Shoot, Don't Shoot (4 page)

“I had dinner with my folks tonight,” Frank said. “My cousin’s getting married two weeks from now, so my mother had one of her command performance dinners in honor of the soon-to-be newlyweds. I was on my way out the door when she pulled me aside and asked me what are we go to do about Jorge Grijalva. ‘Who the hell is Jorge Grijalva?’ I asked.” Frank paused for a moment. “Ever heard of him?”

“Who, me?” Joanna returned.

“Yes, you.”

Joanna closed her eyes in concentration. She ha been so caught up in her own troubles that it was hard to remember someone else’s, but it came her a moment later. “Ceci’s father,” she breathed.

“Ceci?” Frank asked.

“Ceci Grijalva. She was in school and Brownies with Jenny last year. I believe her parents must have gotten a divorce. The mother and the two kids moved to Phoenix right after school got out. The father worked at the lime plant down by Paul Spur until the mother turned up dead somewhere outside Phoenix. It happened about the same time Andy was killed, so I didn’t pay that much attention. As I understand it, Jorge is the prime suspect.”

“Only suspect,” Frank Montoya corrected.

Joanna sat up in bed so she could think better. “Didn’t the detectives on the case pick him up at work down in Paul Spur? A day or so after I was sworn in, I remember seeing a letter from the chief of police up in Peoria. He sent a note to the department, thanking us for our cooperation. Since it happened on Dick Voland’s watch, I passed the letter along to him. That’s all I know about it.”

“You know a lot more than I did, then,” Frank Montoya returned. “You’re right. The family had been living in Bisbee for a while, but Jorge is originally from Douglas. Pirtleville, actually. And it turns out that Jorge’s mother, Juanita, is an old friend of my mother’s. They used to work together years ago, picking peaches at the orchards out in Elfrida. According to Mom, Juanita thinks Jorge is being sold down the river on account of something he didn’t do. She asked me if I...I mean, if
we..
. could do anything to help.”

“Like what?” Joanna asked.

“I don’t know. All I can tell you is his mother swears he didn’t do it.”

“Mothers always swear their darlings didn’t do it.” Joanna countered. “Didn’t you know that?”

”I suppose I did,” Frank agreed, “but if we could just…”

“Just what?”

“Listen to her,” Frank said. “That’s all Mom wanted us to do—listen.”

Joanna shook her head. “Look, Frank,” she said. “Be reasonable. What good will listening do? This case doesn’t have anything at all to do with Cochise County. In case you haven’t noticed, Peoria, Arizona, happens to be in Maricopa County, a good hundred and forty miles outside our jurisdiction.”

“But you’re going up there tomorrow,” Frank argued. “Couldn’t you talk to her for a few minutes before you go?”

“It was a domestic, Frank,” Joanna said. “You know the statistics as well as I do. What could I say to Juanita Grijalva other than to tell her that the cops who arrested her precious Jorge are most likely on the right track?”

“Probably nothing,” Frank Montoya agreed somberly. “But if you talk to her, it might help. If nothing else, maybe she’ll feel better. Jorge is her only son. No matter what happens afterward, if she’s actually spoken to someone in authority, she’ll at least have the comfort of knowing she did everything in her power to help.”

Frank Montoya’s arguments were tough to turn aside. Knowing she was losing, Joanna shook her head. “You should have been in sales, Frank,” she said with a short laugh. “You sure as hell know how to close a deal. But here’s the next problem—scheduling. I go to church in the morning. We finish up with that around eleven-thirty or so, then we come rushing home because my mother-in-law is cooking up a big Sunday dinner. We’ll probably eat around two, and I’ll need to light out of here for Phoenix no later than three. When in all that do you think I’ll be able to squeeze in an appointment with Juanita Grijalva?”

“How about if I bring her by the High Lonesome right around one?” Frank asked. “Would that be all right?”

“All right, all right,” Joanna agreed at last. “But why do you have to bring her? Tell her how to find the place, and she can come by herself.”

“No, she can’t,” Frank said. “Not very well. For thing, Juanita Grijalva doesn’t have a car. For another, she can’t drive. She’s legally blind.”

Joanna assimilated what he had said. “There’s nothing like playing on a person’s sympathy, is there?”

Now it was Frank Montoya’s turn to laugh. “I had to,” he said sheepishly. “I’m sorry, Joanna, but if you hadn’t agreed to talk to Juanita, I never would have heard the end of it. Once my mother gets going on something like this, she can be hell on wheels.”

