Skeleton Canyon Page 8

  Ernie shook his head. “None of that makes much sense to me,” the detective said. “But then I’m not a girl.”

  “I suppose I am?” Joanna returned.

  “Aren’t you?”

  Had anyone else in the department called Sheriff Brady a girl, she might well have taken offense. But Ernie Carpenter was a crusty homicide detective who, from the very beginning, had treated Joanna as a fellow officer-a peer-rather than as an unwelcome interloper. Their already positive relationship had solidified when the two of them had narrowly survived a potentially fatal dynamite blast. Since they were comrades in arms, Joanna was able to overlook Ernie’s occasional lapses into male chauvinism.

  “Look,” Joanna replied, “girl or not, it doesn’t take a genius to see what’s going on here. Bree was far more worried about her parents’ finding out what was in her journal than she was about them stumbling over her supply of birth control bills. So that’s where we have to start with whatever is in that journal.”

  “Great,” Ernie said. “But as you’ve already noticed, the last seven or eight months of entries are missing.”

  “No problem,” Joanna said. “Just because whatever Bree wrote is a deep dark secret to her family, that doesn’t mean it is to everyone else. Half the students at Bisbee High School may know what’s been going on. The trick is going to be getting one of them to tell us.”

  “Mrs. O’Brien gave me a list of all her friends,” Ernie uttered.

  Joanna shrugged. “We can start with them, I suppose,” she said. “But we’ll get what we want sooner by talking to Bree’s enemies. They’re the ones who’ll give us the real scoop.”

  “Enemies!” Ernie sputtered. “What kind of enemies would Bree O’Brien have? She’s eighteen years old, comes from a good family, is an honor student, and was valedictorian of her class. That’s not the kind of girl you’d expect to be drinking, drugging, or hanging around with gangs, which, as far as I’m concerned, is where most teenage problems and fatalities come from.”

  Joanna looked at Ernie. He was a man who brought to his position as detective a bedrock of old-fashioned, small-town values. His solid beliefs and common sense had seen him through years of investigating the worst Cochise County had It) offer. He and his wife, Rose, had raised two fine sons, both of whom were college graduates-although neither of the boys had followed his father into law enforcement.

  “You and Rose only raised sons,” Joanna said. “You probably still believe girls are made of sugar and spice and every-thing nice.”

  “Aren’t they?” He turned back and once again surveyed Bree O’Brien’s almost painfully neat room. “But I don’t think that’s the case here,” he said finally.

  “Me either,” Joanna said.

  “So who’s going to give David O’Brien the good news/bad news?” Ernie asked. “Who gets to tell him that his precious daughter most likely hasn’t been kidnapped but that she’s probably out there somewhere, shacked up for the weekend with an oversexed boyfriend her daddy doesn’t know any-thing about?”

  “I suppose,” Joanna said without enthusiasm, “that dubious honor belongs to me.”

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  Angie Kellogg tried calling Joanna several times during the course of the afternoon. She had known Joanna was taking Jenny to camp that Saturday morning, but Angie also knew that her friend had expected to be back home in Bisbee some time before dark. Angie was still hoping she’d he able to convince Joanna to go along on the next morning’s hummingbird-watching expedition. By the time Angie had to get dressed to go to work, she still didn’t have an answer.

  What do I do now? she asked herself, standing in front of her closet. Should I take along hiking clothes or not?

  In the end, she decided to pack a bag with hiking gear just in case. After all, it was early in the evening. There was still plenty of time for Joanna to call.

  Picking up the phone, Angie dialed the High Lonesome one last time. “It’s Angie again,” she said when the machine clicked on. “Give me a call at work as soon as you get in. I really need to talk to you.”

  Joanna and Ernie left Brianna’s room together and started back to the living room. Walking down the hallway, Joanna paused to study a collection of framed photographs that lined both walls. There were four distinctly separate groupings of pictures.

