Outlaw Mountain (33 page)

“Ernie,” Joanna yelled over her shoulder. “Come here. Quick!”

Moments later, the detective came huffing down the hill. “What is it?” he demanded as he caught up with her. “What’s going on?”

“Call Dispatch and cancel Search and Rescue. I’m pretty sure we’ve found Clete Rogers.”

For Joanna, the next part of the scenario was achingly familiar. George Winfield had to be summoned. The crime scene investigation team had to be called out once more. As curious onlookers gathered around and as the screen of crime scene tape went up, Joanna sat in her Blazer and waited for the wheels of bureaucracy to grind. Watching all the activity, she felt terribly sad.

Alice Rogers was dead and now so was her son. What does it take, Joanna wondered, for a son to kill his mother? How much money could stimulate that much greed? And after the deed was done, how much regret would cause a remorseful killer to take his own life?

Silting in the Blazer, Joanna realized that answers to some of those questions were well within her reach. All she had to do was talk to Dena Hogan, the attorney who had handled the writing of Alice Rogers’ will. Dena Hogan most likely would know the general amounts of money and other assets that were part of Alice Rogers’ estate. Glancing at her watch, Joanna saw there was still plenty of time to make it to Sierra Vista for her tentative appointment with Dena Hogan.

Joanna’s purpose in making the appointment had been to discuss the Mark Childers’ case—to see if any of the financial records subpoenaed in Monica Foster’s divorce case would shed light on what had happened at Oak Vista Estates. But since Dena Hogan was connected to both investigations, one excuse for seeing her was as good as another. Besides, with the two homicide detectives already at the scene of Clete Rogers’ apparent suicide, there was no need for Joanna to hang around.

“I’m leaving,” Joanna told Ernie Carpenter. “I’m going to go out to Sierra Vista and see Dena Hogan. While I’m at it, I may even pay a call on Karen Brainard.”

“Do you want some backup on that?”

Joanna thought about it. “I don’t think so,” she said. “For right now, I think what I have to say to Karen Brainard is best said in private.”

Ernie looked at her and shook his head. “You go on ahead,” he said, “but don’t say I didn’t warn you.”

By two o’clock Joanna was out of her tennies, back in her heels, and standing in front of the receptionist’s desk in Dena Hogan’s office on Fry Boulevard in Sierra Vista. The receptionist was young and vague.

“She’s not in,” Joanna was told when she announced her name.

“Not in,” Joanna echoed. “I called this morning. I made an appointment.”

“Ms. Hogan went home sick at lunchtime. She said she may not be back before Monday,” the receptionist added. “I probably should have tried to call, but I didn’t know where to reach you.”

“You might have tried the sheriff’s department,” Joanna said icily. “I did give my name as Sheriff Joanna Brady. That’s usually where sheriffs hang out.”

Steamed, Joanna made her way out of Dena Hogan’s office. Standing in the cold but sunny November afternoon, she decided to disregard Ernie’s advice and go see Karen Brainard after all. If nothing else, the drive from Sierra Vista to Huachuca City would give Joanna a chance to cool off.

It turned out that Karen Brainard didn’t live in Huachuca City proper. The Brainard place was on Sands Ranch Road in the foothills of the Whetstones. Her house was a sprawling adobe affair—new construction with carefully contrived landscaping that made it look far older and more well-established than it was. A FOR SALE sign sat next to the mailbox.

The silver-haired woman who answered the door resembled Karen Brainard. “I’m Sheriff Brady,” Joanna said. “I’m looking for Karen.”

“She isn’t here right now,” the woman said uneasily. “I don’t know when she’ll be back.”

The wary way the woman responded put Joanna on guard. “And you are?” she asked.

“I’m Maureen,” the woman said. “Maureen Edgeworth. Karen’s mother.” She opened the door wider. “Won’t you come in?”

Stepping inside, Joanna was surprised to see that the house was almost entirely devoid of furniture. All that was left in the living room was a single end table with a lamp. “There are chairs in the kitchen,” Maureen explained. “If you don’t mind sitting there.”

Following Maureen Edgeworth through the house, Joanna could see shadows on the walls where paintings had once hung. It looked as though someone was in the process of moving out. The kitchen, too, was missing artwork, although a table and chairs remained. Maureen Edgeworth motioned Joanna into one of those.

