Skeleton Canyon

by J. A. Jance

  Realizing Katherine was once again attempting to smooth things over and to minimize whatever had happened, Joanna decided to press the issue. “What kind of acting out?” she asked.

  “She called me a bigot, among other things,” David O’Brien snarled, his face darkening with rage. From the looks of him, Bree’s accusatory words might still be hanging in the charged air around him. “My own daughter called me that to my face when I tried to explain to her that some stupid Mexican having his leg broken was no reason for her to give up something she’d wanted for years-something the whole family had worked for.”

  Joanna couldn’t help noticing the sneer in O’Brien’s voice when he said the word Mexican. She also remembered his irrational refusal to deal with Detective Jaime Carbajal. Maybe, she thought, Brianna O’Brien’s assessment of’ her father was right on the money.

  “Are you a bigot, Mr. O’Brien?” Joanna asked.

  The room grew still. Raising his bushy eyebrows, Ernie Carpenter shifted uneasily from one foot to the other. The silence lasted so long that Joanna wondered if perhaps she had gone too far, but David O’Brien didn’t appear to be especially of-fended by the question. In fact, he seemed to like the idea that Joanna was standing up to him and pushing back.

  “Are you aware that I’m from here originally?” he asked at last, favoring Joanna with an unexpected but grim smile. She nodded.

  “Not just from Bisbee,” he continued. “But from right here on the outskirts of Naco. My father, Tom O’Brien, died of a ruptured appendix when I was two. Growing up in a border town makes it tough for kids. On both sides. I didn’t transfer to St. Dominick’s in Old Bisbee until I was in the third grade. Before that I was one of the only Anglo kids in Naco Elementary. The Mexican kids down here used to beat me up every day, Sheriff Brady. Not only that, it was a Mexican driving the truck that killed my first family, smashed my legs to smithereens, and sentenced me to a wheelchair for the rest of my natural life. So believe me, if I’ve got my prejudices, maybe I’m entitled. That’s what I told Brianna, and that’s what I’m telling you.”

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  Not knowing what to say in response, Joanna headed for the door. As she did so, Katherine reached forward and plucked a small silver bell off the coffee table. Moments after she rang it, Mrs. Vorevkin appeared in the room. “Olga,” Katherine said, “please show Sheriff Brady and Detective Carpenter out.”

  The housekeeper nodded in her stolid, impassive way and started down the hallway. She was standing in front of the open door waiting for them to step outside when Joanna stopped beside her. “Can you tell us anything about all this, Mrs. Vorevkin?” Joanna asked.

  The woman’s faded blue eyes welled with tears. “I packed the food,” she said brokenly. “Just like before. I did not mean to cause trouble.”

  “What trouble?” Joanna demanded. “And what food?”

  “A bag of sandwiches, chips, some fresh fruit, and sodas,” Olga answered. “She always wanted plenty of sodas, root beer and Cokes, both.”

  Joanna frowned. “Two kinds?”

  Olga nodded. “Several of each.”

  “And what kinds of sandwiches?”

  “Peanut butter and bologna.”

  “How many?”

  “Five of each.”

  Joanna turned to Ernie. “What do you think?” she asked. “Either Brianna O’Brien was one heavy eater or the picnic lunch was being made for more than one person.”

  “That’s what I think,” Joanna said, returning her gaze to Olga’s placid face. “You were the last person here to see her?” Joanna asked.

  Olga nodded.

  “What was she wearing?”

  Olga glanced toward Ernie. “He ask me already, but I don’t remember. Too upset. She’s a good girl, Brianna,” the woman added after a moment. “A nice girl. A very nice girl. You find her and bring her home.”

  Sheriff Brady saw no point in attempting to explain the twenty-four-hour missing persons rule to Olga Vorevkin. “We will,” she promised instead. “We’ll do our very best.”

  Outside in the driveway, the only official vehicles left were Ernie’s white van and Joanna’s Crown Victoria, Alf Hastings, David O’Brien’s chief of operations, sat on a folding camp stool next to Joanna’s sedan. He was smoking the stub of a powerful cigar.

  ‘‘Where’d everybody go?” Joanna asked.

