Skeleton Canyon (13 page)

Joanna grinned at him. “As a matter of fact, I do. It’s like you said, we’re talking necessity here.”

“What do you think happened to it?”

“It sounded to me as though the compressor died.”

“You want it retrofitted to run on R-134A?”

“That must be the stuff Moe Maxwell calls R2D2. Is that what you did to his GMC—retrofitted it?”

Jim Hobbs nodded.

“Well,” Joanna said, “if it’s good enough for Daisy Maxwell’s beehive, it’s good enough for me. When can you do it? I’d like to have it sooner than a month or two if that’s possible.”

“Okay, okay,” Jim said, realizing she was teasing him. “We’ll get it done a little sooner than that. Come on into the office. I’ll have to check the book.”

Back in her Crown Victoria Joanna headed east on Highway 80, but again, instead of going straight on out to the ranch, she turned off at the Cochise County Justice Complex. After all, no one was waiting for her at home. Is
that why I’m finding a hundred reasons not to go there?
she wondered.

After a few seconds of reflection, Joanna shoved that unwelcome thought aside, convincing herself, instead, that the real reason she was stopping off at the office was because some-thing Jim Hobbs had said was still niggling at her. Joanna realized that what Hobbs had suggested about drug smugglers switching over to Freon was indeed true. As head of law enforcement for a county with eighty miles of international border inside her jurisdictional boundaries, Sheriff Brady was a member of the MJF—the Multi-Jurisdiction Force—an organization designed specifically to combat border area criminal activities. As such, she was well aware that, after heroin and cocaine, Freon had now moved to number three on the DEA’s list of illegal substance smuggling headaches.

Bearing that in mind, Joanna felt obliged to share whatever information she had gleaned with other members of the MJF. Before opening her mouth, however, she wanted to know more specifics. She pulled into the lot at the back of the building, parked in her reserved spot, and then let herself into the office through a private door outfitted with a keypad lock. Once inside, she settled down at her desk, turned on the computer, and logged onto the MJF web site.

As soon as she typed in the word
Freon,
she hit pay dirt. For the next twenty minutes she learned more about the lucrative trade in illicit R-12 smuggling than she ever would have thought possible, including the fact that the Drug Enforcement Agency was now working jointly with the U.S. Customs Service to put a stop to it. When she finished, she picked up the phone and dialed a Tucson number for Adam York, the DEA’s local agent in charge, who had become both a colleague and a friend.

“So where are you this time?” Joanna asked when he answered. York’s job took him all over the state and even all over the country at times, but through the magic of call-forwarding, his Tucson number always seemed to work.

“Believe it or not,” he said, “I’m just sitting here by the pool with a drink in one hand savoring the idea of a Saturday night at home. How about you? You’re not in Tucson, are you?”

“I wish,” Joanna said. “I’m busy, reading up on Freon.”

“Freon. How come?”

“There’s a possibility I may have stumbled onto a smuggling operation down here.”

Joanna heard Adam York’s glass hit a table. The sound of it told her she had the man’s undivided attention. “Who?” he asked urgently. “Where?”

“I heard tonight that some guy up in Benson was about to pick up a big load of cut-rate Freon. I thought you might he interested.”

“You bet I am. Who is he?”

“His name’s Sam Nettleton. Runs a place called Sam’s Easy Towing and Wrecking in Benson. I just ran a copy of his rap sheet. Everything from drunk and disorderly to assault. He’s also had a number of consumer complaints for exorbitant towing charges. Does this sound like somebody you’d be interested in?”

Over the next few minutes, Joanna gave Adam York a complete rundown on the situation, including Sam’s offer to bring Jim Hobbs in on buying what was evidently an illegal shipment of coolant. York listened all the way through.

“This Nettleton guy sounds like a pretty small fish,” the DEA agent said when she finished. “But small fish often lead to bigger fish. We’ve been investigating a big air-conditioning contractor up in Phoenix for months now. So far we haven’t been able to put together anything solid. It’s not likely the two cases are related, but that’s always a possibility. Let me do some checking and get back to you. Is Monday soon enough?”

“Monday will be fine, I guess,” Joanna said. “But it may be too late. Remember, that’s when the alleged shipment—whatever it is—is supposed to arrive. Nettleton told Jim Hobbs he had to have the cash by noon on Monday in order to pay for it.”

“I’ll get back to you on this tomorrow, then,” Adam promised. “If not in the morning, then tomorrow afternoon for sure. If I can manage it, I’ll figure out a way to put this guy under surveillance. What about the fellow who told
you
about him? What’s his name again?”

