Damage Control (24 page)

Who are you?
Joanna wondered.
Where did you go?

Just then her cell phone rang.

“I tracked down Judge Cameron,” Detective Howell said. “I got the warrant, and we’re in. Now what?”

“I want you to take every bit of food out of the fridge,” Joanna said. “I want it bagged, labeled, and stored. Same goes for whatever you find in their pantry and cupboards. If it’s edible, take it.”

“Where are we going to put it all?” Deb said. “We don’t have enough cold storage.”

“We’ll find enough cold storage,” Joanna said determinedly, “if I have to go out and buy another refrigerator and stick it in the evidence room. You’re there right now?”

“Yes. In the kitchen, standing in front of an open fridge that’s way cleaner than mine is.”

“Do you see any chocolate sauce in there?”

“Yes,” Deb said. “Right here in the door. Tante Marie’s Chocolate Sauce, a product of Canada. And here’s another bottle. This one’s Tante Marie’s Caramel Sauce. I’ve never seen this brand before. I don’t think you can buy it at Safeway.”

“Let’s hope not,” Joanna said. “That would be far too easy.”

“Okay,” Deb said. “We’re on it.”

Joanna closed her phone just as the last of the coffee sputtered into the pot, but she was still staring at the photo. There was a part of her, the reasonable, commonsense part, that was counseling Joanna to leave it alone and let sleeping dogs lie. If Andy had been carrying on with this woman, what did it matter? He was dead and gone. But there was another part of her, too, the
part of Joanna that was undeniably her mother’s daughter, that wouldn’t let it go.

One way or the other, I’m going to find you,
Joanna told herself and the image smiling back at her from the photo.
No matter how much it hurts, I need to know the truth.

WANTING ALL HANDS ON DECK FOR SANDY’S INTERVIEW, JOANNA
had summoned Ernie Carpenter to be there along with Jaime. Joanna sat in as well. During the interview Sandy repeated most of what she had told Joanna earlier. She and Samantha had gone to their parents’ house as soon as Deb Howell had told them they could. They had sorted out clothing to take to the mortuary for the cremation. While in the process of contacting friends and relatives about the service, they had paused for lunch. Shortly after that Samantha, who had seemed fine all morning, started acting strangely.

“Is your sister prone to these kinds of episodes?” Jaime asked. “There was the situation the other night—”

“That was different,” Sandy said. “Then we’d both had too
much to drink and things came to a head. But we were over that—at least I thought we were.”

“Maybe, without your knowledge, Samantha had something to drink today, too,” Jaime suggested.

“No,” Sandy declared. “Absolutely not. If Sammy had been drinking, I would have smelled it on her breath. One minute she was fine and the next minute she had no idea who I was—like I was a complete stranger who had turned up in the folks’ house for no reason. And then she started saying totally bizarre things—wondering when our parents would be back home. I tried to explain to her that our parents were dead—that we were there planning their memorial service! It was weird. At first I thought she was just joking around, but then when she brought Dad’s guns out of the back bedroom…” Sandy shook her head as though she still couldn’t quite grasp the reality of what had happened.

“Is it possible your sister has a problem with some other drug besides alcohol?” Jaime asked. “People on crack and meth often carry on like they’ve got a few screws loose.”

“I suppose a drug problem of some kind is a possibility,” Sandy conceded. “My sister and I have been estranged for a long time, Detective Carbajal. There’s a lot I don’t know about her and a lot she doesn’t know about me. Still, I didn’t see any evidence of her popping pills or smoking anything.”

The whole time Joanna had been sitting in on the interview, she’d been thinking about Alfred Beasley’s chocolate topping. With her laptop open in front of her, she’d been quietly surfing the Net. She found the official Web site for Tante Marie’s Toppings, based in Montreal, Quebec. The company motto, plastered over the top of their home page in bright red letters,
proclaimed: “If Your Sweetheart Has a Sweet Tooth, Doesn’t She Deserve the Very Best?” The text claimed that Tante Marie’s Toppings were made from only the highest-quality ingredients. Not available in stores, Tante Marie’s products were shipped to discerning customers all over the globe, with a discount for case-lot orders. Visa, MasterCard, and Amex accepted.