  One set featured poses of a much younger and still able-bodied David O’Brien. One photo showed him in an old-fashioned Bisbee High School letterman’s sweater accepting the Copper Pick trophy from the captain of the Douglas team in the aftermath of a long-ago game in which the Bisbee Pumas had beaten the Douglas Bulldogs. Another showed him standing in front of the entrance of the old high school building on Howell up in Old Bisbee. A third photo showed him in a cap and gown standing next to the fountain in front of Old Main at the University of Arizona. Beside him stood two women-one middle-aged and the other stooped, white-haired, and elderly. His mother and grandmother, Joanna assumed.

  The first picture in the next group featured a smiling David O’Brien dressed in white tennis togs. One hand gripped a tennis racket while the other arm was draped casually across the bare, halter-topped shoulders of an attractive young woman. Seemingly unaware of the camera, she smiled up at him with a look of undisguised adoration. When Joanna saw the same woman again in the next picture-an informal family grouping posed around a towering Christmas tree-she realized this had to be David O’Brien’s first family-the wife, daughter, and son who had perished in a fiery chain reaction wreck on Inter-state 10.

  The little boy was a somber-faced young man who bore an uncanny resemblance. to his father. The daughter, with an impish smile and a disarming set of dimples, was a carbon copy of her mother. It saddened Joanna to see those two long-dead children, youngsters whose lives had been snuffed out in a moment, leaving them no opportunity to grow to adulthood or to experience all the joys and sorrows life has to offer. With a sudden ache in her heart, Joanna found herself missing fenny.

  “‘This must be his first wife and their two kids,” Joanna said quickly to Ernie, pointing back at the Christmas picture.

  The detective nodded. “And these must be Katherine.”

  In the next grouping, one picture showed a much younger version of Katherine wearing a prom dress but standing alone, posing beside an easy chair all by herself rather than with a male escort. Another featured a young and smiling Katherine proudly wearing her black-banded R.N. cap. A third showed her beaming down at a scowling newborn baby that had to he Brianna.

  The last section, one featuring almost as many photos as the other three combined, featured Bree O’Brien herself. Among others there were shots of her on a tricycle, clasping a teddy bear under each arm. One frame held a family Christmas card featuring a toothless six-year-old Brianna along with a caption that read, “All I want for Christmas is my two front teeth.” Another photo was a pose of her in a BHS cheerleading uniform. The last picture in the montage was a framed copy of Bree’s senior portrait, the same one that had been featured in the newspaper prior to graduation.

  Seeing the pictures grouped together like that gave Joanna the odd sensation of having all those people’s lives spread out in almost instant replay fashion. The one woman and the two children had been wiped off the face of the earth, leaving behind hardly a trace-other than a few photographs-to testify to their all-too-brief lives. David O’Brien had gone from being a strappingly handsome, healthy young man to an embittered, wheelchair-bound, old one. Katherine’s bright-eyed and sweetly smiling nurse’s portrait was totally at odds with the dignified and sadly reserved middle-aged woman she had become. As for Brianna, there was nothing in the photos that gave any kind of hint about the existence of the double life that, Joanna was convinced, lay hidden in her missing journal entries.

  After studying the pictures, Ernie must have reached the same conclusion. Pointing to the senior portrait, he shook his head. “A picture’s supposed to be worth a thousand words,” he said sadly. “But it makes you wond
er, doesn’t it?”

  Joanna nodded. “It certainly does,” she said.

  Back in the O’Brien’s living room, David and Katherine sat in front of a massive stone fireplace. David’s wheelchair was parked on one side. Katherine’s overstuffed brocade-covered chair was opposite his. Both Katherine and David held fist-sized cocktail glasses in their hands. As soon as Joanna walked into the room, Katherine’s eyes sought hers. That silent, pleading look spoke volumes. Please don’t tell my husband about the pills, it said. Her voice, however, belied the desperate message in her eyes.

  “Won’t you reconsider and join us?” Katherine asked. She gestured graciously toward a silver serving tray stocked with several crystal glasses, a matching ice bucket, and a selection of liquor bottles. The tray, placed well within reach, sat on an elegantly carved ebony coffee table. “Or, if you wish,” Katherine Continued, “Mrs. Vorevkin could bring in a fresh pitcher of lea.”