“Jim Hobbs,” Joanna told him. “He runs an auto repair shop here in Bisbee.”

“Do you think he’d mind talking to one of my investigators?”

‘‘Are yon kidding? He’s so pissed about what Sam Nettleton is pulling, I’d be surprised if he wasn’t willing to take out an ad in the paper.”

Joanna gave Adam York Jim Hobbs’s telephone numbers. While the DEA agent’s moving pencil made scribbling sounds over the phone, she added, “Sorry about screwing up your peaceful weekend at home.”

“Don’t worry about it,” York said. “Happens all the time. Besides, look who’s talking,” he added. “It’s ten o’clock on a Saturday night, and here you are calling me from the office.”

“Don’t tell me,” Joanna said. “Caller ID. Right?”

“It would have to be,” Adam York said with a chuckle. “I’m sure as hell no psychic.”

When Joanna left the office an hour or so after she arrived, she found that the outside temperature had dropped some. Turning off on Double Adobe Road, she noticed that, off to the southeast, at the southernmost corner of the vast Sulphur Springs Valley, there were a few muted flickers of light on the distant horizon. Lightning. The first storms of the summer monsoon season were trying to make their way up into the Arizona desert from the Gulf of California.

Traditionally, summer rains always arrived just in time to throw a wet blanket on Bisbee’s Fourth of July fireworks celebration. But Independence Day was still more than two weeks away. In the meantime, Joanna expected there would be more days of scorching summer temperatures accompanied by the added complication of gradually increasing humidity.

She had barely turned off onto the High Lonesome’s dirt track of a road when Tigger, a clownish golden retriever/pit bull mix—and Sadie, a leggy bluetick hound—bounded into the moving glow of headlights to greet the car and race the Crown Victoria back to the house. When Joanna parked and opened her door, the dogs raced around to the far side of the vehicle in a frenzied but futile search for Jenny.

“Too bad, guys,” Joanna told them. “No Jenny tonight. Sad to say, you two are going to have to make do with just me for the next little while.”

Out of habit, Joanna had switched off the cooler when she had left for Green Brush Ranch late that afternoon. Now, at ten o’clock at night, the inside of the house felt overheated, especially when compared to the far more moderate temperatures outdoors. Once Joanna turned on the old swamp cooler, she knew it would take an hour or more for it to work its magic. In the meantime, she stripped off her work clothes in favor of shorts and an old T-shirt. Then, pausing only long enough to take messages off the machine, she collected her new cordless phone, a tablet, and a pen and went outside onto the front porch. Settling into the swing, she began returning calls.

Eva Lou Brady, Joanna’s mother-in-law, had called early in the afternoon to invite Joanna to come to dinner after church on Sunday. One of the organizers of the Fourth of July parade had called to see if Sheriff Brady would be willing to step in as grand marshal now that Bisbee’s mayor, Agnes Pratt, had been sidelined with an emergency appendectomy. There were also two separate calls from Joanna’s friend Angie Kellogg—one from home and one from work.

The parade call couldn’t be returned until Monday, and Angie would be at work until two o’clock in the morning. The call to Joanna’s in-lows was different. Jim Bob and Eva Lou Brady usually went to bed right after the local news ended at ten-thirty, so she called them back immediately. Jim Boll Brady answered the phone.

“How’d it go?” he asked. “You get Jenny dropped off at camp all right?”

The hours between then and Joanna’s last glimpse of Jenny seemed to melt away. The image of her daughter trudging dejectedly away from the car with her camp counselor caused a sudden tightening in Joanna’s throat. “It was fine,” she managed, speaking around a lump in her throat that made speech almost impossible. “It would have been better if the air-conditioning in the Eagle hadn’t given out on us along the way.”

“Did you get it fixed?” Jim Bob asked at once. “Is there anything you need me to do?”

Her in-laws’ unfailing helpfulness and generosity never failed to warm Joanna. “Thanks, Jim Bob,” she said. “I’ve already made an appointment with Jim Hobbs to have it fixed.”

“Good. What about dinner tomorrow, then?” Jim Bob asked. “Eva Lou doesn’t want you to get too lonely out there all by yourself.”

“Dinner would be great,” Joanna told him. “What time?”

“One. One-thirty.”

“I’ll be there,” Joanna said.

