by J. A. Jance
“I’m sorry,” she said at last, when she finished. “I shouldn’t be running on and on like this, but I’m trying to make sense of it all. I’m glad we finally figured out who did it, but I’m embarrassed, too, that I fell for so much of Terry’s story. I shouldn’t have.”
“Why wouldn’t you?” Butch said. “You’re a truthful person. You tend to believe what other people tell you. That’s a fault in all the liars of this world, not a fault in you.”
“Still, you’re probably bored to tears.”
“Not at all,” he replied. “I’m trying to add it all up. It turns out that Joanna Brady is smart but naive. She’s also sweet and tough. She’s a good mother and a good friend. She’s full of raw courage backed up by a certain amount of sheer bluff.”
Joanna laughed then. “It sounds as though you think I’m an ordinary schizophrenic.”
“No,” Butch Dixon said quietly. “Not ordinary in any sense of the word. I think you’re downright enchanting.”
Embarrassed, Joanna could think of nothing else to say. They drove on into the parking lot of the Rob Roy in total silence.
Even at nine o’clock, the place was still hopping. Joanna and Butch were shown into the bar to wait for their table to be set. Butch looked around at the golf memorabilia decorating the walls.
“Does the pro out here know what happened to his star golfer?” Butch asked.
Joanna nodded. “As soon as Detective Carbajal and Dick Voland came back from Elfrida, Ernie sent his assistant out here to give Peter Wilkes the bad news. I guess he was pretty broken up about it.”
They ordered wine—a bottle of Cabernet Sauvignon. “What are you going to do about the horse?” Butch asked.
Joanna shrugged. “Take him, I guess. What choice do I have? Jim Bob and Eva Lou don’t have anyplace to keep Kiddo. I do.”
“But don’t you resent that? Your father-in-law interfering like that—giving Jenny that kind of birthday present without even consulting you about it beforehand?”
Joanna thought for a minute before she answered. “I guess I do resent it,” she admitted. “But I know what’s going on. Jim Bob and Eva Lou are just trying to make up for Andy’s being gone. I guess we all are,” she added.
The barmaid brought the wine and was just in the process of removing the cork when Joanna caught sight of her mother. Eleanor Lathrop and George Winfield emerged from the dining room. While George stopped off to visit with someone in the vestibule, Eleanor headed for the rest room.
“Excuse me for a minute,” Joanna said to Butch. “That’s my mother. I need to talk to her.”
When Eleanor stepped out of the stall in the bathroom a few minutes later, she was astonished to find her daughter standing there, leaning against one of the washbasins.
“Why, Joanna!” Eleanor exclaimed. “What on earth are you doing here?”
“Waiting for you,” Joanna said. “I’m here with a friend and saw you and George Winfield come out of the dining room.”
Eleanor was clearly flustered. “I’m sorry, Joanna. I meant to call you and talk to you about this. I’m embarrassed that we didn’t have—”
“Mother,” Joanna interrupted. “Don’t worry about it.”
“Don’t worry?” Eleanor echoed. “But I should have. It’s—”
“What you do or don’t do isn’t any of my business,” Joanna said. “It’s your life. Live a little.”
“But—”
“No buts, Mother,” Joanna said firmly. “Now come on. There’s someone waiting for me out in the bar, someone I’d like you to meet.”
“Is it a he?” Eleanor asked.
Joanna laughed. “Yes, Mother, a he. His name is Butch Dixon. He’s a friend of mine.”
George Winfield and Eleanor stayed long enough to be introduced, but they left when the hostess arrived to tell Joanna and Butch that their table was ready.
“Have George and your mother been an item for long?” Butch asked.
“I’m only her daughter,” Joanna said with a laugh. “How would I know?”
They had an enjoyable dinner, so nice, in fact, that by the time Joanna dropped Butch off at the Grand Hotel, they had agreed on having a picnic lunch the next afternoon. When Joanna came home and went to bed, she did so with a sense of completion. She had done her job. She had uncovered things about some of her neighbors and acquaintances that she would rather not have known. She had seen the disastrous results that came when people lied and cheated, but she had also tapped into parts of herself—the courage part Butch had talked about—that she hadn’t known existed.
When the phone woke her the next morning, she groaned as she picked it up. “What now?”
“Is it true?” Angie Kellogg asked.
“Is what true?”
“What I read in the paper. I stopped off for breakfast and picked up a newspaper while I was at it.”
“I’m not sure what’s in the paper,” Joanna mumbled, turning to look at the clock. It was five after seven.
“About the guy with the parrots,” Angie said. “I think Hacker is his name. Age twenty-seven. Is he for real?”
“As far as I know, yes.”
“But I’ve never seen parrots in the wild, only in cages.”
“From what I hear, that seems to be the parrots’ problem, too.”
