With a purposeful shove from her mother, Jenny stepped out from behind the chair and held out her hand. “I’m glad to meet you,” she said politely. Then she turned back to Joanna, frowning. “But you always told me I didn’t have arty aunts or uncles.”
“That’s because I didn’t think you did.”
Joanna stood up. “You’ll have to excuse us, Colonel Brundage. Thanks for the drink. I hope you’ll forgive my outburst. As you can see, this has been something of a shock.”
Bob Brundage nodded sympathetically. “Better here with just the two of us than at dinner in a whole crowd, wouldn’t you say?”
“I suppose so,” Joanna allowed grudgingly. It was the best she could do. She turned to her daughter. “Come on, Jenny. Let’s go.” As they headed back toward the elevator, Joanna asked, “Did Detective Strong say what was wrong?”
“No. But she made me write down her number. Here it is.” Jenny handed over a piece of paper with a phone number scribbled on it. Instead of bothering with going all the way back upstairs, Joanna stopped by a pay phone in the elevator lobby and dialed.
“Thanks for getting back to me so fast,” Carol Strong said. “I’m almost dressed and ready to leave. Meet me at the APOA campus as soon you can, would you?”
“Why? What’s wrong?”
“I think we’ve found Dave Thompson.”
“You think?”
“Yes. You know him. I need someone to identify him.”
“Where is he?”
“In a red Ford Fiesta registered to someone named Kimberly George. One of the patrol officers looked through the window of one of the APOA outbuildings. It turned out to be a garage with a red car inside it. He broke in as soon as he realized there was someone sitting slumped over in the front seat. The ignition was on, but the engine wasn’t running. It was out of gas.”
“He’s dead, then?”
“Yes.”
Joanna closed her eyes, feeling an odd combination of both sadness and relief. “I’ll meet you there,” she said. “I’ll be on my way as soon as I drop Jenny off with one grandmother or the other.”
CHAPTER TWENTY
Carol Strong had obviously cleared the way. When Joanna arrived at the APOA campus, there was no question about whether or not she was to be allowed through the barriers and given access to the crime scene. A young patrol officer named Reiner walked up to the Blazer as she was shutting off the ignition.
“This way, Sheriff Brady,” he said. “Detective Strong is expecting you.”
Officer Reiner led Joanna into a two-car garage, where, even though the roll-up doors were wide open, the smell of auto exhaust still lingered in the air. As she approached the car, Joanna recognized another smell as well—the ugly odor of death. In a matter of weeks, Joanna had learned the unpleasant truth—that investigating death scenes was anything but antiseptic.
She bent over and peered inside the car. A slack-jawed Dave Thompson slumped over the steering wheel. Wrinkling her nose in distaste, Joanna straightened back up. “It’s him,” she said.
“I thought so,” Carol said. “We’re trying to find the car’s registered owner. No luck so far.”
“Have you checked with the hospital?” Joanna asked.
“What hospital?”
“St. Joseph’s. My guess is she’s in the waiting room keeping Lorelie Jessup company.”
“You know her?”
“Not exactly. I’ve never met her, but I was told Kimberly George is Leann Jessup’s former lover.”
“Lover?” Carol Strong repeated sharply. “Are you telling me Leann Jessup is a lesbian?” Janna nodded.
“I didn’t know that.”
“Neither did I,” Joanna admitted. “Not until this afternoon.”
“How did you find out?”
Joanna shrugged. “After we left your office, Jenny and I went down to the hospital to check on Leann. We talked to her mother and to her brother. What a jerk!”
“Well, that certainly explains a lot,” Carol Strong mused, almost to herself.
“Explains what?” Joanna asked.
“What happened here. Was there some hanky panky going on between them?”
“Between Dave and Leann? No. I’m certain nothing like that was going on.”
“Look,” Carol said, shaking her head. “You can’t be sure, not unless you were with her twenty-four hours of every day. Let’s say, for argument’s sake, that they were fooling around a little. One way or another Thompson learns about Leann’s sexual preference, and he freaks. He flips out completely and decides to kill her. After all, it’s the second time this has happened to him. And then, when it falls apart and she gets away, he comes to his senses, realizes that he’s about to be caught, and doesn’t want to face the consequences. So he bolsters his courage with a little more booze and does himself him. You did see the empty vodka bottle on the bedside him, didn’t you?”
Joanna shook her head. “No, I didn’t. And I don’t understand what you’re saying. What do you mean the second time this happened?”
“It’s the second time Dave Thompson fell for a lesbian,” Carol answered. “His wife left him for a woman, not for another man. I thought you knew that.”
“No,” Joanna said. “I didn’t know. But what about the other women, Serena and Rhonda? What about them?”
“We’re working on it,” Carol answered. “Anyway, thanks for coming and helping us I.D. him.” The detective looked at her watch. “I guess you’d better be getting back to the hotel. It’s almost four-thirty. Aren’t you supposed to be having dinner with your family?”
“That’s at five,” Joanna said. “I have plenty of time.”
Just then two men came pushing a body-bag-laden gurney into the garage. One of them waved at Carol Strong. “What’ve you got?”
“Suicide,” she answered. “We’ve already identified him for you.”
“Good,” the other replied. “That’ll save time. If I’m not home for dinner by six, my wife will kill me.”
Despite Carol’s urging, Joanna wasn’t ready to leave. “Doesn’t it all seem just a little too pat?” she asked.
“What?”
“Dave tries to kill Leann in a fit of rage and then takes his own life.”
“It happens. As soon as Leann Jessup is well enough to talk to us about it, we’ll get the whole thing cleared up. So let’s leave it at that for the time being.”
With that, Carol turned as though to follow the medical examiner techs back toward the car.
“Did you find Leann’s panties, then?” Joanna asked.
“Not yet,” Carol answered. “They weren’t in Thompson’s apartment or we would have found them by now. Maybe they’re still on him—in a pocket or something. Or maybe he hid them in the car.”
“What if you don’t find them?” Joanna prodded.
Carol shook her head emphatically. “Then maybe they never existed in the first place,” she said.
For a moment, the two women stood looking at each other. Homicide detectives are judged by a very public scoreboard—by cases opened and by cases promptly closed. Here was a classic twofer. The attempted homicide/successful suicide theory cleared two of Carol Strong’s cases at once and in less than twenty-four hours. With that kind of payoff waiting in the wings, the mysterious disappearance of a pair of panties diminished in importance. And two pairs of missing panties linked the deaths of Leann Jessup and Serena Grijalva.
“If you don’t mind, I’ll hang around for a while,” Joanna said. “I want to see if they turn up in the car.”
“Suit yourself,” Carol said, and returned to the group of investigators gathered around the car. “All right, you guys. Let’s get him out of here, then.”