by J. A. Jance
“Here’s reporter Jill January with the first of two related stories on tonight’s newscast. Later on this half hour, Jill will be back with another story concerning a local group determined to do something about the increasing numbers of Valley homicide cases resulting from domestic violence.”
The picture on the screen switched to the figure of a young woman standing posed, microphone in hand, on the steps of a building Joanna instantly recognized as the Maricopa County Courthouse. Only when the camera zoomed in for a close-up did she realize the reporter was the same young woman who had thrust a microphone in Joanna’s face as she and Leann Jessup were filing out of the MAVEN-sponsored vigil.
The photographed face of a good-looking young woman flashed across the screen. “A month ago, Rhonda Weaver Norton moved out of the upscale home she shared with ASU economics professor Dean Norton,” Jill January said. “She moved into a furnished studio apartment in Tempe. At the time, Rhonda told her mother that she feared for her life. She claimed that her husband had threatened to kill her if she went through with plans to leave him.”
While what looked like a yearbook head-shot of a balding and smiling middle-aged man filled the screen, the reporter continued talking. “This afternoon, Professor Norton was arraigned in Maricopa County Superior Court, charged with first-degree murder in the bludgeon slaying of his estranged wife. Rhonda Norton had been missing for three days when her badly beaten body was found by a Salt River Project utilities installation crew working on a power line south of Carefree.
“Judge Roseann Blacksmith, citing the gravity of the case, ordered Professor Norton held without bond. Trial was set for February eighteenth.
“Rhonda Norton’s mother, well-known Sedona-area pastel artist Lael Weaver Gastone, was in the courtroom today to witness her former son-in-law’s arraignment. She expressed the hope that the prosecutor’s office would seek either the death penalty or life in prison without possibility of parole.
“At the Maricopa County Courthouse, I’m Jill January reporting.”
When the reporter signed off, the picture returned to the studio anchor. “In the past eleven months, sixteen cases of alleged domestic violence have resulted in death. Because the accused is a well-known and widely respected college professor, the Norton homicide case is the most high-profile of all those cases. Later in this newscast, Jill January will take us to a candlelight vigil that is being held on the steps of the capitol building this evening to focus attention on this increasingly difficult issue. In other news tonight…”
With lightning fingers running the remote control, Jenny fast-forwarded the video through weather and sports, stopping only when Jill January’s smiling face reappeared on the screen.
“The crime of domestic violence is spiraling in Phoenix just as it is in other parts of the country. Domestic violence was once thought to be limited to lower-class households. Increasingly, however, authorities are finding that domestic violence is a crime that crosses all racial and economic lines. Victims and perpetrators alike come from all walks of life and from all educational levels. Often, the violence escalates to the point of serious injury or even death. So far this year, sixteen area women have died as a result of homicidal violence in which the prime suspects have all turned out to be either current or former spouses or domestic partners.
“Tonight a group called MAVEN—Maricopa Anti-Violence Empowerment Network—is doing something to address that problem. At a chilly nighttime rally on the capitol steps in downtown Phoenix this evening, domestic violence activist Matilda Hirales-Steinowitz read the deadly roll.”
The tape switched to the podium onstage at the candlelight vigil, where the spokeswoman from MAVEN stepped forward to intone the names of the victims. “The first to die, at three o’clock on the afternoon of January third, was Anna Maria Dominguez, age twenty-six.”
Again, the reporter’s face appeared on-screen. “Anna Maria Dominguez was childless when she died as a result of a shotgun blast to the face. Her unemployed husband then turned the gun on himself. He died at the scene. She died a short time later after undergoing surgery at a local hospital.
“Often, however, when domestic violence ends in murder, children of the dead women become victims as well.”
“Get ready,” Jenny warned Cecelia. “Here you come.”
Ceci Grijalva’s wide-eyed face filled the screen. Her voice, trembling audibly, whispered through the television set’s speakers. “I have a little brother…” she began.
Joanna turned away from the televised Cecelia to watch the live one. When tears spilled over on the little girl’s cheeks, Joanna moved to the couch and placed a comforting arm around Ceci’s narrow shoulders.
