Rattlesnake Crossing (7 page)

CHAPTER FOUR

Joanna soon discovered that when it came to Clyde Philips' neighbors, there weren't all that many for her to talk to. There were three other houses on the short, unpaved block, but two of them were empty. The only other one that was occupied belonged to Sarah Holcomb, the cane-wielding lady who had directed Joanna to Belle's restaurant.

Minutes after leaving Eddy Sandoval to watch over Jaime, Joanna found herself in Mrs. Holcomb's old-fashioned living room, seated on an overstuffed sofa in front of a doily-covered coffee table. It turned out that getting Sarah Holcomb to talk was easy; separating important details from the old woman's meandering conversation was considerably more difficult.

"I never saw a thing out of line," Sarah declared in answer to one of Joanna's questions. "Course, I was gone a good part of the weekend. Went up to Tucson to see the doctor and visit my daughter and son-in-law," she said. "I left about midmorning on Sunday and didn't come back until just a little while before you showed up this afternoon. My doctor's appointment was yesterday. Anymore, seeing a doctor just takes the starch right out of me. I don't like to make that drive on the same day as my appointment, not at my age. I'm eighty-three, by the way, and still driving," she added. "And I'm proud to tell you that I've never had an accident or a ticket, either one."

"When's the last time you saw Clyde, then?" Joanna asked.

Sarah frowned. "Musta been last week sometime, al-though I don't rightly remember when. He wasn't the best neighbor I ever had. A real ornery cuss, if you ask me. When Belle finally up and left him a few years back, I thought it was high time. Belle, now, she's all wool and a yard wide—maybe even more than a yard wide, come to think of it." Sarah grinned at the joke. When Joanna didn't respond, the woman resumed her story.

"Anyways, what went on between them was none of my business, although I always did think Clyde took terrible advantage of the poor woman. Belle never was much of a looker, and of Clyde always acted like he done her a great big favor by marryin' her. I can tell you that the man never lifted a finger around the place long as he had her to do all the cookin' and cleanin'. You'da thought she signed up to be his slave 'stead of his wife. Poor Belle'd spend all week workin'—she used to cook up three meals a day over to that rest home in Benson. You know which one I mean—the one that had that electrical fire and burned to the ground a few years back. That's where Belle worked, right up until the place burned down. As I remember it, she got burned in that fire, too, somehow. When all was said and done, I h i n k she got some kind of little insurance settlement. I'ro'ly wasn't all that much, but it was enough, and it was money dim belonged to her, not him. The way I heard it, that's what she used to open that little doughnut place of hers.

"Anyways, gettin' back to how things were afore that. Here she was working five or six days a week. But still, come Sunday afternoon, she'd be out there in the yard push-in' that big old mower around, while Clyde'd be sittin' there on his backside on that porch of his like King Tut hisself, tellin' her what part she mighta missed and where she maybe needed to go over it again. If he'da been my husband, I think I woulda found a way to drive that mower right smack over his big toe. Maybe that woulda shut him up.

"About the last time you saw Clyde . . ." Joanna urged.

Ignoring Joanna's polite hint, Sarah continued her tirade. "On the other hand, I always say it takes two to tango. Much as I'd like to, I can't lay the whole thing at Clyde's door. Not all of it. I figure if'n a woman sets out to spoil a man like that, she pretty much deserves what she gets. You can't hardly blame the man for takin' advantage. And Belle's no fast learner. Matter of fact, believe it or not, even after all these years, she's still doin' Clyde's wash. Up till a few months ago, every once in a while he'd fill that camper shell of his plumb full up with dirty clothes and drag the whole mess over to her place. Next thing you know, he'd be comin' back with it all washed, ironed, and folded neat as you please. Lately, though, Belle's been pickin' it up and bringin' it back. Some people never do learn."

Joanna remembered what Belle had said about not allowing Clyde to run a tab for his meals. Maybe the woman had turned doing her ex-husband's laundry into a money-making enterprise as well. Considering the dirty clothing scattered all over the dead man's house, Clyde must have been closing in on another laundry trip when he died.”

"Mrs. Holcomb," Joanna urged again, "about List week. Did you see any strange comings or goings?"

"Well, Clyde always did have people in and out at odd times of day, although that's slowed down quite a bit lately. It wasn't like he ran a store with reg'lar hours or anythin' like that. And then sometimes he'd go on the road and be gone for a week or more. I always tried to keep an eye on things whilst he was gone that way—on his house, I mean—not 'cause I liked the man so much, but just 'cause it was a neighborly sort of thing to do."

