Devil's ClawJ

by J. A. Jance

  “Hey, Junior,” Jenny called across the room. “How’s it going?”

  Junior Dowdle was a fifty-six-year-old developmentally disabled man who had been abandoned by his court-appointed guardians and left on his own at a local arts-and-crafts fair the previous fall. The priest who had found him had turned Junior over to the care and keeping of the Cochise County Sheriff’s Department. Through Joanna’s own efforts and those of her people, not only had Junior’s mother been found, so had a new set of local, Bisbee-area guardians. Moe and Daisy Maxwell, the owners of Daisy’s Café, had taken on that demanding role.

  With infinite patience, Daisy and Moe had taught Junior how to bus tables. Now he spent several hours each day helping out at the restaurant. And, for the first time in his life, Junior Dowdle was earning his own spending money. One look at Junior’s beaming countenance offered mute testimony as to how well that arrangement was working.

  Grinning from ear to ear and carrying a plastic pan loaded with dirty dishes, he came hurrying toward Jenny. On the pocket of his shirt he still wore the sheriff’s badge Joanna had given him the day she had brought him home from the monastery in Saint David.

  “You come,” he said, motioning for them to follow him toward a booth he had just finished clearing. “You come and eat.”

  From behind the counter, Daisy Maxwell watched, nodded, and smiled her approval. She waited until the party was seated before she followed with coffee and menus. “Most of the time Junior remembers menus,” she said. “But not when he sees someone he knows. Then he gets too excited. Come to think of it, though, you guys probably don’t need menus. What’ll you have?”

  Removing the stub of a pencil from her beehive hairdo, Daisy took two orders for choriso and eggs and one for French toast along with two coffees, one milk, and orange juice all around.

  “I just heard about poor Mr. Rhodes,” Daisy said, once she returned her order pad to its customary place in her apron pocket. “It’s too bad. He was the one who usually did your chores for you, wasn’t he?”

  Joanna nodded.

  “What are you going to do now? Who are you going to get to help out?”

  Joanna glanced slyly at Butch. “I don’t know,” she said with a laugh. “I guess I’ll just have to get married.”

  Daisy looked at Butch and grinned. “Sounds like a good idea to me. We women have to stick together and make sure you men pull your weight.” With that, Daisy Maxwell marched off to the kitchen.

  That leisurely breakfast at Daisy’s was the beginning of something Sheriff Joanna Brady didn’t have too many of—a wonderfully carefree day. Together she and Butch and Jenny drove to Tucson and spent several hours in Guzman’s Horse Hotel, Saddlery, and Tack Shop on the far east end of Fort Lowell Road. Once Jenny’s all-new matching saddle, bridle, halter, and saddle blanket had been loaded into the back of the Subaru, they drove to Tucson Mall and spent some time mall-crawling. Then, after a late lunch at La Fuente, they headed back home.

  Jenny, in the backseat next to her saddle, was once again lost in her book. “A penny for your thoughts,” Butch said softly to Joanna, somewhere beyond Saint David.

  “What?” Joanna asked.

  “Where are you?” Butch asked. “We’ve driven sixty miles and you haven’t said a single word.”

  “I was thinking,” Joanna said.

  “About what?”

  “Cleaning house.”

  “Are you kidding?”

  “No. Your mother’s coming to town day after tomorrow and my cabinets haven’t been properly cleaned and neither have my closets.”

  “Don’t worry about it,” Butch offered consolingly. “My mother’s a terrible housekeeper.”

  “No, she’s not. You’re lying.”

  “If my mother didn’t have a cleaning lady—her name’s Irma, by the way, and she’s cleaned Mom and Dad’s house for years. If not for Irma, my folks would have been buried under clutter years ago. Believe me, you don’t have to clean house on account of my mother.”

  “Yes, I do,” Joanna insisted. “And tomorrow’s the only day I have to do it.”

  “So you’re saying tomorrow’s out as far as fun is concerned?”

  “Cleaning can be fun,” Joanna told him. “Bring rubber gloves. You can do the oven.”

  Butch shook his head. “I’m serious, Joanna. My mother isn’t going to look in your oven, and she isn’t going to white-glove your cabinets or closets, either. Now, as far as my cabinets and my closets are concerned, that’s another story entirely. But don’t worry, please. Your house is fine.”

  Sighing, Joanna returned to staring out the window and saying nothing. Right around Tucson, the paloverde and mesquite had begun leafing out. As they climbed up out of the valley, though, the blackened mesquite trees looked as though they were dead for all time.

  “In other words, you don’t believe me,” Butch said at last, reaching out and taking Joanna’s hand.

  “You’re right,” Joanna said. “I don’t. You’re just saying that because you want to make me feel better.”

  “No,” Butch returned with a wry grin. “It’s because I don’t like cleaning ovens.”

  It was almost four in the afternoon as they turned off High Lonesome Road onto the rutted track that led to Joanna’s house. Two hundred yards up the dirt road, they rounded a bend and found their way blocked by a white stretch limo, a Lincoln, that was high-centered on rocks in the middle of the steep wash. A man in a dark blue suit knelt on his hands and knees beside the vehicle and peered underneath it while behind him a woman in a pair of dangerously-high high heels tottered back and forth, pacing and gesticulating wildly.

