Outlaw Mountain

sure this is what you want to do? Do you want to spend your whole life going to someone’s home in the middle of the night, waking up some poor sleeping woman, and telling her that her husband has just blown his brains out?”

Joanna felt her eyes welling with tears. “Please, Butch,” she said. “Not now. I’m too tired to fight.”

“I’m not fighting,” he said. “I’m talking. That’s why…” He stopped.

“Why what?”

“Never mind,” he said. “It doesn’t matter. Go on to bed. I’ll clean up here. Then I’ll wake Junior up and we’ll head home.”

“Don’t go,” Joanna said. “I don’t want you to go. I need you here.”

He took her glass and plate and put them in the dish-washer. “I don’t suppose a night on the couch will kill me,” he said.

“I don’t mean for you to sleep on the couch,” she told him. “We’re engaged. I want us to sleep in the same bed.”

“What will Jenny think?” Butch asked. “She doesn’t know we’re engaged. You didn’t tell her, remember?”

“I didn’t have a chance. I’ll tell her in the morning.”

In the end, it didn’t take all that much convincing to get Butch to give up the idea of sleeping on the couch and to come join Joanna in her bed. Still chilled from spending so much of the night outdoors, she snuggled up against the warmth of his body and felt her own muscles begin to relax.

“By the way,” Butch told her, “we picked up that book from Daisy-America the Beautiful.”

“Did you have a chance to look at it?”

“Jenny and Junior did. They spent at least two hours poring over every page.”

“Find anything?” Joanna asked, but she had to struggle to frame the words. She was fading fast. It was difficult to concentrate.

“I think so.”

“Tell me.”

Butch did, but Joanna Brady didn’t hear a word of it. She was already sound asleep, and she was still asleep the next morning when the phone rang at five past seven. Joanna was so groggy that even the jangling of a phone next to her bed didn’t wake her. Butch answered the call in the kitchen and then came into the bedroom.

“Phone,” he said, shaking her awake. “Something about a meeting you’re supposed to attend.”

“I called the department last night and canceled the briefing,” Joanna mumbled, turning over and burying her aching head in a pillow. “Tell them to forget it. Tell them I’ll come in when I’m good and ready.”

“I don’t think it’s that kind of meeting,” Butch said. “Jeff Daniels is on the phone. He says you’re supposed to be the guest speaker at a Kiwanis meeting this morning. When you weren’t there by the time they finished the Pledge of Allegiance, he was afraid you’d forgotten.”

Groaning, Joanna rolled out of bed. “I forgot all right. TelI him I’m on my way. But what about Jenny?”

“Don’t worry. Junior and I will get Jenny off to school,” Butch assured her. “You go do what you need to do.”

After showering and throwing on her clothes, and with only the barest attempt at puffing on makeup, Joanna pulled into the parking lot of Tony’s in Tintown some twenty minutes later-less than five minutes before she was scheduled to speak.

Slipping into the dining room, she dived as unobtrusively as possible for the open seat next to Jeff Daniels. “Where’s Marianne?” Joanna asked, her eyes searching the room as she poured herself a much-needed cup of coffee.

“At home,” Jeff said. “She’s really feeling rotten. I’m afraid it’s something serious, Joanna. What if it’s stomach cancer or something like that?”

“Has she been to see a doctor?”

“No. I guess she doesn’t want to know.”

“What about her resignation? Did she hand that in?”

“No. Not yet,” Jeff admitted. “It’s like she’s paralyzed, Joanna. Emotionally paralyzed. She’s just going through the motions. Ruth keeps asking me what’s the matter with Mommy. I don’t know what to tell her. Would you try talking to her, Joanna? She won’t listen to a word I say, but maybe you can get through to her.”

“I’ll see what I can do.”

By then the business portion of the meeting was winding down and Joanna knew it would only be a matter of seconds before she would be called upon to speak. She had been invited to discuss the county-wide DARE program. But, in view of what had happened at Oak Vista the night before, Joanna had already scrapped her planned speech and was busily constructing another in her mind. No doubt people would have heard rumors about Lewis Flores’ suicide. The story had hit too late to make the morning edition of the Bisbee Bee, but sketchy reports had probably been aired on Tucson television and radio news broadcasts. Once again, unfortunate events in Cochise County were providing headline fodder for the rest of Arizona.

It wasn’t until Joanna stood up to speak-until after she had launched off into her rendition of what had happened the night before-that she noticed Marliss Shackleford seated at table on the far side of the room. An openly smiling Marliss Shackleford. What’s she so happy about? Joanna wondered.

She made it through her speech by operating on remote control. Her whole body ached with weariness. Her head hurt. Her mouth felt dry. All she wanted to do was fall back into her warm bed. When the speech ended and Joanna opened the subject up to questions, she expected Marliss to be among the first to raise her hand. Instead, Marliss slipped out of the room early without asking a single query. That struck Joanna as odd, but she was too tired to be anything but grateful about having dodged a public firefight with her most vocal critic.

Leaving the meeting, Joanna sat in the car for a few minutes and rested her head on the steering wheel. She felt rotten-almost as if she had the flu. So stop being a martyr, she told herself. Go home and go to bed.

After all, she was allowed ten days of sick leave per year. So far she had used only two days total. In the past few weeks Cochise County had exacted far more than its pound of flesh from its lady sheriff. With that realization, she called in to the department and told Kristin that she wasn’t feeling well. She was taking the day off and going back to bed.

“You and Chief Deputy Voland must have caught the same bug,” Kristin told her. “He called in sick, too.”

“If Voland is out, maybe I should come in after all,” Joanna began.

“No. Don’t bother. Chief Deputy Montoya is here this morning. He says he has everything under control. He offered to hang around all day if need be. You go on home.”

Joanna was too tired to require any more persuasion. “Good,” she said. “I’m on my way.”

When she turned onto the road to High Lonesome Ranch, she was surprised that Sadie and Tigger didn’t come racing to meet her. Their raucous greeting was so much a part of any homecoming that Joanna worried about it as she came up the road. Maybe Butch and Jenny had gone off to town that morning without remembering to put the dogs outside. In that case, it was a good thing Joanna hadn’t gone to work. No telling what mischief those two scoundrel dogs would get into if left to their own devices inside the house.

Joanna came through the last stand of mesquite, then jammed on the brakes when she saw a vehicle parked by the gate. Dick Voland’s Bronco sat there with someone slumped against the driver’s window. On the ground nearby lay Sadie and Tigger, both of whom now bounded to their feet and came running toward Joanna, barking their tardy greeting. Inside the Bronco, the slumping figure stirred and then moved. As soon as he straightened into an upright position, Joanna recognized that the driver really was Dick Voland.

Parking beside him, Joanna jumped out of her Blazer and walked up just as Dick rolled down his window. A cloud of boozy air erupted from the enclosed cab. The smell was so thick and pungent that it almost made her gag.

“What are you doing here, Dick?” she asked. “I thought you were sick.”

“I am sick,” he returned. “Why didn’t you tell me?”

“Tell you what? About Lewis Flores? I tried. At least I think I did. But you had already put in a full day by then. You had gone home.”

“About Butch Dixon,” Voland said doggedly.