“That’s ridiculous. I’m telling you she’s fine.”
Isabel Gonzales appeared behind Amy Baxter in the corridor. “The phone’s for you, Mr. Rogers,” she said. “Burton Kimball.”
Amy nodded to Rex. “You take care of that; I’ll handle this.”
Rex Rogers dodged out of the room, leaving the three women there together. For some time, the only sound was the creaking of Holly’s rocker on the polished hardwood floor.
“Is she being held here against her will?” Joanna asked suddenly.
“Against her will? Of course not! What kind of preposterous idea is that?”
Joanna bent her head close to Holly’s. “Look at your hands,” she said kindly. “You’ve hurt your self. Don’t you think you ought to see a doctor about them?”
She held Holly’s limp hands up in the air. In the dim light, Holly examined them as though they were strange appendages having nothing at all to do with her own body.
“How did I hurt my hands, Amy?” Holly asked in a strangely disembodied voice. “Do you know?”
“You fell, Holly,” Amy answered firmly. “You fell down outside, just a little while ago.”
“Why can’t I remember then?” Holly asked, still studying her hands. “It’s weird not to be able to remember.”
“Maybe you hit your head when you fell, and that’s why you can’t remember,” Joanna suggested. “The hospital is only a few blocks away. It wouldn’t be any trouble at all for me to take you there and have a doctor take a look at you.”
“Oh, go if you want to,” Amy said with sudden irritation. “I won’t stand in your way.”
“No,” Holly said, doubtfully at first but then with stronger conviction. “I think I’m okay. It’s okay. I’ll just stay here.”
Amy Baxter smiled at Joanna in triumph. “See there?” she said.
Joanna reached in the pocket of her blazer and located a business card, one of her old ones from the Davis Insurance Agency. On the back of it, she scrawled her home phone number as well as the word “sheriff.”
“Feel free to call me anytime,” she said.
Holly Patterson took the card but dropped it into her lap without even glancing at it.
“Is that all, Sheriff Brady?” Amy Baxter prompted.
Joanna nodded. “Yes,” she said. “For the time being.”
“Good,” Amy said, settling onto the edge of Holly’s bed. “Mrs. Gonzales can show you out.”
Isabel, waiting in the hall, led the way down the stairs. “What’s going on up there?” Joanna asked.
The Hispanic woman shook her head. “I don’t know. If it had been up to me, I would have let her go. She only wanted to see what was up on the dump. She’s been sitting in her room staring at it and worrying herself sick about it for days. She was already that far. What would it have hurt to let her go the rest of the way?”
“Holly wanted to see what was on top of the dump?” Joanna asked. “Why?”
“Who knows? She keeps on asking me about it. What’s up there? What’s it like? I told her I didn’t know.”
“But she climbed up it?”
“Yes.”
By then they were outside the house. “Where?”
Isabel walked far enough to see the dump around the corner of the house. “There,” she said, pointing. “She was almost up at the top, just above that little mesquite halfway up.”
Joanna shaded her eyes, but she saw nothing.
The dump was a dangerous and barren wasteland that had barely changed for as long as she could remember. Why would Holly Patterson want to climb it?
“What’s wrong with her, Isabel?” Joanna asked.
Isabel Gonzales shook her head. “She’s been bad all along, ever since she’s been here; not eating very much; barely sleeping. All she does is sit in that chair of hers, rocking and rocking. But she’s been worse these last few days, ever since her dad came to see her.”
“Harold Patterson came here?” Joanna demanded. “When?”
“Tuesday afternoon,” Isabel answered. “He got here just before I left to go vote.”
Joanna instantly recognized the discrepancy.
Holly’s lawyer had claimed she tried to kill Burton because he had talked Harold out of settling and out of keeping the scheduled appointment with Holly. But the old man had kept that appointment after all.
“Did Ernie Carpenter ever talk to you about that? Does he know Harold Patterson stopped by here that day?”
“Nobody’s talked to me about it at all.”
He should have, Joanna thought. “But go on with your story,” she said.
“Well, this morning I thought things were better. Miss Patterson even came down to the kitchen for coffee. But as soon as she saw the paper, she fell all to pieces. I thought for a minute she was having a heart attack. It scared me to death. You saw her. Now she’s back to rocking again.”
“You said something about a paper,” Joanna said. “What paper?”
“Today’s Bisbee Bee,” Isabel answered.
“What happened then?”
Isabel shrugged. “She looked at the paper, and then she went all weird. After a minute, she went running back upstairs. I thought she was fine. I went back to work. A few minutes later, Mr. Rogers and Miss Baxter came back from lunch. I told Miss Baxter what happened. She went up to talk to Miss Patterson. A few minutes later, I heard the commotion outside. I saw it all from the kitchen window. Miss Patterson was up on the dump, and Miss Baxter was trying to get her to come down.
That’s when she fell. I was afraid she’d break her neck, but I guess she only skinned her hands.”
“Where exactly did she fall?”
“When she was climbing back down the dump. A rock must have slipped out from under her foot.”
“She fell on the dump, not the terraces?”
“She wasn’t anywhere near the terraces.”
Joanna felt the skin prickle on the back of her neck. For a long moment, she stood looking at the somber brown facade of Cosa Viejo. Linda Kimball was right. Something was definitely wrong inside those brown stuccoed walls, and Holly Patterson was in danger.
“Isabel,” Joanna said, “I need to drive out of here because they’re expecting me to leave. But if I came back on foot, could you let me in and get me up to Holly’s room without anyone seeing me?”
“Sure,” Isabel answered. “Why don’t you park down by my house? Take that little dirt road just outside the gate. It goes around the wall to the back. Park down there and then come up the stairs through the terraces. That’s the way I come to work. I’ll meet you at the basement door and take you up the inside back stairway.”
Joanna nodded. “Good,” she said. “I’ll be right back. Don’t tell anyone I’m coming.”
“Oh, no,” Isabel Gonzales agreed. “I wouldn’t think of it.”
By THE time Joanna parked the Blazer on the far side of the Cosa Viejo caretaker’s cottage, she had reached only one firm decision-she would attempt to lure Holly Patterson out of the house so she could talk to her. If Holly was in mortal danger, as she had hinted to Linda Kimball, then the source of that danger had to be the people who were there in the house with her.
Other than the fact they were liars, Joanna had no other concrete charges to lay at the door of either Amy Baxter or Rex Rogers, but Rex’s lie about Holly falling off the terrace had been a direct falsehood.
Amy’s was more subtle. She had simply gone along with the idea that Harold Patterson had never showed up for his scheduled appointment with Holly when in fact he had. Both times. Holly’s attempt at vehicular manslaughter-regardless of whether or not the city of Bisbee called it negligent driving-had been based on that erroneous premise, Holly’s mistaken belief that her father had once again let her down.
Halfway up the cracked flagstone steps that led through the terraced backyard, Joanna pulled off her pumps and stuck them in the pockets of her blazer. Within three steps, she felt the distinctive crackle of a run that started at the back of her heel and stopped somewhere midthigh. So much for the brand-new pair of panty hose she had put on that morning.