by J. A. Jance
Joanna leaned back in the chair and thought for a moment before she answered. She didn’t want whatever she said to Kristin to add to her department’s inner turmoil if it happened to be repeated to anyone else.
“Some people are simply incapable of putting themselves in anybody else’s shoes, Kristin,” she said finally. “Empathy won’t ever be one of Deputy Galloway’s long suits. But if it will put your mind at ease, I think Leon Cañedo was so overwhelmed by everything that was going on yesterday, he probably didn’t notice who was there and who wasn’t. Ken Junior may have drained off everyone he could bamboozle into not showing up, but it was still standing room only in the parish hall up at St. Dominick’s for most of the evening.”
Kristin heaved another sigh, this one of relief. “Good. I’m really glad.” Saying that, she pushed her unwieldy body upright. “Now that I know you’re here,” she said, “I’ll go get your messages.”
Joanna felt like saying, Do you have to? She didn’t. Instead, she watched Kristin waddle out of the room before returning to her own desk. Moments later, Kristin was back with a fanfold of telephone message slips in her hand. “Chief Deputy Montoya wants to know if you’re ready for the briefing yet.”
“Not yet. Give me a while.”
Nodding, Kristin went out, closing the door behind her. Joanna took the messages and shuffled through them. One was from her mother, one from the county attorney’s office, and two were from people in the community whose names she recognized but who had somehow failed to mention exactly why they were calling. Pulling all pertinent information from reticent phone callers was one of the essential secretarial skills Kristin Gregovich had yet to master. The bottom message was from Butch. “Daisy’s,” it said. “Twelve o’clock. don’t forget!”
With an air of impatience she pushed that one aside. After all, it wasn’t anywhere near twelve yet. What would make him think she’d forget? She glanced at her watch. It was only twenty past eleven – plenty of time.
When it came to returning phone calls, Joanna was a believer in doing the tough things first. She dialed her mother’s number immediately.
“Why, there you are,” Eleanor Lathrop Winfield said. “I’m so glad you called back. I just had the strangest conversation with Marliss Shackleford.”
The fact that her mother was a longtime bosom buddy of The Bisbee Bee’s featured columnist was one of the crosses Sheriff Joanna Brady had learned to bear. Anytime there was a question Marliss didn’t want to pose through official channels – like going through the media relations officer, Chief Deputy Montoya – she had no compunction about asking Eleanor instead. Joanna’s first thought was that Marliss was on the trail of something to do with the Rochelle Baxter case. That assumption proved wrong.
“Marliss asked me why there were so few Cochise County deputies in attendance at the funeral reception yesterday evening,” Eleanor was saying. “I told her she had to be mistaken. I was there myself. It seemed to me there were plenty of people in uniform, all of them plowing through that buffet like they hadn’t eaten in days.”
Hardly any of those starving uniforms belonged to me, Joanna thought despairingly. It bugged her to realize that, as usual, Marliss Shackleford had focused in on the one critical issue Sheriff Brady had been trying to dodge. Rather than issuing a denial Marliss could easily refute, Joanna played coy.
“Really,” she said, feigning as much innocence as she could muster. “Marliss says my deputies weren’t there? That’s strange. I could have sworn they were all over the place, but I could be wrong. I had a few other details to worry about. There wasn’t time for an official roll call.”
“See there?” Eleanor responded, sounding relieved. “I tried to tell Marliss that very thing – that she had to be mistaken, but you know her. Sometimes you have to hit that woman over the head with a baseball bat to get through to her.”
Hitting Marliss Shackleford over the head with anything sounded like an excellent idea to Sheriff Joanna Brady about then, but she fought down a biting comment that could have turned into additional ammunition. “I’ve noticed,” she agreed.
“I’d best be going,” Eleanor went on briskly. “I just spoke to George. He’s finished up with whatever it was he had to do this morning. He’s coming home for lunch. I should get it on the table. The egg salad is ready, but I haven’t made sandwiches yet.”
