“Connie,” he said. “It’s Ron. I don’t know if you’re there or not. If you are, please pick up.” There was a pause, then he continued. “I guess you’re not. I don’t know where to start, Connie, honey. I’m so sorry. About everything. I’m at a place called Pathway to Paradise. I thought these people could help me, and they are—helping me, that is. It’s going to take time, and I want to talk to you about it, Connie. I want to explain. Maybe you’ll be able to forgive me, or maybe not. I don’t know.
“I can’t leave here, because I’ve made a commitment to stay for the full two months, but it would mean so much to me if you would come here to see me. That way I can be the one to tell you what happened instead of your having to hear it from somebody else. Please come, Connie. Please, preferably this evening. Pathway to Paradise is at the far end of the Chiricahua Mountains, just out-side Portal on the road to Paradise. It’s north of town on the right-hand side of the road. You’ll see the sign. Wait for me along the road, sometime between nine and ten, and—”
At that point an operator’s voice cut in on Ron’s. “If you wish to speak longer you’ll have to deposit an additional one dollar and sixty-five cents.”
“Please,” Ron added.
And then the answering machine clicked off. For almost a minute afterward, Connie stood staring blankly at the machine, then she began to quake once more.
Connie Richardson Haskell was a woman who had always prided herself on keeping her emotions under control. Her father had expected it of her. After all those years under her father’s tutelage, Connie had come to expect it of herself. The whole time she had cared for her aging and at times entirely unreasonable parents, she had never once allowed herself to become angry.
But now anger roared through her system with a ferocity that left her shaken. It filled her whole being like an avalanche plunging down the throat of some narrow, rock-lined gorge.
Finally she nodded. “I’ll be happy to join you in Paradise, you son of a bitch,” she muttered grimly. “But I’m going to bring along a little surprise.”
With that, she turned and walked into the bedroom. There, behind one of her mother’s vivid watercolors, was Stephen Richardson’s hidden wall safe. Inside the safe was her father’s well-oiled .357 Magnum. Connie didn’t need to check to see if the gun was loaded. Stephen Richardson had always maintained that having an unloaded weapon in the house was as useless as having a plumber’s helper with no handle.
Not taking the time to shut the safe or rehang the painting, Connie walked back to the kitchen, where she stuffed the pistol into her purse right next to her mother’s Bible. Then, without a backward glance and without bothering to lock up the house, turn on the alarm, or even make sure the door was firmly closed, Connie went back out to Claudia’s Town Car. Her father had always insisted on keeping a Rand McNally
This time, when she switched on the engine, she turned on the air conditioner as well. Until that moment, Connie Richardson Haskell had thought the term “heat of anger” was only a figure of speech.
Now she knew better.
Slamming the big car into reverse, she tore out of the garage and headed for Pathway to Paradise to find her husband. As she drove down the citrus- and palm-tree-lined street and away from the house that had been her home her whole life, Connie didn’t bother to look back, and she didn’t notice that the garage door had tidied to close. There was no reason to look back. It was almost as though she knew she was finished with the house and the neighborhood, and they were finished with her. No matter what happened, Connie Richardson Haskell wouldn’t be returning. Ever.
CHAPTER ONE
At one o’clock Friday morning, Sheriff Joanna Brady let herself back into the two-room suite at the Marriott Hotel in Page, Arizona. Butch Dixon, her husband of a month and a little bit, lay sound asleep on the bed with his laptop computer sitting open in front of him. The laptop was evidently sleeping every bit as soundly as Butch.
Joanna kicked off her high heels and then stood still, gratefully wiggling her cramped toes in the plush carpet. Butch had the room’s air conditioner turned down as low as it could go, and the room was pleasantly cool. Joanna took off her jacket and sniffed it. Wrinkling her nose in distaste, she tossed it over the back of the desk chair. It reeked so of cigar and cigarette smoke that she’d need to dry-clean the suit before she could wear it again. But, after an evening spent playing cutthroat poker with fellow members of the Arizona Sheriffs’
