“I didn’t mean to imply…” Newton began.
“Yes, you did,” Joanna returned sharply. “I’ve been patient. I’ve answered all your questions. I’m assuming Deputy Thomas’s story and mine jibe, because that’s what happened. Now, unless you have something substantial to add, I’m done. All things considered, it’s been a pretty big day-for someone in my condition.”
“Sure, Sheriff Brady,” Detective Unger put in quickly. “If we need anything else, we’ll call.”
“You do that.”
“This doesn’t mean our investigation is over,” Detective Newton growled.
“It is for tonight,” she told him. She knew she had nailed the man with her soccer-ball comment and she had not the slightest doubt that, if push came to shove, she could outshoot him.
Getting to her feet, Joanna stalked from the room. In the lobby, Frank was talking on his cell phone, pacing back and forth. “Oh, wait,” he said. “Here she is. If we leave right now, we can be there in a little over an hour, Mr. Oxhill. You’re sure that won’t be too late? Okay. Fine.”
“What’s that all about?”
“He’s the manager of the Target in Sierra Vista.”
Still rankled by Newton‘s remarks, Joanna answered impatiently as they headed for Frank’s car. “I remember who he is. What does he want?”
“I told you he called earlier and said the primer had been purchased with cash.”
“Yes, I remember that, too.”
“He evidently spent all afternoon worrying about it until he finally realized something. Even though there was no credit-card trail, he did have the product numbers. He decided to try going through cash-register records to see if he could find out exactly when the purchase was made. And he did. He wants us to come look at the store security tapes. He believes he has photos of a woman making the actual purchase.”
Suddenly Joanna’s annoyance with Detective Newton dissipated and she was no longer the least bit tired. “Let’s go then,” she said, scrambling into Frank’s Crown Victoria. “Let’s not just stand around jawing about it.”
“Oh, I almost forgot,” Frank added, as they headed back to the freeway. “I’ve got some other good news. Tom Hadlock and Millicent Ross have been talking. He’s gone through the jail and talked to the inmates and ended up with four more volunteers than he had puppies. He and I talked it over. He’s going to use four trustees as a work group to help with all the extra dogs that will be staying at the pound right now while we’re so short-handed. And Millicent has tracked down some deep-pockets pitbull-rescue guy who’s agreed to underwrite whatever equipment or additional expenses we have to run up in order to make this thing work.
“Millicent says she’ll stow as many dogs and puppies as she can at her clinic tonight. Tomorrow morning she’ll go to Tucson armed with the guy’s credit-card number and purchase whatever equipment we need-beds, dishes, puppy food, toys, bowls, collars, leashes. We’ll bring the dogs to the jail tomorrow afternoon after she gets back.”
“Leashes?” Joanna asked. “Did you say leashes? We just had a major fight at the jail last week-a fight with homemade weapons. Are you telling me that now we’re going to issue leashes to our inmates?”
“We can’t have the dogs there without leashes,” Frank said. “There wouldn’t be any way to control them. And I think it’s going to work. According to Tom, the inmates are so excited you’d think it was Christmas.”
When Frank and Joanna arrived at the Target store in Sierra Vista, Manfred Oxhill was waiting just inside the front door. He turned out to be a tall African-American man with a ready smile and an accent that suggested a Caribbean heritage.
“I’m so glad to meet you,” he said. “Right this way.”
They followed him through a door marked “Employees Only,” up a narrow set of stairs, past what was clearly an employee breakroom and into a warren of offices that lined one whole end of the store. Beyond a door marked “Security,” they squeezed themselves into a room that included one wall lined with monitors and another lined with recording equipment. Manfred Oxhill introduced them to the lone operator in the room, then gave the man a piece of paper covered with a series of handwritten scribbles. Within a matter of minutes, Joanna was staring at a screen where customers, totally oblivious to the watching cameras panning back and forth across the scene, casually went about their business.
“There!” Manfred Oxhill said, pointing at one of the monitors. “That’s register sixteen and this should be the right time- two fifty-two p.m. on 02:25:2005.”
Joanna stepped closer to the monitor. At first all she could see was a back view of a woman standing in front of the cash register. Only when she turned and looked nervously from side to side did Joanna recognize her-Dolores Mattias, Aileen Houlihan’s caregiver. Joanna’s heartbeat quickened in her breast as she watched the cashier put one can of primer after another into a series of plastic bags and then hand them over.
“I’ll be damned,” Joanna exclaimed.
“Who is it?” Frank asked.
“Dolores Mattias,” she said. “I met her this morning.” Joanna turned to Manfred Oxhill. “Can we have a copy of this tape?”
“Of course,” he said. “If you’ll wait here, I’ll bring a new tape from downstairs.”
“What does this mean?” Frank asked.
They had been so caught up with other events and concerns all afternoon and evening that Joanna hadn’t had either the time or the energy to tell Frank what she had learned during her earlier trip to the Triple H.
“Aileen Houlihan may be bedridden with Huntington’s disease,” Joanna said, “but I’m betting she’s still calling the shots.”
Chapter 19
With their copy of the security tape in hand, Joanna and Frank sat in his car in the Target parking lot and discussed what to do next. “I think we should go talk to her,” Joanna said. “Do we know anything else about Dolores Mattias other than the fact that she purchased the primer?” Frank asked. “How do we know that was the primer used on Evans’s vehicle?”
“According to Leslie, Dolores and her husband have been living on the Triple H since about the time Leslie was born.”
“Do you think Dolores may have some knowledge about what went on between Aileen Houlihan and Lisa Marie Evans back in 1978?” Frank asked.
“Maybe,” Joanna replied. “And that’s probably where we should start. We’ll go see her. We’ll bring up the primer to begin with, then we’ll switch over to what happened to Lisa. Dolores most likely won’t be expecting questions on something that happened that long ago. We may surprise her into saying something she shouldn’t.”
“What about Leslie herself?” Frank asked. “Does she have any idea that Aileen may not be her biological mother?”
“I certainly haven’t told her,” Joanna returned. “And from what she told me, I don’t believe she has a clue. She’s fully expecting that she’ll end up just like her mother, bedridden with HD.”
“Are you going to tell her?” Frank asked.
Joanna shook her head. “Not until we have DNA evidence to substantiate that theory.”
“You must be getting older,” Frank said.
“What do you mean by that?” Joanna demanded.
“You’re sure as hell getting wiser. So do we need backup to go see Dolores Mattias, or are we doing this on our own?”
“Between the two of us, I think we can probably handle Dolores Mattias,” Joanna said after a moment’s consideration. “Besides, at this point all we’re going to do is ask her a couple of questions.”
“Where to, then?” Frank asked, turning the key in the ignition.
“The Triple H. Dolores and Joaquin have a place on Triple H Ranch Road.”
The Mattias place was easy enough to find. It had apparently started out as a double-wide mobile home, but with the addition of a screened front porch and a covered back patio, there was no longer anything mobile about it. The Dodge Ram Joanna had seen earlier in the day was nowhere in evidence as they drove up to the house. A dog, a shaggy black and white mutt, raced out to meet them, barking furiously. By the time Frank stopped at the front of the house, the front light had switched on and the door to the screened porch slammed open.