  Hastings shrugged. “Beats me,” he said. “Call came in over the radio, and they all took off like they’d been shot out of a cannon.”

  Opening the car door, Joanna reached for her radio. “Sheriff Brady here,” she said. “What’s going on?”

  Larry Kendrick, the Cochise County Sheriff Department’s lead dispatcher, took the call. “We had what at first sounded like a serious explosion over in St. David. Everything’s pretty much under control now, but Chief Deputy Voland didn’t want to disturb either you or Detective Carpenter while you were talking to the O’Briens. Voland headed over to St. David right away, along with two other cars.”

  Joanna’s heart constricted to hear the words explosion and St. David mentioned in the same sentence. St. David was the site of a nitrate-manufacturing plant that specialized in both fertilizers and explosives. “Not the Apache Powder Plant,” she breathed.

  “No,” Kendrick reassured her. “It wasn’t nearly that serious. It was at a farm near the river on the other side of town, off to the south rather than to the northwest.”

  “Any injuries?”

  “None reported so far. There was a small fire. Outbuildings only. As I understand it, that’s out now.”

  “Keep me posted anyway,” Joanna said. Sliding her thumb away from the push-to-talk switch, she turned to Hastings. The man stood up, making a production of grinding out what was left of his cigar. “If you’re ready to go, I’ll get my ATV and lead you as far as the gate.”

  “That’s not really necessary,” Joanna objected. “I’m sure we can find our way out.”

  “I’m sure you can, ma’am,” Hastings said, doffing his hat. “But orders are orders, and since the guy giving the orders also writes my checks, I’ve got no choice but to follow ‘em.”

  Hastings ambled away, leaving Joanna and Ernie alone in the deepening twilight. “What do we do now, Coach?” the detective asked.

  “Tomorrow’s another day,” Joanna told him. “We go home. You take off your tie, I take off my high heels, and we both put our feet up.”

  “You really don’t want me to do anything more tonight?” Ernie asked.

  Joanna shook her head. “No,” she replied. “We’re not going to move on this case unless and until Brianna O’Brien doesn’t show up tomorrow afternoon.”

  “Are you sure that’s wise?” Ernie asked. “It looks to me as though David O’Brien has more money than God. And clout to match. What if he decides to put you out of office?”

  Joanna shrugged. “This is a free country and that’s his God-given right. In the meantime, you and I are charged with providing equality under the law. That means for everybody, David O’Brien included. If we have a twenty-four-hour waiting period for every other missing person in Cochise County, then we have a twenty-four-hour waiting period for him as well.”

  “Sounds good to me,” Ernie said, loosening his tie and setting off for his van.

  Hastings rumbled up just then on his ATV. First Ernie and then Joanna fell into line behind him. At the far gate, there was a turnout along a side road that provided a stopping place just inside the fence. Hastings swerved off the roadway onto the parking strip, leaving enough room for Joanna and Ernie to drive past as the gate swung open. Checking in her mirror Joanna saw him wait until both vehicles had cleared the gate before he let it swing shut and drove away.

  Fort O’Brien, Joanna thought. That would have been a much better name for the place. Taking all the security into consideration Green Brush Ranch just doesn’t do it.

  Joanna had traveled only a mile or two back toward town when hunger suddenly asserted itself. I
t had been almost eight hours since her lunchtime Whopper in Benson. At that hour, the idea of going home to cook was out of the question. Instead of driving directly to High Lonesome Ranch, she headed for Bisbee’s Bakerville neighborhood and Daisy’s Cafe.

  On that still-steamy June Saturday night, other Bisbeeites must have had much the same idea. The draw might have been the almost chilly air-conditioning in the restaurant as much as it was the food. Whatever the reason, Daisy’s was jammed. People stood in clutches of two and three in the cashier’s lobby area, waiting for one of the booths or tables to clear. When Daisy Maxwell, the owner, came to collect the next pair of customers, she spied Joanna standing alone.

  “You here by yourself?” Daisy asked, picking up a fistful of menus.

  Joanna nodded.

  “There’s a single up at the counter. You’re welcome to that if you like,” Daisy told her. “Everybody else is at least a two-top.”

