“His place?” Frank blinked. “You mean Rhodes Ranch—the land, house, and everything?”
“All three hundred and twenty acres,” Joanna replied. “Reba is of the opinion that the prospect of receiving the ranch sooner rather than later was inducement enough for me to knock her father off. Never mind the fact that I had no idea about the contents of Clayton’s will until yesterday morning, when Burton Kimball called to tell me what was happening.”
“So Dick gets to sic the FBI on you,” Frank grumbled. “And he had the gall to come by and gloat about it. That jackass—”
“He didn’t come by to gloat,” Joanna interrupted. “He came to warn me, Frank. To let me know what was happening. He’s coming here to the department sometime this morning—probably any minute now—to pick up fingerprint information on me. I expect our people to give him their full cooperation, and courtesy, too,” she added. “If he needs help collecting latent prints at the scene, he’s welcome to request Casey Ledford’s services. He shouldn’t have a problem with that. As far as I know, at this point Doc Winfield and I are the only ones accused of any complicity. I don’t believe anyone else in the department is under suspicion.”
“Doc Winfield?” Frank repeated. “What did he do?”
“Clayton’s autopsy, for one thing,” Joanna answered. “But since George Winfield is also my stepfather, Reba Singleton is claiming conflict of interest. She’s asking for a second-opinion autopsy. She’s going before a judge to get a court order.”
“Doc Winfield’s gonna love that,” Frank said.
Joanna continued. “I assume they’ll ask the ME up in Pima County for assistance. The problem is, we’ve done so much work with them lately, that, for all I know, they might be considered contaminated as well.”
Frank Montoya shook his head. “I can’t believe it, Joanna. You’re really going to help Dick Voland open this can of worms?”
“The can’s already open,” Joanna said firmly. “And everybody in this office is going to cooperate with Dick’s investigation. I’ve got nothing to hide or apologize for, and neither does George Winfield. The sooner we get this mess handled, the less outside interference we’ll have to deal with. And now,” she added, reaching for the stack of incident reports, “what all went on yesterday?”
“Do you want to read all those?” Frank asked.
“Not especially. Give me the Reader’s Digest condensed version.”
“In descending order, fifteen UDAs held for the INS, and four DWIs. Two each motor-vehicle accidents and domestic-violence incidents—no fatalities and no serious injuries in any of them. One of the inmates in the jail suffered a seizure of some kind and had to be transported down to the county hospital in Douglas. He’s still there, under guard. In other words, all pretty much routine stuff.”
“What about the Sandra Ridder investigation?”
“We had a team from the crime lab out at the scene—at the two scenes—pretty much all day yesterday. They picked up some trace evidence—threads, hair, that kind of thing—but there’s no way to tell whether or not it has anything to do with what happened.
“Jaime and I picked up Catherine Yates and brought her in to George’s office yesterday afternoon. She IDed the dead woman from the culvert as her daughter, Sandra Ridder. No surprises there, since we’d already pretty much figured that out on our own. According to the doc, he was scheduling the autopsy for sometime this morning. Still no sign of that missing Lexus.”
“What about Lucinda Ridder?”
“She’s still missing, too. Deputy Gregovich and Spike worked the problem all day yesterday. They had no trouble following her after she left the house. She stuck to the road for half a mile or so, then the trail disappeared. They lost her.”
“So she either got in a vehicle or took off on her bike. Since the bike is missing, I’m betting on the latter. Can Spike follow a trail left by a bike?”
“Not as well as he can follow one left by a pair of human feet. On a hunch, I had him check out the crime-scene area over by Cochise Stronghold. They hit a jackpot there and picked up Lucy’s scent again. She spent some time concealed in a dry creek bed, with her bike hidden nearby. She came out of hiding long enough to go over by the sign, then she disappeared into thin air again, same as she did before, when she left Catherine Yates’ house.”
“If she was at the crime scene when her mother was,” Joanna mused, “she might have seen what happened.”
“Or she might have been involved in what happened.”