by J. A. Jance
“I know that,” Terry replied impatiently. “A fire in the barn. Somebody who knows I golf at Rob Roy in the afternoons called out there and spoke to Esther Thomas, the lady who runs the restaurant. Esther sent Tom out on the course to find me and let me know. I can see the barn from here. From the way it sounded, I expected it to be a complete loss, but it doesn’t look that bad. So what’s the problem? Why all the fuss?”
She glanced off in the direction of the barn. “I’ve told Bucky a thousand times not to smoke in the barn, but he never listens to me.” Parking in the empty space next to Bebe Noonan’s Honda, Terry jammed down on the emergency brake and then stepped out of the car, leaving the door open and the keys in the ignition.
“Terry,” Joanna said. “The fire had nothing to do with cigarettes. It may have been arson.”
“Arson,” Terry repeated with a puzzled frown. “Why would anyone want to do that? And what does Bucky think about all this?”
“I’m afraid things are much worse than they look. About Bucky…”
“What about him? Where is he?”
Joanna remembered hearing her father, D. H. Lathrop, and her late husband, Andy—both of them police officers—say that the worst part of being a cop was having to deliver death notifications. After little more than two months in office, Sheriff Joanna Brady already knew from personal experience that the same thing applied to her. Delivering that wrenching news was the worst duty possible.
She took a deep breath. “I’m sorry to have to tell you this, Terry, but your husband is dead.”
As soon as Joanna uttered the words, Terry Buckwalter’s knees seemed to collapse beneath her. Her breath came out in a gasp, and her well-tanned face turned pale and her lips stark-white, as she sank back down into the driver’s seat of the car.
Seeing Terry’s reaction, Joanna immediately began railing at herself for botching the job. Surely there must have been some better way to deliver the news than simply saying, “Your husband is dead.” Wasn’t there something else she might have said, something gentler that would have cushioned the blow? Couldn’t she have found some softer words that would have blunted the impact of that starkly life-changing reality?
“Dead?” Terry repeated, as though in a daze and not quite capable of grasping the word. “You’re saying Bucky is dead?”
Joanna nodded. “The firefighters found him in the back of the barn when they went inside to douse the flames.”
Terry Buckwalter leaned back against the headrest of the seat, momentarily closing her eyes. Joanna expected that any moment a torrent of tears would start, but that didn’t happen.
“How can that be?” Terry murmured. “He was fine when I left at noon. What happened?”
“We won’t know for sure about that until after the autopsy.”
The word “autopsy” seemed to be a catalyst. Terry grasped the steering wheel with both hands and pulled herself up straight. Since she still hadn’t taken the keys out of the ignition, a hollow bell-like tone was bonging out some infernal warning signal. The racket was driving Joanna crazy, but Terry Buckwalter seemed oblivious to it.
“Why an autopsy?” she asked.
Reaching across Terry, Joanna tried to extricate the key, but it wouldn’t pull free from the ignition. The gesture was enough to let Terry know what Joanna was trying to do. She silenced the ringing bell herself by removing the key with the aid of some hidden steering-column-mounted release.
“Who ordered it?” Terry asked again. “Don’t I have any say in that?”
“No, you don’t,” Joanna explained. “The autopsy was authorized by Ernie Carpenter. He’s the homicide investigator on the case.”
“Homicide. You’re saying Bucky was murdered?”
Joanna nodded. “Yes,” she said. “That’s tentative, of course, but that’s the direction the investigation is taking at this time.”
Joanna was still waiting for Terry’s shock to wear off and for the tears to start. For a moment or two it seemed as though they might, but then Terry turned away from Joanna. She pointed a shaking and accusing finger at Hal Morgan’s six-year-old maroon-colored Buick Century.
“It was him, then, wasn’t it,” she said softly. “It has to be him.”
“Hal Morgan?” Joanna asked.
Terry nodded.
“It could be,” Joanna allowed, “but of course we don’t know that for sure. Not yet. The investigation is just now getting underway.”
Without a word, Terry Buckwalter reached into the pocket of her leather bomber jacket and pulled out a scrap of paper, which she handed out the open door to Joanna.
