Paradise Lost (17 page)

“Maculyea/Daniels residence,” Julie Erickson said. Julie was the live-in nanny who cared for Jeff and Marianne’s two children—their almost-four-year-old adopted daughter, Ruth Rachel, and their miracle baby—the one doctors had assured the couple they would never have—one-and-a-half-month-old Jeffrey Andrew.

For years, Marianne Maculyea had been estranged from her par-ents. A partial thaw had occurred a year earlier, when Ruth’s twin sister, Esther Elaine, had been hospitalized for heart-transplant surgery. Marianne’s father, Tim Maculyea, had unbent enough then to come to the hospital in Tucson. Later, when Esther tragically had succumbed to pneumonia, he had come to the funeral as well. Marianne’s mother, Evangeline Maculyea, had not. Only the birth of little Jeffy had finally effected a lasting truce. Julie Erickson, complete with six months’ worth of paid wages, had been Evange-line’s peace offering to her daughter. It was Julie’s capable presence that had made possible Marianne’s rapid post-childbirth return to her duties as pastor of Bisbee’s Tombstone Canyon United Methodist Church.

“Marianne,” Joanna gulped.

“Who’s calling, please?”

“It’s Joanna,” she managed to mumble. With that, she dissolved into tears.

“Why, Joanna!” Marianne exclaimed, the moment she heard Joanna’s voice. “What on earth is the matter?”

“It’s Butch,” Joanna whispered.

“What about him?” Mari demanded. “Is he hurt? Has there been an accident?”

Joanna shook her head. “No,” she whispered. “No accident.”

“What is it, then? You’ve got to get hold of yourself, Joanna. Tell me what’s going on.”

“Oh, Mari,” Joanna sobbed. “What am I going to do? What am I going to tell Jenny? It’ll break her heart.”

“Tell her what? What’s happened?”

Joanna drew a shuddering breath. “Butch stayed out all night. He was with another woman. I saw them together, just a little while ago.”

Marianne was all business. “Where did this happen?” she asked.

“At a hotel up in Phoenix—Peoria, really. “There’s a wedding tonight ...”

“I remember now,” Marianne said. “Butch is the man of honor.”

“Right,” Joanna said. “The rehearsal dinner was last night. I was supposed to go, but I ended up having to work. I had to drive a homicide victim’s sister down to Bisbee to identify the body.

Then there was a huge flap with my mother calling CPS and upsetting everyone out at the ranch.

By the time things settled down, it was too late to drive back, so I spent the night and came back to Phoenix this morning. I had tried calling Butch to let him know. I left several messages on voice mail in the room, and they were all still there because he never came back to the room. He was with another woman, Mari. When I saw them, they had just finished having breakfast together.”

Like a wind-up toy running down, Joanna subsided into silence.

“Breakfast,” Marianne interjected. “You said they had break-fast. What makes you think there’s anything more to it than just that?”

“Isaw them,” Joanna said. “I saw them together. And he intro-duced me to her. He said she was an old friend, Mari. But if she was such a good friend, why haven’t I ever heard her name before?

Why wasn’t she invited to our wedding? Believe me, they’re more than good friends. And I can’t stand it. We’ve been married less than two months, and already Butch may have been unfaithful to me. I can’t believe it.”

“Do you know that for sure?” Marianne asked. “Did he tell you he’s been unfaithful?”

“No, but—”

“How do you know then?”

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“I just know. I’m not stupid, Mari. I saw them together. I know what I saw.” In the silence that followed, Joanna heard Lila Winter’s voice once more.“Thank you for everything.”

“What youthink yousaw,” Marianne admonished. “Have you actually talked to Butch about this? Did you ask him?”

“No. Ever since I left the hotel, he’s been trying to call me. He says he wants to explain.Explain!

As if there could be any explanation. But I won’t talk to him. He thinks all he has to do is give me some kind of lame excuse, and the whole thing will go away. I t won’t!”

“You still haven’t spoken to him?” Marianne asked.

“No. What’s the point? What’s tearing me up is what am I going to tell Jenny, Mari? She loves Butch almost as much as she loved her dad. What will happen to her if she loses Butch, too? And how am I going to face all the people in town, the ones who came to our wedding—the ones who told me I was jumping iii too soon? The ones who said I should have given myself more time? It turns out that they’re right and I’m wrong. How will I ever be able to live this down?”

