dishwasher. She liked his purposeful, economical movements. Liked the way he made himself a contributing part of the household rather than a guest. He seemed to be quietly weaving his way into the fabric of her life, but without making unreasonable demands. Joanna found Butch easy to be with, even though he knew they would most likely spend whatever was left of the evening waiting for the telephone to ring.
“I don’t deserve you,” she said quietly.
He grinned. “Yes, you do.”
He came across the kitchen then and gathered her into a tight embrace. He held her for a long time, and she made no attempt to pull away. Finally, he was the one who broke it off.
“Come on,” he said. “Bring the phone and let’s go sit on the couch where it’s comfortable. And that’s where I’ll spend the night-on the couch. That way, if you do have to go in, someone will be here to look after Jenny when she wakes up.”
CHAPTER THREE
When Joanna awakened the next morning, that’s exactly where she found Butch-sound asleep on her living room couch. They had waited up for some time, expecting a phone call. When none came, they had finally ventured into the bedroom. Sometime after Joanna fell asleep, Butch must have crept out of bed. Joanna was grateful for his discretion when, moments after she reached the kitchen to make coffee, Jenny appeared at her side.
“What’s Butch doing on the couch?” she asked.
“Sleeping,” Joanna said.
“I know that. But why?”
“Because if I had been called into the office during the night, somebody would have been here to look after you.”
Pouring herself a bowl of cereal, Jenny scowled. “To baby-sit, you mean. I’m not a baby.”
“No, you’re not. But eleven is still too young to be left here alone at night.”
By the time Joanna finished showering and dressing and returned to the kitchen, Butch was seated in the breakfast nook drinking coffee and chatting amiably with Jenny, who was munching her way through a peanut- butter-slathered English muffin.
As soon as Joanna entered the kitchen, the conversation ground to a sudden, awkward halt. By the time she had poured her own cup of coffee, Jenny had taken her dishes to the counter and was busily stowing them in the dishwasher. Joanna took Jenny’s place in the breakfast nook. “I hope I’m not interrupting something,” she said.
“Oh, no,” Butch replied with a conspiratorial grin. “We’re all done, aren’t we, Jenny?”
From the kitchen doorway, Jenny looked back and nodded. “And you won’t tell? Promise?”
“Cross my heart.”
Satisfied by his words of reassurance, Jenny disappeared into the living room. Joanna turned an appraising eye on Butch. “Does that mean you really won’t tell me?” she asked.
“Yup,” he said. “That’s what it means.”
Joanna shook her head. She was grateful that Jenny and Butch clearly liked one another, but it bothered Joanna to discover their sharing secrets that didn’t include her. It felt as though they were ganging up on her, double- teaming. It made her feel out of the loop and more than slightly resentful. If there was something important going on in her daughter’s life-some important issue that required an adult consultation-Joanna felt she was the one Jenny should have turned to for guidance.
“You’re awfully quiet,” Butch said a minute or so later. “You’re not upset about this, are you?”
“Upset?” Joanna repeated. “Of course I’m not upset. Don’t be ridiculous.”
Her misgivings to the contrary, Joanna agreed to let Butch drive Jenny to school. Meanwhile, Joanna continued to mull over the secrecy issue as she drove herself from High Lonesome Ranch to the Cochise County Justice Complex three miles away. Those private concerns left her the moment she stepped inside her office. Within minutes she was pulled into an escalating whirl of activity that allowed little time for introspection.
Monday morning roll call was the one time a week when as many of her far-flung deputies as possible assembled in the conference room. That gathering was one Joanna tried to attend on a regular basis. It was a way of staying in touch with officers in the field. Once roll call was over, Joanna retreated to the privacy of her own office for the daily briefing with her two chief deputies.
As usual, Chief Deputy for Operations Richard Voland was on hand and on time. He brought with him the routine sheaf of incident reports that had come in county-wide over the weekend. Tossing the papers onto Joanna’s desk, Voland eased his bulky frame into one of the captain’s chairs in front of Joanna’s desk.
“I don’t know where the hell Frank Montoya is,” he grumbled. “I was told he’s up in Tucson chasing after the kid who stole Mayor Rogers’ mother’s car. Isn’t it about time he got his butt back here to Bisbee and started tending to business? I’m sick and tired of having to cover for him-of having to do my work and his, too.”
Relations between Joanna’s two chief deputies had never been cordial. Frank Montoya’s temporary posting to Tombstone had made things worse. Not only that, Frank’s continuing absence meant that Joanna and Dick Voland were thrown together alone for much of the time,
In public, Dick carried on with total professionalism. Alone in Joanna’s office, however, the man’s continuing infatuation with her was growing more and more apparent. He often came to the morning briefing with two cups of coffee in hand. When he gave Joanna hers, fingers brushing in the process, his face would flush-whether with embarrassment or pleasure, Joanna couldn’t tell. She did know that a call to her from Butch Dixon while Dick Voland was in her office would be enough to send her Chief Deputy for Operations into a day-long funk.
It bothered Joanna that, once the briefings were over, Voland would often find one excuse after another not to leave her office. He would linger in the doorway, making small talk about anything and everything. Sometimes those doorway discussions were official in nature, but more often they revolved around personal issues-around Voland’s bitter divorce and his difficulties as a part-time father. Joanna knew the man was searching for sympathy, and not undeservedly so. But she worried that any personal comments or kind gestures on her part might be misinterpreted.
Before her election to the office of sheriff, Joanna’s experience with law enforcement had been entirely secondhand, as the daughter of one lawman and, later, as the wife and widow of another. Because she had come to the office as a novice police officer, she remained largely dependent on the professionals who worked for her to give her much-needed advice and direction. Richard Voland was an eighteen-year Cochise County Sheriff’s Department veteran. As such, she needed his counsel and help, but his increasingly personal attachment to her forced Joanna to walk a fine line between not alienating the man and not leading him on, either.
On this particular morning, she welcomed Dick Voland’s ill-tempered griping about Frank Montoya. Focus on work usually helped keep personal issues at bay. Without replying, Joanna buzzed her secretary, Kristin Marsten, whose desk was just outside the door.
“Did Chief Deputy Montoya call in to say he’d be late?”
“Actually,” Kristin returned, “he’s on the line right now. I was about to buzz you when you beat me to it. Do you want me to take a message or should I put him through?”
“Let me talk to him,” Joanna replied.
When her line buzzed seconds later, she punched the speakerphone. “What’s up, Frank? Where are you?”
“Still in Tucson,” Montoya answered. “Sorry to miss the briefing, but I wanted to stay with this thing. I was afraid if I didn’t stick around and keep prodding, Pima County would drop the ball.”
“What’s going on?” Joanna asked.
“Everyone has this one filed as juvenile joyriding, which makes it a pretty low priority. When the kid came out of surgery, they didn’t even have any Santa Cruz County detectives here to talk to him. I was it. His mother was there and so was a hotshot attorney who happens to be the kid’s uncle.
“All I wanted to know was where they picked up the car so we’d have some idea of where to go looking for Alice. The kid’s name is Joaquin Morales. His attorney wouldn’t let him talk to me without having some kind of deal in place first. I tried to tell him that if there was a chance Alice was still alive, we needed to find her as soon as possible. The uncle didn’t buy it. He insisted that I call in someone from Pima County. Since the missing person is
