“A couple of times.”
“What kind of car did he drive?”
“Not a car. A truck. A green truck with a camper on it. He brought us an old chair once. He said someone in Sun City was throwing it away because nobody bought it at a garage sale. He said he knew we needed furniture. And sometimes he’d help my mom bring the clothes home from the laundry.”
The phone rang just then, and Jenny pounced on it. “It’s Grandma,” she mouthed silently to Joanna, holding her hand over the mouthpiece as she handed the receiver over to her mother.
“Well,” Eleanor Lathrop said huffily to Joanna, “are you coming down to lunch or not? We’re already down in the coffee shop. Bob’s plane is at two, so he doesn’t have all day. Surely you aren’t going to stand us up two days in a row, are you?”
“Sorry, Mother,” Joanna said. “We were watching something on the VCR. The girls and I will be right there.” Joanna put down the phone. “Turn it off, Jenny. We’ll have to finish this later. Come on.”
Jenny switched off both the TV and VCR. “Have you ever met Grandma Lathrop?” Jenny asked Ceci as they started down the hallway.
“I don’t think so,” Ceci answered.
“She’s a little weird,” Jenny warned. “She sounds mad sometimes, even when she isn’t.”
“Nana Duffy’s like that, too,” Ceci said.
Walking behind them, Joanna realized that having a thorny grandmother was something else the little girls had in common.
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
Halfway across the Hohokam’s coffee shop, Joanna could hear Eleanor. Already in fine form and haranguing as usual, she was reeling off one of her unending litanies to Bob Brundage, who sat, head politely inclined in her direction, providing an attentive and apparently sympathetic audience.
“From the time that man was elected sheriff,” Eleanor was saying, “I don’t believe we ever again ate on time, not as a family. He was perpetually late. It was always something. I kept roasts warm in the oven until they turned to stone. And now that Joanna’s sheriff, it’s happening all over.”
Hearing Eleanor’s familiar whine of complaint, Joanna found herself wondering what had happened to her mother. What had divested her of what must have been freethinking teenage rebelliousness and turned her into an unbending prig? What had happened to that youthful, romantic love between her parents—the forbidden Romeo-and-Juliet affair her long-lost brother had found so captivating? By the time Joanna had any recollection of D. H. and Eleanor Lathrop, they had settled into a state of constant warfare, perpetually wrangling over everything and nothing.
As Joanna and the two girls crossed the room, Bob Brundage stood up to greet them in a gentlemanly fashion. To Joanna’s surprise, however, when he came around the table to hold her chair for her, he winked, but only after making sure the gesture was safely concealed from Eleanor’s view.
“And you must be Cecelia,” he said gravely, helping Ceci into her chair as well. “Jenny was telling me about you last night at dinner. I’m sorry to hear about your mother.”
“Thank you,” Ceci murmured.
“Marliss Shackleford wants you to call her,” Eleanor said sourly to Joanna, sidestepping Bob’s polite attention to social niceties. “She wants to talk to you. Something about a picture.”
“Oh, no,” Joanna said. “I forgot all about that.”
“All about what?”
