02 Tombstone Courage by J A Jance

Author:J A Jance [Jance, J A]
Format: epub
Published: 0101-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

Twenty-One

EVEN WITHOUT directions, Joanna would have had no trouble finding her way. Much of the road was over coarse, trackless shale, but here and there—in still-muddy low spots or in patches of dry, dusty dirt—a collection of freshly laid tire indentations left their separate marks. Wherever visible tracks remained in the roadway, Joanna was careful to drive around them.

She followed the ever-narrowing trail, through a scrub-oak-dotted landscape toward the rockbound red cliffs that crowned the mountain. As she drove through the ranch where Harold Patterson had lived all his life, Joanna allowed herself a moment of private grief. She hadn’t thought about that part of the job, about investigating the death of someone she knew and cared for. But Cochise County was a relatively small community. Some of the people whose deaths came under investigation were bound to be acquaintances if not friends.

Looking around her, she hoped Jim Bob was right; that Harold had “died with his boots on,” doing the work he loved. But there was something worrisome in the back of her mind, a stray thought that wouldn’t disappear no matter how much she wanted to stifle it.

The last time Joanna had seen Harold Patterson was two days ago, when he came to Milo’s office. He had seemed anxious and upset when he came looking for those change-of-beneficiary forms. He had talked about wanting to change the provisions of his policies from Ivy alone to someone else. Those are the kinds of changes people don’t undertake without some reason prodding them to do so—a marriage, a death, or, in this case, what seemed to be a change of heart.

Taken together, Harold Patterson’s policies didn’t add up to a huge fortune, but a cool quarter of a million dollars—or even half that much—couldn’t be overlooked as a possible motive for murder. If Harold Patterson had, in fact, been murdered.

Joanna racked her brain trying to remember the old man’s exact words. He had told her a story, a parable about his daughters, comparing them to two dogs pulling apart an old saddle blanket rather than sharing it. Did that mean Harold intended to split the proceeds of his policies fifty-fifty? It would be important for the investigators to learn whether or not those beneficiary forms had been properly signed and witnessed and where they were right now.

A single phone call to Milo Davis or Lisa would have answered that question in a minute, but Joanna was in her own car, with no radio and no kind of communications capability. How long would it take, Joanna wondered, for the new sheriff to have an official, properly equipped vehicle of her own? And how did she go about requesting one?

Deputy Hollicker had told her three miles. Dick Voland’s Blazer blocked the path at 2.5 in a spot where the road wound between two immense boulders. When Voland stepped up to the side of her car, he leaned down as if expecting her to roll down the window so he could speak to her.

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