Missing and Endangered Read online

  In her telling, however, she left out some of the story—their suspicion that Madison was the one who’d brought the murder weapon to the crime scene, the fact that rather than being drunk during the confrontation there was a chance that Leon had been drugged, and the very real probability that Madison had locked the children in the second bedroom before launching what, by way of Armando Ruiz, would turn out to be a fatal attack.

  Yes, Joanna told the story, but she did leave a few things out. Not lies, she told herself, more like sins of omission.

  When Ernie returned at last, phone in hand, he passed the device over to Lyndell. “Got it,” he said, “all of it. I’d like to drive up to Tucson tomorrow and have a one-on-one with Mr. Moreno. Under most circumstances an attorney wouldn’t be able to speak to us. But your son is dead, and with you paying Mr. Moreno’s retainer, I think it’s safe to say that if you gave him permission to break attorney-client privilege, I think he would.”

  “I think so, too,” said Lyndell Hogan, slipping the phone into his pocket and rising to his feet. “I’ll give him a call as soon as I get back to the hotel to let him know you’re coming. What’s your name again?”

  “Detective Ernie Carpenter,” came the reply, “with the Cochise County Sheriff’s Department.”

  Joanna waited until Lyndell Hogan left the room, and then she darted around her desk and gave Ernie a hug. “File sexual-harassment charges if you like, but that was damned fine work.”

  “You’re going to miss me when I’m gone,” he said with a grin.

  “You’re wrong about that,” she told him. “I already do.”

  Chapter 16

  Joanna was about to head for the parking lot when her phone rang, and she sank back down in her chair to answer.

  “I’ve got several pieces of news for you,” Detective Howell said.

  “Did you talk to Mrs. Ambrose?” Joanna asked.

  “Yes,” Deb said, “and that was a lot like talking to a wall. She didn’t tell me much, although she did allow as how the kids, and most especially the little girl, didn’t seem exactly overjoyed to be dropped off at home. According to Mrs. Ambrose, under the circumstances that kind of behavior wasn’t at all unusual.”

  “It sounds as though the CPS lead goes nowhere.”

  “Yes,” Deb said, “but I had better luck with Kendall’s second-grade teacher, Mrs. Baird. Believe it or not, Kendall is in second grade at the same school where Amy Ruiz teaches. There are three second-grade classes at Carmichael. Amy may not have tumbled to the connection, but Frank did as soon as I asked him which school the Hogan kids would attend.

  “So I talked to Mrs. Baird, and she expressed some real concerns. For one thing, she’s caught Kendall rescuing food out of the trash cans in the cafeteria to take home to eat. She says that the other kids tend to tease Kendall because she doesn’t always have clean clothes or clean hair.”

  “So there’s bullying,” Joanna concluded.

  “Mrs. Baird has gone so far as to suggest as much to the principal, but he told her it was just kids being kids and she shouldn’t worry about it.”

  “Which is to say he’s sweeping it under the rug.”

  “But here’s something that isn’t kids being kids,” Deb said. “Mrs. Baird gave me a piece of notebook paper that she said Kendall gave her sometime last week. Kendall showed Mrs. Baird a word she’d printed on the paper and asked what it meant.”

  “What word?”

  “H-O-R.”

  “What does that mean?” Joanna asked.

  “That’s what Mrs. Baird asked Kendall, and she sounded it out. ‘H-O-R’ equals ‘WHORE’! She said that one of the girls who lives up the street was saying that’s what her mommy calls Kendall’s mommy—a whore.”

  Joanna’s heart gave a squeeze.

  “Mrs. Baird said she was going to bring this to the principal’s attention,” Deb continued, “but he was out of town at a conference. She was waiting for him to come back, but then after all the uproar with the shooting and with Kendall absent from school this week, she decided not to.”

  “Did she tell you which class mommy was spreading that ugly rumor?” Joanna asked.

  “I don’t think she knows, but if we ever get a chance to speak to Kendall, I’ll ask her. I’ll bet she knows.”

  “I’ll bet she does, too,” Joanna agreed.

  She glanced at her watch. It was approaching dinnertime, and she didn’t want to be late getting home.

