“Come on, Ceci,” Joe Duffy said, taking Ceci’s hand. “Bring Spot along, would you?”
Dutifully Ceci reached out and took the handle of the oxygen cart.
“Spot?” Joanna asked.
Joe Duffy gave her a grin. “The trailer park don’t allow no pets. So me an’ Ceci an’ Pepe decided that my cart here would be our dog, Spot. He don’t eat much, and he’s never once wet on the carpet. Right, Ceci?”
“Right, Grandpa,” Ceci said.
“And we’ll see you all on Friday morning,” he said to Joanna. “You won’t forget now, will you? I don’t approve of folks who’d let a little kid down.”
“We’ll be there,” Joanna promised. “Jenny and I both.”
“Good.”
“Whoa,” Leann said, once the Duffys and Cecilia, were out of earshot. “That woman is tough as nails. Those kids are lucky they have a guy like him for a grandfather.”
“For the time being,” Joanna said. “But from the look of things, I doubt he’ll be around very long.”
There were still people milling in the aisles as they started toward the car. Just beyond the back row of chairs, the lights of a portable television camera sprang to life directly in their path, almost blinding them.
“Sheriff Brady,” a disembodied woman’s voice said, as a microphone was thrust in front of Joanna’s face. “Sheriff Joanna Brady, could you please tell us why you came here tonight?”
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
“I missed the first part of the interview,” Leann said later, as they walked from the mall to the car. “Some creepy guy behind us was following so close that when the reporter stopped you, he ran right into me. Stepped on the back of my heel. Did you see him?”
“No,” Joanna said. “I missed that completely.”
“Then, when I turned around to look at him, he glared at me with these cold, ice-blue eyes as if it was all my fault that he ran into me. Whoever he was, he guy had a real problem. I’ve always wondered how dirty looks could cause drive-by shootings. Now maybe I know.”
The two women walked in silence the rest of the way to the car. “How did that reporter know it was you?’’ Leann asked, once they were inside Joanna’s Blazer.
Still somewhat stunned by her unexpected encounter with a television reporter, it was the same question Joanna had been asking herself all the way to the car.
Since deciding to run for office, Joanna had adjusted to the idea that she was no longer a private person in her own hometown, that down in Bisbee there would be people like Marliss Shackleford poking their noses into Joanna’s every move. Until that night, the fact that she was well known on a statewide basis hadn’t yet penetrated her consciousness.
“It is a little disconcerting,” she admitted at last. “That kind of stuff happens all the time in Bisbee, but Bisbee happens to be a very small pond. Phoenix is a lot bigger than that.”
Leann nodded. “By a couple million or so people. Why do you think the reporter singled you out like that?”