In other words, there should be some way to trace the jars of caramel and chocolate syrups that had found their way into Alfred and Martha Beasley’s fridge. Joanna wanted to find a way to bring the food issue into the official interview without necessarily letting Sandy know where the questions were leading.

“Is it possible Samantha had an allergic reaction to something she ate?” Joanna asked.

“Maybe,” Sandy said. “But I’ve never heard any mention of that.”

“Still, it might be worthwhile for you to tell Detectives Carbajal and Carpenter exactly what you and Samantha had for lunch, just in case.”

While Sandy launched into that discussion, Joanna continued surfing. This time she located obituaries for Jonathan and Fern Wolfe—two obituaries each, one in Tampa, Florida, where they were living at the time of their deaths, and another in Kansas City, Missouri, where they had lived prior to retirement. The one in Tampa was clearly a paid obituary. The second one seemed more like an ordinary news article.

Reading that passage, Joanna understood what Sandy had meant earlier when she had burst into tears. Alfred and Martha Beasley and Fern and Jonathan Wolfe were part of the last of a very special breed.

There was no way to tell from the article or the names which of Jonathan’s two sons—Mark or Larry—was the father of the two grandsons.

There was a tap on the conference room door. Closing her laptop, Joanna went to the door. Wendy Cochran, one of the public office clerks, was standing outside.

“Sorry to disturb you, Sheriff Brady,” she said. “But there’s a man out in the lobby who’s causing a disturbance and demanding to see his wife.”

“Mr. Wolfe?” Joanna asked.

Wendy nodded. “That’s the one.”

“Mr. Wolfe’s wife is here in the conference room,” Joanna said. “You can bring him on down.” She waited by the door. When Wendy returned with the man, Joanna escorted him into the conference room. “This is Larry Wolfe,” she told Ernie and Jaime. “Mrs. Wolfe’s husband.”

As soon as Larry came through the door, Sandy leaped to her feet and rushed to embrace him. “Oh, Larry!” she exclaimed. “I’m so glad to see you. I was so afraid—” The rest of her words were muffled by her husband’s shirt as he wrapped his arms around her.

“It’s okay now, Sandy. I’m here.” He sent a hard look in Joanna’s direction. “What about her crazy sister? Where’s she?”

“In the county hospital,” Joanna said. “Under observation.”

“And hopefully under lock and key,” he said. “From what Sandy told me, it sounds as though Samantha is totally nuts.”

Sandy pulled away from him. “This is my husband, Larry,” she told the detectives. “And these two nice men are Detectives Carpenter and Carbajal. They’ve been going over everything that happened today. They think Samantha may have been on drugs.”

“Could be,” Larry said. “Knowing she was on drugs won’t fix anything, but it might at least explain what happened.”

“Actually, Mr. Wolfe,” Jaime said, “we were just finishing up.”

“I can go, then?” Sandy asked.

Jaime nodded.

“Good,” Larry said, holding her close. “I’m sure she could do with some rest. I did what you said, baby,” he added. “I’ve gotten us a room for the night at the Copper Queen.”

“Thank you,” Sandy said. “That was so thoughtful of you.”

He was doing an excellent impersonation of a loving husband, but Joanna wasn’t entirely convinced.

“If they brought you here, where’s your car? Do we need to go pick it up?”

“It’s out front,” Joanna said. “I had one of my deputies drive it here.”

Just then Deb Howell showed up in the hallway behind Joanna. “Okay,” she said. “We’ve finished. Deputy Hogan is unloading the—”

Before Deb had a chance to blurt out anything more, Joanna took her by the arm. Drawing her away from the conference room door, Joanna steered Deb into her office and closed the door behind them.

“You’ve collected all the Beasleys’ food?” Joanna asked.

“Every bit of it,” Deb returned. “The evidence room guys aren’t thrilled, but I managed to squeeze the stuff from the fridge into the evidence room cold-storage locker after all. I left Deputy Sloan up at the house to keep an eye on the place in case we need to take another look around in the daylight.”

“Good thinking,” Joanna said.

“Now what?” Deb wanted to know.

“Were there serial numbers on those two Tante Marie syrup bottles?” Joanna asked.

“I noticed what looked to be batch codes,” Deb said. “We may be able to tell from that when the product was sold and where it was shipped.”

