Partner In Crime (14 page)

Kiddo had come into their lives not long after Andy’s death. As a single mother with a demanding full-time job, Joanna had been wary of taking on any more responsibilities. She had objected to the idea of Jenny’s having a horse, but on that subject she had been overruled by her in-laws. And rightly so, she realized now.

She had watched in amazement as Jenny and the gelding had bonded. She had also been astonished at how caring for the horse had somehow helped ease Jenny’s terrible grief after her father’s death. In a way Joanna didn’t quite understand, she realized that allowing Jenny to be responsible for this huge, four-legged creature had helped transform her from a child into what she was now—a self-possessed young girl verging on womanhood.

Silently Joanna went over and joined Jenny at the fence, noticing as she did so that she and her daughter stood almost eye-to- eye. Within months, Jennifer Ann Brady would most likely be taller than her five-foot-four mother.

“Did you and Butch have a fight or something?” Jenny asked as Joanna reached out a hand to touch Kiddo’s sleek neck.

“Why do you ask that?” Joanna returned.

Jenny shrugged. “He was real quiet last night when he took me to play practice, and he was gone this morning by the time I got up,” she said. “He usually cooks breakfast, but today he didn’t. I had cold cereal instead.”

“We had a disagreement,” Joanna conceded after a pause. “Not a fight. And it’s all settled now. He said he had a meeting over at the new house this morning. I’m sure that’s the only reason he left the house so early.”

“What was it about?” Jenny asked pointedly.

“The disagreement?”

Jenny nodded.

“About his trains,” Joanna answered, thinking how silly that must sound.

“What about them?” Jenny asked.

“He wants to build a permanent track for them in the family room and run it over the doors and window frames,” Joanna replied. “I want a regular family room with a couch, a couple of chairs, a television set, and no trains.”

“If he’s still mad about it, then I guess you won,” Jenny said.

“It’s not a matter of winning or losing,” Joanna replied. “Being married means you have to discuss things and work out compromises you can both live with. I told Butch we’d find someplace else to put his trains, and we will.”

There was a long pause after that. Joanna assumed the conversation was over. It wasn’t.

“Did you and Dad have disagreements?” Jenny asked.

This was tougher ground. With Andy dead, it might have been easier to pretend that everything between them had always been perfect, even if that wasn’t true.

“Yes,” Joanna admitted finally. “Yes, we did.”

“What about?”

Joanna thought about those first stormy years in her previous marriage. She and Andy had both been young, and having a child only a few months after the wedding had added a whole other dimension to the usual newlyweds conflicts. For years, there had always been too little money and too many bills. Thinking back, it seemed to Joanna that she and Andy had fought about almost everything—about whether or not he had filled the car with gas the last time he drove it, about why he was late for dinner or hadn’t picked up his dirty clothes, and why he always seemed to leave an unsightly sprinkle of whiskers in the bathroom sink. Then, after five years or so, things had smoothed out. Joanna and Andy had made it to their tenth anniversary and most likely would have made it longer if only . . .

“A lot of little things, I guess,” Joanna said finally. “Things that I see now weren’t important enough to fight over in the first place.”

“I never heard you fight,” Jenny said wistfully. “Or if I did, I don’t remember.”

“Good,” Joanna returned, meaning it. Her relationship with Roy Andrew Brady hadn’t been all good or all bad. Neither was her relationship with Butch Dixon. Jenny needed to have a more realistic idea of how the world worked.

“It’s better to forget quarrels than it is to remember them,” Joanna added.

Then, as they stepped off the rail and started toward the house, Butch drove into the yard. Again the dogs rode in the back with their heads thrust out the open windows.

As soon as Butch opened the door, the two dogs leaped out and gamboled over to Jenny. Only after greeting her did they make for their water.

“I see you let them ride again,” Joanna said, walking up to kiss him hello. If he was still angry about the train situation, it didn’t show.

He kissed her back and then frowned at the dogs. “I remembered what you said about spoiling them,” he said. “I tried to get them to run home, but Sadie wasn’t having any of it. She lay down in the middle of the road and wouldn’t budge. I had to go back and get her. Once she was in the car, Tigger wanted to ride, too.”

“It’s all right,” Joanna said. “I was teasing.”

Butch glanced down at Joanna’s clothing and then checked his watch. “It’s only five now. How long have you been home?”

Joanna shrugged. “A couple of hours. Jenny and I have been cleaning Kiddo’s stall and putting out hay.”

