Outlaw Mountain (29 page)

“One thing about me, I’m smart enough to know a good deal when I see one. As far as the world is concerned, even though I have money in the bank, I am currently unemployed. It was nice of Marliss to point that out, by the way. So, since Andy already bought this and since I can be pretty well assured that the size is right, once and for all, Joanna Lathrop Brady, will you marry me?”

“Yes, I will,” she returned. With that, he slipped the ring on her finger.

Myron Thomas, co-owner of the Rob Roy, had been observing them from a discreet distance. “Bravo, bravo!” he exclaimed. “Let me be the first to congratulate you. What an extraordinarily beautiful ring,” he added, as he refilled both their flutes. “Did you choose it all by yourself?”

Myron’s question was addressed to Butch, who looked at Joanna and smiled. “No,” he said. “I believe you could say we picked it out together.”

Dinner passed quickly. They skirted around the when-and-where wedding questions in favor of less difficult subjects, only one of which was Jenny’s suspension from school. Joanna would have been content to keep on talking the night away, but at nine o’clock sharp, Butch looked at his watch and signaled for the check. “Daisy has to be in to open the restaurant by five o’clock in the morning. I promised it wouldn’t be any later than ten when we stopped by to pick up Junior.”

While the waiter headed for the cashier’s station, Butch turned back to Joanna. “Which reminds me. We haven’t talked about that at all. Did you make any progress on the Junior situation today?”

“No. How could I?”

Butch seemed perplexed. “But we talked about it last night, and I thought—”

“Talked about what?”

“About checking with the authorities in South Dakota.”

“Butch,” Joanna said. “I have no idea what you mean.”

“You don’t remember my telling you about Mount Rushmore?”

“Not at all. Are you sure you’re not making this up?”

“It was after we went to bed last night. I told you how there was only one picture in the whole book that got Junior all excited, and that was the one of Mount Rushmore. When Jenny asked him if that’s where he lived, he nodded his head up and down and said, ‘Home. Home. Home.’ He was so excited, I was afraid he was going to pee his pants again. Yesterday it was Junior and his sheriff’s badge. Today it was Junior and his book. Whenever anyone came near him, he’d open the book to the Mount Rushmore page and make them look at it.”

“You told me all this last night?”

“Yes, and you said you’d call South Dakota today to see if anyone there has reported him missing.”

Joanna shook her head. “Sorry, Butch, but I don’t remember any of that. I must have dozed off and been talking in my sleep. Which also means that I didn’t do a thing about it today. But I will tomorrow. I promise.”

They drove back to Bisbee. Moe and Daisy Maxwell lived on Quality Hill uptown in Old Bisbee. When Junior came out to the car, he was wearing his badge and carrying his book, one well-worn page of which he insisted on showing to Joanna. “Home,” he announced proudly with one of his wide grins. “Home. Mine.”

“Pretty convincing, wouldn’t you say?” Butch asked. “Definitely convincing. Daisy Maxwell is one smart woman.”

Behind her, Junior tapped on her shoulder. “Daisy,” he said
.
“Me like.”

“Yes, junior,” Joanna agreed. “I like her, too.”

Driving around the abandoned black hole that was Lavender Pit Mine, Joanna had a thought. “What time is it?” she asked.

“Nine-thirty. Why?”

“Would you mind making a stop along the way?”

“What kind of a stop?” Butch asked.

“I think we should go by the house and show George and Eleanor the ring.”

“What a good idea,” Butch said. “That might go a long way toward getting us both out of the doghouse with her. But what do we do with Junior?”

“Take him along in and introduce him,” Joanna said. “That’ll give Mother something else to talk about the next time she runs into Marliss Shackleford.”

Minutes later, they pulled up in front of the house on Campbell Avenue that had been Joanna’s home when she was a girl. The porch light was on. A purple glow behind the living room windows showed that the television set was on.

“Joanna!” Eleanor Winfield said when she opened the door. “What are you doing here?”

“Now that I have a ring, I thought you’d want to be among the first to see it.”

Joanna held out her hand. Taking it, Eleanor pulled her daughter into the living room and switched on the overhead light. “George,” she called over her shoulder. “You have to come look at this. Frederick has given Joanna a ring.”

As usual, Eleanor’s insistence on using Butch’s given name irked Joanna. Eleanor was of the opinion that the name “Butch” wasn’t nearly a dignified enough name for a grown man.