  “But that’s not all,” Deb continued excitedly before Joanna could cut her off. “I just left Lube&Oil Tek, where Leon was the manager. I spent the better part of an hour with one of his mechanics, a guy named Ricky Amado. You’ll never guess what Ricky said the moment I showed him my ID.”

  “What?”

  “‘That bitch killed him, didn’t she!’”

  “That bitch in question being Madison Hogan?”

  “Right. Ricky asked me if I’d ever seen the woman in the flesh. I told him no, that I wasn’t directly connected to the officer-involved shooting so I hadn’t met her. He said, ‘She’s a dish, at least she used to be, but she’s also a real piece of work.’ For instance, did you know Kendall and Peter Hogan aren’t even Leon’s?”

  “I know that now,” Joanna said. “Leon Hogan’s dad and mom drove in from Wyoming. He dropped by the office this afternoon. He’s the one who told me.”

  “Ricky told me she used to be a real looker with a Playboy-centerfold body and the personality of the Wicked Witch of the West. Back when Leon first met her, she was working as a bartender out at the Nite Owl and was barely making ends meet. Ricky said he thought Leon fell for the kids before he even fell for her. He seemed to think he was going to ride to the rescue and save all of them.”

  “Except Madison wasn’t much interested in being rescued.”

  “According to what Leon told Ricky, she’s more of a good-time girl, with the kids little more than inconvenient afterthoughts. Once Leon and Madison tied the knot, he went to court and officially adopted them. Since their biological fathers had long since disappeared, Madison made no objection to changing their last names to Hogan.”

  “Calling Madison Hogan a piece of work doesn’t quite cover it,” Joanna observed.

  “Just wait,” Deb said. “Once Madison started showing her true colors, Leon didn’t know what to do. He stuck it out for as long as he could for the sake of the kids, because he knew that if he tried to divorce her, once the case came before a judge, he wouldn’t have a chance of keeping the kids, but all that changed—”

  “When Leon’s father stepped in and offered to pay for a high-end attorney who was willing to duke it out in court,” Joanna supplied.

  “You got it.” Deb said. “In the meantime, while they were getting their ducks in a row, the attorney advised Leon that even if he moved out, he should still go on paying Madison’s expenses so she couldn’t claim he’d deserted them, and in order to keep Leon’s money rolling in, she let the kids stay with him on weekends.”

  “I’m assuming Madison had better things to do on the weekends than look after her kids.”

  “That’s what Ricky said, too—that leaving the kids with Leon on weekends left her free to do whatever she wanted with her latest boyfriend, Randy Williams.”

  “So Ricky knew about Randy?” Joanna asked.

  “And so did Leon,” Deb said. “It was common knowledge, but Leon ignored it for the same reason he ignored everything else.”

  “To protect Kendall and Peter?”

  “Exactly,” Deb said. “But just because he hadn’t filed for a divorce, Leon hadn’t stopped moving forward. He told Ricky that his attorney had already rewritten his will, leaving everything he owned to be held in trust for Kendall and Peter until they come of age.”

  “Which makes sense,” Joanna said. “I’m sure he didn’t want Madison to be able to lay hands on any of his estate. But since he was living in a rented trailer on the outskirts of Whetstone, that probably won’t amount to
much.”

  “You’d be surprised,” Deb replied. “As the franchise manager, he had a hundred-thousand-dollar group life-insurance policy. He also had the beginnings of a 401(k). A month or so ago, he changed beneficiaries on both of those, cutting Madison out completely and leaving the proceeds in equal shares to Kendall and Peter.”

  In her previous life, Joanna had spent time working in the insurance industry. “Filing for a divorce happens in public, but rewriting your will and changing beneficiaries on insurance policies or 401(k)s are private transactions that could have been accomplished without Madison’s having a clue,” Joanna surmised aloud. “With Leon dead she’s probably under the impression that she’s looking at a big payday.”

  “Not anymore,” Deb said. “Once I talked to Ricky, I called Lube&Oil’s corporate headquarters in L.A. The head of HR told me Madison Hogan had called her office earlier today, asking how she should go about filing a death-benefit claim.”

