“Will Mrs. Matthews have to go to jail even if Dora is dead?”
“If she’s convicted of running a meth lab,” Joanna conceded.
Heaving a sigh, Jenny flopped back over on her side, signaling that the conversation was over. “Come on, Jenny. We probably shouldn’t talk about this anymore tonight. Let’s go out to the kitchen. Butch is making omelettes.”
“I’m not hungry,” Jenny said.
I’m not now, either, Joanna thought. “Well, good night then.”
“Night.”
Joanna returned to the kitchen. Butch looked up from the stove where he was about to flip an omelette. “No luck?” he said. “None.”
“You look pretty down.”
Joanna nodded. “I talked to Connie Haskell’s husband. I don’t think he did it.”
“Why not?”
“I can’t be absolutely sure because he doesn’t have a real alibi. He was off away from everyone else in an isolation cabin that’s Pathway to Paradise’s version of solitary confinement. He was there from Thursday morning on. Still, Butch, you should have seen how he looked when we drove up. He was expecting his wife to get out of the car. He wasn’t expecting me. He’d have had to be an Academy Award–winning actor to fake the disappointment I saw on his face.”
“I see what you mean,” Butch agreed. “If he’d killed her, he wouldn’t have been expecting her to show up.”
“My point exactly”
“But what if he is that good an actor?” Butch said after a moment of reflection. “It’s possible, you know.”
Joanna nodded. “You’re right. It is possible, but he also volunteered to come into the department tomorrow and let us take DNA samples. Innocent people volunteer samples. Guilty ones demand lawyers and court orders.”
Butch set Joanna’s plate in front of her and then sat down across the table from her. “What you’re really saying is, you don’t have the foggiest idea who the killer is and you’re afraid Jenny may still be a target.”
“Exactly,” Joanna said.
The omelette was good, but Joanna didn’t do much justice to it. The table was cleared and they were on their way to bed when the blinking light on the caller ID screen caught Joanna’s eye. Without taking messages off the machine, she scrolled through the listed numbers. Marianne Maculyea had called several times, as had Joanna’s mother, Eleanor. There were also several calls from penny’s friend Cassie Parks. The contractor who was working with Butch on plans for the new house had called once, as had Arturo Ortiz, Yolanda Cañedo’s father. Two of the calls were designated caller 11)–blocked. The only remaining listed name and number were totally unknown to Joanna—a Richard Bernard. He had called on Saturday morning at ten-fifteen.
Wondering if Richard Bernard had left a message, Joanna skimmed through the spiral-ringed message log that was kept next to the phone. In Eva’s neat handwriting was a note saying that Marianne Maculyea had called to remind Joanna that she and Butch were scheduled to be greeters at church the following Sunday morning. There was a written message for Butch to call Quentin Branch, the contractor on their new house. A separate note told Jenny to call Cassie, but there was nothing at all from a Richard Bernard.
Shrugging, Joanna picked up the phone. The broken beeping of the dial tone told her there were messages waiting in the voice-mail system—another one from Cassie to Jenny and one from Eleanor Lathrop Winfield. Again there was nothing at all from Richard Bernard. By then it was too late for Jenny to return Cassie’s call, and Joanna wasn’t particularly eager to call Eleanor back. Like Jenny, Joanna remained convinced that Grandma Lathrop’s actions had contributed to Dora Matthews’s death. Talking to Eleanor was something Joanna was willing to postpone indefinitely.
Putting down the phone, Joanna was halfway to the door when the telephone rang. Joanna checked caller ID before answering. When she saw her mother’s number listed, Joanna almost didn’t pick up the receiver, but then she thought better of it. Might as well get it over with, she told herself.
To her relief, she heard George Winfield’s voice on the phone rather than her mother’s. “So you are home!” he said.
“Yes,” Joanna told him.
“How’s Jenny?” George asked.
“She’s taking Dora’s death pretty hard,” Joanna said.
“So’s Ellie,” George said. “She’s under the impression that it’s all her fault Dora Matthews is dead—that if she hadn’t interfered by calling Child Protective Services, Dora would still be alive.”
This was news. For as long as Joanna could remember, Eleanor Lathrop had made a career of dishing out blame without ever accepting any of it herself. It was one thing for Joanna and Jenny to think Eleanor had overstepped the bounds as far as Dora Matthews was concerned. It was unheard of for Eleanor herself to say so.
“I tried telling her that wasn’t true,” George continued, “but it was like talking to a wall. She wasn’t having any of it. In tact, she took a sleeping pill a little while ago and went to bed. Her going to bed this early is worrisome. I don’t think I’ve ever seen her so upset. That’s why I’m calling, Joanna. At least it’s one of the reasons. I’m hoping you’ll find time tomorrow to talk to Ellie. Maybe you’ll be able to make her see reason.”
Fat chance, Joanna thought. For once in our lives, it sounds as though Eleanor and I are in total agreement. “I’ll talk to her” was all she said. “Good.”
Joanna expected George Winfield to sign off. Instead, he launched into another topic. “I know it’s late, and this information will be at your office tomorrow morning in my official autopsy report. But I thought, because of Jenny’s involvement, you’d want to know some of this now. Dora Matthews was pregnant when she died, Joanna. And all those broken bones you saw, were broken postmortem.”
“You’re saying she was dead before she was hit by the car?”
“That’s right. I’m calling the actual cause of death asphyxiation by means of suffocation.”
“And she was pregnant?”
“At least three months along,” George replied.
‘‘But she was only thirteen years old, for God’s sake,” Joanna objected. “Still a child! How could such a thing happen?”
George sighed. “The usual way, I’m sure,” he said. “And that’s what’s happening these days—children having children. Only, in this case, neither child lived.”
“Will we be able to tell who the father is?”
“Sure, if we find him,” George replied. “I saved enough DNA material from the embryo so we can get a match if we need to. Sorry to drop it on you like this, Joanna, but under the circumstances I thought you’d want some time to think this over before tomorrow morning when you’re reading the autopsy report.”
Joanna closed her eyes as she tried to assimilate the information. “So whoever killed Dora just left her body lying in the middle of the road for someone else to hit?”
“I didn’t say she was run over,” George corrected. “And she wasn’t. She was hit by a moving vehicle while she was fully upright. But she wasn’t standing upright under her own power. There were some bits of glass and plastic found on her clothing. There was also a whole collection of black, orange, yellow, and white paint chips on her body and what looks like traces of polypropylene fiber embedded in the flesh of both wrists. I believe her body was tied to something—a Department of Transportation sawhorse, maybe—while the vehicle crashed into her. The lack of bleeding and bruising from those impact wounds would indicate that she was already dead at that point.”
“Whoever did it wanted us to believe Dora Matthews was the victim of an accidental hit-and-run,” Joanna surmised.
“Correct. And since there’s no evidence of a struggle or any defensive wounds, Dora may even have been sedated at the time of suffocation. I’m doing toxicology tests.”