“That’s right,” Butch agreed with a laugh. “Eva Lou Brady’s not the ignoring type.”
He wrapped an arm around Joanna’s shoulder and pulled her five-foot-four frame close to him. “The poker game was obviously an unqualified success. How did the rest of your day go?”
Joanna sighed. “I spent the whole afternoon in a terminally boring meeting run by a nerdy little guy who’s never been in law enforcement in his life. His job—as an overpaid ‘outside’ consultant from someplace back East—Massachusetts, I think—is to get us to sign up our departments for what his company has to offer.”
“Which is?”
“They do what he calls ‘team building’ workshops. For some exorbitant amount of money, everyone in the department is cycled through a ‘rigorous outdoor experience’ where they learn to ‘count’ on each other. What the hell does he think we do out there day after day, sell lollipops? And what makes him think I can afford to pay my people to go off camping in the boonies instead of patrolling the county? He claims the experience ‘creates an atmosphere of trust and team spirit.’ I felt like telling him that I’m a sheriff, not a cheerleader, but some of the other guys were really gung-ho about it.”
“Bill Forsythe’s such a cool macho dude,” Butch offered. “That program sounds like it would be right up his alley.”
“You’re on the money there,” Joanna said. “He and a couple of the other guys are ready to write the program into their budgets the minute they get back home. Maybe their budgets can handle it. Mine can’t. I’ve got my hands and budget full trying to deal with the ten thousand Undocumented Aliens who come through Cochise County every month. What about you?”
Butch grinned. “Personally speaking, I don’t have a UDA problem.”
Joanna whacked him on the chest. “You know what I mean. What did you do today?”
She glanced at the clock. In anticipation of the late-night poker session, she had drunk several cups of coffee during dinner. Now, at almost two in the morning, that dose of late-in-the-day caffeine showed no signs of wearing off.
“Nothing much,” Butch replied.
“You mean you didn’t go antiquing with the wives?”
Butch shook his head. “Nope. You know me and antiques. I opted out of that one.”
“Golfing, then? I heard somebody raving about the golf course here.”
Butch shook his head. “No golfing,” he said.
“Did you go someplace then?” Joanna asked.
“We drove up to Page in a county-owned vehicle,” Butch reminded her. “That makes it a vehicle I’m not allowed to drive, remember?”
Joanna winced. “Sorry,” she said. “I forgot. So what did you do?”
“I finished.”
“Finished what?”
“The manuscript.”
For over a year Butch had been working on his first novel, banging away at it on his Toshiba laptop whenever he could find time to spare. He had even taken the computer along on their honeymoon trip to Paris the previous month. He had spent the early-morning hours working while Joanna had reveled in the incredible luxury of sleeping in. Shy about showing a work in progress, Butch had refused to allow anyone to read the text while he was working on it, and that had included Joanna. Over the months she had come to regard his work on the computer as one of those things Butch did. In the process, she had lost track of the idea that eventually his book might be done and that she might actually be allowed to read it.
Joanna sat up in bed. “You finished? You mean the book is really finished? That’s wonderful.”
“The first draft is done,” Butch cautioned. “But that doesn’t mean the book is finished. I doubt it’s what an agent or editor would call finished. I’m sure there’s a lot of work still to do.”
Joanna’s green eyes sparkled with excitement. “When do I get to read it?”
Butch shrugged. “I’m not sure. I’d rather you read a printed copy. That way, if you have any comments or suggestions, you can make note of them in the margins on the hard copy.”
Joanna brimmed with enthusiasm. “But I want to read it now. Right away.”
“When we get home,” Butch said, “I’ll hook up the computer and run you off a copy.”
“But we won’t be home until Monday,” Joanna objected.