  “Not exactly letting any grass grow under her feet,” Joanna observed.

  “And only to be told she was out of luck,” Deb replied, “although she’s probably looking for a work-around on those revised beneficiary arrangements.”

  “There won’t be,” Joanna said. “Beneficiary arrangements are ironclad and can’t be changed after the fact. This all sounds like huge progress, Deb. Anything else?”

  “One thing more. Ricky said that Madison was planning to drop by to see Leon when he got home from work on Wednesday—that she was coming for dinner and bringing the kids. Ricky thought she maybe wanted to get back together, but Leon said he was pretty sure she’d be hitting him up for money to buy Christmas presents for the kids. Leon, being a good guy, was fine with that.”

  “I don’t think Madison was dropping by to collect money for Christmas presents from Leon,” Joanna said. “I think she was coming to kill him.”

  And that was when she finally had a chance to tell Deb about the fact that despite Armando Ruiz’s claim that Leon had seemed to be impaired at the time of the shooting, alcohol content was entirely missing from his system.

  “You think she slipped him something?” Deb asked.

  “I do.”

  “We have got to get those poor kids away from that horrid woman.” Deb breathed. “She’s a menace.”

  “I couldn’t agree more,” Joanna said, “but I’ve got to hang up now. I’m already late for dinner. If I don’t show up pretty soon, you’ll have another homicide to solve, because Butch Dixon will kill me.”

  Chapter 17

  It had been the worst weekend of Beth Rankin’s life. All day on Saturday, she’d agonized over the likelihood that Ron might never call her back. Then, after the ugly way that call had ended, she’d spent all day Sunday worrying that he would.

  It wasn’t fair for him to demand that she stop being friends with Jenny. It wasn’t fair that he dictate she should stay on campus during Christmas vacation rather than go to Bisbee to have fun. What gave him the right to boss her around?

  And besides, what did he have against Jenny in the first place? How did he know that Jenny’s mother was in law enforcement? But even if Joanna Brady was a cop, what did it matter? What business of it was Ron’s? What did he care?

  As Sunday afternoon waned into evening, Beth finally started getting mad. Not as mad as she’d been the night she stomped out of her mother’s house in SaddleBrooke, but close enough.

  She and Ron were boyfriend and girlfriend, maybe, but they weren’t married. They weren’t even engaged. And if this was the kind of bossy, overbearing person Ronald Cameron was, they probably never would be either. Beth had spent her whole life up till now being bossed around by other people—first by her mother and by Pastor Ike, too. She wasn’t going to allow her new wings to be clipped by someone else—not even Ron. If he called tonight, she decided, she would tell him so—in no uncertain terms.

  Sunday night, when she crept into the bathroom just before midnight, her whole body was quaking, but she was determined. Beth wasn’t going to give Jenny up, not as a friend and not as a roommate either. And she was going to go wherever she pleased for Christmas vacation. It was Beth’s life after all, and she got to decide.

  So when the phone rang at two minutes past twelve, her fingers trembled as she accepted the call. “Hello.”

  “Hey, Sweet Betsy from Pike,” Ron said. “I hope you had a nice day!”

  Beth had never quite believed it when people claimed they’d been “triggered” by something they heard or saw. She hadn’t believed it possible, but suddenly that was exactly what happened to her. In an instant she went from being cautiously tentative to being furious, because here he was calling her up as though nothing at all had happened. As though she hadn’t spent the whole weekend mired in a pit of despair—as though the suffering he’d put her through the last several days was meaningless.

  “Don’t call me that,” she snapped. “I’m not Betsy. My name is Elizabeth. You can call me Elizabeth or you can call me Beth, but do not call me Betsy.”

  “Hold on,” Ron objected. “Get off your high horse. I just called to say hi and to ask how you’re doing.”

  But Beth had her back up now. She was more angry than hurt. “You’re the one on a high horse,” she retorted. “You’re the one who thinks you can boss everybody around. Well, you can’t. You can’t tell me what to do. You can’t tell me who I can be friends with and who I can’t. And if I want to go to Bisbee for Christmas, I will. Don’t call me again. We’re done.”

