouldn’t believe anything Rory Markham has to say.”

Not an indifferent father at all, Joanna thought.

“Look,” Tazewell said. “I’m sure you and I need to discuss all of this, but I can’t do it right now. What about tomorrow?”

“Where would you like to meet?” Joanna asked.

“I’m in Tucson at a meeting, but I have my own plane. Why don’t I just fly into Bisbee sometime in the morning. We can talk there.”

“In the municipal airport?”

“Sure,” Tazewell said. “When I was a superior court judge in Bisbee and living out on the ranch, I used to do it all the time. Saved myself all kinds of commuting time and wear and tear on my car. I’ll show up, we can have our little chat, and I’ll fly right back out again. What time would you like me there, and can someone meet me?”

“Nine will be fine,” Joanna said at once. “And I’ll pick you up myself.”

“Good,” Tazewell said. “See you then.”

Joanna was still looking at the phone in amazement when Cassie Parks’s voice said, “Jenny, are you there?” Once again Joanna handed the phone back to her daughter.

“So he’s coming here?” Butch asked.

Joanna nodded.

“Well,” Butch said, “that’s better than your having to go there.”

They went to bed relatively early. As usual, Joanna didn’t sleep well. Her back hurt. She couldn’t get comfortable. As predicted, little Dennis kicked up a storm. In the quiet between kicks, Joanna spent the waking hours trying to imagine what questions she would pose to Justice Lawrence Tazewell, who might or might not be a suspect in the Bradley Evans homicide.

The fact that Tazewell had offered to come to Bisbee for the interview should have made her less nervous, but it didn’t. Joanna was enough of a poker player to realize that Tazewell’s willing cooperation might be nothing more than a cagey defensive gambit. By feigning a willingness to help, he might actually be deliberately trying to throw her off track.

She was still nervous about the upcoming interview at nine the next morning as she watched a blue-and-white Cessna 180 circle for a landing on the single runway of Bisbee’s municipal airport. She felt inexplicably better, however, when the door opened and a man wearing jeans, alligator-skin cowboy boots, and an enormous Stetson stepped off the plane. She might be worried about talking to a state supreme court justice, but a supreme court justice who also happened to be a cowboy might be somewhat easier to handle.

Emerging from her Crown Victoria, Joanna walked forward to meet him. Once he finished setting the chocks, he stood up and wiped his hands on the back of his jeans.

“Justice Tazewell?” Joanna asked. “I’m Sheriff Brady.”

“And you’re also very pregnant,” Tazewell observed.

Accustomed to people’s veiled glances and behind-the-back comments, Joanna found Lawrence Tazewell’s directness surprisingly disarming.

“Yes,” she agreed with a laugh, “I am.”

“When are you due?” he asked.

“Sometime this week,” Joanna replied.

Tazewell nodded. “I know a little about babies,” he observed as he followed Joanna back to the Crown Victoria. In order to accommodate her short legs, Joanna kept the bench seat as far forward as possible. That meant that Lawrence Tazewell’s knees were crammed up against the glove compartment. He seemed oblivious, however.

“My stepdaughter had her little girl just a week ago today,” he continued as he shifted in search of a more comfortable position. “Seven pounds six ounces, born screeching her lungs out at ten o’clock last Thursday morning. Suzanne named her Destry Annette. Funny name for a girl if you ask me, but no one did- ask me, that is. My only contribution to the process was to be on hand to wield the digital camera once the nurse had her wrapped and put her in Suzanne’s arms. We loaded the photos into a computer and e-mailed them to her daddy within an hour of her birth. My son-in-law’s in the military, you see. He’s a pilot in the air force and doing a tour of duty in the Middle East right now. That’s why Sharon and I were called in as reinforcements.”

By then they had settled into the vehicle, and Joanna was headed back to the Justice Center. “Where?” she asked.

“Where’s he stationed?” Tazewell returned.

“No,” Joanna said. “Where does your stepdaughter live?”

“Denver,” Tazewell answered. “Ron is from there. His parents own a bunch of apartment buildings, and they’re letting Suzanne and the kids stay in one of them rent-free while Ron is overseas. Destry’s brother, Johnny, is three years old and a real pistol. The other grandparents looked after him while Sharon and I were at the hospital.”