Joanna stopped him in mid-apology. “Don’t worry about it, Frank. It’ll be fine. I’ve never met your mother, but I have one just like her.”

“So you know how it is?”

“In spades,” Joanna answered. “So get off the phone and let me get some sleep. I’ll see you tomorrow. Around one.”

Joanna put down the phone. Once again she switched off the lamp on her bedside table. In the long weeks following Andy’s murder, sleeping properly was one of the most difficult things Joanna Brady had to do. Loneliness usually descended like a smothering cloud every time she crawled into the bed she  and Andy had shared for so many years. Usually she tossed and turned through the endless nighttime hours, rather than falling asleep.

This time, Joanna surprised herself by falling asleep almost instantly—as soon as she put her head back down on the pillow. It was a much-needed and welcome change.

“Last call,” the bartender said. “Motel time.”

At ten to one on a Sunday morning, only the last few Saturday night regulars were still hanging out in Peoria’s Roundhouse Bar and Grill.

“Hit me again, Butch,” Dave Thompson said sagging over the bar, resting his beefy arms along the rounded edge. “The last crop of students for this year shows up this afternoon. Classes this session don’t end until a couple of days before Christmas. With the holidays messing things up, this on is always a bitch. You can’t get ‘em to concentrate on what they’re supposed to be doing. Can’t keep ‘im focused. Naturally, the women are worse than the men.”

“Naturally,” Butch Dixon agreed mildly, putting a draft Coors on the bar in front of Dave Thompson, the superintendent of the Arizona Police Officers Academy three quarters of a mile away. “By the way, you’ve had several, Dave,” Butch oh served. “Want me to call you a cab?”

“Naw,” Thompson replied. “Thanks but thanks. Before I decided to get snockered on my last night out, I asked Larry here if he’d mind giving me a ride home. Shit. Last thing I need is a damned DWI. Right, Larry?”

Larry Dysart was also a Roundhouse regular. These days his drink of choice was limited to coffee or tonic with lime. He came to the bar almost every night and spent long congenial evenings discussing literature with the bartender, arguing politics with everybody else, and scribbling in a series of battered spiral notebooks.

He looked up now from pen and paper. “Right, Dave,” Larry said. “No problem. I’ll be glad to give you a lift home.”

CHAPTER THREE

Even though Joanna was only going through the motions, she went to church the next morning. She sat there in the pew, seemingly attentive, while her best friend and pastor, the Reverend Marianne Maculyea, gave a stirring pre-Thanksgiving sermon. Instead of listening, though, Joanna’s mind was focused on the fact that she would be gone—completely out of town—for more than a month. She was scheduled to spend five and a half weeks taking a basic training class at the Arizona Police Officers Academy in Peoria.

There was plenty to worry about. For instance, what about clothes? Yes, her suitcases were all zipped shut, but had she packed enough of the right things? This would be the longest time she had ever been away from home. She wasn’t terrifically happy about the idea of staying in a dorm. As much trouble as she’d had lately sleeping in her own bed, how well would she fare in a strange one?

But the bottom line—the real focus of her worry—was always Jenny. How would a protracted absence from her mother affect this child whose sense of well-being had already been shattered by her father’s murder? Had it not been for the generosity of her in-laws, Joanna might well have had to bag the whole idea and stay home. Putting their own lives on hold, Jim Bob and Eva Lou Brady had agreed to come out and stay at High Lonesome Ranch for the duration of Joanna’s absence. Not only would they care for Jenny, getting her to and from school each day, they would also look after the livestock and do any other chores that needed doing.

Professionally, Joanna’s attendance at the academy was a thorny issue. Of course she needed to go. That was self-evident, even to Joanna. Her close call during an armed showdown on a copper-mine tailings dump a few days earlier had shown her in life-and-death, up-close-and-personal terms exactly how much she didn’t know about the world of law enforcement.

Joanna’s connections to law enforcement were peripheral rather than professional. Years earlier her father, D. H. “Big Hank” Lathrop, had served as sheriff of Cochise County. And Andy, her husband, had been a deputy sheriff as well as a candidate for the office of sheriff when he was gunned down by a drug lord’s hired hit man. Joanna’s work resume as office manager of an insurance agency contained no items of legal background or law enforcement training. Some of those educational gaps could be made up by reading and studying on her own, but an organized course of study taught by professional instructors would provide a more thorough and efficient way of getting the job done.