Ending that call, she dialed the bar in Brewery Gulch. Angie Kellogg answered, speaking over the din of talking people and blaring jukebox music. “Blue Moon. Angie speaking.”

“It’s Joanna. You called?”

“Yes,” Angie said. “I wanted to ask a favor, but it doesn’t matter. He’s already here.”

“Who’s already there?”

“The parrot guy. He came to take me for a hike tomorrow morning. To see some hummingbirds. I was going to ask you to come along.”

“No kidding. The parrot guy? The one from the Chircahuas? What was his name? Hacker, isn’t it?”

“That’s right,” Angie said. “Dennis Hacker.”

“And the two of you are going on a hike? That’s great.”

Angie’s voice sounded a little more hopeful. “Could you maybe come along with us?” she asked. “We’re going to leave here right after I get off work.”

At two o’clock in the morning?
Joanna thought. “Sorry, Angie,” she said. “I just can’t make it. I’m already beat as it is. I’ve got to go to bed and get some sleep. Not only that, I just made arrangements to have an early dinner with Jim Bob and Eva Lou.”

“Oh,” Angie said. “Well, I guess I won’t go then, either.”

“What do you mean you won’t go? You love hummingbirds.”

“It’s just that ...”

“It’s just what?”

“I don’t know if I want to go with him all by myself.”

Joanna thought back to her one meeting with Hacker. He had come to the Cochise County Sheriff’s Department to give a statement in regard to another case. Jenny had been in the office for Take Our Kids to Work Day, Cochise County’s modified version of the national Take Our Daughters to Work Day. While there, she had encountered the tall, gangly, and loose-jointed Englishman in the hallway. Afterward, Jenny had come dashing into her mother’s office.

“Mom,” she had babbled breathlessly, “you’ll never guess who’s out there in the hall. It’s the Scarecrow from the
Wizard of Oz.”

Smiling at the memory, Joanna addressed Angie. “What’s the matter?” she asked. “Why don’t you want to go out with him? I’ve met him. He seems like a nice enough guy to me.”

“That’s just it,” Angie said defensively. “I don’t know what to think. What if he turns out to be too nice for me or else ... “

“Or else what?” Joanna asked.

“Well,” Angie returned defensively, “what if it turns out to be like the old days? What if we go on a hike to see the birds but he really thinks we’re going out there for something else?”

“You wrote him a letter, didn’t you?” Joanna asked.

“Yes. He claims that’s why he came to see me after all this time—because of the letter.”

“What do your instincts tell you?”

“Half one way and half the other.”

Joanna smiled. “It sounds like a date to me, Angie,” she said kindly. “A regular, ordinary, old-fashioned date for two people to get together and do something they’re both interested in. If I were you, I’d go.”

“Would you really?”

“Yes.”

“I’ve gotta go,” Angie said. “Someone’s asking for a drink.”

“Have fun,” Joanna told her. “Call me tomorrow and tell me how it turned out.”

“Okay,” Angie said with a dubious sigh. “I will.”

CHAPTER TEN

Joanna punched the button that ended the call. Putting the phone down on the swing beside her, she picked up the tablet and pen and began to write.

Dear Jenny,

I had to go in to work this afternoon for a little while, so I
^’
ve only just now come home. If it weren’t for Mr. Rhodes stopping by to feed the dogs on a regular basis, they’d be living on the same kind of crazy schedule I am.

It’s almost eleven o’clock at night, and it’s too hot to be inside, so I’m writing this on the front porch. Even the dogs think it’s too hot. They’re both lying here beside me, panting like crazy. They didn’t much like it when I came home and you didn’t get out of the car. Tigger especially couldn’t quite believe it.

I just took a message off the machine asking me if I could serve as grand marshal of Bisbee’s Fourth of July parade. I don’t know if you heard about it, but Mayor Pratt had an appendectomy last week. She isn’t going to be up to riding in a parade. I’d be happy to sub for her, but I don’t happen to own a horse. I was wondering if you’d consider lending me Kiddo for the day.

Joanna paused, holding the pen to her lips. Jenny had begged for a horse for her tenth birthday. Joanna had resisted, only to be overruled by Grandpa Jim Bob, who had purchased the horse on his own. In the months since, though, Joanna had seen the almost magical changes having a horse to care for had wrought in her grieving daughter. Somehow, taking responsibility for an animal who had lost its former master had helped the fatherless Jennifer Ann Brady immeasurably. There were times when it seemed to Joanna that Jenny was making far more progress at working through her grief than her mother was.