Judgment Call
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“No,” Marty said. “What do you think I am, some kind of snitch?”
“There you are,” Joanna said agreeably. “You didn’t rat out your pals, and you’re the one who got suspended. Fair enough. You pays your money and you takes your choice. Still, does a ten-day suspension warrant being glad someone is dead?”
“All we were doing here was talking, and just because I said it doesn’t mean I meant it,” Marty muttered. “Besides, all any of us know about what happened is what we saw in the picture—just her body lying there.”
The intervening conversation had given Joanna a chance to get a grip on herself. It didn’t matter whose Facebook site had the photo on it; Joanna knew the origin of the original. It had to have come from either the killer or Jenny. Unfortunately, between those two options, Jennifer Ann Brady as the source of the photo seemed the more likely, although Joanna wasn’t aware that her daughter even had a Facebook page.
“Tell me about Facebook,” she said. “Where is that photo posted? Whose account?”
“We don’t have to tell you that,” Marty Pembroke replied. “Isn’t that like freedom of speech or something?”
“If you won’t tell her, I will,” Dena said. Obviously Marty’s reluctance to be a snitch didn’t extend to Dena. “It’s Anne Marie Mayfield’s page. She’s the one who posted it. She didn’t like Ms. Highsmith, either. Neither did I.”
“What was your beef with her?” Joanna asked.
“She sent us both home to change clothes,” Dena replied. “She said Anne Marie’s skirt was too short, and my neckline was too low. It’s like she turned into the fashion police or something. She probably would have been happier if we’d all had to wear uniforms to school.”
“Sounds to me like she was doing her job,” Joanna said.
The four kids in the booth, exchanging a set of disparaging looks, remained duly unimpressed.
With the conversation seemingly at an end, Joanna pulled out a pen and a notebook that she opened to a fresh page. “I’ll need your names and phone numbers,” she said.
Dena had struck Joanna as being the weakest link, so she handed the writing equipment to her. Without a word, she wrote down the required information and passed it along. Since Dena had complied without objection, so did everyone else.
When they finished and handed the pen and notebook back, Joanna stood up and returned her chair to the other table. Then she reached into her pocket and pulled out a packet of business cards.
“You’re all welcome to go now,” she said, passing one card to each of the young people in the booth. “You should expect to hear from one of my investigators sometime in the very near future, and if you happen to stumble across any information that might be helpful, please feel free to call.”
As Joanna turned away from the booth, the idea that any of them would call her for any reason at all seemed more than unlikely.
Again she headed for the corner booth. From the sloppy debris field littering the table, Joanna gathered that lunch was mostly over. As she walked up, Butch looked at her and grinned.
“Without that layer of red dust, you clean up very well,” he told her, “but is something wrong? You look upset.”
“Yes, something’s wrong,” Joanna answered stiffly. “I am upset, and I’m here to tell you, Jennifer Ann Brady is in deep caca!”
“What’s caca?” Dennis asked, smiling up at his mother over a last fistful of taco.
“Mommy will tell you later,” Butch assured their son.
Joanna knew she’d just been thrown under the bus. Since she was the one who had used the term, that was only fair.
“What did Jenny do?” Butch asked.
Joanna shook her head. “I’d better not talk about it right now. Obviously, little pitchers have big ears. Am I too late for lunch?”
Butch moved over far enough so Joanna could sit down next to him. He passed her a glass of iced tea. “This is yours,” he said. “Your chimichanga is ready, but I told Daisy to keep it under the salamander until you got here. She’ll bring it out in a minute.”
“After we have our ice cream, we’re going to the park,” Jeff said. “Can you come, too?”
“No,” Joanna told him. “I have to go to work.”
Daisy Maxwell arrived at the table, personally delivering a platter with Joanna’s steaming chimichanga on it. Daisy set the plate down in front of Joanna and then started away from the table without saying a word. Her customary smile was missing in action. Seams of worry lined her face.
“I’m sorry to hear Junior is under the weather,” Joanna said. “Let him know we’re sending him get-well wishes.”
Daisy paused long enough to nod her thanks. “I’ll tell him,” she said, but clearly Joanna’s words had done little to lighten the woman’s burden of worry as she marched back to the kitchen.
