Downfall

by J. A. Jance

  “Thank you,” Joanna said. “You’re getting better at your job all the time.”

  “But she took off just now grinning like the Cheshire cat,” Tom continued. “I don’t think I’ve ever seen Marliss looking that smug. What did you do to her?”

  “I decided to give her a carrot for a change—a carrot instead of a stick,” Joanna said. “It turns out she liked it.”

  “I came over to tell you that I just got off the phone with Thad Stock,” Tom added.

  “And?”

  “It’s just as we suspected. Jeremy was a good guy in public and a bullying tyrant at home. Thad had a full-ride football scholarship to the U of A, but Allison begged him to go to school somewhere out of state. A couple of months before he graduated from high school, Thad had tried to intervene on her behalf when Jeremy was beating on her, and she was afraid something bad was going to happen.”

  “She was right,” Joanna pointed out. “Something bad did happen,”

  “Yes, it did,” Tom agreed, “and poor Thad seems to think it’s all his fault—that if he’d stayed around home, maybe he could have prevented it.”

  “In that case, chances are he would have wound up dead, too.”

  “Right,” Tom nodded. “Probably so.”

  “Does he have someone in his corner right now?” Joanna asked. “Someone to help him through all this?”

  “I asked him that very question. He said he’s staying with friends in Sierra Vista at the moment, but he gave me his number. I’ll check in with him from time to time to see how he’s doing.”

  “Thanks, Tom,” Joanna said. “He’s going to need all the help he can get.”

  Toward midafternoon, the day turned cooler as puffy cumulus clouds promising a late-afternoon thunderstorm appeared overhead. As people started clearing away the barbecue debris, Butch and Bob, along with several others, went inside to collect the balloons. Dennis was allowed to carry only two of them. He wanted to carry one of the big bunches, but he didn’t weigh enough, and Butch worried he might be picked up and carried away.

  Out in the yard, Butch turned on his megaphone-style voice. “When Dennis understood we were having this party for his grandpa and grandma, he wanted to know if there would be balloons. As you can see, we have balloons. Since I know George was a huge Roy Rogers and Dale Evans fan, as we send the balloons up to heaven, I’m hoping anyone who remembers the words will join me in singing ‘Happy Trails to You.’”

  As the cloud of balloons soared skyward, so did a chorus of voices. When the song was over, there wasn’t a dry eye in the house.

  CHAPTER 46

  THERE WERE PLENTY OF HELPING HANDS TO MAKE LIGHT WORK OF the cleanup. By the time the rain started coming down in earnest, everyone was gone. The storm was furious but brief. An hour after it started, it was over.

  “I’m going to go out and say good night to the horses,” Jenny said. “I miss them.”

  “Okay if I come along?” Joanna asked.

  “Sure,” Jenny said, looking surprised. “Come right ahead.”

  They walked through puddles of water across the driveway toward the barn and corral. “It’s a good thing it didn’t rain like this last night,” Jenny offered.

  “I’ll say,” Joanna agreed. “That would have made for an even worse mess, especially since reinforcements would have had a devil of a time getting there in time.”

  “I was scared when I found out what was going on,” Jenny said. “And I was mad that Dad just took off without telling us.”

  “He was trying to protect you.”

  “I’m a grown-up now,” Jenny reminded her mother. “I don’t need protection. And at least, once it was over, he took me with him to the crime scene.”

  “That counts for something, doesn’t it?” Joanna asked.

  “I guess.”

  Out in the barn, Jenny produced some carrots, pulling them out of her pocket and feeding them to the horses as she scratched their necks and ruffled their muzzles.

  “You’re good with horses,” Joanna observed.

  “And you’re good with people,” Jenny countered. “I really liked what you said about Grandpa and Grandma today—especially what you said about Grandma.”

  It was as though a flashbulb exploded inside Joanna’s head. She was just as guilty of protecting Jenny as Butch had tried to be. Maybe now was the right time to stop doing that.

  “What I said was true,” she said after a moment.

  “Even the part about you being willful and defiant?”

  “Especially that part. I was a regular pain in your grandmother’s you-know-where.” She paused again, wondering how she would say what was coming or even if she should.

  “Did you know your father and I were pregnant with you when we got married?”

  “Sure,” Jenny said with a shrug. “I figured that out a long time ago. We even talked about it once, but it was right after Dad died. Maybe you’ve forgotten.”

