by J. A. Jance
“What’s the scoop on Dora Matthews? My mother just told me that she’s still out at the ranch.”
“You know who she is, don’t you?” Ernie asked.
“Eva Lou told me last night. Her mother used to be Sally Pommer. I know of her, but not all that much. She was a couple of years ahead of me in school. You still haven’t found her?”
“That’s right. We sent a deputy up to the house last night and again this morning, but there’s still no sign of her.”
“That’s not so surprising,” Joanna said. “If Sally Matthews thought Dora would be out camping the whole weekend, maybe she decided to do something on her own—go on a trip up to Tucson or Phoenix, for example. Single mothers are allowed a little time to themselves on occasion.”
“That may well be,” Ernie agreed, “but something Dora told Frank last night has been weighing on my mind. Let me ask you this. You and Butch don’t go off and leave Jenny by herself, do you?”
“No. Of course not. Why?”
“From the way Dora talked, she expected someone to just drop her off at home whether or not we could locate her mother. It sounds like she’s been left alone a lot. She claimed it was no big deal, and maybe it isn’t. All the same, Frank says we should keep trying until we reach Sally. In the meantime, as long as Jim Bob and Eva Lou don’t mind looking after Dora, we’re planning on leaving her there. Have you spoken to either one of them about it?”
“Not yet, but I will,” Joanna assured him. “Now, is there anything else?”
“Not that I can think of.”
“Good enough, Ernie,” she answered. “I’d say you guys have things pretty well under control. Keep me posted.”
After ending the call and putting the phone down, she glanced in Butch’s direction. He was studying her from across the Crown Victoria’s broad front seat. “I guess you’re working today,” he said glumly.
“It won’t take long,” she assured him. “Ernie thinks he’s got a line on identifying the homicide victim from Apache Pass. He wants me to try locating her next of kin. With that phone number and address, it shouldn’t take any time at all.”
“What about going to Bisbee?” he asked.
With a sigh, Joanna picked her phone back up and punched in the memory-dial number for High Lonesome Ranch. Jenny answered after only one ring. “Hello, Mom,” she said.
“How are things this morning?” Joanna asked, forcing herself to sound cheerful.
“Okay.”
“I hear you talked to Grandma Lathrop,” Joanna said.
“I didn’t want to, but Grandma Brady made me,” Jenny replied “She said Grandma Lathrop needed to hear it from me instead of from someone else.”
“That seems fair,” Joanna said without mentioning that she was relieved that she herself had been spared being the bearer of the bad news. “What did she say?”
“You know. That I was a disappointment to her. That people judge me by the kind of company I keep. All that stuff. Why does Grandma Lathrop have to be that way, Mom?” Jenny asked. “Why does she have to make me feel like I can’t do anything right?”
Good question, Joanna thought. She makes me feel the same way. She resisted the temptation to ask how Jenny really was. Jenny sounded fine. If she had achieved some kind of emotional even keel, Joanna was reluctant to make any mention of the body the girls had discovered in Apache Pass. Instead, she contented herself with asking about Dora.
“She’s fine, too,” Jenny said. “Grandma has her helping with the dishes right now. Do you want to talk to her?”
“No,” Joanna replied. “If you don’t mind, put Grandma on the phone.”
As Eva Lou came on the line, Joanna could almost sec her drying her hands on her ever-present apron. “How are things?” Joanna asked.
“We’re all doing just fine,” Eva Lou reported briskly. “I told that nice Frank Montoya that Dora is welcome to stay as long as she needs to. I’m sure her mother will turn up later on today. When she does, we’ll take Dora home where she belongs. In the meantime, I have Dora and Jenny doing some little chores around here—vacuuming, dusting, and so forth. As a penance, if you will. Nothing like using a little elbow grease to help you contemplate your sins.”
“I was thinking about dropping Butch off in Phoenix and then coming home ...”
“Don’t you do anything of the kind,” Eva Lou said. “Isn’t Butch supposed to be in a wedding or something tonight?”