  Collecting a menu of her own, Joanna headed for the single empty stool. She waited while Daisy’s husband, Moe, finished clearing the spot of dirty dishes before she sat down. “What are you doing here?” she asked.

  Moe Maxwell’s usual place of employment was the Bisbee branch of the post office. His primary role in his wife’s restaurant was as chief occupant of the booth nearest the door. There, ensconced with a view that included both the cash register and a tiny black-and-white TV, he would while away his weekend hours drinking coffee and visiting with whichever one of his many cronies happened to stop by.

  Sorrowfully, Moe shook his head. “Don’t even ask,” he said, placing a glass of ice water in front of Joanna. “I was drafted. When it got crowded, Daisy said I could either go to work or plan on spending the night with old Hoop out in his doghouse tonight when we get home. That didn’t leave me much of an option.”

  Joanna laughed. “I suppose not,” she said.

  “Hot enough for you?” Moe continued, halfheartedly wiping the counter.

  Joanna nodded. “And wouldn’t you know, the air-conditioning went out in my car today. I had to take my daughter to camp up on Mount Lemmon. Between now and when I go to pick her up, I’ll have to get it fixed.”

  “Good luck with that,” Moe said. “You’d better call for an appointment right away. Jim Hobbs is the only mechanic I know of around town who’s doing that right now. People are lined up out the door. I just went through it myself a couple of weeks back, me and my old GMC I can tell you this, it lightened my wallet by a thousand bucks.”

  Joanna almost choked on a single sip of water. “A thousand dollars?” she repeated in dismay. “You’re kidding. To fix an air conditioner?”

  Moe nodded, looking even sadder than before. “That’s right,” he replied. “I’m not sure I understand all the details. Has something to do with global warming and holes in the ozone. According to Jim Hobbs, one itty-bitty little thirty-pound canister of Freon costs a thousand bucks a pop these days. Jim retrofitted my truck with some new kind of compressor that uses something else. I can’t remember exactly what it’s called. Had a whole bunch of letters and numbers. R2D2, maybe? Anyways, the damned thing cost me a fortune, and it doesn’t work nearly as well as the Freon did, either. I would have just let it go, but you know Daisy. With her hair the way it is, she can’t even ride to the grocery store with the windows rolled down.”

  Joanna looked across the room to where Daisy was separating yet another two people from the herd waiting near the door. For thirty years, a towering beehive-one with each peroxided blond hair lacquered firmly into place-had been Daisy Maxwell’s signature hairdo. The mere fact that the price of Freon had shot sky-high wasn’t enough to make her change it.

  Daisy delivered the two waiting diners to a nearby booth and then detoured behind the counter on her way back to the cash register. Slipping past her husband, she gave him a swift jab in the ribs with one bony elbow. “Booth six needs bussing,” she told him. “So does table two.”

  With a long-suffering sigh, Moe picked up a wet rag and went to clear the tables.

  “He’d a whole lot rather gab than work,” Daisy complained, pulling a pencil out of her hair and an order pad out of her apron pocket. “If that man really was on my payroll, I would’ve fired him by now. Since he’s working for free, though, what can I do? Now, if you know what you want, I can put the order in on my way through the kitchen. Otherwise it’ll take a while for me to get back to you. We’re short-handed tonight. I didn’t expect this kind of crowd.”

  “Chef’s salad,” Joanna said without bothering to look at the menu. “Ranch dressing on the side. Iced tea with extra lemon.”

  “Corn bread or sticky bun?”

  “Definitely sticky bun,” Joanna answered.

  “You got it,” Daisy said, and hurried off.

  The tea came within less than a minute. Stirring in sugar, Joanna became aware of the music playing through the speakers situated at either end of the counter.

  Reba McEntire sang of a lonely woman living through the aftermath of a painful divorce. The lyrics were all about how hard it was to sleep in a bed once shared with a no-longer present husband. Regardless of the cause of that absence-death or divorce-Joanna knew that the loneliness involved was all the same, most especially so at bedtime, although meal-times weren’t much better.

