come back home empty-handed.”
Acknowledging Joanna’s support with a wan smile, Marianne changed the subject. “Speaking of world travelers,” she said, “what do you hear from your mother?”
Joanna glanced at her watch. “Her plane’s due into Tucson International around four. She was bound and determined to be back in time for the women’s club luncheon tomorrow. That’s when the Historical Committee presents the framed picture of me to hang in the lobby out at the department.”
Marianne smiled. “I know,” she said. “I’m on the committee.”
Joanna continued. “Since today is a workday, I told Eleanor I wouldn’t he able to come hick her up. Jim Bob and Eva Lou offered to go get her, but Mother insisted on having her friend, Margaret Turnbull, meet her instead. They’ll have an early dinner in Tucson and then be home around nine or so.”
“Has she had fun?” Marianne asked.
Joanna nodded. “It sounds like it. Marcie and Bob must have seen to it that they’ve hit every tourist attraction and museum for miles around. I’m sure my mother has been in seventh heaven.”
The previous Thanksgiving, Joanna’s long-lost brother had resurfaced. As a baby, he had been given up for adoption prior to Joanna’s parents’ wedding. Joanna had grown up without ever knowing that her mother and father, Eleanor and Big Hank Lathrop, had an out-of-wedlock child that Eleanor’s parents had insisted they not keep. After the death of both his adoptive parents, forty-four-year-old Bob Brundage had come searching for his biological mother. Eleanor Lathrop had welcomed him with open arms. The feeling was evidently mutual. For Christmas, Bob and his wife, Marcie, had invited Eleanor to come visit them in Washington, D.C., for two weeks.
“She’s never had a chance to do anything like that before, has she?” Marianne asked.
“Never,” Joanna said. “She was widowed young and had a snotty teenager to deal with, sort of like yours truly and a certain hot-tempered nine-year-old.”
“Well then,” Marianne said, “I’d say she’s earned the right to have some fun.”
Joanna nodded. “Me, too,” she admitted.
The very fact that Joanna was finally able to concede that maybe the difficulties between her and her mother weren’t all Eleanor’s fault was in itself a gigantic first step. Eleanor was tough to live with, but perhaps Joanna hadn’t been all sweetness and light, either. Still, it was difficult for Joanna to forget or forgive Eleanor all the years she had spent carping about Joanna’s shotgun wedding when she herself had been guilty of a very similar transgression.
“Where did you go?” Marianne asked.
“I was thinking,” Joanna said. “Maybe I’ve been too hard on my mother.”
Marianne Maculyea laughed. “It’s possible,” she said. “But then, haven’t we all?”
Daisy Maxwell brought their lunches right then. That was pretty much the last chance the two women had to talk. During the course of the meal, several people stopped by to visit with one or the other of them-parishioners from Canyon Methodist Church who were worried about how the organ repairs were going, or someone trying to sign them up to bake cakes to be sold at a local charity auction.
Joanna and Marianne had finished up the last of their coffee and were standing in line at the cash register when a fire truck, siren blaring, roared past the outside door. The truck was headed north on Bisbee Road.
“Somebody’s probably trying to burn down Brewery Gulch again,” Daisy Maxwell quipped as she took Joanna’s money and handed back a fistful of change. In the past few months there had been a series of arson fires up in Old Bisbee, where a combination of steep terrain and tinder-dry conditions had made fire fighting difficult.
“Let’s hope not,” Joanna answered. “If the wind happens to he blowing in the wrong direction, wt. could end up with a disaster on our hands.”
Out in her vehicle, Joanna turned the Blazer in the direction of the department, heading north on Bisbee Road, following the same route the fire truck had taken. When she came through the underpass that had been used to carry mine waste out to the tailings dump, she could see smoke just off to the right over the crest of the hill.
Beyond the underpass, a traffic circle had been installed to facilitate movement of traffic on Highway 80 and in-town vehicles moving from one area of Bisbee to another. Half a mile east of the traffic circle, Joanna could see a flock of emergency vehicles gathered on either side of the roadway at a spot she knew had to be right by the entrance to the Buck-waiter Animal Clinic. Not only was there a clot of emergency vehicles, there was also a cloud of smoke billowing up into a deep-blue sky.
Joanna’s heart fell. If the clinic had somehow caught fire, what did that mean for the animal patients there awaiting treatment? What about Tigger? What if he was dead? Jenny was already an emotional powder keg. After everything else that had happened to her, would she be strong enough to withstand the loss of a beloved pet?
Traffic had come to a halt, backing up for the better part of a mile, almost as far as the traffic circle itself. Turning on both flashers and siren, Joanna made her way into the left-hand lane, but even there she had to swerve around vehicles that had simply stopped in the middle of the road. As she picked her way forward, she pulled the Blazer’s two-way radio microphone out of its holder and thumbed the push-to-talk butt/m.
“Dispatch,” she said. “‘This is Sheriff Brady. I’m just east of the traffic circle on Highway 80. What’s going on?”
“We’ve got a fire at the Buckwalter Animal Clinic,” dispatcher Larry Kendrick answered.
“I can
“It’s confined to the barn.”
“Not the clinic?”
“No, the clinic is fine.”
Joanna allowed herself the smallest sigh of relief. Tigger wouldn’t have been anywhere near the barn, so he was obviously fine. “As many emergency vehicles as they have out here, it must be some fire.”
“That’s because of the body,” Kendrick answered. “One of the deputies on the scene just radioed in asking me to locate Ernie.”
Veteran Detective Ernie Carpenter was the Cochise County Sheriff Department’s lead homicide investigator.
“What body?” Joanna demanded. “My pager’s been on. Nobody’s tried to contact me.”
“There hasn’t been time. The deputy on the scene only called a few minutes ago.”
Just as he said that, an ambulance pulled out from the clinic grounds and came shooting west along the highway, leaving Joanna no choice but to cut back in between two of the stopped cars lining the right-hand side of the road.
Sitting there waiting for the ambulance to drive past, Joanna couldn’t help thinking about the confrontation at that same entrance several hours earlier. She had assured Deputy Pakin that everything was fine-under control were the words she remembered using. But if a body had turned up there, Joanna must have been dead wrong about that. She had mistaken grievances under wraps for grievances under control. Now someone had paid for that mistake with his or her life.
It didn’t take much imagination to figure out that whoever was dead was most likely Bucky Buckwalter. If that was the case, it followed naturally enough that his killer would turn out to be none other than Hal Morgan, the bereaved, sign-wielding protester.
Joanna’s two-taco lunch staged a sudden rebellion in her gut. If that was true, how much of the responsibility for what had happened would rest squarely on the all too inexperienced shoulders of Sheriff Joanna Brady?
THREE
By the time Joanna bounced over the cattle guard and into the grounds of the Buckwalter Animal Clinic, Richard Voland, the Cochise County Sheriff Department’s Chief Deputy for Operations, was already there. He was