That, too, was vintage Eleanor Lathrop. The “whatever” George Winfield had to do that morning was to perform an autopsy. How like Eleanor simply to gloss over and/or ignore anything remotely unpleasant. Her husband’s title might be that of Cochise County Medical Examiner, but in Eleanor’s self-centered world, none of his professional duties were any more important than the egg-salad sandwiches she planned to serve for lunch. And if a scheduled autopsy or an unexpected phone call happened to delay him beyond what Eleanor considered reasonable, Joanna knew there would be hell to pay.
Better him than me, she thought.
Even so, Eleanor didn’t hang up immediately. “According to Marliss, there was another murder last night,” she added.
Here we go again, Joanna fumed. Another one of Marliss Shackleford’s notorious end runs.
“A suspicious death,” she corrected. “I suppose she asked you about that, too.”
“Not about the death specifically,” Eleanor replied. “She wanted to know if I had noticed how the crime rate has really taken off since you became Sheriff.”
That depends on who’s counting, Joanna thought. “What did you say?” she asked.
“I told her the truth,” Eleanor replied. “I said that no matter who’s in charge, the crime rate stays pretty much the same.”
Coming from Eleanor Lathrop Winfield, that lukewarm statement constituted a ringing endorsement.
“Thanks, Mom,” Joanna said.
“You’re welcome.”
Next Joanna dialed the county attorney’s office. Arlee Jones was a blowhard, deal-making good old boy.
“Glad to hear from you, Sheriff Brady,” he said cordially. “Wanted to keep you in the know.”
“About what?” Joanna replied.
“Remember Rob Majors?” Arlee asked. “That kid from San Simon?”
Joanna remembered Rob Majors all too well. He was a not-too-bright kid who had spent the summer earning college tuition money by carjacking travelers along I-10 and selling their stolen vehicles to migrant-smuggling crooks from Old Mexico. Joanna’s department had spent weeks and far too much valuable overtime before they had apprehended him. They had finally decoyed Majors into trying to lift a car driven by Terry Gregovich with Spike, his German shepherd sidekick, stationed in the backseat.
Majors had been taken into custody at the rest area just inside the Arizona/New Mexico border, but he wasn’t jailed until after emergency-room treatment of the numerous puncture wounds on his arm, compliments of an eighty-five-pound police dog.
“What about him?” Joanna asked.
“Thought you’d be relived to hear that I’ve brokered a deal. Rob Majors pleads guilty to a lesser charge, and he drops the police brutality charge against your K-9 officer.”
“How good a deal did he get?” Joanna asked. Arlee Jones’s plea bargains usually gave her a headache. This one was no exception.
“He pleads guilty to one count of first-degree assault and goes to Fort Grant until his twenty-first birthday.”
Joanna barely believed her ears. “The kid’s seventeen. You’re letting him off as a juvenile?”
“It’s the best I could do,” Jones said in an aggrieved tone. “At least it gets your Deputy Gregovich off the hook.”
“Thanks,” Joanna said. “That’s just what I wanted to hear.”
She hung up and was still burning with indignation when she dialed the number for Debra Highsmith, the newly installed principal at Bisbee High School. A student office assistant put the call through.
“This is Sheriff Brady,” Joanna said when Debra Highsmith answered. “I understand you called earli
er.”
“That’s right. Thanks so much for returning the call,” Ms. Highsmith said. “We’re trying to do something a little unusual around here. I was wondering if you could help us out.”
“That depends,” Joanna said. “What are we talking about?”
“I attended an all-girls high school, and an all-girls college as well. This was back in the days when they still had such things,” Debra Highsmith added with a chuckle. “I’m trying to create an atmosphere that will challenge and motivate the young women here at Bisbee High. We want to get them thinking outside the box, as it were. For that we need really dynamic role models.”
Joanna waited silently for Debra Highsmith to cut to the chase.
“BHS career day comes up the end of next week,” Ms. Highsmith continued. “I must apologize for calling you at the last minute. I had made arrangements for an old college chum of mine, Althea Peachy, who works for NASA, to speak to our girls-only assembly. Unfortunately, Peaches found out just this morning that she has to testify before the House Appropriations Committee in D.C. next week. I was wondering if I could prevail on you to pinch-hit.”