“Where are you right now?” Marianne asked.

“Metrocenter,” Joanna answered. “When I left the hotel, I didn’t know where to go. I thought about coming home, but I was crying so hard that it wasn’t safe to drive. I stopped here at the im.ill because I was afraid I was going to kill someone.”

“Good decision,” Marianne said. “Nobody should try to drive when they’re crying their eyes out. So what are you going to do now?”

“Come home,” Joanna said in a small voice.

“Where’s Butch?” Marianne asked.

“Back at the hotel,” Joanna answered. “At the Conquistador, in Peoria. That’s where the wedding’s going to be held, the one where Butch is the man of honor. What a joke!”

“And how’s he getting home?”

“How should I know?” Joanna asked.

“Does he have a car?”

“No. We took my county car up to the Sheriffs’ Association Conference in Page. We stopped off in Phoenix for the wedding on the way back down.”

“How’s he getting back to Bisbee?”

“He can walk, for all I care.”

“I see,” Marianne said.

Around her, the mall was filling up with people while Joanna Brady had never felt so alone in her life. Families—mothers and fathers with young, boisterous children—walked through the
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mall. Some were just out shopping. Others, still dressed in their Sunday finery, were headed to the food court for an after-church lunch. There were throngs of teenagers, kids Jenny’s age, laughing and joking as though they hadn’t a care in the world. Everyone else seemed happy and glad to be alive while Joanna was simply deso-late. She noted that a few of the passersby aimed wary, sidelong glances in her direction.

They probably think I’m crazy,she thought self-consciously.Here I sit. Tears are dripping off my chin, and I’m holding on to my cell phone as though it’s a damned life preserver!

“I think you should go back,” Marianne Maculyea was saying when Joanna’s straying attention returned to the phone.

“I should do what?”

“When it’s safe for you to drive, you should go back to the hotel and talk to Butch.”

“Why? What’s the point?”

Marianne sighed, sounding the way she did when dealing with Ruth, her recalcitrant three-year-old. “Before we go into that, I want you to tell me what’s been going on. All of it, from the beginning.”

And so Joanna found herself relating all the events of the past several days, including how Jenny and Dora Matthews had found Constance Haskell’s body and how Joanna had ended up leaving Phoenix the previous afternoon in order to bring Maggie MatFer-son to Bisbee to identify her sister’s body. She explained how Eleanor had precipitated a crisis at home by dragging Child Pro-tective Services into an already overwrought situation. It was harder to talk about coming back to the hotel that morning and discovering Butch hadn’t been there. Finally she came to the part where Butch and Lila Winters had found her reading Maggie MacFerson’s article in the hotel lobby. As she recounted that, Joanna was once again struggling to hold back tears.

“So that’s it,” she finished lamely. “I got in the car, drove away, and eventually ended up here.”

“Tell me about the wedding,” Marianne said. “Whose wedding is it again?”

“Tammy Lukins,” Joanna answered. “She used to work for Butch. She was one of his waitresses at the Roundhouse Bar and Grill up in Peoria. She’s marrying a guy named Roy Ford who used to be a customer at the Roundhouse. Since Butch is the one who introduced them, they both wanted him to be in the wedding. Tammy wanted Butch to be her . . .” She started to say, “man of honor,” but the words stuck in her throat. “Her attendant,” she said finally.

A short silence followed. Marianne was the one who spoke first. “You told me a few minutes ago that the dead woman’s sister from Phoenix ...”

“Maggie MacFerson,” Joanna supplied.

“That Maggie MacFerson thought her brother-in-law ..”

“Ron Haskell.”

“That he was the one who had murdered his wife. That he had stolen her money and then
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murdered her.”

Joanna nodded. “That’s right,” she said.

“So what will happen next?” Marianne asked.

Joanna shrugged. “Ernie Carpenter and Jaime Carbajal were supposed to go out to Portal this morning to see if they could find him.”

“And what will happen when they do?”

“When they find him, they’ll probably question him,” Joanna replied. “They’ll try to find out where he was around the time his wife died and whether or not he has a verifiable alibi.”