“Yes, tonight and tomorrow, but I thought—”
“Think nothing,” Eva Lou declared. “If you have to come home because of something related to work, that’s fine, but don’t do it because of the girls. Jim Bob and I are more than happy to look after them. It isn’t as though the two of us don’t have some experience in dealing with kids,” she added. “You maybe didn’t know Andy back when he was twelve and thirteen, but I can tell you he was a handful at that age—a handful, but still not smart enough to put much over on us, either. You just go to your wedding, have fun, and don’t worry.”
“All right,” Joanna said. “I’ll think about it.”
“Good. Do you want to talk to Jenny again?”
“No,” Joanna said. “That’s probably not necessary.”
She put down the phone and was amazed to realize they were almost in Flagstaff.
“Well?” Butch asked.
“Typical,” Joanna said. “My own mother gives me hell. Eva Lou tells me everything is fine and not to worry.”
“Should I call now and tell them that you’ll probably miss the rehearsal dinner?”
Bolstered by her back-to-back conversations with Ernie and High Lonesome Ranch, Joanna Brady shook her head. “You’ll do no such thing,” she said. “I’ve made up my mind. Things sound like they’re under control at home. There’s no need for me to go racing back there. I’ll do the next-of-kin interview and be back in plenty of time for the rehearsal dinner.”
“Good enough,” Butch replied, with a dubious shake of his head. “If you say so. Are you going to call Eleanor and let her know?”
Joanna shook her head. “I think I’ll let sleeping dogs lie,” she said.
They stopped for gas in Flagstaff. After leaving Flag, Butch leaned over against the passenger-side door and fell sound asleep. For a change, the cell phone remained blissfully silent, leaving Joanna some time alone to mull over her thoughts.
If Jenny was suffering any ill effects from her experience on Friday night, it certainly wasn’t apparent in anything she had said just then on the phone. So, even though Joanna was relieved on that score, she still wondered about how much having a mother who was a sheriff had contributed to Jenny’s walk on the wild side. That immediately brought Joanna back to the discussion she and Butch had been having about whether or not Joanna should run for reelection.
Three years earlier, when she had agreed to stand for election the first time, it had been in the stunned and awful aftermath of Andy’s death. A Cochise County deputy at the time as well as a candidate for sheriff in his own right, Andrew Roy Brady had been murdered by a drug dealer’s hit man. Refusing to accept the officially proffered theory that Andy had taken his on life, Joanna had forged ahead with an investigation of her own that had eventually revealed a network of corruption in the previous sheriff’s administration.
Joanna’s key role in bringing that corruption to light had eventually resulted in her being encouraged to run for office in Andy’s stead. When she won, Joanna had taken her election to mean that the voters of Cochise County had given her a mandate to go into the sheriff’s department and clean house. Which was exactly what she had done. But that departmental housecleaning had come at a sleep personal price, one that had been paid by Juanita and by Jenny and now, to a smaller extent, was being paid by Butch Dixon as well.
At the moment Butch was fine about it, but Joanna wondered how he would feel months from now if she was still doing the job of sheriff and running for reelection at the same time. Would their marriage withstand
that kind of pressure? What if Butch decided he wanted a family of his own? He loved Jenny, and he was good with her, and he had said that as far as the two of them having children together went, he was content to abide by Joanna’s wishes. Maybe that was fine for the short term, but what if he changed his mind later on?
Joanna’s thoughts strayed once again back to what Jenny had said the previous night. She claimed she had taken the cigarette by accident, that she had done it without really intending to. Joanna was struck by the similarity between Jenny’s misadventure with Dora’s cigarette and the way in which Joanna herself had become sheriff. It had happened almost by accident. But now she was up against decision time—the same place Jenny would be if ever she was offered another cigarette. Joanna was at the point where, as Big Hank Lathrop would have said, it was time to fish or cut bait.
Which meant it was time to ask herself what she, Joanna Brady, really wanted. If she wasn’t sheriff, what would she do instead? She was an indifferent cook and had never been much of a house-keeper. In that regard, Butch made a far better stay-at-home spouse than she did. Did she want to go back to managing an insurance agency for Milo Davis? No. That no longer spoke to her, no longer challenged her the way it once had. Joanna had to admit that she liked being sheriff; liked working the good-guy side of the bad-guy street. She liked the challenge of managing people and she felt that she was doing a good job of it. But the election was a stumbling block. She might feel she was doing a good job, but What about the voters? Did they feel the sane way? And what if she stood lot reelection and lost? What then?