“You say you don’t know when your daughter will return? You are aware that with the ongoing investigations into Lewis Flores’ and Mark Childers’ deaths, your daughter was told not to leave town.”

“But she had to,” Maureen Edgeworth replied. “She didn’t have a choice.”

“Where is she?”

Maureen Edgeworth bit her lip. “I don’t want to tell you,” she said. “She hasn’t gone far, and she will be back eventually. I promise. Her father and I are taking care of Derek and the house in the meantime.”

“Who’s Derek?” Joanna asked.

“Karen’s son. Our grandson,” Maureen said. “He’s only sixteen, you see. This has all been awful for him. It was all I could do to get him to go to school today. He didn’t want to, and I don’t blame him. He’s embarrassed. I feel the same way when I have to go to the grocery store. I don’t know what I’ll do when Sunday comes around and I have to go to church. That’s the most difficult thing—seeing people you know and knowing they know. It’s so hard—so very, very hard.”

“Where is your daughter?” Joanna persisted.

“In Tucson.”

“Where in Tucson?”

“Ed drove her there. Ed’s my husband—Karen’s father. He’s checking her into a treatment center—a drug treatment center. We knew some of this when Paul left. Paul’s our son-in-law, you see. When he moved out, he tried to tell us what was going on—that Karen was mixed up in some pretty wild stuff. But Ed and I didn’t want to believe it. Not Karen. Not our own daughter.

“But when she called last night and told us what had happened and that she’d had to resign from the board of supervisors, there wasn’t any choice. We had to believe her then. And Ed did the only thing that made sense. He made arrangements to check her into the center first thing this morning. She’ll be there for six weeks. We’ve talked to Paul—we’re on very good terms with him, you see—but he’s doing a consulting job and is out of the country for the next three weeks at least. Ed and I assured Paul that we’ll look after Derek at least until he gets back.”

Maureen Edgeworth stopped speaking and seemed to become aware that her hospitality was somehow lacking. “Can I get you a cup of coffee?”

“No, thank you,” Joanna told her. “I just had lunch.”

“If you don’t mind, I’ll fix some for myself.”

As Maureen moved around the kitchen, Joanna wrestled with her conscience. The poor woman was clearly devastated by what was going on with her daughter. She needed someone to talk to right then, and Sheriff Joanna Brady was the only person who happened to be there.

“Karen’s fortunate to have you and your husband for parents,” Joanna said tentatively. “Not everyone would be willing to step in and handle things in a situation like this.”

Maureen shrugged. “What choice do we have?” she asked. “What choice do parents ever have? Karen was always a handful—she and those wild pals of hers, Dena and Monica. They were all smart and they all got good grades, but they were always getting into mischief together, always walking the fine edge.”

“Dena Hogan and Monica Foster Childers?” Joanna supplied.

“Dena James then,” Maureen said. “And yes, Monica Foster. I thought it was just because they were teenagers. I told myself that it was just a phase they were going through and that they’d grow out of it eventually. And I guess Monica did, but Karen and Dena are both in their mid-forties now. That’s a little late for them to keep falling back on that old ‘just-a-phase’ excuse.”

“Did Karen say anything to you about her dealings with Mark Childers?”

“More than we wanted to know,” Maureen Edgeworth said sadly. “She had more than ‘dealings’ with the man. And to think he was her best friend’s husband!”

Maureen shuddered, and her voice rose with indignation. “You have to understand, Sheriff Brady. I tried to raise my daughter to have good morals and high standards. I tried to teach her about right and wrong. I thought wife-swapping went out with the AIDS virus, but I guess not. These days all the kids learn about safe sex in junior high. Somebody needs to teach the parents. They’re the ones who need to grow up. I don’t blame Paul for leaving, not at all.”

“From the sound of it, I’d say your daughter was involved with a whole group of people,” Joanna said gently. “Did she give you any names?”

“Other than Dena? Not really. I’m sure you can ask her yourself if you need to, but I don’t know how soon that’ll be. According to Ed, the first thing that happens at the center is the addicts go into detox for a while—for several days at least. They can’t have any visitors at all until they complete that portion of the treatment. Do you need the address?”

Joanna nodded. “And a phone number,” she added. “Both would be helpful.”

“Just a minute. I wrote them down, but I put the piece of paper in my purse.”