“What’s this?” Joanna asked.
“Read it,” Terry answered. “Hal Morgan said he would kill Bucky, and now he has.”
“Hal Morgan threatened Bucky? Where? When? Nobody told me that this morning.”
“It wasn’t today,” Terry said. “It was last year. In Phoenix. At the courthouse. I saw him once in the hallway outside the courtroom.”
“What did he say?”
“He didn’t say anything,” Terry answered. “He gave me that note. Read it.”
Carefully Joanna began opening a tiny piece of paper that had been folded and refolded until it was smaller than an ordinary shirt button. Once unfolded, the scrap of paper was little more than an inch square.
The message itself, written in tiny script and in fading lead pencil, contained what amounted to two words. “Exodus 21:12.”
Joanna studied the note for a moment and then looked back at Terry Buckwalter’s pale face. “Hal Morgan threatened Bucky with a Bible verse?”
Terry nodded. “Yes.”
“What does it say? Offhand, I don’t remember which verse this one is.”
“I didn’t know it either,” Terry said. “Not at first. I looked it up that night in the Gideon Bible in my hotel room.” Closing her eyes, she recited the words from memory. “He that smiteth a man, so that he die, shall be surely put to death.”
“And you kept it?” Joanna asked. “The note, I mean?”
“Yes,” Terry said. “I put it in my makeup case and then I forgot about it. Until this morning. When I was putting on my makeup, I saw it again and I remembered. With Hal Morgan stationed right outside the clinic gates and carrying his picket sign, I could hardly forget.”
“Why did you put it in your pocket today?” Joanna asked.
“What?” Terry asked. She seemed to have traveled far away.
“You said you’ve had the note in your makeup kit for months, but today you’re carrying it around in your pocket,” Joanna said. “Why is that?”
Terry shrugged. “I meant to talk to Bucky about it.”
“You meant to, but you didn’t?”
Terry shook her head. “I never had a chance. By the time I came over to the clinic from the house, Bucky was already out in the parking lot raising hell. You were there, so you know what that was like. And when we went inside, we got so busy that I never had another opportunity.”
“I’ll need to keep this,” Joanna said, nodding toward the note. “I’ll have to give it to Detective Carpenter.”
“I understand,” Terry said. “It’s all right.”
Carefully refolding the scrap of paper, Joanna dropped it into her own pocket. When she looked down at Terry, the woman was still sitting there with both hands on the steering wheel, staring dry-eyed out through the T-Bird’s bug-spattered windshield.
“Are you all right, Terry?” Joanna asked, concerned that the other woman was going into shock. “Is there someone I can call to come stay here with you?”
Stony-eyed, Terry shook her head and climbed out of the car, shutting the door firmly behind her. “No,” she said. “I don’t need anyone right now. In fact, I should go in and check on the animals, especially on the post-ops. And Tigger, too,” she added. “If Bucky didn’t get around to pulling out those quills, I’ll have to call Dr. Wade down in Douglas and see if he can come help out.”
With that, Terry B
uckwalter hurried into the parking lot. A thunderstruck Joanna Brady watched her go. Nothing could have prepared her for Terry’s reaction, or rather, the lack thereof, to news of her husband’s death. It was almost as though Joanna had told her that Bucky had been called out of town for a few days on some reasonably urgent but non-life-threatening emergency.
Just then Ernie Carpenter, once again wearing his natty suit, emerged from the rest room, lugging his suitcase. “What’s going on?” he asked, examining Joanna’s face. “Has something happened?”
Joanna nodded. “Terry Buckwalter came home a few minutes ago. Someone called the golf course and told her about the fire. I just now informed her that Bucky’s dead.”
“Oh,” Ernie said. “If she’s here, maybe I can talk to her for a few minutes right now. It’ll save me having to make another trip later.”
“Do you mind if I tag along?” Joanna asked.
Carpenter’s steel-gray beetle brows knitted themselves into a frown. “Look, Sheriff Brady, I gave you my word. When I interview Mrs. Buckwalter, if it doesn’t look like it’s necessary, I won’t say a word about the condoms. You don’t need to come along and check up on me.”
