“Time to eat!” Ruth mimicked, imitating Jenny’s every gesture. “Come and get it before we throw it out,” Jenny added.
“Throw it out,” was all Ruth could manage before dissolving into a gale of giggles.
Joanna reached out and took the sweet-smelling baby while Marianne set about fastening her bra and buttoning her blouse. Looking down at Andy’s namesake, Jeffrey Andrew Daniels, with his fuzz of bright red hair, Joanna felt fiercely protective about the little grinning lump of toothless humanity.
She looked up to find Marianne smiling at them both. “He’s cute as a button,” Joanna said.
“But do you think motherhood is worth it?” Marianne asked.
Joanna thought about Irma Sorenson and Amy Bernard. “I don’t know,” she said. “Ask me again in another twenty years.”
“It’s a deal,” Marianne said. “Now let’s go eat. I’m starved.”
CHAPTER TWENTY
Christopher Bernard came alone to Dora Matthews’s funeral on Friday afternoon. Joanna saw him sitting stiffly on a folding chair in the back row of Norm Higgins’s funeral chapel. His navy sport coat, white shirt, and tie seemed totally at odds with his spiky purple hair, his braces, and his multi-ply pierced ears. Joanna smiled at him. He nodded briefly, but he left as soon as the service was over, and Joanna didn’t see him again—not at the graveside service at Evergreen Cemetery and not during the coffee hour later at the Presbyterian Church’s reception hall.
The second pew was occupied by Faye Lambert’s Girl Scout troop, all of them wearing their uniforms and sitting at respectful attention. At the coffee hour after the service, while Jenny and the other girls milled around the refreshment table, Joanna sought out Faye.
“Oh, Joanna,” Faye Lambert said. “I feel so awful about all this. I never should have sent the girls home. I guess I overreacted. It’s just that I had tried so hard to help Dora tit in. I knew things weren’t good at home, but it was stupid of me not to realize how bad they really were. Then, when I found out what Dora and Jenny had been up to that night—that they’d been off hiking around alone in the dark and smoking cigarettes—I was so terribly disappointed. I shouldn’t have taken it personally, but I did. If only—”
“Stop it, Faye,” Joanna told her. “What happened to Dora would have happened regardless. It’s not your fault.”
“But I can’t keep from blaming myself.”
“And my mother thinks it’s her fault for calling CPS. And I think it’s my fault for being out of town. It’s nobody’s fault, Faye. Nobody’s except the killer’s.”
“I heard someone had been arrested,” Faye said. “Some doctor’s wife from up in Tucson? I can’t imagine what the connection is.”
Joanna sighed. “And I can’t tell you, although I suppose the whole state will be reading about it soon enough. In the meantime, though, I almost forgot. I have something I need to give you.”
“For me?” Faye Lambert asked.
“For the troop, really,” Joanna said, digging in her purse for the envelope in which she had stored her poker-playing winnings. “When I was at the Arizona Sheriffs’ Association meeting last weekend, some of my fellow sheriffs were kind enough to take up a collection for your troop—to help out with that planned trip to Disneyland at the end of the summer.”
Faye opened the envelope and peered inside. Her eyes widened. “Why there must be close to seven hundred dollars here.”
“Six ninety-nine, to be exact,” Joanna said.
“How wonderful of them. I’ll need to have the names of the people who made the donations,” Faye said. “The girls will certainly want to send thank-you notes.”
Joanna shook her head. “Don’t bother,” she said. “In this case, I believe they’d all prefer to remain anonymous.”
Faye was called away just then. Joanna looked around the room for Butch and found him chatting with