Joanna pushed a fork into the chimichanga’s crusty tortilla shell, letting some of the steam leak out into the air. She wished she could let some of the steam out of her head at the same time.
“You heard about Junior, then?” Butch asked.
Joanna was grateful he had changed the subject. “Just what Eva Lou said.”
“I’ve been noticing it for the last few weeks,” Jim Bob told them. “It used to be whenever Eva Lou and I came in, he greeted us by name. Now he acts as though he’s never seen us before. This morning, the people next to us asked him for water. He said he’d bring it. When the guy reminded him—and that’s all he did and not even in a mean way—Junior went ballistic. It was out of character and completely over the top. Daisy had to come out of the kitchen and talk him down. He was so upset that she had to take him back to the kitchen with her. When the next set of customers came in, Eva Lou decided it was time to help out.”
“She’s doing a fine job of it, too,” Jeff Daniels added.
Their waitress came by, checking to see if any additional tacos were needed. Fortunately all three of the kids had reached their taco limit. By the time they were done with their single servings of ice cream, Joanna had gobbled down half of her chimichanga and had the rest of it boxed up to take back to the office.
“In other words,” Butch said, when she stood up to leave, doggie bag in hand, “we shouldn’t be surprised if you’re late for dinner.”
On a day that had started out with a homicide investigation, that was a good guess. Joanna was grateful that he didn’t say anything more than that, something that might have turned their private discussion into fodder for the local gossip mills, which were already operating at full capacity.
She leaned down and gave him a kiss, picking up the collection of checks on the table as she did so and making the move before either Jeff Daniels or Jim Bob could object.
“See you when you get home,” Butch said. “Are you going to stop by the clinic to see Jenny?”
Joanna nodded.
“Don’t be too hard on her,” Butch said. “Whatever it is, she probably didn’t do it on purpose.”
IT TOOK a while to exit the restaurant. Joanna was leaving at the same time the thirty diners from the back room were paying for their lunches, separate checks all around. A man in his sixties, dressed in a red flannel shirt topped by a brown vest, seemed to be in charge. He hustled around trying to hurry the process.
Eva Lou was a willing worker, but that kind of crush was more than she could handle. Eventually Daisy herself had to emerge from the kitchen and take charge of the cash register.
Most of the participants seemed to be much the same age as their leader, fifties to sixties or even older. They were all chatting away, discussing their plans for the afternoon and evening. One of them who seemed to be several decades younger than his fellows gave Joanna a sidelong look through a pair of fashionable wire-framed glasses.
She had been on the receiving end of looks like that numerous times. Usually the look was followed by a rude comment that had something to do with the unlikelihood of women being qualified to serve as sheriffs. She often responded to those folks with a flip comment about getting her badge out of a Cracker Jack box and her uniform from a costume shop. This time, before she had a chance to say a word, he nodded at her and smiled.
“Nice hair,” he said. The man was the last customer in the Plein Air line. He had short reddish hair and a matching well-trimmed beard. His unexpected compliment took Joanna by surprise, and she found herself blushing.
“Thanks,” she said. “Yours isn’t bad, either.”
“Yes,” he agreed with a grin. “Redheads rule.”
He left then, allowing Joanna to step forward with her several checks in hand.
“How was your lunch?” Daisy asked.
“Better than the rest of my morning,” Joanna said. “It sounds like yours wasn’t all smooth sailing, either.”
“I’ve been happy to have the extra business this week,” Daisy said, “but I think that’s what pushed Junior over the edge. He’s used to all the regulars, but couldn’t handle so many strangers.”
“He’s going to be all right, isn’t he?” Joanna asked.
Daisy shook her head. “No,” she said. “I don’t think so. His doctor says he believes it’s early-onset Alzheimer’s. It’s not that unusual in cases like Junior’s.”
Daisy’s eyes filled with sudden tears as she punched the numbers into the register. Joanna wanted to offer some kind of comfort, but as two additional customers stepped into line behind her, she kept quiet rather than risk upsetting Daisy even more.
Back in her dust-covered Yukon, Joanna put the vehicle in gear, backed out of the parking lot, and headed for Dr. Millicent Ross’s veterinary clinic in Bisbee’s Saginaw neighborhood.
