by J. A. Jance
Jenny pouted. “Oh, Mom, do I have to? Can’t I stay up just a little longer?”
Joanna shook her head. “No way. I don’t know about you, but I have a big day ahead of me tomorrow. After church and as soon as dinner is over, I have to drive all the way to Phoenix—that’s a good four-hour trip. I’d better get some sleep tonight, or I’ll doze off at the wheel.”
Folding down the covers on what she still considered to be her side of the bed, Joanna crawled in and pulled the comforter up around her chin. Climbing into the double bed was when the now familiar ache of Andy’s absence hit her anew with soul-wrenching reality.
Instead of taking the hint and heading for her own bed, Jenny simply snuggled closer. “Do you have to go to Phoenix?” she asked.
“Peoria,” Joanna corrected, fighting her way through her pain and back into the conversation. “It’s north of Phoenix, remember?” Jenny said nothing and Joanna shook her head in exasperation. “Jennifer Ann Brady, you know I have to go. We’ve been over this a million times.”
“But since you’re already elected sheriff, how come you have to take classes? If you didn’t go to the academy, they wouldn’t diselect you, would they?”
“Diselect isn’t a word,” Joanna pointed out. “But you’re right. Even if I flunked this course—which I won’t—no one is going to take my badge away.”
“Then why go? Why couldn’t you just stay home instead of going all the way up there? I want you here.”
Joanna tried to be patient. “I may have been elected sheriff,” she explained, “but I’ve never been a real police officer—a trained police officer—before. I know something about it because of Grandpa Lathrop and Daddy, but the bottom line is I know a whole lot more about selling insurance than I do about being a cop. The most important job the sheriff does is to be the department’s leader. You know what a leader is, don’t you?”
Jenny considered for a moment before she nodded. “Mrs. Mosley’s my Brownie leader.”
“Right. And what does she do?”
“She takes us on camp-outs. She shows us how to make things, like sit-upons and buddy-burners and stuff. Last week she started teaching us how to tie knots.”
“But she couldn’t teach you how to do any of those things if she didn’t already know them herself, could she?”
Jennifer shrugged. “I guess not,” she said.
“Being sheriff is just like being a troop leader,” Joanna explained. “In order to lead the department, I have to be able to show the people who work under me that I know what’s going on—that I know what I’m doing. I have to know what to do and how to do it before I can tell my officers what I expect of them. And the only way to learn all those things in a hurry is to take a crash course like the one they offer at the Arizona Police Officers Academy.”
“But why does it have to start the week before Thanksgiving?” Jenny objected. “Couldn’t it start afterward? You won’t even be back home until two days before Christmas. When will we go Christmas shopping?”
Andrew Roy Brady, Joanna’s husband and Jenny’s father, had been gunned down in mid-September and had died a day later. After ten years of marriage, this was the first holiday season Joanna would spend without him. She couldn’t very well tell Jenny how much she dreaded what was coming, starting with Thanksgiving later that week.
After all, with Andy dead, what did Joanna have to be thankful for? How could she explain to her daughter that the little house the family had lived in on High Lonesome Ranch—the only home Jenny had ever known—was the very last place Joanna Brady wanted to be when it came time for Thanksgiving or Christmas dinner? How would she be able to eat a celebratory dinner with an empty place in Andy’s spot at the head of the table? How could she make Jenny understand how much Joanna dreaded the prospect of hauling the holiday decorations down from the tiny attic or of putting up a tree? Some words simply couldn’t be spoken.
“Thanksgiving is already under control,” Joanna said firmly. “Grandma and Grandpa Brady will bring you up to see me right after school on Wednesday afternoon. We’ll have a nice Thanksgiving dinner in the restaurant at the hotel. I won’t have to be in class again until Monday. We’ll have the whole weekend together up until Sunday afternoon. Maybe we can do some of our Christmas shopping then. We might even try visiting the Phoenix Zoo. Would you like that?”
“I guess,” Jenny answered without enthusiasm. “Why isn’t Grandma Lathrop coming along? Didn’t you ask her?”
