Dead Wrong (23 page)

“I don’t know the answer to any of
those questions,” Joanna told him. “That’s what
we’re trying to find out. The idea that Lisa is alive and
well is certainly one possible scenario. The other is that
she’s been dead all along. The fact that Bradley Evans is
dead, too, tends to suggest he ended up spooking someone who had
something to hide.”

“How did that all come about?” Tazewell
asked.

“Pure bad luck,” Joanna replied.
“We’ve learned that Bradley Evans and Leslie Markham
both happened to have lunch in the same Sierra Vista restaurant on
Tuesday a week ago. Evans must have noticed the striking
resemblance between Leslie and his presumably dead wife. He spent
most of the next day following her around Sierra Vista taking
pictures with a disposable camera.

“Maybe he wanted to confirm for himself what
he thought he was seeing. Or maybe he planned on showing the photos
to
someone else. But he never got a chance to
show them to anyone. Before he finished shooting that roll of film,
he was dead—stabbed to death. When his vehicle was impounded
after his death, we found the camera hidden under the front seat of
his vehicle.”

“Am I a suspect?” Tazewell asked.

The man’s direct question caught Joanna off
guard. He certainly had been a suspect initially, but the longer
she talked to him, the less she thought Lawrence Tazewell was
directly involved in Bradley Evans’s murder. Still, without
substantiating his alibi, there was no way to be sure.

“Possibly,” Joanna admitted.
“Although not much of one. Is there any way to confirm that
you were in Denver last week?”

Nodding, Tazewell removed a PDA from his pocket and
reeled off a telephone number. “That’s the
FBO—Fixed Base Operator—at the general aviation airport
north of Denver where we landed and where the plane was parked from
Wednesday until Monday morning. Sharon and I spent a lot of time at
the hospital, but we were at our daughter’s in-laws’
apartment a good deal of the time as well, and we met some of her
friends and neighbors. Do you want their names and phone
numbers?”

“Wherever possible,” Joanna said.

It took several minutes for Joanna to collect the
information. While she took notes, Frank Montoya did the same. When
Tazewell finally returned his PalmPilot to his pocket, his face was
grave. “So everything was fine until Evans stumbled on to the
fact that maybe his dead daughter really wasn’t
dead.”

Joanna nodded. “That’s how it
looks.”

“Has Leslie been informed about any of
this?” Tazewell asked.

“Not yet,” Joanna said. “And
until we have some kind of solid confirmation…”

“Right,” Tazewell said. “Of
course. It would be irresponsible to mention any of this to her
while it’s still a matter of supposition, but when the time
comes, are you going to tell her or should I?”

“I’d prefer to have that handled by a
family member—either you or her mother.”

Tazewell nodded. “That may not be
possible,” he said.

“Why not?”

“Depending on how far Aileen’s HD has
progressed, she may not be able to talk.”

“I’d like to hear Aileen’s side
of the story,” Joanna said. “But in case that’s
not possible, what can you tell us about her?”

Lawrence Tazewell shook his head. “I really
don’t have any idea where to start,” he said.

Frank Montoya caught Joanna’s eye and then
stood up. “If you’ll excuse me, there are a couple of
things I need to attend to.”

“Fine,” Joanna said, then she turned
back to Lawrence Tazewell, who was holding the pictures of Lisa
Evans and Leslie Markham and gazing back and forth between them.
“I guess you’d best start at the beginning.”

B
ut
Lawrence Tazewell was still mulling over what he’d just
heard. “I’m surprised she hasn’t done herself in
the same way her mother did. I wouldn’t blame her, but this
does go a long way to explaining the Rory thing.”

“What do you mean?”

“He saw what happened to Ruth. And I’m
sure he knows that, one way or the other, Aileen is a short-timer.
By marrying Leslie, Rory puts himself in a position to be half
owner of a very valuable parcel of Cochise County real
estate.”

“Are there any other children?”

