Dead to Rights

“You mean, as in put there to frame Hal Morgan?”

“Exactly.”

Dick Voland’s head began to shake. “No way,” he said “You’re reaching,”

“That may be,” Joanna conceded, “but I’m telling you this, Mr. Voland. The search for Hal Morgan’s ‘second man’ isn’t a wild-goose chase until I say it’s a wild-goose chase. that clear?”

I le looked at her for a moment as if he was prepared argue. Dick Voland wasn’t any better at losing than he was at winning. “Yes, ma’am,” he said. “You’re the boss.”

“Thank you,” she said. “And now, if you don’t mind think I’ll go home. It’s been a long day.”

She drove straight to her in-laws’ house, picked up Jenny, and then headed out to the Safeway in Don Luis for an abbreviated grocery-shopping trip. Bread, milk, eggs, juice, fruit, luncheon meat. “What are we having for dinner?” Jenny asked as they hurried up and down aisles, stacking itms into the cart.

“How about chorizo, eggs, and flour tortillas?” Joanna suggested. Jenny made a face.

“What’s the matter?” Joanna asked. “The last time we had you told me you loved chorizo.”

“It’s okay,” Jenny said. “But eggs are for breakfast. Why couldn’t we eat with the G’s? Grandma was making stew. She said there was plenty.”

“We can’t eat with Grandma and Grandpa every night, even if they invite us,” Joanna told her daughter. “I know they don’t mind, and Grandma is a wonderful cook. But still, it’s an imposition. We don’t want to wear out our welcome.”

“But we hardly ever have real meals anymore,” Jenny complained. “Not like we used to when Daddy was alive.” Jenny’s quiet comment flew straight to her mother’s heart. It was true. When Andy was alive, mealtimes had been important occasions-a time and a place to reaffirm that they were a family all by themselves, separate and apart from his parents and from Joanna’s mother as well. In a two-career home, breakfast and lunch had been catch-as- catch-can in the breakfast nook and the same had held true when Andy was working graveyard or night shifts. But when all three of them had been home for dinner together, the meal had automatically turned into an occasion. Much of the time, they would set the dining room table with the good dishes and with cloth napkins-for just the three of them.

In the months since Andy died, eating at the dining room table by themselves was something Joanna and Jenny had never done. There it was too painfully clear that Andy’s place was empty. Quick meals of scrambled eggs or grilled cheese sandwiches eaten in the breakfast nook didn’t carry quite the same emotional wallop. Until right then, however, Joanna hadn’t known Jenny was feeling deprived. Maybe it was time to reconsider the chorizo option.

Mentally calculating what staples she still had at home, Joanna dropped a package of pork chops into the basket, along with a container of deli-made coleslaw and a bottle of sparkling cider.

As Jenny and Joanna headed for the checkout line, their cart almost collided in the freezer aisle with a cart pushed by a man named Larry Matkin. Larry, a Phelps Dodge mining engineer, was fairly new to town, although Joanna had seen him several times at various civic meetings around town. Matkin was a member of the Rotary Club, but he had visited Joanna’s Kiwanis club to give a talk on the prospects and economic implications of P.D.’s reopening mining operations In the Bisbee area. He was a tall, lanky guy with reddish-brown hair, glasses, and a prominent Adam’s apple. His speech had been dry as dust.

“Sorry,” Joanna said with a laugh. “You know how it is with women drivers.”

Matkin, stacking typical bachelor fare of frozen TV dinners into his cart, seemed to see no humor in her comment.

He didn’t smile in return. “It’s okay,^” he mumbled. “No harm done.” For a moment it looked as though he was going to say something more, then he changed his mind. With his face flushing beet-red, he turned his attention back to the frozen-food case.

“What was the matter with that man?” Jenny asked, as they reached the check stand. “It was only a little bump. Why’d he get so mad?”

“What makes you think he was mad?” Joanna asked.

Jenny wasn’t a child to he easily thrown off track. “Didn’t uou see how his face turned all red?”

“That doesn’t necessarily mean he was mad,” Joanna explained. “It could be he’s shy.”

“Maybe it means he likes you then,” Jenny theorized.

Joanna looked down at her daughter in shock. “I don’t think so,” she said.

“But it could happen, couldn’t it?” Jenny insisted. “He might ask you out. What then? Would you go?”

Unsure how to answer or even if she should answer this unforeseen dating question, Joanna was saved by the timely intervention of the check-out clerk. “Paper or plastic?” she asked.

Joanna wanted to leap across the check stand and hug the woman. “Paper,” she replied gratefully. “Definitely paper.”

TEN

Halfway home, with the groceries safely stowed in the back, Joanna was still mulling over the implications behind Jenny’s disturbing question when the child lobbed yet another one in her direction.

“Did you catch him?” Jenny asked.

“Catch who?” Joanna asked, mystified by a question that was so far from what she’d been thinking.

“The guy who killed Dr. Buckwalter.”

“No.” Joanna answered truthfully. “We’re working on it, hut I’m afraid Detective Carpenter didn’t make all that much progress today. He’s been up in Sunizona working on an-other case.^”

She realized as she said the words that she wasn’t giving Jenny a very comprehensive or detailed answer. As such Jenny probably didn’t find it very satisfactory, but it was the best Joanna could do. When Andy had been a deputy, Jenny had always shown a precocious interest in his work and in everything that went on in the department. When she had asked those kinds of questions of him, Andy had been only too happy to respond. I le ha(l always answered with a no-holds-barred candor that Joanna found disquieting even then. In the present circumstances-with the scars from Andy’s death still so near the surface-such questions and their accompanying answers bothered her even more. Joanna always worried that something she might say would bring up topics that would be painful to Jenny and hurtful to her as well.

Driving through the last glimmers of twilight, Joanna clung to the steering wheel and worried where Jenny’s inquisitive mind would take them next.

“It’s my birthday pretty soon,” Jenny said.

Mistakenly assuming this was nothing but another one of Jenny’s mind-bending changes of subject, Joanna let her guard down. “Not for another three months yet,” she returned.

“What are you going to get me?” Jenny asked.

Joanna shrugged. “Three months is a long time,” she said. ^“I haven’t given it all that much thought.”

“Well,” Jenny said, sitting up straight and folding her short arms across her chest. “I already know what I want for my birthday.”

“What?”

“What I told you before-Dr. Buckwalter’s horse. Kiddo. Daddy said I could have a horse someday. He promised. Besides, Kiddo will be lonely without someone to love him. What if he gets sold for dog food or something?”

“Jenny,” Joanna said firmly. “Nobody’s going to sell Kiddo for dog food. But you have to understand what’s going on here. I’m all alone now-alone and overloaded. Between work and home, I can’t take on one more thing without falling apart. There’s a whole lot more to taking care of a horse than scratching him on the nose when you feel like it and giving him a carrot once in a while.”

“That’s not true!” Jenny spat hack at her.

“It is true,” Joanna insisted. “Horses require a lot of hart work.”

“Not that,” Jenny said. “What you said before. About being alone. You are not alone. You have me, don’t