Skeleton Canyon

“Not tonight,” Ernie replied. “Tomorrow’s another day.” “Right,” Jaime said. “I’ll get after it first thing in the morning.”

Ernie turned again to Joanna. “What about the O’Briens?” he asked. “Should we drive out to Green Brush Ranch and talk to them tonight?”

Wearily, Joanna shook her head. “As you said, Ernie, its late. Tomorrow’s another day.”

They all left the department a few minutes later. On the drive home, Joanna found she was so exhausted that she had trouble staying awake. Corning through the cuts on Highway 80, she was dismayed to see orange emergency lights flashing at the intersection of High Lonesome Road and the Double Adobe cutoff.

“What now?” she muttered. “Not an accident, I hope.”

When she reached the lights, however, she discovered not one but two utility crews. “What’s going on?” she asked, rolling down her window.

“We’ve got a fried transformer here,” the foreman told her. “It melted some wires as well. None of the people up High Lonesome have power right now, but we should have it back on within a couple of hours.”

“Great,” Joanna said. “The perfect ending to a perfect day.”

The dogs met her, as usual, halfway up the drive. The water had drained out of both creek beds, leaving both crossings rocky and muddy and devoid of the usual tracks, but passable nonetheless. It was eerie, though, driving into the yard without having the motion detector turn on the floodlights. Joanna wasn^’t looking forward to the silence, either.

It’s going to be quiet, she thought. Way too quiet.

But when she stepped out of the Eagle, she was assailed by the noise of what sounded like the bleating of a herd of a thousand sheep. Colorado River toads, she realized with a smile of relief. The night wasn’t going to be quiet after all.

The frogs^’ noisy squawking was one of the sounds of summer. That first rainstorm always awakened hordes of hibernating toads and set them on their brief but frenetic mating trail.

Their raucous racket never failed to cheer Joanna. It meant that after months of dry days and endless blue skies, the rains had returned, bringing with them the promise of life begun anew.

Joanna knew that once she went inside, the walls of the house would cut off the toads’ welcome, cheery song. That settles it, she told herself, making up her mind. I’m sleeping out on the porch again tonight.

CHAPTER NINETEEN

Standing in front of her closet on Monday morning, Joanna was faced with the usual problem of what to wear. Had she managed to go shopping on Saturday afternoon, she might have had a few more choices. As it was, she settled on a three-piece hunter green pantsuit that was coming up on the end of its useful life. It was an old standby that dated from her previous career in the insurance business. She had worn it until she was tired of it. Most likely so was everyone around her.

The phone in the outer office was ringing as she walked in the door to hers. “It’s Adam York,” Kristin Marsten, her secretary, announced over the intercom once Joanna made it as far as her desk. “Do you want me to put him through?”

“Sure,” she said. “Hello, Adam,” she added a moment later. “You’re certainly up and at ‘em bright and early this morning.”

“You call this bright and early? What do you mean?” Adam replied. “I’ve been working all weekend-ever since you called on Saturday. In fact, I tried like hell to reach you yesterday evening. The phone rang and rang, but there was no answer. Your machine never picked up, either.”

“Sorry about that,” Joanna apologized. “I was out all day in a car with no radio. Then, last night, a storm came through and knocked out a transformer just up the road, shutting off the electricity for several hours. It also seems to have put a permanent glitch in my answering machine. Even with the power back on this morning, I couldn’t make the thing play back messages or record a new one.”

Adam York laughed. “Sounds like it’s about time to toss out that outdated machine and sign up for something civilized like voice mail.”

“I’ll look into it,” Joanna told him. “Now, what have you got for me?”

“Here’s the deal. As I told you the other night, the guys up in Phoenix have been working overtime on a big- time Freon-smuggling case. I checked with them. No one on that case thinks your Benson guy is related to what’s going on in Phoenix. They agree with me that he sounds like more of a small-time, independent operator than a big one. The Phoenix case revolves around a major air-conditioning contractor up there, not some seat-of-the-pants tow truck operator. All the same, as of six o’clock this morning, both Sam Nettleton and Sam’s Easy Towing and Wrecking are under twenty-four-hour surveillance.”

“Great,” Joanna said. “How’d you manage that?”

Adam York laughed. “There are a few advantages to being the agent in charge, you know. If we come up with anything concrete, we’ll let you know right away.”

“I appreciate it,” Joanna said. Glancing out into the reception area, she saw both her chief deputies pacing back and forth, waiting for their early morning briefing. “‘Thanks for keeping me posted, Adam. I have to go. Duty calls. There are people outside waiting for me.”

^“Sure thing,” Adam told her cheerfully. “Rut don’t bother Ilianking me. If this lead turns into something, we should be thanking you. You’re the one helping us, remember?”

Putting down the phone, Joanna motioned Deputies Voland and Montoya into the room. Wrangling as usual, they assumed their customary chairs. “What’s the deal?” Joanna asked.

“We took another big hit in the overtime category again this weekend,” Frank Montoya complained. “Nobody around here seems to listen or believe me when I tell them a budget crunch is coming. It’s going to nip us in the butt. We can’t keep squandering our resources this way, day after day, week after week.”

“You call that squandering? We had a homicide, for one thing,” Voland reminded him. “We also got hit by a record breaking storm-one that played havoc with roads and traffic all over the county. Of course, we had to use overtime. What do you expect?”

“I’ll tell you what I expect. If we keep splurging on overtime at the same rate we have been lately, my computer model says payroll will hit empty two weeks prior to the end of the fiscal year. What’s going to happen then?”

“Nothing much,” Dick Voland said easily. “We’ll have ourselves an old-fashioned SDC with the board of supervisors.”

“An SDC?” Frank Montoya asked with a frown. “What’s that?”

“A stare-down contest,” Voland replied with a sardonic grin. “First guy to blink loses.”

Montoya, chief deputy for administ^ration, was not amused. “That’s no way to run a department,” he said.

“And neither is this,” Joanna told them firmly. “Quit bickering, both of you. You sound like a wrangling old married couple. Let’s go to work. Yesterday’s overtime charges aren’t Dick’s fault, Frank. He wasn’t even in town when the storm hit. On the other hand, Frank is right about the budget shortfall. Every week he gives me a computer printout that shows where we are and where we’re going. At the moment we’re running six-point-seven days short of being able to meet basic payroll at the end of the fiscal year. That’s a serious problem. Everybody from patrol right through jail staff is going to have to do something to fix it. Now let’s-”

The intercom buzzed. Shaking her head in annoyance, Joanna pushed the button. “What is it, Kristin? ^” she demanded. “We’re having a briefing in here. Can’t it wait until-”

“There’s someone here who insists on seeing you, Sheriff Brady,” Kristin said. “His name’s Ignacio Ybarra.”

“You mean he’s here to see one of the detectives, don’t you?” Joanna asked.

“No. He says he wants to see the sheriff. Right away.”

“Where’s Detective Carpenter?”

“He still hasn’t come in this morning.”