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Minutes later, they pulled up in front of the house on Campbell Avenue that
had been Joanna s home when she was a girl. The porch light was on. A purple
glow behind the living room windows showed that the television set was on.
 Joanna! Eleanor Winfield said when she opened the door.  What are you doing
here?
 Now that I have a ring, I thought you d want to be among the first to see
it.
Joanna held out her hand. Taking it, Eleanor pulled her daughter into the
living room and switched on the overhead light.  George, she called over her
shoulder.  You have to come look at this. Frederick has given Joanna a ring.
As usual, Eleanor s insistence on using Butch s given name irked Joanna.
Eleanor was of the opinion that the name  Butch wasn t nearly a dignified
enough name for a grown man.
 It s beautiful, Eleanor was saying,  although it does look a little like the
one Andy gave you. It isn t, of course.
 Of course not, Joanna agreed, and let it go at that.
Butch and Junior stepped inside long enough for Butch to be congratulated and
for Junior to be introduced; then they climbed back into the car and drove out
to high Lonesome Ranch.  We can come in for a while, Butch offered hopefully,
Joanna looked in the backseat, where Junior was nodding off.  No, she said.
 Your charge looks pretty worn out. You d better get him home and to bed.
Butch shrugged.  You can t blame a guy for asking, he said.
He waited outside in the Subaru until Joanna had unlocked the door and taken
the dogs into the house. As the car drove away, Joanna was touched by a
feeling of being alone but not necessarily of being lonely. It was a sign that
slowly, over lime, she was getting better, and that knowledge made her almost
giddy. She wanted to call people and tell them what had hap-pened that she was
in love and engaged but it was too late. It was also too late to return the
phone calls of the people who had called her office during the day. She went
out to the kitchen, thinking she d squander some of her excess energy on
cleaning up the mess out there. Only the kitchen was spotless. The dishwasher
had already been loaded and run. That was the way Butch always left any
kitchen clean and ready to use.
Looking for something to do and hoping for an occupation that would calm her
down and help her sleep, Joanna pulled open the briefcase she had brought home
the day before and hadn t opened since. There, on top, sat My Life and Times
by Alice Rogers.
It worked yesterday, Joanna told herself. She had read one chapter and been
out like a light. Maybe it would work the same way now. Undressing, she took
the book to bed with her. Skimming, Joanna scanned through the rest of Alice
Rogers childhood remembrances. Jessie Monroe was right. The book wasn t
written in smoothly flowing prose. Some of the senten-ces careened dangerously
off track without ever coming up with something so simple as a subject and a
predicate. Alice s free-form punctuation also made for tough going.
Joanna s eyes were growing heavy when she reached the part where the mine
supervisor s headstrong fifteen-year-old daughter met a handsome, fast-talking
man-about-town named Calhoun Rogers. The unlikelihood of their pairing was
enough that it roused Joanna to attention once more. And then it happened.
When my father could see that Cal and I were determined to get married, he
offered Cal a job. I know Daddy could have found Cal a good position with
Phelps Dodge. After all, Daddy was the superintendent of the smelter by then.
It wouldn t have been any trou-ble, but Cal didn t want to be beholding. He
liked being his own boss and doing his own thing, so we said no and went our
own way. But sometimes now I wish we hadn t done that and wonder what would
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have hap-pened if we had accepted Daddy s offer. For one thing, we would have
had medical insurance and maybe the company doctors would have caught Cal s
diabetes before it got so bad that he had to go and lose his leg. That s what
the doctors said happened. That it went untreated for so long that by the time
they figured out what was the matter with him a lot of the damage was already
done.
Joanna finished reading that paragraph and went on to the next before she
realized what she had read. Diabetes. Wasn t that hereditary? And if so, who
else might be diabetic in the family diabetic and a user of insulin? Of
course, Joanna real-ized with a jolt of excitement. Calhoun Rogers son,
Clete.
She remembered the bad spell he had suffered up on Houghton Road after Susan
arrived and raised such hell with him. What was it he had said? Something
about having medica-tion in his truck. She remembered, too, how concerned he
had been that he have food along with him on the drive to Tucson. That had to
be it. Cletus Rogers was an insulin-dependent diabetic, and his mother may
have been murdered with an overdose of insulin.
Too excited to sleep, Joanna jumped out of bed, threw on a robe, and paced the
floor. It was after midnight now too late to call any of the detectives
involved too late to try con-tacting Dr. Fran Daly up in Tucson. No, the only
thing to do was to go to bed, try to sleep, and go to work on the whole mess
first thing in the morning.
Eventually she did go back to bed and to sleep. Long before her alarm sounded
the next morning, Joanna s eyes popped open of their own accord. She was up,
dressed, and drinking coffee by the time Clayton Rhodes came to feed the
livestock at six. By six-thirty she was on the phone to Fran Daly in Tucson.
 Well, Fran said,  if we aren t a pair of early birds worms and all. What s
got you up and going so bright and early?
 The insulin, Joanna answered.
 Pharmaceutical companies aren t to be rushed, Fran Daly said.  I spoke to at
least half a dozen people yesterday. They all assure me that they should be
able to trace the batch num-ber to its distribution point, but so far the
computer guru who s supposed to make that happen can t be bothered with
returning my calls.
 I think I can help, Joanna said.  Is it possible that Clete Rogers is
diabetic? Breathlessly she went on to explain what she had learned.
 It certainly sounds plausible, Fran said, when Joanna fin-ished.  And with
that kind of direction, it shouldn t be too difficult to get the supplier to
confirm that the insulin container we found on Alice Rogers body was actually
part of her son s prescription. In fact, the druggist who sold it might even
be able to do it.
 What about fingerprints on the vial? Joanna asked.  It was made out of
glass, wasn t it? Shouldn t there have been fingerprints left on it?
 Probably, as long as the killer didn t use gloves. I sent the vial over to [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]