“He’s my next call.”

She tried Frank’s home number and got no answer. Next she called the department.

“He’s in,” Lupe Alvarez told her. “But he’s got someone with him at the moment. That guy from Washington.”

Beaumont again, Joanna thought. Good enough. Let Frank deal with him.

“Have Chief Deputy Montoya call me when he’s done,” Joanna said. “I’m at home. Anything else I should know about now that I’m available?”

“Yes,” Lupe said. “You’ve had three calls from someone named Cornelia Lester. She says she’s…”

Joanna remembered the name from the next-of-kin contact sheet in Latisha Wall’s file. “I know who she is. Is she here in town?”

“Yes. She’s staying at the Copper Queen, room five-twelve.”

Joanna picked up a pen. “Do you have the number?”

“Yes.”

“You’d better give it to me, then,” Joanna said, once again dreading the thought of having to speak to yet another grieving relative. “I’ll call her back while I’m waiting to hear from Frank.”

Twelve

BY FOUR O’CLOCK THAT AFTERNOON I was back at the Cochise County Justice Center. “I’m sorry, but Sheriff Brady has had a family emergency,” the same public lobby receptionist told me. “She’s not available at this time.”

“What about her second-in-command?” I asked.

“Chief Deputy Montoya is on his line at the moment. When he’s free, I’ll let him know you’re here.”

“And my name is-”

“I know,” she returned. “You’re Special Investigator Beaumont. I remember you from earlier.”

I wondered about that. Did she remember my name because she just happened to remember it, or had her boss passed the word that I was persona non grata? For the next ten minutes, I cooled my heels in the lobby. The longer I waited, the more I fumed. It wasn’t as though I was in a hurry or had anywhere else to go. It was the principle of the thing. So far, Sheriff Brady and her department had been something less than cooperative.

I found myself once again studying the picture montage in that glass display case. Joanna Brady may have been cute as a button when she was a little kid, dressed in a Brownie uniform and selling Girl Scout cookies like mad. Maybe she still was, but cute wasn’t working on me.

Eventually the secured door to the back offices opened and out walked a late-thirty-something Hispanic guy. He wore the same kind of uniform the sheriff had been wearing when I last saw her, although his was free of curves. And his head was shaved absolutely smooth.

“Hello,” he said as he approached my chair. “You must be Special Investigator Beaumont. I’m Chief Deputy Frank Montoya. What can I do for you?”

He escorted me back to his office, which was in the same wing of the building as the sheriff’s private office. I thought maybe I could pull out the good ol’ boy card and jolly Chief Deputy Montoya out of some useful information. But Sheriff Brady had her people firmly in line as far as J.P. Beaumont was concerned. Montoya gave me diddly-squat.

“Look,” he said in answer to my direct question about the Bobo Jenkins interview. “I can appreciate your wanting to know about that, but our department is conducting what is becoming a more and more complicated investigation. Without Sheriff Brady’s express permission, I’m not authorized to give out any information. Period.”

“It is complicated,” I agreed, “what with the addition of not one but two missing persons cases.”

Montoya’s eyes narrowed when I said that. He didn’t like my knowing about the missing art dealer and her boyfriend.

Too bad, I thought. I found that out on my own, Mr. Chief Deputy Montoya. If you don’t like it, you’ll just have to lump it.

“If I were Sheriff Brady,” I said aloud, “I think I’d be glad to have an extra detective show up and lend a hand with all this.”

Frank Montoya’s lips curled into a tight smile. “I don’t think that’s quite how she views the situation,” he said. “And until I have a chance to talk to her about it…”

By then I had pretty well decided that Sheriff Brady’s supposed family emergency was nothing but a smoke screen to keep me out of her hair.

“When will that be?” I asked. “When will you be able to talk to her again? And how long is this so-called family emergency scheduled to last?”

That one pissed him off. “As long as it takes,” he replied, standing up. “Now, if there’s nothing else, I’m quite busy at the moment.”

With that he escorted me to the door, down the hall, and back into the public lobby. As he booted me out I realized that, years ago when I had the chance, I should have coughed up the six hundred bucks and taken myself through the Dale Carnegie course.

JOANNA DIALED THE HOTEL and was relieved when Cornelia Lester didn’t answer. She left word with the desk clerk and had just put down the phone when Frank called her back. “Losing a dog is tough,” he said. “How’s Jenny faring?”

Joanna liked the fact that everyone who knew about Sadie asked about Jenny. “Better than I would have expected,” Joanna told him. “She took Kiddo and Tigger and went for a ride. Now, tell me. What did Mr. Beaumont want?”

“Anything and everything,” Frank replied.

“I’m not surprised, but what exactly?”

“He asked about the Bobo Jenkins interview.”

It was something Joanna hadn’t anticipated. “How did he know about that?” she demanded.

“Who knows?” Frank replied. “I sure as hell didn’t tell him. He also asked if we were making any progress in locating Dee Canfield and her boyfriend.”

“So he knows about the missing persons part of it, too,” Joanna mused. “Who all has he been talking to?”

“Beats me, boss,” Frank said. “Remember, though, the man’s an ex – homicide detective. He’s probably been all over town asking questions. You know how people here love to talk.”

Joanna knew that very well. Bisbee was a small place where everyone had a finger in everyone else’s pie.

“What did you tell him?” she asked.

“Nothing. Not without your approval.”

“Which I’m not in danger of giving anytime soon,” Joanna said. “Now let me tell you what Dave Hollicker found out.”

When she finished explaining about sodium azide, Frank Montoya was aghast. “Geez!” he exclaimed. “That stuff sounds scary!”

“You’ve got that right,” Joanna told him grimly. “It’s scary as hell.”

“You’re saying this sodium azide crap is lying around all over the place where any nutcase in the universe can lay hands on it?”

“That’s the deal,” she told him. “And,” she added, “unlike cyanide or arsenic, there aren’t any limits on who can have it.”

“There should be,” Frank said.

“Amen to that,” Joanna agreed.

There was a pause. “Maybe I should go on the Internet and check this out,” Frank suggested. “I’ll see what more I can find out about it.”

“Good idea,” Joanna said. “Unfortunately, we have no idea how much of it the killer still has in his or her possession. I’m guessing there’s some left over after loading up the sweetener packets in Latisha Wall’s kitchen.” Then, as an afterthought, she added, “While you’re surfing the Net, there’s something else I’d like you to check out, Frank. I want you to do some research on Anne Rowland Corley.”

“Wait a minute,” Frank said. “Isn’t she the young girl from Bisbee who, years ago, supposedly killed her father and then skated?”

At the time, the two Rowland deaths had been high-profile cases in southern Arizona, and they still were. Joanna wasn’t surprised to learn that, years later, their outcomes continued to be common knowledge in local law enforcement circles.

“She’s the one,” Joanna replied.

Frank frowned. “I seem to recall she died several years ago.”

Joanna nodded. “I vaguely remember that, too,” she said. “But the details escape me. That’s why I want you to check it out.”