you can’t keep it up forever. It’s too hard on you. You forget to stop and smell the roses. As you know, when those roses are gone, they’re gone forever.”
It was as close as Eva Lou Brady had ever come to bawling her out. Deservedly so. Joanna took Eva Lou’s hand and squeezed it. “That’s good advice,” she said. “I’ll try not to forget it.”
Someone else arrived-Don and Louise Watson, bringing Jim Bob with them. After somber greetings all around, the four of them left Joanna where she was, and moved closer to where the other mourners were gathering around the casket-topped grave. There were only a few latecomers still straggling in when Ernie Carpenter sidled up to Joanna.
She had barely glimpsed at Ernie earlier in her office. Now she was shocked by the look of him. His color was bad. There were dark circles under his eyes. The snowballing events of the past few days had put a terrible strain on every-one in the department, but with Ernie as the sole homicide detective, the brunt of the pressure had landed squarely on his broad shoulders.
“The L.P.G.A.?” he muttered. “I still think it’s just too damned convenient that Terry Buckwalter happens to have her big-deal golf tryout this weekend. What do you think?”
Joanna looked up at him. Ernie was a good cop, a capable cop. Unlike Joanna, Ernie hadn’t recently lost his spouse. Every aspect of Bucky Buckwalter’s murder seemed to tug on Joanna Brady’s still raw emotional heartstrings. Ernie’s judgment may have been impaired by sheer exhaustion, but not by his own prejudices.
As sheriff, Joanna Brady had only one clear option--to step aside and let her investigator do his job. “It’s your case, Ernie,” she said. “I don’t have an opinion on this one.”
“Now that I know about this paternity thing, I need t talk to Terry again. Late this afternoon is probably the firs I’ll be able to get to it.”
“What about sleep?” Joanna asked.
Ernie stopped cold. “Sleep?” he repeated, as though were a totally foreign word. “Who needs sleep?”
“You do,” Joanna answered. “You’ve been juggling on case after another. How much rest have you had in the past three days?”
“Some,” Ernie admitted.
“Five hours? Ten?”
“Something like that,” he said.
“That’s about what I thought,” Joanna said. “I can tell jus by looking at you. Don’t try to talk to Terry today, Ernie. Le it go. Once the funeral is over, I want you to take the rest o the afternoon off. And the weekend, too. I don’t want you near the department any before Monday morning.”
“But what about Terry going up to Tucson? What if she takes off and doesn’t come back?”
“Then let it be on my head. If she runs away, we’ll find her,” Joanna said. “But right now, you need some time off. You’re off duty from noon today on. That’s an order, Detective Carpenter. You’ve already put in some sixty-odd hours this week. Monday will be time enough to start getting a handle on all of this. If you work yourself into the ground or into the hospital, then where will we be?”
Before Ernie had a chance to reply, the Reverend Billy Matthews launched off into the “dust to dust, ashes to ashes” part of the service. Moving close enough to hear, Joanna watched as Bucky Buckwalter’s coffin slowly slid out of sight. As it did so, Joanna was gripped once again by the terrible sense of loss and finality that had assailed her months earlier as Andy’s coffin, too, had disappeared from view. The tears that surprised her by suddenly spurting from her eyes had nothing at all to do with Bucky’s death.
Glancing over her shoulder, she could see the distant part of the cemetery that held Andy’s low-lying granite marker. She and Jenny had been there together only once since the marker was installed. That was on Veterans Day, when they had gone to place a tiny American flag beside the grave.
The service wasn’t yet over when Joanna quietly drifted away toward that other part of the cemetery. Almost blinded by her tears, it was all she could do to keep from stumbling headlong over gravestones.
Once there, she stooped to pluck the faded flag out of the ground. Slipping it into the pocket of her coat, she knelt over the plain red granite marker. Chiseled into the smooth red rock was Andy’s full name-Andrew Roy Brady-along with the dates of both his birth and his death. At the very bottom of the marker, almost melting into the long yellowed grass, were four simple words: “To serve and protect.”
One at a time, she ran her fingers over each of the letters. To serve and protect. That had been Andy’s job-his whole mission and purpose in life. It was the reason he had joined the service after high school and it was the reason he had signed on as deputy sheriff once he was discharged from the army. Now those same words constituted Joanna’s mission in life as well.
“They can be mighty tough to live by,” Jim Bob Brady observed, walking up behind her and laying a steadying hand on her shoulder.
Startled by her father-in-law’s voice and touch, Joanna hurried to wipe the tears from her eyes. She scrambled to her feet.
“They are,” she mumbled. “Especially right about now.”
“Why? What’s wrong?”
Joanna shook her head. “It feels like the bad guys are winning, Jim Bob.”
He shook his head. “Aw now,” he said. “I wouldn’t go so far as to say that. Seems to me you and your people are doin’ all right.”
Joanna gave him a frail smile. “It’s possible you’re prejudiced,” she said.
“Nope,” he declared, “not me. I admit it’s been a bad week around here for lots of folks, but I’m sure that before too long you’ll sort it all out.”
“Sort it all out?” Joanna snorted. “What good will the do? Several people are dead, all of them in my jurisdiction. Five in all, with a couple more lives hanging by a thread. In at least two of those cases my own actions, or inactions on the part of some of my people, are partially responsible for what happened.”
“So?” Jim Bob returned. “Most likely those people would be dead regardless of who was sheriff. The only thing you can do is try and see to it that whoever’s responsible get what’s comin’ to him.”
Unable to say anything in return, Joanna turned an, looked back toward the mound of flowers next to Buck Buckwalter’s grave. “When people are dead,” she said finally, “punishing the killer always seems like too little too late.”
“Maybe so, but it’s the best you can do. Come along now,” Jim Bob added. “It’s too chilly for you to be out here very long.”
Reaching out, he took Joanna by the hand and pulled her close, then he headed off across the cemetery, leading her back in the direction of the parked cars. “Eva Lou saw you walk off, and she sent me to fetch you. She was concerned.”
“I’m sorry to worry you,” Joanna said. “That was thoughtless of me.”
“That’s all right. Problem is, we’re in a little bit of a hurry because Eva Lou’s due to help serve at the Ladies’ Aid’s luncheon. I need to drop her by the church before too long. You see, that’s Eva Lou’s thing, Joanna. Servin’ lunch may not seem like much of anything. On the scale of things, it’s sort of like you said-too little, too late. But when people are hurtin’, fixin’ and servin’ food is the best Eva Lou can do. You’re so busy looking at the murder part of all this that you’ve plumb forgot it’s the lunches and the little things that glue us all together.”
Looking up at her father-in-law gratefully, Joanna realized what he was saying was absolutely true. “Thanks, Jim Bob,” she said. “I needed that.”
SIXTEEN
Back at the cars, Eva Lou was already waiting in her husband’s Honda. “I guess we’ll see you later,” she said. “Your mother mentioned that you wouldn’t be coming to the church.”
Joanna smiled in at her through the partially opened window. “What is it Jim Bob always says about a wise man changing his mind?” She took her father-in-law’s hand and squeezed it. “He gave me a little pep talk over there. Sort of like the one you gave me earlier. Now that you’ve both go my attention, I believe I’ll come along to the luncheon after all.
Just inside the parish hall of Canyon Methodist Church Joanna ran into Bebe Noonan. Still dressed in black, she
