by J. A. Jance
“Are you going to go for a search warrant?”
“With what?”
“Good question,” Frank said.
Just then a call came in over the radio. “What’s up, Larry?” Joanna asked.
“Detective Carbajal called in a few minutes ago. He wants you back up at the entrance to Cochise Stronghold pronto. He says he’s found something but he isn’t sure what.”
Frank flipped on both lights and siren. As he floorboarded the gas pedal, the rough surface of the road seemed to smooth out. Joanna knew, however, that that was a dangerous illusion. The ride was smooth only because the tires were spending so little time in contact with the roadway. After several nerve-racking minutes, Joanna was more than slightly relieved when they stopped on the outskirts of a group of emergency vehicles parked around the carved redwood forest service sign that marked the entrance to Cochise Stronghold. The sign was illuminated by Jaime Carbajal’s trouble light. The detective himself, on hands and knees, appeared to be crawling through a scattered field of rocks.
“What’s up, Detective Carbajal?” Joanna asked.
Jaime rose to meet her. “After what Deputy Pakin told us, I decided to come up here and take a look around. Over there are signs of what appears to be a serious struggle, including what looks to me like blood spatter.” He pointed to a spot just to the right of the sign where a ten-foot-square area had been marked off with a border of yellow tape. “We’ll be able to tell more tomorrow in the daylight. In the meantime, take a look at this.”
He held up a bag that contained what looked like a small plastic soup bowl. Even through the glassine bag, Joanna could see that the outside of the once white bowl was yellowed with age and covered with a coating of grime.
“What’s this?” Joanna asked. “The leavings from somebody’s long-ago picnic?”
“I don’t think so,” Jaime replied. “Remember, Deputy Pakin’s witness said the woman he saw was messing around with the rocks at the base of the sign, so I decided to come check. The cover was loose inside the hole, but the bowl itself was embedded in the dirt at the bottom of the hole.”
Joanna took the bag and examined the bowl more closely. On the bottom, accentuated by clinging dirt, was a still recognizable Tupperware trademark.
“I tried selling Tupperware years ago, when Andy and I were first married,” she told her astonished deputies. “The stuff’s supposed to be airtight, waterproof, and capable of lasting forever. This looks as though it’s been here for a long time. What’s in it?”
“Nothing now,” Jaime replied. “It was empty when I found it, but I’ll bet it wasn’t empty when the woman in the white car came looking for it.”
Joanna walked over to the sign and the pile of disturbed rocks beneath it. With the help of a flashlight, she peered down in among them to where the outline of the bowl was still clearly visible in the soft, fine, insect-sifted dirt under the rocks.
“Assuming Sandra Ridder is the one who hid it, that would mean the bowl has been here for eight years at least,” Joanna stated. “That’s how long she’s been in prison. What could be so valuable that, after all this time, she would risk stealing a vehicle her first night out of the slammer in order to come get it?”
“Whatever it was, it wasn’t very big,” Frank offered.
Joanna studied the container. “And it wasn’t something Sandra wanted her attorney to know about, since she evidently stole Melanie Goodson’s car to come get it. But shouldn’t we ascertain once and for all that the person Lance Pakin’s witness saw here really was Sandra Ridder? What’s his name again, and is he still camped out up there?”
Jaime consulted his notes. “Mr. Pete Naujokas of Estes Park, Colorado,” he said. “And yes, as far as I know, he’s still up there. Third RV spot on the right inside the campground. But how can he possibly identify her?”
Frank held up a piece of paper. “The night clerk faxed me a copy of Sandra Ridder’s mug shot.”
Jaime laughed. “Frank Montoya’s trusty mobile office strikes again.”
Frank’s technological additions to his Crown Victoria had been the topic of much good-natured ribbing both inside and outside the department. But at times like these, it was easy for Frank to rib back.
“It’s only a little after nine,” Joanna told her officers. “Even the most dedicated RVer won’t have hit the sack this early. Frank and I will go show Pete Naujokas the picture and see what he says. That way we’ll know for sure whether or not Sandra Ridder is the woman who was digging in the rocks.”