“Good,” Joanna said. “I’m guessing we’ll need that information. Now let’s go talk to Ernie and Jaime.”

The Double Cs, as Detectives Carpenter and Carbajal were known around the department, were not amused when Joanna
told them what Deb and Deputy Hogan had been doing and why.

“If you think eating a chocolate sundae was what sent Samantha Edwards over the edge, wouldn’t it have been nice if you had mentioned it during the interview?” Ernie demanded. “Why the hell did you leave us stumbling around in the dark?”

“I didn’t want to tip my hand to Larry Wolfe,” Joanna said.

“So you’re thinking he’s the bad guy here?” Ernie asked.

“A bad guy who seems to be perpetually short on cash. This may well be a case of murder for profit. If it hadn’t been for Samantha, he might have gotten away with it. The longer Wolfe goes without knowing we’re looking at him, the better off we’ll be.”

Somewhat mollified, Ernie nodded. “So what now?”

“It’s getting late. Let’s call it a day. Tomorrow morning first thing, I want you and Deb to track down everything there is to know about Larry Wolfe. Sandy’s the one who mentioned their financial woes to me. I want to know what the situation really is. I also learned that Larry’s parents both died in Tampa last year within a few weeks of each other. It sounds as though the father was a self-made millionaire several times over. The brother, Mark Wolfe, lives in Saint Louis, Missouri. He’s the executor of the parents’ estate. Again, from what Sandy said, the two brothers have been estranged for a long time. Larry has been expecting disbursements from his parents’ estates to bail him out of the soup, but those have evidently been a long time coming.”

“Are you thinking Larry may have had something to do with his parents’ deaths as well?” Deb asked.

“It’s worth looking into,” Joanna said.

“What about me?” Jaime asked. “While Deb and Ernie are tracking on Larry Wolfe, what do you want me to do?”

“Keep working on Luis,” she told him. “We’ll hope he’s surfaced by then. If not…”

Jaime nodded. “You’re right,” he said. “Luis it is.”

Joanna was home by seven—two hours later than she was supposed to be, but several hours earlier than she had expected to be. Dinner turned out to be pizza—cold pizza—the remains of several different kinds.

“Where did these come from?” she asked, munching away on a piece of garlic/artichoke.

“It turns out the kids Jeff brought down wanted to earn some money,” Butch said with a laugh. “But they work harder for food, especially if whatever is being served happens to be part of the pizza food group.”

“You got a lot done, then?”

“An amazing amount,” Butch said. “Especially since I didn’t have to go get the pizza.”

“You had it delivered? Since when did Pizza Palace start delivering?”

“They don’t,” Butch replied. “Your mother picked it up and dropped it off.”

“My mother?”

“She called right after you left this morning. She was in a great mood and has evidently forgiven me for ratting her out to you. She said she knew you were busy and wanted to know if there was anything I needed. When I told her I could use a couple of pizzas, she brought same. She even let down her hair enough to have a slice or two with us. I don’t think I’ve ever seen pizza pass Eleanor’s lips before.”

Joanna didn’t remember ever seeing that happen, either.

“Anyway,” Butch continued, “she and Jeff were talking about
the benefit the churchwomen around town are getting ready to do for the Sundersons next week. Your mom came up with a brilliant idea. Carol Sunderson and her grandkids don’t have a place to live right now, and we happen to have an extra house that’s currently vacant. Eleanor suggested maybe Carol would be interested making a trade. What if we offered her and those kids of hers a place to live. They could stay in our old house rent-free or at a minimal rent in exchange for her helping out around here as needed. It would sort of be the reverse of when Clayton Rhodes was alive and helping you with the chores at the old place.”

Clayton had been Joanna’s longtime neighbor who had owned the adjoining ranch. After Andy’s death and despite the fact that Clayton had been well into his eighties by then, the man had been unstinting in helping Joanna and Jenny with the many chores associated with old High Lonesome Ranch. Later, when he died, Joanna had been astonished to find that the old man had left his ranch to her. The ranches were still deeded separately, but Butch and Joanna had built their new home on the site of Clayton’s old one at the mouth of Mexican Canyon on what they sometimes referred to as the “new” High Lonesome Ranch.