FOR JOANNA THE NEXT TWO DAYS FLASHED BY IN A FLURRY OF paperwork and complicated logistics with quick stints of motherhood squeezed in around the edges. She spent a good deal of time working closely with the M.E. At Joanna’s suggestion one of the first things Kendra Baldwin did was contact a victims’-rights organization from Phoenix, putting them in touch with Rosa Moreno in order to facilitate getting Amelia Salazar’s remains shipped home to her grandmother in Mexico.
At the moment it was far too soon for the M.E. to have established the identities of any of the three individuals whose bodies had been found buried behind Arthur Ardmore’s place in Calhoun, although Kendra remained hopeful that the same kind of miracle that had allowed her to identify Amelia would happen again.
“Who knows?” she said. “Maybe lightning really will strike twice in the same place.”
Unlike Latisha, neither Sadie Jennings nor Sandra Locke had ever been reported missing. Sandra’s mother, Margo, was located living in a halfway house in Lodi, California. She was fresh out of jail, without a job, and completely broke. With no home of her own, she had nowhere to bring Sandra and no money with which to do so.
“I always figured Sandy was lying dead somewhere,” Margo said, “so you could just as well go ahead and bury her wherever she’s at. It don’t matter to me.”
“I’ll talk to Norm Higgins over at the mortuary,” Joanna said when Kendra reported what Margo had said. “I’ll see what we can do.”
Sadie’s parents were both dead. Sadie’s father had died of a drug overdose, and her mother had succumbed to hep C months earlier while still in prison, so Kendra was currently on the trail of a distant cousin in hopes that, if she could manage to get a genetic profile from the DNA-extraction kits, familial DNA would provide a positive identification.
The Department of Public Safety had launched an inquiry into whether or not Deputy Raymond’s injuries were the result of an officer-involved shooting. The GSR tests Tom had ordered had completely exonerated the young officer on that score.
On Wednesday morning Joanna was present when both Deputy Raymond and Latisha Marcum were released from the Copper Queen Community Hospital. Raymond was going home to Elfrida to recuperate, while Latisha was scheduled to fly back to St. Louis with her parents. Since it was the day before Thanksgiving, the fact that they’d been able to find tickets to fly home at all, let alone three seats together, had been something of a miracle.
Before they left, Joanna managed to take Lyle Richards aside. “From our preliminary survey of the situation, it looks as though there’s a considerable amount of Ardmore money hiding out here and there. You might want to consider enlisting the services of a good attorney as well as a good forensic accountant. I’m a sheriff, not an attorney, but I think there’s a strong likelihood Latisha could sue the Ardmore estate for damages due to wrongful imprisonment.”
Lyle nodded. “Thank you,” he said. “I’ll look into it.”
A few minutes later, as Juanita Raymond and Lyle Richards went about completing and signing all necessary release paperwork, Joanna noticed that Garth and Latisha were sitting off to the side, waiting to be wheeled out of the hospital. Joanna was gratified to hear them chatting away as though they were old friends.
“So what are you going to do now?” Garth asked.
“I want to go back to school,” Latisha told him. “I think I want to become a teacher.”
“Good for you,” Garth called over his shoulder as a nurse grabbed the handles on his chair and wheeled him toward the door. “Stay in touch, and I’ll be sure to send along Grandpa Jeb’s meat-loaf recipe.”
“Wait a minute, I thought that recipe was your grandmother’s.”
“It is,” Garth replied, “but Grandpa is the one who gave it to her.”
When it came time for Latisha to be wheeled out to Lyle’s rental car, Joanna walked along beside her. “I never knew that cops could be so nice,” Latisha murmured.
She was settled in the backseat by then, but the car door was still open.
“We do our best,” Joanna said.
“When you find out the names of those other girls, will you send them to me?” Latisha asked. “I’m praying for them without names right now, just like you told me. It may not make any difference to God if I don’t know their names, but it would make a difference to me.”
“You’ll have those names as soon as we do,” Joanna assured her. “I promise.”