Leaving Jaime Carbajal to continue his investigation of this new part of the crime scene, Joanna and Frank headed for the campground. The gravel road, little more than a trail in spots, was rough and winding enough to prove something of a challenge to Frank’s Civvie. Once they arrived at the campground and saw some of the big RV rigs parked there, Joanna wondered aloud how they had made it up the road.
Frank looked at her and grinned. “Most of the guys who drive these are retired,” he told her. “They don’t care how long it takes to get from one camping spot to another. They’re not on a set schedule.”
Outside the Naujokases’ RV, four people in folding camp chairs were seated around a blazing fire. “Mr. Naujokas?” Joanna asked, exhibiting her ID.
“That’s me.” A smiling, slightly built man stepped out of the firelight. “Most people call me Pete,” he said.
“I’m Sheriff Joanna Brady, and this is Frank Montoya, my chief deputy. I was wondering if you’d mind taking a look at a picture we have here and telling us whether or not it’s the woman you saw down by the park entrance last night.”
Frank passed him the faxed mug shot, and Pete Naujokas walked it over to the fire in order to take a closer look. “That’s her,” he said, coming back to return the paper to Frank. “Who is she-or rather, who was she? Some kind of criminal?”
“Her name is Sandra Ridder. She went to prison for manslaughter eight years ago, after the shooting death of her husband. Her mother lives a few miles away from here off Middlemarch Road.”
“But what was she doing here?” Pete asked. “At the campground?”
“We think she came looking for something, maybe something that had been hidden for years.”
“Since before she went to prison?”
“That’s right,” Joanna told him. “We found an empty container, but there was no sign of what had been in it.”
Pete shook his head. “Most likely not a missing ring,” he said. “The whole thing gives me the willies.” He shivered. “I guess I’m lucky she didn’t accept my offer of help. No telling what might have happened then. When you hang around campgrounds like this, you meet up with a lot of really nice people. It lulls you into believing that everyone’s pretty much the same. Know what I mean?”
Joanna nodded.
“I guess I’ll be more careful after this,” he added with a rueful grin. “Being a good Samaritan is supposed to be a good thing. On the other hand, being a dead good Samaritan is downright stupid.”
“After you left the woman by the sign and came on up to the campground, did you hear anything?”
“You mean like a gunshot?” Pete Naujokas asked. “No, I didn’t. I’ve asked around. As far as I can tell, nobody else did, either.”
Frank and Joanna left a few minutes later. After a brief stop to check in with Jaime Carbajal, they continued back to Joanna’s Blazer.
“That is weird,” Frank mused along the way.
“What is?”
“If Sandra’s mother lived just a few miles away, why not hide whatever it was on her mother’s property instead of someplace as public as the entrance to a national monument?”
“Because she didn’t want whatever it was she was hiding to be connected to her mother or to her,” Joanna said. “A weapon, maybe. What about the gun that was used to kill Tom Ridder? Was that ever recovered?”
“I don’t know,” Frank replied. “I can probably find out tomorrow. It would have to be damned small
to fit inside that bowl.”
“So we’re looking for something that’s small and valuable,” Joanna added. “What about you, Frank? Supposing your house was on fire or about to be washed away in a flood, and all you could rescue was whatever would fit in a bowl that size. Given that set of circumstances, what would you have put in there?”
“My grandfather’s Purple Heart,” Frank replied with hardly a moment’s hesitation. “My birth certificate, a couple of photos, and my wallet. That way I’d have some ID and my credit cards when it came time to start over. What about you?”
Joanna nodded. “I’d probably do pretty much the same thing, only instead of a Purple Heart, I’d save my father’s sheriff’s badge.” As a teenager, Joanna had been given D. H. Lathrop’s sheriff’s badge after her father’s funeral. It had been one of her most treasured mementos before she was elected sheriff. Now it was even more so.
By then Frank had stopped the Crown Victoria next to Joanna’s Blazer. “See you Monday,” he said as Joanna climbed out of the Civvie. “If not sooner.”
“Let’s hope not sooner,” she returned. “I’d like to have one whole day to myself this weekend.”