While Maureen went to get the information, Joanna sat considering her next move. Dena Hogan was handling Monica Foster’s divorce from Mark Childers, but she was also palling around with someone who was Mark Childers’ drug-using mistress. This sounded very much like a conflict of interest. Dena Hogan may have left work sick that day, but it seemed to Joanna that it was time someone paid the woman a visit at home.

“Do you happen to know where Dena lives?” Joanna asked when Maureen returned to the kitchen.

“Kino Road,” Maureen replied. “Just south of Ramsey. You’re not going to go see her, are you?”

“I may,” Joanna hedged.

“If you do, please don’t tell her I said anything. I don’t want to cause any more trouble than I already have.”

A car—an old T-Bird—pulled into the yard and stopped. “That’ll be Derek,” Maureen said. “He drives himself to and from school. Please go now, Sheriff Brady. I hope you won’t mind if I don’t introduce you. I’m sure you understand. I just can’t upset him any more right now.”

“Of course,” Joanna agreed, standing up to leave. “I understand completely.”

In the end, there was no problem with introductions, because once Derek Brainard came into the house, he slammed the front door and disappeared into the depths of the house without ever showing his face in the kitchen. Joanna let herself out, climbed into the Blazer, and headed back for Sierra Vista. She used her cell phone to get Dena and Rex Hogan’s exact address on Kino Road. Half an hour later, Joanna approached the Hogan address just as a woman, blond and carrying two suitcases, exited the house.

Driving slowly and checking house numbers, Joanna stopped to watch. The woman heaved two massive bags into the open trunk of a car parked in the driveway. It was only when she turned around to reenter the house that Joanna realized she wasn’t a woman at all. The long blond locks and the missing trademark buckskin jacket had fooled her. No, the person returning to Dena Hogan’s house was none other than Ross Jenkins. The car the suitcases had been loaded into was the same Chrysler Concorde Joanna had seen Jenkins driving on Houghton Road three days earlier. In front of that was a pearlescent-white Lexus.

All at once, the threads of the two separate cases came together for Joanna like crosshairs in the sights of a rifle. She felt an eerie prickling at the back of her neck and knew that Ernie Carpenter had been dead-on right. She never should have come here alone.

CHAPTER NINETEEN

As Ross Jenkins disappeared into Dena Hogan’s house, Joanna switched off the Blazer’s engine. From a discreet distance two houses away, she grappled with what to do. Other than instinct and moral indignation, she had very little to go on. Despicable behavior wasn’t criminal. If Dena Hogan was screwing around with Susan Jenkins’ husband, that was the business of the four people most closely involved. It certainly wasn’t Joanna’s. And standing someone up for an appointment while claiming to be sick but really heading out of town couldn’t be considered criminal either.

Sure, there were clear conflicts of interest involved. Even in small-town legal circles people would frown on an attorney who, while representing one party in a divorce proceeding, was also best friends with the opposing spouse’s mistress. But that called for disciplinary action from a bar association and nothing more, especially since wife, mistress, and attorney were all long-term friends with a supposedly “close” relationship that dated all the way back to girlhood.

All those things were bothersome—worrisome, even—but not cause for involvement by a local law enforcement agency. Still, Joanna knew instinctively that whatever was going on right then was more than morally wrong. Dena Hogan had been privy to the contents of Alice Rogers’ will. More than privy, she was the attorney who had drafted the damned thing. Alice’s two children, as well as her Johnny-come-lately husband, would have benefited to some extent from Alice’s premature death. With one of those beneficiaries dead and the other among the missing, that left only one, Susan Jenkins and her husband Ross, who had just loaded a pair of suitcases—Dena’s, presumably—into his car.

What’s the relationship between these two? Joanna wondered. And how much of this is Susan Jenkins in on?

The door opened once more and again Ross Jenkins emerged from the house. This time he crammed one more, smaller, suitcase into the trunk, then slammed the lid shut before he tossed a heavily loaded garment bag into the back-seat. As he returned to the house once again, Joanna realized she didn’t have much time. The car was full. When it was completely loaded, Ross and Dena would most likely drive away from the house. When that happened, Joanna wouldn’t have sufficient probable cause to pull them over.

She wanted to confront them sooner than that, without the necessity of what might later be characterized as an illegal traffic stop. The problem was, she was there by herself. Approaching a pair of suspected killers alone was downright foolhardy.