Skeleton Canyon

by J. A. Jance

  “Thanks for the warning,” George said. “I’ll have to do the best I can.”

  Abandoning her now-cold cup of coffee, Joanna headed for the shower herself. Minutes later, with her hair still damp, and dressed in boots and hiking attire, she headed outside and stopped cold in front of the Crown Victoria. The low-slung patrol car wouldn’t cut it in Skeleton Canyon any better than George Winfield’s hearse.

  Unlocking it, she picked up the radio. “I’m going to be out of radio contact,” she told Tica Romero. “I’ll be in my Eagle. It doesn’t have a radio or air-conditioning, but at least it has four-wheel drive.” She was about to end the contact when she remembered it was Sunday.

  “When you have a chance, Tica, I’ll need you to call a few people for me. My in-laws are expecting me to drop by after church for dinner. I’ll need you to let Jim Bob and Eva Lou know I most likely won’t make it.”

  “And the other call?”

  “Make that one to Reverend Marianne Maculyea of Canyon Methodist Church,” Joanna said. “Tell her I won’t be coming to Sunday school or church today. Let her know why. Mari’s a friend of Angie Kellogg’s, too. She and Jeff will both want to know what’s going on.”

  Joanna had barely stopped the Eagle on the shoulder of Highway 80 when Ernie Carpenter’s van went flying by. Fifty yards down the road, it almost stood on its nose as Jaime Carbajal, driving in Ernie’s stead, jammed on the brakes. Pulling a quick U-turn, the van came back to the spot where Joanna was parked. After yet another U-turn, the van pulled in behind the Eagle, and both detectives climbed out. For a change, even the usually dapper Carpenter was already dressed down to crime scene-appropriate attire.

  “What gives, Sheriff Brady? Do you need help?”

  Joanna shook her head. “I’m waiting for George Winfield. He’s still a little short when it comes to Cochise County geography. I wasn’t sure he could find his way to Skeleton Canyon on his own.”

  Ernie nodded. “The guy’s still pretty much of a greenhorn. I hope he gets a move on, though. Looking at those clouds over there, we may not have much time.”

  “You two go on,” Joanna told them. “Winfield and I will be along as soon as we can.”

  “Are you sure you’re all right, Sheriff Brady?” Ernie asked. “Tica told us about Angie Kellogg being missing as well. I know she’s a friend of yours.”

  “Thanks, Ernie,” she said. “I’m okay and I’m sure Angie will be fine. She’ll find her way out. Once you get out there, though, you might want to turn on your siren. It’ll make it easier for her to know where you are.”

  “Right,” Ernie said. “Will do.”

  The two detectives started away. “Detective Carbajal?” Joanna called after them.

  “Yes, ma’am?”

  “Remember,” she said, leveling a reproving look in his direction, “sirens yes, but whoever was in that pickup is already dead. You’re not out to set land speed records here. This isn’t a hot pursuit situation, and I don’t want it treated as such.”

  With a meaningful glance at Ernie, who had no doubt been urging him on, Jaime nodded. “Right, Sheriff Brady,” he said. “I’ll be sure to slow it down.”

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  Ernie and Jaime had just pulled away when George Winfield arrived in the converted hearse that doubled as his coroner’s wagon. When George walked up to the window of Joanna’s Eagle, he was carrying an Arizona map that he had unfolded and was holding at arm’s length. His left cheek bore a faint smudge of lipstick that was, no doubt, Eleanor’s.

  “Ellie says Skeleton Canyon is somewhere over here in the Pelon…” He paused. “How do you say it? The Pelonsillios?”

  He pronounced the word in true gringo fashion with the word silly taking the place of the two silent l’s. The sound of it grated on Joanna’s ear. So did his use of Joanna’s father’s pet name for her mother. The lipstick didn’t help.

  “It’s Spanish,” she explained, without bothering to cover up her irritation. “That means you don’t pronounce the double 1. It’s Pelon-si-yos.”

  George shook his head. “I’ll never be able to say all these god-awful Spanish and Indian words. Whatever happened to good old American English?”

  “You mean like Minnesota?” Joanna asked testily. “Or maybe Illinois?”

  Realizing he had stepped in something but unsure what it was, Winfield regarded her warily. “I guess we’d better get started.”

