Tombstone Courage jb-11

by J. A. Jance

  Bisbee had come so far into the modern era that after generations of five-number dialing, telephone users now had to use all seven numbers to make a local call, which seemed like an unnecessary and cumbersome waste of time. But some small-town practices persisted. Alvin Bernard, Bisbee’s chief of police, still had his home telephone number listed in the directory, and Joanna decided it wasn’t too late to call.

  Back when Alvin graduated from high school, he had flunked the company physical and had missed being hired by P.D. When he went to work as a cop for the city of Bisbee, his former class mates had looked down their noses at him. They were somewhat more respectful and envious, both, now that their high-paying copper-mining jobs had disappeared and Alvin’s hadn’t. Not only was he still employed by his original employer, attrition and two key heart attacks had bounced him all the way up to chief.

  “Congrats, Joanna,” he enthused. “Welcome aboard and all that shit. Excuse me, all that crap. What can I do for you?”

  “I was calling for some information about that hit-and-run incident last night.”

  “Ask away. We’ve got letters of mutual aid out the kazoo. What do you need?”

  “Can you tell me what’s happening on that case?”

  “Sure thing. My guys talked to Holly Patterson’s sleazebag lawyer. He says it’s nothing. That her foot slipped on the accelerator or some such thing, and that by the time Holly had the car back under control, she was too upset to come back.”

  “Right.”

  “That’s what I say. But we picked up another angle on it from someone else. One of my officers’ aunts, Isabel Gonzales, and her husband work at Cosa Viejo. She’s the cook, and he’s the gardener, for the new owner.

  “Isabel told her sister that Holly Patterson has really been going downhill ever since she got back home. Sounds almost like a rerun of what happened to her mother. From what I’ve been able to pick up, Burton expected Harold Patterson to offer Holly some kind of settlement yesterday. Harold stopped by to see her, but when they couldn’t come to terms, Holly went ballistic. She blames her cousin, Burton Kimball, for talking her father out of settling.”

  “What does Burton say?”

  “He flat out denies it. He says he tried to talk Harold out of it but that he didn’t get to first base. He did succeed in talking old Judge Moore into granting a continuance when Harold didn’t show up in court this morning. I guess the out-of-town lawyer was screaming like a scalded Indian.”

  Joanna thought about all that for a minute. “I’ll bet he was. So one person says Harold was going to settle, the other says he wasn’t. Who’s right? What do you think is going on?”

  “Well,” Alvin Bernard replied cheerfully, “I’d have to say somebody’s lying through his teeth. It’s just too damned soon to tell which is which. But then, that’s what you and I get paid for, isn’t it-to find out who’s lying?”

  “Yes,” Joanna Brady answered. “I suppose it is.”

  Joanna Expected to toss and turn after those two disquieting phone calls. Instead, she fell asleep the moment her head hit the pillow; her eyes closed, and she fell into a heavy, dreamless sleep. Toward morning, though, she drifted into a dream-an un usually happy one at first, a dream about the old days, about when Andy was still alive.

  Joanna and Jenny were sitting in the back of a moving pickup. Jenny was holding an old wicker picnic basket, and the two of them were laughing and singing songs at the top of their lungs.

  They were driving down a bumpy dirt road. It took some time before Joanna realized they were in Hank Lathrop’s old Chevrolet pickup the terrible old half-ton truck her father had promised would be Joanna’s someday when she had her license, the truck her mother had sold to a farmer from out in the Sulphur Springs Valley the week after Hank’s funeral.

  The time frame of the dream was disjointed and confusing. Details were disturbingly out of synch.

  There were two dogs riding along in the pickup, but not Liz and Pearl, Hank Lathrop’s two old black-and-tans, but Joanna’s present-day Sadie and Tigger.

  Eventually, Joanna turned around to look in the cab and see who was driving. She was startled to find that the driver was none other than Hank Lathrop himself, while Andrew Brady rode shot gun in the passenger seat. The two of them were talking and laughing, enjoying some private joke.