"Could you give me the names of any of the people who might have dropped by?" Joanna asked.

"His customers, you mean?"

Joanna nodded. "We're going to need to speak to as many of them as possible."

"Why's that?"

Joanna sighed. "Solving a homicide is a lot like unraveling a knot of yarn. You have to take each single strand and follow it all the way to the end. As far as an investigation is concerned, all the people who knew the victim are separate strands of yarn. We'll be talking to all of them—friends, neighbors, customers—the same way I'm talking to you."

"I see." Sarah became thoughtful. "When is it that you think old Clyde croaked out?" she asked.

"Sometime over the weekend," Joanna replied. "We won't have more detailed information until after the autopsy. That's one of the reasons I'm trying to learn when you last saw him alive."

"You mean he didn't just die last night or this morning?" "I'm not sure. Why?"

Sarah grimaced and pursed her wrinkled lips. "I pro'ly shouldn't even say this," she said, "but Belle was here bright and early Sunday morning when I was getting ready to leave for Tucson. I was mighty surprised she come by at that hour. Clyde was one of them night owls and a real late sleeper as a consequence. Right after Belle moved out on him, that just got worse and worse. Like he got his days and nights all turned around. He partied a lot back then. When he wasn't workin', he'd stay up most of the night, drinkin' and carryin' on; then he wouldn't never show his face much before early afternoon. The partyin's pretty much dropped off the last year or two, but he still slept real late. Them kind of habits is tough to break."

"Do you remember what time it was when Belle came by?" Joanna asked.

"Not exactly," Sarah returned. "But it musta been right around nine o'clock or so. I remember I was out gettin' my clothes in off the line. I got up early to wash up a few things to take along to Tucson. I musta put 'em out on the line about seven—I put 'em in as soon as I woke up. I wake up at six-thirty on the dot. Always have, and I put on the coffee and turned on the clothes washer about that same time. The clothes had been out long enough to dry, and I wanted to get 'em packed and in the car so I could hit the road before the sun got much hotter. That's one of the bad things about gettin' old. Just can't take the heat the way I used to. It must have been about eight-thirty then. Maybe a quarter to nine. I'da thought she'd be on her way to church by then."

"What was Belle doing when you saw her?" Joanna asked. "Anything out of the ordinary?"

"Nope. She drove up and parked that big of Cadillac of hers right there behind Clyde's truck. Belle's car is so big that I'm always surprised it makes it through that narrow little gate. Once it's inside, it takes up half the driveway. Anyway, Belle couldn't have been inside the house more than a minute or two, because I was just rollin' my clothes basket back into the house when she came tearin' out of the house and took off again."

"You didn't talk to her?"

"No," Sarah said. "And that wasn't like her—not stop-ping off long enough to say hello or chew the fat. Didn't give much thought to it, though. Figured maybe she was on her way somewhere or had her mind on somethin' else and didn't even see me standin' out there in—"

Stopping abruptly in mid-sentence, Sarah pursed her thin lips again. "You don't suppose . . . ?" Then, as if in answer to her unfinished question, she shook her head. "Certainly not," she announced. "It's not possible."

"What's not possible?" Joanna asked.

"That Belle had somethin' to do with all this—with what happened to Clyde. No, I've known the woman all her life. She wouldn't hurt a flea. Fact of the matter is, some of the neighbors and I used to laugh at her when we'd see her move things out of the house—bugs and centipedes and such—rather than kill 'em. Surely someone who literally wouldn't hurt a fly couldn't kill a person, could they?"

For the third time in the space of a half-an-hour, someone had raised the possibility that Belle Philips was somehow responsible for her former husband's death.

"That's why we have homicide detectives," Joanna said soothingly. "To find out whether something like that is possible."

All the while Sarah had been droning on and on, Joanna had been paying close attention to what was happening outside the lace-curtained windows and beyond the two cottonwood trees that shaded Sarah's front yard. Sitting where she was, the sheriff had an almost unobstructed view of the street. In ten minutes' time, a series of cars had come and gone as Mike Wilson's Search and Rescue detail assembled, collected Deputy Sandoval and then left again, Dick Voland's Bronco had also pulled up. It was parked directly behind Joanna's Blazer. Voland and one of the deputies had marched off toward Clyde's shop at the back of the property. Realizing her chief deputy must have arrived with a search warrant in hand and trusting that he knew what he was doing, Joanna hadn't bothered to traipse after them.