With Jenny off on a three-night camp-out with her Girl Scout troop, Joanna and Butch had some time to themselves, and they were prepared to take full advantage of it. They were scheduled to stay over in Page until Saturday morning. Leaving there, they would drive back only as far as Phoenix, where Butch was scheduled to be a member of the wedding of one of his former employees, a waitress from the now-leveled Roundhouse Bar and Grill up in Peoria. Drafted to stand up for the bride, Butch had been appointed man of honor, as opposed to the groom’s best man. The rehearsal dinner was set for Saturday evening, while the wedding itself would be held on Sunday afternoon.
“I want to read it now,” Joanna wailed, doing a credible imitation of a disgruntled three-year-old’s temper tantrum. “Isn’t there some way to have it printed before Monday? I’m off work the whole weekend, Butch. You’ll be busy with the wedding and man-of-honor duties tomorrow and Sunday both. While you’re doing that, I can lie around and do nothing but read. I haven’t done something that decadent in years.”
“You’re quite the salesman,” Butch said, laughing. “No wonder Milo Davis had you out hawking insurance before you got elected sheriff. But maybe we could find a place in Phoenix that could run off a copy from my disk, although I’m sure it would be a lot cheaper to do it on our printer at home.”
“But I won’t have a weekend off when we get home,” Joanna pointed out. “As soon as we cross into Cochise County, I’ll be back in the soup at home and at work both, and you’ll be tied up working on plans for the new house. We won’t even have time to sit down and talk about it.”
Between Joanna’s job and Butch’s project of herding their proposed house design through the planning and permit stage, the newlyweds didn’t have much time to spend together.
“All right, all right,” Butch agreed with a chuckle. “I know when I’m licked. Now look. It’s almost two o’clock in the morning. What time is your first meeting?”
“Eight,” she said.
“Don’t you think we ought to turn off the light and try to get some sleep?”
“I’m not sleepy. Too much coffee.”
“Turn over then and let me rub your back. That might help.”
She lay down and turned over on her stomach. “You say you’ll rub my back, but you really mean you’ll do something else.”
He nuzzled the back of her neck. “That, too,” he said. “I have it on good authority that works almost as well as a sleeping pill.”
“Maybe you’re the one who should have been selling insurance,” she told him.
It turned out he was right. Before long, caffeine or not, Joanna was sound asleep. When the alarm went off at six-thirty, she reached over and flicked it off. She was still in bed and dozing when a room service attendant knocked on their door at seven-fifteen, bringing with him the breakfast Butch had ordered the night before by hanging a form on the outside of their door.
While Joanna scrambled into her clothing and makeup, Butch settled down at the table with a cup of coffee and USA Today.
“I really like this man-of-leisure stuff,” he said, when she came out of the bathroom and stood shoving her feet into a pair of heels. Like everything else in Joanna Brady’s wardrobe, the shoes were new—purchased as replacements for ones destroyed by Reba Singleton’s rampage through Joanna’s house. The shoes looked nice, but they were still a long way from being comfortable.
“Don’t rub it in,” she grumbled. “If you’re not writing, what are you planning to do while I’m in meetings?”
“Today the wives are scheduled to take a trip out to the Navajo Reservation,” Butch answered. “Since I’m done writing, I thought I’d tag along with them on that. I’m espe
cially interested in Indian-made turquoise and silver jewelry.”
“In other words, while I’m stuck listening to one more dreary speaker, you’ll be spending the day on a bus loaded with a dozen or so women I don’t know.”
Butch lowered the paper and looked at her. “You’re not jealous, are you?”
Joanna shrugged. “Maybe a little,” she admitted.
“Have you seen any of those other women?” he asked. “They’re all a lot older than you are, Joey, and not nearly as good-looking. In addition, I’m short and bald. That doesn’t make me what you’d call the sexy leading-man type.”
“Yul Brynner and Telly Savalas were both bald,” Joanna countered. “And so is Andre Agassi. Nobody says any of them aren’t sexy.”
She sat down at the table and took a tentative sip of her coffee. He reached across the table and touched her hand. “But I’m in love with you, Joey,” he said. “And you’re in love with me, so don’t go around worrying about the competition. There isn’t any.”
