“I don’t think anything of the kind,” Eleanor returned. “And I don’t care if Dora’s grandparents were pillars of the Presbyterian Church up in Old Bisbee. The daughter and granddaughter are totally out of control. A child like that shouldn’t be associating with our sweet little Jenny and leading her astray. You don’t put a good apple in with a bunch of bad ones in order to make the bad ones better, now do you? Life doesn’t work that way.”
As Eleanor continued to rail about the cigarettes, Joanna’s own temper began to rise. “Mother,” she said, trying to sound unflappable. “There’s no use trying to blame the whole thing on Dora Matthews. Jenny has some culpability in this situation, too. Dora didn’t exactly force Jenny to take that cigarette. Dora offered it, and Jenny took it of her own volition. She told me that herself.”
“But the point is, Dora should never have had cigarettes at a Girl Scout camp-out in the first place,” Eleanor continued. “That isn’t the way Girl Scouts worked when I used to be involved. What kind of a soft-headed leader is Faye Lambert anyway?”
“She happens to be the only person who stepped up and volunteered for the job,” Joanna returned. “She’s the one person in town who was willing to say she’d take over the troop when it was about to be dissolved for lack of a leader, remember? She’s also someone who’s volunteering because she thinks Girl Scouting is important and not because she happens to have a girl of her own in the troop.”
“That’s my point exactly,” Eleanor said. “Faye Lambert doesn’t have a daughter. As a matter of fact, she doesn’t have any children at all. How much can she possibly know about girls Jenny’s age? What makes her think she’s qualified?”
74
I’/\It/U )I’.1 I ( As usual when dealing with I{Iearlor, Joanna Zell iici temper I is
ing. On occasions like this it seemed as though Eleanor never heard a word Joanna said.
“Mother,” Joanna countered, “if you’re talking about parenting skills here, let’s put the blame where it really belongs--on me. I’m where you should be pointing the finger. IfJenny and Dora are 0111 of line, haul me on the carpet, and Dora’s mother, too. But it’s not Faye Lambert’s fault that our children misbehaved any more than it’s yours or Eva Lou’s.”
“I should hope not!” Eleanor sniffed. “Faye Lambert isn’t the only one I’m ticked off at either,” she continued. “I’m disgusted with George, too. He knew all about this last night—knew that Jenny was in some kind of trouble. He should have told me about it at the time and had me go along out to pick those girls up instead of calling on Jim Bob and Eva Lou. I can tell you for sure, if I’d been the one in charge, a girl like Dora Matthews would never have spent the night at High Lonesome Ranch!”
Luckily for her you weren’t in charge, Joanna thought. “How did you find out about it then?” Joanna asked mildly.
“Jenny called a few minutes ago,” Eleanor said. “I’m sure Eva Lou made her call. Otherwise I wouldn’t have known a thing about it. All I can say is, I certainly hope you’re coming home today to get this mess straightened out.”
That, of course, had been Joanna’s intention—to drop Butch off in Peoria and head for Bisbee, but now, with her mother issuing orders, Joanna’s first instinct was to balk. “Now that the phone is working, I’ll be talking to the department and to both Jenny and Eva Lou before I make any decisions,” Joanna said.
Across the car, Butch Dixon smiled tolerantly to himself and shook his head. He was growing accustomed to the ongoing battles waged between his new wife and her overbearing mother.
“Aren’t you even concerned about this?” Eleanor continued. “It doesn’t sound like it. Here’s your own daughter spending time with the wrong kinds of friends and most likely headed for trouble, but you’re totally blasé. I don’t think you’re even worried about it.”
“Of course I’m worried,” Joanna began. “It’s just ...” Then, as though she’d been blindsided, Joanna had an inkling of what was going on with her daughter. When Jenny had agreed to sneak away after lights-out and when she’d tried that fateful cigarette, she had simply been trying to fit in—to be one of the regular kids. The same thing had happened to Joanna when she herself had been Jenny’s age and when Joanna’s own father, former copper miner and deputy sheriff, D. H. Lathrop, had been elected sheriff of Cochise County.
In the tight-knit and socially stratified community of Bisbee, where what your father did dictated your social milieu, Big Hank Lathrop’s change of job and elevation to the office of sheriff had dropped Joanna out of her old familiar social context and into another—one in which she hadn’t been especially welcome. Her former friends felt she was too stuck-up to play with them, while kids with white-collar parents didn’t think she was good enough to be included in their activities and cliques. Some of her discipline troubles at school—like the fierce fistfight that had cemented her lifelong friendship with Marianne Maculyea—grew out of Joanna’s efforts to fit in, of trying to find a place where she would be accepted.
Before Eleanor could say anything more, the phone beeped in her hand. “Look, Mom,” Joanna said, knowing Homicide Detective Ernie Carpenter was on the line. “One of my detectives is trying to reach me. I have to hang up now.”
“Tell me one thing,” Eleanor demanded. “Are you coming home today or not?”
“I’ll have to call you back on that,” Joanna replied, ending the call. After dealing with Eleanor, getting on board a homicide investigation sounded like a relief.
“Good morning, Ernie,” Joanna said. “What’s up?”
“I’m working the Jane Doe from Apache Pass.”
“What about her?”
“Doc Winfield says it looks like she’s been dead for a day or two. He thinks what killed her is blunt-force trauma. He’ll know more about that when he does the autopsy this morning. But believe me, Sheriff Brady, there’s a lot more to it than just being whacked over the head. The woman was tortured before she died. It was ugly—really ugly.”
Joanna closed her eyes and wondered how much of that Jenny and Dora Matthews had seen and how much of it they would carry with them, waking and sleeping, for the rest of their lives.
Meanwhile, Ernie continued. “We’ve had a crime scene team out there since first light this morning, and that’s why I’m calling you. They may have found something important. It’s one of those medical ID warning bracelets that says no penicillin and no morphine. It gives a name and address in Phoenix. One of the links was broken, so there’s no way to tell for certain whether or not it belonged to our victim, but I think the odds are good that it did because it doesn’t look like it’s been out baking in the weather tin very long. Frank tells me you’re going to be in Phoenix today. I was wondering if you’d be interested in trying to track down this address and see if you can find someone named Constance Marie Haskell. Otherwise, either Jaime or I will have to do it.”
Joanna’s homicide detective division consisted of two officers—Ernie Carpenter and Detective Jaime Carbajal. It was silly for one or the other of them to make a seven-hour round-trip drive to and from Phoenix in order to do something Joanna could handle without having to go more than a few miles out of her way.
“Do you have an address and phone number?” she asked. Motioning to the notepad on her dashboard, Joanna pantomimed to Butch that she needed him to write something down. Ernie read off the name from the bracelet as well as the phone number and an address on Southeast Encanto Drive. Joanna repeated the information for Butch’s benefit so he could jot it down.