Minor in Possession by J. A. Jance Read Free Book Online Page B

parking lot with a puzzled Deputy Hanson looking on, and held him tightly against me, feeling his strong young body next to mine, marveling at how tall my little boy had grown, how well built and capable.
    â€œI needed that, Scotty,” I said at last, when I could talk again. “You’ve no idea how badly I needed that.”

CHAPTER
5
    D espite the extraordinary circumstances, Louise Crenshaw sent word through her secretary that I was to return to Group until the sheriff’s department investigators were ready to speak to me. Deputy Hanson reluctantly agreed to let me leave the parking lot only after cautioning me not to mention Joey Rothman’s death to anyone at all until after a decision had been made on an official announcement.
    Bearing that in mind, I returned to our portable where Burton Joe was leading the client group through a meandering discussion about denial and its impact on dysfunctional, chemically dependent families. The bottom line revolved around the catch-22 that denying you have the disease of alcoholism is in and of itself a symptom of the disease. Naturally, until you admit you have a problem, you can’t fix the problem. According to Burton Joe, breaking through denial is a major step on the road to recovery.
    I’ve heard it before, and I must confess I didn’t pay very close attention during the remainder ofthe morning. My mind wandered. There was no denying I had a problem all right. Regardless of the fact that the weapon belonged to me, the presence of my fingerprints as the most recent prints on a possible murder weapon clearly posed a very touchy problem, one that had nothing to do with alcoholism or liver disease, although I’d say that in terms of potential for long-term damage it rivals either one.
    I could feel myself being sucked inevitably into the vortex of circumstances surrounding Joey Rothman’s death. If any homicide cop worth his salt started asking questions, it wouldn’t take much effort to discover that J. P. Beaumont had both motive and opportunity. I took small comfort from the fact that all the circumstantial evidence pointing at me also pointed at Lieutenant Colonel Guy Owens. (In the course of the long night and longer morning, his official title and rank had surfaced in my memory.) Whatever fatherly motive I might have had, Owens had more. In spades. Kelly Beaumont wasn’t pregnant. Michelle Owens was.
    Blocking out Burton Joe’s psycho-babble, I wondered about the official time of death. Lacking that critical piece of information, I couldn’t assess exactly how much trouble I was in. If the coroner happened to declare that the murder occurred while Guy Owens and I were together in the cabin, then life would be good. Each of us could provide the other with an airtight alibi.
    But if Joey Rothman died later than that, Ithought uneasily, if the autopsy indicated that the crime occurred sometime after Guy Owens left my cabin and before I went to see Lucy Washington and to report the problem with my car, that would be a white horse of a different color.
    Around eleven o’clock, Nina Davis came to the door of the portable and crooked a summoning finger in my direction. Annoyed at the barrage of unexplained interruptions, Burton Joe nonetheless nodded that I could go. I followed Nina out the door, wondering why Louise had once more sent her secretary instead of coming herself. This was exactly the kind of one-woman show Louise did so well, playing the part of a grande dame puppet master, jerking the strings of anyone dumb enough to let her.
    But even outside, Louise Crenshaw was no where in sight. Instead, waiting on the path was an attractive Mexican-American woman in her mid-thirties. Nina Davis introduced her as Yavapai County Sheriff’s Detective Delcia Reyes-Gonzales.
    I’ve survived a good portion of my career in the fuzzy world of affirmative action. Years of departmental consciousness-raising seminars have