Skeleton Canyon (38 page)

When they came into view of Dennis Hacker’s lighted trailer, however, Joanna knew at once that whatever orders had been issued, the free-spirited Angie had disregarded them. As soon as the diesel-driven Hummer rumbled into hearing distance, the trailer’s door flew open and Angie bounded outside.

Joanna was in the process of stopping the Hummer, but she hadn’t quite finished braking when Dennis Hacker pushed open his door. He leaped out and hit the ground running. By the time Joanna had the vehicle stopped and the emergency brake located, Hacker had Angie wrapped in an all-enveloping bear hug. In order to give them a moment of privacy, Joanna waited a second or two before she climbed down.

“I was so worried,” she heard Angie saying. “There was blood all over the place in there and broken glass and the telephone smashed to bits. I was scared to death you were hurt. And you are, too,” she added breathlessly, catching sight of the bandage on Dennis Hacker’s head.

“Don’t worry,” he told her. “It’s nothing. If it hadn’t been for you, I’d probably be dead by now. Right, Sheriff Brady?”

Angie, her face awash in tears, turned from Dennis to Joanna. “You saved him,” she said. “Thank you.”

“We were lucky,” Joanna said. “But he’s right. If we hadn’t come right when we did, things might have been a whole lot different.” She walked over to the trailer, intending to close the door. “Come on now,” she added. “As soon as I put up some crime scene tape—”

Glancing in the door, she stopped cold. “What happened in here?” she demanded, turning back to Angie.

“The place was such a mess that I couldn’t stand it,” Angie said with a shrug. “I know Dennis likes to keep things neat. I didn’t want him to come back and find it like that.”

“But it was a crime scene, Angie,” Joanna responded. “It should have been left exactly as it was. Cleaning it like that destroyed important evidence.”

Angie was immediately contrite. “I’m sorry,” she said tear-fully. “I didn’t mean to do anything wrong. I got scared, sitting in the cemetery all by myself. I kept hearing things. Finally, I decided to come here and wait inside. But the place was so dirty. I thought I’d be helping by cleaning it up. Besides, I couldn’t stand just sitting here doing nothing.”

Shaking her head in exasperation, Joanna looked around at the spick-and-span interior of the trailer. “Never mind,” she said finally. “With or without the evidence from here, we should be able to nail Aaron Meadows on kidnapping charges. After all, Chief Deputy Voland and I both saw him in the act. Come on now. Let’s get these guys into town to a doctor.”

It was midnight by the time Joanna finally made it back home to the High Lonesome. Getting ready for bed, she stood in front of the full-length mirror and examined the tattered remains of her three-piece pantsuit. There was a jagged hole in one knee. Two buttons were missing—one from the front of the blouse and one from the sleeve of the blazer. Not only that, underneath it all, Joanna Brady was still braless.

Mother always told me I was terribly hard on clothes,
she re-minded her reflection with a wry grin.
Fortunately, I didn’t have time to go shopping on Saturday. Otherwise, I’d have been out there crawling around in a brand-new outfit.

Joanna fell into bed and was asleep almost before her head hit the pillow. At eight the next morning, she hitched a ride with a deputy out to the crime scene, where five other deputies were busy combing the rugged rock-strewn terrain, gathering up wads of wind-scattered hundred-dollar bills. Joanna arrived just in time to see Frank Montoya wave away the tow truck that had hauled the wrecked remains of Dick Voland’s Blazer up the mountainside.

Looking at the smashed hulk, the chief deputy for administration shook his head. “I can already hear what the insurance guy is going to say,” Frank grumbled mournfully as Joanna walked up beside him. “It isn’t going to be pretty.”

“No, I don’t suppose it will be,” she agreed. “Speaking about insurance. What’s happening on my Blazer?”

“I already told you. It’s totaled,” Frank said. “Once we knew what it was going to cost to replace that damaged head liner and all the upholstery, he said it wasn’t worth fixing. We’re lucky we have all those Crown Victorias.”

“I don’t want a Crown Victoria,” Joanna insisted. “I want my Blazer back. I need a vehicle that can get
over
running washes and doesn’t have to be parked for twelve hours or so on the nearest bank.”

“But we can’t afford to fix—”

“Don’t fix it then,” Joanna said. “Take the head liner out and leave it out. All I want is a vehicle that runs. It doesn’t have to be pretty.” With that Joanna wandered over to see her lead homicide detective. “How are things going, Ernie?” she asked.

