To Joanna’s way of thinking, none of the colorful furnishings in the crowded room quite squared with plain-Jane Abby Holder who always dressed in black or gray, whose hair was always pulled back into an old-fashioned, simple French twist, and whose face never showed a single hint of makeup. The furniture seemed far more in keeping with Abby’s mother, who was dressed in a vivid orange muumuu and whose thin lips and cheeks were garishly colored with bright red lipstick and rouge.
Despite the limited floor space in the room, Abby’s mother propelled her hand-powered chair through the maze of furnishings with practiced ease.
“I’m Elizabeth Stevens, Abigail’s mother,” she announced. “I can’t imagine what possessed her to go rushing off without bothering to properly introduce us. Who are you? What are you doing here? Not selling something, I hope. Maybe you’re a pair of those Bible-thumping missionaries? They’re forever showing up on the front porch and ringing our doorbell. I’ve told Abby a hundred times not to let them inside. You’re not some of those, are you?”
“No,” Deb said with a laugh. “Definitely not. I’m Detective Deb Howell, and this is Sheriff Brady.”
“Oh, that’s right. I forgot we have a lady sheriff these days,” Elizabeth said. “Call me old-fashioned, but I can’t imagine that a woman could do as good a job of running the sheriff’s department as a man would, and you still haven’t mentioned what you’re doing here or what it is you’re after.”
Joanna knew that Abby Holder was a few years younger than her own mother. That meant that Elizabeth was somewhere in her eighties or even nineties. Somewhere along the way, she had decided to turn off her self-editing applications. She would say whatever came into her head and let the chips fall where they may. Not wanting to divulge the purpose of their visit, Joanna made a gentle stab at changing the subject.
“Have you lived here long?” she asked.
“Longer than I ever wanted,” Elizabeth shot back. “I’m afraid Abby made this bed. Now we both have to lie in it.”
Out of Elizabeth’s line of vision, Abby had come into the room and was collecting a set of cups and saucers from the buffet.
“Mother!” she exclaimed. “Please! Give it a rest.”
“Well, it’s true,” Elizabeth sniffed. “If you hadn’t gone against your father’s wishes and married that Freddy Holder, we wouldn’t have to live in this dump.”
It was easy to see that this was a long-established pattern, with Elizabeth Stevens bullying her daughter and with Abby taking it. This time, maybe for the first time ever, Abby seemed prepared to fight back, countering fire with fire.
“If Daddy hadn’t made such spectacularly bad investments,” she said, “you wouldn’t have had to sell the big house on the Vista and come slumming with me.”
Elizabeth seemed both astonished and dismayed by her daughter’s response. All the natural color drained from her face, leaving only the bright red clownlike layer of rouge glowing on otherwise stark white cheeks.
“I won’t have you speaking about your father in such a disrespectful manner,” she declared.
Abby didn’t back off. “I won’t have you speaking disrespectfully about Fred, either,” she returned. “He and I found this place together, and he paid for it with his life. Just remember, if it weren’t for your being able to come here to live with me, you and all your furniture would have been out on the street. How about a little gratitude for a change?”
“Well,” Elizabeth huffed. “I never!”
With that, she spun her chair into a sudden about-face and sped from the room.
“I’m sorry you had to witness that,” Abby said. “Most of the time I just let what she says wash over me. Today I couldn’t.”
I don’t blame you a bit, Joanna thought. She said aloud, “Fred was your husband?”
Abby nodded. “My father was the superintendent of the mines. Fred’s father was an underground miner. That’s all Fred ever wanted to be, too—a miner, just like his dad, Daniel. Fred knew he wasn’t cut out for college; his grades weren’t good enough, but he knew that working underground he’d be able to support us. Naturally my parents despised him. They thought I could do far better in the matrimony department than marrying some guy who worked underground. They did everything they could think of to break us up. I know my father told the guys at the company employment office that Fred wasn’t miner material, but I figured out a way around it.”
“What was that?” Joanna asked.
“I told Fred we should pretend that we had caved. I came home from a date one night in April, crying my heart out. I told my parents that I had broken up with him, and it worked like a charm. They were thrilled. Two things happened after that. Suddenly—magically—Fred was no longer persona non grata in the employment department. The strike was over by then. Fred got a job working underground, and I set about signing up for the fall semester in Flagstaff.
“Back then, it was still called the Northern Arizona Teacher’s College. It wasn’t even a university. My mother was in her element, though, shopping like crazy to get me properly decked out to go off to school in the fall, but I fooled them. Two weeks after high school graduation, on the day I turned eighteen, Fred and I eloped. We got married in Lordsburg. Fred had already moved out of his parents’ place and rented this one. When we moved in here, my parents had a conniption fit. My father officially disowned me. He never spoke to me again, not even when Fred died a few months later.”
“He died?” Joanna asked.
Abby nodded.
“What happened?”
“He died in a mining accident less than two months after we got married. The stope he was in collapsed. The other miners managed to dig him out, but it was too late. He was already dead. Fred’s parents were always as good as gold to me, right up until they both died. All of which made the way my parents acted that much worse. My parents didn’t even bother coming to the funeral.
“With Fred gone, I was completely on my own. I had taken typing and shorthand in high school. Luckily I managed to get hired as the school secretary at Greenway Elementary School. My father wasn’t speaking to me at the time, and he wasn’t on the school board, either, but for all I know he might have helped engineer my being offered the job so I’d at least be self-supporting. A few months later, when Fred’s life insurance paid off, I went to my landlord and offered to buy this place. Paid cash for it. I’ve been here ever since.”
“How long has your mother been living with you?” Joanna asked.
“Six years now,” Abby said. “When my father retired from Phelps Dodge, my mother signed the paperwork saying it was all right for him to take a lump-sum distribution instead of a pension. The trouble was, he got all caught up in day trading and lost the money.”
“He lost all of it?”
Abby nodded. “He used creative money-managing techniques to keep my mother from finding out how bad things were, but once he died and was no longer able to juggle things around, his financial house of cards finally collapsed. That’s when my mother discovered she was destitute. The house on the Vista, the one Mother had lived in all her married life, was mortgaged to the hilt. Since there was no pension, all she had coming in were the Social Security checks that came to her as my father’s widow. The bank was foreclosing on the house. They were going to throw her and all her worldly goods out into the street, so I took her in.”
“Under the circumstances, you did more than most people would have,” Joanna said.
Abby shrugged. “She’s my mother. What else could I do? I had planned on retiring in the next year or two. Now, with Mother living here and with my hours cut back