  David O’Brien frowned as though finding his wife’s offer of hospitality somehow offensive. Polishing off the liquid in his own glass, he leaned over, slamming the crystal glass down on the tray hard enough to jangle the bottles standing there. Allen tossing in a couple of ice cubes, he refilled his glass with a generous serving from a half-empty bottle of Chivas Regal.

  “No, thank you…” Joanna began.

  “Stop it, Katherine,” O’Brien ordered. “That isn’t necessary. No sense treating these two cops like they’re honored guests or long-lost relatives. They’re here for business, not pleasure.”

  Katherine blanched at the rebuke. Wanting to make her feel better, Joanna ignored David O’Brien’s rudeness and turned instead to his wife. “Your husband is right, Mrs. O’Brien,” Joanna said smoothly. “Detective Carpenter and I are here on business. It’s very kind of you, but it isn’t necessary to treat us as guests. And, now that we’re finished, we need to be going.”

  Katherine had been ordered to stifle, and she did so. She nodded mutely in response, holding her mouth in a thin, straight line while her eyes welled with tears. David O’Brien, however, seemed oblivious to the fact that his actions had caused his wife any discomfort. Still fuming, he turned his attention on Joanna.

  “Well, Sheriff Brady,” he continued brusquely, “what have you decided? Are you going to call in the FBI or not?”

  “Not,” Joanna replied. “I realize, Mr. O’Brien, that you’re under the impression that some serious harm has come to your daughter. However, nothing we found in her room gives any indication of foul play. According to what your wife could tell us about your daughter’s things, the clothing Bree packed when she left home is consistent with someone going away for a few days-of someone going away with every intention of returning. Your daughter told you she’d be back on Sunday afternoon, correct?”

  “Yes, but…”

  “How old is she, Mr. O’Brien?”

  “She turned eighteen in March.”

  “Not a juvenile, then. She’s of an age where the law allows her to come and go as she pleases, regardless of her parents’ wishes. Until she misses her Sunday afternoon estimated time of arrival or until you receive some kind of threat or ransom demand, there’s really nothing more we can do.”

  “Can or will?” David O’Brien asked.

  “We’ve already done something,” Joanna countered reason-ably. “Probably more than we should have under the circumstances. Even though Brianna doesn’t officially qualify as a missing person, my department has nonetheless alerted authorities both here and in New Mexico to be on the lookout for her.”

  “But not the FBI.”

  “No.”

  “And you have no intention of notifying them?”

  David O’Brien was clearly a bully-someone who was accustomed to having his own way each and every time, no questions asked.

  “As I told you earlier,” Joanna said, “we won’t take that kind of action unless there’s some compelling evidence to indicate that a kidnapping has actually taken place.”

  The unwavering calmness in Joanna’s answer seemed to provoke David O’Brien and make him bristle that much more. “I thought as much,” he said. “But that’s till right. You do your thing, Sheriff Brady, and I’ll do mine.”

  “David…” Katherine began, but he silenced her once more with a single baleful glare. Again the woman subsided into her chair. She said nothing more aloud, but the fingers gripping her partially filled glass showed white at the knuckles.

  Looking at the woman, the phrase “contents under pressure” suddenly popped into Joanna’s head. That was what Katherine O’Brien was like. She seemed to be forever walking on eggshells around her husband, trying to keep things from him-things like learning about his daughter’s birth control pills-that might provoke… what?

  For the first time, the possibility of domestic violence entered into the equation. Joanna had been sheriff long enough to know that domestic violence was a part of all too many seemingly happy marriages in Cochise County and throughout the rest of the country as well. DV calls came from homes at all socioeconomic levels and all walks of life. David O’Brien was in his seventies, but his bare arms bulged with the muscles and sinews used to propel his non-motorized wheelchair. His hands, callused from turning the rubber wheels, would come equipped with a powerful grip. Used as weapons, those same hands could be dangerous, although, in Joanna’s opinion, the words that came from his mouth-words steeped in anger and bitterness-seemed damaging enough.

