have the man- or womanpower to interview everyone at Bisbee High School, but knowing how the school social networking system worked, she had effectively put everyone on notice that she intended to do so. With any kind of luck, that little bit of intimidation would be enough to smoke out some useful information.
This time, when she started the car, she drove away from Dr. Ross’s clinic and headed for the Justice Center, dialing Deb Howell’s number as she went.
“Detective Howell here.”
“Any luck with the next-of-kin situation?”
“Sorry, boss,” Deb said. “I’ve run into a brick wall. As far as I can tell, Deb Highsmith doesn’t have any next of kin. The contact listed with the Department of Licensing is Abby Holder.”
“Mrs. Holder?” Joanna repeated. “That old battle-ax who’s the secretary at the high school?”
“One and the same,” Deb replied. “I’m on my way to see her now. I have to say, that woman absolutely terrified me when I was going to school. I never saw her in any color but black.”
“She had the same effect on me,” Joanna said, stifling a chuckle when she remembered how the kids at Daisy’s had expressed similar kinds of fear about Debra Highsmith. “Isn’t that the way it’s supposed to be when you’re in high school?” she asked. “If the kids aren’t scared to death of the principal and the people in the principal’s office, something’s wrong. It’s a control issue. It’s been that way forever. Is Abby Holder at school today?”
“I already checked,” Deb said. “The kids are out of school for the weekend and so are the staff members. I’m headed to her house.”
Joanna had a choice. If she went to the office where she could tackle the day’s paperwork, she would also be a sitting duck for anyone Marliss Shackleford happened to send her way. If Joanna was out on an interview with Deb Howell, she would be a moving target rather than a stationary one.
“Mind if I tag along?”
“I’d love to have you come along,” Deb said. “She lives at 2828 Hazzard.”
“All right,” Joanna said. “I’ll meet you there in a few minutes.”
ABIGAIL HOLDER was a few years younger than Joanna’s mother. It was mostly through Eleanor Lathrop Winfield that Joanna knew some of Abby’s history. She had grown up on the Vista, an upscale neighborhood in Bisbee’s Warren neighborhood, one that had long been home to the town’s white-collar elite—the mine supervisors along with a selection of judges, doctors, and lawyers.
Growing up and walking to school from her parents’ far-lower-class home on Campbell, Joanna had been jealous of the people who lived on the Vista. The large, mostly brick houses with shady front porches and yards usually required the regular attention of a gardener. The houses on East Vista and West Vista faced each other across a block-wide, five-block-long expanse of park that had once been the neighborhood’s centerpiece. Joanna had heard that the park had once been a grassy oasis, complete with a bandstand and huge trees. The bandstand and trees were both gone now, and the lush grass had been allowed to go to weedy ruin due to the prohibitive costs of watering and mowing it.
Hazzard was the last street in Bisbee’s Warren neighborhood, a final outpost of civilization before town gave way to desert. When Joanna pulled up in front of Abby Holder’s small frame house on Hazzard, it was clear that this one was very different from the brick-clad mansion where she had grown up. The ramshackle wooden structure was built on a terrace, several steep steps above street level. A concrete wheelchair ramp zigzagged across the small front yard up to the terrace, and then again up onto a tiny front porch. In the early afternoon, the porch still offered some shade, but as the sun went down in the west, Joanna knew the shade would disappear. In the summer, the setting sun would turn the front room of the house into a virtual oven.
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
