Joanna was sidestepping the suitcase when she saw a book. The cover-blue with a cascade of pale pink flowers-matched the others she and Ernie had seen in Brianna O’Brien’s bed-room. “Ernie,” she called, “here’s the journal.”
Ernie had pulled out a camera and was already taking photos of the battered wreck. “One journal or two?” he called, without bothering to look over his shoulder.
“Only one so far,” Joanna replied. “The other one’s probably around here somewhere. Is it okay if I pick this one up and look at it?”
“You’re wearing gloves, aren’t you?”
“Yes.”
“Go ahead then, if you want to,” he said.
Fully aware that the person who had last touched the book was dead, Joanna approached the journal reverently, almost as though it were a holy relic. Dropping down onto a nearby rock, she opened the front cover. Written in the same girlish hand Joanna remembered from the other volumes, this one covered the period of time between October 9 of the previous year and this year’s March 4.
“It’s the completed one,” Joanna called to Ernie.
“Well then,” Ernie replied impatiently between squeezes on his camera’s shutter, “go look for the other.”
By then Dennis Hacker had returned from the Eagle with George Winfield’s equipment satchel. Taking out an evidence bag, Joanna slipped the book inside. Then she began to comb the hillside, searching for the missing book. It was hard, hot work. She went to what appeared to be the edge of the debris field-the camper shell-and started there. At the end of hill an hour she was too hot and winded to continue.
“Your face is all red,” George Winfield observed, glancing in her direction. “Better have some of that water of yours. I’d hate for you to have a heatstroke.”
“Thanks,” Joanna said. She heeded his advice immediately. Sinking down next to the evidence box, she helped herself to water from her canteen. As she did so, the journal was right there, sitting in plain sight, tempting her. Finally, handling it with the gloves on, and being careful to touch only the edges, she slipped it out and opened it, turning to the last entry first.
The entry for March 4 was written at the very bottom of the page. It consisted of only five words, written in a hurried, careless, and almost illegible scrawl: “My mother is a liar.”
So is mine, Joanna thought. Remembering what was going on with Eleanor Lathrop and George Winfield, she couldn’t help empathizing with the hurt made almost visible by Brianna O’Brien’s angry scribble. Since that was the last sentence written at the bottom of the last page, there was no further explanation about what kind of lie Katherine O’Brien had told her daughter. No additional explanation was necessary for Joanna Brady to know exactly how Brianna must have felt when she wrote those words-betrayed, hurt, and left out.
Glancing at the journal again, Joanna realized it was possible Bree had written more on the topic. Perhaps the entry continued in the next volume-the one that was still missing.
Still too hot to return to the ground search for the missing diary, Joanna spent a few more minutes scanning the preceding entries. From what was written there, she was able to gather that at the time Katherine O’Brien had been out of town, off on some kind of extended trip. Nothing Joanna could find in the days immediately preceding the March 4 entry gave any indication that there was anything amiss. One entry said that Bree was hoping to pull off a special surprise in honor of her mother’s birthday, but there was nothing to explain exactly what the surprise was to be or whether it had anything to do with the unvarnished anger in those last few words.
Remembering that David O’Brien had mentioned the previous November as the time things had changed so for Brianna, Joanna thumbed back to the last week in November and the first few days of December. A few minutes later, after closing the book and returning it to the bag, she made her way down to where Ernie Carpenter was meticulously examining the interior of the truck.
“Find anything?” he asked.
“We now know the name of the boyfriend. Ignacio Ybarra, the football player from Douglas who was injured during the Bisbee/Douglas game.”
Ernie stopped what he was doing. “The one Brianna O’Brien got kicked off the cheerleading squad over?”
“One and the same.”
“We’d better go talk to him. Anything else?”
“The last entry is intriguing. It says, ‘My mother is a liar.’ “
“That’s all?”
“That’s it.”
Ernie frowned. “It sounds as though there’s a possibility that we’re dealing with two liars here-like mother like daughter.”
“It does sound that way,” Joanna agreed. Just then she heard the noisy clamor of what must have been several approaching vehicles. “I’d better go up and see who’s here.”
“Go ahead,” Ernie told her. “I’ll keep working. If Jaime’s finally dug himself out of that sand trap, tell him to get his ass down here. I need him to establish a grid and start bagging up some of this evidence. I don’t like the sound of that thunder. I want this stuff out of here before it rains, not after.”
Up until then, Joanna had been so preoccupied with what was going on that she hadn’t paid any attention to the weather. Now, though, she looked up. Earlier the sky had been simply overcast. Now it was threateningly so. A storm was definitely brewing. Not only would they need to gather the evidence as quickly as possible, Joanna realized, they would also need to get all the vehicles back across that enormous wash before the rain arrived. Then, with a sudden pang of guilt, Joanna realized she had spent more than an hour too busy to give the missing Angie Kellogg a single thought.
Hurriedly, she scrambled back up to the top of the ridge. The crest looked like a traffic jam. Vehicles were parked single file behind Joanna’s Eagle. First came Ernie’s van, followed by a wrecker from Willcox big enough to haul semis. Bringing up the rear was Frankie Stoddard’s Range Rover. Dennis Hacker’s Hummer, which once had been parked directly behind the Eagle, now was nowhere in sight.
Jaime Carbajal met Joanna at the lip of the cliff. “Sorry it took so long, Sheriff Brady. We ended up having to wait for the wrecker after all.”
“That’s okay. Hurry, though. Ernie wants you down there on the double, establishing a grid and bagging evidence. What about Mr. Hacker?”
“We ran into him about half a mile back. He’s off searching for Angie Kellogg.”
“No one’s heard from her or seen her?” Joanna asked. “Not so far.”
Looking at the sky and worrying that she had waited too long, Joanna hurried over to Ernie’s van and commandeered the radio. “Tica,” she said when the dispatcher answered. “Where are the guys from Search and Rescue?”
“They’re on the way,” Tica responded.
“Tell them we’ve got an inexperienced hiker lost out here in the Peloncillos, and it looks like a big storm is coming. If they need something of Angie’s to give the dogs her scent, have them get in touch with her boss, Bobo Jenkins, at the Blue Moon up in Brewery Gulch.”
By the time Joanna got off the radio, Frankie Stoddard was standing directly behind her. “So what gives?” the private investigator asked. “Is it her?” she asked, nodding in the direction of the wreck.
Joanna nodded. “We’re pretty sure,” she said. “Pending positive ID, of course.”
“And she just ran off the cliff here?”
“That’s how it looks.”
For a long moment, Frankie stood with her arms crossed, staring down at the wreck. “I know it’s your job to notify the parents,” she said at last. “But I’d guess you’re going to be tied up here for quite some time. If you’d like, I could drive back into town and tell the O’Briens that there’s been a fatality accident out here and the victim is most likely their daughter.”
Notifying the O’Briens was a task Joanna had been dreading from the moment she looked over the edge of the cliff and saw the smashed red pickup far below. “Once we get the body back to town, we’ll need them to come do an official identification, but you’re sure you wouldn’t mind telling them initially?”