they have a corncob stuck up their butts?” Burton asked Joanna when she walked up beside him.
After a day filled with thorny complications and unrelenting tension, Cochise County’s leading defense attorney’s comment was so unexpectedly lighthearted and welcome that Joanna burst out laughing. “Probably because they did,” she replied. Sill smiling, she offered him her hand. “How’s it going, Burton? I understand you’re waiting for a client.”
I le nodded and looked around. “I take it they’re not here yet?”
“Not so far. You’re welcome to wait in my office if you like.”
She led him through a security door and down the long hallway to the suite of private offices at the back of the building. Joanna’s was in the far back corner. “Have a chair,” she invited as they entered.
Gratefully, Burton sank down on the long leather sofa that, along with the oversized desk and all the other furnishings, were hand-me-downs dating from the administration of Walter V. McFadden, Joanna’s immediate predecessor. Folding his arms behind his head, Burton leaned back into them. “‘Tell we,” he said. “How’s Ruby Starr holding up? Is she still cooking up a storm around here?”
In local law enforcement circles, Burton Kimball had a reputation for attracting an oddball and sometimes difficult clientele. Ruby Starr qualified on both counts. She and her husband had come to Bisbee with the intention of opening a fine dining establishment. The husband had been supposed to provide the business expertise while Ruby was expected to do the cooking. Their partnership and marriage both had come to grief in a domestic dispute that started with Ruby going through the house and nailing her husband’s discarded dirty clothes to the hardwood floor. The battle had escalated into a sledgehammer-to-windshield finale that had put Ruby Starr in the county jail charged with criminal assault.
She just happened to be there-with Burton Kimball on retainer as her attorney-when the jail’s previous cook made off in the middle of the night, taking with him all the fixings for the jail inmates’ Thanksgiving dinner. In an act of civic generosity, Burton and his wife had provided dinner, replacing the missing turkeys and other necessary ingredients as well. Ruby Starr had been drafted out of her jail cell to do the cooking. She had done such an admirable job that, upon her release, she had been offered the jail cook’s job on a permanent basis. Seven months later, she was still there.
Joanna smiled. “Ruby’s doing fine,” she answered. “Now the only inmates who complain about the food are the ones who weren’t here before and who don’t have any idea how bad it can be. One of our repeat offenders usually sets the griper straight in a big hurry.”
After a few minutes of small-town talk about whose kids were doing what over the summer, Joanna steered the conversation toward the business at hand. “How do you know Ignacio Ybarra?” she asked.
“I hardly know him at all,” Burton admitted. “His uncle, Frank, and I played football at the same time. Not exactly together, since we were on opposite teams. Still, we knew one another by reputation. Over the years, I’ve done some work for Frank, including legalizing Frank and Yolanda’s informal guardianship of their nephew-Frank’s sister’s son-Iggy.”
“That’s what they call him, Iggy?”
Burton shook his head. “No, I picked that up from reading a newspaper article about his football exploits. His family calls him Pepito.”
The phone rang just then and Joanna answered. “They’re here,” she told the attorney moments later.
Burton Kimball rose to his feel and smoothed his jacket, twitching at once from his at-ease demeanor to something far more businesslike. “If it’s at all possible, I’d like to meet with my client in private for a few minutes before we go into one of the interview rooms.”
“Certainly,” Joanna said. She rang the desk clerk. “Tell Detective Carpenter to bring Mr. Ybarra into my office. Mr. Kimball would like to speak to him in private.”
Joanna stood up. “I’ll go into the outer office to wait.” She started toward the reception room door and then paused, glancing at the private door from her office that led back outside to the parking lot.
Burton Kimball seemed to read her mind. “Don’t worry, Sheriff Brady,” he said. “Ignacio Ybarra won’t take off. I give you my word.”
Nodding, Joanna went out and closed the door. In the reception area, she met Ernie and Ignacio Ybarra as they entered the room. The young man was taller than Joanna expected-well over six feet. He was dark-haired, dark- eyed, and good-looking, except for the fact that his face was covered by a series of scrapes and ugly bruises. He held himself stiffly, as though his whole body hurt.
“How do you do, Mr. Ybarra,” Joanna said.
Anxiously, Ignacio peered around the room. “I thought Mr. Kimball was supposed to be here,” he said.
“He is,” Joanna responded. She pointed toward her closed office door. “In there. He’s waiting to speak to you. You may go in.”
With a glance over his shoulder at a fuming Detective Carpenter, Ignacio Ybarra walked past them both and into the sheriff’s private office while Joanna turned to her outraged detective.
“We don’t have to do this,” Ernie grumbled. “Allowing them a private conversation isn’t required by law. And why leave them alone in your office? What if Ybarra takes off?”
“He won’t,” Joanna said. “It may not be a legal requirement, but giving them the opportunity to confer in private is an act of common decency. Burton told me that he barely knows his client. Why shouldn’t we give them a chance to introduce themselves?”
“You’re telling me Kimball claims he doesn’t know him?” Shaking his head, Ernie broke off in disgust. “I doubt that. When we picked Ybarra up, he just happened to have Burton Kimball’s home telephone number on him. In a pencil-written note in his shirt pocket. That doesn’t much sound like strangers to me. And when he made his single phone call, all Ybarra had to do was tell Burton Kimball his name and the attorney says he’ll be right here. Which he is, by the way.”
“That’s all that was said, Ignacio Ybarra’s name?”
Ernie consulted his notes. “That’s right. Ybarra says, ‘It’s me, Mr. Kimball, Ignacio Ybarra,’ and then he hangs up. Burton Kimball drops everything on a Sunday night and scoots right over here. Yup, I’m sure they’re strangers.” The sarcasm in Ernie’s voice wasn’t lost on Joanna.
“So you’re saying Burton Kimball had already been alerted to some coming legal difficulty long before you and Jaime showed up at Ignacio’s house?”
“You bet. Mr. Ybarra may have put on an Academy Award-worthy performance when we told him Brianna O’Brien was dead, but it isn’t going to wash with mc. And neither is his cock and-bull story about some guy he didn’t know beating the crap out of him.”
“What do you think
“My guess is that he and Brianna got into some kind of beef. II turned physical. He ended up killing her, but with her giving almost as good as she got. Then, realizing what he’d done, he decided to run the truck off the cliff and try to make it look like an accident.”
“Without any clothes on?” Joanna raised an eyebrow. “Do you have anything at all to substantiate that theory, Ernie?”
“Not so far,” he grunted, “but I’m working on it.”
The door to Joanna’s office opened and both Burton Kimball and a subdued Ignacio Ybarra walked into the reception room. “We’re ready now,” the attorney announced. “Where are we going to do this? One of the interview rooms?”
“How about right here?” Joanna suggested. “It’s certainly noire comfortable than anywhere else, and bigger, too.”
They settled into places, with Ignacio and Burton Kimball pearling themselves in the two matching captain’s chairs. Ernie assumed the love seat, while Joanna leaned against the front of her secretary’s desk.
Ernie didn’t waste any time. “All right, Mr. Ybarra. May I call you Iggy?”
Ignacio shrugged. “I like Nacio better, but Iggy’s okay.”
“Very well, Nacio. Why don’t you tell us in your own words exactly what your relationship was to the dead woman.”
Ignacio Ybarra winced at the words. His face paled. “We were in love,” he said softly. “We wanted to get married someday.’’
“Did Brianna’s parents know anything about that?” Ernie asked.
“Probably not,” Nacio said.
