“Whatever works,” Joanna returned.
“Okay,” Frank said. “So I have my marching orders. Anything else?”
“That’s all I can think of at the moment. No, wait. Any luck with Phelps Dodge on the General Office employees?”
“Not yet. What do you think I am, some kind of miracle worker?”
“Pretty much,” she told him.
Frank Montoya wasn’t amused. “So while I’m busy making my next set of phone calls, what are you up to?” he asked.
“I’m going to be picking Edith Mossman’s brain,” Joanna said. “Trying to get the goods on her son.”
“Nice,” Frank said. “Call me a wimp if you want to, but I’ll stick to making phone calls. Getting a nice little old lady to turn
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state’s evidence against her own son sounds a little underhanded to me.”
“Maybe,” Joanna agreed. “But if Eddie Mossman is the kind of creep he seems to be, I’m in favor of doing whatever it takes to get him off the streets.”
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When Edith Mossman emerged from Burton Kimball’s office, Joanna hurried forward.
She helped the older woman into the car and stowed her walker in the backseat. Once Joanna’s seat belt was fastened, she glanced at Edith. The older woman sat motionless.
Her head was thrown back against the headrest; both eyes were closed. ‘Are you all right?” Joanna asked. “Tired,” Edith returned. “I’m very tired.” “Have you had anything to eat?”
Edith shook her head. “Knowing that Eddie was coming here to make trouble upset me so much that I couldn’t eat a thing.”
“Let’s go have some lunch then,” Joanna offered. “You’ll feel better after you have some food.”
“I don’t think so,” Edith said hopelessly. “I don’t think any 260
thing is going to make me feel better ever again, but I suppose I do need to keep up my strength.”
“Did Burton think he could help you?”
“Mr. Kimball wasn’t sure,” Edith replied. “He said we could probably slow things down some, but he didn’t know if we can stop Eddie from taking Carol’s body away altogether. He said that if Carol were a minor or incapacitated in some way and I had been appointed her guardian, then it was more likely he could fix this. Or if I had some kind of written document, like a will or something, specifying her wishes, then that would work, too. As it is, Eddie, as her father, is officially considered to be her next of kin.”
“Your son can’t take Carol’s body anywhere if he isn’t going there himself.”
Suddenly, despite her lack of food, Edith Mossman straightened in her seat and came to full attention. “What are you saying?” she asked sharply.
“If someone were to file criminal charges against your son, if he ended up going to jail or prison rather than returning to Mexico, he wouldn’t be able to take his daughter’s body anywhere. It’s my understanding that when it comes to shipping caskets containing human remains across the international border into Mexico, it’s customary to have a relative of the deceased ride along to accompany the body.”
“You’re saying, if Eddie doesn’t go back to Mexico, then Carol’s body doesn’t go either?”
Joanna nodded. “It’s not one hundred percent, but it might work.”
“Tell me what I need to do,” Edith said.
“First you’re going to have some lunch. Then we’ll talk.”
259
J. A. Jance
Joanna pulled into the last open parking place at Daisy’s Cafe. Junior Dowdle, Daisy’s adopted developrnentally disabled son, met them at the door with a wide smile and a pair of menus. “Booth or table?” he asked.
“Booth, please, Junior,” Joanna told him.
Junior led them to an empty booth and deposited their menus on the table. As he waddled purposefully away, Edith Mossman eyed him suspiciously. “Why would a restaurant hire someone like that?” she asked.
“It’s his mother’s restaurant,” Joanna explained. “A few years ago, Junior’s guardian abandoned him over in St. David. Moe and Daisy Maxwell took him in. First they were just his foster parents. After the death of Junior’s biological mother, Moe and Daisy officially adopted him. They also taught him how to work here.”
“Oh,” Edith said, relenting. “I suppose that’s all right then.”
When Daisy appeared, pad in hand, Joanna ordered a roast beef sandwich while Edith settled on a cheese enchilada. As soon as Daisy walked away from their booth, Edith turned her full attention on Joanna.
“Now what can I do to help?” she asked.
Joanna herself had been mulling that very question. “Did any of your granddaughters’
abuse occur while they were still in the States?” she asked.
Edith shook her head. “I don’t think so. According to Carol, it started happening after they moved to Mexico. Cynthia, my daughter-in-law, was terribly ill ever before she became pregnant with Kelly. She never should have gotten pregnant that last time, but Eddie insisted. That’s one thing The Brethren do believe in-that they should go forth and multiply. Eddie believed in multiplying in a big way. And so, when Cynthia was too sick to …”
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Edith paused, searching for the proper word. “… to accommodate his needs any longer, he came to Carol looking for … sexual gratification!
For several seconds, while Edith Mossman struggled to regain her composure, Joanna had to battle her own sense of outrage. A terrible revulsion assaulted her-a sickness that had nothing to do with current physical reality.
How could someone do that to his own child? a shaken Joanna wondered. How could he?
“Carol told me Eddie came to her bed late one night a few months after Cynthia became ill,” Edith Mossman continued at last. “With Cynthia confined to her sickbed in the room next door, he woke Carol up and forced himself on her. He told her that since Cynthia could no longer perform her wifely duties, they were now Carol’s responsibility.
He said that her mother needed Carol to take her place. He claimed that was what Cynthia wanted!”
Edith paused again while her eyes brimmed with tears. “So, of course Carol complied.
What choice did she have?”
In her years as sheriff, Joanna Brady had encountered more than her share of ugly situations. A year earlier she had struggled to come to terms with the murder of a pregnant and unwed teenager. Dora Matthews had been a sexually precocious classmate of Jenny’s, and it had been tough on Joanna to realize that children Jenny’s age were already sexually active. But the tale Edith Mossman had just related was far more appalling.
When Joanna tried to speak, the question she was asking stalled in her throat. “How old was Carol at the time?” she managed finally.
“She’d just turned ten,” Edith answered.
Months earlier, when thirteen-year-old Jennifer Ann Brady 262
had crossed the critical line of demarcation that separates girlhood from womanhood, Joanna had responded to the situation by taking her daughter out to dinner alone so they could have a private woman-to-woman discussion of the intricacies of human sexuality. To Joanna’s dismay, Jenny had wasted no time in derailing her mother’s best intentions.
“Come on, Mom,” Jenny had told her with a dismissive shrug. “I already know all that stuff. They teach us about it at school.”
Being told about the birds and the bees by your mother or by a respected teacher at school was one thing. To be routinely raped by your own father from age ten on was something else.
“How long did the incest continue?” Joanna asked.
“Until Carol was fourteen,” Edith answered. ‘As soon as she had her first period, she got pregnant. When it came time to deliver, she was too small and the baby was too big. The doctor did a cesarean, but it was too late to save the baby. He died.
Later on the doctor told Carol that her female organs had been damaged and that she’d never be able to have children.”