“Ms. MacFerson, please,” she said reassuringly. “You’re not under arrest. Don’t you remember anything?”
“I remember going to Connie’s house and waiting for that son of a bitch of a brother-in-law of mine. I listened to the messages, talked to Ken Wilson, and after that . . . nothing.” She stopped struggling with the door and turned to look at Joanna. “Wait a minute. Is this about Connie?”
Joanna’s mind reeled. She had gone through Constance Haskell’s next-of-kin notification once, but it evidently hadn’t taken. Maggie MacFerson remembered none of it. Joanna had heard of alcoholic blackouts, but this was the first time she had ever dealt with someone who had been functioning in one. Maggie MacFerson may have been able to walk and talk. She had seemed aware of what was going on around her, kit apparently her brain had been switched off. For all she remembered, Maggie might as well have been asleep.
Joanna took a deep breath. “I’m afraid I have some bad news for you,” she said. “A woman’s body was found in Apache Pass last night. This morning my officers found a broken medical identification bracelet nearby, a bracelet with your sister’s name and address on it. I came by your sister’s house this afternoon and found you there. I told you what had happened, and you agreed to come with me to identify your sister’s body. That’s what we’re doing now. We’re on our way to Bisbee.”
Maggie turned and stared at Joanna, who waited for an outburst that never came.
“Then what are we doing sitting here talking about it?” Maggie demanded at last. “Let’s get this show on the road.”
Joanna nodded. Checking in the mirror for a break in traffic, she eased the idling Crown Victoria back onto the roadway. Once they reached highway speed, she switched off the flashing lights.
“You still haven’t told me what happened to my hands,” Maggie said. “Did I get in a fight and punch somebody’s lights out?”
“You broke a glass,” Joanna told her. “A crystal glass. The ER folks at Saint Joe’s took out as much glass as they could find and stitched up the worst of the cuts. You’re supposed to go see your own doctor next week to have the bandages and stitches removed. The doctor also said there’s a good chance he may have missed some of the glass. The pieces were small and difficult to see.” Joanna paused. “How are you feeling?” she added.
“Hungover as hell,” Maggie admitted. “But I’ve had worse. I’m thirsty. My mouth tastes like the bottom of a birdcage. Can’t we stop and get something to drink?”
“As in a soda?” Joanna asked. “Or as in something stronger?”
“A Coke will be tine,” Maggie MacFerson said. “Hell, I’d even drink straight water if I had to.” And then, after all that, she started to cry.
CHAPTER SIX
After stopping at a Burger King long enough to get a pair of Cokes, Joanna once again headed down the freeway. then Maggie MacFerson had stopped weeping. She sat up straight and wiped her nose on the back of one of her bandaged hands and sipped her soda through a straw.
“I’m sure you told me all of this before,” she said, stifling a hiccup, “but I don’t remember any of it. Tell me again, please. From the beginning.”
Joanna did. When she finished, Maggie continued to stare out through the windshield in utter silence. “You said earlier you thought your brother-in-law was responsible,” Joanna added at last. “Any particular reason?”
“Connie met Ron Haskell during our mother’s final illness,” Maggie answered quietly. “He was a CPA working for the accounting firm that handled our parents’ affairs, Peabody and Peabody. Connie had Mother’s power of attorney so she could handle finances, pay bills and all that. Ron Haskell knew everything about Mother’s affairs, right down to the last penny. I think he saw that my sister was a vulnerable old maid who would eventually be well-to-do. He set out on a single-minded quest to grab Connie’s half of our mother’s estate. I don’t know what the hell Ron did with the money, but according to Ken Wilson, it’s gone. Ron closed all the accounts and then disappeared. If Connie’s dead, it’s probably a good thing. Finding out that Ron had stolen the money would have killed her. For her, being dead is probably preferable to being betrayed, cast off, and dirt-poor besides, or, even worse, having to come crawling to me for help.”
“At the house, you said something about a message from your sister’s husband, one that was on the machine. Something about him wanting to meet your sister in paradise.”
Maggie nodded. “Right,” she said. “Something like that. I was off work. I’m afraid I’d already had a couple of drinks before I got there. Ron said, ‘Meet me in paradise. Join me in paradise.’ Something like that. I don’t remember exactly, but it sounded to me like he meant for her to be dead. Maybe he was planning one of those homicide/suicide stunts. Connie was so stuck on the guy that she would have done whatever he asked, even if it killed her.”
After that, it was painfully quiet in the car. The sun had set completely. Once they exited the freeway at Benson, traffic grew sparse. “I wish I still smoked,” Maggie said. “I could sure use a cigarette about now, and something a whole lot stronger than soda.”
“Sorry about that,” Joanna said. “Cop cars aren’t meant to be cocktail lounges.”
“I suppose not,” Maggie said.
When they came through the tunnel at the top of the Divide, Joanna was surprised to see the flashing glow of emergency lights just to the right of the highway. They danced and flickered off the steep mountainsides, making the whole canyon look as it had had caught fire. From the number of lights visible, there were clearly lots of emergency vehicles at the scene. Something big had happened at the top end of Old Bisbee. Joanna reached over and switched on her radio.
“Hey, Tica,” she said, when Tica Romero, the night shift dispatcher, came on the air. “Any idea what’s happening at the upper end of Tombstone Canyon?”
“That would be the Department of Public Safety’s Haz-Mat team,” Tica advised her. “Bisbee PD called DPS in to clean up a meth lab they found in a house just above the highway. Since it’s inside the city limits and not our jurisdiction, I didn’t bother with all the details. Want me to find out for you?”
“No, never mind,” Joanna told her. “I have a possible relative of the presumed Apache Pass victim with me. We’re meeting with Doc Winfield for an ID. When we finish with that, I’ll most likely go back to Phoenix.”
“So Chief Deputy Montoya is still in charge?” Tica asked.
“That’s right. Ever since Dick Voland left, Frank’s been itching to run an investigation. Looks to me like he’s doing a good job of it.”
Minutes later, Joanna wheeled the Civvie in under the portico of the office of the Cochise County Medical Examiner. The building, a former grocery store turned mortuary turned morgue, still bore a strong resemblance to its short-lived and unsuccessful mortuary incarnation, a connection Maggie recognized at once.
“They’ve already sent Connie to a funeral home?” she asked. “You told me we were going to the morgue.”
“This is the morgue. It used to be a funeral home,” Joanna explained, pulling in and parking under the covered driveway. “A company called Dearest Departures went out of business several years ago. Some bright-eyed county bureaucrat, intent on saving the local taxpayers a bundle of money, bought the building out of bankruptcy and remodeled it into a new facility for our incoming medical examiner. His name is George Winfield, by the way,” she added. “Dr. George Winfield.”