As Tazewell spoke, Joanna was doing some calculating of her own. Bradley Evans had died sometime the previous Wednesday or Thursday. If, as Lawrence Tazewell claimed, he had been off in Colorado doing grandfather duty, it seemed likely that he had no connection to the Evans homicide.

“Did you fly your own plane up there?” she asked.

“Of course,” he said. “Commercial flying is such a pain these days that I avoid it whenever possible. We left right after I got off work on Wednesday and were there in time for dinner. It could have taken us the same amount of time just to clear security at Sky Harbor.”

As they came up over the hill south of the ballpark, Tazewell looked around and sighed. “Looks like nothing’s changed,” he said. “When I first got elected to the superior court, I thought Aileen and I would move over here. I’d even made an offer on a nice place over on the Vista, but she refused to leave her folks’ ranch. Her mother was starting to have some health issues about then. And she stayed on even after both her parents passed away. As far as I know, she’s still there. I’m the one who moved on.”

There was a clear hint of regret in his voice. “You don’t sound particularly happy about it,” Joanna said.

“Being here brings it all back, I guess,” he said. “My colossal failure in life. The funny thing is, I didn’t see it coming even though one of my fraternity brothers from the U of A tried to warn me. Dudley told me he thought I was getting in over my head, only I didn’t believe him. Old Dud was of the opinion that marrying a rich man’s daughter was a bad idea. Turns out he was right. Which brings us, I suppose, to Leslie. What’s going on with her? What’s this about stalking? I’m willing to bet it has a lot more to do with that slime bucket named Rory Markham than it does with me.”

“I take it you don’t approve of your son-in-law?” Joanna asked casually.

“Look,” Lawrence Tazewell said. “Aileen wrote me out of my daughter’s life a long time ago. I’ve had no contact with Leslie at all since she was little, but I still care, and I try to keep track of what’s going on with her. When I found out she had married Rory Markham, I assumed it was Rory’s son. I knew he had at least one. I didn’t find out until much later that wasn’t the case. When I learned she had married the father instead, the Rory I knew, I couldn’t believe it. Why would someone like Leslie, a girl in her twenties, want to hook up with an old goat almost as old as her father?”

Joanna had her own ideas about why Leslie had married Rory Markham. “So you and he knew each other?” she asked.

“I knew him slightly but Rory and my ex have been pals forever,” Tazewell answered finally. “Maybe even more than pals on occasion. I suspect Aileen is the one who engineered the whole thing.”

Joanna was thunderstruck. “You’re saying your wife allowed your daughter to marry one of her ex-boyfriends?”

“Encouraged probably more than allowed,” Tazewell replied. “In fact, she probably manipulated the whole transaction and poor Leslie probably still hasn’t figured it out. Aileen’s like that, you see-someone who always gets her way. That’s one of the reasons I divorced her.”

“But-” Joanna began. Lawrence Tazewell stopped her mid-objection.

“Look,” he said. “Just because someone gives birth doesn’t make her a decent mother-present company excepted, of course. Now tell me about this stalking business. You say the guy was taking pictures. Do you have any idea who it is?”

Joanna hadn’t expected the interview to progress this far without being back at the department and having someone else to witness and record exactly what was said, but she was into it now, and there was no turning back.

“His name is Evans,” Joanna answered. “Bradley Evans.”

She glanced in Tazewell’s direction to see if there was any visible reaction to this revelation, but there was nothing-no sign of recognition or even interest.

“And he is?”

“An ex-con,” Joanna said. “And he’s dead. Someone murdered him last week.”

“A friend of Rory’s?” Tazewell asked.

“No,” Joanna said. “Not as far as we’ve been able to determine. You may know him, though.”

“Me?” Tazewell asked. “How would I know the man?”

“You’re the one who sent him to prison.”

“What’s the man’s name again?”

“Bradley Evans. He went to prison in 1978 for the murder of his pregnant wife. You were the judge who accepted his plea agreement and imposed the prison sentence.”

