As Linda left the room, the intercom buzzed.
“Ernie’s down working in the glory hole on the Patterson ranch. He wants to know can it wait?”
“It can’t wait. Tell him to keep on doing what he’s doing. I’ll come find him. What about a car, Kristin? Did you get one for me?”
“All that’s available today is a five-year-old Blazer. Body’s good; engine’s a little rough. That’s what Danny from Motor Pool says.”
“I only want to know two things. Does it run, and is it equipped with a working radio?”
“Danny says yes.”
“Good. Tell him to bring it around as soon as he can. I’d like to have it here in under five minutes, with the engine running and a full tank of gas. And, Kristin?”
“Yes.”
“Thanks for taking care of the car,” Joanna said. “Good job.”
WHEN Joanna rushed out of the office in search of Ernie Carpenter, she grabbed the stack of un opened mail and took it along with her.
The Blazer with the Sheriff’s Department insignia on the door was a long way from new, but that didn’t bother her After all, it was several years newer than her old Eagle.
Once on the Rocking P, she drove straight to the glory hole without turning off at the house.
As she went past, though, she caught a glimpse of Ivy’s truck parked by the front gate. Seeing it made her wonder if Ivy would really go through with her hasty wedding plans. By getting married within days of her father’s death, Ivy would be committing one of those breaches of small-town etiquette that would expand into legend with countless retellings.
Where hasty marriages were concerned, Joanna Brady was one of the few people in town prepared to give the benefit of the doubt to Yuri Malakov and Ivy Patterson’s late-blooming, whirlwind romance. After all, Joanna and Andy had raised eyebrows years earlier with their own rushed wedding. That union had certainly worked out fine in the long run.
A rushed marriage was probably fine, but the possibility of murder was not. Personally, Joanna wanted to believe in the idea of two people living happily ever after, but a determination on whether or not the newlyweds would ride off into the sun set on a honeymoon or end up in prison at florence would have to be left in Ernie Carpenter’s capable hands. It was up to him and to a judge and jury.
This time when Joanna arrived at the glory hole, there was a whole collection of vehicles parked around it. She had to leave the Blazer a fair distance away and then tiptoe over the rocky ground in her city-slicker black pumps. High heels that were only marginally safe on flat sidewalk surfaces were downright dangerous on the splintery shale.
Three young deputies lounged around the hole. Ostensibly, they were running spotlights and lugging equipment, but mostly they leaned on fence posts with their hands in their pockets and chewed the fat. As soon as Joanna drove up, they all made an obvious pretense of looking busy.
“Hey, Detective Carpenter,” one of them called down into the hole. “Sheriff Brady’s here.”
“What are you waiting for then?” Ernie grumbled back. “Winch me up so I can talk to her and get it over with.”
While Joanna watched, a filthy, mud-caked specter rose up out of the glory hole. The bandbox detective who had sat taking notes in her office only hours earlier now looked and smelled like a battle weary infantryman in night camouflage.
Once out of the harness, he strode over to the van where a makeshift washbasin had been set up on the tailgate. Cursing her wretched shoes, Joanna tripped after him.
“How do you do it?” she asked irritably.
“Do what?” he asked, bending over and care fully soaping his hands, then sloshing the dirt off his grubby face.
“One minute you look like you just stepped out of Gentlemen’s Quarterly. The next you look like you haven’t changed clothes in years.”
“Oh, that,” Ernie Carpenter said with a short laugh. “It’s a trick I learned from my wife. When ever she was expecting, she always kept a packed suitcase by the front door. I keep two changes of clothes in my car at all times, because in this line of work, you never know what’s going to turn up. Speaking of which, I take it something did.”
Joanna nodded and pulled the white envelope out of her pocket. “Look what someone brought to my office earlier this afternoon. I thought you’d want to see it.”
Drying his hands on a paper towel, Ernie took the offered envelope, opened it, and removed the three-by-five card. He read it without comment, then slipped the card back in the envelope.
“That’s fine,” he said without showing more than minimal interest. “It’s bound to make the coroner’s identification job that much easier.”
“You think it’s him then?” Joanna asked, disappointed that Ernie’s level of excitement didn’t match her own.
“I’m sure of it,” he answered, opening a nylon fanny-pack that was strapped around his waist.
“As soon as I saw these, I was pretty sure that’s who it was.”
He removed something from the bag, dunked it in the water, and then dried it with a towel. “Look at this,” he said.
Joanna held out her hand, and Ernie dropped something into it. At first she thought it was the beaded brass