Suppressing a sigh, Joanna reached for her desktop calendar. “What day?” she asked.
“Next Thursday. We’d like you to speak first thing in the morning – around nine or so. The boys will be in the gym having their own assembly. The girls will be in the auditorium.”
Joanna consulted her calendar. The morning after a night of Halloween pranks would be a bad day for her to be out of the office, but encouraging young people was also part of her job.
“All right,” she said, penciling it in. “Nine o’clock. Anything else I should know?”
“Well, there is one more thing,” Debra Highsmith added. “I need to let you know that we have a zero-tolerance policy about weapons here on campus.”
“Wait a minute,” Joanna objected. “I’m a sworn police officer, remember? You want me to come to your school and talk to students about the possibility of considering law enforcement as a career, but you don’t want me to wear my guns?”
“Right,” Debra Highsmith allowed. “It doesn’t make sense, but you know how paranoid school boards can be about such things these days. What if a student overpowered you, grabbed one of your weapons, and used it on some other student?”
“And what if one of your students shows up at school that day with a weapon of his or her own? What then?” Joanna returned. “Wouldn’t it be a good idea to have a properly trained and armed police officer on-site when all hell breaks loose?”
“I don’t make the rules,” Debra Highsmith returned. “I simply enforce them.”
That’s the same thing I always say, Joanna thought.
“All right,” she said. “Nine o’clock, on Thursday, November first, in the auditorium.”
She put down the phone and was still staring at it when her private line rang.
“You’re late,” Butch said. “It’s ten after twelve. You’re still in the office.”
“Sorry,” she said. “Time got away from me. I’ll be right there.”
Ten minutes later and twenty minutes after the appointed time, she pulled up in front of Daisy Maxwell’s café in Bisbee’s Bakerville neighborhood. Junior Dowdle, the developmentally disabled fifty-year-old ward of the restaurant’s owner, met Joanna at the door. He carried a pile of menus and sported a wide smile. “Time to eat?” he asked.
Junior had been abandoned by his caretakers a year earlier. Daisy and her retired postal worker husband, Moe, had taken him under their wing and assumed guardianship. Junior had blossomed under their care. Working in their restaurant, he took his tasks of clearing tables and washing dishes very seriously. Occasionally he was allowed to serve as host, passing out menus and accompanying guests to tables or booths.
Joanna stood in the doorway of Daisy’s and scanned the room for Butch. His Honda Goldwing was parked in front of the restaurant. Butch himself was nowhere to be seen.
“Back,” Junior said, pointing helpfully. “Back there. Reservation,” he added with an emphatic nod.
Following Junior Dowdle’s directions, Joanna made her way to the private back room that sometimes doubled as a meeting room for the local Rotary Club. Pushing open the door, she was surprised to find every available surface covered by unfurled blueprints.
Butch looked up when she entered. “There you are,” he said wryly. “I may be your husband, but do you have any idea how hard it is to book an appointment with you these days?”
She looked around the room. “What’s this?”
“Our new house,” he said. “Or what’s supposed to be our new house. The problem is, I can’t get you to sit still long enough to talk about and sign off on the plans. In other words, you and I are having a meeting – an official meeting. We’re still working through the permit process, but before construction can begin, all the decisions need to be made. Cabinets have to be ordered, plumbing fixtures, appliances, everything. So first we’ll have lunch. They made Cornish pasties today, so I ordered two of those. Then we’re going to go over each of these papers, one piece at a time.”
“I saw the house you redid in Saginaw,” Joanna told him. “I’m sure whatever decisions you make will be fine with me.”
“Still,” he said. “There are things we should talk about. Marriages don’t work well when one person makes too many unilateral decisions. I’m not going ahead until you’ve officially signed off on everything, from countertops to cabinets.”
Joanna wanted the new house. She was looking forward to living in it, but she dreaded the process of getting there. If only she could bring herself to tell Butch how she had grown up listening to her parents squabble endlessly over one of D.H. Lathrop’s grindingly slow remodeling projects after another.
