by J. A. Jance
“So that’s it,” she finished lamely. “I got in the car, drove away, and eventually ended up here.”
“Tell me about the wedding,” Marianne said. “Whose wedding is it again?”
“Tammy Lukins,” Joanna answered. “She used to work for Butch. She was one of his waitresses at the Roundhouse Bar and Grill up in Peoria. She’s marrying a guy named Roy Ford who used to be a customer at the Roundhouse. Since Butch is the one who introduced them, they both wanted him to be in the wedding. Tammy wanted Butch to be her . . .” She started to say, “man of honor,” but the words stuck in her throat. “Her attendant,” she said finally.
A short silence followed. Marianne was the one who spoke first. “You told me a few minutes ago that the dead woman’s sister from Phoenix ...”
“Maggie MacFerson,” Joanna supplied.
“That Maggie MacFerson thought her brother-in-law ..”
“Ron Haskell.”
“That he was the one who had murdered his wife. That he had stolen her money and then murdered her.”
Joanna nodded. “That’s right,” she said.
“So what will happen next?” Marianne asked.
Joanna shrugged. “Ernie Carpenter and Jaime Carbajal were supposed to go out to Portal this morning to see if they could find him.”
“And what will happen when they do?”
“When they find him, they’ll probably question him,” Joanna replied. “They’ll try to find out where he was around the time his wife died and whether or not he has a verifiable alibi.”
“But they won’t just arrest him on the spot, toss him in jail, and throw away the key?”
“Of course not,” Joanna returned. “They’re detectives. They have to find evidence. The fact that the money is gone and the fact that Connie Haskell died near where her husband was staying is most likely all circumstantial. Before Ernie and Jaime can arrest Ron Haskell, they’ll have to have probable cause. To do that they’ll need to have some kind of physical evidence that links him to the crime.
“What if they arrested him without having probable cause?”
“It would be wrong,” Joanna answered. “Cops can’t arrest someone simply because they feel like it. They have to have good reason to believe the person is guilty, and they can’t simply jump to conclusions based on circumstantial evidence. It has to be some-thing that will stand up in court, something strong enough to convince a judge and jury”
“That’s true in your work life, Joanna,” Marianne said quietly. “What about in your personal life? Is it wise to allow yourself to jump to conclusions there?”
A knot of anger pulsed in Joanna’s temples. “You’re saying I’ve jumped to conclusions?”
“Criminals have a right to defend themselves in a court of law,” Marianne said. “You told me yourself that you didn’t listen to anything Butch had to say. That when he tried to talk to you, you didn’t listen—wouldn’t even answer the phone.”
“This is different,” Joanna said.
“Is it? I don’t think so. I believe you’ve tried and convicted the man of being unfaithful to you without giving him the benefit of a fair hearing. I’m not saying Butch didn’t do what you think he did, and I’m certainly not defending him if he did. But I do think you owe him the courtesy of letting him tell you what happened, of letting him explain the circumstances, before you hire yourself a divorce attorney and throw him out of the house.”
Joanna sat holding the phone in stunned silence.
“A few minutes ago you asked me what you should tell Jenny,” Marianne continued. “How you should go about breaking the news to her and how you’d face up to the rest of the people in town. Have you talked to anyone else about this?”
“Only you,” Joanna said.
“Good. You need to keep quiet about all this until you know more, until you have some idea of what you’re up against. It could be nothing more than bachelor-party high jinks. I’ve seen you at work, Joanna. When your department is involved in a case, you don’t let people go running to the newspapers or radio stations and leaking information so the public ends up knowing every single thing about what’s going on in any given investigation. You keep it quiet until you have all your ducks in a row. Right?”
Joanna said nothing.
“And that’s what I’m suggesting you do here, as well,” Marianne said. “Keep it quiet. Don’t tell anyone. Not Jenny, not your mother, not the people you work with—not until you have a better idea of what’s really going on. You owe it to yourself, Joanna, and you certainly owe that much to Butch.”
“But—”
“Let me finish,” Marianne said. “Since Butch came to town, Jeff and I have come to care about him almost like a brother. We feel as close to him as we used to feel to Andy. I also know that he’s made a huge difference in your life, and in Jenny’s, too. I don’t want you to throw all that away. I don’t want you to lose this second chance at happiness over something that may not be that important.”
Joanna was suddenly furious. “You’re saying Butch can do any-thing he wants—that he can go out with another woman and it doesn’t matter?”
“If something happened between him and this woman, this Lila, then of course it matters. But it’s possible that absolutely nothing happened. Before you write him off, you need to know exactly what went on.”
“You mean, I should ask him and then I should just take his word for it?” Joanna demanded. “If he tells me nothing happened, I’m supposed to believe him? He was out all night long, Mari. I don’t think I can ever trust him again. I don’t think I can believe a word he says.”
“In my experience,” Marianne said, “there are two sides to every story. Before you go blasting your point of view to the universe, maybe you should have some idea about what’s going on on Butch’s side of the fence. He’s been used to running his own life, Joanna. Used to calling the shots. Now he’s in a position where he often has to play second fiddle. That’s not easy. Ask Jell about It sometime. Things were rough that first year we were married, when I was try ing to be both a new bride and a new minister all at the same tin me. If fact, there were times when I didn’t think we’d make it.”
