Mel Stevenson turned away from the hall, and his eyes were pleading. “I guess it would be easier if I just said this was none of my business,” he said. “But it is my business. Grace is my daughter, and I don’t want to see her hurt. Or the children, either.”
The man was obviously working up to something, and I said, “Sir, the more we know, the easier it will be for everyone.”
Stevenson sighed and held his hand to his forehead. “This is easy when it’s someone else.”
“Sure.”
With a final rub of his head, he stepped up close and reached out a hand, letting it rest on my right shoulder. “You have children, don’t you?”
“Yes.”
“Any teens?”
I smiled. “Grandchildren. My oldest daughter is forty-seven next month.”
“Then you understand just a little of all this.” He dropped his hand. “My granddaughter is pregnant, Sheriff.” He held up a hand when he saw the puzzled look on my face. “I know, I know. In this day and age, it happens all the time. But that doesn’t make it any less crushing. It’s always easy to tsk-tsk when it’s someone else’s youngster-because obviously they didn’t do an adequate job as parents.” He smiled thinly. “So there you are. That’s what Jim and Grace were arguing about. I’m sure it was quite a war. I’m glad I didn’t have to hear it.”
He walked off into the middle of the living room and stopped, facing the fireplace. “I really liked Jim Sisson,” he said softly. “He was always such a gentleman around the wife and me.”
I glanced at Linda and nodded at the door. She reached out for the door handle, and the sound of the latch brought Stevenson back to the present. “Do me a favor,” I said. “Do what you can to keep Grace here. She’s talking about going back to Posadas, and she’s in no mental condition to be doing that. If she takes off anyway, give me a call right away.” I pulled a business card out of my shirt pocket and extended it to him. “That way, we can have an officer keep her in sight. Keep her out of trouble, maybe.”
He nodded and took the card. “What a mess,” he muttered.
“And it wouldn’t hurt if she did give her family lawyer a call, Reverend. She’s going to be needing legal advice about a whole slew of things anyway.”
Stevenson frowned and looked sideways at me. “Do you believe she’s involved in some way, Sheriff?”
“I don’t know,” I replied, and it was obvious that wasn’t the answer Stevenson wanted to hear.
He followed me out the door. The evening was still hot, even with the sun ducking behind the houses across the street.
I stopped at the edge of the lawn, looking at the Sisson’s Suburban. “Did you drive up to Posadas to pick up Grace and the kids, or did she drive them down?”
Stevenson shook his head. “One of the neighbors brought them down. I believe one of them drove the Suburban and the other followed in their own car. I appreciated what they did, but I don’t even remember who it was now. Things were so…” He twisted his hand in a whirlwind motion.
“For sure,” I said, “Reverend, thanks a lot. You call me, now, if she does something foolish.”
He nodded wearily and went back inside.
“Wow,” Linda Real said as we settled into 310. I lowered the window while the air conditioning spooled into action. “Wow,” she said again.
“Such fun, eh?” I said.
“She is a real first-class, certified A-number-one witch.” Linda looked over at me in amazement.
“And a great job you did at keeping a straight face,” I added, and pulled 310 into gear.
“Do you think she’s going to drive back?”
“Yes. For one thing, it’s going to take her about fifty years to forgive her father for spilling the beans.”
I drove round the block, took the next two intersections to the left, and pulled up beside the marked Las Cruces police cruiser parked at 2190 Vista del Campo. An officer who made Thomas Pasquale look like a middle-aged veteran peered across at me.
“Officer, I’m Sheriff Gastner from Posadas.”
“Yes, sir,” he said eagerly. “I called in when you arrived, and the sergeant said that you and the detective were here.”
I nodded and gestured at the Suburban down the block. “We’ve got a distraught woman, Officer. She says that she’s going to drive back to Posadas tonight, and she’s about the last person who should be on the highway. The whole mess is a real time bomb. Maybe they’ll sort it all out, I don’t know. Just keep a close watch. If she takes off, I’d appreciate knowing it. And I’d appreciate it if you’d give her a close escort and then hand her over to the state police. Make sure that she can see you. Maybe that will help her pay attention.”
“Yes, sir.”
I nodded. “Good man. And, Officer…kid gloves, all right? That’s a pretty bruised family.”
“Yes, sir.”
I gave him an informal salute and we drove up the street. We passed 2121, and I was glad that I wasn’t spending my evening in that place.
“It’ll be interesting to know who drove her down here,” Linda Real murmured as we drove by the house, and I looked at her in surprise. “She was certainly ready to tell all the neighbors to go to hell. But obviously there’s someone looking out for her.”
I grinned. “The officer was right about you,” I said.
“Sir?” Linda said, but I decided to let her wonder about it.
Chapter Eighteen
While Linda and I drove back toward Posadas, Grace Sisson’s Suburban didn’t move from her father’s driveway in Las Cruces. I could imagine the storm clouds that hung inside that house-and I was sure that matters wouldn’t improve when Marjorie, the eldest daughter, arrived home. The raw wounds would be scratched again, with another dose of advice and another round of slammed doors and things said that would be regretted later.
For now, Grace Sisson’s problems with her wayward daughter weren’t my concern-except that it didn’t take a Ph.D. in family counseling to imagine what spark had touched off the day-long war at the Sisson household. I guessed that Jim Sisson had been the last to find out about Jennifer, and when he had, he’d blown his top.
“No wonder Jim wasn’t paying attention where he drove that front loader,” I said to Linda. “If he was fuming all day long about Jennifer, it’s anybody’s guess what kind of plumbing job Bucky Randall was getting.”
Linda was driving-for one thing, she talked a little less when she was behind the wheel. But more important, even with just one eye, her night vision was a thousand percent better than mine, especially when the headlights bounced off the intermittent sheen of water left on the asphalt by the storm.
“Maybe Jennifer’s boyfriend,” Linda mused.
“Maybe her boyfriend what?”
“Maybe he came over to talk with Jim Sisson and the two of them argued.”
“I find that hard to imagine,” I said. “First of all, the usual behavior of the young male is to either deny responsibility or run and hide. No kid is going to seek out an enraged dad late at night to try and smooth things over.”
“Assuming it was a kid,” Linda said.
“Assuming that, yes. And assuming that Jim’s death was linked to his daughter’s entanglements in the first place. I can imagine him wanting to thrash the kid involved with his daughter, and maybe he did take a swing. And maybe the kid swung back. Who the hell knows? But the events that followed don’t fit that picture.” I sighed.
“What a goddam mess. What keeps me thinking that Jim Sisson’s death is somehow linked to his daughter’s love life is Grace Sisson’s attitude. If she’s heartbroken about losing her husband, the heartbreak hasn’t bubbled to the surface yet. She’s clearly in a rage about her pregnant daughter. That’s all she’s thinking about.”
Linda shrugged. “But isn’t that sort of thing always supposed to happen to someone else’s kid, not your own? I can imagine that when Jennifer popped the news, it stopped the Sissons’ world from turning for a while.” She glanced over at me. “I’m surprised that the girl even said anything, knowing what her mom’s reaction was bound to be.”