  Is that possible? Joanna wondered. Could I have somehow misplaced such a momentous conversation?

  She took a deep breath before continuing. “She and my dad were just kids when they fell in love. When your grandmother turned up pregnant, abortions weren’t an option, and her parents insisted that she give the baby away.”

  “That must have been awful for her.”

  “I’m sure it was awful for both of them,” Joanna said. “But they were still in love, and as soon as they could, they got married anyway.”

  “Is that why I never met anyone from Grandma’s side of the family?” Jenny asked.

  “That’s why. And it’s also why, when I turned up pregnant with you, Grandma was devastated. She saw history repeating itself and blamed herself for not doing a better job of raising me. But history didn’t repeat itself, Jenny. My mother didn’t force me to give you up. She helped your father and me make it through. And the moment you turned up on the scene, she loved you like crazy.”

  “I loved her, too,” Jenny said. “She was prickly at times, but I still loved her.”

  “Prickly,” Joanna said, nodding. “She certainly was that. But she set a good example for me, Jen—a powerful example. And I want you to know whatever choices you make—good or bad—Butch and I will be there for you.”

  “No matter what?”

  “No matter what.”

  “Thank you, Mom,” Jenny said. “You’re the best.”

  CHAPTER 47

  FOR THE FIRST TIME IN PRETTY MUCH FOREVER, JOANNA STAYED home for an entire weekend. Everyone who had wanted to drop by had done so on Friday afternoon. Bob and Marcie left on Saturday morning to fly back to DC. On Sunday, Jenny left early to drive back to Flagstaff.

  Joanna spent a lot of time that weekend soaking in her own beautiful tub. As the pain of her aching muscles eased in the hot water, her overwrought emotions seemed to dissipate just like the mountains of bubble floating on the water’s surface.

  At some point in the middle of Sunday afternoon, she was sitting in the tub, almost dozing, and thinking about her mother’s many unsung acts of kindness, when another piece of divine inspiration came to her. She crawled out of the bath, dressed, and went looking for Butch and Denny. She found them in the dining room working on what looked like an impossibly complex LEGO project.

  “I’m going out for a while,” she said.

  “Promise me that you are not going into the office,” Butch said.

  “I promise. But where’s that purchase agreement from the cemetery—the one Bob gave you?”

  “On my desk,” Butch answered. “In the in-box. But why do you need it?”

  “Because I think I know someone who would love to have it—make that someone who deserves to have it.”

  She drove past the Justice Center without even being tempted to turn in. She drove past the traffic circle and Lavender Pit and wound her way up into Old Bisbee. Only when she put the Enclave in park in front of Mona Tipton’s modest clapboard house on Quality Hill did she have second thoughts. Maybe she s
hould have called ahead. Maybe she shouldn’t have come at all.

  Too late to reconsider, Joanna told herself. It’s now or never.

  She climbed up the wooden stairway. The handrail was a bit rickety. It probably needed a handyman’s attention. She punched the button on the old-fashioned round doorbell and heard it buzz inside the house. A few seconds later, slow footsteps creaked across linoleum-covered floorboards.

  The woman who opened the door was the same one Joanna had seen some time ago when she had come here to let Mona know that Joanna’s father’s death—Mona’s lover’s death—long thought to be an accident, had actually been murder-for-hire.

  Mona was dressed the same way she’d been on that other occasion. Even on a hot and quiet Sunday afternoon in early September, she looked as though she was ready to walk out the door and head off to work. She wore a neatly pressed white blouse and a long-out-of-fashion double-breasted suit that was fraying at the cuffs. Sensible heels and a pair of panty hose completed her ensemble. What was different was her hair. It had been gunmetal gray the last time Joanna had seen her. Now it had gone completely white.

  “Why, Joanna,” Mona said in genuine surprise, pushing open a flimsy wood-framed screen door. “What in the world are you doing here? I should think you’d have your hands full this weekend.”

  “I have, but things have quieted down a little,” Joanna replied. “I have something I wanted to drop off. May I come in?”

  “Of course. Please. What can I get you?”

  “Nothing, thank you,” she said.

  Inside, a noisy swamp cooler kept the house reasonably cool.

  Mona settled slowly into a swaybacked easy chair. “Is something the matter?” she asked.

  “Not really the matter, no,” Joanna said. “It’s just that when my mother and George died, there was some confusion about cemetery arrangements. It turned out we ended up with an extra burial plot, one that wasn’t needed.”