“Could I go see them? The parrots, I mean.”
Angie Kellogg’s enthusiasm made Joanna smile. “Sure,” she said. “Mr. Hacker would probably be delighted to meet someone who cares as much about birds as he does.”
“But how do I find him?”
“Drive up to Pinery in the Chiricahuas, get on Forest Road 42 and ask for the parrot guy. I’m sure someone will be able to tell you where he is.”
“I may just do that,” Angie said.
Joanna picked Jenny up from Sue Espy’s house in time for Sunday school and church. During the service, Jeff Daniels held the quiet Esther on his lap while it took both Joanna and Jenny to keep Ruth corralled. Marianne’s Thanksgiving-in-January sermon left not one dry eye in the congregation. During coffee hour afterward, one whole Sunday-school table was stacked high with baby presents.
Over Jenny’s objections, Joanna rushed her out of the social hall before she was able to snag a second helping of cake. “What’s the hurry?” Jenny asked.
“We’re going on a picnic,” Joanna replied. “I’ve ordered a picnic lunch from the Grub-box uptown. It’s supposed to be ready by now.”
“Where are we going?” Jenny asked.
“It’s a surprise,” Joanna told her.
As expected, lunch was packed and ready to go. They drove from there to the Grand Hotel where Butch Dixon sat waiting for them in the lobby reading another book—Smilla’s Sense of Snow.
Once he was in the car, they headed east on Highway 80. “Where are we going?” Jenny asked again, settling into the backseat.
“The Wonderland of Rocks,” Joanna said.
“Where’s that?” Butch asked.
“In the Chiricahuas. If you look on the map, it’s called the Chiricahua National Monument, but locals call it the Wonderland of Rocks.”
“It’s where Grandpa Lathrop died, isn’t it,” Jenny asked quietly.
“Yes,” Joanna said. As they drove across and up the long valley, Joanna told Butch the story of Big Hank Lathrop’s death, about how he had stopped to change a woman’s tire and had been run down by a drunk driver while Joanna and her friends had looked on in horror. “And until Friday night,” she finished, “I had never been back.”
“Not once?” Butch asked. “Not even with Andy?”
“No,” Joanna said “Not even. But I decided this morning that today is the first day of the rest of my life. This was always one of my favorite places. It was silly to put off coming here for so long.”
Driving into the monument, they rode past the greasy oil slick where Hal Morgan’s Buick had burned to ashes. Joanna said nothing. That was part of her other life. She was determined not to let w
ork intrude on this gloriously clear, wonderfully warm January day.
The first glimpses of the fantastic rhyolite pillars brought gasps of astonishment from Jenny in the backseat.
“This must have been a sacred place to the Indians who lived here,” Butch said. “What did they call it?”
Joanna shook her head. “I don’t know,” she said. “Whatever it was, they probably kept it a secret, and I don’t blame them.”
Later in the afternoon, after lunch, while Jenny set off to explore one of the trails, Joanna and Butch sat watching a lizard sun himself. Green-and-gray skin made him almost invisible on the lichen-covered rock.
“So what do you think?” Butch asked. “Will Hal Morgan be able to get his life back now?”
Joanna thought long and hard before she replied. The question had more than one layer of meaning. So did her answer.
“I don’t know,” she said. “It takes time to get over something like that.”
“Yes,” Butch Dixon said gently, “I’m sure it does.”
About the Author
J.A. JANCE is the New York Times bestselling author of the J. P. Beaumont series, the Joanna Brady series, three interrelated thrillers featuring the Walker family, and Edge of Evil. Born in South Dakota and brought up in Bisbee, Arizona, Jance lives with her husband in Seattle, Washington, and Tucson, Arizona.
www.jajance.com
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ALSO BY J. A. JANCE
Joanna Brady Mysteries
Desert Heat
Tombstone Courage
Shoot/Don’t Shoot
Dead to Rights
Skeleton Canyon
Rattlesnake Crossing
Outlaw Mountain
Devil’s Claw
Paradise Lost
Partner in Crime
Exit Wounds
J. P. Beaumont Mysteries
Until Proven Guilty
Injustice for All
Trial by Fury
Taking the Fifth
Improbable Cause
A More Perfect Union
Dismissed with Prejudice
Minor in Possession
Payment in Kind
Without Due Process
Failure to Appear
Lying in Wait
Name Withheld
Breach of Duty
Birds of Prey
Partner in Crime
Long Time Gone
and
Hour of the Hunter
Kiss of the Bees
Day of the Dead
Copyright
This book is a work of fiction. The characters, incidents, and dialogue are drawn from the author’s imagination and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to actual events or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
DEAD TO RIGHTS. Copyright © 2006 by J.A. Jance. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.
ePub edition July 2006 ISBN 9780061762611
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