She smiled back at him. “Okay,” she said.
Just then Joanna’s cell phone rang. She retrieved it from the bedside table where she’d left it overnight, recharging. The display said the call was coming from High Lonesome Ranch.
“Good morning, Jenny,” she said. “How are things?”
“Do I have to go on the camping trip?” Jennifer Ann Brady whined.
Joanna felt a stab of worry. Maybe Jenny was sick. “Are you feeling all right? You’re not running a fever, are you?” she asked.
“I’m not sick,” Jenny answered. “I just don’t want to go is all. Mrs. Lambert told us last night at the troop meeting that we won’t be able to cook over a campfire because we can’t have any fires. Some dork at the Forest Service decided it’s too dry for campfires. Without cooking, I probably won’t be able to earn any of the badges I thought I was going to earn. I’d rather stay home.”
“You know that’s not an option, Jenny,” Joanna said firmly. “You said you were going when you signed up. Now you have to keep your word.”
“But I hate it. I don’t even want to be a Girl Scout anymore. It’s dorky.”
The word “dork” is certainly getting a workout this morning, Joanna thought. But the idea of Jenny wanting to quit Girl Scouts was news to Joanna. From the moment her daughter had been old enough to join Daisies, Girl Scouting was something Jenny had loved.
“Since when?” Joanna asked. “Is it because you have a new leader? Is that it?”
“No. Mrs. Lambert is nice and so is the new assistant leader. I like them both, but it’s still dorky.”
“I’m a little tired of things being dorky at the moment,” Joanna said. “Could you maybe think of some other word to use? As for the subject of quitting, if that’s what you decide to do, fine, but only after we have a chance to discuss it as a family. Right now, you’ve made a commitment to go on a camp-out, and you need to keep that commitment. Mrs. Lambert has made arrangements for food and transportation and all those other details. It wouldn’t be fair for you to back out now. You need to live up to your word, Jenny. Besides, Grandma and Grandpa Brady agreed to look after the ranch for the weekend. They didn’t agree to look after the ranch and you as well.”
“That’s another thing,” Jenny said crossly. “Grandma Brady found my stupid sit-upon. She says I have to take it along because it was on the list Mrs. Lambert gave us. You know, the sit-upon I made back when I was in Brownies? I always thought you threw it away. I asked you to throw it away. It’s so ugly. When the other girls see it, they’re going to laugh at me.”
“No, they won’t,” Joanna countered. “You girls were all in Brownies when you made those. I think there’s a good chance that some of theirs are every bit as ugly as yours is. Remember, Mrs. Lambert said you’re going to be listening to lectures from those young interns from the history department at the University of Arizona. You’ll need something to sit on during those lectures, and a sit-upon is just the thing. Would you rather come home with sandburs in your butt?”
“That means I have to take it?”
“Yes.”
“It’s not fair,” Jenny said. “You’re all just being mean to me. I don’t even want to talk to you anymore. Good-bye.” With that she hung up.
Joanna turned to Butch. “I don’t believe it,” she said. “My daughter just hung up on me.”
Butch didn’t seem overly dismayed. “Get used to it,” he said. “Jenny’s twelve, going on twenty. She’s about to turn into a teenager on you, Joey. It goes with the adolescent territory.”
“Since when do you know so much about adolescents?”
“I was one once.”
“And now she wants to drop out of Girl Scouts,” Joanna continued.
“So I gathered, and maybe she should,” Butch said, from behind his newspaper. “If that’s what she really wants to do. Just because you stayed in Scouting as long as you did doesn’t mean your daughter has to.”
“You’re going to take her side in all this?” Joanna demanded.
“I’m not taking sides,” Butch said reasonably. “But if Jenny really wants to drop out of Girl Scouts, I think we should let her do what she wants to do.”
“What if she wanted to drop out of school?” Joanna returned. “Would you let her do that, too, just because it was what she wanted?”
Butch looked exasperated. “Joanna, what’s gotten into you?”
