team with the woman who owned and operated the restaurant. All things considered, the Bisbee Convention Center should not have been a scary place for her, yet tonight it was. Impossibly so. Standing outside in the cold, watching others arrive and hurry inside, was far preferable to going inside herself.
“I see you’re not all that eager to go inside, there,” a familiar male voice teased from behind her.
Joanna turned to greet Frank Montoya, the Will cox city marshal, who was one of her two opponents in the race for sheriff. During a series of joint-candidate appearances in front of local civic groups, Joanna had come to like Frank-a tall, scrawny, crew-cut Mexican-American of thirty five. Frank’s ready wit and screwball sense of humor camouflaged real dedication to his work and a serious sense of purpose.
Frank Montoya was the son of once-migrant farmworkers who had, years before, settled in Wilcox on a permanent basis. He came to law enforcement through a hitch in the army as an MP and with an associate of arts degree in police science from Cochise College. In an area of the country where Mexican-Americans were still often deemed second-class citizens, voters in Wilcox had surprised themselves and Frank, too, by electing him to serve as city marshal while he continued to commute back and forth to the university in Tucson to earn his B.A. in law enforcement.
“Hi, Frank,” Joanna returned lightly. “You’re right. I’m not looking forward to it. I’d much rather have a root canal.”
“Me, too,” Montoya agreed with a laugh. “The Big Guy showed up a few minutes ago. I watched him go inside. He was in seventh heaven with a television camera following his every move and with two microphones stuck in his face. It makes it easier for him to talk out of both sides of his mouth.”
Joanna couldn’t help laughing.
Al Freeman, the heavyset former chief of police in Sierra Vista, was the third candidate in the three way race for sheriff. In campaign appearances and brochures, Freeman had self-importantly characterized himself as the “only law-enforcement professional” running for the office of sheriff. That tactic had effectively thrown Joanna and Frank Montoya together in an uneasy alliance, which, to their mutual wonder, had blossomed into an un likely friendship.
With a lessening of tension, Joanna grinned back at Frank. “I don’t know what’s been worse, limping around with doorbelling blisters on both feet or having to sit through Al Freeman’s endless red neck-and-proud-of-it speeches.”
“No question in my book,” Frank Montoya said, “Al Freeman’s speeches win that contest hands down.”
They both laughed then, in unison. Frank held out his hand and smiled. “So may the best token win, Joanna,” he said solemnly. “I hope to hell one of us beats the pants off that loudmouthed bastard.” They shook hands. “By the way,” Frank added, “I like the haircut. Your mother’s doing?”
“How did you know?”
“Take one guess,” Frank said, running one hand over his own freshly trimmed hair. “Joanna, our mothers may be from opposite sides of the
THE USUALLY mild-mannered and easygoing Linda Kimball was on a tear. The Election Night bash in Bisbee’s new convention center, a bipartisan effort where political enemies buried the hatchet and socialized, was also the primary fund-raiser for a prominent local arts group called the Bisbee Betterment Society.
As one of the movers and shakers behind the annual event, Linda was required to play hostess.
Armed with a glass of plain fruit punch and an ironclad smile, she was doing her duty, but she was also looking for her husband. With some real fire in her eyes.
Three hours after he should have been home and two hours after they were due at the convention center, Burton still hadn’t showed up or even called. Normally, that wouldn’t have bothered her.
Linda understood that the unexpected often happened in Burton’s work life, especially the day be fore he was due in court with an important case.
And if he had been working, she wouldn’t have minded or said a word. After all, Burton’s job was what made their comfortable lifestyle possible.
They lived a far more affluent existence than Linda had ever dreamed possible growing up in Cotton wood as the daughter of a school-cafeteria worker and a none-too-successful used-car salesman.
Burtie’s tardiness had nothing to do with work.
That was the problem. Linda already knew from several different sources that it had more to do with booze than the practice of law. Word had come back to Linda that Burton had spent a good part of the afternoon in the Blue Moon Saloon up Brewery Gulch. Of all places! If Burtie was going to go drinking, couldn’t he at least do it someplace a little more respectable?
One of Linda’s “friends” could barely contain her glee when she called with the news, which she had heard from someone else who’d heard it from a friend of Don Frost, who was a classic lush if ever there was one. To add insult to injury, not only had Burton been drinking in the bar, every body in town evidently knew it.
The last time Burton Kimball had gotten himself really plastered was at his own bachelor’s party twelve years earlier. He was still green around the gills by the time the wedding party got to the church the next afternoon. Linda Kimball had a whole wedding album of pictures as documented evidence to prove it. She had told Burtie then and there that if he wanted to be married and stay married, he’d better knock off the drinking. And he had. Until now.
Without Burton at the party to offer his technical assistance, Linda herself had been forced to over see the placement of Harvey Dawson’s repaired television monitors, which would broadcast both local and statewide election results. Statewide results would come from Tucson stations, while local ones would be displayed on Bisbee’s public-access channel. There typed messages listing local election results would be mixed in with civic and commercial announcements.
Linda had noodled her way through the television monitor confusion only to find herself caught in the middle of a last-minute run-in between Bisbees two competing caterers. On this one night, they were forced to work together. And when a turf war broke out, Linda settled it. But as the evening wore on, as she was forced to handle one crisis after another, Linda’s temper rose and Burton Kimball’s rapidly tumbling husbandly stock fell that much further.
As Bisbee parties went, the Bisbee Betterment Society Election Night bash was not to be missed.
