Joanna was thunderstruck. 'But why didn't you tell me in advance? Why didn't you let me know?'
'Because then I would have been asking you for permission and you might have said no. I decided to present it as a fait accompli.' His face darkened, 'From the looks of things, it's probably a good thing I did.'
'Your dinner, senorita,' the waiter said, appearing at Joanna's elbow. Then he set another plate in front of Butch. 'The plate is very hot, senor. Now, will there be anything else?'
Joanna shook her head wordlessly.
'I don't think so,' Butch told him. 'This will be fine.'
The waiter walked away and Butch turned back to Joanna. 'You're looking at me like I'm an invader from outer space.'
'Why did you do it?' she asked. 'Why did you go be-hind my back like that?'
'Because I care about you,' he said simply. 'I know what my feelings are for you and I hope, given time, you might feel the same way about me.'
Joanna opened her mouth to speak, but he stifled her with a wave of his hand. 'I'm not asking for any kind of promises from you,' he added. 'I know you need time, but I also don't think that with me in Peoria and you in Bisbee, you're going to know me well enough to make a wise decision one way or the other. My mother told me years ago, 'Distance is to love as wind is to fire. It blows out the little ones and fans the big ones.' That sounded good to me at the time when the young woman I thought was the love of my life had taken off with somebody else. I thought she'd come to her senses and come back to me. She didn't. And now that I'm older, it doesn't sound smart.'
He paused, then sighed. Again Joanna started to speak, but he waved her off and continued. 'You're so busy down here, Joanna. There's your work and your friends and there's Jenny to take care of. I was afraid I'd get lost in the shuffle. That if I was always two hundred miles away, you'd put me out of your mind and never give me a second thought. Now that I think about it, after living through the last two days, it may not be all that easy catching up with you with both of us living in the same town.
'But I want to give it a chance, Joanna,' he murmured. His eyes darkened in the soft glow of the candle on the table. 'I'm a two-time loser in the love-and-war department. I want to get it right this time. I promise not to rush you, not to push you, but please, let me be here. We'll be friends to begin with. We'll have an opportunity to get to know one another. I've already met some of the people in your life, but this will give me a chance to get to know them better. Like Jeff Daniels and Marianne Maculyea, for instance. They both seem like very nice people, and today is the first time I've ever been able to talk to Jeff one-on-one. That's what we need to do, Joanna. We'll let some time pass, and then we'll see where things go from there. Fair enough?'
When Butch stopped talking, a sudden wave of silence washed across their table and swallowed it whole. He was right, of course, and Joanna knew it. Had he broached his plan to her in advance, she never would have agreed to it. She had liked the status quo and wouldn't have minded if things had gone on that way indefinitely. She had enjoyed the
'Well,' Butch said finally, 'can't you say something?'
'I don't know what to say.'
'Try,' he said. The eyes he turned on her were bleak and almost devoid of hope. He had the forlorn look of a convicted felon waiting for the judge to issue an order of execution.
'It's just that… well… I'm surprised, is all.'
'But you don't hate me for doing it?'
'No, of course I don't hate you. I'm glad for you.'
He settled back in his chair with a sigh of relief. 'That's all I need to know for right now,' he said. 'Don't say another word. Give yourself some time to get used to the idea. In the meantime, let's eat some of this food before it gets cold. It's been a long time since Daisy's.'
Joanna picked up her fork, but she didn't touch her food. 'Speaking of Daisy's, there are people around, like Marliss Shackleford, for example, who are going to make a huge deal of this. You just don't know what it's like to live in a small town…'
'That's all right. I have a pretty thick skin, and I suspect Sheriff Joanna Brady does, too.'
“Maybe,” she said. 'I hope so.' The waiter walked by. Joanna raised her hand enough to catch his eye. 'I've changed my mind. I think I'm going to have a margarita after all. Blended,' she added. 'No salt.'
'1 believe I'll have one, too,' Butch Dixon told the waiter. 'Make mine the same way.'
Despite a somewhat rocky start, Joanna and Butch went, on to have a good dinner. Maybe that one margarita did make a difference. They talked about Jenny and her visit to her creepy cousins in Oklahoma. They talked about Eleanor and George Winfield and postcards Joanna had received from the pair of honeymoon cruisers. They talked, too, about Joanna's late-afternoon run-in with Marliss Shackleford.
They followed dinner and that one margarita apiece with several cups of coffee. By eleven o'clock, they were on their way back to University Medical Center when Joanna's cell phone rang.
'I have some bad news and I have some worse news,” Dr. Fran Daly said. 'Which do you want first?'
'Start with the bad,' Joanna said.
'I was right about Clyde Philips having AIDS,' she said. 'He had a full-blown case of it, but there's no sign his blood work that he was undergoing any kind of treatment. So you were right, too. He probably hadn't been to a doctor. Let's hope his ex-wife…'
'Belle,' Joanna supplied.
'Let's hope she hasn't been to bed with him in the too recent past.'
'Let's hope,' Joanna agreed. 'You'll probably be hearing from her before I do. She's supposed to call you about releasing the body and making funeral arrangements.”
'Do you want me to tell her?' Fran asked, 'Or do you want to do it? You've obviously met the woman. I haven’t.”
'Maybe not,' Joanna said, 'but in this instance, I don’t think your being a stranger is as important as the fact that you're a doctor. I think it'll be better if that information comes from a physician. If nothing else, you can at least advise her to have herself checked out.'
'I suppose you're right,' Fran said. 'I'll see what I can do.'
'If that's the bad news, what's worse?' Joanna asked.
'I was wrong about his committing suicide,' Fran answered. 'I found blunt-instrument trauma to the back of his head.'
'Couldn't he have fallen and injured himself that way?'
'Not six or seven times. None of those blows looked like enough to kill him, but they probably rendered him unconscious. The bag and the belt were probably added later to finish the job. I'd say you'd better check both of them for prints.'
'We will,' Joanna said. 'I'll have my evidence techs go to work on them first thing tomorrow morning. What about time of death?'
'Sunday night or Monday morning. The room was cool enough that it slowed decomposition.'
The call ended a few seconds later, and she switched off the phone.
'Bad news, huh?' Butch asked.
Joanna nodded. 'Very bad news,' she replied. 'For several people,' she added. 'One of our recent murder victims turns out to have had AIDS, and there's a good chance he didn't know it. That means that most likely none of the people who've been hanging around with him knew it, either.'
'Too bad for them,' Butch observed.
After that, Butch and Joanna drove for several blocks in silence.
'Life used to be much simpler, didn't it?' Butch Dixon said at last. 'Back in the old days, I mean.'
'Yes,' Joanna agreed. 'Much simpler.'
They reached the hospital parking garage a few minutes later. 'Just let me out here,' she said.
Are you going back up?'