In the early fifties, before the opening of Lavender Pit, clusters of frame houses that had dotted the hillsides and canyons of Upper Lowell, Lower Bisbee, and Jiggerville had stood in the way. One at a time, the houses were pried off their foundations, loaded onto axles, and then trucked through town, where they were attached to new foundations that had been dug on lots that had formerly been company-owned land in neighborhoods that would ultimately come to be known as Bakerville and Saginaw.
As far as Joanna was concerned, this was all ancient history—almost as lost on her as the fact that townspeople in Bisbee had once sheltered in mines when Apaches had threatened to ride through town causing trouble. Joanna remembered seeing photos of the houses being moved, but that was all. By now, those houses had been in place on their “new” lots long enough that mature trees and bushes had grown up around them.
On arriving in town Dr. Millicent Ross had bought two adjoining houses in a part of Saginaw that fronted on the highway. She lived in one with her partner, Jeannine Philips, who was head of Joanna’s Animal Control unit. The other housed Millicent’s veterinary clinic as well as a pet boarding and day-care facility. Jenny worked at the boarding area—feeding and walking animals who were either recuperating from procedures or being boarded. Her shifts ran for two hours a day after school, for several hours on Fridays, and sometimes on weekends as well, if working didn’t conflict with a scheduled rodeo. Jenny’s work for the clinic was ostensibly done on a volunteer basis, but Dr. Ross had assured her that once Jenny was ready to go off to college and vet school, there would be a college fund awaiting her in exchange for her hours of work.
Joanna and Butch had regarded this unorthodox arrangement as a win-win situation all the way around. Through her own efforts, Jenny was making a very real down payment on her college education, and she was far too busy with work and school to get into any trouble. Up to now, that is.
Joanna pulled into the small parking lot in front of the clinic. A chain-link fence surrounded a yard between the clinic and Dr. Ross’s home. Through the chain-link mesh, Joanna could see Jenny walking a placid pit bull who seemed totally unconcerned about the plastic surgical cone fastened around his broad neck. Joanna used a self-locking gate to let herself into the tree-shaded yard. Only up close did she see the straight line of stitches going down the dog’s right rear leg.
“Hi, Mom,” Jenny said. “This is Prince. He got out of his yard and got hit by a car. Dr. Ross had to install rods and pins in his leg to put it back together. He’s really doing good.”
“He’s doing well.” Joanna corrected her daughter’s grammar automatically. “I’m glad to hear that, but it’s not why I’m here. You’re in trouble, young lady.”
Jenny frowned. “I am?”
“Yes, you certainly are.”
“How come?”
“Because you took an unauthorized photo of Ms. Highsmith this morning before I got to the crime scene. What did you use, your cell phone?”
Jenny nodded, her blue eyes wide. “I did,” she replied, “but I only sent it to Cassie.”
Cassie Parks, Jenny’s best friend, lived in a decommissioned KOA campground near Double Adobe that her parents had turned into a mobile-home park.
“She may be the only person you sent it to, but Cassie must have passed it along to someone else. Now it’s all over the Internet. Someone, one of the students from the high school, has even posted it on her Facebook page. I saw that one with my own eyes. Because of the photo Marliss Shackleford is threatening to write an article identifying the homicide victim without bothering to wait for a next-of-kin notification, something my detectives have not yet been able to accomplish.”
Jenny’s bright blue eyes widened even more. A flush of embarrassment flamed the skin of her cheeks and neck.
“I’m sorry,” she said. “I never meant for that to happen.”
“I can understand that this isn’t at all what you intended,” Joanna conceded, “but it’s what has happened, and it’s serious, Jenny—terribly serious. What if this is how Ms. Highsmith’s family members find out about her death—because some uncaring idiot posted a gory picture of her body on the Internet?”
To Joanna’s astonishment, Jenny sank to the ground. She sat there with her knees pulled up to her chest, sobbing inconsolably. With a grateful sigh, Prince, the wide-load butterball pit bull, sank down beside her. Resting his muzzle on his front paws, he closed his eyes contentedly.
“I just wanted to get her back,” Jenny said. “That’s all.”
“Get who back?” Joanna asked. “What are we talking about?”
