J. Jance - Dead to Rights

Dearest Departures had been open for less than two weeks, but the Cashman/Bellweather episode proved to be the local franchise’s undoing. The well-organized business plan called for a considerable cash flow based on relatively low-cost but prepaid services. Once people stopped prepaying and took their business back to Norm Higgins, it was only a matter of time. Norm’s costs may have sounded like the high-priced spread, but at least people had some confidence that Norm and his boys would stick the right body in the right box.

One month later, Dearest Departures was dead in the water. The owners locked the place up and abandoned town in the middle of the night, leaving behind a bunch of bad debts and a few very unhappy prepaid and unburied customers. Less than a year later, the parent company was out of business as well. When the building in Bisbee, along with all existing equipment, was about to be auctioned off for back taxes, some bright-eyed public servant came up with a better idea. The Dearest Departures facility in Tombstone Canyon was transformed, with a modest capital outlay, to house the offices of the newly appointed Cochise County Coroner, Dr. George Winfield.

Doc Winfield had come to Bisbee by almost as circuitous a path as the building he now occupied. A trained pathologist specializing in oncology with a practice in Minneapolis, he had lost heart when first his wife and, soon after, his only daughter had succumbed to cervical cancer. No longer willing to fight the good fight, he had given up on cancer and returned to school to study forensic pathology. Winfield had graduated with that specialty at a time when most of his original medical school class was thinking of retirement. Two months later, he had answered a blind ad in the Wall Street Journal. He arrived in Bisbee as a permanent snowbird in time to oversee the remodeling of the new facility.

As careful with public money as he was with his own, George Winfield had changed only that which was necessary. The walls of his office were still draped with lush burgundy velvet curtains that, as he said, still had several good years of use left in them. That explained why, when Joanna Brady pulled tip to his office, she parked her Blazer in a spot on reserved for Dearest Departures hearses.

“Why, Sheriff Brady,” Winfield said easily, rising in true gentlemanly fashion when Joanna knocked, unannounced, at his open door. “What can I do for you?”

“Ernie Carpenter’s been called out of town because of…” she began.

George Winfield nodded knowingly. “Dick Voland ready told me. Because of the Reed Carruthers case,” he finished.

“Right. I was in the neighborhood, though,” Joanna said. “I thought I’d come by and see if there was anything important enough for me to pass along to Ernie tonight.”

“Like I told Dick, I don’t have anything in writing yet,” George answered. “At this point I’m limited to one half-time clerk-typist. She only works mornings, regardless of how many bodies turn up in the morgue. I can verbal you some preliminary results, but that’s about it. You can’t have it black and white officialese until around noon tomorrow.”

“I’d appreciate anything you could tell us. So would my public information officer,” Joanna told him.

Winfield leaned back in his chair. “Amos Buckwalter was dead before the fire ever started,” he replied without further preamble. “The lung damage I saw would be consistent with what one would expect from a long term smoker, but not am someone dying of smoke inhalation.”

“If the fire and smoke didn’t kill him, what did?” Joanna asked.

“He died of a single puncture wound.”

“A puncture wound? Where?”

“Right here,” Winfield said. He turned slightly in his chair and pointed to a spot just over the top of his stiffly arched shirt collar. “It’s in this little indentation. There were so two matching abrasions on the outside of his neck-one either side. If you’re wondering about a murder weapon, I’d say you’d do well to go looking for a pitchfork.”

“A pitchfork!” Joanna exclaimed, remembering what be Noonan had said about stumbling over a pitchfork when she found Hal Morgan lying in the burning barn. “You’re sure that’s what it was?”

Winfield nodded. “My older brother and I spent lots of summers working on our uncle’s farm back in Minnesota,” said. “We hated each other’s guts. Still do, as a matter of fact. Believe me, I know the receiving end of a pitchfork when I see one. Incidentally, I have the scars to prove it, right here on my upper thigh. I could demonstrate same, if you’d like.”

George Winfield was sixty if he was a day, and Joanna recognized the remark as nothing more than gentle teasing. “No, thanks,” she said. “If you don’t mind, I think I’ll just take your word for it. Now, if you could give me something little more official-sounding than that, I’d appreciate it. I need the kind of verbiage I can pass along to Frank Montoya. He’s the guy the reporters are calling for details on this case. In dealing with the media I’m sure he’d benefit from having something more concrete and more anatomically correct than pointing to the back of his head or giving the newsies a lecture on the inherent dangers of pitchforks.”

“Happy to oblige,” George said.

A few minutes later, armed with the needed information, Joanna stood up to leave. “By the way,” George said as she started for the doorway. “What do you hear from Ellie?”

Ellie?

Joanna stopped in mid-stride. It had been years since she had heard anyone refer to her mother by the pet name only her father had used.

“Ellie?” she repeated stupidly. “You mean my mother?”

Winfield looked confused. “I hope I’m not mistaken,” he said. “I understood Ellie to say that you were her daughter.”

“Eleanor Lathrop is my mother,” Joanna managed.

Nodding and looking relieved, George Winfield smiled. “And she was going to D.C. to see her son.”

“Right,” Joanna said.

“I believe she expected to be home by now.”

“She is,” Joanna answered stiffly. “She came home last night.”

George Winfield smiled again. “Good,” he said. “Ellie’s a lovely lady. We met at the Arts and Humanities Council. Mel Torme is doing a show in Vegas over the next three weeks. I told Ellie that as soon as she got back from D.C., I’d try to get us tickets. Now that she’s back in town, I’ll have to give her a call.”

Joanna attempted a weak smile. “You do that,” she said. And so will I!

Stunned, Joanna headed back to the department. Mother is dating? Eleanor had a boyfriend? All that seemed unthinkable, yet Winfield’s use of the name “Ellie” confirmed it.

So what are you so upset about? Joanna chided herself. Why shouldn’t she?

After all, Big Hank Lathrop had been gone for years. What startled Joanna-what bothered her-was that she was on the outside looking in. Obviously Eleanor had a life of her own, one her daughter knew very little about.

Once back at the Justice Center, Joanna quickly became so embroiled in what was going on there that her personal concerns were temporarily pushed aside. First she briefed both Frank Montoya and Dick Voland on the Buckwalter autopsy preliminaries. Then, after being briefed herself on how the Sunizona investigation was proceeding, Joanna shut herself away in her corner office to try to retake control of her day.

There were more than a dozen telephone calls waiting to be returned. As she made her way through them, one by one, she sat with her phone to her ear, staring out the window of her corner office at the employee parking lot and at the desert landscape beyond it.