Judgment Call (10 page)

“Right.”

“Could you please access her Facebook page and see if you can tell me what time the photo was posted?”

As a law enforcement officer, Joanna was painfully aware of the problems with cyberpredators stalking the Internet to find likely victims. She and Butch had installed the latest and greatest parental controls on their home computer system for just that reason. The situation with Jenny and the crime scene photo taught her that there was as much of a problem with information going out as there was with bad guys trying to get in. Besides, by using her cell phone to take and send the picture, Jenny had cleverly outmaneuvered them. The parental controls were on her computer, not her phone. That would have to change.

It took the better part of a minute, but finally Dena came back on the line. “Eight ten,” she said. “That's what it says.”

In other words, Joanna thought, it took a little less than an hour to get from Jenny to Cassie and from Cassie to the whole school!

“You're not going to be calling my parents, are you?” Dena asked. “They'll be really upset if I get called in to talk to a detective.”

“Don't worry,” Joanna said reassuringly. “Before this is over, we'll probably be talking to everyone at the school.”

That was a little white lie. Joanna didn't have the man- or womanpower to interview everyone at Bisbee High School, but knowing how the school social networking system worked, she had effectively put everyone on notice that she intended to do so. With any kind of luck, that little bit of intimidation would be enough to smoke out some useful information.

This time, when she started the car, she drove away from Dr. Ross's clinic and headed for the Justice Center, dialing Deb Howell's number as she went.

“Detective Howell here.”

“Any luck with the next-of-kin situation?”

“Sorry, boss,” Deb said. “I've run into a brick wall. As far as I can tell, Deb Highsmith doesn't have any next of kin. The contact listed with the Department of Licensing is Abby Holder.”

“Mrs. Holder?” Joanna repeated. “That old battle-ax who's the secretary at the high school?”

“One and the same,” Deb replied. “I'm on my way to see her now. I have to say, that woman absolutely terrified me when I was going to school. I never saw her in any color but black.”

“She had the same effect on me,” Joanna said, stifling a chuckle when she remembered how the kids at Daisy's had expressed similar kinds of fear about Debra Highsmith. “Isn't that the way it's supposed to be when you're in high school?” she asked. “If the kids aren't scared to death of the principal and the people in the principal's office, something's wrong. It's a control issue. It's been that way forever. Is Abby Holder at school today?”

“I already checked,” Deb said. “The kids are out of school for the weekend and so are the staff members. I'm headed to her house.”

Joanna had a choice. If she went to the office where she could tackle the day's paperwork, she would also be a sitting duck for anyone Marliss Shackleford happened to send her way. If Joanna was out on an interview with Deb Howell, she would be a moving target rather than a stationary one.

“Mind if I tag along?”

“I'd love to have you come along,” Deb said. “She lives at 2828 Hazzard.”

“All right,” Joanna said. “I'll meet you there in a few minutes.”

ABIGAIL HOLDER WAS A FEW YEARS YOUNGER THAN JOANNA'S
mother. It was mostly through Eleanor Lathrop Winfield that Joanna knew some of Abby's history. She had grown up on the Vista, an upscale neighborhood in Bisbee's Warren neighborhood, one that had long been home to the town's white-collar elite—the mine supervisors along with a selection of judges, doctors, and lawyers.

Growing up and walking to school from her parents' far-lower-class home on Campbell, Joanna had been jealous of the people who lived on the Vista. The large, mostly brick houses with shady front porches and yards usually required the regular attention of a gardener. The houses on East Vista and West Vista faced each other across a block-wide, five-block-long expanse of park that had once been the neighborhood's centerpiece. Joanna had heard that the park had once been a grassy oasis, complete with a bandstand and huge trees. The bandstand and trees were both gone now, and the lush grass had been allowed to go to weedy ruin due to the prohibitive costs of watering and mowing it.

Hazzard was the last street in Bisbee's Warren neighborhood, a final outpost of civilization before town gave way to desert. When Joanna pulled up in front of Abby Holder's small frame house on Hazzard, it was clear that this one was very different from the brick-clad mansion where she had grown up. The ramshackle wooden structure was built on a terrace, several steep steps above street level. A concrete wheelchair ramp zigzagged across the small front yard up to the terrace, and then again up onto a tiny front porch. In the early afternoon, the porch still offered some shade, but as the sun went down in the west, Joanna knew the shade would disappear. In the summer, the setting sun would turn the front room of the house into a virtual oven.

Joanna parked out front, just behind Detective Howell's Tahoe. Together the two of them walked up the wheelchair ramp. When they reached the front door, Deb, ID in hand, stepped up to the door and rang the old-fashioned doorbell. From somewhere deep inside the house a tuneless jangle announced their presence.

Moments later the door cracked open and Abby Holder peered outside at them. “Yes,” she said. “What do you want?”

“I'm Detective Howell with the Cochise County Sheriff's Department,” Deb explained, “and this is Sheriff Brady.”

In response, Abby opened the door wider. For the first time ever, she wasn't wearing all black. She was dressed in a faded red-and-gray Bisbee High School tracksuit, complete with the school's familiar Puma logo. Drab gray hair was pulled back in a tight French twist. She wore no makeup, however, and the grim expression that had petrified generations of schoolchildren was firmly in place.

The formal introductions were interrupted by an aggrieved voice, calling from somewhere inside the house, “What's going on? Are we having company? Why didn't you tell me?”

Abby turned away from the door. “It's about school, Mother,” she said. “I'll take care of it.”

Pulling the inside door shut behind her, Abby Holder stepped out through the screen door and onto the porch. “This is about Ms. Highsmith, right?” Abby asked as she studied Detective Howell's ID. “I already heard you found her body. One of the teachers called me.”