  Joanna thought again of the almost obsessive neatness of Brianna’s room-of the House Beautiful quality of the whole spacious and well-appointed place. Some people were good housekeepers by their very nature, but Sheriff Brady had learned from reading her deputies’ incident reports that in some relationships keeping a clean house was a stipulation-a requirement to be met on a daily basis-in order to keep from earning a smack in the mouth. Or worse. In that kind of environment, Bree’s birth control pills, her missing journal entries, and even her own AWOL status made far more sense. For that matter, so did Katherine’s obvious fear of rocking the boat.

  Joanna turned back to David. He was studying her with narrowed eyes, as if expecting her to cave in to his demands.

  “What do you mean by your thing and my thing, Mr. O’Brien?” she asked.

  “It means that as soon as I saw your department’s reluctance to call in reinforcements, I went ahead and made other arrangements. I’ve contacted a private eye up in Phoenix. Detective Stoddard will be here by nine o’clock tomorrow morning. You may be unwilling or unable to do the job, Sheriff Brady. I’m sure my PI won’t be.”

  “Hiring a detective is certainly your prerogative, Mr. O’Brien,” Joanna returned. “It may prove to be a waste of money, however, especially if your daughter shows up on her own as scheduled tomorrow afternoon.”

  “Even if she does, it’s my money,” O’Brien said sourly.

  “Of course,” Joanna agreed. “And you’re entitled to spend it in whatever manner you see fit. Good evening, then.” She started to leave, but then stopped and turned back. “May I ask one more question?”

  “What’s that?”

  “Have you noticed any changes in your daughter’s behavior in the last few months?”

  “What’s this? You’re asking me questions about a daughter you insist isn’t really missing?”

  Joanna ignored the jibe. “Has she changed?”

  O’Brien shrugged. “Of course she’s changed,” he said. “Night to day. As though she had a personality transplant. Telling us one thing and doing another is just the tip of the iceberg.” He paused long enough to glower at his wife, as though he held Katherine personally accountable for his daughter’s emerging dishonesty.

  “She never should have dropped out of the cheerleading squad,” he continued. “That was the beginning of all this and a grave disappointment to me as well. I didn’t raise my daughter to be a quitter. That’s not what O’Briens do.”

  You mean being student body vice president and class valedictor
ian weren’t enough? Joanna wanted to ask, but she didn’t. Instead, she stifled that question in favor of another. “She just quit?”

  David O’Brien might have wanted Katherine to keep quiet, but his orders weren’t enough to suppress a mother’s natural inclination to defend her daughter. “Miss Barker had to drop her,” Katherine interjected. “It happened back in November. At the end of football season. Because Bree had been captain of the squad, there was a bit of a flap about it. You may have heard…”

  From the moment Joanna had found her wounded husband shot and bleeding in a sandy wash her every waking moment had been preoccupied with her own concerns, with her own survival and with Jenny’s. Joanna Brady had had very little energy left over to squander on anyone else’s difficulties. In That kind of emotion-charged atmosphere, it was hardly surprising that a tempest centered in and around the local high school cheerleading squad had failed to penetrate her consciousness.

  Joanna shook her head. “I don’t remember hearing anything about it,” she said.

  “You’re probably the only one,” David said. “It happened during the Bisbee-Douglas game. One of the players from Douglas-some young Mexican kid-ended up getting hurt. Had his leg broken, I guess. Bree was upset about it beyond all reason. She walked off the field right in the middle of the game. Left the ballpark and went directly to the hospital. Naturally, the cheerleading adviser had no choice but to put her off the squad.”

  Joanna counted off the months in her head. November through June. Seven months. About the same length of time covered by the missing journals. “And that was when you first noticed the change in her?”

  “She was moody, I suppose,” Katherine said. “But that was understandable. After all, losing her position on the squad was a very real loss to her, a blow to her self-esteem. There’s some grieving to be done after something like that happens. Grieving and a certain amount of acting out. But beyond that, she was fine. It’s not like it interfered with her grades or anything.”