Dead Wrong (28 page)

Sobbing uncontrollably now and too overcome to
continue, Dolores Mattias paused again.

“What did he say?”

“It wasn’t just what he said. It was
how he looked. His face went pale; his hands shook. I was afraid he
might be having a heart attack or something. I asked him if he was
okay and he said, ‘No matter what happens, I love you.’
I thought it was odd—
strange even.
Joaquin isn’t sentimental. My husband says he loves me
sometimes—on my birthday or our anniversary or on
Valentine’s Day, but not out of the blue like that, for no
reason. He was really telling me good-bye, wasn’t he! Joaquin
saw the cops were there and he was afraid because he was involved
in whatever happened to that man. What if Joaquin’s dead now,
too?”

“Please, Mrs. Mattias,” Joanna said.
“You mustn’t jump to conclusions. Your husband is
probably fine. He’s just gone off somewhere and we have to
find him, that’s all. But what makes you think Joaquin may be
involved?”

“He was gone Thursday night,” Dolores
admitted softly.

“What do you mean, gone?” Joanna
asked.

“I mean, he left the house. He was away for
several hours—for most of the night. We turned off the TV
after the news and went to bed. He waited for a long
time—until after he thought I was asleep, then he got up and
snuck out of the room. The next thing I heard was him driving out
of the yard. He didn’t come back until almost sunup. I was
still awake, but I kept my eyes shut when he came in. He snuck back
into bed and pretended to be asleep when I got up a little while
later.”

“Did you say anything to him about it?”
Joanna asked. “Did you ask him where he’d been or what
he’d been doing?”

Dolores shook her head. “Joaquin’s a
cowboy. He’s always been a handsome man,” she said.
“Years ago he had a girlfriend. When I found out about it, he
broke it off, but I was afraid it might be happening
again—that he had a new girlfriend.”

“And what do you think now?”

“I no longer believe he was using the primer
to help a friend paint his car,” she said slowly. “I
think Joaquin may have done something far worse than having a
girlfriend.” It was a painful admission for Dolores to make.
Joanna’s heart went out to her.

“I’m sorry to put you through all this,
Mrs. Mattias. Maybe we’re all wrong. Maybe when we find
Joaquin, he’ll be able to give us a reasonable explanation
for all this. But for right now, we should probably be going.
Here’s my card. Please call me if he comes home or if you
hear from him. We need to talk to him.”

Dolores Mattias stared blindly at the card without
benefit of her reading glasses. Then she dropped it on the table
beside her. “Will he go to prison?” she asked.

If Joaquin Mattias was convicted of being involved
in a murder, he would certainly go to prison. It was possible
Joaquin’s involvement was limited to helping move the body,
but these days even that was considered a felony.

“I don’t know,” Joanna said.
“That depends on what, if anything, he’s
done.”

“Yes,” Dolores Mattias said softly.
“I understand.”

As they walked toward the Crown Victoria, Frank
made his feelings clear. “What the hell was that all
about?” he demanded. “We want to
talk
to him? It sounds to me as though Joaquin
Mattias is in this up to his eyeballs.”

“I didn’t want to scare the poor woman
any more than necessary, but what she told us was important. If we
play her right, she may tell us even more.”

“For instance.”

“We know from her that Bradley Evans came to
Aileen’s house. Given Bradley Evans’s frame of mind at
the time, I think it’s fair to assume that he and Rory
Markham would have had some kind of altercation. Yet, when I showed
Bradley’s photo to the Markhams, Rory categorically denied
ever having seen the man.”

“So Rory’s a liar.”

“He’s a liar, all right,” Joanna
said. “He lied to me, and I be
lieve
he’s also lying to his wife. If we were to ask Leslie about
it, I bet we’d learn that she’s entirely in the dark
about her husband’s grand plan to subdivide the Triple H.
Leslie is young, relatively inexperienced, and susceptible to
Rory’s bullying. I’ve seen him do it firsthand.
He’s under the impression that the moment Aileen dies, the
coast will be clear for him to do whatever he wants.”

“If Hospice is coming in on the case, it
probably won’t be long before that happens,” Frank
added. “Days or even weeks. What are the chances he’s
already greased the skids as far as Planning and Zoning is
concerned?”

