euthanize.”
They were nearing the boardroom now. Charles Longworth Neighbors appeared to be lost in thought. “How many people do you think were out there?” he asked.
“Out in the parking lot? Fifty, I suppose,” Joanna answered.
“On a Friday morning,” he mused. “That’s quite a few. Do you think they really do vote?”
In that moment Sheriff Joanna Brady understood exactly what was at stake. Charles Longworth Neighbors had been appointed to fill out someone else’s unexpired term.
Now he faced the prospect of running for election on his own and based on his own record.
In the years since her election, Joanna Brady had learned a little about politics herself.
“I’d be amazed to think they didn’t,” she said. “Vote, that is. And if they can summon this many folks for a Friday morning rally, who knows how many votes they can muster?”
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This was news Charles Longworth Neighbors clearly found disturbing. “We should do something about this,” he said.
“Yes,” Joanna agreed amiably. “We certainly should.”
“Do you have any ideas?”
Yes, Joanna thought, like breaking Animal Control out of the sheriff’s department and putting jeannine Phillips in charge.
“One or two,” Joanna said.
“Good, good,” Neighbors said distractedly as he held the boardroom door open for Joanna to enter. “Write up something on that and get it to me, would you, please?
I’ll put it on the agenda for next week.”
“Sure,” Joanna said. “I’ll see what I can do.”
She took her seat in the room and waited for the meeting to get under way. It was hard not to smile. After all, doing what it took to give the AWE vote to Charles Longworth Neighbors was also going to help Sheriff Brady.
Frank Montoya showed up just as the meeting was called to order. He leaned over to her and asked, “What’s going on? You look like you just won the lottery.”
“Tell you later,” she said.
The meeting that morning wasn’t as bad as meetings sometimes were, but when Joanna emerged just before noon, she wasn’t surprised to see that the protesters had evaporated in the face of the hot sun. She checked her phone and found she had five missed calls.
Scrolling through them, she discovered they were all from home. She called there immediately. Jenny answered on the second ring.
“Hi, Mom.”
“What’s going on?” Joanna demanded. “Is anything wrong?”
“No,” Jenny said. “Everything’s fine. Butch and I just got back from taking Lucky to the vet. Dr. Ross says Butch is right.
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Lucky is stone-deaf. She gave us the name of a book on sign language for dogs. She said we might be able to train all the dogs to respond to hand signals. Wouldn’t that be neat?”
“Yes, it would. Is Butch there?”
“No. He’s in town. He said that if you called, he’d meet you at Daisy’s for lunch.”
“Want to grab some lunch?” Frank asked, coming up behind her.
“Sorry,” Joanna told him. “It turns out I’m having lunch with my husband.”
As she drove to Daisy’s, Joanna had to pull over at the traffic circle to let a funeral cortege go past. She knew whose funeral it was-Stella Adams’s-and she was glad the windows in the limo following the hearse were dark enough that she couldn’t see inside.
She was glad not to see Denny Adams and his son, Nathan, coping with their awful loss. She had read in the paper that the services for Stella Adams would be private, but still, it seemed wrong that more people weren’t there. This was a time when Dennis and Nathan Adams needed people around them-even if they didn’t want them.
As the procession with its woefully few cars drove past, Joanna said a small prayer for Dennis and Nathan Adams and for all the remaining Mossmans as well.
It was a subdued Joanna Brady who arrived at Daisy’s Cafe. Butch was seated in their favorite booth, the one at the far corner of the restaurant. He was grinning from ear to ear.
“What’s up?” she asked as she slipped onto the bench seat.
“What makes you think something’s up?” Butch returned.
“Your face, for one thing. You’d never make it playing poker.”
“Drew called,” Butch said, bubbling over. “Carole Anne Wilson is making me an offer.
She wants Serve and Protect to be the
