Tombstone Courage

by J. A. Jance

  “All this trial business must be almost as hard on her as it is on you,” Marianne continued. Her voice was kind: sincere and caring where Marliss Shackleford’s had been sharp and self-serving.

  Harold dropped his gaze and examined his mud-spattered boots. “Yes,” he allowed reluctantly. “I reckon it is.”

  Marianne reached out and took the old man’s hand. “You take care of yourself now, Harold.” She turned to Marliss and engaged her in some kind of small talk that finally set Harold free to go vote. He quickly planted himself in front of Barbara Wentworth’s table and gratefully dived into the election process.

  In other times, he and Barb Wentworth would have shot the breeze while she found his name in the voter-registration list, showed him where to sign, and gave him his ballot. This time, Barbara seemed disinclined to talk. Did even the no-nonsense Barbara Wentworth read People? he wondered.

  Minutes later, breathing a sigh of relief, Harold escaped to the relative privacy of a voting booth. He read each page of the ballot carefully. It wasn’t a very exciting election. The usual people were running for the usual offices, and no one would be particularly surprised when the incumbents were reelected to their traditional positions in the state legislature or on the board of supervisors. As far as county races were concerned, the only one of any special interest to Harold Patterson was the wide-open contest for the office of sheriff.

  Two months earlier, right after the primary and when the general-election ballots had already been printed, all hell had broken loose in Cochise County. Both candidates for sheriff, the two men whose names even now were listed on the preprinted ballots, had perished the previous September in a series of harrowing events that had stunned the entire state. The previous sheriff, Walter V. McFadden, and his opponent, Deputy Andrew Brady, had succumbed to gunshot wounds within days of one another.

  In the ensuing investigation, the community had been shocked to learn that several long-term members of the Sheriff’s Department had been deeply involved in drug-trafficking. By the time the smoke cleared, Joanna Brady—widow of one of the dead men—had agreed to run for sheriff in her husband’s stead. For the past two months, the murders, the investigation, and the subsequent campaign for sheriff had been front-page news. Only Holly Patterson’s forthcoming legal battle with her father had finally displaced the Sheriff’s Department from top position on the front pages of the Bisbee Bee.

  Joanna Brady was someone Harold Patterson remembered as the feisty daughter of yet another Cochise County sheriff, the long-dead D. H. “Big Hank” Lathrop. Big Hank had once played poker with Harold on a fairly regular basis. The other two current candidates—one from Willcox and the other from Sierra Vista—weren’t people Harold knew personally. In fact, standing in the voting booth, he barely remembered their names.

  What he remembered best about Joanna Lathrop Brady was seeing her as a sprightly little red-haired imp in a freshly pressed Brownie uniform standing outside one or the other of the Phelps Dodge Company stores. She had been a capable businesswoman even way back then, selling him Girl Scout cookies and carefully counting back the change. That long-ago child with her two missing front teeth deserved far better cards than the tough ones life had dealt her with disturbing frequency.

  When she was a high school sophomore, Joanna’s father had died in a tragic automobile accident. Now, somewhere under thirty years of age, she was already the widow of a gunned-down police officer, but she wasn’t ready to give up and quit. By agreeing to run in her husband’s place, she showed plenty of grit and determination, qualities Harold Patterson both possessed himself and admired in others.

  To Harold’s way of thinking, a vote for Joanna Brady was a vote for continuity, for the way things ought to be.

  In the space provided for write-in candidates, Harold used a stubby pencil to write in Joanna Brady’s name. Then, squaring his shoulders, he emerged from the voting booth and dropped his ballot into the box. Voting for Joanna Brady felt good. It almost made the stop at the church worthwhile; almost balanced the scales for his having to put up with the likes of Tottie Galbraith and Marliss Shackleford.

  Almost, but not quite.

  Harold left the church before anyone else could corner him into a conversation. He certainly didn’t want to hang around long enough to risk running into Ivy when she came in to vote.