“Why so early?”

“I gave myself part of the afternoon off,” she said.

“How come?”

“Politics,” she said.

“I see,” Butch said. “Come tell me about it while I fix dinner.”

Inside the house, Jenny and the dogs disappeared into her room. Relieved that things were better with Butch, Joanna sat in the breakfast nook and sipped at a soda while he hustled around the kitchen. There was no point in asking if she could help. Years of being a short-order cook made Butch’s culinary efforts far superior to Joanna’s limited skills in that regard. His movements were quick, decisive, and economical.

Joanna told him everything—about the Rochelle Baxter/ Latisha Wall case as well as the difficult board of supervisors meeting and Marliss Shackleford’s hurtful column. Somehow, though, she neglected to mention the heart-to-heart she and Jenny had shared outside Kiddo’s corral.

“It sounds like Marliss is throwing her lot in with your opposition,” Butch said when she finished relating the part about the column. “Any idea who that’s going to be?”

“Not really,” Joanna said. “I have my suspicions. It was Ken Galloway who raised such a stink about Yolanda’s Fallen Officer funeral. I wouldn’t be surprised to learn he’s Marliss Shackleford’s ‘unnamed source.’ “

Butch stopped with a half-peeled potato in one hand and the paring knife in the other. “Do you think Galloway might run against you?” he asked.

Joanna nodded. “It’s possible.”

“That’s my guess, too,” Butch agreed.

The phone rang, and Joanna hurried to answer it. “Howdy, boss,” Jaime Carbajal said. “Sorry to bother you at home.”

“It’s all right. What’s up?”

“I had an appointment to finish my interview with Dee Canfield today. Like I told you, I did a preliminary with her yesterday, but she was so anxious about getting ready for the show that she barely paid attention to my questions. Since she was so distracted, I made an appointment to see her this afternoon at the gallery.”

“And?”

“She wasn’t there. Her boyfriend wasn’t, either. The place is still closed up tight, just like it was last night. The sign’s still on the door. There were two notices—one from FedEx and one from UPS—saying they had attempted deliveries.”

Joanna felt a twinge of concern. She had been pleased to hear Dee had canceled the show, thinking the gallery owner had come to her senses. Now there was a far more ominous possibility. Only one person in town had been absolutely determined to shut down that grand-opening party.

“Did you go by her house?” Joanna asked. “Maybe she’s ill.”

“Sure did. She lives on Cochise Drive out in Huachuca Terraces. I stopped by twice,” Jaime said. “Nobody was home. The blinds are down and the curtains closed. Something’s not right here, Sheriff. I have a really bad feeling about it. If there’s still no sign of her or Warren Gibson by tomorrow morning, I should probably get search warrants and go through both the house and the gallery.”

“Maybe they decided to take a few days off,” Joanna suggested.

“I doubt that,” Jaime said. “For one thing, I talked to Gina Dodd at Desert Stairs Catering. Dee hired Gina to supply the food for last night’s party. The first Gina knew about the cancellation was when she showed up with a vanful of food and found the sign on the gallery door. Gina says Dee never would have done that without calling. She says that’s not the way Dee Canfield does business. Gina’s convinced something is terribly wrong.”

“Do you think Gina Dodd’s word will be enough for you to get a search warrant? And will you be able to get one on Saturday morning?”

“By the time I talked to Phyllis Kelly, Judge Moore’s clerk, he was gone for the day,” Jaime replied. “He and his wife have a dinner engagement in Tucson. I’ll have to catch up with him in the morning. Phyllis says I can bring the paperwork by his house then.”

“Did you talk to Bobo Jenkins about any of this?” Joanna asked. “He had a disagreement with Dee Canfield over Rochelle Baxter’s show, but I believe he and Dee have been friends for a long time. Maybe he knows where Dee and Warren might have gone off to.”

“I didn’t actually talk to Bobo today,” Jaime said. “What I got instead was a call from Burton Kimball. He says he’ll be along for the ride when Bobo Jenkins comes to talk to us at ten o’clock tomorrow morning.”

Joanna was surprised. “Bobo’s bringing Cochise County’s premier defense attorney along for the interview? How come?”

“You tell me. I told Mr. Kimball all we want is to ask Bobo a few routine questions. Burton hinted that he thought our reasons for wanting to talk to his client were possibly politically or racially motivated.”

