Missing and Endangered (Joanna Brady #19)(46)
“There won’t be,” Joanna said. “Beneficiary arrangements are ironclad and can’t be changed after the fact. This all sounds like huge progress, Deb. Anything else?”
“One thing more. Ricky said that Madison was planning to drop by to see Leon when he got home from work on Wednesday—that she was coming for dinner and bringing the kids. Ricky thought she maybe wanted to get back together, but Leon said he was pretty sure she’d be hitting him up for money to buy Christmas presents for the kids. Leon, being a good guy, was fine with that.”
“I don’t think Madison was dropping by to collect money for Christmas presents from Leon,” Joanna said. “I think she was coming to kill him.”
And that was when she finally had a chance to tell Deb about the fact that despite Armando Ruiz’s claim that Leon had seemed to be impaired at the time of the shooting, alcohol content was entirely missing from his system.
“You think she slipped him something?” Deb asked.
“I do.”
“We have got to get those poor kids away from that horrid woman.” Deb breathed. “She’s a menace.”
“I couldn’t agree more,” Joanna said, “but I’ve got to hang up now. I’m already late for dinner. If I don’t show up pretty soon, you’ll have another homicide to solve, because Butch Dixon will kill me.”
Chapter 17
It had been the worst weekend of Beth Rankin’s life. All day on Saturday, she’d agonized over the likelihood that Ron might never call her back. Then, after the ugly way that call had ended, she’d spent all day Sunday worrying that he would.
It wasn’t fair for him to demand that she stop being friends with Jenny. It wasn’t fair that he dictate she should stay on campus during Christmas vacation rather than go to Bisbee to have fun. What gave him the right to boss her around?
And besides, what did he have against Jenny in the first place? How did he know that Jenny’s mother was in law enforcement? But even if Joanna Brady was a cop, what did it matter? What business of it was Ron’s? What did he care?
As Sunday afternoon waned into evening, Beth finally started getting mad. Not as mad as she’d been the night she stomped out of her mother’s house in SaddleBrooke, but close enough.
She and Ron were boyfriend and girlfriend, maybe, but they weren’t married. They weren’t even engaged. And if this was the kind of bossy, overbearing person Ronald Cameron was, they probably never would be either. Beth had spent her whole life up till now being bossed around by other people—first by her mother and by Pastor Ike, too. She wasn’t going to allow her new wings to be clipped by someone else—not even Ron. If he called tonight, she decided, she would tell him so—in no uncertain terms.
Sunday night, when she crept into the bathroom just before midnight, her whole body was quaking, but she was determined. Beth wasn’t going to give Jenny up, not as a friend and not as a roommate either. And she was going to go wherever she pleased for Christmas vacation. It was Beth’s life after all, and she got to decide.
So when the phone rang at two minutes past twelve, her fingers trembled as she accepted the call. “Hello.”
“Hey, Sweet Betsy from Pike,” Ron said. “I hope you had a nice day!”
Beth had never quite believed it when people claimed they’d been “triggered” by something they heard or saw. She hadn’t believed it possible, but suddenly that was exactly what happened to her. In an instant she went from being cautiously tentative to being furious, because here he was calling her up as though nothing at all had happened. As though she hadn’t spent the whole weekend mired in a pit of despair—as though the suffering he’d put her through the last several days was meaningless.
“Don’t call me that,” she snapped. “I’m not Betsy. My name is Elizabeth. You can call me Elizabeth or you can call me Beth, but do not call me Betsy.”
“Hold on,” Ron objected. “Get off your high horse. I just called to say hi and to ask how you’re doing.”
But Beth had her back up now. She was more angry than hurt. “You’re the one on a high horse,” she retorted. “You’re the one who thinks you can boss everybody around. Well, you can’t. You can’t tell me what to do. You can’t tell me who I can be friends with and who I can’t. And if I want to go to Bisbee for Christmas, I will. Don’t call me again. We’re done.”
Then she hung up. She had turned off her phone, left the bathroom, crawled into bed, and fallen asleep, because it really was over. Ron hadn’t broken up with her; she had broken up with him. For the first time in forever, Beth Rankin felt as though she’d taken control of her own life.
Chapter 18
Lucky and Lady were waiting in the laundry room when Joanna arrived, and it seemed as though they were the only ones happy to see her. No one else was visible, and no one called a greeting either. She put her weapons away and then ventured farther into the house. The kitchen was deserted. Dinner was clearly over, and she had missed it—again. Her phone call with Deb had lasted far longer than it should have. A covered dish of some kind sitting in isolated splendor in the microwave hinted that the lay of the land on the home front wasn’t particularly welcoming.