Tazewell shook his head. “Max and his first
wife, Margie, had a little boy who died of leukemia when he was
twelve. Margie suffered a debilitating stroke while she was still
in her forties. Ruth was the nurse Max hired to take care of
Margie. Max and Ruth married within months of Margie’s death.
The only child the two of them had together was Aileen. Max was
delighted be
yond bearing when Aileen showed up,
and he and Ruth spoiled her rotten.”

“You said Ruth’s brothers died of
Huntington’s?” Joanna asked.

Tazewell nodded. “But they were younger than
she was. The brothers were only in their twenties when they started
going downhill. Ruth was in her thirties when Aileen was born.
Because she still wasn’t sick, I think she must have thought
it wasn’t going to happen to her.”

“But it did,” Joanna offered.

“Yes. Ruth was just beginning to show
symptoms of HD when Aileen and I married. And when she found out
Aileen was pregnant, Ruth went nuts. She wanted Aileen to have an
abortion, but neither Max nor Aileen would hear of it. Aileen
because she really wanted to have the baby, and Max because he
wanted to keep the Triple H in the family.”

Tazewell paused. “Damn!” he exclaimed.
“I had forgotten all about that.”

“About what?”

“Sometime early in October of that year, Ruth
and Aileen flew to Albuquerque to see her brothers. By then both of
them were confined to a nursing home. I offered to fly Ruth and
Aileen there, but Ruth wasn’t having any of that. She
insisted on flying commercial. At that stage of her pregnancy,
Aileen had to have written permission from her doctor to fly at
all. I remember she was really offended that she had to have a
permission slip. But when she came back from that trip, Aileen was
a completely different person.”

“How so?” Joanna asked.

But Lawrence Tazewell, lost in his own thoughts,
didn’t seem
to hear her. “Do you
think that’s what happened?” he asked. “Do you
think that, after seeing Ruth’s brothers, Aileen decided she
couldn’t risk having a child of her own, so she got rid of
her own baby and took someone else’s?”

“Tell me about Aileen Houlihan,” Joanna
said.

“As in do I think she’s capable of
doing such a thing? No,” he said after a pause. “I
don’t.”

“What was she like then?”

The faraway look returned to Tazewell’s eyes.
“When I first met Aileen Houlihan, she was a pistol,”
he said at last. “Headstrong, stubborn, and spoiled rotten.
She came to the University of Arizona with a whole catalog of
parental rules and a single-minded determination to break ’em
all. I was a case in point.”

“How so?”

“Aileen’s daddy wanted his daughter to
graduate from the University of Arizona with honors, go on to law
school, and then come home to do her parents proud—maybe end
up going into politics. She carefully deconstructed that whole
program. Her freshman year she did three things that sent her old
man round the bend—she flunked out of school, married me, and
brought me home to live on her parents’ ranch. Max was in his
late seventies when Aileen came dragging home with me and told him
that she didn’t need a college degree to raise cattle and
horses.”

“You’re saying she married you out of
spite?”

“Pretty much. Did you ever meet Max and Ruth
Houlihan?”

Joanna shook her head. “Never. It sounds like
they were a little before my time.”

“I suppose,” Tazewell agreed.
“They were quite a pair. Ruth was beautiful. Fortunately for
her, Aileen took after her mother in the looks department. Old
Maxfield was ugly as a stump—a crotchety old bowlegged cowboy
who never got over his incred
ible good luck at
finding himself such a gorgeous young woman to be his second wife.
He didn’t know about the Huntington’s, at least not
before they got married, and I don’t think it would have made
any difference if he had. I’m sure he would have married Ruth
anyway. Max was stubborn as hell. Aileen takes after her father in
that regard.”

“So you and Aileen got married. What happened
then?”

“Max was disappointed, but he decided to make
the best of a bad bargain. He was the one who bankrolled my first
election here in Cochise County. And, as I told you earlier, after
Aileen dumped me, Max used his contacts to help me get a foothold
up in Maricopa County. I suspect he was grateful that I left the
marriage without making a fuss over custody arrangements or
demanding a property settlement.”

“And you left the marriage
because…?” Joanna asked.

