J. Jance - Partner In Crime

“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.