“I don’t know,” she said with a shrug. “I seem to be having a bad morning.” With that, she grabbed her purse, stuffed her phone into it, and then stomped out of the room, slamming the door shut behind her. The loud bang from the closing door reverberated up and down the hallway. Two doors away, Pima County Sheriff Bill Forsythe turned and glanced back over his shoulder.
“My, my,” he murmured, clicking his tongue. “Sounds like a lovers’ spat to me.”
Before Joanna could reply, her phone rang again. Considering the fact that she was about to tell Bill Forsythe to mind his own damned business, the ringing phone was probably a lifesaver. There were two more roosterlike squawks before she managed to retrieve the distinctively crowing cell phone from the bottom of her purse. As soon as she picked it up, Joanna saw her chief deputy’s number on the phone’s digital readout.
“Good morning, Frank,” she said, walking briskly past Bill Forsythe as she did so.
Frank Montoya hailed from Willcox, Arizona, in northeastern Cochise County. He came from a family of former migrant workers and was the first member of his family to finish both high school and college. Years earlier he had been one of Joanna’s two opponents running for the office of Cochise County sheriff. After she won and was sworn into office, she had hired him to be one of her two chief deputies. Now Frank Montoya was her sole chief deputy. He was also the person Joanna had left in charge of the department during her absence.
“How’s it going?” she asked.
“Are you all right?” Frank asked. “Your voice sounds a little strained.”
“I’m fine!” she told him. “Just not having a smooth-running morning today. Now what’s up? I’m on my way to the meeting. Anything happening that I should know about?”
“We had another carjacking on I-10 yesterday afternoon, over near Bowie.”
Joanna sighed. This was the sixth carjacking along the Cochise County stretch of the interstate in as many weeks. “Not again,” she said. “What happened?”
“A guy named Ted Waters, an elderly gentleman in his eighties, had pulled over on the shoulder to rest because he was feeling a little woozy. Some other guy came walking up to the car and knocked on the window. Waters rolled it down. As soon as he did, the young punk reached inside, opened the door, and pulled Waters out of the car. He threw Waters down on the side of the road and drove off. Border Patrol stopped Waters’s vehicle this morning at their checkpoint north of Elfrida. It’s a late-model Saturn sedan. At the time it was pulled over, it was loaded with seven UDAs. My guess is that the people in the car this
morning had no idea it was stolen.”
“Coyotes again?” Joanna asked.
People who bring drugs and other contraband across the border are called mules. For a price, coyotes smuggle people. Since vehicles involved in smuggling of any kind are subject to immediate confiscation and impoundment, it had suddenly become fashionable for coyotes to use stolen cars for transporting their human cargo. That way, when the vehicles were impounded, the coyotes were out nothing. They had already been paid their exorbitant smuggling fees, and someone else’s car wound up in the impound lot.
“What time did all this happen?” Joanna asked.
“The carjacking? Four in the afternoon.”
“Good grief!” Joanna exclaimed. “The carjackers have started doing it in broad daylight now?”
“That’s the way it looks,” Frank said.
“How’s the victim doing? What’s his name again?”
“Waters, Ted Waters. He’s from El Paso. He was on his way to visit his daughter who lives up in Tucson. He was banged up a little, but not that much. Had some cuts and bruises is all. He was treated at the scene and released. We called his daughter. She took him home with her.”
“Was Mr. Waters able to describe his assailant?”
“Not really. The first thing the guy did was knock off the old man’s glasses, so he couldn’t see a thing. Waters said he thought he was young, though. And Anglo.”
“The border bandits are hiring Anglo operatives these days?”
“It doesn’t sound too likely,” Frank replied. “But I suppose it could be. We’re asking Border Patrol to bring the car to our impound yard instead of theirs, so Casey can go over it for prints later this morning.”
Casey Ledford was the Cochise Sheriff’s Department’s latent fingerprint expert. She also ran the county’s newly installed equipment loaded with the AFIS (Automated Fingerprint Identification System) software.
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