Eventually the Civvie—as she preferred to call the Crown Victoria—emerged from the cool pine forests and dropped off the Mogollon Rim into a parched desert landscape where the in dash digital display reported a temperature of 118 degrees.
There’s too much on my plate for me to even think about this right now, Joanna told herself. When the time’s right, I guess I’ll know.
CHAPTER FIVE
A little after two that afternoon, Joanna drove into the shaded porte cochere of the new Conquistador Hotel in downtown Peoria. A doorman in white shirt and tie approached the driver’s door and opened it, letting Joanna out of air-conditioned comfort into a stifling and breath-robbing heat even though overhead mist ejectors were futilely trying to provide evaporative cooling. Looking at the doorman, Joanna was grateful that he was the one wearing a tie while she was dressed in the relative comfort of a T-shirt and shorts.
“Checking in today?” the doorman asked.
Joanna nodded. As she and Butch stepped out of the car, Butch looked around and whistled in amazement. It had taken less than a year for a fully landscaped, twelve-story resort hotel to sprout on the property that had once contained Butch’s Roundhouse Bar and Grill, along with any number of other small morn-and-pop-style businesses. The gentrification process had left behind no trace of the old working-class neighborhood’s funk or charm.
“There goes the neighborhood,” Butch said with a grin. “It’s so upscale now, I’m not sure they’ll let us in.”
“Will you need help with your luggage?” the doorman asked. Joanna nodded. “And we have valet parking,” he added. “Just leave your keys in the car.”
He handed Joanna a ticket. Once a bellman had loaded their luggage onto a cart, a valet attendant started to drive the Crown Victoria away. Joanna stopped him.
“I’ll just be a couple of minutes,” she said. “I have an errand to run. If you don’t mind leaving the car here ...”
“Sure,” he replied, stepping back out. “But we’ll have to keep the keys.”
Butch glanced at his watch. “It’s two now. The dinner starts at six. Why don’t you leave from here? I can handle getting us checked in. That way you’ll be finished that much sooner.”
Joanna looked down at the wrinkled shorts and T-shirt that had already done five hard hours in the car. “I have to change,” she told him. “I can’t very well do a next-of-kin notification dressed like this.”
Butch nodded. “You’re right about that,” he said. “But I’m betting you won’t make it back in time for dinner.”
“I will, too,” Joanna declared.
While Butch followed the luggage inside, Joanna used her cell phone to contact the department in Bisbee where, despite its being Saturday, Frank Montoya was nonetheless hard at work. “How are things?” she asked.
“Doc Winfield completed the Jane Doe autopsy. According to him, the woman was beaten to a pulp, tortured, raped, and had her head bashed in—not necessarily in that order.”
Joanna cringed at the litany of violence. “Sounds like the carjacker is out of the picture.”
“I’d have to agree there,” Frank said. “‘This perp is a whole other breed of cat. Or, if he is the carjacker, the rules of engagement just changed for the worse.”
“Even if the Apache Pass murder isn’t connected to the carjackings, both incidents have happened at almost the same time, and they pose a serious threat to public safety. Can we schedule extra patrols along I-10?” Joanna asked.
“I don’t know,” Frank said. “Our resources are already stretched pretty thin.”
“What about moving units away from the southern sector and putting them up north?”
“Considering the situation along the border, is that wise?” Frank asked.
Joanna knew what he meant. For months now, Cochise County’s eighty miles of international border had been deluged with an unprecedented flood of illegal immigrants. Increased INS enforcement in Texas and California had led to an influx of illegals throughout Joanna’s jurisdiction. Even with additional help from the U.S. Border Patrol and INS, things along the border were still out of control. All the extra enforcement made her county resemble an armed camp.
“What about the guys who were picked up driving the Saturn?”
“UDAs again. The guy driving it was an illegal with no license and no insurance. He may have known the vehicle was stolen, but I doubt it. Lots of fingerprints, but so far, Casey Ledford’s found nothing useful.”