“All right,” she said, and sat down.
They had eaten lunch and were making good progress through the various blueprints until they got to a detailed rendering of the family room. “What’s this?” Joanna asked, pointing to a line that went all the way around the room, just above the doorjambs and window frames.
“That’s the train shelf,” Butch told her proudly.
“The what?”
“Remember the O-gauge Lionel trains I used to have on display up at the Roundhouse? They’ve been in storage ever since I came to Bisbee. I decided the family room would be a great place to put them out again – in sight but not in the way. And by putting it in now, during the building process, the wiring can be built into the conduit in the walls behind the shelf.”
As he spoke, Butch brimmed with enthusiasm. Now he stopped and glanced sharply at Joanna’s face. “Don’t you like it?”
“A train in the family room?” she asked uneasily.
“Several, actually,” Butch answered. “I have six. There won’t be enough room to have all of them out at once, but…”
“Wouldn’t it be better to have just a television set, some sound equipment, and a couch and some chairs in there?” Joanna asked tentatively. “Having pictures on the walls would be fine, but trains?”
Butch’s face fell. “All right,” he said glumly. “I’ll get rid of it, but at this rate, I might just as well get rid of the trains, too.”
“I didn’t say that.”
“Well,” he said, “why not? If I’ve got no place to display them – if I have to leave them packed up and in storage all the time – what’s the point of having them?”
“Butch, please, I never said you should get rid of your trains.”
“It sounded like it to me.”
Joanna’s cell phone rang. Butch rolled his eyes and crossed his arms as she plucked it out of her pocket to answer it. Detective Jaime Carbajal was on the line. “What’s up?” she asked.
“According to Doc Winfield, we just ran into a problem,” Jaime said.
More than one, Joanna thought, looking at Butch. Scowling, he had returned to studying the family-room blueprint. “Like what?” she asked.
�
�Our victim’s name isn’t Rochelle Baxter,” he said.
“What is it?”
“Latisha Wall, originally from Macon, Georgia.”
“Okay,” Joanna said. “She went by a different name. How come? Does she have a record?”
“No.”
Joanna was losing patience playing Twenty Questions. “What’s the deal?”
“The ME tracked down one Lawrence Baxter, supposedly her father and the person the DMV lists as her next of kin. Turns out he doesn’t exist, either. Doc Winfield ended up talking to some guy in the Washington State Attorney General’s Office in Olympia. His name’s O.H. Todd, and he claims he’s Latisha Wall’s case manager. She was evidently in a witness protection program.”
“They gave her a new name and identity and set her up to live down here in Arizona?” Joanna asked.
“That’s right,” Jaime said. “Except now she’s dead. Doc Winfield said the guy in Olympia almost had a coronary when he heard what had happened.”
“What was she a witness about?”
“Todd wasn’t saying, at least not to Doc Winfield,” Jaime replied. “Said he had to check with his superiors before he could release any information to anyone, including us. However, he did request that he be kept informed about all aspects of the investigation. He gave Doc Winfield the name, phone number, and address of Latisha’s mother and sister back home in Georgia. The father is deceased, and the mother is in poor health. The ME says authorities from Washington will contact the next of kin.”
“Thank God for small favors,” Joanna said. “What about the preliminary results from the autopsy?”
“Inconclusive. No wounds of any kind. No bruises or abrasions. No defensive wounds that would indicate a struggle, and no sign of disease, either. Doc’s not willing to say she died of natural causes, though. He’s ordering a full set of toxicology tests. You know how long those take.”
“Weeks,” Joanna murmured.
“Right,” Jaime said. “So where does that leave us?”
Joanna thought for a moment before she answered. “Okay,” she said. “We’ll handle this case like a full-blown homicide investigation until we know otherwise. If we learn later that Latisha Wall took her own life or died from some kind of accidental poisoning, all we’ll be out are the man-hours we’ve devoted to the investigation. But we have to pay attention right now, while the evidence is fresh. If someone did murder her and we wait for toxicology reports, the trail will be cold by the time we start looking for the perp.”