The woman weeping inconsolably on Yuri Malakov’s massive shoulder wasn’t simply Harold Patterson’s grieving daughter. She was instead the betrayed child of a betrayed mother, a child who now-perhaps for the first time - finally was forced into seeing her once-trusted father through new eyes. Joanna’s revelation had coerced Ivy into holding Harold responsible for any number of past sins, either real or imagined.
And Ivy’s betrayal, her profound distress, clearly stemmed from the fact that two bodies had been found in the glory hole up on Juniper Flats. Two bodies, not one.
But there’s far more to it than that, Joanna thought uneasily, as she waited for Ivy Patterson’s spate of wild tears to subside.
If Harold Patterson had betrayed his own wife and daughter, if he had somehow tricked them into believing he was something he wasn’t, then what had he done to the rest of the world? After all, a man capable of deceiving his family was more than smart enough to trick a mere insurance agent. Or a brand-new sheriff….
With SOME effort, Ivy pulled herself together and leveled her gaze on Marianne. “That settles it then,” she said. “I’ve changed my mind. I want to go through with it after all, just the way I talked about in the first place.”
“But, Ivy…” Marianne protested.
“No,” Ivy interrupted forcefully, “I’ve had it. I’m not going to change my mind again. I’ve spent my whole life looking out for everybody else. I’m not going to do that anymore.”
At that juncture, the front door slammed open, and Burton Kimball rushed uninvited into the room. “Is it true?” he demanded. “Did they find him? Is he dead?”
Beyond tears, Ivy’s eyes suddenly glimmered with cold fury. “He’s dead all right,” she said.
Burton Kimball closed his eyes and shook his head. “Ivy,” he said, “I’m so sorry. But these things happen. It’ll be all right. You’ll see.”
“It is not all right!” Ivy insisted. “It’ll never be all right. Don’t you understand? Dad lied to me.”
A stricken look washed across Burton Kimball’s face. “If it’s about the will, Ivy, there shouldn’t be any problem. He said he was going to change it, he may have wanted to change it, but I wouldn’t do it for him. Not the day he asked about it. And I doubt he found anyone else to do it on such short notice. You should still end up with the ranch. That’s the way we set it up originally. And even if Holly were to attempt to go against the will or try to continue the lawsuit against his estate, I don’t see how she’d win.”
“I’m not talking about Dad’s will,” Ivy cut in icily. “It’s worse than that. Way worse. Mother was right all along, Burtie. About the glory hole. They just found another body in it.”
Dismayed, Burton Kimball stopped short.
“What do you mean, another body?”
“Just what I said. Somebody else is dead and down in the glory hole with Dad,” she answered.
Stricken, Burton Kimball staggered toward a chair. “How can that be? It’s crazy.”
“That’s what Dad always told Mother, That it wasn’t possible for a body to be down there, that she was crazy for saying so, remember? Dad used us, Burtie,” she added bitterly. “He used us both, to spy on her and keep her in line, when the whole time she was telling the truth. It must have been true all along.”
With every word, Ivy’s voice had risen both in pitch and outrage. Yuri soothingly rubbed her upper arm. “Be still” he murmured. “Do not be so upset.”
Ivy burrowed under Yuri’s arm, not so much like a lost wild thing seeking the warmth of its nest, but more like an angry wounded bear retreating to her cave. As she rested against him, Burton shot Yuri Malakov a single scathing and questioning glance, but his full attention soon settled back on Ivy.
“who is this other body?” he asked. “Does any one know?”
“There’s no way to tell who it is until we can raise it out of the hole,” Joanna said. “From the looks of it, it’s not so much a body as it is a skeleton. It’s been down there a long time.”
“Do you hear that, Burtie?” Ivy demanded.
“Don’t you remember? Mother made us both promise never to go near that place. She even made me swear that, on the family Bible.”
Burton Kimball nodded. “Until after your father was dead,” he added. “I do remember that much. At the time, I thought it was just more of her ranting and raving. In fact, it was one of the things that helped convince me Uncle Harold was right, that Aunt Emily was really completely around the bend. She would go on and on about that glory hole for hours on end, insisting it would be the death of your father someday.”
“She was right,” Ivy Patterson said shortly. “Now it is.”
She took a deep breath. “I kept my promise to her,” Ivy added. “I stayed away right up until last night.”
Yuri pulled Ivy close in what seemed a warning for her to drop the subject, but Joanna had already caught the small discrepancy in their story.
“You went up there last night?” she asked, glancing meaningfully at Yuri Malakov, wanting him to understand that she knew he had lied to her earlier about the way he had found the body. “So the part about seeing the buzzards wasn’t true?”
“It’s true,” Ivy said. “I saw them late yesterday afternoon, just as the search party was giving up and shutting down for the night. I wanted to go see for myself. I went up and checked as soon as I could.”
“You’re saying you found him yesterday after noon then?”
Ivy nodded. “Just before sundown.”
“But you didn’t report it until this morning. Why not?”
“Because I didn’t feel like it. There was something I had to do first,” Ivy Patterson answered. “Something important.”
“What?”
Ivy’s hand sought the top of Yuri Malakov’s knee and rested there lightly. As she answered the question, though, her eyes were defiant and focused full on Joanna’s face.
“Yuri and I spent the night on an air mattress in the back of the Scout. It wasn’t very romantic, but it was okay.”
“You did what?” Burton exploded.
Ivy looked at him. “You heard me.”
“But why on earth would you pull a crazy stunt like that?”
“To prove I could,” she said defiantly. “Because I wanted to. And why not? Dad turned against me, and don’t try to tell me he didn’t. In my book, turnabout is fair play. I did it to get even. I did it to prove a point. I did it because it was the closest I could come to dancing on my father’s grave. Mother’s grave is next to his down at Evergreen Cemetery. I couldn’t do it there.”
Burton Kimball was clearly thunderstruck.
“You mean to tell me, you and this… this… jerk,” he finally spit out the word with a heartfelt glare in Yuri’s direction “spent the night together next to a glory hole with your father’s body in it, and you didn’t even bother to report it until this morning? What kind of craziness is that, Ivy? What in the world’s gotten into you?”
“You think it’s crazy, do you? Well, maybe it is. Maybe craziness runs in our family. I think I finally just got sick and tired of being the good girl, of doing my duty and getting shit on for it, of having other people tell me what to do.”
Burton Kimball held up both his hands as though trying to see through the blaze of Ivy’s anger to some kind of reasonableness. “Wait a minute here,” he said. “Let’s try to think straight for a change. This is a tough time for all of us, Ivy. I only came by because I heard from Marliss Shackleford up at the Bisbee that something was up. I came to see if there was anything at all Linda and I could do to help. “Do you want me to call Norm Higgins for you? I could start working on funeral arrangements, calling relatives, that sort of thing. What exactly do you need? I guess the first thing is to find out when the body will be released and go from there.” He looked at Joanna. “Any idea, Sheriff Brady?”