  After all, it was bad enough that Harold was forced to undergo public attacks from one of his two daughters. He worried that if Ivy saw him there in the church and simply cut him dead, that would be almost as bad or worse than a noisy row with Holly. That would give the ladies of the United Christian Prayer Fellowship so much to talk about that they wouldn’t shut up for a week.

  Harold Lamm Patterson, one tough old bird, could handle just about anything, but the prospect of having Ivy—his favorite—spurn him in public was more than he could endure.

  Four

  BISBEE AS it is known now was created in the fifties when several different hamlets, including Old Bisbee, incorporated into a single entity. Forty years later, the old lines of demarcation still persist.

  That election morning, seven miles down the road in the Warren business district, not much work was being conducted at the Davis Insurance Agency on Arizona Street. When Joanna arrived, she found two baskets of “good wishes” flowers from clients waiting on her desk. A box of glazed doughnuts and a percolator of coffee covered most of the surface of the receptionist’s desk. The receptionist herself, a young woman named Lisa Connors, fielded an occasional business phone call between serving coffee and doughnuts to the steady parade of drop-by well-wishers.

  Milo Davis himself, flushing with good humor from the tip of the resin-imprisoned scorpion on his bolo tie to the top of his shiny bald pate, grinned, shook hands, and told people he wasn’t losing an office manager, he was gaining a sheriff. Milo’s shoulder-whacking jest was made with the best of intentions, but it bothered Joanna all the same.

  From high school on, this building with its single, three-office suite was the only workplace she had ever known, and Milo Davis had been her only boss. If she won the election, all that would change. Joanna felt like a reluctant and uncertain fledgling about to be shoved from the nest, regardless of whether or not she could fly. And yet she did want to win, didn’t she?

  At nine, Milo left for a nine-thirty appointment. Moments after he left the office a call came in from a newspaper reporter from the Arizona Sun in Tucson. When Lisa put the call through to Joanna, the woman explained she was calling for an Election Day comment from the woman who might possibly be Arizona’s first female county sheriff. The reporter’s questions were the sort Joanna had come to dread during the course of the campaign.

  As far as the media were concerned, the election of the Cochise County sheriff was newsworthy primarily because Joanna Brady, one of the three candidates, was a woman. And no matter how she answered the questions, the way the articles were written generally made Joanna sound like a wild-eyed, gun-toting feminist—an unlikely cross between Dirty Harry and Gloria Steinem.

  Finished with the call, Joanna was sorting through a stack of home-office underwriting requirements and correspondence when Harold Lamm Patterson appeared at Lisa’s desk. Standing politely with a damp and battered Stetson in hand, he asked to see Milo right away. Joanna heard Lisa tell Harold that Milo was out for most of the morning, and she saw the look of grave disappointment that washed across the old man’s leathery features. Like everyone else in town, Joanna knew Harold Patterson had his hands full with his ring-tailed bitch of a daughter back home and making trouble. There was no reason to add to the old man’s woes.

  Getting up, Joanna wandered to the outer office and stopped beside Lisa’s desk. “If it’s something urgent, Mr. Patterson,” Joanna suggested, “perhaps I could be of help.”

  “I would appreciate it, ma’am,” Harold Patterson said sincerely. “I surely would.”

  When ushered into Joanna’s office, Harold took the seat she motioned h
im into. Like a wary old bird poised for sudden flight, he perched uneasily on the chair with his hat balanced precariously on one knobby knee. He squinted at her through narrow, lidded eyes.

  “You’re Hank Lathrop’s little girl, aren’t you? The one who’s running for sheriff?”

  Joanna nodded without comment. Little girl? Hardly, but compared to Harold’s eighty-odd years, she must seem improbably young for that kind of responsibility.

  “I reckon your daddy would be real proud of you if he could see you today,” Harold continued. “I voted for you, by the way. Stopped off on my way into town.”

  Joanna felt a flush creep up her neck. “Thank you, Mr. Patterson. I appreciate that. But tell me, what can I do for you today?”

