By the time Joanna’s salad came, the hunger she had felt earlier had entirely disappeared. She picked at the pale pieces of canned asparagus and moved the chunks of bright red tomato from side to side. It was easy to feel sorry for herself, to wallow in her own misery and self-pity. Butch Dixon, a man she had met up in Peoria when she went there to attend the Arizona Police Officer’s Academy, had made it quite clear that he was more than just moderately interested in her. But Joanna didn’t think she was ready for that. Not yet. She was glad to have Butch as a friend-as a pal and as someone to talk to on the phone several times a week-but it was still too soon for anything beyond that, not just for Joanna but also for jenny.
“Mind if I sit down?”
Joanna looked up to see Chief Deputy Richard Voland standing with one hand on the back of the now-vacant stool next to her.
“Hi, Dick,” she said. “Help yourself.”
She was grateful Daisy’s was a public enough venue that Voland’s ears didn’t turn red as he eased his tall frame down onto the stool. Opening a menu, he studied it in silence for some time before slapping it shut. “Batching it is hell, isn’t it?” he grumbled. “Ruth maybe had her faults, but she was one helluva cook.”
Ruth Voland, Dick’s soon-to-be-ex-wife, had taken up with their son’s bowling coach from Sierra Vista. Their divorce was due to be final within the next few weeks. As that day loomed closer, Chief Deputy Voland was becoming more and more difficult to be around.
“You’re right,” Joanna agreed. “It’s not much fun, but thanks to people like Daisy Maxwell, neither of us is starving to death.”
Voland nodded morosely. “Hope you don’t mind my tracking you down. Dispatch said you were stopping off to have dinner. I needed to grab a bite myself.”
Daisy came to take his order. Joanna waited until she left before speaking again. “So what’s up over in St. David?”
“Killer bees,” Voland answered. “It was unbelievable.”
“Killer bees?” Joanna repeated. “I thought there was some kind of an explosion.”
“That’s right. There was. A lady by the name of Ethel Jamison found a swarm of killer bees up under the roof of a tool shed. Her great-grandson is down visiting from Provo, Utah, for a couple of weeks. He offered to take care of them for her. So he and a buddy of his logged onto the Internet, consulted some kind of cyberspace
“I wasn’t the only one who got stung, either,” Voland added. “A couple of the volunteer firemen did, too. Naturally, the two boys didn’t.”
Dick’s coffee came. He stopped talking long enough to add cream and sugar. “So what’s happening on the O’Brien deal?” “Nothing,” Joanna said.
“But I thought…”
“Brianna O’Brien may not have gone where she
“You’re going to wait the full twenty-four hours?” Dick Voland asked. “David O’Brien will have a cow.”
“He’s already having a cow, so I don’t see what difference it makes.”
“David O’Brien isn’t someone I’d want to get crosswise with,” Voland warned. “From a political standpoint if nothing else. With his kind of money, he can make or break you.”
Joanna gave her chief deputy a sidelong glance. “I’m surprised to hear you say that, Mr. Voland,” she told him. “Aren’t you the same guy who was out on the stump during the election, trying to get people to vote against me?”
Voland ducked his head and shrugged self-consciously. “Maybe I changed my mind,” he said while his ears glowed bright red.
It was Saturday night. Knowing small-town gossipmongers might read far more into this casual dinnertime meeting than it merited, Joanna picked up her ticket and slid off her stool.
“I’d better be going,” she said. “See you Monday.”
“Right,” Dick returned. “See you then.”
CHAPTER NINE
Joanna went out to the Crown Victoria and drove north toward the traffic circle where Jim Hobbs’s auto repair shop was located. Remembering Moe Maxwell’s advice that she put the Eagle in the shop for repairs as soon as possible, she glanced off in that direction. To her surprise, even after nine o’clock on a Saturday night, the lights were still on at Jim’s Auto Repair. One of the two garage bay doors was still open.
Instead of heading out toward the ranch, Joanna drove on around the circle and pulled in beside Jim’s cherished 1956 Chevy BelAir. Jim himself was hanging over the front fender of a Honda Civic. He straightened up when he heard Joanna’s car stop and sauntered out of the garage, wiping his greasy hands on a rag.
“It’s you, Sheriff Brady,” he said, grinning when he recognized Joanna. “1 thought it would be Margo come to tell me to get the hell home. But since I’m working on my mother-in-law’s car, I don’t figure I’ll be in too much trouble. What can I do for you?”
“It’s the air-conditioning on my Eagle,’’ Joanna began. “It went out on the way to Tucson today. Moe Maxwell says I’ll need to get in line for an appointment, so I thought I’d check.”
The congenial grin disappeared from Jim’s face. “It’s a setup deal, isn’t it? A sting. As soon as I got the call, I figured it would be something like this. Sorry, Sheriff Brady. I’m all booked up for air-conditioning work. I won’t be able to get around to you for a month or so, maybe even longer.”
“A month?” Joanna echoed. “That long? Right in the middle of the summer?”
“Too bad, isn’t it,” Jim returned coldly. “But like I said, it might even be longer than that.” Then, as if dismissing her, he turned and headed back into the garage.
For several moments Joanna sat there wavering in confusion. Jim Hobbs had done lots of work for her over the years. She had no idea what had provoked him or why she would de-serve such an abrupt dismissal. Something was wrong. Not wanting to leave the misunderstanding hanging, Joanna climbed out of the Crown Victoria and followed him into the garage.
Jim’s Auto Repair had arisen from the ruins of a defunct gas station, one that had become a permanent casualty in the EPA’s ongoing war against leaky gasoline tanks. Anyone walking into the orderly but run-down building would have known at once where Jim Hobbs’s priorities lay. The grungy cinder block walls, the fly-specked dirty glass, and the cracked cement flooring might have all been seventy-year-old original construction, but there was nothing old or lacking in the gleaming tools and up-to-date equipment lining the walls.
Walking inside, Joanna stood for a long time watching Jim in silence while he studiously ignored her. “All right, Jim,” she said at last, trailing him over to a metal tool chest where he slammed a wrench into one of the drawers. “What’s going on?”
“I’ll tell you what’s going on,” he growled, turning on her and poking the air between them with one of his stubby fingers. “That weasely Sam Nettleton character over in Benson gives me a call this afternoon and tells me he’s got a cool deal on some really cheap Freon if I want to go in with him on it. Well, here’s the real scoop, Sheriff Brady. I didn’t bite, so you can call off your dogs and forget it. I’ve got twenty thousand bucks tied up in legally approved equipment to do air-conditioning work the right way. The reason I’m as busy as a one-armed paperhanger right now is that hardly anyone else in the county has bothered to invest in that new equipment-including Mr. Sleazeball Sam Nettleton. If you think you’re going to waltz in here and find me using illegal Freon-”
“Wait a minute, Jim,” Joanna said. “Hold on. I don’t have any idea what you’re talking about. I stopped in here to see about getting my Eagle fixed because I almost roasted to death driving Jenny up to Mount Lemmon today.”