“Yes, and that's why we're here,” Deb continued. “At the Department of Licensing, you're listed as her next of kin. You're not related, are you?”

“No, not at all,” Abby replied.

“Close friends, then?” Deb asked.

Abby shook her head. “Not really, although we worked together every day for several years. When she told me she was going to put me down as her emergency contact, I was a little taken aback—uncomfortable, really—but she said there was no one else.”

“No relatives of any kind?” Joanna asked.

“None that I know of. That's what she told me, anyway. That she was an only child, that her parents died in a car accident years ago, and that she wasn't close to any of her cousins. I wondered about it at the time, if maybe she was in the witness protection program or something. I didn't ask her that, of course. I just wondered about it.”

“When did she list you as her emergency contact?” Deb asked. “Was this a recent development?”

“Oh, no,” Abby answered. “It happened when she first got here and was filling out all her paperwork.”

“Did she ever mention where she was from?”

“Back east somewhere,” Abby replied. “From one of those tiny states—Vermont or New Hampshire or Connecticut. I can never keep those straight in my head.”

“I believe there's a life insurance rider on your group insurance policy,” Joanna said.

That was a lie. Joanna didn't believe it was true; she knew it was true. For years before she ran for and was elected to the office of sheriff, Joanna had worked for the Davis Insurance Agency. She had handled the paperwork on the transaction when her boss, Milo Davis, had won the bid to handle the school's group insurance program.

“Yes,” Abby agreed. “There are some differences in coverage for certified as opposed to noncertified personnel, but we all have a life insurance benefit.”

“Do you have any idea who she might have named as the beneficiary on that?”

“No idea whatsoever,” Abby answered. “You'd have to check with the school district office for that information, or there might be something about that in her files at school.”

“What about a cell phone?” Deb asked.

Joanna knew that no cell phone had been found at the crime scene or at the victim's home. She also knew that cell phone records might lead them to people who were part of Debra Highsmith's social circle but weren't necessarily known to the people with whom she worked.

“Oh, yes.”

“Do you happen to know the number?”

Abby reeled it off from memory. Deb punched the number into her cell phone and tried dialing it. Unsurprisingly, it went straight to voice mail.

Just then there were several sharp raps on the closed door behind Abby. The blows were hard enough that the three stair-step windowpanes jiggled in their mahogany frames, threatening to come loose.

“I know you're still out there, Abigail,” her mother said imperiously. “It's very low class to be standing outside conducting business on the front porch. Are you out there talking about me?”

Abby flushed with embarrassment. “I'll be right there, Mother.” Then she turned back to Deb Howell and Joanna. “My mother has a few security issues. I have a caregiver who usually stops by several times a day to check on her when I'm at work, but when I'm here, Mother doesn't like having me out of her sight. If you don't mind coming inside …”

Abby allowed her voice to trail off before she finished her less than enthusiastic invitation. It was plain to see that she wasn't eager to welcome them into her home. As the daughter of a sometimes difficult mother, Joanna understood the woman's reluctance. In public, Abby Holder appeared to be totally in control. It had to be difficult for her to be treated with such open contempt at home.

The polite thing for Joanna and Detective Howell to do would have been to walk away and let Abby Holder deal with her mother's issues in private, but this was a homicide investigation. As someone who had worked with the victim day in and day out for years, Abby Holder might well have insights into the workings of Debra Highsmith's life that no one else could provide.

There was another series of raps on the closed door. “Abigail? Are you still there?”

“We don't mind at all, do we, Deb?” Joanna said with a bright smile. “Any information you can give us at this stage would be a huge help.”

Reluctantly, Abby opened the door and allowed them to enter. Just inside the door a tiny woman sat hunched in a wheelchair. She gripped a colorful cane in one hand and was clearly within seconds of staging another assault on the door, whose marred surface already gave clear evidence of several previous blows. The woman appeared to be afflicted with a severe widow's hump, one that left her face permanently pointing into her lap. Thin gray hair did little to conceal the balding spot on the top of her head.

“It's about time you came inside,” she complained, peering up at them sideways due to an inability to raise her head. “You told me you were going to make some tea. I'm still waiting.”

Looking at her, Joanna was reminded of a time when, as a little girl, she had climbed into a cottonwood tree to spy on a nest of newly hatched crows. Joanna had gotten only the smallest peek at the naked, angry, and demanding little things before an infuriated mama crow had shown up on the scene to drive the interloper away. Abby Holder's mother wasn't naked, but she had angry and demanding down to a science.

Abby gestured Joanna and Deb into the living room. “Could I interest you in some tea?”

“Please,” Joanna said, accepting for both of them. “That would be great.”

While Abby retreated into what must have been the kitchen, Joanna and Deb seated themselves side by side on a chintz sofa. The living room was small and crowded with too much oversize furniture. There were two large easy chairs that matched the sofa. A huge glass-fronted buffet was shoved up against one wall with a flat-screen television perched on top of that. On the muted screen the cast members of some afternoon soap opera were going through their paces. Every available inch of wall space was covered with framed artwork—notably oversize desert landscapes done in vivid oils.

To Joanna's way of thinking, none of the colorful furnishings in the crowded room quite squared with plain-Jane Abby Holder who always dressed in black or gray, whose hair was always pulled back into an old-fashioned, simple French twist, and whose face never showed a single hint of makeup. The furniture seemed far more in keeping with Abby's mother, who was dressed in a vivid orange muumuu and whose thin lips and cheeks were garishly colored with bright red lipstick and rouge.