Good question, Joanna thought. Why isn’t my mother coming along? Eleanor Lathrop had been invited to join the Thanksgiving expedition not just once, but three separate times—by Joanna and by both Jim Bob and Eva Lou Brady. Eleanor had turned down each separate invitation. She claimed she had some pressing social engagement that would keep her from spending even one night away from home, to say nothing of three. Joanna had no doubt that Eleanor would have been more enthusiastic about the trip had the idea been hers originally rather than Jim Bob and Eva Lou’s. That was something else Joanna couldn’t explain to Jenny.
“I asked her, but I guess she’s just too busy,” Joanna answered lamely. With a firm but loving shove, Joanna finally booted her daughter out of bed. “Go on, now. It’s time to get in your own bed.”
Reluctantly, Jenny made her way across the room. She stopped beside the three packed and zippered suitcases. She glowered at them as if they were cause rather than result. “I liked it better when Daddy was here,” she said.
Joanna knew part of the reason Jenny didn’t want to go to her own room—part of the reason she didn’t want her mother to be away from home—stemmed from a totally understandable sense of loss. The child was still grieving, and rightfully so. And although Jenny’s blurted words weren’t meant to be hurtful to her mother, they hurt nonetheless.
Joanna winced. “So did I,” she answered.
Jenny made it as far as the bedroom door before she paused again. “Come on, you dogs,” she ordered. “Time for bed.”
Slowly Sadie and Tigger, Jenny’s two dogs, rose from their sprawled sleeping positions on the bedside rug. They both stretched languorously, then followed Jenny out of the room. When the door closed, Joanna switched off her light and then lay there in the dark, wrestling with her own feelings of loneliness and grief.
She had been agonizingly honest when she told Jenny that she too had liked things better the way they were before Andy’s death. It was two months now since Joanna had found Andy lying wounded and bleeding in the sand beside his pickup. There were still times when she couldn’t believe he was gone, when she wanted to call him up at work to tell him about something Jenny had said or done. Times Joanna longed to have him sitting across from her in the breakfast nook, drinking coffee and talking over the day’s scheduling logistics. Times she wanted desperately to have him back beside her in the bed so she could cuddle up next to his back and draw Andy’s radiating warmth into her own body. Even now her feet were so distressingly cold that she wondered if she’d ever be able to get to sleep.
Minutes later, despite her cold feet, Joanna was starting to drift off when the telephone rang. She snapped on the light before picking up the receiver. It was almost eleven. “Hello?”
“Damn,” Chief Deputy for Administration Frank Montoya said, hearing her sleep-fogged voice. “It’s late, isn’t it? I just got home a few minutes ago, but I should have checked the time before I called. I woke you up, didn’t I?”
“It’s okay, Frank,” Joanna mumbled as graciously as she could manage. “I wasn’t really asleep. What’s up?”
Frank Montoya, the former Willcox city marshal, had been one of Joanna’s two opponents in her race for the office of sheriff. In joint appearances on the campaign trail, they had each confronted the loud-mouthed third candidate, Al Freeman. Those appearances had resulted in the formation of an unlikely friendship. Once elected and trying to handle the department’s entrenched and none-too-subtle opposition to her new administration, Joanna had drafted fellow outsid
er Frank Montoya to serve as her chief deputy for administration.
“I had dinner with my folks tonight,” Frank said. “My cousin’s getting married two weeks from now, so my mother had one of her command performance dinners in honor of the soon-to-be newlyweds. I was on my way out the door when she pulled me aside and asked me what are we going to do about Jorge Grijalva. ‘Who the hell is Jorge Grijalva?’ I asked.” Frank paused for a moment. “Ever heard of him?”
“Who, me?” Joanna returned.
“Yes, you.”
Joanna closed her eyes in concentration. She had been so caught up in her own troubles that it was hard to remember someone else’s, but it came to her a moment later. “Ceci’s father,” she breathed.
“Ceci?” Frank asked.
“Ceci Grijalva. She was in school and Brownies with Jenny last year. I believe her parents must have gotten a divorce. The mother and the two kids moved to Phoenix right after school got out. The father worked at the lime plant down by Paul Spur until the mother turned up dead somewhere outside Phoenix. It happened about the same time Andy was killed, so I didn’t pay that much attention. As I understand it, Jorge is the prime suspect.”