“Because Aileen told me to get out. She made
it perfectly clear that I’d never measure up to her father.
She said she was bored with me. She said that she wasn’t
ready to settle down—that she needed to live a little. When
she hinted around that I probably wasn’t Leslie’s
father, I finally decided she was right. Having a wild woman for a
girlfriend is one thing, but having a wild woman for a wife is
something else. I hung around for a while after Leslie was born,
but when it came time for the next election, I didn’t bother
to run. Instead, I took the job offer Max had found for me, moved
to Phoenix, got a divorce, and went on with my life.”

“And Aileen?” Joanna asked.
“According to Leslie, she never married again.”

“How long has she been sick?” Tazewell
asked.

“Leslie didn’t say.”

“Once her HD symptoms started coming on, I
can see why
she would have stayed out of
another relationship.” He paused and looked past Joanna to
the ocotillo-and-bear-grass-dotted landscape outside her window.
“I wonder…” he said thoughtfully.

“What?”

“Maybe Ruth convinced her to have a late-term
abortion after all. And Aileen made arrangements to pass this other
child off as her own so no one would know. Not even me, but I do
have a right to know. I have half a mind to fly straight out to the
ranch right now and ask Aileen about it face-to-face.”

“No,” Joanna said at once.
“Please don’t. Interference like that could very well
jeopardize our investigation into the Evans homicide. I’m
convinced Bradley Evans died because he stumbled on a long-buried
truth someone didn’t want exposed to the light of
day.”

“Are you going to talk to her about
this?”

“I’m going to try.”

“You’ll let me know what you find
out?”

Joanna nodded.

“I loved her once, you know,” Tazewell
added with a bleak smile.

“I know you did.”

With a light tap on the door, Frank Montoya
reentered the room and placed a stack of papers in front of Joanna.
At the bottom of the top sheet was a discreetly handwritten note:
“T’s alibi checks out.”

“Is there anything else, then?”
Tazewell asked. “Anything more you need from me?”

“Not that I can think of,” Joanna said.
“Only your contact numbers so we can be in touch with you
when we need to.”

Tazewell nodded and handed Joanne a business
card.

Joanna stood and extended her hand. “Thanks
for coming,”
she said. “I know this
has been hard on you. I’ll have a deputy take you back to
your plane.”

“Thanks,” Tazewell said, then he added,
“I don’t suppose you believe that I knew nothing about
any of this—about the connection between my wife and the
family of the man I sent to prison.”

“Actually,” Joanna returned, “I
do believe you.”

“Thank you,” he said. “But once
they get wind of it, I doubt the press will be that kind. Best
case, I’ll lose the federal nomination. Worst case,
I’ll be forced off the bench.”

“I hope not,” Joanna said.

Tazewell shook his head. “I’m not so
sure about that. If Aileen was able to pull the wool over my eyes
as thoroughly and as easily as this, I’m too damned stupid to
sit on the Arizona Supreme Court!”

With that he turned and strode out of the
office.

“He’s upset,” Frank said as the
door closed.

“I’ll say,” Joanna responded.
“He has every right to be. As soon as we can get someone to
take him back to the airport, we’ll go out to the Triple H
and see what we can do to get to the bottom of this.”

“Right now?” Frank asked.

“Does either one of us have something better
to do?” Joanna asked. “Besides, if he thinks about it
too long, Lawrence Tazewell may decide to have his own little chat
with Aileen Houlihan. What about these?” she asked, picking
up the fistful of papers.

“Bring them along,” Frank said.
“I’ll drive. We can talk about those as we
go.”

Buckled into the passenger seat of Frank’s
Crown Victoria, Joanna scanned through the documents. The several
pages dealt
with the telephone numbers Lawrence
Tazewell had given them. One after another, people had verified
what he had said about the times he had arrived in Denver, where
the plane had been tied down, as well as people he had seen while
there. And, in every regard, each of the several people—from
the guy in charge of the FBO to Tazewell’s
stepdaughter—told the same story. Frank’s assessment
about Tazewell’s lack of involvement in the Evans homicide
seemed validated. The next sheet was a printout from classmates.com
with information on Barbara Tanner Petrocelli.