“Cassie. It’s like we’re not even friends anymore,” Jenny hiccuped through her tears. “She’s going to be a cheerleader next year, and she thinks that makes her a really big deal. She has all kinds of new friends. The only time I even get to see her is in class or on the bus on our way to school. I thought if I sent her that picture, she’d feel like I was giving her some special inside information and that we’d be friends again. Instead, she did this. How could she?”
Crouching next to her devastated daughter, Joanna came face-to-face with her own culpability, served up with a huge helping of motherly guilt. How long had Jenny and Cassie been on the outs? As Jenny’s mother, how had Joanna not known about this crisis that was tearing away at her daughter’s well-being? How could she have left Jenny to make her way through such a painful loss on her own?
With all that in mind, the idea of Jenny’s taking and sending the photo was still wrong, but it was certainly more understandable.
Quieter now but still sniffling, Jenny mumbled, “Am I grounded then? Are you going to take my cell phone away?”
Joanna and Jenny’s birth father, Andy, had never been on quite the same page when it came to disciplining Jenny. With Butch, Joanna had found a partner who was a master at presenting a united front.
“We’ll need to talk it over with Dad,” Joanna said.
The day before, Jenny was the one who had first used the term “Dad” to refer to Butch. This was the first time Joanna tried it. To her surprise Jenny voiced no objection.
“Okay,” she said, drying her eyes with her sleeve. “I’m really sorry, Mom. Honest.”
Joanna patted her daughter’s shoulder. “I know,” she said consolingly. “Sometimes that’s the only way to get smarter—to learn from our mistakes. We’re a law enforcement family, Jenny. That makes us different. That’s why I didn’t discuss the Highsmith situation with you yesterday. I didn’t want you to mention the case to friends and classmates. Some of the things that are discussed around our dinner table are things you shouldn’t talk about with anyone outside our immediate family.”
“You mean like it’s privileged information or something?” Jenny asked. “Like what clients tell their lawyers?”
“Not exactly like that,” Joanna said. “There isn’t a legal requirement that I not tell you about Ms. Highsmith. It’s more a matter of discretion.”
“You mean like using common sense.”
“Yes,” Joanna replied.
Jenny stood up and dusted off her jeans.
“I’m sorry about you and Cassie,” Joanna said. “I wish you had told me.”
Jenny bit her lip. “It started last fall, after she made the JV cheerleading squad. I kept thinking it would get better. It’s like she’s fine when we’re on the bus going to school, but once we get there, she acts like I’m invisible. It hurts my feelings, Mom. I can’t help it.”
Joanna remembered all too well her own struggles in high school. First it had been because the kids were wary of being friends with the sheriff’s daughter. Then, after her father was killed by a drunk driver, Joanna had been considered the odd kid out because her father was dead. It was like people thought being without a father was somehow contagious. Her social situation in high school was one of the things that had made an “older man,” Andy, so attractive to her. Through it all, even in the face of a hurried “have-to” wedding, Marianne Maculyea had been Joanna’s true-blue loyal friend. Was then; still was. Unfortunately, Jenny’s friend Cassie wasn’t made of the same stuff.
“Of course it hurts your feelings,” Joanna agreed. “Have you talked about it with Butch?” She couldn’t quite justify playing the “Dad” card twice in the same conversation.
Jenny shrugged. “I guess I thought you’d notice.”
Joanna smiled at her daughter. “We didn’t,” she said. “You’re probably giving us way too much credit. We’ll talk about it tonight. All of us together.”
“Except Dennis.”
“Yes,” Joanna agreed. “Except Dennis.”
Bored with what must have seemed like endless prattle, Prince continued to sleep, snoring soundly. Pit bulls may have had a reputation for being scary and fierce; Prince was anything but.
“You’d better get that big guy up and back inside,” Joanna added, nodding toward the snoozing dog. “Dr. Ross is going to be wondering what became of you.”
As Jenny and Prince meandered back inside, Joanna returned to the Yukon. She had handled the Jenny situation to the best of her ability, but there were still outstanding issues on that score, not the least of which was making sure Debra Highsmith’s family was notified in a timely fashion. That included getting the jump on whatever story Marliss Shackleford was getting ready to publish.
Joanna was in the Yukon and had already turned the key in the ignition when she remembered Marliss’s unusual question about Jenny that morning while Joanna had still been at the crime scene. Even that early on, the reporter must have had a good idea that Jenny was the source of the photo. So where was she getting her information?
