Joanna parked out front, just behind Detective Howell’s Tahoe. Together the two of them walked up the wheelchair ramp. When they reached the front door, Deb, ID in hand, stepped up to the door and rang the old-fashioned doorbell. From somewhere deep inside the house a tuneless jangle announced their presence.
Moments later the door cracked open and Abby Holder peered outside at them. “Yes,” she said. “What do you want?”
“I’m Detective Howell with the Cochise County Sheriff’s Department,” Deb explained, “and this is Sheriff Brady.”
In response, Abby opened the door wider. For the first time ever, she wasn’t wearing all black. She was dressed in a faded red-and-gray Bisbee High School tracksuit, complete with the school’s familiar Puma logo. Drab gray hair was pulled back in a tight French twist. She wore no makeup, however, and the grim expression that had petrified generations of schoolchildren was firmly in place.
The formal introductions were interrupted by an aggrieved voice, calling from somewhere inside the house, “What’s going on? Are we having company? Why didn’t you tell me?”
Abby turned away from the door. “It’s about school, Mother,” she said. “I’ll take care of it.”
Pulling the inside door shut behind her, Abby Holder stepped out through the screen door and onto the porch. “This is about Ms. Highsmith, right?” Abby asked as she studied Detective Howell’s ID. “I already heard you found her body. One of the teachers called me.”
“Yes, and that’s why we’re here,” Deb continued. “At the Department of Licensing, you’re listed as her next of kin. You’re not related, are you?”
“No, not at all,” Abby replied.
“Close friends, then?” Deb asked.
Abby shook her head. “Not really, although we worked together every day for several years. When she told me she was going to put me down as her emergency contact, I was a little taken aback—uncomfortable, really—but she said there was no one else.”
“No relatives of any kind?” Joanna asked.
“None that I know of. That’s what she told me, anyway. That she was an only child, that her parents died in a car accident years ago, and that she wasn’t close to any of her cousins. I wondered about it at the time, if maybe she was in the witness protection program or something. I didn’t ask her that, of course. I just wondered about it.”
“When did she list you as her emergency contact?” Deb asked. “Was this a recent development?”
“Oh, no,” Abby answered. “It happened when she first got here and was filling out all her paperwork.”
“Did she ever mention where she was from?”
“Back east somewhere,” Abby replied. “From one of those tiny states—Vermont or New Hampshire or Connecticut. I can never keep those straight in my head.”
“I believe there’s a life insurance rider on your group insurance policy,” Joanna said.
That was a lie. Joanna didn’t believe it was true; she knew it was true. For years before she ran for and was elected to the office of sheriff, Joanna had worked for the Davis Insurance Agency. She had handled the paperwork on the transaction when her boss, Milo Davis, had won the bid to handle the school’s group insurance program.
“Yes,” Abby agreed. “There are some differences in coverage for certified as opposed to noncertified personnel, but we all have a life insurance benefit.”
“Do you have any idea who she might have named as the beneficiary on that?”
“No idea whatsoever,” Abby answered. “You’d have to check with the school district office for that information, or there might be something about that in her files at school.”
“What about a cell phone?” Deb asked.
Joanna knew that no cell phone had been found at the crime scene or at the victim’s home. She also knew that cell phone records might lead them to people who were part of Debra Highsmith’s social circle but weren’t necessarily known to the people with whom she worked.
“Oh, yes.”
“Do you happen to know the number?”
Abby reeled it off from memory. Deb punched the number into her cell phone and tried dialing it. Unsurprisingly, it went straight to voice mail.
Just then there were several sharp raps on the closed door behind Abby. The blows were hard enough that the three stair-step windowpanes jiggled in their mahogany frames, threatening to come loose.
“I know you’re still out there, Abigail,” her mother said imperiously. “It’s very low class to be standing outside conducting business on the front porch. Are you out there talking about me?”
Abby flushed with embarrassment. “I’ll be right there, Mother.” Then she turned back to Deb Howell and Joanna. “My mother has a few security issues. I have a caregiver who usually stops by several times a day to check on her when I’m at work, but when I’m here, Mother doesn’t like having me out of her sight. If you don’t mind coming inside …”
Abby allowed her voice to trail off before she finished her less than enthusiastic invitation. It was plain to see that she wasn’t eager to welcome them into her home. As the daughter of a sometimes difficult mother, Joanna understood the woman’s reluctance. In public, Abby Holder appeared to be totally in control. It had to be difficult for her to be treated with such open contempt at home.
The polite thing for Joanna and Detective Howell to do would have been to walk away and let Abby Holder deal with her mother’s issues in private, but this was a homicide investigation. As someone who had worked with the victim day in and day out for years, Abby Holder might well have insights into the workings of Debra Highsmith’s life that no one else could provide.
There was another series of raps on the closed door. “Abigail? Are you still there?”
“We don’t mind at all, do we, Deb?” Joanna said with a bright smile. “Any information you can give us at this stage would be a huge help.”
Reluctantly, Abby opened the door and allowed them to enter. Just inside the door a tiny woman sat hunched in a wheelchair. She gripped a colorful cane in one hand and was clearly within seconds of staging another assault on the door, whose marred surface already gave clear evidence of several previous blows. The woman appeared to be afflicted with a severe widow’s hump, one that left her face permanently pointing into her lap. Thin gray hair did little to conceal the balding spot on the top of her head.
“It’s about time you came inside,” she complained, peering up at them sideways due to an inability to raise her head. “You told me you were going to make some tea. I’m still waiting.”
Looking at her, Joanna was reminded of a time when, as a little girl, she had climbed into a cottonwood tree to spy on a nest of newly hatched crows. Joanna had gotten only the smallest peek at the naked, angry, and demanding little things before an infuriated mama crow had shown up on the scene to drive the interloper away. Abby Holder’s mother wasn’t naked, but she had angry and demanding down to a science.
Abby gestured Joanna and Deb into the living room. “Could I interest you in some tea?”
“Please,” Joanna said, accepting for both of them. “That would be great.”
While Abby retreated into what must have been the kitchen, Joanna and Deb seated themselves side by side on a chintz sofa. The living room was small and crowded