Driving back across the Sulphur Springs Valley toward home, Joanna kept mulling the same question. What would have been in a bowl that small? And why Tupperware? The one thing Joanna remembered from her abortive and relatively unhappy career as a Tupperware representative was that those sturdy plastic containers-especially the round ones-were supposed to be both air- and watertight. Driving through the night, Joanna smiled at a recollection of Andy teasing her back then, telling her that if nuclear warfare ever broke out, that, after hundreds of years, the only artifacts left to testify to human existence in the late twentieth century would be warehouses chock-full of still usable Tupperware and still edible Twinkies.
Part of what had made selling Tupperware difficult for Joanna had to do with the fact that many people in town were broke. Once the mines closed, most of Bisbee’s economic base disappeared. For a long time the expected boom in out-of-state visitors had simply bypassed the little town. In those cash-strapped days, Tupperware had been hard to come by. You had to be invited to a party, go and play dumb games, and then fork over hard-earned cash in order to cart home a set of four of those stupid bowls. And, for Joanna, that had been the real difficulty in selling the stuff-she didn’t actually believe in it. Her mother did. Eleanor claimed to adore the stuff. Joanna remained firmly in the camp of margarine containers.
Joanna couldn’t remember her mother ever storing a dishful of leftovers without first using the distinctive little tab to raise the lid and let out excess air. And in Eleanor’s fastidiously run household, no Tupperware-stored leftovers were ever allowed to spoil or go to waste.
The same thing couldn’t be said of Joanna Brady’s more casually managed existence. Containers of food were sometimes inadvertently shoved to the back of a lower shelf in her refrigerator where the contents might well mutate into a new life form before finally being rediscovered. With margarine tubs or cottage-cheese or sour-cream containers, there was never any question of what to do then-throw them out, leftovers and all. But Tupperware was different and came with an entirely different set of rules. No matter how disgusting what had been left to molder inside, those had to be cleaned out and rehabilitated with bleach, detergent, and elbow grease. To do anything less seemed un-American somehow.
Taking Joanna’s own deep-seated prejudices and experience into account, that meant Sandra Ridder hadn’t intended to lose her Tupperware bowl-ever. Not the first time when she hid it, and not the second time when she had gone back to retrieve it. And whatever she had stowed in the bowl all those years earlier, she had meant it to be protected from the elements.
By the time Joanna neared High Lonesome Ranch, she had left off worrying about Sandra Ridder’s Tupperware and was dealing with concerns much closer to home. She wondered what had happened that evening in her absence. It was one thing to be a hands-on sheriff, but how about being a hands-on mother? What had her presence contributed to the investigation into Sandra Ridder’s death, and how much had she missed by being away from the High Lonesome and Jenny and Butch? The fact that she wasn’t alone-the fact that Joanna Brady was dealing with the daily ball-juggling contest of every other working mother in America-didn’t make her feel any better about it.
Halfway up the winding road that led to the house, Joanna had to slow to negotiate the wash. A tow truck had removed Reba Singleton’s stranded limo, but in the process the well-worn track across the dry creek bed had been obliterated. Boulders that hadn’t been there before had been churned to the surface, while wheel-swallowing pits had been left behind in the sand. Using the Blazer’s four-wheel drive to negotiate this new obstacle path was the only thing that kept Joanna herself from becoming stuck in her own driveway. As a result, Joanna wasn’t thinking fond thoughts about tow-truck drivers, limo drivers, or Reba Rhodes Singleton by the time she finally pulled into her own yard.
She was relieved to see Butch’s Subaru was still parked near the gate. Knowing Jenny had been looked after in the meantime was the only thing that made being gone so long possible or bearable.
The lights were on in the living room as she parked the Blazer, but as soon as she opened the car door, the back porch light came on and Sadie and Tigger came tumbling out of the house. Behind the two dogs walked Butch, in stocking feet, gingerly picking his way across the yard.
“You shouldn’t be out here without shoes,” she scolded. “Don’t you know there are sandburs in the yard?”
“I do now,” he said, hopping gingerly on one foot. “How are things?”
