J. Jance - Fire and Ice

“Tom Hadlock managed to get an announcement about her being missing on the ten o’clock news from Tucson,” Joanna said. “Before the news broadcast ended, we had a tip from a man who called in and who said he had found an old woman standing beside the road in Palominas yesterday afternoon. He had stopped and asked if she needed help. She said she needed a ride to Bisbee, that she had to get back to her office.”

“Office?” Butch said. “Isn’t she in her nineties?”

“Ninety-three,” Joanna said. “But remember, she’s an Alzheimer’s patient. Things that happened a long time ago are far more real to her than something that happened this morning. She thought she was going back to her office after a noon meeting out at Sierra Vista, and she was clear enough that she convinced the driver she was okay and should be dropped off. The problem is, she left that office for the last time over thirty years ago. Even so, that’s where we found her. Up by the old high school. She retired as the county superintendent of schools in 1973.”

“So why was she at the high school?”

Dennis abandoned the teddy bear in favor of climbing into his mother’s lap to freeload on some of Joanna’s toast.

“That’s where her office was when she was superintendent, but she had worked there even earlier than that. Back when the old high school was still in operation, she was the school librarian. She wanted to be a principal, but women didn’t become high school principals back in the forties and fifties, so she became a school librarian. Then she pole-vaulted over the principal job and became the county superintendent of schools instead.”

“Sounds like somebody else I know,” Butch said with a smile as he refilled Joanna’s coffee cup. “She’s okay then?”

“I think so. She was cold, of course. We took her down to the hospital so the ER doctors could check her out and wrap her in warm blankets. By the time we knew she was okay, her grandniece was on her way from Phoenix. The grandniece is hoping to find a facility closer to her home so she’ll be able to keep better track of Ms. Brinson’s care and caretakers.”

“That makes sense,” Butch said. “Why didn’t she do that to begin with?”

“Philippa Brinson lived in the San Pedro Valley all her life and she didn’t want to leave it. She was born there. That’s where she and her husband lived after they married, and it’s where she wanted to stay. Bad idea. Caring Friends is a joke. The only thing Alma DeLong cares about is her bottom line. And if I can figure out a way to charge her with reckless endangerment, I will.”

“You go, girl,” Butch said. “So what’s on the program today, aside from the bachelor party, that is?”

“A homicide investigation,” Joanna said, gulping the last of her coffee. “And I’d better head out, or they’ll start the briefing without me.”

In actual fact, most of the players were already assembled in the conference room by the time Joanna arrived. In the old days, Frank would have started without her. Tom Hadlock kept everyone waiting.

“Sorry about my slow start this morning,” she apologized, settling into her usual chair. “It was a short night without much sleep, but it was a successful one. Good work, guys, and good work on the media contacts, Tom,” she added, addressing her chief deputy. “Without your making that ten o’clock news slot, we might have had an entirely different outcome on Philippa Brinson.”

Hadlock accepted the praise with a self-conscious nod. “Marliss Shackleford isn’t too thrilled about it,” he said with a mirthless chuckle. “She just called to give me an earful about giving a scoop to the Tucson media while ignoring the locals.”

Marliss, a reporter for the local paper the Bisbee Bee , had long been a fly in Joanna’s ointment. In that regard, however, she had recently learned that she wasn’t alone. It turned out Marliss was every bit as much of a pain for Alvin Bernard, Bisbee’s chief of police. Now, as Tom Hadlock learned the ropes as media spokesman for Joanna’s department, Marliss was becoming Tom’s problem as well. He would have to learn how to handle her.

“Don’t let Marliss get to you,” Joanna advised. “She’s always on someone’s case. If she mentions it again, you might point out to her that the so-called locals don’t have a ten o’clock news broadcast. If we’d had to wait until this morning’s paper to put out our missing persons announcement, Philippa Brinson might well have succumbed to hypothermia. In that case Alma DeLong would be sitting in jail and facing a possible homicide charge.”

“She may be anyway,” Deb Howell said. “I just got off the phone with a woman named Candace Welton. She’s the daughter of a woman who was a patient at Caring Friends. Her mother, Inez Fletcher, developed a severe infection that turned into sepsis. When she died, the physician who works with the facility listed the cause of death as natural causes, but the daughter thinks the infection started as a result of an untreated bedsore. Her older brother, Bob, was evidently in charge of making the mother’s final arrangements. The daughter didn’t ask for an autopsy at the time. She was told that because her mother’s death was due to natural causes, she’d have to pay for an autopsy herself. She didn’t have one done because she didn’t have the money. But she’s heard about the Brinson situation, and she’s asking for one now.”

“She’s willing to have her mother’s body exhumed?”

Deb nodded. “That’s what she said.”

“If the brother was in charge of arrangements, we’ll probably have to clear the exhumation with him as well,” Joanna said. “In the meantime, I’ll talk to Dr. Machett about it and see what he has to say.”

Joanna had no doubt that if George Winfield were still in charge, the investigation would be given an immediate go-ahead. With Guy Machett at the helm, she wasn’t so sure.

“What else?” Joanna asked, looking around the table. Jaime Carbajal raised his hand. “I have an appointment with Chuck Savage later on this morning. He’s bringing me a copy of the surveillance tape from the Lester Attwood homicide.”

“From the camera by the gate?”

Jaime nodded. “According to Chuck, he and his brother installed that camera just recently-only a week or so ago. He also said that when Mr. Attwood found out about it, he was upset. He claimed that if they were putting in a camera, it must be because they didn’t trust him, and Chuck Savage told me confidentially that was true. They didn’t want to hurt their stepmother’s feelings, so they hadn’t let on about it to her, but they had heard Attwood was back in the chips-that he seemed to have more money than he should have had. They decided to check up on him.

“They set up the system so there was a video recorder and monitor in Attwood’s trailer. The tape from that is missing. Luckily for us, they also created a feed to a second off-site recorder, one Mr. Attwood knew nothing about. That’s the one we’ll be getting a copy of later today.”

“Great. What about the crime scene?” Joanna looked around the table and realized her crime scene investigator, Dave Hollicker, wasn’t there. “Where’s Dave?” she asked.

“His wife called in and said he didn’t get home from photographing the Caring Friends scene until after five this morning,” Tom replied. “I told her to let him sleep until he woke up.”

“So we don’t have photos from either scene?” Joanna asked.

“Not yet. We’ll have to take a look at those later, but he did tell me that he found a spot at the far corner of the Action Trail property where it looked like somebody did some pretty heavy loading and unloading. At least three vehicles were involved, along with lots of movement going back and forth.”