On the home front, Butch had been busy, too. He’d slipped back into his role of stay-at-home daddy as easily as putting on an old shoe. You would have thought he’d been taking care of newborn babies all his life.
On Tuesday he’d managed to get out of the house long enough to do all the shopping necessary to create their Thanksgiving feast. He had picked up a supply of new baby bottles and some formula as well. Joanna intended to breast-feed Sage as long as possible, but as the guy who’d be left holding a hungry baby if Mom couldn’t get home in a timely fashion, Butch wanted to be equipped with a backup plan already in place.
As promised, Denny was fully involved in the preparations. By midafternoon, when it came time to bake pumpkin pies, Butch put Denny in charge of cleaning the pumpkin seeds so they could be roasted. While he was doing that, Butch went in search of Joanna.
He was surprised to find her standing in front of the bookshelf in his study, emptying the shelves of her father’s journals and loading them into a box. “Hey,” he said, “why are you boxing those up? I thought you were going to read them.”
“I thought so, too,” Joanna said ruefully, “but then I went to see Tom in the ICU. That business out in Calhoun really affected him. He’s going to be carrying that burden around with him for the rest of his life. And I’m sure the same kinds of things happened to my dad. He confided in these books—he put his whole heart into them—the good stuff and the bad stuff. I’m packing these away, not throwing them away. Maybe someday, after I retire, I’ll be able to read them, but not right now. I’ve got enough of my own stuff to carry around. I can’t afford to carry his, too.”
Butch thought about that for a moment before he nodded. “Gotcha,” he said finally. With that, he turned and headed back toward the kitchen. “Hey, Denny,” he called as he went. “Are you done with those seeds yet? We need to get them in and out of the oven so I can start on the pies.”
Joanna had finished loading the books into the box and was taping the cover shut when the landline phone on Butch’s desk jangled awake. Plucking the handset off the charger, she picked it up and answered. “Hello.”
“Joanna?” It was a woman’s voice, one Joanna was sure she had heard before, although she didn’t recognize it right off.
“It’s Carole Anne Wilson,” the voice continued. “How are you, and how’s the baby?”
Of course. Carole Anne Wilson was Butch’s editor in New York.
“We’re both fine,” Joanna said. “How are you?”
“I’m great. Is Butch home?”
“Sure, but he’s in the other room,” Joanna said. “Let me take the phone to him.”
Out in the kitchen, Dennis was squatting in front of the oven, watching to see if his pumpkin seeds had started to burn yet, while Butch put the finishing touches on crimping a pair of piecrusts.
“It’s Carole Anne,” Joanna said, offering him the phone.
He dusted off his hands on his apron before taking the phone. “Hi, Carole,” he said. “Yeah, I’m baking pumpkin pies. What’s up with you?”
For the next several very long seconds—the better part of a minute—he listened, while a huge smile spread across his face. “You’ve got to be kidding!” he said at last. “That’s great. Thank you so much for letting me know.”
“Letting you know what?” Joanna demanded as he handed the phone back to her.
“I made the list!” he said.
“What list?”
“The New York Times Best Sellers list. I didn’t make it the first week, but I did on week two. Just the Facts clocks in at number twelve on the combined hardback/e-book list.”
Joanna was dumbfounded. “You made the New York Times list? Really? That’s amazing!”
“Not really, because Gayle Dixon is the name on the list instead of Butch Dixon, but yes, we made the list. Just the Facts made the list!”
“What does that mean, Daddy?” Denny asked without taking his eyes off the pumpkin seeds.
“It means that maybe someday I’ll be able to make enough money by writing books that your mom will be able to stay home for a change. She might even start running the household,” Butch added with a wink in Joanna’s direction.
“Are you sure?” Denny asked. “You’re a better cook.”
Joanna and Butch both burst out laughing at that. “Out of the mouths of babes,” Butch said.
“That’s all right,” Joanna said. “Check with me four years from now. If you’re making handfuls of money by the time the next election rolls around, maybe it’ll be time for me to pull the plug, quit being sheriff, and learn to cook.”
“Don’t even think about it,” Butch advised. “Given your recent history with maternity leave, you wouldn’t last two weeks.”