  “I’m used to dealing with Milo,” Harold Patterson hedged. “And with Milo’s father before that…”

  “It’s all right, Mr. Patterson. If you don’t want me to take care of whatever it is, that’ll be fine. The problem is, I have no idea how long Milo will be gone. It could be after lunch before he comes back. I do have access to all of the files, and…”

  Harold leaned forward in his chair and lowered his voice. “It’s personal, ma’am,” he whispered so Lisa couldn’t hear. “Personal and confidential.”

  Joanna took the hint, got up, and firmly closed the connecting door between her office and Lisa’s. “There,” she said, sitting back down. “Is that better?”

  Harold nodded. “What do I have to do to change the beneficiaries on my policies?” he asked. “Do I have to bring the policies into the office, or what? I think they’re over at the bank….”

  “Oh, no. If that’s all you want, I can do it in a minute. All you have to do is fill out a change-of-beneficiary form.”

  “Just one form for all the policies?”

  “No. You use a separate form for each one, but I will need the policy numbers.”

  “Dang. I don’t have them along.”

  Joanna smiled. “No problem, Mr. Patterson. Give me your date of birth.”

  “November the twelfth, 1910.”

  Joanna switched on her desktop computer and booted it up. Once she had entered Harold Patterson’s name and birth date into the database, the screen showed her a listing of his set of several policies. Harold Patterson had come into the world when automobiles were still a rarity. He watched the computer operation with some interest.

  “You have five policies in all with us, Mr. Patterson,” Joanna said a moment later. “Would you care to have a printout on each one?”

  “You can do that?”

  “Certainly.”

  Joanna typed in a series of commands, and moments later the dot-matrix printer behind her whined out a stream of printed paper. Tearing off the tractor-feed holes and separating the printouts into individual sheets, she handed them over to Harold. He sat there for some time, squinting at each one in turn.

  “Is everything in order?” Joanna asked.

  He looked up at her as if startled at the sound of her voice. “Oh, yes. They seem to be fine.”

  Joanna reached into her bottom drawer, thumbed through a series of files, and came up with a fistful of change-of-beneficiary forms. “You don’t have to complete them here, but they do have to be properly witnessed at the time of signing. Did you want to change the beneficiary designation on all of the policies?”

  Harold first nodded, then shook his head. “Yes. Well, no. I’m not sure.” Finally, he tossed the stack of papers back onto Joanna’s desk.

  “How can I tell?” he demanded in disgust. “Eyes are so damn bad, I can’t hardly read the dang things.”

  Joanna picked them up and glanced through them. “Your daughter Ivy is the sole beneficiary on all of them,” she explained. “If she’s not then living, the proceeds are to be divided equally between your nephew, Burton Kimball, and your daughter Holly. If you’d like to make a change in those arrangements, Mr. Patterson, I’d be happy to complete the forms for you.”

  To Joanna’s surprise, Harold Patterson’s eyes filled with a sudden pool of tears that threatened to overflow his eyes despite the old man’s valiant attempt to blink them back.

  “Always thought of myself as sort of a caretaker,” he mumbled hoarsely. “Thought I’d take care of what my pa gave me and pass it along to my children and to their children’s children. As it turns out, my girls are the end of the line. Instead of valuing the Rocking P and what I’ve worked for all my life, they’re fighting over it.”

  He shook his head sadly. “Reminds me of a pair of dogs I had once, years ago, an older one and a pup. The old dog had this blanket, an old, wore-out horse blanket, that he slept on out in the barn. The pup took a liking to that blanket and tried to make off with it. There was plenty of blanket to go around. They could have both used it, but they each pulled and tugged on it until there was nothing left but pieces. Turned out neither one of them had the good of it.”

  Harold paused and looked at Joanna. “You see what I mean, don’t you?”

  Joanna nodded. “I think so, yes. Your daughters?”

  He nodded wearily. “And the Rocking P is the blanket. Or maybe I am. You want your children to grow up to like each other or at least get along, but it seems like that’s not how things work out most of the time.”

  “Mr. Patterson,” Joanna said kindly, “I can see that you’re under a good deal of stress today. Understandably so. Why don’t you take the printouts and the change-of-beneficiary forms with you and give yourself some time to think things over and sort them out.”