  “I guess we’d better,” Joanna said.

  Winfield went back to the hearse and removed a heavy leather satchel, which he lugged over and loaded into the back of the Eagle. By the time he climbed into the rider’s seat, Joanna already had the engine running.

  The turnoff to the north entrance of Skeleton Canyon was at a crossroads presuming to be a village that called itself Apache. From Double Adobe Road to the turnoff was a good fifty-five miles. The drive took them east across the southern end of the Sulphur Springs Valley and then north through the San Bernardino Valley. Most of the time on a drive like this, Joanna would have been frustrated by the vastness of her jurisdictional boundaries. Six thousand two hundred and forty square miles was a big area to cover, but today the miles flew past far too fast for her to even think about it.

  Absorbed in her own thoughts, Joanna was thinking not only about the tragedy of Brianna O’Brien’s death, but also about her own culpability with regard to whatever was going on with Angie Kellogg. Joanna had thought Dennis Hacker was inviting Angie on a harmless, old-fashioned date-the kind of innocent, hand-holding thing old people sometimes use to re-gale their kids, grandkids, and great-grandkids. Wrong. Not in this case.

  Joanna knew something about the abuse Angie Kellogg had endured as a child. And she knew a little about her life as a prostitute in L.A. It was hardly surprising that someone with her background would worry that maybe the Bird Man’s intentions weren’t all they were cracked up to be-that he was interested in something besides hummingbirds. Considering what had happened, Joanna had little doubt who had been right and who had been wrong.

  Thinking about the realities of Angie out walking around, unprepared, in the wild, rock-strewn landscape that made up the Peloncillos, Joanna glanced at Doc Winfield’s feet. Despite her warning advice, he was nonetheless wearing a pair of thin-soled, highly polished loafers.

  “Are those the only shoes you have along?” she asked.

  “Unfortunately yes,” he said. “I’m not much for hiking. I haven’t quite gotten around to buying any hiking boots yet.”

  “What about water?” she asked. “I don’t suppose you brought along any of that, either.”

  “I brought along my crime scene kit.”

  “But no water to drink?”

  “No.”

  Joanna sighed. “That’s all right. I have two canteens in the back. I’ll give you one to use. That’s what happens to city slickers when you turn them loose in the desert. If you don’t watch them every minute, pretty soon they turn themselves into potato chips. When you’re working out in the sun, especially with the humidity going up like it is right now, heat-stroke can sneak up and catch you unawares.”

  “Is that why they call the place we’re going to Skeleton Canyon?” Winfield asked. “Because people died out there?” Joanna nodded.

  “Of thirst?”

  “They were mostly murdered,” Joanna answered. “You ever hear of the Clanton gang?”

  “As in Wyatt Earp?”

  “Before they tangled with him, the Clantons ambushed a band of Mexican gold smugglers here in the Peloncillos. According to legend, the Clantons made off with a shipment of stolen gold, only to be caught by the survivors a few miles away. In the ensuing fight, a few more people died and the gold disappeared. It’s still supposed to be out there somewhere.”

  “Amazing,” George Winfield murmured.

  “The Peloncillos have always been a haven for smugglers. It’s a mountain range that’s almost impossible to patrol. The Baker Wilderness Area, between Skeleton Canyon
and the international border, is supposed to be closed to vehicular traffic. Unfortunately, smugglers don’t necessarily pay any attention to the edicts of the Environmental Protection Agency or the U.S. Forest Service.”

  “Amazing,” George Winfield said again, settling back in his seat and staring out the window at a landscape that was waist-high in yellow grass. “I can’t believe I’m living in a place where those names are part of history and not just something that used to turn up in Saturday matinees. Coming here I thought this would all be real desert, maybe even sand dunes. This almost looks like wheat.”

  Joanna considered explaining to him how Anglos had encouraged the spread of mesquite, which had killed off the native grasses, but she let it go. Let him learn some of that stuff on his own, she thought.

  They drove in silence for several more miles before George spoke again, clearing his throat as he did so. “By the way, Joanna, has Ellie said much of anything to you about…” He paused. “Well, about us,” he finished lamely.

  There he was, using the name Ellie again to bring up a topic Joanna wasn’t at all eager to discuss. “Not really,” she returned coolly. “Why?”

