Desert Heat

was his way of getting back at my mother. She always insisted that if men had the babies, there’d only be one child in each family, and one was all she was having. So Daddy was stuck with me. He never got the real son he always wanted. Mother wanted me to be one of those sweet, doll-playing, mind-your-mother little girls. My dad turned me into a tomboy, mostly out of spite, I think, and not that it took much effort on his part. The natural inclination was al-ready there. And every time he called me Little Hank it drove my mother crazy.”

Walter McFadden understood that it was easier right then for Joanna to think and talk about her father than it was for her to deal with her husband’s grave injuries, with the uncertainty of what was happening with Andy’s surgery.

“Your dad was smart to get out of the mines when he did, Joanna,” Walter said. “He saw the bottom was going to fall out of the copper business a whole lot sooner than anybody else did. He got out to run for sheriff, and once he got elected, he took me with him. Smartest thing I ever did. I owe your dad a helluva lot.”

Joanna pulled the jacket more tightly around her. Looking down she seemed to become aware of the ugly stains marring the denim. She rubbed fitfully at one. When it didn’t come off, she returned her gaze to Walter McFadden.

“You paid that debt in full,” she said quietly. “Andy wouldn’t have been hired if it hadn’t been for you. I know that. His grades were okay, but they weren’t that good.”

“I didn’t do him that big a favor,” Mc-Fadden returned. “Andy was a good deputy.”

Joanna Brady’s eyes narrowed. “Is!” she said determinedly, balking at how easily the sheriff had slipped into using the past tense where Andy was concerned. “Andrew Brady is a good deputy,” she corrected. “Don’t go writing him off, Walter McFadden. It’s not over ‘til it’s over.”

The sheriff smiled. “Your daddy, Old D. H. Lathrop, was one damn stubborn hombre in his time. Is that where you get it?”

Even Joanna couldn’t help but smile in re-turn. “Actually,” she said, “I think I got a double dose. Stubborn streaks are pretty strong on both sides of my family tree.”

She picked up a ragged People magazine and made some pretense of reading it, but the words wouldn’t jell in her mind. She ended up flipping randomly through the pages without even bothering to read the captions under the pictures. When she finished with that one, she didn’t bother to pick up another. Instead, she stared fixedly at the clock. It seemed to take forever for the minute hand to move from one small black dot to the next.

Twenty minutes later, a swinging door burst open and the Reverend Marianne Maculyea strode into the room. Marianne was half-Mexican and half-Irish. To everyone’s surprise and in spite of a strict Catholic upbringing, Marianne had turned out to be one hundred percent Methodist. She was a Bisbee girl who had gone away to college in California expecting to major in microbiology. She had returned home several years later as an ordained Methodist minister, sporting braces, Birkenstocks, and a househusband named Jeff Daniels who stayed home, baked his own bread, kept an incredibly clean parsonage, and who never hinted to Marianne that perhaps they ought to share the same last name.

This unusual arrangement inevitably caused Bisbee’s old-timers to be somewhat suspicious. Scandalized was more like it. Five years after Marianne Maculyea’s return, the braces were gone but the househusband remained. Even though the town as a whole languished in economic woes, the once dwindling First Methodist Church up the canyon in Old Bisbee boasted a healthy, thriving congregation. When the local Kiwanis Club began admitting women, Reverend Marianne Maculyea was one of the first women invited to join.

“I figured I’d find you here,” Marianne said to Joanna, who had gotten up and hurried to meet the other woman. “Your mother called Jeff, and Jeff called me. What’s the word? What’s going on?”

“We still haven’t heard anything,” Joanna answered. “Andy isn’t out of surgery yet. Mari, how on earth did you get here so fast?”

“I was already in Tucson,” she said. “I came up to meet with Deena O’Toole to help her plan the memorial service. Jeff caught me at her house out in the foothills just as I was leaving.”

