“What are these doing here?” she demanded.
“In case you haven’t noticed, my mother is an incredible busybody,” Butch said. “When I was growing up, she was forever going through my stuff. I finally started leaving things I didn’t want her to see at a friend’s house. This morning she was all over me, wondering what was in the boxes. When I told her where the boxes came from, she was hot to trot to go through them. I told her I was sure you’d rather do that yourself. When she insisted that someone in your condition shouldn’t be lifting heavy boxes, I finally moved them in here to keep them out of her reach. I put today’s mail in here, too, for the same reason.”
“You think she’d go through that?” Joanna asked.
“I wouldn’t put it past her,” Butch replied. “The good thing about your office is that we can always lock the door if need be. Come to think of it, I’ll probably lock my computer in here, too, when I’m not using it.”
“Poor baby,” Joanna said and meant it.
For the next hour Joanna sat at the desk in her now-crowded home office and dutifully wrote thank-you notes exactly as Eleanor would have wanted her daughter to do. It was funny, in a way, to think that both she and Butch had survived being raised by very similar and extremely autocratic mothers. It went a long way to explaining why the two of them got along so well.
Dinner turned out to be more of the same, with Margaret monopolizing every avenue of conversation. Knowing that Butch had been stuck with his mother all day, Joanna did her best to run interference for him. She was cheerful. She asked focused questions. And she kept Margaret rambling away. With Margaret’s having downed a predinner cocktail or two, that wasn’t difficult. It wasn’t until dessert when Margaret finally managed to get under Joanna’s skin.
“I guess I didn’t realize your father used to be a sheriff,” Margaret said with a smile. “I’m sure Butch must have told me, but it didn’t sink in. Is that why you wanted to be involved in law enforcement?”
Joanna wasn’t sure where Margaret was going. Joanna had grown accustomed to these kinds of unwelcome questions out on the campaign trail, but she didn’t expect them to crop up at her own dining-room table.
“I didn’t really want it,” Joanna answered warily. “It simply happened.”
“Are you saying you were elected to office by accident?” Margaret asked incredulously. “How is that possible? I was under the impression that election campaigns are a lot more complicated than that.”
Joanna remembered how, in the painful aftermath of Andy’s funeral, she had been asked to run for office in his stead. She had agreed-not because her father had been sheriff once or because Andy had wanted to be, but because it was something she actually wanted to do.
“I wasn’t elected to an office,” she said. “I was elected to do a job, and it’s a job I do willingly every single day.”
She would have said more, but the phone rang, and Jenny hurried to answer it. “It’s for you, Mom,” Jenny said. “Somebody from work.”
Taking the phone from her daughter’s hand, Joanna returned to the relative privacy of the far end of the living room before she answered. An excited Debbie Howell was on the phone, calling from Sierra Vista.
“What’s up?” Joanna asked.
“I’m looking at the photos,” Debbie Howell said breathlessly. “You’re not going to believe this.”
“What?”
“Bradley Evans was stalking someone.”
“Stalking?” Joanna repeated. “Who? And how can you be sure?”
“A woman,” Debbie returned. “A dark-haired Anglo woman, a brunette. Looks to be in her late twenties. She’s wearing what looks like a wedding ring. There are several pictures of her walking in a mall and several others of her pushing a shopping cart through a parking lot. Two more show her getting into a vehicle-a blue sedan. I can’t be sure of the make or model.”
“Does the woman know she’s being photographed?”
“I doubt it,” Debbie returned. “It doesn’t look like she does. In fact, I’d say she’s totally oblivious.”
“Is there any way to identify who she is?” Joanna asked.
“Not that I can tell. There’s no visible license plate, if that’s what you mean.”
“Can you tell where the pictures are taken? I mean, are they from Sierra Vista or maybe somewhere else you recognize? And what about the Double Cs? Have they seen the photos?”
“Not yet. They’re coming here to meet me right now to take a look. Ernie wanted me to let you know what’s going on.”
“Thanks, Debbie,” Joanna said. “I appreciate being kept in the loop. So how’s your first day been?”
“Terrific, Sheriff Brady. I don’t know how much of a help I’ve been so far, but it’s what I’ve wanted to do for a long time. Thanks for giving me a chance.”
Joanna hung up the phone feeling guilty that it had been Ernie Carpenter rather than Sheriff Joanna Brady who had opened the door on Debbie Howell’s new opportunity.
And then she thought about Bradley Evans. Was it true that he had been a stalker? That idea certainly didn’t square with what Ted Chapman had told her about the man. But now Joanna wondered. If he had been following an unsuspecting young woman around and snapping pictures of her without her knowledge or consent, then perhaps he had been on his way to reverting to the behavior that had put him in prison in the first place.
When Joanna returned to the dining room, the table had been cleared and Jenny was serving dessert-rhubarb pie topped with generous scoops of vanilla ice cream.
Joanna resumed her place, and Margaret looked at her questioningly. Clearly she was dying of curiosity about the phone call, but she couldn’t bring herself to come straight out and ask. In that moment, Joanna understood Margaret Dixon perfectly. She was every bit as nosy as Butch had said she was, but a lifetime’s worth of dealing with Eleanor-of constantly battling and frustrating her own mother-had left Joanna Brady uniquely prepared to deal with the Margaret Dixons of the world.
“No biggie,” Joanna said, sending a casual smile in her mother-in-law’s direction. “You know how it is-same old, same old.”
Chapter 7
When Joanna arrived at the conference room the next morning, her homicide team was already assembled. They were studying a collection of color snapshots scattered across the conference-room table. “I’ve already mentioned that Ernie will be taking a few days off at the end of this week and maybe the beginning of the next,” Frank told Joanna as people came to order. “I’ve let everyone know that Debbie’s going to be working as a detective for the next little while.”
Joanna was relieved that the announcement about Ernie’s upcoming absence had already been handled. Nodding, Joanna went straight to the task at hand. “What about the pictures?” she asked. “I think we’ll need several copies of each of these,” Frank said. “Enough to go around, and enlargements, too. Eight-by-tens at least. Then we may be able to use Photo Shop to enhance the images so we can figure out where these were taken.”
“You’re right,” Ernie agreed. “We should all have copies, but it isn’t going to take some high-tech computer program to see what we need to see.” Ernie tapped one of the photos with a thick forefinger. “Look at the background on this one. If those aren’t the Huachuca Mountains, I’ll eat my hat.”
Joanna picked up the photo and studied it herself, looking beyond the woman pushing the grocery cart to the undulating wall of mountains looming behind her.
“I think you’re right, Ernie,” she agreed. “If I’m not mistaken, we’re going to find this was taken in the parking lot of that Fry’s grocery store out on Highway 92.”
“Do you want me to check on that?” Debbie asked. “I could take copies of a couple of the photos out there. If the woman is a regular customer, one of the clerks or carryout people will recognize her.”
“Good thinking,” Joanna said. “We need to know who she is and why Evans was following her around snapping photos.”