“It’s not that,” Joanna said.
Still looking at the clinic door through which Terry Buckwalter had disappeared, Joanna reached into her pocket and pulled out the folded note. “Before you talk to her, there are two things you need to know. Number one, this note is one that Hal Morgan gave Terry Buckwalter in the hallway of the Maricopa County Courthouse last year. She considers it to be a death threat, and so do I.”
Unfolding the note, Ernie Carpenter held it at arm’s length. “What’s it say? I confess I’m not up on my Bible verses this afternoon.”
“The gist of it is pretty much an eye for an eye and all that jazz.”
“I see.” Ernie dropped the note into his pocket. “I believe you said two things.”
“Forget what I said about not telling Terry Buckwalter about the condoms,” Joanna answered. “My guess is she already knows.”
“What makes you say that?”
“Women’s intuition,” Joanna answered.
“In a homicide investigation, women’s intuition doesn’t count for much,” Carpenter observed. “You’ll have to do better than that.”
“When I told her, she didn’t cry,” Joanna said.
“Didn’t cry?” Carpenter asked.
Joanna shook her head. “Not at all. Not a single tear. It was almost as though she already knew she had lost him. After that, finding out he was dead didn’t really matter.”
A look of intense interest washed across Detective Carpenter’s face. “Did she say anything?” he asked.
“No,” Joanna answered. “It’s more what she didn’t say. At first she looked stunned. I thought she was going to cry, but she didn’t. Instead, a minute or so later, she walked into the clinic to go look after the animals.”
Ernie considered Joanna’s answer for a moment. “Different strokes for different folks,” he said. “Not everybody reacts to this kind of news in exactly the same way.”
“Maybe so,” Joanna agreed. “I can tell you this, though, from personal experience. Within five minutes of hearing Andy was dead, the last thing in the world I thought of was doing my job.”
“What did you think about?” Ernie Carpenter asked.
Joanna’s eyes filled with tears. Four and a half months after the fact, tears could still sneak up on her and catch her unawares. “That I would never see him again,” she managed. “That I’d never be able to talk with him or laugh with him. That we would never eat another meal together or sleep in the same bed.”
Ernie Carpenter listened gravely and then he nodded. “Maybe Terry Buckwalter isn’t quite as sad to lose Bucky as you were to lose Andy, Sheriff Brady. Andy was a quality type of guy. Bucky was…” The detective paused and shrugged. “Well, Bucky was Bucky,” he finished at last. “From what I hear, that wasn’t all good.”
He waited long enough for Joanna to dry her own tears. “Do you still want to come with me while I talk to her?”
Joanna nodded.
“Come on then. I really meant what I said a little while ago. I’m hoping we’ll be able to make a respectable homicide investigator out of you yet. Women’s intuition and all.”
FIVE
IT WAS so late by the time Joanna finally escaped the office that Eva Lou and Jim Bob Brady, Jenny’s paternal grandparents, insisted that they both stay in town for dinner. Joanna was only too happy to accept what was offered. Eva Lou’s winter evening fare included a hearty bowl of navy bean soup and a thick slab of her prizewinning, skillet-baked corn bread.
Naturally, Bucky Buckwalter’s death was one of the major topics of conversation, although Joanna tried to keep the discussion as low-key as possible. Joanna avoided the use of the word “murder,” saying only that Doc Buckwalter had died in a fire in the animal clinic’s small barn.
“But Kiddo’s all right?” Jenny asked in a subdued voice. “He didn’t get hurt or anything, did he?”
One of the reasons Jenny had always liked going to the clinic was that Bucky had often let her go out to the corral to give the vet’s rangy gelding a carrot or two.
“No,” Joanna assured her. “Kiddo’s fine.”
Jenny turned her fathomless blue eyes on her grandfather. “Kiddo’s a nice horse,” she said. “Dr. Buckwalter promised me once that he’d let me ride him someday. I guess now that’ll never happen.”
“No,” Jim Bob agreed. “I don’t suppose it will.”