  Determined to shut out the words, Joanna sat sipping her tea and observing the people in the room through the mirror on the far side of the counter. Unfortunately, she could see nothing but couples. Pairs. Men and women-husbands and wives-eating and talking and laughing together. In the far corner of the room sat a young couple with a toddler in a high chair. The child was happily munching saltine crackers while the man and woman talked earnestly back and forth together.

  Struck by a sudden jolt of envy, Joanna forced herself to look away. It reminded her too much of the old days when Jenny was at what Andy had called the “crumb-crusher stage.” It had been a period during which every meal out-whether in a restaurant or at someone else’s home-had included the embarrassment of a mess of cracker crumbs left around Jenny’s high chair.

  Right about now, Joanna thought, I’d be so happy to have a few of those crumbs back again that I wouldn’t even complain about having to clean them up.

  By the time Joanna’s salad came, the hunger she had felt earlier had entirely disappeared. She picked at the pale pieces of canned asparagus and moved the chunks of bright red tomato from side to side. It was easy to feel sorry for herself, to wallow in her own misery and self-pity. Butch Dixon, a man she had met up in Peoria when she went there to attend the Arizona Police Officer’s Academy, had made it quite clear that he was more than just moderately interested in her. But Joanna didn’t think she was ready for that. Not yet. She was glad to have Butch as a friend-as a pal and as someone to talk to on the phone several times a week-but it was still too soon for anything beyond that, not just for Joanna but also for jenny.

  “Mind if I sit down?”

  Joanna looked up to see Chief Deputy Richard Voland standing with one hand on the back of the now-vacant stool next to her.

  “Hi, Dick,” she said. “Help yourself.”

  She was grateful Daisy’s was a public enough venue that Voland’s ears didn’t turn red as he eased his tall frame down onto the stool. Opening a menu, he studied it in silence for some time before slapping it shut. “Batching it is hell, isn’t it?” he grumbled. “Ruth maybe had her faults, but she was one helluva cook.”

  Ruth Voland, Dick’s soon-to-be-ex-wife, had taken up with their son’s bowling coach from Sierra Vista. Their divorce was due to be final within the next few weeks. As that day loomed closer, Chief Deputy Voland was becoming more and more difficult to be around.

  “You’re right,” Joanna agreed. “It’s not much fun, but thanks to people like Daisy Maxwell, neither of us is starving to death.”

  Voland nodded morosely. “Hope you don’t mind my tracking you down. Dispatch said you were stopping off to have dinner. I needed to grab a bite myse
lf.”

  Daisy came to take his order. Joanna waited until she left before speaking again. “So what’s up over in St. David?”

  “Killer bees,” Voland answered. “It was unbelievable.”

  “Killer bees?” Joanna repeated. “I thought there was some kind of an explosion.”

  “That’s right. There was. A lady by the name of Ethel Jamison found a swarm of killer bees up under the roof of a tool shed. Her great-grandson is down visiting from Provo, Utah, for a couple of weeks. He offered to take care of them for her. So he and a buddy of his logged onto the Internet, consulted some kind of cyberspace Anarchist’s Cookbook, and blew the place to pieces, bees and all. Except they didn’t quite get all the bees. Like this one, for example,” Voland added, pointing to an ugly red welt on the back of his hand. “And this one, too.” A second vivid welt showed itself on the back of his neck, just above his wilted shirt collar.

  “I wasn’t the only one who got stung, either,” Voland added. “A couple of the volunteer firemen did, too. Naturally, the two boys didn’t.”

  Dick’s coffee came. He stopped talking long enough to add cream and sugar. “So what’s happening on the O’Brien deal?” “Nothing,” Joanna said.

  “But I thought…”

  “Brianna O’Brien may not have gone where she said she was going,” Joanna told him, “but she’s not yet officially missing. According to her parents, she’s not due back until tomorrow afternoon. If and when that deadline passes, we’ll make an official missing persons determination.”

  “You’re going to wait the full twenty-four hours?” Dick Voland asked. “David O’Brien will have a cow.”

  “He’s already having a cow, so I don’t see what difference it makes.”

  “David O’Brien isn’t someone I’d want to get crosswise with,” Voland warned. “From a political standpoint if nothing else. With his kind of money, he can make or break you.”