mother’s wheezing Eagle. As directed, she reached down and picked up her bedroll, only to drop it again a moment later to throw her arms around Joanna’s waist.
“I’ve changed my mind,” she said tearfully. “I don’t want to stay. I’d rather go back home with you.”
Had the decision been left to Joanna, she would have simply loaded the bedroll and bag back into the car. Lisa, however, remained unmoved and unperturbed. “Hurry up now, Jenny,” she insisted. “Tell your mother good-bye so she can go make her phone call. Then we’ll need to hurry, or you’ll miss this afternoon’s nature hike.”
To Joanna’s amazement, that little bit of gentle prodding was all it took. With one more quick hug, Jenny let go of her mother, picked up her bedroll, and walked away without so much as a single backward glance. Joanna was the one who was left behind with a mist of tears covering her eyes. Grateful lot the dark sunglasses that covered half her face, Joanna glanced at Lisa. If the counselor saw anything amiss, she pre-tended not to notice.
“You go ahead and make your phone call, Sheriff Brady,” she said to Joanna.
“When I finish, I can come up… “ Joanna began lamely.
Lisa shook her head. “No,” she said. “It’s probably better if you just go after that. Jenny will be fine. You’ll see.”
It was almost noon before Hector finally showed up at the station. He was sober by then, but he looked like hell.
“Where’ve you been?” Nacio demanded. “Uncle Frank just called looking for you. I was supposed to leave hours ago.”
“I got held up,” Hector said.
“Right,” Nacio growled back at him. “You’re just lucky Uncle Frank keeps you on. If it was up to me, you’d be out of here. Now, get to work. Mrs. Howard is due back in half an hour. Her Buick needs an oil change, and I haven’t had a chance to get near it.”
“What’s the matter with you this morning, Pepito?” Hector asked with that slow, lazy smile of his. “Did that little blond
Nacio looked at him. He couldn’t afford to make any denials. Half sick, he realized that if Hector knew about Bree, most likely so did Uncle Frank and Aunt Yoli.
“Shut up and get to work,” he said. “We’re too far behind this morning to stand around arguing.”
Without another word, Hector headed for the Buick in the far bay and disappeared under the opened hood. An hour later, with things pretty much back under control, Nacio went in search of Ron Torres.
“Hector’s here now. Uncle Frank should be in later on. Will you be all right until then?”
Ron grinned and gave him a thumbs-up. “No problem,” he said, as a car pulled up to the full-service pumps. “We can handle it.”
“Good, then,” Nacio said. “because I’m going.”
CHAPTER FOUR
With a hard lump blocking her throat and almost cutting off her ability to breathe, Joanna watched Jenny walk away until she disappeared behind the dining hall with Lisa following twenty or thirty paces behind. It took every bit of effort Joanna could muster to restrain herself from jogging after them. Finally, sighing, she plucked her purse out of the Eagle and went off in search of the camp director’s office. Joanna paused in the doorway of the dining hall.
Years before, when Joanna had attended this same camp, she had eaten meals at long narrow tables in this very room. The wood-and-stone building that had once seemed wonderfully spacious and comfortable now appeared cramped and surprisingly shabby. It was packed full of noisy, disheveled girls downing an uninspired- looking lunch. They sat on benches at drearily functional Formica-topped cafeteria tables. Seen through adult eyes, the place reminded Joanna of a few prison dining rooms she had seen. Still, the high-spirited girls who were wolfing down sandwiches at those tables seemed absolutely delighted by both the food and their surroundings,
“May I help you?” someone asked.
“I’m looking for the camp director,” Joanna said.
“‘That’s me. My name’s Andrea Petty.”
The smiling speaker was a young, nut-brown, shorts-clad African-American woman with a scatter of freckles sprinkled across an upturned nose. She wore a headful of shiny, beaded braids. She didn’t look a day over sixteen.
“What can I do for you?” Andrea continued.
“My name’s Joanna Brady. Lisa met my daughter and me at the car and said there was a message for me. She also said that if I needed to, I could use the phone in your office.”
Andrea gave Joanna an appraising once-over. “All the message said was for you to call your office, but you don’t look old enough to be a sheriff.”
Andrea smiled back. “The phone’s in here,” she said, leading the way into a small Spartan office that opened off the south end of the dining hall. “It’s behind the door. There’s not much privacy. If you need me to leave…”
“No, that’s all right,” Joanna said. “I’m sure this will be fine.”
Fumbling through her purse, she found her departmental telephone credit card and began punching numbers into the phone while a tearful girl about Jenny’s age came edging her way past the partially opened door. With a badly scraped knee, she was in need of both sympathy and a little first aid.
“Sheriff Brady here,” Joanna said when someone picked up the phone at the Cochise County Sheriff’s Department, more than a hundred miles away. “I had a message to call in. What’s happening?”
“Dick Voland said if you called to put you straight through to him,” the desk clerk said. “Hang on.”
With a severe budget crunch looming, Chief Deputy Richard Voland wasn’t supposed to be in the office on Saturday. “What are you doing going to work on your day off, lobbying for comp-time?” she asked as soon as Voland came on the phone. “You haven’t moved out of your apartment and back into your office, have you?”
“I got called in,” he said, ignoring the jibe. “We’ve got a problem.”
“What
“A missing person.”
“A missing person?” Joanna echoed. “You’ve gone in to work on Saturday and you’re calling all over God’s creation looking for me on account of a missing person?”
“Wait until I tell you which one is missing,” Voland replied.
The seriousness in his tone was unmistakably convincing. “Go ahead, then,” Joanna said impatiently. “Who is it?”
“Roxanne O’Brien,” Dick Voland answered. “David and
“Katherine O’Brien’s daughter.”
“Bree O’Brien? You’re kidding.”
Joanna’s response was as reflexive as it was illogical. Of course, Dick Voland wasn’t kidding. The possible disappearance of the only daughter of one of the county’s most prominent couples was hardly a joking matter.
“When?” Joanna asked, not giving her chief deputy time to take offense. “And how? What happened?”
“She left home yesterday afternoon to drive to Playas, New Mexico. She was supposed to spend the weekend with a friend of hers, Crystal Phillips,” Dick Voland said. “The problem is, she never made it. Katherine O’Brien called over there this morning to verify what time she’d be home tomorrow after-noon, but according to Ed Phillips, Crystal ’s daddy, Bree never showed up there. Not only that, she wasn’t expected.”
“Not expected? That sounds bad.”
“Just wait,” Voland continued. “You haven’t heard anything yet. It gets worse. According to Katherine O’Brien, Bree has made three weekend trips to visit Crystal Phillips in the last three months-this one included. Crystal and
