Rattlesnake Crossing : A Joanna Brady Mystery (9780061766183)

by Jance, Judith A.

  From that standpoint, Joanna had no doubt that she had given Jenny good advice. The last thing bullies like Rodney and Brian expected was for a helpless victim to turn on them and beat the crap out of them. Which Jenny was fully capable of doing. Andy had seen to that. He had taught his daughter both offensive and defensive moves, making sure she knew how to use them.

  Shaking her head, Joanna rolled off the couch. Carrying the phone with her, she made her way into the bedroom and stripped off her clothes. Only when she was standing there naked did she realize that her favorite set of summer attire—sports bra, tank top, shorts, and undies—was still in the dryer, where she had left it on her way to work early that morning.

  Eleanor Lathrop, Joanna’s mother, had done her utmost to inculcate Joanna with the same kinds of repression and overweening modesty in which she herself had been raised. In Eleanor’s scheme of things, walking naked through her own house—even a good mile from the nearest neighbor—would have been utterly unthinkable. But Eleanor was out of town this week, on a belated Alaskan honeymoon cruise with George Winfield, Cochise County’s new medical examiner and Eleanor’s new husband of some three months’ standing. No, if Joanna happened to walk around naked in her own home, who was going to give a damn? Certainly not the two dogs.

  With that Joanna flung open the bedroom door—closed out of habit—and strode through the living room and kitchen and on into the enclosed back porch that doubled as a laundry room entryway. There she pulled the clothes out of the dryer and put them on. Then she went back to the kitchen and switched on Jenny’s boom-box CD player. Patsy Cline’s distinctive voice came wafting through the speakers in her trademark song of falling to pieces, a roadmap for how not to move beyond the loss of a love.

  The CD was new, a birthday gift from Butch Dixon, a friend of Joanna’s from up near Phoenix. It was a never-before-released recording of a concert Patsy Cline had given shortly before the plane crash that had taken her life. Listening to Patsy sing from across all those years was like hearing from Andy as well. Patsy Cline was dead and yet, through the magic of her work, she lived on in much the same way Andy was still a part of High Lonesome Ranch and of Jenny’s and Joanna’s lives as well.

  Joanna had been taken aback by her strong emotional reaction to the music. She had been surprised. To her dismay, Butch Dixon hadn’t been surprised in the least.

  With the music still swirling around her, Joanna opened the refrigerator door and stared at the contents, wondering what to fix for dinner. It came to her all at once. Closing the refrigerator door and opening the cupboard instead, she plucked out the box of Malt-o-Meal. She had always wondered what it would be like to have hot cereal for dinner.

  That night, with no one there to criticize or complain—with no one to consider but herself—Joanna Brady found out. She cooked the cereal in the microwave, covered it with milk and brown sugar, and then ate it standing there by the counter. Eleanor would have been aghast.

  For the first time, a fragile thought slipped across Joanna’s consciousness—flitting briefly through her mind on gossamer butterfly wings—that maybe living alone wasn’t all bad.

  ONE

  “SO WHAT went on overnight?”

  Morning briefing time the next day found Sheriff Joanna Brady closeted in her office at the Cochise County Justice Complex with her two chief deputies, Dick Voland and Frank Montoya. For a change, the burly Voland and the slight and balding Montoya weren’t at each other’s throats.

  Montoya, deputy for administration and a former city marshal from Willcox, had been one of Joanna’s several opponents in her race for sheriff. Voland, chief for operations, had been chief deputy in the previous administration and had actively campaigned for another losing candidate. Joanna had confounded friends and critics alike by appointing the two of them to serve as her chief deputies. Almost a year into her administration, their volatile oil-and-water combination was working. The constant bickering didn’t always make for the most pleasant office environment, but Joanna valued the undiluted candor that resulted from the two men’s natural rivalry.

  “Let’s see,” Voland said, consulting his stack of reports. “Hot time up in the northwest sector last night. First there was a report of a naked female hitchhiker seen on Interstate 10 in Texas Canyon. Not surprisingly, she was long gone before a deputy managed to make it to the scene.”