“Can you check on that?” Joanna
asked.

“Will do.”

“So here’s Rory, about to make a
killing with this real estate deal. Everything is going swimmingly,
then Bradley Evans shows up. Next thing you know, Evans is dead,
and Rory Markham seems to be the last person who saw the victim
alive. Given the lies he told us about not knowing Evans, that
turns him into our prime suspect.”

“But why would Markham do it?” Frank
asked. “What’s his motive?”

“Somehow Bradley Evans posed a threat to Rory
Markham’s grand design.”

“What kind of threat?”

“That’s what we need to find
out.”

“Where to next?” Frank asked, turning
his key in the ignition. “Home?”

“Sounds good to me. It’s been a very
long day.”

Frank took her as far as the Justice Center, where
she moved from his Crown Victoria to hers. By the time she got home
it was after eleven and the household was asleep. Only Lady came to
the door to greet her, and Butch didn’t
budge when she crawled into bed beside him.

S
he
woke up late to the smell of frying bacon and waddled out to the
kitchen. “I won’t even ask how your day was
yesterday,” Butch said, kissing her good morning. “I
think I already know. How’d you sleep?”

“Like a brick. I was too tired to do anything
else.”

“Are you going in to work today?”

“Not if I can help it.”

“What about church?” Butch asked.

“I need a robe day,” Joanna said.
“Call me a backslider, but I just want to sit around in my
nightgown for a change.”

“You’ve certainly earned it,”
Butch said, “but you might want to give your mother a call
before it gets much later. She phoned yesterday.”

“Annoyed because she hasn’t heard from
me?”

“You must be psychic,” Butch said with
a grin.

“Are you in labor?” Eleanor Lathrop
Winfield demanded as soon as she heard her daughter’s
voice.

“No, Mom, I’m not.”

“Oh,” Eleanor said. “Since you
couldn’t be bothered to call with the news that you’re
having a boy, I thought this must be really important.”

“I’ve been busy,” Joanna said.
“I’ve been working.”

“I don’t know why,” Eleanor
sniffed. “Someone in your condition shouldn’t be
traipsing all over hell and gone and getting involved in
shoot-outs, for Pete’s sake. It was all over the news. I
can’t imagine what you’re thinking.”

Eleanor’s disapproval of her daughter’s
continuing to work
during her pregnancy was a
long-standing bone of contention between them. Forget the fact that
the “shoot-out” had most likely saved a little
girl’s life. Detective Newton’s snide references to
Joanna’s condition had been annoying. Eleanor’s were
far more hurtful.

“I was doing my job, Mother,” Joanna
said. “And I intend to continue doing it.”

“I don’t understand how DNA
works,” Eleanor said. “You’re just like your
father and nothing at all like me.”

Thank God,
Joanna
thought.

“But now that I have you on the phone, do you
and Butch want to come over for dinner? George is all hot to trot
to fire up his barbecue. It’s only March, but as far as
he’s concerned it’s the beginning of summer.”

“I’ll check with Butch and let you
know.”

Butch, it turned out, was agreeable.
“It’ll give us a chance to do a little
fence-mending,” he said. “Find out what
time.”

After making arrangements with Eleanor for them to
go to dinner at six, Joanna spent the rest of the morning at the
desk in her home office. She called into the department and talked
to Frank, who brought her up-to-date on the latest happenings.
There was still no word of any kind from Joaquin Mattias. Dolores
had now filed a formal missing-persons report. Antonio Zavala had
undergone surgery at UMC to repair his damaged foot, and Jail
Commander Tom Hadlock had made arrangements to hire two off-duty
Tucson PD officers to stand guard duty at Zavala’s hospital
room. Jeannine’s condition, meantime, had been upgraded once
again. Frank had even managed to speak to her on the phone. Pain
meds or not, Jeannine had been thrilled to hear that Millicent was
moving forward with the pit-bull rescue project.

“You are coming in, aren’t you?”
Frank asked once he finished with his telephone briefing.

“No,” Joanna said. “I
hadn’t planned on it. Why?”

“Millicent Ross just came back from Tucson
and dropped off her truckload of pet supplies. Tom has guards
unloading and distributing those right now. Millicent expects to be
back here around two to start delivering puppies to inmates, but
the reporters are already here.”