  “An extra plot?” Mona asked with a frown.

  “Yes, my mother and brother were arranging to purchase one without my knowledge, and now we have this one.” She reached into her purse, pulled out the purchase agreement, and held it out to Mona over the shiny wooden surface of an intervening coffee table.

  “I want to offer it to you,” Joanna said, “if you’re interested, that is. I know how much you cared for my dad, and I know he cared for you, too. If you’d like to be buried in the family plot with him, now’s your chance.”

  “Why on earth would you do such a thing?” Mona asked. “And what would people say?”

  “After all these years, does it matter what people say? And I’m doing it because it seems like the right thing to do.”

  Tentatively, Mona reached for the piece of paper. Once it was in her hand, she put on a pair of reading glasses and scanned it all the way through.

  “I don’t know what to say,” she said finally, clutching the paper to her breast. “I think this is the kindest thing anyone has ever done for me. Of course, I’ll accept. It means the world to me. Thank you.”

  “You’re welcome,” Joanna said. “But there is one small detail that may make you change your mind.”

  “What’s that?”

  “The Rojas plots are on the far side of my mother, so you wouldn’t actually be next to my dad, you’d be next to Eleanor.”

  There was a moment of silence before Mona Tipton’s face broke into a sad smile. “I can’t think of anything more appropriate,” she murmured. “Eleanor always came between D.H. and me. This way she still can—forever and ever.”

  Joanna drove home feeling as though a huge weight had been lifted from her shoulders. For dinner, they had leftovers from the barbecue. Not long after Dennis hit the hay, they did, too.

  “It’s been a hell of a couple of weeks,” Butch said as they lay side by side in the dark. “I’m glad it’s over.”

  “Me, too,” she said. Butch hadn’t asked about the purchase agreement, and she hadn’t told him. Maybe it was time to take another page out of her mother’s playbook—do good works and keep quiet about them.

  “Much as I hate to admit it,” Butch said, “I was dead wrong about Tom Hadlock being your chief deputy. When the chips were down, he really stepped up. You always said you saw something in him that nobody else did, and I’m here to say, you were right.”

  “Thanks,” Joanna said. “He did step up, and now, with a fully functioning chief deputy in place, when Eleanor Sage Dixon is born, I intend to take a whole month of maternity leave, whether or not I win the election.”

  “Sure you will,” Butch replied with a laugh, “but only when hell freezes over.”

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  J. A. JANCE is the New York Times bestselling author of the J. P. Beaumont series, the Joanna Brady series, the Ali Reynolds series, and five interrelated thrillers about the Walker Family as well as a volume of poetry. Born in South Dakota and brought up in Bisbee, Arizona, Jance lives with her husband in Seattle, Washington, and Tucson, Arizona.

  Discover great authors, exclusive offers, and more at hc.com.

  ALSO BY J. A. JANCE

  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

  Justice Denied

  Fire and Ice

  Betrayal of Trust

  Ring in the Dead: A J. P. Beaumont Novella

  Second Watch

  Stand Down: A J. P. Beaumont Novella

  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

  Dead Wrong

  Damage Control

  Fire and Ice

  Judgment Call

  The Old Blue Line: A Joanna Brady Novella

  Remains of Innocence

  Random Acts: A Joanna Brady and Ali

  Reynolds Novella

  WALKER FAMILY NOVELS

  Hour of the Hunter

  Kiss of the Bees

  Day of the Dead

  Queen of the Night

  Dance of the Bones: A J. P. Beaumont and Brandon Walker Novel

  ALI REYNOLDS NOVELS

  Edge of Evil

  Web of Evil

  Hand of Evil

  Cruel Intent

  Trial by Fire

  Fatal Error

  Left for Dead

  Deadly Stakes

  Moving Target

  A Last Goodbye: An Ali Reynolds Novella

  Cold Betrayal

  No Honor Among Thieves: An Ali Reynolds/Joanna Brady Novella

  Clawback

  POETRY

  After the Fire

  CREDITS

  Cover design by Richard L. Aquan

  Cover photograph © Bradley Sauter / Alamy Stock Photo

  COPYRIGHT

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, organizations, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

  DOWNFALL. Copyright © 2016 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 nonexclusive, nontransferable r
ight to access and read the text of this e-book on screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, 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 hereafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.

  FIRST EDITION

  EPub Edition September 2016 ISBN 9780062297730

  ISBN 978-0-06-229771-6

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