  “Sounds to me like some long-haul trucker got lucky,” Montoya said.

  “That’s what I thought, too,” Voland agreed. “Then, overnight, somebody took out Alton Hosfield’s main pump and two head of cattle over on the Triple C.”

  CCC Ranch, referred to locally as either the Triple C or the Calloway Cattle Company, was an old-time cattle ranch that straddled the San Pedro River in northwestern Cochise County. The family-owned spread had historic roots that dated all the way back to Arizona’s territorial days. Alton Hosfield, the fifty-three-year-old current owner, was waging a lonely war against what he called “enviro-nuts” and the federal government to keep his family’s holdings all in one piece. Meanwhile, neighboring ranches had been split up into smaller parcels. Those breakups had caused a steady influx of what Alton Hosfield regarded as “Californicating riffraff.” Most of the unwelcome newcomers were people the rancher could barely tolerate.

  “Does that mean the Cascabel range war is heating up all over again?” Joanna asked.

  Voland nodded. “It could be all those rattlers are getting ready to have another go at it.”

  In high school Spanish classes Joanna had been taught that cascabel meant “little bell.” But in Latin American Spanish it meant “rattlesnake.” No doubt Voland wanted to impress Frank Montoya with his own knowledge of local Hispanic place-names.

  “Deputy Sandoval checked to see if maybe Hosfield’s cattle had broken into Martin Scorsby’s pecan orchard again,” Voland continued. “As far as he could tell, the fence was intact, and both cattle were found on the Triple C side of the property line.”

  Scorsby, Hosfield’s nearest neighbor, was a former California insurance executive who had planted a forty-acre pecan orchard on prime river bottom pastureland Alton Hosfield had coveted for his own. During an estate sale, he had attempted to buy the parcel from the previous owner’s widow. Years later, Hosfield still read collusion into the fact that Scorsby’s offer had been accepted by the former owner’s son—yet another Californian—in place of his. In addition, Joanna knew that on several previous occasions, when Triple C cattle had breached the fence and strayed into Scorsby’s pecan orchard, Hosfield had been less than prompt in retrieving them.

  “It’s not just that the cattle are dead,” Voland added ominously. “It’s how they got that way. This isn’t in the report, because I just talked to deputy Sandoval about it a few minutes ago. He managed to recover a bullet from one of the dead cattle. He said he’s never seen anything like it. The slug must be two inches long.”

  “Two inches!” Joanna repeated. “That sounds like it came out of a cannon rather than a rifle.”

  “Sniper rifle,” Frank Montoya said at once. “Probably one of those fifty-caliber jobs.”

  Both Joanna and Voland turned on the Chief Deputy for Administration. “You know something about these guns?” the sheriff asked.

  “A little,” Montoya said. “There’s a guy over in Pomerene named Clyde Philips. He’s a registered gun dealer who operates out of his back room or garage or some such thing. He called me a couple of months ago wanting to set up an appointment for his salesman to come give us the whole sniper-rifle dog and pony show. He said that since the bad guys might have access to these things, our Emergency Response Team should, too. He sent me some info. After I looked it over, I called him back and told him thanks, but no thanks. Maybe the crooks can afford to buy guns at twenty-five hundred to seven thousand bucks apiece, but at that price they’re way outside what the department can pay.”

  “What can fifty-calibers do?” Joanna asked.

  “Depends on who you ask.
After I talked to Philips and looked over the info he sent me, I got on the Internet and researched it a little further. Fifty-calibers were first used as Browning automatic rifles long ago. Remember those, Dick? Then the military in Vietnam tried a sniper version. The farthest-known sniper kill is one point four-two miles, give or take. Not bad for what the industry calls a ‘sporting rifle.’”

  “Sporting for whom?” Joanna asked.

  “Probably not for the cattle,” Voland replied.

  “We’ll be running forensic tests on the slug?”

  Voland nodded. “You bet.”

  “I don’t suppose there’s any way to tell who some of Clyde Philips’ other local customers might be,” Joanna suggested.