  As she talked, Joanna folded the two separate stacks of paper together into a single letter-sized sheaf and placed them in a blank manila envelope.

  “Talk to your daughters and your nephew if you think it will help. Or wait until tomorrow or the next day and speak to Milo himself about this. In other words, don’t rush into anything. And if you do change the beneficiary and later on you think better of it, then all you have to do is sign another set of forms.” She smiled. “We’re bureaucrats here, Mr. Patterson. We like doing paper-work. It gives our lives meaning.”

  For the first time since Harold Patterson entered her office, Joanna noticed the ghost of an answering smile playing at the corners of his mouth.

  “Thank you,” he said, taking the envelope and putting it in his pocket. “Thank you kindly. Sounds like real good advice.”

  He used the arm of the chair for support and awkwardly raised himself up. “I’m so stiff,” he said, “I must be getting old. And I ought to be ashamed of myself, acting like such a dang fool in public. I hate to be so much trouble.”

  “It’s no trouble at all,” Joanna assured him.

  Harold Patterson held out his gnarled hand, and Joanna shook it warmly, hoping her outward appearance camouflaged the lump in her throat. She didn’t want him to see how much his distress affected her.

  Standing before her, he seemed shrunken somehow, as though the very act of talking with her about his problems had robbed him of some of his vitality. He seemed far more frail than when he’d first walked into her office a short time earlier. It hurt Joanna to see this proud old man reduced to near tears, awkwardly mumbling apologies and thanks.

  There was much Joanna Lathrop Brady should have thanked him for. Buying all those Girl Scout cookies was only the barest beginning. Although she hadn’t learned the truth of the matter until much later, Harold Patterson’s behind-the-scenes lobbying had resulted in Joanna’s being nominated for Girl’s State the year after her father died. And when she graduated from Bisbee High School the year after that, Harold had delivered an inspiring if homespun commencement address.

  As they shook hands now in Joanna’s office, she remembered that other long-ago handshake on a warm May night under the lights of the baseball stadium. The principal had called out Joanna’s name, and she had marched across the stage to the place where Harold Patterson, as president of the school board, was dispensing the coveted red-and-gray diplomas. Every graduate in line both before and after
Joanna Lathrop received a straightforward handshake, and so did Joanna.

  But after that, and before she could continue across the stage, Harold had grasped her by both shoulders and held her for a moment. Looking her straight in the eye, he said, “Your daddy would have been very proud.” Then he had winked at her, given her a gentle shove, and sent her on her way.

  Other people had said much the same thing to her that night, but Harold’s words were the only ones she remembered specifically. The timely encouragement and comical wink, both from her father’s old poker-playing buddy, had given her a much-needed boost. His kindness had helped propel her across the stage and somehow granted her permission to toss her red cap with its gray tassel high in the air along with everybody else’s when the long ceremony was finally over.

  Now, with the tables suddenly reversed, what comfort could she offer him in his time of need?

  “We’re here to help, Mr. Patterson,” she said softly. “Anytime. It’s no trouble at all.”

  Harold Lamm Patterson nodded and started toward the door, where he paused with one hand on the knob. “What’s Milo Davis going to do without you if you go and get yourself elected?” he asked.

  Joanna had been wondering that herself, but it wasn’t a subject she had broached aloud, not with Lisa and certainly not with Milo. It seemed as though talking about what might happen if she won could bring her bad luck, sort of like stepping on a crack and breaking your mother’s back.

  She laughed. “Nobody’s indispensable, Mr. Patterson. I’m sure Milo and Lisa would get along without me just fine.”

  “Well,” Harold Patterson said, “they may just have to.”

  When he finally limped out of her office, Joanna followed him as far as the office window. His mud-splattered Scout was parked out front in the place usually reserved for one of Milo Davis’ several Buicks. To Joanna’s surprise, the old man by-passed the Scout. And instead of utilizing the crosswalk, he marched across Arizona Street on a long, jaywalking diagonal, making straight for the bank.