As the word
job
surfaced in Joanna’s head, so did a whole other line of concern—work. If a five-and-a-half-week absence could wreak havoc in her personal life, what would it do to her two-week-old administration at the Cochise County Sheriff’s Department? While she was gone, her two chief deputies Frank Montoya for administration and Dick Voland for operations—would be running the show. That arrangement—the possibly volatile combination of two former antagonists—would either function as a form of checks and balances or else it would blow up in Joanna’s face. Sitting there in church, not listening to the sermon, Joanna could worry about what might happen, but she couldn’t predict which way things would go.

Almost without warning, the people in surrounding pews rose to their feet and opened their hymnals as the organist pounded through the first few bars of “Faith of Our Fathers.” As Joanna fumbled hurriedly to find the proper page of the final hymn, she realized Reverend Maculyea’s sermon was over. Joanna hadn’t listened to a word of it. No doubt Marianne had figured that out as well. When she and her husband, Jeff Daniels, followed the choir down the center aisle to the door of the church, the pastor caught Joanna’s eye as they passed by. Marianne smiled and winked. Weakly, Joanna smiled back.

She had planned to skip coffee hour after church, but Jenny headed her off at the front door. “Can’t we stay for just a few minutes?” she begged.

Joanna shook her head. “I have so much to do....”

“But, Mom,” Jenny countered. “It’s Birthday Sunday. When I was coming upstairs from Sunday school, I saw Mrs. Sawyer carrying two cakes into the kitchen. Both of ‘em are pecan praline—my favorite. Please? Just for a little while?”

“Well, I suppose,” Joanna relented. “But remember, only one piece. Grandma Brady’s cooking dinner at home. It’s supposed to be ready to eat by two o’clock. If you spoil your appetite, it’ll hurt her feelings.”

Waiting barely long enough for her mother to finish speaking, Jenny slipped her hand out of Joanna’s grasp and skipped off happily toward the social hall. As Jenny thundered down the stairway, Joanna bit back the urge to call after her, “Don’t run.” The first caution, the one about Jenny not spoiling her appetite, sounded as though it had come directly from the lips of Joanna’s own mother, Eleanor Lathrop. And as Joanna stood in line, awaiting her turn to greet and be greeted by Jeff and Marianne, she told herself to cut it out.

As the line moved forward, Joanna found herself standing directly behind Marliss Shackleford. “I was surprised to find someone had chosen of ‘Faith Our Fathers’ as the recessional,” Marliss announced when she reached Marianne’s husband. “Isn’t that a little, you know, passe?” she asked with a slight shudder. “It’s sexist to say the least.”

Jeff Daniels cocked his head to one side, regarding the woman with a puzzled frown. “Really,” he said, pumping Marliss Shackleford’s outstretched hand. “But it doesn’t seem to me that ‘Faith of Our Parents’ has quite the same ring to it.”

Jeff’s comment was made with such disarming ingenuousness that Marliss was left with no possible comeback. Behind her in line, Joanna choked back a potentially noisy chuckle as Marliss moved on to tackle Marianne. When Joanna stepped forward to greet Jeff, they were both grinning.

“How’s it going, Joanna?” he asked, diplomatically removing the grin from his face. “Are you all packed for your six-week excursion?”

As is Bisbee “clergy couples” went, Jeff Daniels and Marianne Maculyea weren’t at all typical. For one thing, although they were officially, and legally, “man and wife,” they didn’t share the same last name. Marianne was the minister while Jeff served in the capacity of minister’s spouse. She was the one with the full-time career, while he was a stay-at-home husband with no paid employment “outside the home.”

In southeastern Arizona, this newfangled and seemingly odd arrangement had raised more than a few eyebrows when the young couple had first come to town to assume Marianne’s clerical duties at Canyon Methodist Church. Now, though, several years later, they had worked their way so far into the fabric of the community that no one was surprised to learn that the newly elected treasurer of the local Kiwanis Club listed his job on his membership application as “househusband.”

“Almost,” Joanna answered. “And not a moment too soon. I’m supposed to leave the house at three. You and Marianne are still coming out to the ranch for Grandma Brady’s farewell dinner, aren’t you? She’s acting as though I’m off on a worldwide tour.”