  “She hasn’t happened to mention that we’re… er.. married?”

  Joanna turned to look at him and in the process ran the right-hand tires onto the shoulder of the road. She had to struggle with the steering wheel for a moment before the Eagle returned to the sun-cracked pavement.

  “Married?” she demanded, her face pale. “You can’t be serious!”

  George shook his head. “I wouldn’t kid around about some-thing like this. I’ve been telling her for weeks now that she needed to let you know. In case you haven’t noticed, your mother’s a little stubborn. We eloped, Joanna. Last month. We got married in a little chapel up in Vegas. I’ve booked an Alaskan cruise for our honeymoon in August. I wanted you to know about it before then.”

  Joanna couldn’t think of a single word to say in reply. George hurried on. “I hope you’re not too shocked. At our ages, you know, it’s hard to tell how much time we have. And your mother and I are just alike. High-fidelity and low-frequency, if you know what I mean.”

  He chuckled at his own joke and then looked at Joanna to see if she was laughing. She wasn’t. They were approaching the turnoff to Skeleton Canyon. With her chin set and her eyes staring straight ahead, Joanna jammed on the brakes. She swung the Eagle onto the gravel road with such force that, had George Winfield not been wearing his seat belt, he would have come sliding into her lap.

  “I guess you’re a little angry about this,” he murmured a little later.

  “Angry?” Joanna repeated. “Whatever makes you think that?”

  “I suppose that’s why Ellie was so reluctant to tell you in the first place. She was afraid you’d react this way.”

  In front of them a trio of three black-tailed deer gracefully leaped across the sandy track, clearing the barbed-wire fences on both sides as though they didn’t exist and then disappearing into the waist-high grass. Seeing them gave Joanna a chance to gather her resources. The last thing she ever wanted to do was react just the way her mother said she would. If Eleanor had thought Joanna was going to be angry, then, by God, angry was the last thing she’d be!

  “I’m surprised,” she said carefully. “Surprised and shocked, but not angry.”

  George Winfield sighed. “That’s a relief, then,” he said. “What about your brother? What do you think he’ll say?”

  Bob Brundage, Joanna’s long-lost brother, was another one of Eleanor Lathrop’s little secrets. Born out of wedlock before D.H. Lathrop and Eleanor married, Bob had been put up for adoption as an infant. Joanna had first learned of his existence at Thanksgiving the previous year, when he had tracked down his birth mother after the deaths of both his adoptive parents.

  “I have no idea what Bob will say,” Joanna replied, curbing a desire to snap. “You’ll have to ask him yourself.”

  “I thought we’d invite him and his wife to the reception,” George continued.

  “What reception?”

  “The one we’ll have when we get back from the cruise. Maybe in September sometime. That’ll be fun, don’t you think? Nothing too fancy. Maybe just a little get-together at the club-house out at Rob Roy Links. That’s where we went on our first real date, you see.”

  “I’m sure it’ll be a ball,” Joanna said. “I can hardly wait.”

  They came around a sharp curve where the road was blocked by a barbed-wire gate. Parked in front of the gate was a battered green Range Rover. A slender woman in a dark blue dress and wearing huge, wraparound sunglasses stood next to the vehicle, studying a map.

  Joanna rolled down her window. “Excuse me,” she called. “Would you mind moving out of the way? We need to get past.”

  The woman looked up. “Maybe you can help me. I’m looking for Skeleton Canyon, but when I came to this gate, I was afraid I had missed a turn. Am I going the right way?”

  Leaving the Eagle idling, Joanna climbed out. “I’m sorry,” she said, pulling out her badge. “I’m Sheriff Brady. There’s been a serious accident up in Skeleton Canyon today. A fatality. We’re expecting emergency vehicles in and out of here on this road. If you don’t mind, it would probably be better if you could postpone your visit to some other time.”

  “But that’s why I’m here,” the woman replied. “Because of the accident. I heard about it on my police scanner and came straight on out.” She reached into her purse and pulled out an ID wallet of her own that she handed over to Joanna.

  “Frances G. Stoddard,” the identification card said. “Private Investigator.”

  Suddenly, a day Joanna Brady was convinced had already bottomed out got that much worse. “You’re David O’Brien’s private eye.”