“Wait a minute. I think I do remember now. The guy was an ex-soldier from Fort Huachuca, right? He copped a plea even though no one ever found his wife’s body.”

Joanna nodded.

“And you’re right. I’m the one who imposed his sentence. It wasn’t a good time for me, though. I barely remember the proceedings. But what would he have against Leslie?”

By then Joanna was pulling into the Justice Center complex. “Let’s talk about it when we get inside,” she said.

“All this is new?” Tazewell asked.

Joanna nodded. “Relatively,” she said.

“When I was here everything was still located in the courthouse up in Old Bisbee-the jail, the sheriff’s department, the courts.”

“Times change,” Joanna said. “Come on in.” She ushered him into her office through her private entrance and offered him a chair. “Would you mind excusing me?” she asked. “Nature calls-urgently.”

Tazewell smiled. “I understand,” he said. “Take your time.”

Leaving him alone in her office, Joanna hurried to the rest room and then back to Frank’s office. “Got him?” Frank asked.

“He’s in my office. Do you have anything for me?”

“Not yet,” Frank answered. “Nothing on the blood work, if that’s what you mean. Trying to get the crime lab moving on this is like pulling teeth.”

“Having a supreme court justice sitting in my office may be our secret weapon on that score,” Joanna said. “Care to join us?”

Nodding, Frank followed Joanna from his office to hers. After introductions, the three of them settled into chairs around the small conference table in the corner of the room. “What can you tell me about your former wife’s friends?” Joanna asked.

“What friends?” Lawrence Tazewell asked with a snort of derision. “Rory was the only one I knew of, and he was a chum of hers from grade school on. Rory earned money by working on the Triple H during the summers and on weekends. Aileen was totally preoccupied with her parents and her horses. In that order. Her father came first, her mother second, the horses third.”

“What about Leslie?”

“A distant fourth. They hired the wife of one of the Triple H ranch hands to look after her.”

“Did you sue for custody?” Joanna asked. “If you knew your ex-wife wasn’t much of a mother and that your daughter was being raised by a paid caregiver, I should think you would have tried to gain custody.”

Lawrence Tazewell said nothing for a very long time. Instead of answering, he stared out the window at the gray limestone cliffs rising in the distance. “No,” he said finally. “I wasn’t tough enough. I took the easy way out. Aileen said she wanted a divorce, so I gave it to her. And Max made it worth my while to get out and not to rock the boat.”

“Max?” Frank Montoya asked.

“Maxfield Houlihan,” Tazewell answered. “Aileen’s father. Once she made it clear she wanted to be rid of me, Max did whatever he could to make it happen. And I have to hand it to the man. Max Houlihan may have looked like a rube, but he was surprisingly well connected. With the clear understanding that I would go away and stay away, Max pulled a few choice strings. I ended up being offered a great position with a law firm up in Phoenix, one that was far too lucrative to turn down. And that position inevitably resulted in where I am today.”

“You’re saying that it’s because of your ex-father-in-law’s string pulling that you’re a supreme court justice?”

“He didn’t get me the appointment,” Tazewell said. “I got that on my own, but that first job he obtained for me was certainly a springboard to bigger and better things. It put me on a fast track in a way being a superior court judge in Cochise County never would have. But, yes, that is what happened. I’ve felt guilty about it for years. I paid my child support every month, but other than that, I stayed out of Aileen’s and Leslie’s lives. I didn’t want to be involved. I had already lost them once, and I didn’t want to face losing them again. Over the years I’ve tried to make up for my shortcomings with Leslie by doing my level best to be a good father to my present wife Sharon’s two daughters.”

There was something in Tazewell’s demeanor that made Joanna think he was leaving something out. “What do you mean, lose them again?” she asked.

“HD,” he said.

“What’s that?”

“Huntington’s disease,” Tazewell answered.

“I’ve never heard of it,” Joanna said. “What is it?”