“…he cries anyway, and I can’t make him stop. That’s all,” Cecelia finished saying on-screen while the child on the couch sobbed quietly, her whole body quaking under the gentle pressure of Joanna’s protective arm.
“They wanted me to say something nice about my mom,” Ceci said, her voice choking. “But when I got there, all I could think about was Pepe.”
“You did fine,” Joanna said.
“Nana Duffy says it’s my daddy’s fault, that he did it, but I don’t think so. Do you?” Ceci looked questioningly up at Joanna through tear-dewed eyelashes. Joanna wanted to comfort the grieving child, but what could she tell her?
Torn between what she knew and what she could say, “I don’t know” was Joanna’s only possible answer.
“And now here’s my mom,” Jenny said.
The camera focused on Joanna and Leann making their way through the crowd.
“…police officers in attendance,” Jill January was saying. “Cochise County Sheriff Joanna Brady.”
“Cecelia Grijalva is a friend of my daughter’s…” Joanna heard herself saying when suddenly Ceci scrambled out from under her arm.
“I know him, too,” she said, pointing to a spot on the screen where a man’s face had momentarily materialized directly over Leann’s shoulder. He was leading a crowd of people filing down the aisle toward the exit.
When first Joanna and then Leann stopped, so did he, but not soon enough. He blundered into Leann, bumping her from behind with such force that he almost knocked her down.
The camera was focused on Joanna in the foreground. Her words were the ones being spoken on tape. Still, the jostling in the crowd behind her was visible as well. As she watched the televised Leann turn around to see what had hit her, Joanna remembered Leann telling her about the incident on their way back to the car after the vigil.
And the glare Leann had mentioned—the one she had said might have been enough to spark a drive-by shooting—was there, captured in the glow of the television lights. Even thirdhand—filtered through camera, videotape, and TV screen—the man’s ugly, accusing stare was nothing short of chilling. He and Leann stood eye to eye for only a moment. Then he glanced up and into the camera as though seeing it for the first time. A fraction of a second later, he ducked to one side behind Leann and disappeared into the crowd.
“You know him?” Joanna asked.
Ceci nodded.
“Who is he?”
Ceci shrugged. “One of my mom’s friends.”
“What’s his name?”
“I don’t know. She didn’t tell me her friends’ names.”
“Jenny,” Joanna said, “would you please run the tape back to that spot and stop it there? I want to look at that sequence again.”
Jenny’s agile fingers darted knowledgeably over the remote control. Moments later, the man’s face reappeared. With his features frozen in place on the television screen, the glower on his face was even more ominous than it had seemed in passing.
“Did you know he was there that night?” Joanna asked.
Ceci shook her head. “No. I didn’t see him until just now.”
“Were there other people there that you knew?”
“Some,” Ceci answered. “There were two teachers from my old school, Mrs. Baker and Mrs. Sand
oval. And a man named Mr. Gray from the place where Mom used to work, but he talked to Grandpa, not to me.”
“Didn’t this friend of your mother’s come talk to you?” Joanna asked. “Or to your grandparents?”
Ceci shook her head. “If he did, I didn’t see him.”
“Okay, Jenny. Let it play again.”
As Cecelia’s words played back one more time, Joanna closed her eyes momentarily, remembering the vigil, recalling how people had poured up onto the stage after the speeches, how they had gathered in clumps around the various speakers, offering condolences and words of support. Everyone there had come to the vigil with some cause to be angry, but it was only on the face of that one man that the anger had registered full force. Still, if he had felt that strongly about what had happened to Serena, why hadn’t he come forward to visit with the dead woman’s family?
“Did he come to your house while your mother was alive?”
“A couple of times.”
“What kind of car did he drive?”
“Not a car. A truck. A green truck with a camper on it. He brought us an old chair once. He said someone in Sun City was throwing it away because nobody bought it at a garage sale. He said he knew we needed furniture. And sometimes he’d help my mom bring the clothes home from the laundry.”