Now, though, she watched as a van with Pima County's logo emblazoned on its door pulled up and parked behind Dick's Bronco. The pinch-hitting medical examiner had arrived from Tucson, so Joanna decided to go.

She stood up and held out her hand. "Thank you so much, Mrs. Holcomb. You've been a great help. One of my detectives or I may need to talk to you again, but in the meantime, I'll have to be going."

Rather than taking Joanna's proffered hand, Sarah simply stared at it without moving. "If I'da known where all this was headed . . ." she said, "that you might end up goin' after Belle . . . I'da kept my big mouth shut. That's what I shudda done."

"Mrs. Holcomb," Joanna said reassuringly, "depending on the actual time of death, what you've told me may or may not have any bearing on this case. Regardless, let me assure you that you've done the right thing by telling us everything you know."

Sarah Holcomb shook her head. "I always did talk way too much," she muttered morosely. "From the time I was just a little tyke. You'da thought that by the time a woman gets to be my age she'd know better."

"But—" Joanna began again.

Sarah waved her aside. "No," she said. "You go on now. I don't want to talk no more. Not to you and not to nobody else, either."

Feeling as though she'd botched things somehow, Joanna let herself out the front door. She hurried back to Clyde Philips' house in time to see a tall, beefy woman with bleached blond hair disappear through the front door.

Joanna arrived at the bedroom doorway as the woman slammed a heavy brown valise to the floor just inside the room. Planting both hands on her hips, she turned to survey her surroundings. "I'm Fran Daly of the Pima County Medical Examiner's office," she told Jaime Carbajal.
"Doctor
Fran Daly. Who are you?"

At five-four, Joanna couldn't see over Dr. Daly's broad shoulder, but she peered around the other woman in time to catch sight of a grimy Jaime Carbajal using a metal ladder to climb up and out of the crawl space. Gingerly, he eased himself onto what seemed to be a relatively stable part of the bedroom floor.

"I'm Detective Carbajal," he replied. "I'm a homicide detective with the Cochise County Sheriff's Department."

"All right. So where's the body?"

Jaime nodded back toward the hole. "Down there," he said. "The victim was lying on a bed that collapsed and fell through the floor into the crawl space."

"Great," Fran muttered irritably. "Just what I need. The body's fallen into the basement. What else? It looks like a damned army's been in and out of this room. What the hell happened here?"

"Well," Jaime explained, "a woman fell through the floor right along with the victim. As I understand it, she was seriously hurt in the fall. We had to call for help. All told, it took six men—four firemen and two EMTs to get her out—and—"

"You're telling me six men have been tracking through my evidence? Who the hell's the dimwit who authorized that? The least those clowns could have done was worn booties over their shoes so they wouldn't have left these god-awful tracks all over the place. Are you responsible for this mess, Detective Carbajal?"

Joanna couldn't see the superior sneer Fran Daly leveled at Jaime Carbajal, but she heard it well enough.

"No," Joanna said quietly. "I am."

Dr. Fran Daly spun around and glared at her. Built with all the grace and delicacy of a tank, she wore a cowboy shirt and jeans. Her only pieces of jewelry were a man's watch and an immense, turquoise-encrusted silver belt buckle on a wide leather belt.

"And who might you be?" Fran Daly demanded.

"My name's Joanna Brady."

"Well," Fran said, "I was directed to report to someone named Voland—Chief Deputy Richard Voland. Where's he?"

"Outside," Joanna said. "Chief Deputy Voland is busy at the moment, but you're welcome to talk to me."

"What are you?" Fran Daly asked. "His deputy?"

"As a matter of fact," Joanna said deliberately, "it's the other way around. Dick Voland is my deputy. I'm
Sheriff
Joanna Brady, Dr. Daly. And I'm also the person—I believe you used the term 'dimwit'—who made the decision that it was more important to effect a timely rescue of a seriously injured woman than it was to tiptoe around preserving evidence. When it comes to handling injury situations, the possibility of losing some trace evidence must take a backseat to emergency medical care. What was done here seemed like a reasonable trade-off to me. If I had it to do over, I'm sure that I'd reach the exact same conclusion."