“It’s a degenerative disease,” he said. “It’s hereditary and incurable. They used to call it Huntington’s chorea because it causes chorea-violent, uncontrollable spasms. It progresses over a period of time-ten to fifteen years, rendering its victims more and more helpless. Ruth, Aileen’s mother, had it, and so did two of her brothers. HD would have killed Ruth eventually, but she committed suicide before things progressed that far. Since Aileen’s mother had HD, there’s a fifty-fifty chance that she’ll develop it too. The same goes for Leslie. God forgive me, but I wasn’t tough enough to stay around and watch it happen.”

“Leslie told us last night that her mother was ill with some kind of degenerative disorder. She didn’t say what kind.”

Lawrence Tazewell’s eyes blinked with tears. “Sorry to hear it,” he said gruffly. “I always hoped she’d dodge that bullet. I think they do genetic testing now. I hope Leslie has it done before she has kids. If she doesn’t have the HD gene, she can’t pass it along to her children.”

“Genetic testing may not be necessary,” Joanna said.

She struggled up out of the chair, went over to her desk, opened her briefcase, and removed the envelope containing the photos of Leslie Markham and Lisa Marie Evans.

Ignoring Frank’s warning look, Joanna returned to the conference table with the envelope in hand. “How long has it been since you’ve seen your daughter?” she asked.

“Eighteen years or so,” Tazewell answered. “The last time I saw her was at her grandmother’s funeral. She must have been seven then. I haven’t contacted her since. Why?”

Wordlessly Joanna shuffled through the photos and removed one that Bradley Evans had shot of Leslie pushing a grocery cart across a parking lot. She handed it over to Lawrence Tazewell. He fumbled a pair of reading glasses out of his pocket, put them on, and then studied the photo for several seconds. “This is her?” he asked at last.

Joanna nodded. “You haven’t even seen pictures of her?”

“No,” Tazewell said at last. “Not since she was in grade school. She’s beautiful, but she doesn’t look like anybody-not her mother’s side of the family or mine.”

“There could be a reason for that,” Joanna told him as she extracted Lisa Marie Evans’s senior picture from the envelope and handed it over.

Lawrence Tazewell studied the photo for a long time. Then he picked it up and held it next to Leslie’s picture. When he spoke, his voice was a hoarse whisper. “Who the hell is this?” he demanded. “The women in these two pictures could be twins.”

“Not twins but close,” Joanna said. “The one woman’s maiden name was Lisa Marie Crystal. Her married name was Evans. She was Bradley Evans’s wife, our murder victim’s supposed murder victim. We have reason to believe Lisa Marie Evans may have been Leslie’s biological mother.”

Tazewell looked stunned. “Not Aileen?” he asked. “How could such a thing be possible?”

“That’s what we’re trying to find out. We’ve collected some DNA samples that should confirm Leslie’s real parentage. It’ll take time to have them processed, of course. In the meantime, Leslie told us a few things about the unusual circumstances surrounding her birth, including the fact that you were out of town at the time it happened.”

Tazewell nodded. “I was in Dallas at a conference. Leslie was delivered at home with her grandmother’s help and then taken to the hospital later.” He paused and then added, “But if Leslie is someone else’s baby, what happened to Aileen’s?”

“Are you certain she was pregnant at the time?”

“That’s what I thought,” Tazewell said. “It’s what Aileen told me. So did her doctor.”

“Do you remember the doctor’s name?”

“Carstairs, Carston, Carmmody,” Tazewell answered. “I don’t remember exactly, but I think his name started with a C.”

“Maybe something happened to that baby,” Joanna suggested. “Some kind of late-term miscarriage. And if she and Lisa Evans were friends, maybe they arranged for Aileen to supposedly give birth at home so they could pass Lisa’s baby off as your wife’s. Doing that would have cleared the way for Lisa to leave her husband and simply disappear.”

“The murdered man, Bradley Evans,” Tazewell said. “He would have been the husband, the same man I personally sentenced to prison.”

Joanna nodded. “That’s right,” she agreed.

“But he pleaded guilty, didn’t he?”

“Yes.”

“If he wasn’t responsible for his wife’s death, why would he do a thing like that?”

“Who knows? If he was drunk, maybe he was operating in a blackout and felt ultimately responsible for whatever had happened to her regardless of who actually did it,” Joanna offered. “Now tell me. Did your wife ever mention having a friend named Lisa?”

