Partner In Crime (6 page)

Dee nodded and swallowed hard. “Rochelle was such a talented young woman,” she said, dabbing at her tears. “This was her very first show, you see, and she was so excited about it—excited and nervous, too.”

“Did she complain to you about feeling ill?”

“Ill? You mean was she sick? Absolutely not. We worked together all day long yesterday—Shelley, Warren, and I. She certainly would have told me if she wasn’t feeling well.”

“Who’s Warren?” Jaime asked.

“Warren Gibson. My boyfriend. He helps out around the gallery. I’m the brains of the outfit. He’s the brawn.”

Just outside Dee Canfield’s line of vision, Jaime caught Joanna’s eye and motioned toward his watch, indicating he needed to head for his autopsy appointment at Doc Winfield’s office.

“Detective Carbajal has to leave now,” Joanna explained. “But if you don’t mind, I’d like to ask you a few more questions.”

“Okay,” Dee said. “I’m happy to tell you whatever you need to know. I want to help, but I’ll have to leave soon, too, so I can make arrangements about the show.”

As Jaime hurried out the front door, Dave Hollicker appeared from behind one of the screens lugging two heavy bags. Joanna took Dee’s elbow, helped her off the stool, and escorted her outside.

“It might be better if we talk out here,” Joanna said, taking her own notebook out of her purse. “Now tell me, Ms. Canfield, how long have you known Rochelle Baxter?”

“Five months or so,” Dee answered. “As I said, Bobo Jenkins met her first—I’m not sure how—and he introduced us. He knew I was getting ready to open the gallery. He thought Shelley and I would hit it off. Which we did, of course. She was such a nice person, for an ex-Marine, that is. I’m more into peace and love,” Dee added with a self-deprecating smile. “But then, by the time Shelley made it to Bisbee, so was she—into peace and love, I mean.”

“Where did she come from?”

Dee Canfield frowned. “This may sound strange, but I’m not sure. The way she talked about being glad to be out of the rain, it could have been somewhere in the Northwest, but she never did say for certain. I asked her once or twice, but she didn’t like to talk about it, so I just let it be. I had the feeling that she had walked away from some kind of bad news—probably a creep of an ex-husband—but I didn’t press her. I figured she’d get around to telling me one of these days, if she wanted to, that is.” Dee frowned. “Now that I think about it, maybe she has,” she added thoughtfully.

“What do you mean?”

Dee countered with a question of her own. “What do you know about art?”

“Not much,” Joanna admitted. “I had to take the humanities course at the university, but that’s about all.”

“Remember that old saw about writers writing about what they know?”

Joanna nodded.

“The same thing goes for artists,” Dee continued. “They paint what they know. Shelley painted portraits. Her subjects glow with the kind of intensity that only comes from the inside out—from the inside of the subject and of the painter as well. The titles are all perfectly innocuous—
The Carver, The Pastor and the Lamb, Homecoming
—and yet they’re all painted with the kind of longing that puts a lump in your throat. Shelley was painting far more than what she saw. She was also painting what she
wanted
—a time and place and people she wanted to go back to, but couldn’t. Does that make any sense?”

Joanna nodded. “She never talked to you about any of the people in her paintings?”

Dee shook her head. “Not really. ‘Somebody I knew back home,’ she’d tell me without ever bothering saying where ‘back home’ was. But I did notice that there’s no rain in any of her pictures. Wherever home was, it must not rain very often, or else she just didn’t like to paint rain.”

“Maybe Rochelle Baxter didn’t tell you where she came from because she had something to hide,” Joanna suggested.

“Like maybe she had done something wrong? Something illegal?” Dee demanded.

“Possibly.”

“No!” Dee replied hotly. “Nothing like that. I’m sure of it. I’m an excellent judge of character, Sheriff Brady. Psychic, even. Shelley was as honest as the day is long. If she had done something bad, I would have known it.”

“You said she was an ex-Marine. Did Rochelle mention anything to you about where she served and when?”

“She’d been in the Gulf War,” Dee answered. “I remember something about her being an MP, but again, she wasn’t big on details.”

“Do you have any idea about the people in the paintings?” Joanna asked. “Who they might be?”