  Montoya shrugged. “You could ask him, I suppose, but I don’t know how much good that’ll do. Fifty-calibers may be lethal as all hell, but they don’t have to be registered. Anybody who isn’t a convicted felon is more than welcome to buy one, including, incidentally, those Branch Davidian folks from over in Waco. But just because felons can’t buy them doesn’t necessarily mean they don’t have them. All the crooks have to do is steal one from somebody who does.”

  “Great,” Joanna said. She glanced at her watch. “I guess I’ll take a run over to Pomerene later today and have a little chat with Clyde Philips. Anybody care to join me?”

  “Can’t,” Montoya said. “I’ve got a set of grievance hearings with jail personnel lined up for this afternoon.”

  “I’ve got meetings too,” Voland said, “although if you need me to go…”

  “Then I’ll make like the Little Red Hen and do it myself,” Joanna said firmly. “While I’m at it, I may stop by and visit both Hosfield and Scorsby. Maybe I can talk sense into one or both of them. The last thing we need is for all those wackos up around Cascabel to choose sides and start throwing stones.”

  “Or bullets,” Frank Montoya added.

  “Right,” Joanna said. “Now, what else is going on?”

  “Just the usual,” Voland replied. “An even dozen undocumented aliens picked up on foot over east of Douglas. A stolen pickup down in Bisbee Junction. Two domestics, one in Elfrida and another out in Palominas. A couple of DWIs between Huachuca City and Benson. In other words, no biggies.”

  Joanna turned to Montoya. “What’s happening on the administration side?”

  “Like I said before, those grievance hearings are set for this afternoon. I should have the September rotation and vacation schedules ready for you to go over by tomorrow morning, and next month’s jail menus by tomorrow afternoon. Also, there are two new provisioners, one from Tucson and one from Phoenix, interested in bidding on becoming our food supplier. I’m trying to set up meetings with their sales reps for later this week. You should probably be in on both of those.”

  Joanna nodded. “All right. Anything else?” Both deputies shook their heads. “Okay, then,” she told them. “Let’s go to work.”

  Voland and Montoya left Joanna’s office. Running one hand through her short red hair, Joanna contemplated the hard nut of uncompleted paperwork left over from the day before when her private phone rang. It was a line she had installed specifically so family members—Jenny in particular—could reach her without having to fight their way through the departmental switchboard.

  “Hello, Joanna,” Butch Dixon said as soon as she picked up the phone. “How are things with the Sheriff of Cochise?”

  Blushing, Joanna glanced toward her office door and was grateful Frank Montoya had closed it behind him when he went out. She didn’t like the idea that anyone in the outer office, including Kristin Marsten, her secretary, might be listening in on her private conversations.

  “Things are fine,” Joanna said. “But I’ve barely heard from you the last few days. What’s going on?”

  “I’ve been as busy as the proverbial one-armed paper hanger,” Butch replied. “Or maybe a one-legged flamenco dancer. What about you?”

  Joanna recognized that his joking response was meant to gloss over the lack of real information in his answer, and that tweaked her. On the one hand, she couldn’t help wondering if his being so busy had something to do with some other woman. On the other hand, since she and Butch had no kind of understanding, Joanna realized she had no right to question him, and no right to be jealous, either.

  “Just the usual,” she said, matching the vagueness in his answer with her own.

  “The usual murder and mayhem, you mean?” he asked. She could almost see the teasing grin behind his question.

  “More meetings and paperwork than murder,” she admitted with a laugh.

  That was one of the things that had dismayed her about being sheriff. Her officers often balked and complained at the amount of paperwork required of them. Joanna found that she certainly had more than her own fair share of it, but what seemed to chew up and squander most of her time, what she resented most, was the never-ending round of meetings. She despised the necessity of attending one mindless confab after another—endless, droning conferences where little happened and even less was decided.

  “What are you doing tonight?” Butch asked.

  “Tonight? Nothing, but…”

  “How about dinner?”