The phone rang just then, and Jenny pounced on it. “It’s Grandma,” she mouthed silently to Joanna, holding her hand over the mouthpiece as she handed the receiver over to her mother.
“Well,” Eleanor Lathrop said huffily to Joanna, “are you coming down to lunch or not? We’re already down in the coffee shop. Bob’s plane is at two, so he doesn’t have all day. Surely you aren’t going to stand us up two days in a row, are you?”
“Sorry, Mother,” Joanna said. “We were watching something on the VCR. The girls and I will be right there.” Joanna put down the phone. “Turn it off, Jenny. We’ll have to finish this later. Come on.”
Jenny switched off both the TV and VCR. “Have you ever met Grandma Lathrop?” Jenny asked Ceci as they started down the hallway.
“I don’t think so,” Ceci answered.
“She’s a little weird,” Jenny warned. “She sounds mad sometimes, even when she isn’t.”
“Nana Duffy’s like that, too,” Ceci said.
Walking behind them, Joanna realized that having a thorny grandmother was something else the two little girls had in common.
22
Halfway across the Hohokam’s coffee shop, Joanna could hear Eleanor. Already in fine form and haranguing as usual, she was reeling off one of her unending litanies to Bob Brundage, who sat, head politely inclined in her direction, providing an attentive and apparently sympathetic audience.
“From the time that man was elected sheriff,” Eleanor was saying, “I don’t believe we ever again ate on time, not as a family. He was perpetually late. It was always something. I kept roasts warm in the oven until they turned to stone. And now that Joanna’s sheriff, it’s happening all over.”
Hearing Eleanor’s familiar whine of complaint, Joanna found herself wondering what had happened to her mother. What had divested her of what must have been freethinking teenage rebelliousness and turned her into an unbending prig? What had happened to that youthful, romantic love between her parents—the forbidden Romeo-and-Juliet affair her long-lost brother had found so captivating? By the time Joanna had any recollection of D. H. and Eleanor Lathrop, they had settled into a state of constant warfare, perpetually wrangling over everything and nothing.
As Joanna and the two girls crossed the room, Bob Brundage stood up to greet them in a gentlemanly fashion. To Joanna’s surprise, however, when he came around the table to hold her chair for her, he winked, but only after making sure the gesture was safely concealed from Eleanor’s view.
“And you must be Cecelia,” he said gravely, helping Ceci into her chair as well. “Jenny was telling me about you last night at dinner. I’m sorry to hear about your mother.”
“Thank you,” Ceci murmured.
“Marliss Shackleford wants you to call her,” Eleanor said sourly to Joanna, sidestepping Bob’s polite attention to social niceties. “She wants to talk to you. Something about a picture.”
“Oh, no,” Joanna said. “I forgot all about that.”
“All about what?”
“She asked me for a picture—an eleven-by-fourteen glossy of me. She asked for it just before I left town. She’s on the facilities committee at the Women’s Club. They need the picture to frame and put up in the department. It’s supposed to go in that glass display case at the far end of the lobby along with pictures of all my predecessors.”
“But, Mom,” Jenny objected, “you don’t have a picture like that. All those other guys are standing there wearing their cowboy hats and their guns. And they all look sort of…well, mean, even Grandpa Lathrop.”
Eleanor shook her head disparagingly. Jenny’s observant objection might not have met with Eleanor Lathrop’s approval, but to Joanna’s way of thinking, it was on the money. The display in question, located at the back of the department’s public lobby, featured a rogues’ gallery of all the previous sheriffs of Cochise County, who did all happen to be guys.
The photos in question were primarily of the formally posed variety. In most the subject wore western attire complimented by obligatory Stetsons. All of them wore guns, while only one was pictured with his horse. Most of them frowned into the camera, their grim faces looking for all the world as though they were battling terrible cases of indigestion.
Ignoring Eleanor’s disapproval, Joanna couldn’t resist smiling at Jenny. “The mean look shouldn’t be any trouble. I can handle that,” Joanna said. “And I’ve already got a gun. My big problem is finding a suitable horse and a hat.”