“Tell you what, Frank,” she said. “Let’s beef up patrols in the northern sector of the county and along our portion of I-10. Since the feds have brought all those extra Border Patrol agents, we’ll let theist take up some of our slack for a change. God knows we’ve been doing plenty of their work.”
Moments later, Frank was giving Joanna computer-generated driving directions that would take her from the Conquistador Hotel in Peoria to Southeast Encanto Drive near downtown Phoenix. By the time she finished up with her phone call, Butch was coming back across the driveway carrying a pair of room keys, one of which he handed to her.
“We’re in room twelve fourteen,” he said. Looking at her closely, he frowned. “You’re upset. What’s wrong?”
“The autopsy’s in on the Apache Pass victim,” Joanna said. “It’s pretty bad.”
“Does that mean you want to head home and go to work on it?” Butch asked. “If that’s the case, I can rent a car to do what I need to do here.”
“No,” Joanna assured him. “As they told us in one of the sessions up in Page, we sheriffs need to learn to delegate. From what Frank and Ernie have both told me, I think they have things under control. Besides, I have a part of the job that needs doing right here in Phoenix, remember?”
Up in the room, Joanna changed into a skirt, blouse, and lightweight microfiber jacket. At home in Bisbee and in order to save wear and tear on her own newly recreated wardrobe, she had often taken to wearing a uniform to work. For the Sheriffs’ Association Conference, she had brought along mostly business attire, and for next-of-kin notifications, that was the kind of clothing she preferred. Out of respect for the victim, she always felt she needed to show up for those heart-rending occasions wearing her Sunday best—along with her small-of-back holster.
“Be careful,” Butch told her, giving her a good-bye hug. “And, case you’re interested, I think changing clothes was the right thing to do.”
Even though the car had been parked in the shade, the Crown Victoria felt like an oven. The route Frank had outlined took her down the Black Canyon Freeway as far as the exit at Thomas. On Thomas she drove east past Encanto Municipal Golf Course to Seventh Avenue. There she turned south. Southeast Encanto Drive wasn’t a through street, but as soon as Joanna turned of Seventh onto Monte Vista, she knew she was in one of the old-money neighborhoods in Phoenix. The houses were set back from the street on generously sized lots. Around the homes were the kinds of manicured lawns and tall, stately trees that thrived in the desert only with careful attention from a professional gardener and plenty of irrigation-style watering.
The address turned out to be an ivy-covered two-story red brick house with peaked-roof architecture that revealed its pre World War II origins. Joanna pulled into the driveway and parked the Crown Victoria behind a bright-red Toyota 4-Runner. Turning off the ignition and dropping the car keys into the pocket of her blazer, Joanna felt the same kind of misgiving she always experienced when faced with having to deliver the kind of awful news no family ever wants to hear.
Just do it, Joanna, she told herself firmly. It’s your job.
Letting herself out of the car, she walked up the well-groomed sidewalk. Here in the center of Phoenix, surrounded by grass and shaded by trees, it didn’t seem nearly as hot as it had on the shiny new blacktop that graced the driveway at the Conquistador Hotel. Reaching for the doorbell, Joanna was startled to see that the door was slightly ajar. A steady stream of air-conditioned air spilled from inside out. She hesitated, with her finger reaching toward the bell. Then, changing her mind, she pushed the door open a few inches.
“Hello?” she called. “Anybody home?”
There was no answer, but deep within the house she heard the sound of murmuring voices. “Hello,” she called again. “May I come in?”
Again no one answered, but Joanna let herself in anyway. Inside, the house was cool. Drawn curtains made it almost gloomy. The furniture was old and threadbare, but comfortably so—as though whoever lived there preferred the familiarity of top-of-the-line pieces from a bygone era to newer and sleeker steel-and-glass replacements. The voices seemed to emanate from the back of the house. Following them, Joanna made her way through an elegantly furnished dining room. Only when she reached a swinging door that evidently opened into the kitchen did she finally realize that the voices came from a radio program. On the other side of the door a loud boisterous talk-show host was discussing whether or not it might be possible for this year’s Phoenix Cardinals to have a winning season.