“Don’t hold back,” Frank said with a grin. “Why don’t you say how you really feel?”
“But there is someone else I need to call,” she added. “Sheriff Randy Trotter.”
Through the years Joanna had had enough dealings with Hidalgo County Sheriff Randy Trotter in New Mexico that his numbers were programmed into her cell phone. Minutes later she had the man on the phone.
“Are you still working?” he asked once he knew who was calling. “I thought you’d be off having your baby by now. What can I do for you?”
“What would you think if I said the names Billy and Clarence O’Dwyer?” Joanna asked.
“I’d think I was glad Roostercomb Ranch is mostly on your side of the state line,” Randy Trotter answered. “Those two guys are mean as snakes, and the less my officers and I have to do with them the better. Why?”
“Because it looks like they’re operating a criminal enterprise that straddles the state line the same way their ranch used to.”
“I don’t think I want to hear this,” Randy said, “but I guess you’d better tell me.”
It was ten after four and Joanna had just gotten off the phone with Sheriff Trotter when Frank pulled up in front of Anna Marie Crystal’s modest home on Short Street.
“You never did say how we’re going to play this,” Frank observed as they walked up the sidewalk. “Are you going to tell her about Leslie Markham’s resemblance to her dead daughter?”
“Not if we don’t have to,” Joanna returned. “For one thing, until we know whether or not her daughter is dead or alive, I don’t want to get the poor woman’s hopes up.”
Fritz, the silky terrier mix, began barking the moment they stepped onto the porch. Through the door they could hear Anna Marie muttering to herself while she shut off the blaring television set, confined the dog to the kitchen, and then came to the door. When she opened it, a thick cloud of stale cigarette smoke wafted outside.
“Oh,” Anna Marie said, looking at Joanna and shaking her head in apparent disgust. “It’s you again. What do you want this time?”
“This is my chief deputy, Frank Montoya,” Joanna said. “We’d like to talk to you for a few minutes if you don’t mind.”
“I’ve already told you everything I know about Bradley Evans,” Anna Marie said. “Personally, I don’t give a damn if you ever find out who killed him.”
“This is about your daughter,” Joanna said.
“About Lisa?” Anna Marie gave Joanna a shrewdly appraising look, but finally she stepped back into the room, allowing Frank and Joanna to enter. “What about her?”
“Do you mind if we sit?” Joanna asked.
“It’s okay, I suppose,” Anna Marie answered.
Joanna immediately chose a spot at the far end of the couch and seated herself next to an end table that contained a reeking ashtray. One of the stubs was still smoldering.
“What do you want to know?” Anna Marie asked brusquely.
“What can you tell us about your daughter’s marriage to Bradley Evans?” Joanna asked.
“I don’t see that it matters. I thought they were too young to be married. And I thought he was on the wild side and not ready to settle down. I thought he drank too much. Why? Why does any of this matter now?”
“Was Lisa unhappy with him?” Joanna persisted.
“Are you kidding? She was head over heels in love with the guy. And she told us-Kenny and me-that she was sure he’d straighten up once she had the baby.”
“Did she ever threaten to leave him?”
“Never.”
“You don’t think it’s possible she tried to run away from him?”
“If she did, he stopped her, didn’t he. Murdering her would be one way to keep her from leaving.”
“Yes,” Joanna said, “I suppose it would.” She eyed the ashtray where the smoldering cigarette stub had finally extinguished itself. “I’m sorry,” she said. “I seem to be thirsting to death. Could I trouble you for a glass of water?”
“All right,” Anna Marie said grudgingly. She stood up with a sigh and headed for the kitchen. Before the door had swung shut behind her, Joanna had collected the cigarette stub, stuffed it into an evidence bag, and shoved the bag into her pocket. Grinning, Frank gave her a quick thumbs-up.
Anna Marie returned to the living room with a glass of water in one hand and her yapping dog in the other. “I don’t know what any of this has to do with the price of tea in China,” she said.
“We’re trying to find out if it’s possible that Bradley Evans’s murder now has something to do with what happened to your daughter all those years ago.”
Anna Marie put down the dog. Then she collected the ashtray, her cigarettes, and her lighter and took them to the opposite end of the couch. She lit a cigarette and then blew a new puff of smoke into the already saturated air. By the time she looked back at Joanna, her countenance had changed.
“I certainly hope so,” she said fiercely. “I always thought the son of a bitch got off way too easy. I prayed every night for years that he’d die in prison. You see how much good that did. But he’s dead now, so why are you still asking questions?”
“Since Bradley Evans confessed to the crime and also went to prison for it, it’s possible that the investigation into your daughter’s death was something less than thorough,” Joanna explained. “We’re exploring the possibility that someone else may have been involved.”
“You’re saying Bradley had an accomplice?”
That wasn’t at all what Joanna meant, but since that idea seemed to satisfy some of Anna Marie’s objections, she let it slide. Joanna knew from reading the casebook that the Lisa Evans homicide had been closed so quickly and so definitively that few of the victim’s friends and associates had ever been interviewed.
“Possibly,” Joanna said.
“Was it a woman?” Anna Marie asked. “I always wondered about that-if he had a girlfriend or someone on the side-and that’s why he got rid of Lisa.”
“Did your daughter say something that led you to think that might be the case?”
“No. According to what she told me, everything was hunky-dory, except for Bradley’s drinking, that is. She was worried about it. That was the only thing she ever complained about.”
“It may be the one thing she mentioned to you, but she might have said something more to someone else,” Joanna said. “You see, Mrs. Crystal, although I love my mother very much, there are issues in my marriage that I would never discuss with her. Is it possible that Lisa had friends other than you, people her age, that she might have told her troubles to?”
Anna Marie considered for a moment before she answered. “Lisa’s best friend would have been the Tanner girl-Barbara Tanner. Lisa might have said something to her.”
“Who was Barbara Tanner?”
“Her parents owned the dry cleaner’s where Lisa worked. In fact, Barbara was the one who got Lisa the job in the first place. She worked part-time there while she was still in high school and then full-time after she got out. Barbara worked there, too, some of the time, but after she went off to college, she only worked on winter breaks and during the summers to help her parents.”
“What about Lisa?” Joanna asked. “Why didn’t she go to college?”
Anna Marie shrugged. “She wasn’t interested, mostly. Kenny would have found a way to pay for it if she had really wanted to go, but her grades weren’t all that good, and she never really liked school.”
“Do the Tanners still live around here?” Joanna asked.
Anna Marie shook her head. “They sold out a long time ago, and they’re both gone now. Barbara was a change-of-life baby, so her parents were a lot older than Kenny and me.”
“What about Barbara?”
“I have no idea,” Anna Marie said. “The last time I saw her was at Lisa’s funeral. She was there with her fiance. I know she introduced me to him, but I don’t remember his name or anything about him. I don’t think he was from around here.”