“It’s beautiful,” Eleanor was saying, “although it does look a little like the one Andy gave you. It isn’t, of course.”

“Of course not,” Joanna agreed, and let it go at that.

Butch and Junior stepped inside long enough for Butch to be congratulated and for Junior to be introduced; then they climbed back into the car and drove out to high Lonesome Ranch. “We can come in for a while,” Butch offered hopefully,

Joanna looked in the backseat, where Junior was nodding off. “No,” she said. “Your charge looks pretty worn out. You’d better get him home and to bed.”

Butch shrugged. “You can’t blame a guy for asking,” he said.

He waited outside in the Subaru until Joanna had unlocked the door and taken the dogs into the house. As the car drove away, Joanna was touched by a feeling of being alone but not necessarily of being lonely. It was a sign that slowly, over lime, she was getting better, and that knowledge made her almost giddy. She wanted to call people and tell them what had happened—that she was in love and engaged—but it was too late. It was also too late to return the phone calls of the people who had called her office during the day. She went out to the kitchen, thinking she’d squander some of her excess energy on cleaning up the mess out there. Only the kitchen was spotless. The dishwasher had already been loaded and run. That was the way Butch always left any kitchen—clean and ready to use.

Looking for something to do and hoping for an occupation that would calm her down and help her sleep, Joanna pulled open the briefcase she had brought home the day before and hadn’t opened since. There, on top, sat
My
Life and Times
by Alice Rogers.

It worked yesterday,
Joanna told herself. She had read one chapter and been out like a light. Maybe it would work the same way now. Undressing, she took the book to bed with her. Skimming, Joanna scanned through the rest of Alice Rogers’ childhood remembrances. Jessie Monroe was right. The book wasn’t written in smoothly flowing prose. Some of the sentences careened dangerously off track without ever coming up with something so simple as a subject and a predicate. Alice’s free-form punctuation also made for tough going.

Joanna’s eyes were growing heavy when she reached the part where the mine supervisor’s headstrong fifteen-year-old daughter met a handsome, fast-talking man-about-town named Calhoun Rogers. The unlikelihood of their pairing was enough that it roused Joanna to attention once more. And then it happened.

When my father could see that Cal and I were determined to get married, he offered Cal a job. I know Daddy could have found Cal a good position with Phelps Dodge. After all, Daddy was the superintendent of the smelter by then. It wouldn’t have been any trouble, but Cal didn’t want to be beholding. He liked being his own boss and doing his own thing, so we said no and went our own way. But sometimes now I wish we hadn’t done that and wonder what would have happened if we had accepted Daddy’s offer. For one thing, we would have had medical insurance and maybe the company doctors would have caught Cal’s diabetes before it got so bad that he had to go and lose his leg. That’s what the doctors said happened. That it went untreated for so long that by the time they figured out what was the matter with him a lot of the damage was already done.

Joanna finished reading that paragraph and went on to the next before she realized what she had read. Diabetes. Wasn’t that hereditary? And if so, who else might be diabetic in the family—diabetic and a user of insulin? Of course, Joanna realized with a jolt of excitement. Calhoun Rogers’ son, Clete.

She remembered the bad spell he had suffered up on Houghton Road after Susan arrived and raised such hell with him. What was it he had said? Something about having medication in his truck. She remembered, too, how concerned he had been that he have food along with him on the drive to Tucson. That had to be it. Cletus Rogers was an insulin-dependent diabetic, and his mother may have been murdered with an overdose of insulin.

Too excited to sleep, Joanna jumped out of bed, threw on a robe, and paced the floor. It was after midnight now—too late to call any of the detectives involved—too late to try contacting Dr. Fran Daly up in Tucson. No, the only thing to do was to go to bed, try to sleep, and go to work on the whole mess first thing in the morning.

Eventually she did go back to bed and to sleep. Long before her alarm sounded the next morning, Joanna’s eyes popped open of their own accord. She was up, dressed, and drinking coffee by the time Clayton Rhodes came to feed the livestock at six. By six-thirty she was on the phone to Fran Daly in Tucson.

“Well,” Fran said, “if we aren’t a pair of early birds worms and all. What’s got you up and going so bright and early?”

“The insulin,” Joanna answered.

