“Good morning, Joanna,” Voland said, politely tipping his hat. “Hope we’re not catching you at a bad time.”
“No. Come on in.”
From the distressed looks on their faces, it was apparent that neither one of the officers relished the coming encounter. The death of a fellow officer was always hard on all concerned. Thinking it would ease the situation, Joanna blurted out her news from Dr. Sanders. “Andy’s surgeon from Tucson just called. He told me he thinks Andy was murdered.”
To her surprise, neither Carpenter nor Voland seemed much interested in her news. “Really,” Carpenter mused. “What makes him say that?”
“He saw preliminary results from the autopsy. They don’t have a toxicology report yet, but Dr. Sanders seems to think Andy died of a possible drug overdose, that someone slipped Andy something lethal right there in the hospital under everyone’s very noses.”
Carpenter shook his head and smiled indulgently. “That’s all very interesting, Joanna. Sounds like something straight out of a soap opera to me, but we have to take these things one step at a time. We need to ask you a few questions if you have time.”
She nodded. Looking at the two burly men looming over her in the kitchen, Joanna knew they wouldn’t be well suited to the tight-fitting benches of the breakfast nook. “Come on into the dining room,” she said.
As they seated themselves around the table, Dick Voland seemed especially uncomfortable. “I hate to bother you at a time like this. I’m sure you’re real busy today, but since we couldn’t visit with you yesterday…”
“It’s all right,” Joanna assured them, determined to be cooperative and do what she could to help. “I understand you’ve got your jobs to do. And after talking to Dr. Sanders, I’m ready to talk. Would anybody like coffee?”
Both men shook their heads in silent unison. Their joint refusal unnerved her a little. It wouldn’t have hurt them to observe some social niceties, and it puzzled Joanna that they both seemed to give so little credence to Dr. Sanders’ mind-boggling news.
“What’s really going on?” she asked.
“Suppose we cut directly to the chase, Joanna,” Ernie Carpenter said at once. “Can you tell us where Andy was weekend before last?”
She answered without hesitation. “Payson. Outside of Payson, actually, visiting with a friend. Floyd Demaris is his name, but everyone calls him Pookie. He and Andy graduated from the police academy in Phoenix together, but Pookie got shot while he was still a rookie. He’s in a wheelchair and back living with his folks. He always loved the outdoors. Once each September, before it got too cold, he an Andy would go camping.”
“And, as far as you know, that’s what they did?” Detective Carpenter asked.
“As far as I know?” Joanna echoed. “You’ saying Andy didn’t go there?”
Sitting with a Cross ever-sharp pencil poised above a blank page in a meticulously kept notebook, Ernie Carpenter abruptly changed the subject. “How many guns did Andy own?”
“Two,” Joanna answered. “The.38 Chief and his.357.”
“So you’re aware he had two separate weapons?”
“Of course, I’m aware of that,” Joanna returned shortly. “Guns were the tools of Andy’s trade. Those are the kinds of things married couples usually know about each other. He carried the.357 with his uniform and wore the Chief with civilian clothes because it’s so much smaller and easier to carry.”
“So you would have expected him to take the Chief with him for the weekend rather than the.357?”
“That’s right.”
“Didn’t you find it odd that he always left one or the other of those two weapons in locker down at the department?”
“What’s odd about it?” Joanna asked.
Carpenter looked her right in the eye. “I take mine home,” he said.
“Do you have any little children at home?” she returned.
“Not anymore.”
“We do. The day Jennifer was born Andy spent most of the day in the waiting room of County Hospital with the distraught parents of a little girl who’d been playing with her father’s pistol. Remember that?”
Both officers nodded. “She died, didn’t?” Detective Carpenter asked.
“That’s right, she did. And it made quite an impression on Andy and me. He always said keeping track of one handgun was trouble enough. He didn’t want to risk having two in the house at the same time. None of this was exactly a state secret, so why all the questions about Andy’s guns? What do they have to do with the price of peanuts?”
Carpenter dropped his gaze as he made a quick notation in his notebook. “I’m sure you’ve heard by now about Lefty O’Toole’s death, haven’t you?”
“Yes, but…”
“We have the ballistics tests back,” Carpenter continued. “We’ve confirmed that Lefty shot with bullets fired from Andy’s.357. We’re estimating time of death as some time the weekend before last. That’s only a best-guess estimate, nothing definitive.”
“That’s when Andy was in Payson,” Joanna supplied.
Ernie Carpenter raised his eyes and met Joanna’s. “He wasn’t,” the detective said. “Somebody else told us he was supposed to be there, so we did some checking. I’ve already spoken with Mr. Demaris. Andy called and canceled the trip late Thursday afternoon, He said something important had come up here at home and he wouldn’t be able to make it.”
“But…” Joanna began.
Detective Carpenter silenced her with a dismissive wave of his hand. “When he left here on Friday afternoon, did Andy say anything to you to the effect that he had changed his mind and was going somewhere else?”
“No.”
“And he stayed away the whole weekend just as he would have if he really had mad the trip to Payson?”
Joanna’s stomach muscles tightened. Before, what she had heard about the investigation had been so much hearsay. Now there could be no doubt that Detective Ernie Carpenter was trying to implicate Andy in Lefty O’Toole’s death. As the questions droned, the investigator continued to show absolutely no sign of interest in Dr. Sanders’ allegations. Hadn’t he listened to her? Maybe she hadn’t said it clearly enough.
“How much do you know about your husband’s business dealings?” Carpenter went on. His questions were professional and gratingly dispassionate.
“I know everything,” Joanna maintained. “I keep the books. We sell a few head of cattle now and then. I can show you in black and white that what we make doesn’t amount to t much money.”
“Do you own any property other than your place here, something Andy might have liquidated without your knowledge?”
“No. None at all.”
“Did a relative of his die recently?”
“No. Why?”
“Mrs. Brady,” Ernie Carpenter said slowly, “Andy was a colleague of mine. I’d like to find some legitimate source for the nine-thousand five-hundred-dollar cash deposit he made into your joint checking account on Monday of this week. Do you have any idea where that money might have come from?”
Joanna was astonished. “How much?”
“Nine-thousand-five-hundred even,” Carpenter repeated. “Sandy, down at the bank, said he brought it all into the branch in a stack of cash on Monday afternoon. He showed up it just before closing time.”
Shaken, Joanna found it difficult to speak. “But that’s almost ten thousand dollars. I can’t imagine where Andy would lay hands on that kind of money.”
“Could he have borrowed it from his parents?”
“No. The Bradys don’t have it, and he wouldn’t have borrowed it from them even they did.”
“So you have no idea where this money came from?”
“None at all.”
“Have there been other occasions when unexplained money has turned up in your account?
“No. Absolutely not.” Joanna turned to Dick Voland who had maintained a strict silence during the entire interview process.