“It’s late, and I’m tired,” she told him. “How are things with you?”
Butch wrapped one arm around her shoulders and gently pulled her against his chest. “We had some company,” he said, leading her toward the house.
“Not your parents!” Joanna exclaimed. “Don’t tell me they turned up early.”
“Not my parents.”
“Who then?”
Butch waited until they were all the way inside the house before he answered. “Dick Voland,” he said.
Joanna blinked. Dick Voland had been a long-term deputy with the Cochise County Sheriff’s Department. He had served as chief deputy in the administration of Joanna’s predecessor, Walter V. McFadden, and had continued in that capacity, sharing responsibility with Frank Montoya, once Joanna was elected. She had been able to deal with the man in the beginning, when he was simply gruff and overbearing. The situation had become much more complicated when Joanna discovered that he had developed a serious middle-aged crush on her. Voland had mostly pined in silence, but Joanna’s betrothal to Butch had pushed him over the edge. The morning after her engagement was made public, Voland had turned up on High Lonesome Ranch, drunk and belligerent. He had handed in his resignation on the spot. Under the circumstances, Joanna had been only too happy to accept it.
Since then, Joanna had seen little of the man. She had heard that he was in the process of hanging out his shingle as a private investigator. She had also heard that he and Marliss Shackleford were now an item. Marliss, a columnist for a local rag called The Bisbee Bee, wasn’t one of Joanna’s favorite people either. When she heard Marliss and Dick were dating, Joanna figured that the two of them deserved each other.
“Dick wasn’t drunk, was he?” Joanna asked carefully.
At six-four, Voland was a massive bear of a man who outweighed Butch by a good fifty pounds. “Not that I could tell.”
“What did he want?”
“He didn’t say. I offered to take a message, but he said he needed to talk to you. He wanted you to call as soon as you got home tonight. I left the number there on the table.”
Joanna felt a sudden fury wash through her. “I know his number,” she stormed. “And if it was that damned important, he could have called me on my cell phone. He knows my numbers, too. I sure as hell haven’t changed them! He just wanted t
o come by, hassle me, and nose around in my business.”
“Come on, Joey,” Butch said, using the private nickname he had bestowed on her. “Don’t be upset. He didn’t cause any trouble, and he didn’t say anything out of line.”
“He should have told you what he wanted,” Joanna insisted. “That was rude, treating you as if you’re incapable of passing along a simple message.”
Butch laughed aloud at that. “You don’t understand very much about men, do you?”
Joanna frowned. “What’s so funny? And what do you mean by that?”
“I mean Dick Voland and I were in a contest, and I won. Dick’s the big loser here. I’ve got you, and he doesn’t. Believe me, Dick Voland isn’t ever going to sit down and have a long, heart-to-heart discussion with me. He hates my guts, and he’s going to do his best to pretend I don’t exist.”
“What about you?” Joanna asked.
“I feel sorry for him, but not that sorry.”
“Regardless,” Joanna said. “It’s late, and I’m not calling him back tonight. Whatever the big secret is, it’s going to have to wait until morning.”
“Good enough,” Butch said. “Now, did you have any dinner?”
“No,” Joanna answered, noticing for the first time that she was hungry.
“After that big, late lunch, all Jenny and I had were a couple of scrambled eggs and toast. Would you like me to make you some?”
“Please.”
While Butch scrambled eggs, Joanna undressed and locked her weapons away. Then, wearing her nightgown and robe, she returned to the kitchen to make toast and pour a glass of milk while she told Butch about the situation with Catherine Yates, her dead daughter, Sandra, and her missing granddaughter, Lucy.
“Not a very happy story,” Joanna concluded. “Here I should have been spending the weekend enjoying Jenny’s birthday celebration with you and getting ready for our wedding. Instead, I’m busy worrying about who’s killing whom and why.”
“Which reminds me,” Butch said, getting up to clear the table. “George called, too. Just a little while ago. He said it was something to do with Clayton Rhodes, but he also said that he and your mother were going to bed as soon as the news was over. He said he’d talk to you about it in the morning.”