Free Dead to Rights by J. A. Jance

understand,” Joanna said.
    “What don’t you understand?” Carpenter asked, never removing his eyes from the task at hand.
    “According to what I’ve read,” Joanna mused, “most of the time perpetrators set fires in hopes of concealing evidence of a crime. But this is a metal barn sitting on a concrete slab. There wasn’t enough fuel inside the barn to cause the building to collapse or even to burn up the corpse. Morgan must have known that, so what was the point? Why did he bother?”
    Ernie stopped what he was doing long enough to fix her with an appraising stare. “Good question,” he said. “Damned good question. If you’re not careful, we may end up making a reasonably good homicide detective out of you yet.”
    With that, Ernie returned to checking the contents of the wallet.
    “It may be a good question, but you haven’t answered it,” Joanna insisted.
    “And I’m not going to,” Detective Carpenter told her. “Remember, this is only the bare beginning of the investigation. Once I know what the answer is, believe me, you’ll be the first to know.”
    “Fair enough,” she said.
    Moving closer, Joanna observed Ernie’s painstaking handling of Bucky Buckwalter’s personal effects. Each time the detective removed some item from the wallet, he would examine it carefully and then place it in an evidence bag before making the proper notation on an inventory sheet attached to a clipboard. It was a tedious process, one that required more than two hands.
    “Would you like me to help with that?” Joanna offered. “I could either take the stuff out of the wallet and you could list it, or we could do it the other way around.”
    “Thanks,” Ernie said, handing her his pencil and clipboard. “That’ll speed things up.”
    One by one Joanna listed the driver’s license as well as the other cards, photos, and pieces of paper. “He was carrying a little bit of cash on him,” the detective reported eventually. “I count three twenties, a ten, and six singles. Seventy-six bucks and a package of Trojans.”
    “Trojans?” Joanna repeated. She heard the shock and surprise in her voice when she uttered the word, and she wondered if Ernie noticed.
    “Sure,” he said with a short laugh. “As in condoms. These are the nineties, Sheriff Brady. Lots of men pack them around in their wallets these days. What’s wrong with that?”
    Joanna considered for a long moment before she answered. “Nothing,” she said finally. “Except if Bucky Buckwalter had been behaving himself, he wouldn’t have needed them.”
    Rocking back on his heels, Ernie Carpenter regarded Joanna Brady with a puzzled frown. “Do you know something I don’t know?” he asked.
    Joanna nodded. “The Davis Insurance Agency sold the Buckwalters their health insurance several years ago. With all of Milo Davis’s health insurance clients, whenever there was a problem with a claim, I was the designated troubleshooter. It was my job to duke things out with the claims people, to help our clients make their way through the bureaucratic jungle.”
    “So?” Ernie urged when Joanna paused and seemed disinclined to continue.
    “Terry Buckwalter suffered from recurring ovarian cysts,” Joanna answered at last. “She finally had a complete hysterectomy up at University Medical Center in Tucson. This was three or four years ago. There was a huge mixup because the insurance company paid the anesthesiologist twice and didn’t pay the surgeon anything. It was a mess that took me months to sort out.”
    That far into the story, Joanna stopped cold.
    “Go on,” the detective urged.
    Joanna shook her head. “That’s all. The problem is, that’s confidential information. I probably shouldn’t even have mentioned it.”
    Thoughtfully Carpenter dropped the condoms into a glassine bag. “Don’t worry about it,” he said. “It’s interesting information and probably not that important in the long run. If I do end up needing to have official