  “What the hell!” Butch muttered, stopping just short of the wash.

  Joanna leaped out of the Subaru before it came to a full stop. “Who are you?” she asked. “What seems to be the problem?”

  The woman stopped pacing long enough to reply. “We’re stuck, that’s what the problem is. Seems to me that even an idiot could see that much. Who the hell are you?”

  The woman’s slender figure was clad in a black wool two-piece suit that screamed of haute couture. The thin-skinned, carefully made-up face looked as though it had been artificially augmented more than once, and her mane of hair had been highlighted within an inch of its life. She might have been quite attractive had it not been for the aura of prickly hostility that surrounded her like a dark thundercloud.

  “My name’s Joanna Brady. It so happens that this road leads to my house. What are you doing here?”

  The woman’s face hardened into a demeaning sneer. “So this is the incomparable Joanna Brady! Sad to say, you’re the very reason I’m here. I had to come get a look at you for myself. I wanted to see the woman who killed my father.”

  “Killed your father?” Joanna echoed. “What are you talking about?”

  “Oh, yes, by all means. Let’s play innocent, why don’t we. Clayton Rhodes was my father, and you had no business working him into his grave.”

  Behind Joanna one of the doors on the Subaru quietly opened and closed. Butch got out. With a curt nod in the direction of the two women, he walked past them and then dropped down to his knees, where he joined the limo driver in studying the situation under the Lincoln.

  “Mom,” Jenny called from the car. “What is it?”

  “It’s all right, Jenny,” Joanna called back. “Just wait in the car.” She turned back to the angry woman standing in front of her.

  Joanna Brady had been connected to law enforcement most of her life, first as the daughter of a sheriff and then as wife of a deputy long before she herself had been elected sheriff. She had been around grieving survivors often enough to know that they might well turn their anger on whoever was handy, including any unfortunate police officers who might be close at hand.

  Joanna took a calming, steadying breath. “You must be Reba Singleton,” she said soothingly. “I’m so sorry about your loss. If there’s anything my department or I can do—”

  “Y
ou can tell me the status of the investigation.”

  “Ms. Singleton, please understand, your father’s body was found late last night. I’ve been unavailable since early this morning, when the medical examiner was scheduled to do the autopsy—”

  “I’ve already checked with Dr. Winfield,” Reba Singleton interrupted. “He seems to be of the convenient opinion that my father died of natural causes.”

  “If that’s the case,” Joanna said, “I would assume no further investigation is necessary. I have the key to your father’s house. Once we get your car freed from here, you’re welcome to drive on up to your father’s house and check things out for yourself. Although maybe that’s not such a good idea. His road’s quite a bit worse than mine. You might get stuck again.”

  “Let me get this straight,” Reba said. “On the say-so of Dr. Winfield who, I’m told, also happens to be your stepfather, you’re declaring that there will be no further investigation into the circumstances surrounding my father’s death?”

  Joanna contained an impulse to lash back. “Dr. Winfield may be my stepfather, but he is also a perfectly competent medical examiner. If he says your father died of natural causes, you can rely on that being the case.”

  Reba Singleton raised one pencil-thin eyebrow. “Really,” she said. “And you can rely on my smelling a conflict of interest when somebody sticks one under my nose.” With that, she swung away from Joanna. “Washburn?”

  Slowly the limo driver got to his feet and dusted the sand from his pants and sleeves. “Yes, ma’am,” he said.

  “You do have a cell phone, don’t you?”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  “And do you have a signal?”

  “I don’t know,” he said, reaching for his pocket. “I can check.”

  “Why don’t you do that,” Reba told him. “And then, call Triple A and have someone come pull us out of this godforsaken place.”

  Joanna made one more effort to soothe the roiling waters. “Look,” she said, “I have a four-wheel-drive Blazer as well as a winch and come-along up at the house. I’m sure we could pull you out.”

  Reba swung back around. “Like hell!” she spat. “I’d rot in hell before I’d have you pull me out.”

  That was enough for Joanna. “Suit yourself,” she said. “Come on, Butch. Let’s go on around them and leave them be.”

  Butch came back, dusting off his pant legs as well. “Are you sure that’s a good idea?” he asked.

  By then Joanna was already back at the Subaru and opening the door. “I don’t see that we have any choice,” she told him. “From the sound of things, they’re not much interested in our help.”

  “Who’s that woman?” Jenny asked when Joanna was back in her seat. “She looks mad.”

  “She’s Clayton Rhodes’ daughter,” Joanna said. “And she is mad.”

  “How come she’s mad?” Jenny asked. “Because her father’s dead? I wasn’t mad when Daddy died. I was sad.”

  “Most people are,” Joanna said.

  Butch climbed in behind the wheel. Without a word, he started the engine. He maintained his tight-lipped silence until he had used the agile Subaru’s all-wheel drive to detour around the stricken limo. Only when he was back on the road to Joanna’s house did he finally speak. “That woman’s something else,” he declared.