“Memorial service?” Joanna asked, frowning. “What memorial service? Who died?”

Marianne shook her head. “I didn’t know you hadn’t heard. I’m sure you remember Lefty O’Toole, don’t you?”

Wayne O’Toole had graduated from Bisbee High School in the early sixties and had gone on to receive a degree from the University of Arizona before falling prey to the draft. After a stint in Vietnam he had returned to Bisbee to teach only to leave the district in disgrace three years later when he was found to be growing a healthy crop of marijuana in his Mother’s backyard up in Winwood Addition. It was years since Joanna had heard his name.

“1 didn’t know him,” she said, “not personally. But Andy did. Mr. O’Toole was the line coach the whole time Andy played football, JV and Varsity both. He got fired the year I was a freshman. What happened?”

“Murder, evidently,” Marianne Maculyea replied. “Someone shot him in the back. He had just gotten out of drug rehab a month or so ago. According to his mother, he was living in Mexico and supposedly getting his life back in order. Lefty’s like me. He was raised a Catholic but left the church years ago. I’ve become friends with Mrs. O’Toole up at the Mule Mountain Rest Home. She asked me to handle the memorial service. Deena, Lefty’s ex-wife, is helping with the arrangements. Between the two of them, I’ve had my hands full, but enough of that. Tell me about Andy. What in the world happened? Jeff said he’d been shot, too.”

Joanna nodded. “That’s right. It must be an epidemic. I found Andy down under one of the bridges along High Lonesome Road. They brought him here by helicopter. He’s been in surgery for over an hour so far.”

“Tell me again what happened to Lefty O’Toole?” Walter McFadden interrupted.

Marianne Maculyea’s total focus had been on Joanna. Now, for the first time, she seemed aware of the sheriff’s presence.

“Oh, hi there, Walter. I didn’t see you when I came in. The story we’re getting is still pretty muddled. It happened down near Guaymas. When they found him, he was thirty miles from nowhere, out in the middle of the desert. It’s a miracle anyone found him at all. His car turned up abandoned by an old airstrip, so chances are it was robbery. At least that’s what the Mexican authorities are saying so far.”

“And he was living down there?” Mc-Fadden asked.

“That’s right. In a dilapidated old school bus someone had converted into a poor-man’s RV. From what we’ve been able to piece together, he disappeared from the mobile home park over a week ago. The body was found this last Wednesday and the federales notified Mrs. O’Toole late Thursday afternoon. Since then, Deena’s been trying to make arrangements to bring him home. It’s costing Lefty’s mother a small fortune to get the body back across the border.”

“Why haven’t I heard about this before now?” McFadden demanded.

Marianne shrugged. “Mordida doesn’t work all that well if too many people hear about it.”

Joanna wasn’t fluent in Spanish, but living in a border town, you didn’t have to be. Mordida, literally translated as “the bite,” refers to bribing public officials. Across the line, it was the time- honored if illegal custom by which Mexican border guards supplemented their meager incomes. If an American citizen happened to die in Old Mexico, getting him home could be a very expensive process, especially it the case received very much publicity. Then the delays could become insurmountable.

Marianne Maculyea turned back to Joanna. Taking both Joanna’s cold hands in hers, she squeezed them tight. “I’m sure Andy has an army of doctors and nurses looking after him. How are you holding up?” she asked. “Can get you anything?”

“I’m all right,” Joanna answered. “So far.” She extricated her hands and walked back over to the painting. In the meantime, Walter McFadden put down his newspaper, picked up his hat, and walked over to Marianne. “Reverend Maculyea, if you’re going to be here with Joanna, maybe I’d better be getting on about my business.”

Marianne nodded. “I plan to stay all night, if that’s all right.” She looked to Joanna for confirmation, but she seemed to have faded out of one conversation and into another.

“I’m sorry Lefty O’Toole’s dead,” she said quietly. “And Andy will be, too. No matter what happened later, Andy