“Only suspect,” Frank Montoya corrected.
Joanna sat up in bed so she could think better. “Didn’t the detectives on the case pick him up at work down in Paul Spur? A day or so after I was sworn in, I remember seeing a letter from the chief of police up in Peoria. He sent a note to the department, thanking us for our cooperation. Since it happened on Dick Voland’s watch, I passed the letter along to him. That’s all I know about it.”
“You know a lot more than I did, then,” Frank Montoya returned. “You’re right. The family had been living in Bisbee for a while, but Jorge is originally from Douglas. Pirtleville, actually. And it turns out that Jorge’s mother, Juanita, is an old friend of my mother’s. They used to work together years ago, picking peaches at the orchards out in Elfrida. According to Mom, Juanita thinks Jorge is being sold down the river on account of something he didn’t do. She asked me if I…I mean, if we…could do anything to help.”
“Like what?” Joanna asked.
“I don’t know. All I can tell you is his mother swears he didn’t do it.”
“Mothers always swear their darlings didn’t do it,” Joanna countered. “Didn’t you know that?”
“I suppose I did,” Frank agreed, “but if we could just…”
“Just what?”
“Listen to her,” Frank said. “That’s all Mom wanted us to do—listen.”
Joanna shook her head. “Look, Frank,” she said. “Be reasonable. What good will listening do? This case doesn’t have anything at all to do with Cochise County. In case you haven’t noticed, Peoria, Arizona, happens to be in Maricopa County, a good hundred and forty miles outside our jurisdiction.”
“But you’re going up there tomorrow,” Frank argued. “Couldn’t you talk to her for a few minutes before you go?”
“It was a domestic, Frank,” Joanna said. “You know the statistics as well as I do. What could I say to Juanita Grijalva other than to tell her that the cops who arrested her precious Jorge are most likely on the right track?”
“Probably nothing,” Frank Montoya agreed somberly. “But if you talk to her, it might help. If nothing else, maybe she’ll feel better. Jorge is her only son. No matter what happens afterward, if she’s actually spoken to someone in authority, she’ll at least have the comfort of knowing she did everything in her power to help.”
Frank Montoya’s arguments were tough to turn aside. Knowing she was losing, Joanna shook her head. “You should have been in sales, Frank,” she said with a short laugh. “You sure as hell know how to close a deal. But here’s the next problem—scheduling. I go to church in the morning. We finish up with that around eleven-thirty or so, then we come rushing home because my mother-in-law is cooking up a big Sunday dinner. We’ll probably eat around two, and I’ll need to light out of here for Phoenix no later than three. When in all that do you think I’ll be able to squeeze in an appointment with Juanita Grijalva?”
“How about if I bring her by the High Lonesome right around one?” Frank asked. “Would that be all right?”
“All right, all right,” Joanna agreed at last. “But why do you have to bring her? Tell her how to find the place, and she can come by herself.”
“No, she can’t,” Frank said. “Not very well. For one thing, Juanita Grijalva doesn’t have a car. For another, she can’t drive. She’s legally blind.”
Joanna assimilated what he had said. “There’s nothing like playing on a person’s sympathy, is there?”
Now it was Frank Montoya’s turn to laugh. “I had to,” he said sheepishly. “I’m sorry, Joanna, but if you hadn’t agreed to talk to Juanita, I never would have heard the end of it. Once my mother gets going on something like this, she can be hell on wheels.”
Joanna stopped him in mid-apology. “Don’t worry about it, Frank. It’ll be fine. I’ve never met your mother, but I have one just like her.”
“So you know how it is?”
“In spades,” Joanna answered. “So get off the phone and let me get some sleep. I’ll see you tomorrow. Around one.”
Joanna put down the phone. Once again she switched off the lamp on her bedside table. In the long weeks following Andy’s murder, sleeping properly was one of the most difficult things Joanna Brady had to do. Loneliness usually descended like a smothering cloud every time she crawled into the bed she and Andy had shared for so many years. Usually she tossed and turned through the endless nighttime hours, rather than falling asleep.
This time, Joanna surprised herself by falling asleep almost instantly—as soon as she put her head back down on the pillow. It was a much-needed and welcome change.