  Joanna nodded. She was remembering the message Lisa Howard had passed along to her from the sergeant in Los Gatos. Now, having met Reba Joy Singleton, Joanna had a far better idea of what Sergeant Carlin had meant when he said, “Good luck.” He had meant that Reba Singleton was going to be a problem. Just how bad that problem would turn out to be was anybody’s guess.

  CHAPTER 5

  As usual, Sadie and Tigger came racing down the road to greet the car and follow it into the yard. While Jenny took the two gamboling dogs and darted inside to change into jeans and riding boots, Joanna and Butch busied themselves with unloading the car. “What’s her name again?” Butch said, nodding in the direction of the stalled Lincoln.

  “Reba Singleton,” Joanna replied.

  “And she really is Clayton Rhodes’ only daughter?”

  “That’s my understanding.”

  Butch shook his head. “It’s hard to accept someone like her being related to him. Clayton always struck me as being the salt of the earth. Reba, on the other hand, acts like a first-class bitch. What do you suppose she meant with that comment about you and George Winfield having a conflict of interest?”

  Away from Reba’s bristling anger, Joanna was attempting to practice letting go. She shrugged in response to Butch’s question. “Who cares what Reba Singleton says?” she returned. “After a sudden and unexpected death, survivors sometimes go nuts for a while and make all kinds of crazy accusations. They try to blame anybody and everybody for whatever it is that’s happened in order to keep from having to blame themselves.

  “I don’t think Reba and her father were especially close. In fact, I seem to remember some big family hassle about the time Molly Rhodes died. Molly was Reba’s mother. I don’t recall any of the quarrel’s gory details right offhand, but whatever it was was serious enough that I don’t think she and Clayton ever patched things up. Which means that right this minute Reba Singleton is walking around in a world of hurt. She’s packing a full load of guilt and regret, and she’s looking for someplace to dump it.”

  “Preferably on you.”

  Joanna smiled. “That’s all right,” she said. “I’m tough enough to take it.”

  Jenny came out of the house wearing her jeans, boots, and hat, and carrying the cordless phone. “It’s for you,” she said, handing the receiver to her mother.

  “Who is it?” Joanna asked.

  “Who else?” Jenny returned sourly. “Work.”

  While Jenny collected her new bridle and then went into the barn to retrieve Kiddo, Joanna turned her full attention to the phone. “Sheriff Brady here,” she said.

  “Hi, Joanna,” Chief Deputy Frank Montoya said. “Sorry to bother you on your day off, but it’s a probable homicide. And we have a standing order that you’re to be contacted—”

  “Did you say ‘probable’?” Joanna said, interrupting him.

  “Yes. The victim was shot and is currently being airlifted to Tucson. According to Lance Pakin, the first officer on the scene, she’s in real bad shape and isn’t likely to make it.”

  “Who is it?”

  “We have no idea at the moment. The man who found her was walking by and happened to see her lying in a ditch. He doesn’t look or sound like a suspect. In fact, if it wasn’t for him, she probably would be dead by now.”

  Jenny emerged from the barn leading her sorrel gelding. She led Kiddo over to where Butch stood holding the new saddle blanket at the ready. Joanna turned away from them and walked several steps toward the house as she spoke into the phone.

  “Where and when did this happen?”

  “Near the entrance to Cochise Stronghold,” Frank Montoya replied. “Not inside the monument itself, but between there and Pearce.”

  Cochise Stronghold, in the Dragoon Mountains, was an easily defended cliff-bound hideaway where the Apache chieftain Cochise had often retreated with his wandering band of followers. It was now a national monument. In the winter these days Cochise Stronghold was stocked with a new population of wanderers—an ever-changing assortment of RV-driving retirees. In the summer the demographics changed as retirees were replaced by campers with school-aged children who pulled into the camping area and stayed as long as the law allowed.

  “Since I was already in the neighborhood assisting a deputy on a runaway call,” Frank continued, “it only took a matter of minutes for Lance Pakin and me to get here as well. In fact, we got to the scene before the EMTs did. Lance and I applied as much first aid as we could, but I’m afraid the EMTs are right in saying that the victim isn’t going to make it.”

  “What happened to her?”

  “It looks as though she was shot in the lower
back. She was hit once at least and maybe more. She appears to have lost a good deal of blood and was hanging by a thread as they loaded her into the Med-evac helicopter.”

  Joanna sighed as she lost all hope of being able to stay home and spend a quiet evening with Butch and Jenny. “You mentioned something about a runaway? What’s that all about?” Joanna asked.

  “A fifteen-year-old Elfrida high school girl named Lucinda Ridder disappeared from her grandmother’s house sometime overnight last night, along with her pet hawk. When the grandmother got up this morning, both the girl and the bird were gone. The grandmother, Catherine Yates, made such a fuss with the emergency operators that I finally went over to her place on Middlemarch Road myself. According to Grandma, Lucy’s mother is due home today or tomorrow. Mrs. Yates is frantic that we find Lucy and have her back home by the time her mother arrives. I was at the Yates’ place—the grandmother’s place—trying to explain why we have a twenty-four-hour waiting period on missing-persons reports when the second call came in. I decided to come straight here and check just in case the gunshot victim and Lucy turned out to be one and the same.”