Joanna stepped closer to the monitor. At first all she could see was a back view of a woman standing in front of the cash register. Only when she turned and looked nervously from side to side did Joanna recognize her-Dolores Mattias, Aileen Houlihan’s caregiver. Joanna’s heartbeat quickened in her breast as she watched the cashier put one can of primer after another into a series of plastic bags and then hand them over.
“I’ll be damned,” Joanna exclaimed.
“Who is it?” Frank asked.
“Dolores Mattias,” she said. “I met her this morning.” Joanna turned to Manfred Oxhill. “Can we have a copy of this tape?”
“Of course,” he said. “If you’ll wait here, I’ll bring a new tape from downstairs.”
“What does this mean?” Frank asked.
They had been so caught up with other events and concerns all afternoon and evening that Joanna hadn’t had either the time or the energy to tell Frank what she had learned during her earlier trip to the Triple H.
“Aileen Houlihan may be bedridden with Huntington’s disease,” Joanna said, “but I’m betting she’s still calling the shots.”
Chapter 19
With their copy of the security tape in hand, Joanna and Frank sat in his car in the Target parking lot and discussed what to do next. “I think we should go talk to her,” Joanna said. “Do we know anything else about Dolores Mattias other than the fact that she purchased the primer?” Frank asked. “How do we know that was the primer used on Evans’s vehicle?”
“According to Leslie, Dolores and her husband have been living on the Triple H since about the time Leslie was born.”
“Do you think Dolores may have some knowledge about what went on between Aileen Houlihan and Lisa Marie Evans back in 1978?” Frank asked.
“Maybe,” Joanna replied. “And that’s probably where we should start. We’ll go see her. We’ll bring up the primer to begin with, then we’ll switch over to what happened to Lisa. Dolores most likely won’t be expecting questions on something that happened that long ago. We may surprise her into saying something she shouldn’t.”
“What about Leslie herself?” Frank asked. “Does she have any idea that Aileen may not be her biological mother?”
“I certainly haven’t told her,” Joanna returned. “And from what she told me, I don’t believe she has a clue. She’s fully expecting that she’ll end up just like her mother, bedridden with HD.”
“Are you going to tell her?” Frank asked.
Joanna shook her head. “Not until we have DNA evidence to substantiate that theory.”
“You must be getting older,” Frank said.
“What do you mean by that?” Joanna demanded.
“You’re sure as hell getting wiser. So do we need backup to go see Dolores Mattias, or are we doing this on our own?”
“Between the two of us, I think we can probably handle Dolores Mattias,” Joanna said after a moment’s consideration. “Besides, at this point all we’re going to do is ask her a couple of questions.”
“Where to, then?” Frank asked, turning the key in the ignition.
“The Triple H. Dolores and Joaquin have a place on Triple H Ranch Road.”
The Mattias place was easy enough to find. It had apparently started out as a double-wide mobile home, but with the addition of a screened front porch and a covered back patio, there was no longer anything mobile about it. The Dodge Ram Joanna had seen earlier in the day was nowhere in evidence as they drove up to the house. A dog, a shaggy black and white mutt, raced out to meet them, barking furiously. By the time Frank stopped at the front of the house, the front light had switched on and the door to the screened porch slammed open.
“What’s happened?” Dolores Mattias called before Joanna had even set foot outside the car. “Has there been an accident? Is Joaquin hurt? Where is he?”
Joanna switched gears. “Your husband is missing?” she asked.
“He was supposed to come up to the house to get me when my shift was over, but he didn’t. I had to ask the night nurse to give me a ride home.”
“Have you tried calling him?”
Dolores shook her head. “He doesn’t have a cell phone.”
“When did you see him last?”
“This morning,” Dolores said. “When he dropped me off at Aileen’s place.”
“Did your husband have plans for the afternoon?” Joanna asked. “Have you checked with his friends?”
“He said he was going to be working around here,” Dolores asserted. “At least that’s what he told me at breakfast- that he wanted to finish painting the front gate. That’s one of the reasons I’m worried. Nothing’s been done on the gate- nothing at all. It’s not like him to go off somewhere without letting me know. But if you’re not here about Joaquin, why did you come?”
“To speak to you, Mrs. Mattias,” Joanna said.
“Me?” Dolores asked. “Why me?”
“This is my chief deputy Frank Montoya. We’re investigating the homicide of someone named Bradley Evans. May we come in?”
Dolores Mattias gave no sign of recognition at hearing the murder victim’s name. Instead, she opened the door wide enough to allow them entry to the screened porch and then escorted them into the living room.
“How can I help you?” she asked, seating herself and motioning for Joanna and Frank to do the same.
“We understand you purchased some automobile paint primer a week or so ago,” Joanna ventured.
Dolores nodded. “Yes, I did.” She made the admission easily, as if it were of no consequence at all. “Joaquin had agreed to help a friend paint his car that weekend. My husband was supposed to pick up the primer, but he ran out of time. Since I was going to town any way, Joaquin asked me to pick it up, and I did.”
“What friend?” Joanna asked.
“Someone who works at the restaurant in Sonoita.”
“What’s his name?”
“I don’t know,” Dolores said. “Joaquin didn’t say. As moody as he’s been lately, I didn’t press him. He’s been so upset that he’s been almost impossible to live with.”
Being involved in a murder is upsetting, Joanna thought. “Upset about what?” she asked.
“The survey,” Dolores answered. “Ever since Joaquin found out about it, he just hasn’t been himself.”
“What survey?”
“He was going around the ranch in late January, checking fence lines. That’s one of his jobs-making sure the fences are okay. He was down at the far western corner of the ranch when he came across a survey crew. He asked them what they were doing. They told him they were working for Mr. Markham and doing preliminary survey work in advance of subdividing the ranch-this part of the ranch,” Dolores added. “The part closest to the road. It’s going to be called Whetstone Ranch Estates.”
Joanna sent Frank a questioning look. For the last several months, he’d been the one attending the board of supervisors meetings. Perhaps this proposal had come up in one of the Planning and Zoning reports. In answer to Joanna’s unspoken question, her chief deputy shrugged his shoulders and gave a slight shake to his head.
“Joaquin was very upset to hear it,” Dolores continued. “Senora Ruth promised that we’d always be able to keep our place here, no matter what. So did Aileen. Naturally, Joaquin went straight to Mr. Markham and asked him about it. He said not to worry. That he’d see to it that, no matter what happened to the Triple H, we’d be taken care of.”
Joanna thought back to what Leslie had said earlier, about her planning to give up her career in real estate in order to focus her attention on running the ranch once her mother was gone. It sounded as though she and her husband were of two different minds on the subject.
“Does Leslie know anything about this?” Joanna asked.
Dolores shook her head. “I don’t know. She’s already dealing with so much concerning her poor mother that it didn’t seem fair to ask. I told Joaquin not to worry-that we’d be fine. We’ve saved our money over the years, and we haven’t had to pay rent. Maybe we’ll be able to buy a place in town.”