  Like the time-warped dogs, that part of the dream could never have happened in real life, there. D. H. Lathrop might have known Andy Brady as a child by name or reputation, but certainly not as Joanna’s future husband-as Hank Lathrop’s future son-in-law. By the time Andy came home from the service and he and Joanna became a hot item, Joanna’s father was already dead.

  But this was a dream. In the dreamscape, those things were possible, and both men were together.

  And the Joanna Lathrop Brady who was riding in the back of that silver Cheyenne was overjoyed to see them. She tapped on the window, wanting to catch their attention. Since there was plenty of room in the front, she wanted to ride up there with them, to join in the stories and jokes, but they were too busy laughing and having a good time to hear her. She tapped on the window again and again. Still they didn’t notice.

  Suddenly, a cloud seemed to pass in front of the sun, darkening the sky overhead. Joanna looked up and saw a rainstorm marching across the valley toward them. It was one of those fierce summer storms, the kind that kicks up clouds of swirling dirt and sends those out as reconnaissance troops in advance of the driving rain. Not wanting to be soaked, she turned back to the cab and pounded on the window again, only now no one was there.

  The truck was still barreling down the road, but the cab was empty. The doors were open. Both her father and Andy had disappeared. No one was holding on to the steering wheel, which twisted wildly from side to side while the truck careened drunkenly down the narrow track, picking up speed as it went.

  Joanna woke up slick with sweat. She fought her way out from under the covers and then lay there with her heart hammering in her chest, waiting for the fright to pass.

  Gradually, her heartbeat slowed to normal, and a sort of calm numbness spread over her. You don’t need a PhD. in dream interpretation to understand what that one meant, she thought. In the dream-as in life both Andy and her father had bailed out on her, abandoning her to fight the good fight alone, leaving her stuck in the bed of the moving pickup of life with no way for her to reach either the steering wheel or the brakes.

  As she knew it would, eventually the clarity of the dream grew fuzzy and disappeared, taking with it both the terrifying end as well as the pleasant, carefree beginning. That was the problem with dreams. In order to shake off the bad parts, you usually had to let go of the good ones as well. Joanna glanced at the bedside clock: 4am, too late to go back to sleep but still far too early to get -up. That’s when she noticed where she was lying.

  Ten years of habit are hard to break. Even after almost two full months, her sleeping body had yet to adjust to the changed circumstances of her life.

  When autumn chill penetrated the bedroom or when late-night dreams changed to terrifying nightmares, force of habit still sent Joanna scurrying toward Andy’s side of the bed. Her cold or frightened body still sought comfort and refuge in the spot where his fading scent lingered in the lumpy down of what had once been his pillow.

  With a sigh, and knowing now she wouldn’t go back to sleep, Joanna crawled out of bed. She pulled on her heavy terry-cloth robe and went out to the kitchen, where she heated water and made herself a cup of instant cocoa. Not the old-fashioned made from-scratch kind that Jim Bob Brady favored, but a close enough substitute to help shake off the chill.

  Carrying the steaming mug with her, Joanna made her way into the darkened living room. It wasn’t necessary to turn on any lights. She knew the way.

  Sitting down on the couch, she dragged one of Eva Lou’s heavy, hand-crocheted afghans over her icy feet. Moments later, Sadie, the big bluetick hound, emerged from Jenny’s bedroom and thrust her warm, smooth mu
zzle into Joanna’s lap.

  “I didn’t mean to wake you, girl,” Joanna apologized, patting the dog’s seemingly hollow head.

  It no longer disturbed her to find herself speaking aloud to the dog. In the preceding weeks, Sadie had given more than her share of late-night comfort to a grieving Joanna Brady. Tigger-an ugly and improbable mixture of pit bull and golden retriever, had been adopted by Jenny in the aftermath of his previous owner’s death. Tigger stuck with Jenny no matter what, while Sadie was more evenhanded about sharing herself. Even pawed, Joanna thought, smiling at the self correction.

  With a sigh, Sadie flopped down on the floor near Joanna’s feet, and the woman was grateful for the creature’s company. It made the early-morning house seem less silent and alien. In the old days, she might have turned on the radio, tuned in some far-off countrywestern station. She didn’t do that anymore, didn’t make that mistake. Those songs were all about couples, about relationships. The words always hurt too much and made her own loneliness that much worse.

