deadly Colt 2000 she was aiming a plastic water pistol. The expected explosion of gunpowder never came. Instead, a puny stream of water shot out of the pistol and fell to the ground not three feet in front of her. The intruder, totally undeterred, raced into the house through the back door.
Enraged, Joanna threw down the useless water pistol and then headed toward the house herself just as she heard Jenny start to scream. Jenny! Joanna thought. She’s in there with him. I have to get her out!
She started toward the house, running full-out. Even as she ran, she could see a spiral of smoke rising up from the roof of the house, from a part of the roof where there was no chimney, a place where there should have been no smoke.
“Jenny!” Joanna screamed. “Jenny!”
The sound of Joanna’s own despairing voice awakened her. Heart pounding, wet with sweat, she lay on the bed and waited for the nighttime terror to dissipate.
When her breathing finally slowed, she glanced at the clock beside her bed. Twelve-fifteen. It wasn’t even that late. She turned over, pounded the pillow into a more comfortable configuration, and then tried to go back to sleep.
That’s when she realized that although the dream was long gone, the smell of smoke remained. Cigarette smoke—as sharp and pungent as if the person smoking the cigarette were right there in the room with her.
Which is odd, she thought, closing her eyes and drifting off once more. Leann Jessup is my closest neighbor, and she doesn’t even smoke.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
On Wednesday before Thanksgiving, classes ended at noon. Within minutes, the parking lot was virtually empty. Since the Hohokam Resort Hotel was only a half mile away from campus, Joanna had no reason to pack very much to take with her from dorm to hotel room. If she discovered something missing over the weekend, she could always come back for it later. In fact, the dorm and the hotel were close enough that she and Jenny could easily walk over if they felt like it.
Hauling one of her suitcases down from the shelf in the closet, Joanna tossed in two changes of clothing, her nightgown, and a selection of toiletries. She sighed at the size of the next reading assignment and dropped her copy of
“She’s the little girl whose mother died, isn’t she?” Eva Lou asked.
“That’s the one.”
“How’s she doing?”
“Medium,” Joanna answered, thinking about the less than friendly Ernestina Duffy and her frail, oxygen-dependent husband. “Not as well as Jenny,” Joanna added. “Unfortunately for her, Ceci Grijalva doesn’t have the same kind of support system Jenny does.”
“Poor little thing,” Eva clucked. “I’ll go hunt down that bathing suit just as soon as I get off the phone.”
For a change there wasn’t anyone else waiting in line to use the phone. Dialing the Sheriff’s Department number, Joanna savored the privacy. Trying to handle both her personal and professional life from an overused pay phone in an audience-crowded room was aggravating at best.
Once again, Kristin was chilly on the telephone, but she was also relatively efficient. “Chief Deputy Voland is out to lunch, and Chief Montoya’s still over in the jail kitchen.”
“What’s he doing over there?” Joanna asked. “Micromanaging the cook?”
“He’s been there all morning,” Kristin answered. “The last I heard he was supervising the crew of inmates who are washing all the walls.”