“Maybe you should come up to the gallery and see for yourself,” Dee suggested. “I assume they’re people from Shelley’s past. They’re all painted in a wonderful sort of summer light, but not the light we have here in the desert. The shadows don’t have the same hard edges that desert shadows do. This is much softer. And speaking of soft, that’s how she spoke, too—with a soft drawl that makes me think she must have come originally from somewhere down south, but then she’d say something about being glad her bones were finally warming up, so I really don’t know.

“If that’s all you need, I’d better go,” Dee added, extracting a car key from the fringed leather purse that hung from her shoulder. She edged away from Joanna toward a wildly colored, custom-painted Pinto station wagon.

“I still need to go get gas,” she said, “but I’ve made up my mind. I’m going to go through with the show’s grand opening tonight after all. For one thing, it’s too late to call off the caterer. Even if I canceled, I’d still have to pay for the food. So we’ll have an event anyway, even if it’s more like a wake than anything else—a wake with paintings instead of a body. But before it opens, I’m going to redo all the prices.”

“Redo them?” Joanna asked. “What do you mean?”

“I’m going to raise them,” Dee Canfield returned decisively. “Those fifteen pieces are all I have to sell of Shelley’s work. With her gone, that’s all there’s ever going to be, which makes a big difference to collectors. It means the paintings are more valuable.”

“There aren’t any others?”

“Only one,” Dee replied. “But that one’s already sold.”

“But I would have thought there’d be others, either here in her studio or in storage. . . .” Joanna began.

Dee shook her head. “Shelley was something of a perfectionist, you see. She’d paint one canvas over and over until she got it right and moved on to the next one. Maybe she was just cheap, but she didn’t believe in letting canvases go to waste.”

“How do art galleries work?” Joanna asked innocently. “Do you get a set fee and the artist receives all the rest?”

“Of course not,” Dee said. “Shelley’s and my agreement works on a percentage basis, fifty-fifty.”

“So, if you raise the prices on Rochelle Baxter’s work, her heirs will receive more, but so will you.”

“Believe me,” Dee said, “I’ll see to it that Shelley’s heirs receive the additional proceeds, if that’s what you mean.” She paused, and her eyes narrowed. “Wait a minute. Are you suggesting that I may have had something to do with Shelley’s death—that I killed her so I could make more money off her paintings?”

“I wasn’t implying anything of the kind,” Joanna replied evenly. “But whenever we encounter a suspicious death like this, we question everyone. It’s the only way to find out what really happened.”

Joanna’s response did nothing to calm Dee Canfield’s sudden anger. “You can take your questions and your not-so-subtle hints and go straight to hell!” she fumed.

With that, Dee got in her car and slammed the door behind her. On the second turn of the key, the old engine coughed fitfully to life. Jerking and half-stalling, the Pinto lurched away from the curb and bounced through an axle-bending pothole.

As the Pinto shuddered out of sight, Joanna Brady jotted into her notebook: Who is Deidre Canfield and where did
she
come from?

D
AVE
H
OLLICKER CAME OUTSIDE
and heaved yet another set of plastic bags into his waiting van. “How much longer do you think you’re going to be?” Joanna asked. “Probably several more hours,” he said.

Joanna nodded. “All right, then. I’ll leave you and Casey to it. In the meantime, I’m going back to the department to try to herd my day into some kind of order.”

As she drove toward the Justice Center, Joanna recalled the last time she had seen Bobo Jenkins. It had been several months earlier, on the occasion of Angie Kellogg’s marriage to Dennis Hacker. The wedding ceremony had taken place in the parsonage of Tombstone Canyon United Methodist Church, with the Reverend Marianne Maculyea presiding. Bobo Jenkins, Angie’s employer at the Blue Moon Saloon and Lounge, had given away the bride.

Recalling the event, Joanna remembered that Bobo Jenkins had seemed buoyantly happy as he told Butch about his plan to sell the Blue Moon to Angie and Dennis. He said he was looking forward to his second early retirement.”

Rochelle hadn’t been in evidence at the wedding, but Joanna wondered if Bobo Jenkins’s happiness then had had less to do with early retirement than with the appearance of a new woman in his life. Now, though, whatever future the two of them might have planned together had evaporated. Rochelle Baxter was dead.