  Then she hung up. She had turned off her phone, left the bathroom, crawled into bed, and fallen asleep, because it really was over. Ron hadn’t broken up with her; she had broken up with him. For the first time in forever, Beth Rankin felt as though she’d taken control of her own life.

  Chapter 18

  Lucky and Lady were waiting in the laundry room when Joanna arrived, and it seemed as though they were the only ones happy to see her. No one else was visible, and no one called a greeting either. She put her weapons away and then ventured farther into the house. The kitchen was deserted. Dinner was clearly over, and she had missed it—again. Her phone call with Deb had lasted far longer than it should have. A covered dish of some kind sitting in isolated splendor in the microwave hinted that the lay of the land on the home front wasn’t particularly welcoming.

  Walking past that, she paused in the doorway long enough to check out the combination dining room/living room. When she left for work that morning, the two rooms had been awash in partially filled boxes that had once been chock-full of Christmas decorations. All those decorations were out on display now. Holiday trappings covered every possible flat surface, while the boxes themselves had vanished from view.

  “Anybody home?” Joanna called.

  “Family room,” Butch responded. “We’re working on the train, and your dinner’s in the microwave.” It wasn’t exactly an ecstatic welcome-home, and it seemed like a good idea for her to make herself scarce. She went over to the microwave, punched the reheat button, and waited. She was in the doghouse, and deservedly so, and the fact that Butch preferred that she eat her solitary dinner rather than help out in the family room wasn’t a good sign.

  When Joanna first met Butch, she’d been attending the Arizona Police Academy in Peoria. When it came to meals, Butch’s diner, the Roundhouse Bar and Grill just up the street, had been the restaurant of choice. The food was good, but the real attraction had been his model trains.

  Butch Dixon was a railroad buff. All the decor on the walls inside the restaurant had a railroad connection, but nothing could top the collection of model trains that constantly circled the perimeter of the dining room. They traveled on several different tracks laid on wooden shelving that had been installed a foot below the room’s dropped ceiling. Because there were different tracks, the trains could run in opposite directions without ever crashing into each other. Butch and his model-railroading friends had created a series of miniature dioramas along the tracks that depicted to
wns, cities, parks, farms, and ranches. There were trees in the forests, saguaros in the deserts, windmills on the ranches, and barns and livestock on the farms.

  When Joanna first set foot in the Roundhouse, she loved the food but thought the train-based decor was a bit over the top. She was still a fairly new widow at the time and certainly hadn’t been looking for any kind of romantic connection. When she met Butch Dixon, the Roundhouse’s owner and head cook, she found him intriguing, but that was it. She wasn’t interested in having a boyfriend at all, to say nothing of a long-distance one. Butch’s life was based in Peoria and in his restaurant, while Joanna’s was located four hours away in Cochise County. In her book that was that.

  Except it wasn’t. A few months later, the city of Peoria had come along and offered Butch a buyout that he couldn’t refuse. He took the money and ran, intent on two very different pursuits. One was to follow his lifelong dream of becoming a writer. The other was to win over a petite and somewhat contrary red-haired woman who’d walked into the Roundhouse and turned his life on end.

  Once they married, and when it came time to build their new house, Butch had insisted that his model trains had to come along for the ride. The arrangement in the family room at High Lonesome Ranch was similar to the one formerly in the restaurant, but on a much smaller scale. Here again the tracks rested on shelving just below ceiling level, but this was a simpler display with fewer tracks and, as a consequence, far fewer trains.

  These days Butch, with Denny’s increasingly capable assistance, switched out the display from time to time, retiring some trains, bringing out others, and changing the scenery to match the season.

  After eating her solitary leftovers and cleaning up the resulting mess in the kitchen, Joanna ventured warily into the room where Butch and Denny were creating a display Butch liked to call “Trains in Winter,” complete with tiny lit Christmas trees lining the tracks. A chaos of boxes, some empty and some not, covered the floor. Butch, perched on a ladder, stood above the fray while Denny handed things up to him. Sage, confined to a playpen, seemed happy to remain on the periphery of all the action.