“Politically or racially motivated?” Joanna repeated. “What kind of nonsense is that?”

“I’ve heard talk that Bobo Jenkins is thinking of running for mayor,” Jaime offered.

“He can run for governor, for all I care,” Joanna shot back, angered by the implication. “Bobo is one of the last people who saw Latisha Wall alive. He was also raising hell in Castle Rock Gallery yesterday morning, not long before Dee Canfield and Warren Gibson disappeared. Of course we need to talk to him. That’s not race or politics; that’s police work. If Bobo feels a need to have Burton Kimball along to hold his hand, it’s his problem, not ours.”

There was a pause. “Are you okay, boss?” Jaime asked.

“What do you mean, am I okay?” Joanna demanded, trying not to sound as irritable as she felt. “Of course I’m okay.”

“Kristin told me that you went home early, which, you have to admit, isn’t like you,” he said. “She thought you weren’t feeling well, and you do sound a little . . .”

“A little what?”

“Well . . . cranky,” Jaime replied reluctantly.

Joanna didn’t want to sound cranky. Or unreasonable. “I’m fine, Jaime,” she assured him, deliberately softening her tone. “What time is that Bobo Jenkins interview again?”

“Ten.”

When her other homicide detective, Ernie Carpenter, had asked to take a full week of vacation all at once, it hadn’t seemed like that big a deal. “When’s Ernie due home?” she asked.

“Monday.”

“I wish it was sooner, but that’s the way it is. All right, then. If Bobo is bringing the big guns in with him, you’d better have some backup as well. Call Frank Montoya and ask him to be there with you.”

“Will do,” Jaime agreed.

“All the same,” Joanna added, “I’ll be in the office. When you’re done with the interview, come tell me how it went.”

“Okeydokey,” Jaime Carbajal responded. “Who needs weekends anyway?”

He hung up and Joanna turned back to Butch. “What was that all about?” he asked.

Joanna explained as best she could.

“Dee Canfield,” Butch said. “The woman who disappeared. Who’s she again?”

“She owns the gallery where Rochelle/Latisha’s art was going to be exhibited. Even with the artist dead, she was going to go through with the grand opening last night, but then she didn’t. Jaime Carbajal tried to go to the party himself, but the gallery was closed up tight, and it still is, more than twenty-four hours later.”

Butch lifted a pot lid to check on the potatoes. “I can hardly wait to read next week’s paper,” he said. “No doubt Marliss will figure out a way to make all of this your fault as well.”

At that moment Jenny meandered into the kitchen. “What’s your fault?” she asked, opening the refrigerator door and examining the contents. “What’s for dinner?” she added. “It smells good, and I’m starved.”

“Pork chops and gravy,” Butch replied. “Along with mashed potatoes, string beans, and apple sauce.”

“Great,” Jenny said. “Everything except the string beans.” Butch’s fried pork chops were her unqualified favorite. Reaching for a clean glass, she poured herself some milk.

“So what’s your fault, Mom?” Jenny asked, sipping her milk and studying her mother’s face over the rim of the glass.

“At the moment, one person is dead and two others are missing,” Butch explained. “I was saying that in Marliss Shackleford’s next column, she’ll probably try to blame all of it on your mother. That’s Marliss’s usual modus operandi.”

“Oh,” Jenny said, taking her half-empty glass and heading into the dining room. “Is that all? I thought you guys were back to talking about putting a train track in the family room.”

Butch shot Joanna a quizzical look. Joanna sighed.

Thanks, Jen,
she thought.
You’ve just provided a perfect ending to a perfect day!

I
T WASN’T A PARTICULARLY NICE WAY
to begin celebrating my birthday. For one thing, I had to be up and out of Belltown Terrace by five in the morning in order to make that 7
A.M.
Alaska Airlines flight to Tucson. It was pitch-dark as I climbed into a cigarette-smoke-saturated cab driven by a non-communicative maniac. I wasn’t about to give the state of Washington access to the condo’s communal limo.

The rain was pouring down as we headed for the airport, but I didn’t regard that as any kind of ill omen. After all, it was the last week in October. Everybody knows it rains like mad in Seattle in October. And maybe that’s why the seven-o’clock plane to Tucson was loaded to the gills. It was full of people wanting to trade chill autumn rain for one last glimpse of sun along with a whole wad of purple-and-gold-bedecked rowdy Husky fans on their way to a U Dub/U of A football game.