“Not so hot,” he answered. “I sent Jaime Carbajal down to Montgomery Ranch to pick up the body.”

“Body?” Joanna returned. “What body?”

“The one that washed up on the banks of Sycamore Creek overnight,” Ernie answered. “Old man Montgomery himself came all the way up here to tell us about it. Found the guy in one of his cow pastures earlier this morning.”

“Montgomery?” Joanna asked, trying to place the name.

Ernie nodded. “Marshall Montgomery from Montgomery Ranch, a few miles north and west of here. Jaime just now radioed me to say that ID on the body identifies the dead man as one Alf Hastings.”

“Did he drown?” Joanna asked.

“Sure did,” Ernie replied glumly. “But not before somebody poked him full of holes. Jaime says he’s got at least half a dozen stab wounds to the heart and lower chest. I’ll bet money that his blood will match up with the mess we found on the rider’s seat of Meadows’s Suburban.”

“You think Aaron Meadows did it, then?” Joanna asked.

Ernie nodded. “Most likely,” he said. Joanna started to walk away, but Ernie stopped her. “Hold on,” he said. “I think I may have found something that belongs to you.”

Reaching into the glove box of his van, he pulled out a glassine bag and handed it over to Joanna. Inside was her bra—or what was left of it anyway. The material of both cups had been shot full of holes by pellets from Aaron Meadows’s final shotgun blast.

“It’s a good thing you weren’t wearing this at the time,” Ernie said with a grin.

Joanna looked at the shredded remains of what had been one of her favorite bras. “Not much left of it, is there?” she said ruefully. “I filled this with rocks and threw it up in the air in an effort to decoy the guy away from Dick Voland.”

“I’d say it worked like a charm,” Ernie told her. “Maybe Dick will buy you a replacement.”

The last thing Joanna Brady wanted from Chief Deputy Richard Voland was a new bra. “Please,” she said, “don’t even mention it. I was about to retire this one anyway.” Then, in an attempt to change the subject, she motioned toward the deputies still combing the rocky hillside.

“How much money have they recovered so far?” she asked.

“Two hundred thou, give or take,” Ernie answered.

“And where does somebody like Aaron Meadows—somebody with no job, no bank account, and no visible means of support—come up with that kind of cash?”

“Nothing legal,” Ernie told her. “You can count on that. My best guess is that Meadows was opting out of the smuggling business and making a run for it. Whatever the case, I expect Adam York will get to the bottom of it. Have you heard from him, by the way?”

“From Adam?” Joanna nodded. “Just a message that said Meadows underwent surgery late last night to amputate his left arm. He’s still under sedation, or at least he was earlier. He’s also under a twenty-four-hour guard. In the meantime, the guys from the U.S. Customs Service have put Stephan Marcovich under arrest.”

“Great,” Ernie said. “It couldn’t happen to a nicer guy.”

Frank Montoya had joined them just in time to hear the last few exchanges. “If they’re keeping Meadows under guard, I hope no one is expecting us to pay.”

Joanna turned to her chief deputy for administration. “You know, Frank,” she teased. “You used to be a lot more fun before you started worrying about the budget all the time.”

He rubbed his balding head. “Somebody’s got to do it, you know.”

“Right,” Joanna agreed. “Better you than me.”

Joanna stayed at the crime scene only long enough to see how things were going, then she hitched a ride back to her Crown Victoria with Frank, who was on his way to give a press briefing. Other than a few traces of sand still left in the dip, there was no sign that the day before the wash had been a dangerous, raging flood.

Once in her car, Joanna drove herself back to Bisbee. It was early afternoon when she pulled into the justice complex and parked in her reserved parking spot just outside her office door.

Inside, she sat down at her desk, kicked off her shoes, and closed her eyes for a moment before punching the intercom button. “I’m here, Kristin,” she said. “You might as well bring in today’s mail.”

When Kristin brought in the stack of mail, Joanna found that the topmost item was a homemade postcard with a Polaroid picture of Jenny glued to the front. Soaked to the skin and grinning from ear to ear, she stood in a downpour outside the door to an eight-person tent. The hand-painted sign over her head said, BADGER. The message on the other side of the card was cheery and brief:

Dear Morn,

It rained today, but we had fun anyway. Wish you were here. Hello to the G
^’
s.