Removing the key and picking up the doggie bag from Daisy’s, Joanna hurried back into the yard just as Jenny came outside again. This time she had a miniature long-haired dachshund on a leash. Prince had outweighed this tiny thing ten times over, but this dog was clearly ten times the trouble. She went into a paroxysm of barking, each bark lifting her stiff little legs off the ground.
“Quiet, Heidi,” Jenny ordered, jerking on the leash.
Heidi paid no attention. Jenny looked uncomfortable, as though she was afraid Joanna was going to give her more grief. Instead, Joanna handed her daughter the doggie bag.
“I only ate half my chimichanga at lunch,” she said. “I brought you the rest.”
Jenny’s face brightened. Bean and cheese chimichangas were her second-favorite food, right after pepperoni pizza. “Thanks,” she said. “I didn’t have time to pack a lunch.”
“Wouldn’t want you to starve,” Joanna told her with a smile, “but I have one other question. What time did you send the photo to Cassie?”
Jenny shook her head. “I’m not sure. It was while Kiddo and I were waiting for you. Why?”
“I was just wondering. Can you check your call history?”
With Heidi still barking her head off, Jenny put down the bag, just out of the dog’s reach, and pulled her cell phone out of her pocket. With a one-handed dexterity that amazed her mother, she scrolled through her calls. “Seven sixteen,” she said at last. “That’s when I sent it.”
“Okay,” Joanna said. “Thanks.”
Walking back to the Yukon a second time, Joanna pulled out the notebook and located the page where the four kids from Daisy’s had listed their names and phone numbers. She found Dena’s name as well as her numbers. Dena had listed both her home phone number and her cell. Joanna called the latter.
“It’s Sheriff Brady,” she announced when Dena answered. “I’m wondering if you could do me a favor. You’re one of Anne Marie Mayfield’s Facebook friends, right?”
“Right.”
“Could you please access her Facebook page and see if you can tell me what time the photo was posted?”
As a law enforcement officer, Joanna was painfully aware of the problems with cyberpredators stalking the Internet to find likely victims. She and Butch had installed the latest and greatest parental controls on their home computer system for just that reason. The situation with Jenny and the crime scene photo taught her that there was as much of a problem with information going out as there was with bad guys trying to get in. Besides, by using her cell phone to take and send the picture, Jenny had cleverly outmaneuvered them. The parental controls were on her computer, not her phone. That would have to change.
It took the better part of a minute, but finally Dena came back on the line. “Eight ten,” she said. “That’s what it says.”
In other words, Joanna thought, it took a little less than an hour to get from Jenny to Cassie and from Cassie to the whole school!
“You’re not going to be calling my parents, are you?” Dena asked. “They’ll be really upset if I get called in to talk to a detective.”
“Don’t worry,” Joanna said reassuringly. “Before this is over, we’ll probably be talking to everyone at the school.”
That was a little white lie. Joanna didn’t have the man- or womanpower to interview everyone at Bisbee High School, but knowing how the school social networking system worked, she had effectively put everyone on notice that she intended to do so. With any kind of luck, that little bit of intimidation would be enough to smoke out some useful information.
This time, when she started the car, she drove away from Dr. Ross’s clinic and headed for the Justice Center, dialing Deb Howell’s number as she went.
“Detective Howell here.”
“Any luck with the next-of-kin situation?”
“Sorry, boss,” Deb said. “I’ve run into a brick wall. As far as I can tell, Deb Highsmith doesn’t have any next of kin. The contact listed with the Department of Licensing is Abby Holder.”
“Mrs. Holder?” Joanna repeated. “That old battle-ax who’s the secretary at the high school?”
“One and the same,” Deb replied. “I’m on my way to see her now. I have to say, that woman absolutely terrified me when I was going to school. I never saw her in any color but black.”
“She had the same effect on me,” Joanna said, stifling a chuckle when she remembered how the kids at Daisy’s had expressed similar kinds of fear about Debra Highsmith. “Isn’t that the way it’s supposed to be when you’re in high school?” she asked. “If the kids aren’t scared to death of the principal and the people in the principal’s office, something’s wrong. It’s a control issue. It’s been that way forever. Is Abby Holder at school today?”