“Pharmaceutical companies aren’t to be rushed,” Fran Daly said. “I spoke to at least half a dozen people yesterday. They all assure me that they should be able to trace the batch number to its distribution point, but so far the computer guru who’s supposed to make that happen can’t be bothered with returning my calls.”

“I think I can help,” Joanna said. “Is it possible that Clete Rogers is diabetic?” Breathlessly she went on to explain what she had learned.

“It certainly sounds plausible,” Fran said, when Joanna finished. “And with that kind of direction, it shouldn’t be too difficult to get the supplier to confirm that the insulin container we found on Alice Rogers’ body was actually part of her son’s prescription. In fact, the druggist who sold it might even be able to do it.”

“What about fingerprints on the vial?” Joanna asked. “It was made out of glass, wasn’t it? Shouldn’t there have been fingerprints left on it?”

“Probably, as long as the killer didn’t use gloves. I sent the vial over to the crime lab,” Fran said. “But the results from that don’t come back to me. They go directly to the detectives working the case.”

“To Hank Lazier, in other words.”

“Right,” Fran said. “And since he and Tom Hemming are working like hell to extradite those three kids from Mexico, Hank’s not going to be ecstatic when you show up with an-other suspect altogether, along with a whole new theory about what went on.”

“Tough,” Joanna said. “He’ll have to learn to live with it.”

Finishing that phone call left Joanna energized and ready to take on the world. She drove into the office and went straight to work. By the time Kristin Marsten and Frank Montoya showed up at eight o’clock, Joanna had already mowed through most of the previous day’s correspondence and was starting to return the congratulatory phone calls.

Frank Montoya stuck his head in the door. “Is it safe?” he asked. “Word is out that Her Majesty—meaning you—is lopping off heads right and left.”

“Dick Voland quit; I didn’t fire him,” Joanna said. “And I gave Kristin a clear choice of either shaping up or shipping out. In other words, I don’t think you’re in any danger of having your head lopped off. Come on in.”

“Won’t it be boring having our morning briefing without Voland here sniping at us?” Frank asked. “A little like coffee with no cream?”

Joanna gave him a rueful smile. “I’m sure we’ll manage. First off, you need to know that I’m engaged to Butch Dixon, and here’s the ring to prove it.” She waved her hand and flashed the diamond past Frank’s face. “That’s all I’m saying about it,” she continued. “If you receive any questions from the media regarding my engagement, I will expect you to deliver a very firm ‘No comment.’ Is that clear?”

“Very.”

“I’ve been on the phone to Fran Daly this morning. She’s tracking the insulin vial that was found on Alice Rogers’ corpse. That trail may lead us straight back to Clete Rogers. Do you happen to know whether or not he’s diabetic?”

Frank shook his head. “Nobody’s ever talked about specifics, but I do know he’s had some long-term health difficulties. I remember Nancy, the hostess at the Grubsteak, making some allusion to it. It probably wouldn’t be all that hard to find out. If nothing else, I can ask her.”

“Do it,” Joanna said. “Also, is there a chance Clete Rogers fingerprints are on file anywhere?”

“I doubt it. As far as I know, he’s never been involved
nt
anything that requires prints. He runs a restaurant, Joanna. I isn’t like he’s a securities dealer or something.”

“Would it be possible for you to get his prints?” Joanna  asked. “Casually, of course. I’d want you to do it in a way that wouldn’t necessarily arouse suspicion. Maybe you could have him sign some phony-baloney form and then bring the pen back to Casey down in AFIS.”

“That shouldn’t be too hard,” Frank said. “How soon do you want it?”

“ASAP.”

“It figures. I’ll handle it.” Frank paused. “What about Karen Brainard? I understand she resigned from the board of supervisors as of yesterday morning. What, if anything, are we doing about her?”

“I’ve assigned Ernie Carpenter to the Mark Childers/Lewis Flores cases,” Joanna said. “I told Ernie that if he finds any evidence of wrongdoing on her part, we should go after her for it.”

Frank raised a questioning eyebrow. “Ernie Carpenter investigating white-collar crime? That’s a long way from his usual area of expertise, isn’t it?”

“Not that far,” Joanna replied. “After all, two men are dead as a direct result of what was happening at Oak Vista. If there were bribes or payoffs involved in that mess, Ernie’s going to find them.”