around the car, and let Maggie in. Then she fastened her seat belt.
“Thanks,” Maggie said grudgingly. “That was a bitch!”
Joanna knew Maggie didn’t mean getting in and out of the car. She was talking about the ordeal of identifying a murdered loved one. “Yes,” Joanna said. “I know”
“Do you?” Maggie asked sharply.
Joanna nodded. “You interviewed me when I was elected, after my first husband was shot and killed, remember?”
“Oh, that’s right,” Maggie said as the anger drained from her voice. “I forgot. Sorry.” She fell silent then as Joanna struggled to ignore her own rampaging emotions while she drove the narrow winding thoroughfare called Tombstone Canyon. That one exchange had been enough to catapult Joanna back into the unimaginable pain she had lived with immediately after Andy’s murder. She knew too well how much that kind of violent death hurt and the kind of impact it had on the people left behind. Andy’s murder was now three years in the past, but Joanna doubted the pain of it would ever go away entirely.
Maggie ducked her head to look up at the glowing lights from houses perched on the steep hillsides on either side of the street. “The people who live in those places must be half mountain goat,” she said.
Grateful for Maggie’s attempt to defuse the stricken silence, Joanna responded in kind. “If I were you,” she said, “I wouldn’t bother challenging any of them to a stair-climbing contest.”
Coming into the downtown area, Joanna drove straight to the Copper Queen Hotel and pulled up into the loading zone out front. Once again, she went around the car and opened both the door and the seat belt to let Maggie out.
“The bar’s right over there,” Joanna said, nodding her head toward the outside entrance to the hotel’s lounge. “Why don’t you go on inside. I need to check on something.”
While Maggie headed toward the bar, Joanna hurried to the desk. “Do you have any vacancies tonight?” she asked the young woman behind the counter.
“We sure do. What kind of a room?”
“Single. Nonsmoking.”
“For just one night?”
Joanna nodded. The clerk pushed a registration form across the counter. Joanna filled it out with Maggie’s name, and paid for the room with her own credit card. Once she had the key her hand she went into the bar, where Maggie was sitting in front of a glass filled with amber liquid. Out of deference to her bandaged hands, the bartender had put a long straw in the cocktail glass.
“Something’s happened at home,” Joanna said, settling on the stool next to Maggie. “I’m going to have to spend some time with my daughter. I hope you don’t mind, but I’ve booked a room lilt you here at the Copper Queen, courtesy of the Cochise County Sheriff’s Department. Here’s the key. Tomorrow morning, First thing, I’ll take you back to Phoenix. I hope that’s all right.”
“Can’t you put me on a bus?”
“There isn’t a bus.”
“A taxi, then?”
“There isn’t one that’ll take you as far as Phoenix.”
“Well, then, I guess it’ll have to be all right, won’t it?” Maggie replied after slurping a long swallow through the straw. “Was it something I said, or are you just opposed to riding around with drunks in your car?”
Joanna ignored the gibe. “Here’s my hone phone number,” she added. Next to the key on the counter, Joanna placed a business card on which she had scribbled her number at High Lonesome Ranch. Maggie peered at the card but made no effort to collect it or the key. When Maggie said nothing more, Joanna left the lounge, stopping back by the front desk on her way out.
“Maggie MacFerson, the guest in room nineteen, is in the bar,” she told the desk clerk. “You’ll recognize her right away. She’s got bandages on both hands and probably won’t be able to manage a key. It’s probably not going to take much Scotch to put her back under, either. Would you please be sure she makes it to her room safely?”
“Sure thing, Sheriff