“What reporters?”

“The pit-bull-rescue guy—the guy who
paid for all the puppy goodies—evidently has media
connections out the ying-yang. He issued some kind of press
release. So far we’ve got TV camera crews and print media
here from Phoenix and Tucson, but a crew from
Good Morning America
is supposed to show up as
well. They’re all asking when you’ll be
here.”

Joanna sighed. “I guess you called that
shot.”

“What shot?”

“You said this was going to be a PR
bonanza.”

“Remind me to be careful what I wish
for,” Frank said ruefully. “This is nuts.”

“All right,” Joanna returned.
“I’ll be there about the same time the puppies are, and
not a minute before.”

The briefcase she had carried with her from place
to place the day before was now a jumbled mess. While sorting
through it, she stumbled across the classmates.com printout Frank
had given her a good twenty-four hours earlier—the on-line
profile for Lisa Marie Bradley’s friend, Barbara Tanner
Petrocelli. When Joanna picked up the phone to call the woman, she
did so more for the sake of closure than out of any real
expectation that the conversation would be of value to the
investigation.

As soon as Joanna introduced herself on the phone,
Barbara
Petrocelli was nothing short of
cordial. “I read about Bradley’s death in the paper
last week,” she said. “It made me terribly sad. I
remember that time like it was yesterday. According to what my
parents told me, Lisa left the cleaner’s that day in
mid-shift. She left the money in the till, turned off the lights,
locked the door, and disappeared. The next thing I knew, Bradley
was being charged with murder. It was such a horrible waste. Now
he’s gone, too.”

“Mrs. Crystal said you and Lisa Marie were
friends.”

“I felt sorry for her to begin with,”
Barbara admitted, “but we became good friends.”

“She confided in you?”

“Absolutely,” Barbara returned.
“The same way I confided in her.”

“Did she mention anything to you about being
unhappy in her marriage?” Joanna asked.

“To Bradley? Anything but,” Barbara
answered. “She adored him. She may have been worried about
his drinking, but she was looking forward to raising a family with
the man. She loved him so much. I could never understand how he
could betray her like that.”

“As far as you know, then, there wasn’t
any particular quarrel that would have provoked him to attack
her?”

“Not really, but by the time the murder
actually happened, I had been back at school for several weeks. I
just wish I had been here. Maybe I could have done something to
help Lisa the same way she helped me.”

“What do you mean?”

“If things were going badly with her husband,
I could have listened to her, offered her a shoulder to cry on the
same way she
did for me during my breakup with
Rory. I mean, if he had been treating her badly and was turning
violent or something, maybe I could have helped her find a place to
go, a shelter or something.”

At first Joanna was afraid she had been mistaken.
“Did you say Rory?” she asked.

“Sure,” Barbara returned. “Rory
Markham, notorious snake in the grass, and one of my worst youthful
transgressions. I met Claudio and started dating him while I was
still on the rebound. Fortunately, it’s a rebound romance
that defied all the odds and is still working very well, thank
you.”

“Wait a minute,” Joanna said.
“You were dating Rory Markham?”

“Yes,” Barbara returned. “And I
broke up with him, too. I might not have caught on if Lisa
hadn’t warned me about him.”

“Warned you? About what?”

“About his coming into the cleaner’s
and flirting with her when I wasn’t around.”

“You’re saying he knew Lisa Marie
Evans?” Joanna asked. “That they were
acquainted?”

“Of course he knew her,” Barbara said.
“I was the one who introduced him to her when he came by to
take me to lunch.”

Joanna took a deep breath. No one had ever made any
kind of connection between Rory Markham and the long-ago
disappearance of Lisa Marie Evans. Now that had changed.

“Did Rory know that Lisa had told you what he
was doing behind your back?”

“I may have told him, but it didn’t
really matter. I didn’t break up with him because of some
harmless flirting. It turned out that was just the tip of the
iceberg. He actually had a thing for older women—older
married women. One of those Mrs. Robinson
deals. I probably shouldn’t be telling you this
since he’s still around here and running a real estate office
in town, but the woman involved has been dead for a long
time.”