Joanna was stunned. “You and Jeff?” she asked.
“Yes, Jeff and I,” Marianne returned.
“But you never mentioned it. You never told me.”
“Because we worked it out, Joanna,” Marianne said. “We worked it out between us. Believe me, it would have been a whole lot harder if the whole world had known about it.”
“What are you saying?” Joanna asked.
“I’m saying you have a choice,” Marianne said. “It’s one of those two paths diverging in the woods that Robert Frost talks about. You can go home and tell Jim Bob and Eva Lou and Jenny that something terrible has happened between you and Butch and that you’re headed for divorce court. Do that, and you risk losing everything. Or, you can pull yourself together, drive your butt back to the hotel, go to that damned wedding with a smile on your face and your head held high, and see if you can fix things before they get any worse.”
“Swallow my pride and go back to the hotel?” Joanna repeated. “That’s right.”
“Go to the wedding?”
“Absolutely, and give Butch a chance to tell you what went on. What’s going on. If he wants to bail out on the marriage and if you want to as well, then you’re right. There’s nothing left to fix and you’d better come home and be with Jenny when her heart gets broken again. But if there is something to be salvaged, you’re a whole lot better off doing it sooner than later.”
“I thought you were my friend, Mari. How can you turn on me like this?”
“I am your friend,” Marianne replied. “A good enough friend that I’m prepared to risk telling you what you may not want to hear. A friend who cares enough to send the very worst. Some things are worth fighting for, Joanna. Your marriage is one of them.”
Soon after, a spent Joanna ended the call. Butch
had evidently given up trying to call, since the phone didn’t ring again. Sitting in the mall, with the overheated but silent telephone still cradled in her hand, Joanna sat staring blindly at the carefree Sunday after-noon throng moving past her.
And then, sitting with her back to the noisy fountain, Joanna could almost hear her father’s voice. “Never run away from a fight, Little Hank,” D. H. Lathrop had told her.
Joanna was back in seventh grade. It was the morning after she had been suspended from school for two days for fighting with the boys who had been picking on her new friend, Marianne Maculyea.
“No matter what your mother says,” her father had counseled in his slow, East Texas drawl, “no matter what anyone says, you’re better off making a stand than you are running away “
“So other people won’t think you’re a coward?” Joanna had asked.
“No,” he had answered. “So you won’t think you’re a coward.”
The vivid memory left Joanna shaken. It was as though her father and Marianne were ganging up on her, with both of them telling her the exact same thing. They both wanted her to stop running and face whatever it was she was up against.
Standing up, Joanna stuffed the phone in her pocket and then headed for the mall entrance. Getting into the Crown Victoria was like climbing into an oven. The steering wheel scorched her fingertips, but she barely noticed. With both her father’s and Marianne’s words still ringing in her heart and head, she started the engine and went looking for the side road that would take her away from the mall.
As she drove, she felt like a modern-day Humpty Dumpty. She had no idea if what had been broken could be put back together, but D. H. Lathrop and Marianne were right. Joanna couldn’t give up without a fight. Wouldn’t give up without a fight. Maybe she didn’t owe that much to Butch Dixon or even to Jenny, but Joanna Brady sure as hell owed it to herself.
It was almost two by the time Joanna returned to the hotel. She pulled up to the door, where a florist van was disgorging a mountain of flowers. Dodging through the lobby, Joanna held her breath for fear of meeting up with some of the other wedding guests. In her current woebegone state, she didn’t want to see anyone she knew.
When she opened the door to their room, the blackout cur twins were pulled. Butch, fully clothed, was lying on top of the covers, sound asleep. She tried to close the door silently, but the click of the lock awakened him. “Joey?” he asked, sitting up. “Is that you?”
She switched on a light. “Yes,” she said.
“You’re back. Where did you go?”
“Someplace where I could think,” she told him.
Rather than going near the bed, Joanna walked over to the table on the far side of the room. Pulling out a chair, she sat down and folded her hands into her lap.
“What did you decide?” Butch asked.
“I talked to Marianne. She said I should cone back and hear what you have to say.”
“Nothing happened, Joey,” Butch said. “Between Lila and me, mean. Not now, anyway. Not last night.”
“But you used to be an item?”
“Yes, but that was a long time ago, before I met you. Still,” Butch added, “I’m sorry.”
“For what?” Joanna asked the question even though she feared what the answer might be. “If nothing happened, what do you have to be sorry for?”
“I shouldn’t have been with Lila in the first place,” Butch admitted at once. “After the rehearsal dinner, she offered me a ride back to the hotel. I should have come back with someone else, but I didn’t. I was pissed at you, and I’d had a few drinks. So I came back with Lila instead. At the time, it didn’t seem like that bad an idea.”
“I see,” Joanna returned stiffly.
“No,” Butch said. “I don’t think you see at all.”
“What I’m hearing is that your defense consists of your claiming that nothing happened, but even if it did happen, you’re not responsible because you were drunk at the time.”