Joanna was amazed. “You found Lisa
Evans’s friend!”

“Yup,” Frank agreed with a grin.
“Address, phone number, and everything. Isn’t that why
you keep me on the payroll?”

“And she still lives in Sierra Vista,”
Joanna marveled. “Once we finish up with Aileen Houlihan,
maybe we can see Barbara, too. After all, it’ll be on our way
home.”

The last piece of paper was a copy of a phone
message addressed to Debbie Howell. It listed the name Manfred
Oxhill along with a Sierra Vista telephone number.

“Who’s Manfred?” Joanna
asked.

Frank grinned again. “That’s the best
part,” he said. “I noticed a message in Debbie’s
box and decided to take a look at it. Turns out Mr. Oxhill manages
the auto-parts section of Sierra Vista’s Target store. I
called him. He apologized for taking so long to respond to
Debbie’s inquiry about primer. He’s been out sick all
this week until yesterday, but it turns out they sold a whole case
of primer last Friday morning. He’s going back through the
records to see if he can find out if it was a cash or credit
transaction.”

“Surely we wouldn’t be lucky enough
that the killer used a credit card,” Joanna murmured.

“You’d be surprised,” Frank
replied. “Most crooks get caught because they’re dumb,
not because we’re all that clever.”

“What time does Mr. Oxhill get off
work?”

“Six,” Frank answered. “So maybe
we can see him today as well.”

“Anything on Jeannine this morning?”
Joanna asked.

Frank nodded. “I called Millicent and checked
with her. Jeannine’s been upgraded to serious, so
that’s good. It sounds like she’s making
progress.”

Glad for any sign of improvement, Joanna stuffed
the papers into her briefcase and then leaned back in her seat. As
the Crown Victoria motored through the morning sunlight, she closed
her eyes and thought about the upcoming interview. If
Aileen’s Huntington’s symptoms were as advanced as
Joanna suspected, then there was no way the woman could have been
directly involved in the murder of Bradley Evans. Indirectly
involved, though, was another matter.

After nights of chronic sleep deprivation, Joanna
soon fell victim to the warmth inside the vehicle and to the steady
hum of tires on pavement. With the baby quiet for a change, she was
lulled into a sound sleep and roused herself only when Frank slowed
to turn off Highway 90 onto Triple H Ranch Road.

After crossing three separate cattle guards and
opening and closing two gates, they arrived. There were two
distinctly separate ranch houses on the property. What appeared to
be the main one was set behind a white picket fence. It was a
rambling old-fashioned, frame-style place with recently added vinyl
siding and a standing-seam metal roof. A generous roof overhang
created a shady front porch and allowed for covered verandas on
either side of the house. A bank of brightly blooming honeysuckle
grew around the base of the front porch.
Halfway to the house a well-made wooden wheelchair ramp broke away
from the sidewalk and led up to the side of the porch, where one
section of wooden rails had been removed to allow access.

Frank was turning into the yard when, on the far
side of a metal barn, Joanna caught sight of a small airplane
parked next to a corral.

“What the—!” she began.

“Is something wrong?”

“That’s Lawrence Tazewell’s
blue-and-white Cessna.”

“But you told him not to come here,”
Frank returned.

“Evidently he didn’t pay any
attention.”

Joanna was out of the car before Frank had shifted
into park. She caught the beginning of a radio transmission as she
slammed the door shut, but she was so intent on Lawrence Tazewell
that she didn’t stay still long enough to listen. Hurrying
through the gate and up the sidewalk, she heard the sound of raised
voices.

“Get out! You’ve got no business coming
here!” Leslie Markham shouted.

“I just want to see her, to talk to
her,” Tazewell objected.

“She doesn’t want to talk to
you,” Leslie declared. “She doesn’t want anyone
to see her like this, especially you. How dare you come flying in
after all these years as if you still owned the place?”