Love, Jenny

Joanna reread the note several times, struck by what it
didn’t
say more than by what it did. There was no remark to indicate that Jenny was lonely or homesick or that she missed her mother or the dogs. It also didn’t say that Joanna should come right back up to Tucson to bring her daughter home. Joanna turned the card over and was still studying the picture when her private line rang. The caller turned out to be Eleanor Lathrop.

“Hello, Mother,” Joanna said. “What’s up?”

“I just had the strangest call from that little friend of yours. You know who I mean. That blonde girl—Angie Kellogg.”

“What kind of call?”

“She wanted to know where in Bisbee she could buy Wedgwood. I told her I didn’t know of anyplace at all anymore, but why did she want to know? She says her boyfriend broke a piece of his Kutani Crane china. The set was a gift from the young man’s grandmother. Angie is trying to find a way to replace it. Do you believe that?”

“That Angie would want to replace something that’s broken? That doesn’t surprise me at all. She’s a very kindhearted—”

“I know Angie’s kindhearted,” Eleanor Lathrop agreed irritably. “What I want to know is where in the world would she find somebody who has a set of Wedgwood china. Not only that, she says he uses it for everyday!”

“She found him up in the mountains,” Joanna said. “She and Dennis Hacker went hummingbird-watching together.”

“Wedgwood for everyday,” Eleanor repeated morosely. “Now, why couldn’t
you
find someone like that?”

Smiling, Joanna thought of the serviceable and often-chipped Fiesta Ware that was used on the Formica tables in Butch Dixon’s Roundhouse Bar and Grill up in Peoria, Arizona. It was a long way from Wedgwood, but it suited the rough-hewn Butch.

“I guess,” Joanna said, “Wedgwood users just aren’t my type.

“I suppose some bald-headed, twice-divorced motorcycle rider is?”

Over the past several months, Frederick “Butch” Dixon had made several trips to Bisbee on his Goldwing. Each time, Eleanor had been quick to voice her disapproval, which, Joanna realized, probably only served to make the man that much more appealing.

“He isn’t bald,” she said now. “He shaves his head.”

“If you ask me”—Eleanor sniffed—”it’s the same thing.” Fortunately, the intercom buzzed again just then, saving the conversation from deteriorating any further. “Adam York is on line one,” Kristin announced.

“Sorry, Mother,” Joanna said. “There’s another call. I’ve got to go.” She picked up the other receiver. “Hello, Adam. What’s up?”

“What kind of trading mood are you in?” he asked.

“Trading? What do you mean?”

“I just got off the phone with Arlee Jones . . .” Adam began.

“The Cochise County Attorney?” Joanna demanded. “What are you doing talking to him? You two didn’t make some kind of deal on Aaron Meadows, did you?”

“Settle down, Joanna,” Adam soothed. “Arlee told me I couldn’t do any kind of horse trading unless you agreed up front.”

“Are you talking plea bargain here? If you are—”

“All the man wants is a guarantee that Jones won’t seek an aggravated first-degree murder conviction, that we most likely wouldn’t be able to win anyway. If you’ll agree to that, I’m pretty sure I can get Meadows to give us a signed confession. In addition, he’ll turn state’s evidence. From what he’s said so far, I’m betting that, with his help, I’ll be able to put Marco Marcovich away for a long time. We’ll both come up winners, Joanna. Your two homicide cases will be cleared. So will my Freon problem.”

Sitting there, staring out the window at the sunny parking lot, Joanna thought again about what she had said to Dick Voland the night before—about how, in the course of being sheriff, she had been forced to become a pragmatist. How she was in favor of whatever worked.

“That’s the only thing we’ll be conceding here—we won’t ask for the death penalty?”

“The only thing.”

“And what does Arlee Jones say?”

“That whatever you say goes.”

“Get the confession,” Joanna said, wearily. “Fax me a copy as soon as you have one. I’ll need to go talk to the girl’s parents and let them know what’s happened.”

CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

About four o’clock in the afternoon, still watching the clock and waiting for the fax to come in, Joanna finished her paperwork and made her way down the hall to the evidence room.

“I believe Ernie Carpenter or Jaime brought in another journal either last night or this morning,” she told Buddy Richards. “It’ll be one similar to the one I looked at yesterday. It’s part of the Aaron Meadows investigation.”

“What about it?” Buddy asked.