“Last call,” the bartender said. “Motel time.”
At ten to one on a Sunday morning, only the last few Saturday night regulars were still hanging out in Peoria’s Roundhouse Bar and Grill.
“Hit me again, Butch,” Dave Thompson said, sagging over the bar, resting his beefy arms along the rounded edge. “The last crop of students for this year shows up this afternoon. Classes this session don’t end until a couple of days before Christmas. With the holidays messing things up, this one is always a bitch. You can’t get ’em to concentrate on what they’re supposed to be doing. Can’t keep ’em focused. Naturally, the women are worse than the men.”
“Naturally,” Butch Dixon agreed mildly, putting a draft Coors on the bar in front of Dave Thompson, the superintendent of the Arizona Police Officers Academy three quarters of a mile away. “By the way, you’ve had several, Dave,” Butch observed. “Want me to call you a cab?”
“Naw,” Thompson replied. “Thanks but no thanks. Before I decided to get snockered on my last night out, I asked Larry here if he’d mind giving me a ride home. Shit. Last thing I need is a damned DWI. Right, Larry?”
Larry Dysart was also a Roundhouse regular. These days his drink of choice was limited to coffee or tonic with lime. He came to the bar almost every night and spent long congenial evenings discussing literature with the bartender, arguing politics with everybody else, and scribbling in a series of battered spiral notebooks.
He looked up now from pen and paper. “Right, Dave,” Larry said. “No problem. I’ll be glad to give you a lift home.”
3
Even though Joanna was only going through the motions, she went to church the next morning. She sat there in the pew, seemingly attentive, while her best friend and pastor, the Reverend Marianne Maculyea, gave a stirring pre-Thanksgiving sermon. Instead of listening, though, Joanna’s mind was focused on the fact that she would be gone—completely out of town—for more than a month. She was scheduled to spend five and a half weeks taking a basic training class at the Arizona Police Officers Academy in Peoria.
There was plenty to worry about. For instance, what about clothes? Yes, her suitcases were all zipped shut, but had she packed enough of the
right things? This would be the longest time she had ever been away from home. She wasn’t terrifically happy about the idea of staying in a dorm. As much trouble as she’d had lately sleeping in her own bed, how well would she fare in a strange one?
But the bottom line—the real focus of her worry—was always Jenny. How would a protracted absence from her mother affect this child whose sense of well-being had already been shattered by her father’s murder? Had it not been for the generosity of her in-laws, Joanna might well have had to bag the whole idea and stay home. Putting their own lives on hold, Jim Bob and Eva Lou Brady had agreed to come out and stay on High Lonesome Ranch for the duration of Joanna’s absence. Not only would they care for Jenny, getting her to and from school each day, they would also look after the livestock and do any other chores that needed doing.
Professionally, Joanna’s attendance at the academy was a thorny issue. Of course she needed to go. That was self-evident, even to Joanna. Her close call during an armed showdown on a copper-mine tailings dump a few days earlier had shown her in life-and-death, up-close-and-personal terms exactly how much she didn’t know about the world of law enforcement.
Joanna’s connections to law enforcement were peripheral rather than professional. Years earlier, her father, D. H. “Big Hank” Lathrop, had served as sheriff of Cochise County. And Andy, her husband, had been a deputy sheriff as well as a candidate for the office of sheriff when he was gunned down by a drug lord’s hired hit man. Joanna’s work résumé as office manager of an insurance agency contained no items of legal background or law enforcement training. Some of those educational gaps could be made up by reading and studying on her own, but an organized course of study taught by professional instructors would provide a more thorough and efficient way of getting the job done.
As the word job surfaced in Joanna’s head, so did a whole other line of concern—work. If a five-and-a-half-week absence could wreak havoc in her personal life, what would it do to her two-week-old administration at the Cochise County Sheriff’s Department? While she was gone, her two chief deputies—Frank Montoya for administration and Dick Voland for operations—would be running the show. That arrangement—the possibly volatile combination of two former antagonists—would either function as a form of checks and balances or else it would blow up in Joanna’s face. Sitting there in church, not listening to the sermon, Joanna could worry about what might happen, but she couldn’t predict which way things would go.