“What about Tigger?” Jenny asked. “Will he be able to come home tomorrow?”
Joanna knew from talking to Bebe Noonan that Bucky hadn’t managed to pull out Tigger’s porcupine quills prior to his death. Terry Buckwalter had been in the process of getting Dr. Reginald Wade, the vet from Douglas, to come look after whatever animals were still in need of treatment—Tigger included. But Jenny seemed to be on a fairly even keel this evening, and Joanna didn’t want to say or do anything that would upset her.
“Most likely he’ll be home tomorrow, although I’m not sure when.”
“Before I go to school?”
“We’ll see,” Joanna told her. If there was going to be another blowup on the subject, Joanna wanted it to take place after they left Jim Bob and Eva Lou’s cozy duplex rather than before.
Jenny finished the last of her soup, put down her spoon, and pushed her chair away from the table. “Can I be excused then?” she asked, addressing her grandmother.
“May I,” Joanna corrected automatically.
Eva Lou smiled. “Sure, sweetie,” she said. “You run along and play for a while. It’ll give your mom a chance to relax a little.”
Jenny darted out of the dining room, heading for the bedroom/playroom her grandparents had declared her private domain in a house that was often Jennifer Brady’s home away from home. Jim Bob Brady waited until she was out of earshot. “So old Bucko bit it,” he said solemnly. “He couldn’t’ve been very old.”
“Fifty-three,” Joanna answered, sipping the cup of after-dinner decaf Eva Lou had placed in front of her.
“He was always a great one with horses, even when he was little,” Jim Bob continued. “I’ll never forget that deal with the second-story horse up Brewery Gulch. You ever hear about that?”
Eva Lou nodded. It was a story they had all heard many times, but Joanna obligingly shook her head. “Second-story horse?” she asked.
“Bucky wasn’t no more’an eleven or twelve when he pulled that one off. A couple of drunken rodeo riders raised so much trouble in Tombstone during Heldorado that they got run out of town. They ended up in a rented room up over the old Plugged Nickel. That was back before the place burned down. The next day they went right back to Tombstone, got in a card game, and won themselves a horse. I don’t know if they cheated or what, but that night, because they were afraid the former owner would come try to steal the horse back, they took the critter upstairs w
ith them when they went to bed.”
“Upstairs?” Joanna asked, egging him on. “You mean over the bar?”
“That’s right. The bartender heard the horse moving around up there and called the cops. None of the city cops had any idea what to do. When they first got there, they could barely open the door to the room because that horse’s butt was right in the way. He was standin’ there tied to the bedpost, just as pretty as could be, with both the drunks passed out cold on the bed.
“The one cop had a camera with him. He was gonna take a picture to prove it was real, that it wasn’t something he and his partner had just made up. Fortunately, the other cop had the good sense to talk him out of it. If a flash had gone off behind him like that, the horse most likely would’ve gone straight out the window and ended up splattered all over the street.
“Anyways, the police were still millin’ around out front and scratchin’ their heads when Bucky Buckwalter came down the Gulch to pick up the papers for his paper route. Except for him, his whole family was a shiftless bunch of do-nothin’s, but that Bucky was a worker. He was out making his own way long before he shoulda.
“So Bucky showed up and found out what was goin’ on. He convinced the cops to give him a chance to bring the horse out. And he did it, too. Covered the horse’s eyes with his jacket and then led him right down them wooden stairs, one step at a time, talkin’ to him a mile a minute like those so-called horse whisperers you hear so much about these days.
“Li’l Bucky got his picture in the paper afterward, too. Everybody said he was a hero. Once they sobered up, those cowboys sure as heck thought so, too. Get thinkin’ about it, I do believe they even gave him a reward.”
“Nobody ever said he wasn’t good with animals,” Joanna said quietly, thinking of Terry Buckwalter and Hal Morgan. “But when it came to people…” Deciding against saying anything more, Joanna let the unfinished statement linger in the air.
“So the killer’s that fellow from Wickenburg then?” Eva Lou said, changing the subject. “The one whose wife died up in Phoenix? That’s what it sounded like on the news tonight.”