“No, not that I remember,” Tazewell responded. “But our marriage was what one could charitably call troubled. With the notable exception of Rory Markham, I wasn’t really privy to Aileen’s circle of acquaintances. Still, are you saying that she knowingly participated in some kind of conspiracy that resulted in my sending an innocent man to jail for murder?”

“At this point,” Joanna said, “all I’m suggesting is that’s a possibility.”

“And Evans was innocent the whole time?”

Joanna nodded. “Also possible.”

“If I’d had any idea-if I’d had even the slightest hint that Aileen knew the woman-I would have recused myself immediately. I never would have agreed to preside over the Evans case. You do believe me, don’t you?”

Joanna nodded. “Yes, I do,” she said.

“But supposing Evans didn’t kill his wife. Where the hell did she go? Is she still alive and well somewhere, living under an assumed name? And what if that other baby-my baby-didn’t die either? Where is that child?”

“I don’t know the answer to any of those questions,” Joanna told him. “That’s what we’re trying to find out. The idea that Lisa is alive and well is certainly one possible scenario. The other is that she’s been dead all along. The fact that Bradley Evans is dead, too, tends to suggest he ended up spooking someone who had something to hide.”

“How did that all come about?” Tazewell asked.

“Pure bad luck,” Joanna replied. “We’ve learned that Bradley Evans and Leslie Markham both happened to have lunch in the same Sierra Vista restaurant on Tuesday a week ago. Evans must have noticed the striking resemblance between Leslie and his presumably dead wife. He spent most of the next day following her around Sierra Vista taking pictures with a disposable camera.

“Maybe he wanted to confirm for himself what he thought he was seeing. Or maybe he planned on showing the photos to someone else. But he never got a chance to show them to anyone. Before he finished shooting that roll of film, he was dead- stabbed to death. When his vehicle was impounded after his death, we found the camera hidden under the front seat of his vehicle.”

“Am I a suspect?” Tazewell asked.

The man’s direct question caught Joanna off guard. He certainly had been a suspect initially, but the longer she talked to him, the less she thought Lawrence Tazewell was directly involved in Bradley Evans’s murder. Still, without substantiating his alibi, there was no way to be sure.

“Possibly,” Joanna admitted. “Although not much of one. Is there any way to confirm that you were in Denver last week?”

Nodding, Tazewell removed a PDA from his pocket and reeled off a telephone number. “That’s the FBO-Fixed Base Operator-at the general aviation airport north of Denver where we landed and where the plane was parked from Wednesday until Monday morning. Sharon and I spent a lot of time at the hospital, but we were at our daughter’s in-laws’ apartment a good deal of the time as well, and we met some of her friends and neighbors. Do you want their names and phone numbers?”

“Wherever possible,” Joanna said.

It took several minutes for Joanna to collect the information. While she took notes, Frank Montoya did the same. When Tazewell finally returned his PalmPilot to his pocket, his face was grave. “So everything was fine until Evans stumbled on to the fact that maybe his dead daughter really wasn’t dead.”

Joanna nodded. “That’s how it looks.”

“Has Leslie been informed about any of this?” Tazewell asked.

“Not yet,” Joanna said. “And until we have some kind of solid confirmation…”

“Right,” Tazewell said. “Of course. It would be irresponsible to mention any of this to her while it’s still a matter of supposition, but when the time comes, are you going to tell her or should I?”

“I’d prefer to have that handled by a family member-either you or her mother.”

Tazewell nodded. “That may not be possible,” he said.

“Why not?”

“Depending on how far Aileen’s HD has progressed, she may not be able to talk.”

“I’d like to hear Aileen’s side of the story,” Joanna said. “But in case that’s not possible, what can you tell us about her?”

Lawrence Tazewell shook his head. “I really don’t have any idea where to start,” he said.

Frank Montoya caught Joanna’s eye and then stood up. “If you’ll excuse me, there are a couple of things I need to attend to.”

“Fine,” Joanna said, then she turned back to Lawrence Tazewell, who was holding the pictures of Lisa Evans and Leslie Markham and gazing back and forth between them. “I guess you’d best start at the beginning.”