Dead to Rights

“Right,” Joa

“I believe she expected to be home by now.”

“She is,” Joa

George Winfield smiled again. “Good,” he said. “Ellie’s a lovely lady. We met at the Arts and Humanities Council. Mel Torme is doing a show in Vegas over the next three weeks. I told Ellie that as soon as she got back from D.C., I’d try to get us tickets. Now that she’s back in town, I’ll have to give her a call.”

Joa

Stu

So what are you so upset about? Joa

After all, Big Hank Lathrop had been gone for years. What startled Joa

Once back at the Justice Center, Joa

There were more than a dozen telephone calls waiting to be returned. As she made her way through them, one by one, she sat with her phone to her ear, staring out the window of her corner office at the employee parking lot and at the desert landscape beyond it.

She knew the desert was anything but empty. Occasionally jackrabbits and coyotes would show up outside her window. Quail and roadru

Today, though, there was nothing visible in the animal Kingdom to lighten Joa

To the north stood a jagged wall of rugged gray hills. Each steep hillside wore a jaunty crown of perpendicular limestone cliffs. To the west were the shale-covered foothills of the Mule Mountains. Their deep-reddish flanks hinted that perhaps unmined copper still lingered beneath their rock scrub-oak-dotted surfaces.

Usually, this particular view comforted Joa

How dare Eleanor do that!

For as long as Joa

He called her Ellie! Joa

Lost in reverie, Joa

When the door closed behind her, Joa

Disgusted as much with the process as with herself, she was stuffing the piles into a briefcase when Dick Voland tapped on her door. When he stepped into her office, he was smiling. “I just picked up a little something I thought you’d like to know about,” he said.

Joa

“What’s that?” she asked.

“I got to thinking about what you told Frank and me earlier, about Doc Winfield saying the murder weapon might possibly be a pitchfork.”

“Yes,” Joa

“A little later I remembered Ernie saying something about a pitchfork being found at the crime scene, so I checked in the evidence room. Sure enough, the pitchfork was there, all right, although no one had gotten around to doing anything with it. I took it on myself to order a set of prints. Guess what?”

“I hate to think.”

“Hal Morgan’s prints were on it. How do you like them apples?”

Voland’s gleeful grin reminded Joa

The withering look Joa

Voland’s face fell. “Isn’t it obvious?” he returned. “Morgan’s prints are on the murder weapon. He’s lying about all it, including this ‘second-man’ stuff that sounds like it’s straight out of the old ‘Fugitive’ reruns on TV. I’m in favor of turning my deputies loose from the wild-goose chase you’ve got them on.”

“What other prints were on the pitchfork?” Joa

Voland look dismayed. “There weren’t any others.”

“Why not?” Joa

“What are you saying?” Voland asked.

“‘That if there aren’t any other prints on that handle, then the ones that are there were put there deliberately. Planted.”

“You mean, as in put there to frame Hal Morgan?”

“Exactly.”

Dick Voland’s head began to shake. “No way,” he said “You’re reaching,”

“That may be,” Joa

I le looked at her for a moment as if he was prepared argue. Dick Voland wasn’t any better at losing than he was at wi

“Thank you,” she said. “And now, if you don’t mind think I’ll go home. It’s been a long day.”

She drove straight to her in-laws’ house, picked up Je

“How about chorizo, eggs, and flour tortillas?” Joa

“What’s the matter?” Joa

“It’s okay,” Je

“We can’t eat with Grandma and Grandpa every night, even if they invite us,” Joa