“But they won’t just arrest him on the spot, toss him in jail, and throw away the key?”

“Of course not,” Joanna returned. “They’re detectives. They have to find evidence. The fact that the money is gone and the fact that Connie Haskell died near where her husband was staying is most likely all circumstantial. Before Ernie and Jaime can arrest Ron Haskell, they’ll have to have probable cause. To do that they’ll need to have some kind of physical evidence that links him to the crime.

“What if they arrested him without having probable cause?”

“It would be wrong,” Joanna answered. “Cops can’t arrest someone simply because they feel like it. They have to have good reason to believe the person is guilty, and they can’t simply jump to conclusions based on circumstantial evidence. It has to be some-thing that will stand up in court, something strong enough to con-vince a judge and jury”

“That’s true in your work life, Joanna,” Marianne said quietly. “What about in your personal life? Is it wise to allow yourself to jump to conclusions there?”

A knot of anger pulsed in Joanna’s temples. “You’re saying I’ve jumped to conclusions?”

“Criminals have a right to defend themselves in a court of law,” Marianne said. “You told me yourself that you didn’t listen to anything Butch had to say. That when he tried to talk to you, you didn’t listen—wouldn’t even answer the phone.”

“This is different,” Joanna said.

“Is it? I don’t think so. I believe you’ve tried and convicted the man of being unfaithful to you without giving him the benefit of a fair hearing. I’m not saying Butch didn’t do what you think he did, and I’m certainly not defending him if he did. But I do think you owe him the courtesy of letting him tell you what happened, of let-ting him explain the circumstances, before you hire yourself a divorce attorney and throw him out of the house.”

Joanna sat holding the phone in stunned silence.

“A few minutes ago you asked me what you should tell Jenny,” Marianne continued. “How you should go about breaking the news to her and how you’d face up to the rest of the people in town. Have you talked to anyone else about this?”

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“Only you,” Joanna said.

“Good. You need to keep quiet about all this until you know more, until you have some idea of what you’re up against. It could be nothing more than bachelor-party high jinks. I’ve seen you at work, Joanna. When your department is involved in a case, you don’t let people go running to the newspapers or radio stations and leaking information so the public ends up knowing every single thing about what’s going on in any given investigation. You keep it quiet until you have all your ducks in a row. Right?”

Joanna said nothing.

“And that’s what I’m suggesting you do here, as well,” Mari-anne said. “Keep it quiet. Don’t tell anyone. Not Jenny, not your mother, not the people you work with—not until you have a better idea of what’s really going on. You owe it to yourself, Joanna, and you certainly owe that much to Butch.”

“But—”

“Let me finish,” Marianne said. “Since Butch came to town, Jeff and I have come to care about him almost like a brother. We feel as close to him as we used to feel to Andy. I also know that he’s made a huge difference in your life, and in Jenny’s, too. I don’t want you to throw all that away. I don’t want you to lose this sec-ond chance at happiness over something that may not be that important.”

Joanna was suddenly furious. “You’re saying Butch can do any-thing he wants—that he can go out with another woman and it doesn’t matter?”

“If something happened between him and this woman, this Lila, then of course it matters. But it’s possible that absolutely nothing happened. Before you write him off, you need to know exactly what went on.”

“You mean, I should ask him and then I should just take his word for it?” Joanna demanded. “If he tells me nothing happened, I’m supposed tobelieve him? He was out all night long, Mari. I don’t think I can ever trust him again. I don’t think I can believe a word he says.”

“In my experience,” Marianne said, “there are two sides to every story. Before you go blasting your point of view to the universe, maybe you should have some idea about what’s going on on Butch’s side of the fence. He’s been used to running his own life, Joanna. Used to calling the shots. Now he’s in a position where he often has to play second fiddle. That’s not easy. Ask Jell about It sometime. Things were rough that first year we were married, when I was try ing to be both a new bride and a new minister all at the same tin me. If fact, there were times when I didn’t think we’d make it.”

Joanna was stunned. “You and Jeff?” she asked.

“Yes, Jeff and I,” Marianne returned.

“But you never mentioned it. You never told me.”

“Because we worked it out, Joanna,” Marianne said. “We worked it out between us. Believe me,
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it would have been a whole lot harder if the whole world had known about it.”