“Sort of like the people who come by and drop off baby chicks and rabbits once Easter is over.”

“Exactly!” Butch agreed. He sounded utterly outraged, and Joanna loved him for it.

“There’s a big difference, though,” Joanna said. “We can’t do much about people who abandon baby chicks, because chickens don’t have money. That’s not the case here. And, if there’s money involved-most likely including social security as well as the private funds-then my guess is the guardians have made mail-forwarding arrangements so they can continue receiving Junior’s checks. That all adds up to fraud and embezzlement. Did the nursing home have the name of the attorney who set up the trust and handled the guardianship arrangements?”

“I’m sure they do, but they wouldn’t give that information to me.”

“They’ll give it to someone with the word ‘sheriff’ in front of her name,” Joanna said. “I have to go by the hospital and get a tetanus shot. As soon as I get back to the office, though, I’ll get right on it.”

“See you at dinner then?” Butch said. “Remember, we’re all supposed to meet at the Bradys’ for dinner tonight. I believe Jim Bob was threatening to go out and buy some champagne.”

“I don’t know for sure what time I’ll get there,” Joanna said, “but I’ll show up as soon as I can.”

CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

An hour after returning to the department, Joanna was sitting at her desk, resting her aching head in her hands. Her whole body hurt from her collection of scrapes and bruises and from being slammed against the wall of Dena Hogan’s garage. She had ditched her torn clothing in favor of some of her crime scene duds, but the denim jeans were rough and uncomfortable on her chafed knees.

Ernie and Jaime had come in to perform the interview honors with Dena Hogan and to confer with Arlee Jones. Meanwhile, Joanna had tried to deal with the Junior issue. She was right. Having the word “sheriff” connected to her name had enabled her to extract the information she needed from Ellen Dowdle’s nursing home. Armed with the name of Ellen’s attorney, Drew Gunderson, she had tried calling, only to fall victim to the time-zone difference and to the fact that Gunderson had no answering machine at his office and an unlisted number at home.

Joanna had just decided to wait until morning to call when someone tapped on her door. “Anybody home?”

She looked up to see her stepfather, Dr. George Winfield, standing in the doorway. “Come on,” he said. “Ellie just called me at the office and gave me my marching orders to come pick you up. We’re late for dinner and it sounds like we’re both in the doghouse.”

Looking at her watch, Joanna was dismayed to see that it was already after seven. She stood up and reached for her jacket. “I’ll have to run down to Motor Pool and see if they have a car I can use,” she said. “My Crown Victoria still isn’t fixed. Between a damaged windshield and a flat tire on the Blazer, that won’t really be usable until sometime tomorrow.”

“I heard rumors about that,” George said. “The word is out that you’re tough on the county’s rolling stock. First you shot the tire, and then somebody else blew out the window. Or are those just vicious rumors?”

Joanna scowled. “They’re true.”

George Winfield grinned. “I thought so. Come on. Don’t bother checking with Motor Pool right now. I’ll give you a ride over to the Bradys’ place. I’m sure someone there-” he gave Joanna a conspiratorial wink-”some certain someone-will be only too glad to give you a ride back.”

Joanna started to argue, but she was too tired to object. She realized it would be good to be driven for a change-good to be pampered. “Let’s go,” she said.

She picked up her purse and started toward the door. “You may want to fix your face,” George suggested.

“My face? What’s the matter with it?”

“A matched pair of shiners, for one thing,” George replied. “How’d you do that?”

Joanna ducked behind Kristin’s desk and examined her face in the mirror that hung there. George was right. Both eyes had distinct shadows under them, shadows that weren’t yet purple but they would be.

“I had to head-butt my way out of trouble today,” Joanna said.

George grinned. “Was that before or after you shot the tire?”

“Before,” Joanna replied, digging through her purse to retrieve her compact. She rubbed some of the powdery cake makeup onto her face and added a dash of lipstick for good measure, but another check in the mirror proved that her makeup efforts had done little to disguise the damage.

“That’s as good as it gets,” she said, closing the compact. “I’m not a very good example, am I?” she added. “Jenny’s been suspended from school for fighting. I’m her mother and supposedly a grown-up, but just look at me. Not only that, Mother’s going to have a fit.”

“Let her,” George said. “It won’t be the first time. Besides, you were only doing your job.”

Joanna settled into the front seat of George’s new county-owned car, a Dodge Caravan with temporary plates and the new-car smell of new leather. How he had managed to finagle leather out of a tight-fisted county budget was more than Joanna could understand. When he switched on the ignition, however, none of the dash lights lit up. He had to lean forward and squint to read the shift dial as he moved the van into gear.

“Brand-new car,” George complained. “The dealer made me a good deal-maybe even a little too good. But here it is less than a week after I drove it off the lot, and I’m having some kind of mysterious problem in the electrical system. It’s probably just a fuse. I was supposed to take it into the dealer today, but I ended up having to go to Tombstone instead.

So this afternoon, I tried calling to switch the appointment to tomorrow, and the place is closed.”

“On Friday?” Joanna asked. “Is it a holiday or something?”

“No, according to the message on the answering machine, it must be more serious than that. The announcement says the dealership is closed until further notice. For service work, there’s a referral number to a dealer up in Tucson.”

“Wait a minute,” Joanna said. “Where did you buy this vehicle?”

“Fort Apache Motors in Sierra Vista.”

“From Ross Jenkins?”

“Do you know him?”

“Know him! He’s the guy who took a shot at me today-the one who’s in the hospital right now having his bowel sewn back together.”

“Small world,” George marveled. “Well, small county, anyway. But still, why would they close the dealership?”

“He was on his way out of town,” Joanna replied. “To Rio de Janeiro. I’ll bet he stripped the dealership clean of money before he went.”

Once the two detectives and the prosecutor had locked themselves in the interview room with Dena Hogan, Joanna had deliberately stayed away. If and when it came time to testify about what had happened on Kino Road that afternoon, Joanna didn’t want to have muddied the waters by being involved in the interview. She had written up a full report of what had happened from her point of view and would let that stand on its own. Still, it seemed that this new bit of information was something Ernie and Jaime needed to know.

“I need someone to go tap on the interview room door,” she told the desk clerk who answered her phone call. “I need to talk to either Detective Carpenter or Detective Carbajal.” “The double Cs,” as the two detectives were sometimes called.

Ernie came on the phone a few moments later. “What’s up?”

“You may want to find out if Dena knows what happened to Ross Jenkins’ auto dealership,” Joanna suggested. “According to George Winfield, it’s shut down until further notice.”

“Will do.”

“How’s it going with Arlee?”

“Sounds to me as though he’s going to strike a deal. I think Dena will cop a plea for Alice Rogers. By the time Ross Jenkins gets out of the hospital, he’ll wish he hadn’t.”