J.A. Jance - Dead Wrong

“No,” Ted agreed. “I suppose not. But since no one else is going to claim the body, I’d like to. I’ve talked to people at the prison down in Douglas. The warden there is willing to let me officiate at a memorial service inside the Papago Unit. That way some of the inmates Brad was working with will be able to attend. Of course, if there’s any need or interest, I suppose I could do a second service outside the prison as well, although, since the unit is a minimum security facility, the warden might allow a few members of the public to attend the prison service as well.”

“You’d do that?” Joanna asked.

“He was a friend of mine,” Ted said. “Yes, I would. That’s what friends are for.”

“All right,” Joanna said. “I’ll call the ME and see what he says.”

Moments later Joanna was on the phone explaining the situation to her stepfather. “Since we haven’t been able to locate any other relatives,” George Winfield said, “I suppose that would be fine. What mortuary?”

“Cochise Mortuary and Funeral Home,” Ted replied in answer to George’s relayed question. “They’re in Douglas. On G Avenue.”

“I know where they are,” George said. “Have Mr. Chapman stop by. Once he signs the necessary paperwork, I’ll call the funeral home and get things under way.”

“Thank you,” Ted said to Joanna once she was off the phone. “This means a lot to me. I really appreciate it.”

“You’re welcome,” she returned. “But are you all right?”

Ted sighed. “I’m disappointed,” he admitted. “If this stalking thing turns out to be true, I can’t help feeling that Brad betrayed the trust I put in him. I pride myself on being a good judge of character. Maybe I’m losing my touch.”

“I doubt that,” Joanna said. “Maybe Brad Evans was really good at pulling the wool over people’s eyes.”

But Ted Chapman was in no mood to give himself a break. “Even so,” he said, getting up to leave, “I should have seen through it.”

Joanna’s phone was ringing again before Ted Chapman was all the way out the door. “I forgot,” George Winfield said. “I meant to apologize for dumping all that stuff on you the other day without so much as a by-your-leave, but with Don and Margaret there, I didn’t want to go into it.”

“It’s all right, George,” she said. “Better late than never. Don’t worry about it.”

“You know how your mother is,” George continued. “Once she gets the bit in her teeth, there’s no stopping her. We’ve been talking about cleaning out the garage ever since we got married. This weekend we finally went to work on it, and now Ellie wants it all done yesterday. I’m sure some of the stuff has been lying around collecting dust for decades. But not anymore, and now that we’ve started the process…” He paused. “Now she wants it all done immediately, if not sooner.”

“Sounds pretty familiar,” Joanna said with a sympathetic laugh.

“Some of the boxes she had set aside for you and Jenny are filled with knickknacks. If you don’t want them, I wouldn’t blame you at all, but when it comes to the diaries…”

“What diaries?” Joanna asked.

“Your father’s diaries,” George answered. “Several boxes were full of books. They were up in the rafters of the garage. When I started bringing them down, your mother knew what was inside without even having to look. She claimed they were just a bunch of worthless old books and that I should take them out to the dump and get rid of them. She was so adamant about it that it piqued my curiosity. When she went into the house, I unsealed one of the boxes and what did I find? Your father’s diaries.”

“My father kept diaries?” Joanna asked.

“Volumes of them, Joanna,” George returned. “As soon as I saw them, it occurred to me that maybe you or your brother or Jenny might want to take a look at them. If you want to get rid of them yourself later, fine. But bearing all that in mind, I loaded those boxes into the back of the van along with everything else. Instead of taking them to the dump, I dropped them off at your place on Sunday along with the things Ellie actually wanted you to have. The problem is…”

He paused uneasily.

“You don’t want me to let on to Mother that I have them,” Joanna said.

“Exactly,” George Winfield breathed. “Ellie would be terribly upset if she found out that I had gone against her express wishes.”

“Don’t worry,” Joanna said with a laugh. “Your secret’s safe with me. I’ve lived with Eleanor long enough to know when to keep my mouth shut. I didn’t even know my father kept diaries. It will be wonderful for me to have a chance to look at them. So thanks. Sometimes I think you know me better than my mother does.”

Once Joanna got off the phone, she sat at her desk marveling and reliving the stab of memory that had assailed her when she had glimpsed her father’s handwriting on the evidence log in Lisa Marie Evans’s file.

D. H. Lathrop had been gone for a very long time. Sometimes Joanna wondered if what she remembered about him was real or if it had been filtered and changed somehow through the hero-worshiping eyes of his unsophisticated daughter. For instance, when she had recalled that fragmentary memory of him sitting hunched with pen and paper at the kitchen table, she had assumed he’d been laboring over some mundane piece of job-required paperwork. Now, though, it seemed possible-likely, even-that he’d been writing in a diary.

Had Joanna’s father grappled with his natural adversary, the written word, in order to leave pieces of himself behind for those who followed? Had he wanted or expected whatever he had written there to survive him? Had he imagined that someday a grown-up Joanna might read his words and somehow come to understand her father’s hopes and dreams and aspirations? Had D. H. Lathrop ever, in his wildest dreams, thought that the son he and Eleanor had given up for adoption might someday come back into their lives and be able to study the diaries, thus learning about the biological father who would otherwise forever be a stranger? And what about Jenny and this as-yet-unborn grandchild? Could the diaries shed light on the existence of a man they had never met? Now, through George Winfield’s kindness, all those things were possible.

For a moment Joanna considered picking up her cell phone and sharing this amazing news with Bob Brundage, her long-lost brother whose out-of-wedlock birth had predated their parents subsequent marriage by a number of years. Given up for adoption as a newborn, he had come looking for his birth parents years later, and only after the deaths of both his biological father as well as his adoptive parents. Eleanor had welcomed him and his wife, Marcie, with open arms.

Joanna scrolled through the stored numbers in her cell phone until she located Bob Brundage’s name and number, but she paused before pressing the “talk” button. Joanna had told George Winfield that she wouldn’t betray his secret in preserving the diaries, but what about her brother? Bob hadn’t grown up at odds with Eleanor Lathrop. Joanna knew all about keeping things from her mother. For her it had been a matter of survival-as necessary as breathing. What if Joanna told Bob, and he somehow let slip to their mother what George had done?

No, Joanna told herself firmly, putting the phone back down. Let sleeping dogs lie.

She picked it back up a moment later, however, and called home. “Did anyone ever tell you you’re a very smart man?” she asked Butch when he answered.

“Not recently,” he said.

Hurriedly she explained what George had done. “So it’s a very good thing you didn’t let your mother get her hands on any of those boxes.”