  “Where?” Joanna asked, trying not to sound too eager. Several times in the past few months, she and Butch had split the two hundred miles between them by meeting in Tucson for lunch or dinner, but she wasn’t sure she wanted to make that trip on a weeknight.

  “Eight o’clock in the morning comes mighty early,” she said.

  Butch laughed. “Don’t worry,” he returned. “I promise I won’t keep you out late. I’ll pick you up at the ranch at seven. I’ve got something I want to show you. See you then.”

  “Wait a minute,” Joanna interrupted before he could hang up. “What kind of dinner are we talking about? How should I dress?”

  “Casual,” Butch said. “Definitely casual.”

  “This doesn’t include going someplace on your motorcycle, does it?” she asked warily. Butch Dixon was inordinately proud of his Goldwing, but riding motorcycles was something Joanna Brady didn’t do. And she didn’t intend to start.

  “No,” Butch answered. “We won’t be winging it. I’ll have my truck. See you then.”

  Just as Joanna put down the phone, her office door opened and Kristin marched up to her desk carrying that morning’s stack of mail, which landed on top of the previous day’s leftovers. Shaking her head, Joanna dived into it. She wondered if she’d ever achieve the kind of organizational skill where she handled paperwork only once without having to sort it into stacks and piles first.

  Kristin stood for a moment watching Joanna work, then she turned to go. “Do me a favor if you would,” Joanna called after her. “Look up the number for Clyde Philips over in Pomerene. Call him and ask if I can stop by to see him for a little while early this afternoon, say around two o’clock. And then double-check with Marianne Maculyea and see if we’re still on for lunch.”

  The Reverend Marianne Maculyea, pastor of Canyon United Methodist Church, was not only Joanna’s minister, she was also her best friend. The two had known each other from junior high on, and once a week or so, they met for a girl-talk lunch at which they could let down their hair. In Bisbee, Arizona, the two friends were well known for their nontraditional jobs. As women doing “men’s” work, both were often targets of small-town gossip, jealousy, and criticism. Set apart from most of the other women in the community, they used their weekly get-togethers as sounding boards and pressure valves. Huddled in the privacy of one of Daisy Maxwell’s booths, they could discuss issues neither could mention to anyone else.

  While Kristin went to make the calls, Joanna settled in to answer the correspondence. Over the months, Kristin had finally accepted the fact that Joanna preferred to type her own letters on her own computer, rather than going through what she regarded as the cumbersome process of dictating them and having them typed. Dictation might have been fine for a hunt-and-peck typist like Sh
eriff Walter V. McFadden. For Joanna, however—a former insurance-office manager whose personal typing speed was about one hundred and twenty words a minute—dictation simply didn’t make any sense. Whenever possible, the sheriff typed her own correspondence.

  One after another, Joanna ripped through the letters, keying one letter in, printing it, and signing it before going on to the next. All Kristin would have to do when they landed on her desk was type the envelopes, stuff the letters inside, and run the stuffed envelopes through the postage meter.

  An hour and a half passed with blinding speed. Later, on her way to the coffeepot in the outside office, Joanna stopped at Kristin’s desk. “Any luck with Clyde Philips?” she asked.

  Kristin shook her head. “I can keep trying, but so far there’s no answer at his place.”

  “What about Marianne?”

  “She says it’s Cornish Pasties Monday at Daisy’s, so she wouldn’t miss it for the world.”

  By eleven-thirty, Joanna was settled into one of the worn Naugahyde booths in Daisy’s Cafe. Arriving ahead of Marianne, Joanna sat and waited, stirring her iced tea and replaying her conversation with Butch Dixon. There was a part of her—the old, loyal to Andy part—that enjoyed his company immensely but still wanted to hold the man himself at arm’s length. Then there was the other part of her—the new Joanna—who didn’t want to run the risk of losing Butch to someone else.

  That was one of the reasons she was looking forward to this particular lunch with Marianne. She wanted to have the opportunity to discuss the Butch Dixon dilemma. Marianne Maculyea was a skilled minister and counselor as well as a trusted friend. Joanna hoped Marianne would help sort through some of her jumbled emotions and make sense of what she was feeling.