  So Joanna sat listening to her empty house, grateful for Sadie’s jowl-flapping snores. No matter how hard she tried, Joanna couldn’t escape the sense that the house was practically empty. And it wasn’t just because of Jenny’s continuing subdued silences, either. The small house seemed deserted and eerily abandoned because Andrew Brady wasn’t in it. And would never be again.

  When he was alive, there had been times when he had been away overnight, either at work or out of town on a trip. Occasionally, he had been gone for several days at a time. Joanna and Jenny had stayed on High Lonesome Ranch by themselves back then, but it hadn’t been a problem. In those days, the ranch hadn’t lived up to its name. It had never seemed lonesome or empty because always there was the expectation that Andy would come back eventually, and the house would once more ring with noise and laughter.

  But now, with no such expectation, the High Lonesome was lonesome indeed. At times Joanna considered locking the front and back doors, slap ping a For Sale sign on the front gate, and simply walking away. For good. After all, she and Andy had bought the house expecting to be there together, not alone. She thought about leaving, but she didn’t do it.

  of course, the scavengers had come out in force. Two different real estate agents from Tucson sleazy developer types who were evidently both avid followers of the obituary pages-had showed up on her doorstep within minutes of the funeral, offering to buy the High Lonesome for some ridiculously low figure.

  From what they said about “taking the place off your hands” it was clear neither one of them had any idea that the insurance she and Andy had purchased over the years had left her with the mortgage paid in full and with a good deal of financial security besides. Joanna Brady sure as hell didn’t have to give High Lonesome Ranch away, but she wasn’t at all certain she wanted to keep it, either.

  For one thing, located seven miles from town and two miles off the nearest paved road, the house on High Lonesome Ranch was, as one might expect, very isolated. Clayton Rhodes, her nearest neighbor, was a toothless, hard-of-hearing octogenarian who lived a good mile away. Bill and Charlene Harris were another mile beyond the Rhodes’ place. If there was trouble, if lightning ever did strike, a mile or two was a long way to go for help. What happened to Andy had already proved that.

  When that thought crossed her mind, Joanna’s first instinct was to turn on the light, pick up the phone, and call Adam York back that very minute to see if he had anything to add to the advice he had given her the night before. She was tempted to call again, but she didn’t.

  What stopped her was the vision of herself, Joanna Brady, the candidate stomping all over hell and gone, asking the eighty thousand residents of Cochise County to vote for her. She had won the election, by God. More people had written her name in the blank for sheriff than had chosen Frank Montoya and Al Freeman put together.

  Those people hadn’t all voted for her because she was Hank Lathrop’s poor orphaned daughter or because she was Deputy Andrew Brady’s poor shattered widow, either. Sympathy stretched only so far. Voters had chosen Joanna Brady because they thought she was the right person for the job And now, as the duly sworn sheriff of the whole damn county, she’d better not go ducking for cover at the first sign of trouble. Besides, Adam York had already told her what to do.

  Joanna got up from the couch then, once more disturbing the sleeping Sadie. Leaving the dog b hind, she again made her way through the house in the dark, returning this time to her bedroom, where she switched on the light. She made straight for Andy’s rolltop desk and unlocked the drawer where she kept her new 9-mm Colt 2000 semi automatic, one she had bought for herself from part of Andy’s life-insurance proceeds. She had told herself at the time that she was buying it for protection; that living alone as she did, she needed the weapon regardless of whether or not she won the election. But now that she had won…

  Handling the gun with the kind of careful respect it deserved, she carried it out to the kitchen.

  There, after mixing herself yet another cup of cocoa, she took a seat at the breakfast nook. Meticulously, she dismantled the weapon, cleaned it, and painstakingly put it back together. She had splurged and allowed herself the luxury of the wooden-handled First Edition model because she liked the smooth feel of it in her hand. The gun was new, and it was hers. It wasn’t something that had been handed down to her by either her father or her husband.