“My defense is that nothing did happen,” he replied. “But it could have. It might have, and I shouldn’t have run that risk. She’s dying, you see.”
“Who’s dying?”
“Lila.”
“Of what?” Joanna scoffed derisively, remembering the willowy blonde who had accompanied Butch through the lobby. “She didn’t look sick to me.”
“But she is,” Butch replied. “She has ALS. Do you know what that is?”
Joanna thought for a minute. “Lou Gehrig’s disease?”
Butch nodded. “She just got the final diagnosis last week. She hasn’t told anyone yet, including Tammy and Roy. She didn’t want to spoil their wedding.”
“But, assuming it’s true, she went ahead and told you,” Joanna said. “How come?”
“I told you. Lila and I used to be an item, Joey. We broke up long before you and I ever met. She married somebody else and moved to San Diego, but the guy she married walked out on her two months ago,” Butch continued.
She got dumped and now she wants you back, Joanna thought. She felt as though she were listening to one of those interminable shaggy-dog stories with no hope of cutting straight to the punch line. “So this is a rebound thing for her?” Joanna asked. “Or is that what I was for you?” Her voice sounded brittle. There was a metallic taste in her mouth.
“Joey, please listen,” Butch pleaded. “What do you know about ALS?”
Joanna shrugged. “Not much. It’s incurable, I guess.”
“Right. Lila went to see her doctor because her back was bothering her. She thought maybe she’d pulled a muscle or something. The doctor gave her the bad news on Thursday. Even though she’s not that sick yet, she will be. It’ll get worse and worse. The doctor told her that most ALS patients die within two to five years of diagnosis. She’s putting her San Diego house on the market. She’s going to Texas to be close to her parents.
“Lila needed to talk about all this, Joey,” Butch continued. “She needed somebody to be there with her, to listen and sympathize. happened to be handy. We talked all night long. I held her, and she cried on my shoulder.”
“You held her,” Joanna said.
“And listened,” Butch said.
“And nothing else?”
“Nothing. I swear to God.”
“And why should I believe you?” Joanna asked.
Butch got off the bed. He came across the room to the table, where he sat down opposite Joanna. As he did so, his lips curved into a tentative smile. “Because I wouldn’t do something like that, Joey. I’m lucky enough to be married to the woman I love. She’s also somebody who carries two loaded weapons at all times and who, I have it on good authority, knows exactly how to use them. What do you think I am, stupid?”
Joanna thought about that for a minute. Then she asked another question. “You said you were pissed at me. Why?”
“That’s hard to explain.”
“Try me.”
“Tammy and Roy and the rest of the people at the wedding are all my friends,” he said slowly. “I had just finished spending the last three days up at Page being sheriff’s spouse-under-glass. Don’t get me wrong. Antiquing aside, I was glad to do it. But turnabout’s fair play, Joey. I really wanted you to be here with me last night at the rehearsal dinner. I wanted to show you off to my old buddies and be able to say, `Hey, you guys, lucky me. Look what I found!’ But then duty called and off you went.
“As soon as you said you were going, I knew you’d never make it back in time for the dinner, and I think you did, too. But did you say so? No. You did your best imitation of Arnold Schwarzenegger saying, `I’ll be back,’ which, of course, you weren’t. You left in the afternoon and didn’t turn back up until sometime in the middle of the night. I know you weren’t back earlier because I, too, was calling the room periodically all evening long in hopes you’d be back and able to join in the fun. Either you weren’t in yet, or else you didn’t bother answering the phone.”
“You didn’t lea
ve a message,” Joanna said accusingly. “And you could have tried calling my cell phone.”
“Right, but that would have meant interrupting you while you were working.”
Joanna thought about that for a moment. They had both made an effort to reduce the number of personal phone calls between them while she was working. Still, she wasn’t entirely satisfied.
“That’s why you were pissed then?” she asked. “Because I missed the rehearsal and the rehearsal dinner and wasn’t around for you to show me off to your old pals?”
“Pretty much,” Butch admitted. “I guess it sounds pretty lane, but that’s the way it was.”
A long silence followed. Joanna was thinking about her mother and father, about Eleanor and Big Hank Lathrop. How many times had Sheriff Lathrop used the call of duty to provide an excused absence for himself from one of Eleanor’s numerous social functions? How often had he hidden behind his badge to avoid being part of some school program or church potluck or a meeting of the Bisbee Historical Society?
Joanna loved her mother, but she didn’t much like her. And the last thing she ever wanted was to be like Eleanor Lathrop Winfield. Still, there were times now, when Joanna would be talking to Jenny or bawling her out for something, when it seemed as though Eleanor’s words and voice were coming through Joanna’s own lips. There were other times, too, when, glancing in a mirror, it seemed as though Eleanor’s face were staring back at her. That was how genetics worked. But now, through some strange quirk in her DNA, Joanna found herself resembling her father rather than her mother. Here she was doing the same kind of unintentional harm to Butch that ll. H. Lathrop had done to his wife, Eleanor. And Joanna could see now that although she had been hurt by her belief in Butch’s infidelity—his presumed infidelity—she wasn’t the only one. Butch had been hurt, too.