“I guess I didn’t realize your father used to be a sheriff,” Margaret said with a smile. “I’m sure Butch must have told me, but it didn’t sink in. Is that why you wanted to be involved in law enforcement?”
Joanna wasn’t sure where Margaret was going. Joanna had grown accustomed to these kinds of unwelcome questions out on the campaign trail, but she didn’t expect them to crop up at her own dining-room table.
“I didn’t really want it,” Joanna answered warily. “It simply happened.”
“Are you saying you were elected to office by accident?” Margaret asked incredulously. “How is that possible? I was under the impression that election campaigns are a lot more complicated than that.”
Joanna remembered how, in the painful aftermath of Andy’s funeral, she had been asked to run for office in his stead. She had agreed-not because her father had been sheriff once or because Andy had wanted to be, but because it was something she actually wanted to do.
“I wasn’t elected to an office,” she said. “I was elected to do a job, and it’s a job I do willingly every single day.”
She would have said more, but the phone rang, and Jenny hurried to answer it. “It’s for you, Mom,” Jenny said. “Somebody from work.”
Taking the phone from her daughter’s hand, Joanna returned to the relative privacy of the far end of the living room before she answered. An excited Debbie Howell was on the phone, calling from Sierra Vista.
“What’s up?” Joanna asked.
“I’m looking at the photos,” Debbie Howell said breathlessly. “You’re not going to believe this.”
“What?”
“Bradley Evans was stalking someone.”
“Stalking?” Joanna repeated. “Who? And how can you be sure?”
“A woman,” Debbie returned. “A dark-haired Anglo woman, a brunette. Looks to be in her late twenties. She’s wearing what looks like a wedding ring. There are several pictures of her walking in a mall and several others of her pushing a shopping cart through a parking lot. Two more show her getting into a vehicle-a blue sedan. I can’t be sure of the make or model.”
“Does the woman know she’s being photographed?”
“I doubt it,” Debbie returned. “It doesn’t look like she does. In fact, I’d say she’s totally oblivious.”
“Is there any way to identify who she is?” Joanna asked.
“Not that I can tell. There’s no visible license plate, if that’s what you mean.”
“Can you tell where the pictures are taken? I mean, are they from Sierra Vista or maybe somewhere else you recognize? And what about the Double Cs? Have they seen the photos?”
“Not yet. They’re coming here to meet me right now to take a look. Ernie wanted me to let you know what’s going on.”
“Thanks, Debbie,” Joanna said. “I appreciate being kept in the loop. So how’s your first day been?”
“Terrific, Sheriff Brady. I don’t know how much of a help I’ve been so far, but it’s what I’ve wanted to do for a long time. Thanks for giving me a chance.”
Joanna hung up the phone feeling guilty that it had been Ernie Carpenter rather than Sheriff Joanna Brady who had opened the door on Debbie Howell’s new opportunity.
And then she thought about Bradley Evans. Was it true that he had been a stalker? That idea certainly didn’t square with what Ted Chapman had told her about the man. But now Joanna wondered. If he had been following an unsuspecting young woman around and snapping pictures of her without her knowledge or consent, then perhaps he had been on his way to reverting to the behavior that had put him in prison in the first place.
When Joanna returned to the dining room, the table had been cleared and Jenny was serving dessert-rhubarb pie topped with generous scoops of vanilla ice cream.
Joanna resumed her place, and Margaret looked at her questioningly. Clearly she was dying of curiosity about the phone call, but she couldn’t bring herself to come straight out and ask. In that moment, Joanna understood Margaret Dixon perfectly. She was every bit as nosy as Butch had said she was, but a lifetime’s worth of dealing with Eleanor-of constantly battling and frustrating her own mother-had left Joanna Brady uniquely prepared to deal with the Margaret Dixons of the world.
“No biggie,” Joanna said, sending a casual smile in her mother-in-law’s direction. “You know how it is-same old, same old.”
Chapter 7
When Joanna arrived at the conference room the next morning, her homicide team was already assembled. They were studying a collection of color snapshots scattered across the conference-room table. “I’ve already mentioned that Ernie will be taking a few days off at the end of this week and maybe the beginning of the next,” Frank told Joanna as people came to order. “I’ve let everyone know that Debbie’s going to be working as a detective for the next little while.”
Joanna was relieved that the announcement about Ernie’s upcoming absence had already been handled. Nodding, Joanna went straight to the task at hand. “What about the pictures?” she asked. “I think we’ll need several copies of each of these,” Frank said. “Enough to go around, and enlargements, too. Eight-by-tens at least. Then we may be able to use Photo Shop to enhance the images so we can figure out where these were taken.”
“You’re right,” Ernie agreed. “We should all have copies, but it isn’t going to take some high-tech computer program to see what we need to see.” Ernie tapped one of the photos with a thick forefinger. “Look at the background on this one. If those aren’t the Huachuca Mountains, I’ll eat my hat.”
Joanna picked up the photo and studied it herself, looking beyond the woman pushing the grocery cart to the undulating wall of mountains looming behind her.
“I think you’re right, Ernie,” she agreed. “If I’m not mistaken, we’re going to find this was taken in the parking lot of that Fry’s grocery store out on Highway 92.”
“Do you want me to check on that?” Debbie asked. “I could take copies of a couple of the photos out there. If the woman is a regular customer, one of the clerks or carryout people will recognize her.”
If it’s not already too late, Joanna worried. What if Bradley Evans had already done his worst before someone got to him?
“Good thinking,” Joanna said. “We need to know who she is and why Evans was following her around snapping photos.”
Joanna glanced around the table, settling on the Double Cs. “Do we have a viable suspect in this case?” she asked.
Ernie shook his head. “Not yet,” he said as Jaime Carbajal nodded in agreement.
“All right then,” Joanna said. “That brings us back to Evans himself. What do we know about him so far?”
“Evans may have been a loner, but his landlady thought he walked on water,” Jaime conceded. “That’s why she was so adamant about not letting us into his place without a search warrant. The guy didn’t smoke or drink; paid his rent on time; never gave her any trouble; didn’t have women spending the night; and helped out occasionally with little jobs around the house. When it comes to renters, it doesn’t get any better than that. So either Evans really was a good guy or else he was really good at creating a screen so people thought he was a good guy.”
“Which is it?” Joanna asked.
Jaime Carbajal shrugged. “The jury’s still out on that,” he said. “We need to see if we can track down Bradley’s credit-card use and telephone records. Frank will be focusing on that. Credit-card receipts will help us track his movements in the days before he died. So will his phone calls. In the meantime, Ernie and I will spend most of today interviewing people at the prison down in Douglas. We know Ted Chapman’s opinions about Bradley Evans. Personally, I’d like to see if there are any dissenting ones. If he had something going with the girl in the pictures, maybe he confided in one or more of the people he was working with at the prison.”