“You’re not taking this seriously enough, Joanna,” Eleanor scolded. “You’re an important public official now. Your picture ought to be properly displayed right along with all the others. That doesn’t mean it has to be exactly like all the others. Maybe you could use the same picture that was on your campaign literature. That one’s very dignified and also very ladylike. If I were you, I’d give Marliss one of those. And don’t let it slide, either. People appreciate it when public servants handle those kinds of details promptly.”
With Bob Brundage looking on, Joanna couldn’t help smarting under Eleanor’s semipublic rebuke. “Marliss only asked me about it in church this last Sunday, Mother,” Joanna replied. “I wasn’t exactly in a position where I could haul a picture out of my purse and hand it over on the spot. And I’ve been a little busy ever since then. Besides, I don’t know why there’s such a rush. They don’t make the presentation until the annual Women’s Club luncheon at the end of January.”
“That’s not the point,” Eleanor said. “Marliss still needs to talk to you about it, and probably about everything else as well.”
“What everything else?” Joanna asked. “The food at the jail?”
“Hardly,” Eleanor sniffed. “Obviously, you haven’t read today’s paper. Your name’s splashed all over it as usual. It makes you sound like—”
“Like what?” Joanna asked.
Eleanor frowned. “Never mind,” she said.
A folded newspaper lay beside Eleanor’s place mat. Jenny reached for it.
“That’s great. First Mom’s on TV, and now she’s in the paper,” Jenny gloated. “Can I read it? Please?”
Eleanor covered the paper with her hand, adroitly keeping Jenny from touching it. “Certainly not. You shouldn’t be exposed to this kind of thing. It’s all about that Jessup woman. It’s bad enough for your mother to be mixed up in all this murder business, but then for them to publish things about people’s personal bad habits right there in a family newspaper….”
“Oh,” Jenny said. “Is that why you don’t want me to read it? Because it talks about lesbians? I already knew about that from going to see Mom’s friend at the hospital yesterday. Her brother called her a dyke, so I sort of
figured it out.”
“Jenny!” Eleanor exclaimed, her face going pale. “What language!”
“Well, that’s what he said, didn’t he, Mom?” Joanna returned defiantly.
“So you know about lesbians then, do you, Jenny?” Bob Brundage asked, gently nudging himself into what had been only a three-way conversation.
“’Course,” Jenny answered offhandedly.
“Did you learn about that from your mom or from school?” he asked, carefully avoiding the icy disapproval stamped on Eleanor Lathrop’s face. “Or do the schools in Bisbee have classes in the birds and the bees?”
Knowing Eleanor’s attitude toward mealtime discussions of anything remotely off-color, Joanna observed this abrupt turn of conversation in stunned silence. What in the world was Bob Brundage thinking? she wondered. Was he deliberately baiting Eleanor by encouraging such a discussion? But of course, since Bob didn’t know Eleanor well, it was possible he had no idea of her zero-tolerance attitude toward nonparlor conversation, as she called it.
On the other hand, maybe he did. As he gazed expectantly at Jenny, awaiting her answer with rapt attention, Joanna caught what seemed to be a twinkle of amusement glinting in his eyes. I’ll be, Joanna thought. He’s doing it on purpose.
At that precise moment, she made the mistake of taking a tiny sip of water.
“Mom told me some of it,” Jenny said seriously. “But we mostly learn about it in school, along with AIDS and all that other icky stuff. Except we don’t call it the birds and the bees.”
Bob Brundage raised a questioning eyebrow. “You don’t? What do you call it, then?”
Jenny sighed. “When it’s about men and women, we call it the birds and the bees. But when it’s about men and men or women and women, we call it the birds and the birds.”
“I see,” Bob Brundage said, nodding and smiling.
“Jennifer Ann!” Eleanor gasped, while Joanna choked on the water, sending a very undignified and unladylike spray out of her mouth and nose into a hastily grabbed napkin. When she looked up at last, Bob Brundage winked at her again.