It took several minutes to help Edith Mossman into the car. Once she was settled, Joanna went back into the building. By then Jaime Carbajal had arrived on the scene.
Joanna brought him up to speed. “You two handle Eddie,” Joanna told him. “In the meantime, I’m giving Mrs. Mossman a ride back to Sierra Vista.”
Once in the driver’s seat of the Crown Victoria, Joanna 252
glanced in Edith Mossman’s direction. She sat slumped in the passenger’s seat, staring stonily ahead at nothing in particular.
‘Are you all right?” Joanna asked.
“I’m a failure,” Edith said quietly.
‘A failure?”
‘At motherhood. If I’d done a better job, Eddie wouldn’t have turned out the way he did.”
“If your son turned out to be a child molester, it’s not your fault. It’s his.”
Edith turned sharply and stared at Joanna. “I never said that,” she said.
“No, you didn’t,” Joanna agreed. “You didn’t have to, but it is true, isn’t it?”
Edith shut her eyes. Two fat tears dribbled slowly down her bony cheeks. Finally she nodded. “Yes,” she whispered brokenly. “Yes, it is.”
“Would you tell me about it?”
“It’s too late. It’s over and done with.”
“It’s not over,” Joanna said quietly.
“What do you mean?” Edith asked.
“Two other women were murdered last week over near Rodeo, New Mexico,” Joanna said.
“Pamela Davis and Carmen Ortega were independent television journalists doing a story on a group called The Brethren.”
Joanna let the last word fall into the conversation like a pebble into a deep well.
It took a long time for her to hear the answering splash.
“The same group Eddie’s involved with,” Edith Mossman breathed at last.
Joanna nodded. “Pamela Davis and Carmen Ortega left California with a check for five thousand dollars from their
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production company, Fandango Productions, made out to Carol Mossman. They were going to pay her to tell her story, Edith. Somebody murdered them and your granddaughter, too, in order to keep Carol from going public.”
‘And you think my son did that?”
“It’s possible.”
“If he did,” Edith said fiercely “then you have to lock him up and throw away the key.”
“You’ll help us then?”
‘Absolutely. Just tell me what to do.”
“You’ll need to talk to my detectives again.”
Edith nodded. ‘All right,” she said.
“Why didn’t you mention any of this to them the other day when you talked to them the first time?”
Edith shrugged. “I guess I didn’t think it was important. And Carol never wanted to talk about it. At least she never did before. I thought I was respecting her wishes.
But now … Of course I’ll talk to them, but there’s something else I need to do first.”
“What’s that?”
“I need to talk to a lawyer. I want someone to go to court for me to keep Eddie from taking Carol’s body away.”
“You don’t have an attorney of your own?” Joanna asked.
“I used to,” Edith said. “Augie Deming, out in Sierra Vista. He’s the one who did Grady’s and my wills, but that was years ago. Augie died a few years after Grady did. I haven’t used an attorney since.”
While they talked, Joanna had started the car and driven down Tombstone Canyon as far as the downtown area. Now she pulled into a parking place. “Tell you what,” she said. “Burton Kimball’s office is just over there.” She pointed toward the 254
entrance to a long redbrick building. “Burton’s an attorney. He’s also a friend of mine. He’s done some work for me over the years. I’m not sure what, if any, grounds he could use to keep your son from taking charge of Carol’s body but if it can be done, he’s the one to do it.”
“Do I need to have an appointment in order to see him?” Edith asked.
“Just a minute,” Joanna said. “I’ll find out.”
Joanna used her cell phone to make sure Burton Kimball was available, then she escorted Edith as far as the office door. “You go inside and talk to him,” Joanna told Edith.
“I’ll be waiting here when you’re done.”
As soon as Edith disappeared inside, Joanna hurried back to the Civvie, and called Frank Montoya.
“I guess the morning briefing’s been canceled due to lack of interest,” he said derisively.
“Not lack of interest,” Joanna corrected. “Lack of personnel.” As quickly as possible, she explained everything that she had learned so far that morning.
‘As long as Ernie and Jaime are meeting with Eddie Mossman,” Joanna finished, “he’s not going anywhere. And I’m relatively certain that he’ll stick around town long enough to try to wrest Carol Mossman’s body out of Edith’s grasp. But we have to move fast. If he once figures out he’s becoming an actual suspect, I’m afraid he’ll disappear back into Mexico.”
“So what do you want me to do?” Frank asked.
“First, I want you to call down to the police department in Obregon and find out whether or not they made a next-of-kin notification. I also want to know when and how Eddie Mossman traveled from there to here.”
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“Got it,” Frank said. “If he was involved in his daughter’s death, he wouldn’t need to be notified.”
“Exactly. I also want you to get on the phone to Fandango Productions.”
“Right. The television production company Pamela Davis and Carmen Ortega worked with.
I saw that in your report.”
“Talk to Candace Leigh, the CFO. Have her send you to whoever you need to talk to.
Find out if they have any details on Pamela Davis and Carmen Ortega’s activities once they left there for Arizona. Diego Ortega said something about their being the target of one or more death threats. He even read me one that was purportedly from Ed Mossman. But it could have been sent by someone else. We need to know everything about that threat and any others that might have been received. If any police reports were made in regard to the threats, I want copies of those. And if Pam and Carmen sent any e-mails that contain notes or information, I’d like to have access to those as well. Somewhere along the way, they crossed paths with Carol Mossman’s killer.
I want to know where and when that was.”
“Anything else?” Frank asked.
“Yes. Hidalgo County’s medical examiner is doing the two autopsies today. Call over there and let them know that I need preliminary results as soon as possible.”
“How come?” Frank asked. “They were shot, weren’t they? What’s an autopsy going to tell us that we don’t already know?”
“I want them to pinpoint the time of death as closely as possible. I want to know if they were murdered before or after Carol Mossman died.”
“So you’re thinking Ed Mossman murdered the two women in New Mexico and his own daughter as well?”
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“The thought had crossed my mind.”
“What if he skips out and goes back to Mexico before we pull together enough pieces to have probable cause?”
Joanna was quiet for several moments as a tiny chip of an idea began to take shape in her head. ‘At this point, we don’t know for sure that Ed Mossman is a suspect.
But I do know he’s been threatened. In fact, his own mother was all set to assault the man this morning.”
“So?”
“We tell him that, because we believe his life may be in danger, we’re putting him under a police guard. Have one of the deputies on hand when Jaime and Ernie finish their next-of-kin interview. Tell him that because we’ve been notified of what we believe to be a credible threat to his life, we’re offering him protection. Tell him if we didn’t do that, there’s a possibility we’d be held liable in case anything happened to him.”
“That’s stretching it a little, isn’t it?” Frank Montoya asked.