“Oh, I went all right. I told you I would, so I did. The whole thing was nothing but a gigantic waste of time.”

“No surprises there,” Joanna said. “Those meetings usually are.”

“You mean you don’t like attending them, either?” Dick Voland sounded surprised.

“Fortunately for both of us, Dick, Frank Montoya actually gets a kick out of all that political wrangling.”

“Is that so,” Voland said wonderingly. “Maybe the guy has some redeeming qualities after all. Just don’t tell him I said so.”

Joanna laughed. “My lips are sealed. Now, how about putting me through to Kristin?” Seconds later, Joanna was speaking to her secretary. “Any messages?”

“Your mother, for one,” Kristin said. “She’s called three times so far. There was also a call from Father Thomas Mulligan. You know, the head of Holy Trinity, that Catholic monastery over in Saint David. He asked to speak to you directly. I told him you were working a case and asked him if it was an emergency. He said no, but that he did want to speak to you as soon as possible. Here’s the number.”

Pulling a notepad from her pocket, Joanna jotted down Father Thomas’ name and number. “Anything else?”

“Nothing out of the ordinary.”

“Good.” Joanna glanced at her watch. The afternoon was speeding by at an alarming rate. It was already past time for school to be out. Jenny usually called the office in the afternoon, just to check in. “Jenny will probably call once she gets to Butch’s house,” Joanna said. “Tell her to try reaching me on the cell phone.”

Walking as she talked, Joanna emerged from the cholla and was now within sight of the cars. She was shocked to see Susan Jenkins, freed from Ernie’s handcuffs, standing beside her Chrysler and smoking a cigarette. An unconcerned Sergeant Mallory stood nearby, talking to another uniformed deputy.

“Wait a minute,” Joanna said. “Why’s she still here, and where are her cuffs? I asked you to place her under arrest, and I thought someone would have hauled her away by now.”

Folding his arms across his broad chest, Sergeant Mallory sauntered over to Joanna. “Before we did, I talked to my lieutenant about it. He said no dice.”

Joanna’s temper rose. A sudden flush fired her cheeks. “What does that mean?” she demanded.

Mallory shrugged. “You know how it is,” he said. “My supe wanted me to get those statements first. In other words, no paper, no jail.”

Over by the Sebring, Susan Jenkins ground out her cigarette and came walking toward Joanna and Mallory. Preparing for the possibility of another attack, Joanna tensed, but as Susan came closer, it became apparent that the woman had been crying.

“I’m sorry, Sheriff Brady,” Susan Jenkins apologized at once. “I don’t know what got into me. I was so mad at Clete right then, I couldn’t see straight. All the way here, I kept thinking that if only he had listened to me yesterday or if he had used his brain before that, maybe none of this would have happened. Maybe our mother would still be alive.”

Much as it hurt her to do so, Joanna had to admit that right that minute there was nothing the least bit threatening about Susan Jenkins. With her faced blotched with tear-stained mascara, she looked just like any other bereaved relative-brokenhearted but not dangerous.

“You and your brother have both sutured a terrible loss,” Joanna said. “And you both have my sympathy.”

“It is her then?” Susan asked, nodding in the direction from which Joanna had come.

“Yes. Pending positive identification, of course. But yes, we’re pretty sure.”

Susan Jenkins’ eyes filmed with fresh tears. She buried her face in her hands. “I kept hoping the cops would be wrong, that it would turn out to be someone else.”

“What was your mother wearing when you saw her last?” Joanna asked.

“A dress,” Susan said. “A pink dress.”

“What about a sweater or coat?”

“Mother was very warm-blooded. She hardly ever wore a coat. She wasn’t wearing a sweater when she left my house the other night, but she might have had one in her car.”

Susan cast a wary look in the direction of the cholla. “Should I go over there and look-tell them whether or not it’s really her?”

Joanna thought about how it would feel for a daughter-any daughter-to see her mother lying on a deathbed of cactus and teeming with marauding insects. It had been hard enough for Joanna, a stranger, to see Alice Rogers that way. For a grieving daughter, the sight would be a nightmarish one that would haunt the rest of her life.

“No,” Joanna said kindly. “It’s probably better if you don’t see your mother right now. As I told Clete earlier, that kind of ID is usually done after the body has been transported to the morgue. Speaking of your brother, is that where he went?”

Susan shook her head. “I don’t know. He didn’t say a word to me. He just drove off in his pickup truck.”

Joanna turned to Sergeant Mallory. “Did Mr. Rogers tell you where he was going?” she asked.

“He said he wasn’t feeling well and that he was going home.”

“Typical,” Susan said, with a trace of anger leaking back into her voice. “Clete always talks a good game, but when it’s crunch time or when there’s some kind of real crisis, looking for him to do anything useful is like leaning on a bent reed. I can understand his not having guts enough to do something about Mother and Farley Adams, but if Clete had bothered to mention the situation to me, I’ll bet I could have.”

Joanna was tempted to put a stop to that whole line of reasoning, to tell Susan Jenkins that there was nothing either she or her brother could have done to keep Alice Rogers from tangling with a gang of car thieves. That would have been the kind thing to do. But in the back of her mind, Joanna kept thinking about her phone call from Dick Voland-the one telling her that it looked as though Farley Adams had packed his gear and left Outlaw Mountain.

“Tell me what you know about your mother’s boyfriend,” Joanna said. “Had you ever met him?”

“Sure,” Susan said. “He started out about a year ago doing yard work for her-trimming and pruning, mowing the lawn, raking, hauling out some of the old dead century plants. I didn’t actually meet him until he was building the wall. Mother had always dreamed of having a wall around her place-one of those six-foot-high stucco affairs that looks like it came off a Spanish hacienda. She was thrilled when she finally found someone who could do the work for her. When the wall was finished, I expected Farley to move along. The next thing I knew, she had booted her previous renters out of the mobile home on Outlaw Mountain so Farley Adams could live there and work her claim. Even then, I didn’t worry about it. I thought it was strictly a business arrangement.

“But Saturday night, she told me what was really going on-that the two of them were in love and getting married. Mother and I had a big fight about it. A huge fight. I told her she was crazy, that the man was just after her money. After all, Farley’s at least twenty years younger-closer to my age than hers. What else could it be?”

What else indeed? Joanna thought. She couldn’t help empathizing with Susan Jenkins in that moment. After all, Joanna Brady had felt exactly the same kind of shocked disbelief about her own mother and George Winfield when the medical examiner had finally worked up the courage to tell her that he and Eleanor Lathrop had eloped. Joanna had been so stunned at the time that she had almost driven off the road. And ever since, even though she liked George-even though she could see that the marriage between Eleanor Lathrop and George Winfield was clearly a love match-there was a small hard corner of Joanna’s heart that couldn’t quite forgive the love birds for their sneaky, underhanded maneuvering.

For a moment Joanna considered offering Susan Jenkins the benefit of some of her own hard-won experience. In her old life, that’s precisely what she would have done. But now she was a cop-a detective-and it was her job and responsibility to ask questions. Counseling could wait.