  Finished with the cleaning, Joanna dressed warmly and went outside into the cold November morning. If the cattle were surprised to be awakened and fed long before daybreak, they voiced no objection. By the time the shadowy tops of the Chiricahua Mountains to the east were dusted with a soft lavender glow, all ten head of cattle were in the corral contentedly munching hay. That was when Joanna took her holstered Colt and retreated to the back pasture for a session of target practice.

  Joanna Brady had owned the semi-automatic for less than two weeks, so it was still somewhat new and unfamiliar.

  Even without Adam York’s advice, she had been doing target practice on her own, as much as time permitted. Every session, she pinned a black-and-white man-sized, man shaped target to a hay bale and fired away at it.

  She continued to have some difficulty in mastering the sweeping trigger-finger motion required to fire the next round, but each subsequent practice showed some slight improvement. And each succeeding target came down from the bale with the bullet holes grouped more tightly in the desired deadly patterns. She didn’t have to wonder what kind of damage those kinds of groupings could do to a human body. She already knew about that. On a firsthand basis.

  At ten to seven, chilled to the bone, she took off her protective ear covering and heard the shrill sharp blasts of the soccer-referee whistle she and’ Jenny used to summon each other when the distances on the ranch were too great for shouts to carry.

  The high-pitched blasts had a disturbingly frantic quality to them. Joanna holstered the gun and hurried back to the house with a sense of dread walking beside her. She was relieved to see Jenny and the dogs waiting for her on the back porch. As soon as she was close enough to see her Joanna could tell from the look on Jennifer’s face that something was terribly wrong. The childs face was pasty white, her thin lips drawn together in a grim, straight line.

  “What’s the matter?” Joanna asked, hurrying to Jenny’s side.

  “Marianne called,” Jenny said. “She wants you to call her back right away.”

  “Why? What happened?”

  “She says they found Mr. Patterson. He’s dead!”

  And with that, Jennifer Ann Brady threw both small arms around her mother’s neck and sobbed her heart out, the racking sobs shaking her whole body. It was as though she had somehow slipped through the protective cocoon of childhood into the terrible world of adulthood, of life and death.

  Joanna took Jenny in her arms and held her close, murmuring what words of comfort she could summon. But the child’s frantic grief, her overriding anguish, went far beyond t
he reach of her mother’s puny words. Or of Marianne’s phone call, either.

  Jenny wasn’t crying about Harold Patterson, an old man she barely knew. No, she was crying for her father.

  Damn Tony Vargas anyway! Joanna thought, remembering the man who had murdered Jenny’s father. Damn him straight to everlasting hell!…

  WHEN JENNY finally calmed down enough to go shower, Joanna headed for the telephone. There were three new messages on the machine from three different reporters-all wanting to schedule interviews, but no one from the Cochise County Sheriff’s Department had bothered to dial up the new sheriff to let her know what was going on out at the Rocking P Ranch. If there was some kind of official notification system within the department, Sheriff Joanna Brady’s name was not yet included on the list.

  She was tempted to call Dispatch and demand to know what the hell was going on, but she squelched that idea. Going off half-cocked would be stupid. Before she did anything at all, she needed some real knowledge of the situation from a reliable source. Instead of calling the department, she dialed Marianne Macula’s number.

  “What’s up?” she asked Jeff Daniels when he answered the phone.

  “Marianne’s in the shower. She told me to tell you she’s heading out to the ranch as soon as she gets dressed. Ivy called a few minutes ago. They found her father in a glory hole up on Juniper Flats. Harold Patterson is dead.”

  “Heart attack?”

  “No. Hit on the head with a rock. At least that’s what Ivy said. The sides must have caved in on him. Ivy was hysterical on the phone. Marianne’s out of the shower now. Do you want to talk to her?”

  “There’s no need. Tell her thanks for letting me know, and that I’m on my way, too. I’ll be there as soon as I can.”

  Jenny came out of the shower wrapped in a towel. “Be where?” she asked.

  “At the Patterson ranch. Hurry and get dressed,” Joanna told her. “We’ll have to leave early. I’ll check with Grandma Brady to see if you can have breakfast with her.”