Halfway back to the department, Joanna changed her mind about going there. Bobo Jenkins was a man Joanna knew and liked. He needed to be informed about Rochelle’s death in person rather than through one of Bisbee’s notoriously swift gossip mills. Plus, if Joanna went to see him right then, she wouldn’t have time to think about it for too long, while her own sense of dread kept building. She hated doing next-of-kin notifications—hated having to tell some poor unsuspecting person that a loved one was suddenly and unexpectedly dead.

Picking up her radio, she called in and asked for Bobo Jenkins’s address. She learned that he lived on Youngblood Hill in Old Bisbee, only a matter of blocks from his former business, the Blue Moon. Joanna drove directly there and parked in the designated area at the top of the hill. She then hiked down the steep incline to the arched and gated entrance that led back up a steep flight of stairs to a house perched far above the street. It was no accident that people who lived on some of Old Bisbee’s higher elevations were regular winners in the annual Fourth of July race up “B” Hill.

Thirty-two steps later found her standing, out of breath, on the wooden porch of a fully renovated 1880s-vintage miner’s cabin overlooking Brewery Gulch. The clapboard siding, front door, and porch railings were all newly painted. The broad planks of flooring showed evidence of having been recently replaced. The period piece of etched glass in the front door had been carefully relined with new putty, and the glass itself sparkled in the morning sun. Sighing with reluctance, Joanna placed her finger on the old-fashioned doorbell and listened while it buzzed inside the tiny house.

When Bobo Jenkins came to the door, he wore shorts, a sweat-soaked T-shirt, and a pair of tennis shoes. A limp towel was thrown around the back of his neck. “Hi, there, Joanna,” he said. “I was out back working out. Care to come in?”

Joanna made her way into a brightly painted living room. Hardwood flooring glistened underfoot while huge pieces of leather furniture dominated the space. Looking at the furniture, Joanna shuddered at the idea of dragging those large pieces up from the street.

“Nice place,” she said. “But how on earth did you get this furniture up here?”

“I didn’t beam it up, if that’s what you mean.” He grinned. “It helps if you lift weights. It’s also a good idea to have a bunch of weight-lifting friends. Have a seat.”

Joanna eased herself down onto the soft gray leather couch. She would have preferred keeping up the pretense of polite conversation. Her stomach clenched at the idea of doing what she had come to do. Once she unleashed her bad news, this comfortable, peaceful room would never again be quite so peaceful. Some of her disquiet must have communicated itself. When she turned back to Bobo Jenkins, his easygoing smile had disappeared.

“What’s going on?” he asked, perching on the arm of the couch.

“I’m sorry to have to do this,” she began. “I understand you’re good friends with a woman named Rochelle Baxter. Is that true?”

“With Shelley? Of course it’s true. And I hope we’re a little more than friends,” he added. A concerned frown crossed his face. “Why are you asking me about her? Has something happened?”

Joanna took a deep breath. There was no easy way. “She’s dead, Bobo,” Joanna said.

The big man’s mahogany-colored skin faded to gray. “No!” he exclaimed. “That’s impossible!”

Joanna shook her head. “I’m sorry, Bobo,” she said, “but it’s true. Rochelle Baxter was taken ill and called 911 around ten o’clock last night. She collapsed while talking to the emergency operator. When the EMTs reached her, she was unresponsive. Rochelle was DOA on arrival at Copper Queen Hospital.”

Bobo buried his face in the towel. “Shelley, dead?” he murmured. “I can’t believe it. She was fine when I left her—perfectly fine. What happened?”

“We don’t know,” Joanna replied. “At least, not yet. From what we can tell, she became desperately ill. By the time help reached her, it was already too late.”

Joanna paused, allowing Bobo to internalize the awful information. Finally she asked, “Did Rochelle have any known medical condition that might explain this sudden attack?”

His face contorted by anguish, Bobo shook his head wordlessly.

“You said she was fine when you left her,” Joanna continued. “Does that mean you saw her last night?”

Bobo nodded.

“What time?”

“I don’t know exactly,” he answered. “Fairly early. It couldn’t have been much later than seven or so. I was back here by seven-thirty.”

“What was the purpose of your visit?”

Bobo sighed. “Shelley and I were supposed to have dinner last night, but she stood me up. Not stood up, exactly. She just called and canceled. I went to see her anyway—to ask her about it and find out what was going on.”

“You say she canceled. What time was that?” Joanna asked.