  “Bingo,” Frances Stoddard said with a smile. “You can call me Frankie. Everybody else does. What was your name again?”

  “Brady,” Joanna said wearily. “And you can call me Sheriff.”

  If Frankie Stoddard was offended by Joanna’s brusque reply, she certainly didn’t let it show. “Glad to meet you, Sheriff,” she said. “I understand you’ve been traveling in a vehicle with no radio, so you probably don’t know what’s going on.”

  “What now?”

  “If this is the right road, two of your officers are up ahead. Stuck in a wash. They’ve called for a wrecker to come get them out. I have a winch on the Rover. I thought if I could get up to where they are…”

  Joanna closed her eyes and shook her head. From bad to worse and worse again.

  “Come on,” she said to Frankie. “If you can move your vehicle out of the way, I’ll go first. And if you can winch them out, I’ll be eternally grateful. Otherwise, we’ll be stuck here half the day without getting anywhere near where we’re supposed to be.”

  At the turnoff in Apache, the road to Skeleton Canyon had been a fairly generous gravel affair that soon dwindled to dirt. On the other side of the closed gate, however, it was comprised of two rocky tracks with foot-high grass growing up in the middle. A few hundred yards beyond the gate, the road opened out again into a wide, sandy wash. Ernie Carpenter’s van sat stuck in the middle of it, mired in sand up to the hubcaps.

  Ernie sat on a nearby rock, wiping the sweat off his forehead. As soon as Detective Carbajal saw Joanna, he came hurrying up to her Eagle. “Sorry about this, Sheriff Brady,” Jaime apologized. “I thought I had enough momentum going into the wash to get us through. The sand just reached out and grabbed us.”

  There was no sense in ripping into him about it. “Tell you what, Jaime,” Joanna said. “Load what you can of Ernie’s equipment into the back of this. The lady behind me, Frankie Stoddard, is a private detective working for David O’Brien. She says she has a winch, and she thinks maybe her Range Rover can haul you out of here. Meantime, I’ll take Doc Winfield and Ernie on up the line to see if we can make it to the accident scene.”

  “Sure thing, Sheriff Brady,” Jaime said. “I’ll get rig
ht on it.”

  Twenty minutes later, Joanna was ready to set out again with George Winfield in the front seat and with Ernie scrunched into the backseat along with as much of his equipment as would fit. Shifting into four-wheel drive, she negotiated the wash with no difficulty.

  “Who was that lady?” Ernie asked again. “The one with the Range Rover?”

  “Her name’s Frankie Stoddard,” Joanna answered. “She’s David O’Brien’s private eye.”

  “Great,” Ernie muttered.

  “That’s what I say,” Joanna said.

  Angie Kellogg heard the sirens. Sitting in a thicket of mesquite, she watched the drama below. She saw an agitated Dennis Hacker bound off the hillside and into the little clearing where the Hummer was parked, saw him look around anxiously for her, heard him calling her name and talking on his cell phone, but Angie didn’t move. She was too hurt. Too angry.

  It wasn’t that she liked Dennis Hacker that much. She had seen him just the two times. What was important about him, though, was what he represented. Joanna Brady, Marianne Maculyea, Jeff Daniels, and Bobo Jenkins had all tried to convince Angie that she could leave her past behind and live a normal life. And it had seemed to her in the past few months that she was doing so, that she was succeeding. She had made some friends at work. At home, she was learning to deal with neighbors, some of whom she liked and some she didn’t.

  The former included Effie Spangler, Angie’s spry, octogenarian neighbor, who despite her years and having a working clothes dryer in her laundry room, nevertheless preferred drying her wash on a clothesline. The latter included Richard, Effie’s obnoxious husband, who always seemed to find something to do in the backyard whenever Angie was sunbathing and who never failed to complain that her bird feeders were bound to attract rats.

  For Angie, there was much to be proud of. There was a normalcy and a regularity to her existence now that would have astonished her family back home in Battle Creek. Some of that normalcy included things her parents themselves had never achieved. For instance, Angie’s snug little house in Galena was completely paid for. She had a job and a car and insurance premiums. She had her own driver’s license and her very own voter’s registration card. All of those achievements should have said she was real.