by J. A. Jance
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.”
Jeff shook his head. “Wouldn’t miss one of Eva Lou’s dinners for the world. What time are we due?”
“Between one-thirty and two.”
Finished with Marliss, Marianne stepped back to greet Joanna with a heartfelt hug. “We’re all going to miss you,” she said. “But everything’s going to be fine here at home. Don’t worry.”
Not surprisingly, Marianne’s intuitive comment went straight to the heart of Joanna’s problem. “Thank you,” she gulped, blinking back tears.
Marianne smiled. “See you downstairs,” she said.
Joanna glanced at her watch as she headed for the stairway. There wasn’t much time. She hurried into the social hall, scanning the tables for a glimpse of Jennifer. Initially seeing no sign of her daughter, Joanna made a single swift pass through the refreshment line and picked up a cup of coffee. With cup in hand, she finally spotted Jenny and one of her friends. The two girls were already seat at a table and scarfing down cake.
Not wanting to crab at her daughter in public, Joanna deliberately moved in the opposite direction. Too late she realized she was walking directly into the arms of Marliss Shackleford.
Joanna Brady had never liked Marliss Shackleford and for more than one reason. The woman had a real propensity for minding other people’s business. She thrived on gossip, and she had managed to find a way to turn that hobby into a job. Once a week Marliss held forth in a written gossip column called “Bisbee Buzzings” that appeared in the local paper, The Bisbee Bee.
To a private citizen, columnist Marliss Shackleford could be a bothersome annoyance. Now that Joanna was in the public eye, however, annoyance had escalated into something else. From the moment Joanna Brady began making her bid for the office of sheriff, Marliss had chosen to regard everything related to Joanna and Jennifer Brady as possibly newsworthy material for her weekly column.
At first, Joanna hadn’t tumbled to her changed circumstances. Then one day, she was shocked to see her own words quoted verbatim in Marliss Shackleford’s column—words taken from a conversation with a third party in what Joanna had mistakenly assumed to be the relative privacy of an after-church coffee hour. Only in retrospect did she recall the reporter hovering in the background in the social hall during the conversation. Since then, Joanna had gone out of her way to avoid Marliss Shackleford.
Veering to one side, Joanna dodged the Marliss pitfall only to stumble into another one that proved almost equally troubling.
“Why, Joanna Brady!” Esther Brockner exclaimed, clasping the younger woman by the hand. “How are you and that poor little girl of yours doing these days?”
Two weeks after Andy’s death, Esther Brockner had been the first elderly widow who had felt free to advise Joanna that since she was so young and attractive, she wouldn’t have any trouble at all marrying again. That well-intentioned but tactless comment had left Joanna fuming. She had forced herself to bite back the angry retort that she didn’t want any other husband. Now, after being told much the same thing by several other thoughtless acquaintances, Joanna’s hide had toughened considerably.
Facing Esther now over a cup of coffee, Joanna had little difficulty maintaining her composure. “We’re doing fine, Esther,” she returned civilly. “How about you?”
“Every day gets a little better, doesn’t it?” Esther continued.
Not exactly, Joanna thought. It was more like one step forward and two back, but she nodded in reply. Nodding a lie didn’t seem quite as bad as telling one outright.
“Why, Sheriff Brady,” Marliss said, using her cup and saucer to wedge her way into the two-way conversation. “I guess you’re off to school in Phoenix this week.”
“Peoria,” Joanna corrected. “The Arizona Poll Officers Academy is based in Peoria, outside Phoenix.”
Marliss waved her hand in disgust. “What’s the difference? Peoria. Glendale. Tempe. Mesa. If you ask me, those places are all alike. From the outlet stores in Casa Grande on, there’s way too much traffic. I hear it’s almost as bad as L.A. All those people!” She clicked her tongue in disapproval. “It’s not like a small town. In a place like that, nobody cares if you live or die. In fact, I’ve heard it isn’t safe for a woman alone to drive around Phoenix. I wouldn’t go there if you paid me.”
Joanna felt a sudden urge to smile because she was, in fact, being paid to go to the Phoenix area. Not only that, some of Marliss Shackleford’s hard-earned tax dollars were partially footing the bill.
“I’m sure most people in metropolitan Phoenix are just fine,” Joanna said.
Marliss drew herself up to her full five foot three. “I understand the course work at that school is pretty tough,” she said. “Aren’t you worried about that?”
“Why should I be?”
Marliss shrugged, in a vain attempt to look innocent. “If you didn’t pass for some reason, it might be a bad reflection on your ability to do the job, wouldn’t it?”
“I expect to pass all right,” Joanna replied.
“Speaking of doing the job, I need a picture of you.”
“What for,” Joanna asked, “the paper?”
“No. For the display in the Sheriff’s Department lobby. I’m on the Women’s Club facilities committee, and I’m supposed to get a glossy eleven-by-fourteen of you to put up along with those of all the previous sheriffs. I don’t need it this minute, but I will need it soon. I’ll have to have it framed lime for an official presentation at our annual luncheon in January.”
Looking around the room for Jenny, Joanna nodded. “I’ll take care of it as soon as I can.”
From across the room she succeeded in catching Jenny’s eye. Joanna motioned toward the door. In response, Jenny pointed toward her empty plate, then folded her hands prayerfully under her chin.
The gestured message came through loud and clear. Jenny wanted a second piece of Mrs. Sawyer’s cake.
Shaking her head, Joanna walked up to her daughter. “No,” she said firmly. “Come on. We’ve got to go.”
Scowling, Jenny got up to follow, but as they started toward the stairway, Cynthia Sawyer abandoned her spot behind the refreshment table and came hurrying after them. She was carrying a paper plate laden with several pieces of her rich, dark-brown pecan praline cake.
“I know this is Jenny’s favorite,” Cynthia said, smiling and carefully placing the loaded plate Jenny’s outstretched hand. “She mentioned that you folks were having a little going-away party this afternoon. We have more than enough for the people who are here. I thought you might want a piece or two for dessert.”
Joanna knew she’d been suckered. There was no way to turn down Mrs. Sawyer’s generous offer without making a public fool of herself.
“Why, thank you, Cynthia,” Joanna said. “That’s very thoughtful.”
Clutching the plate, Jenny scampered triumphantly up the stairway to safety while her moth stalked after her.
“Jennifer Ann Brady, you’re a brat,” Joanna muttered when she knew they were both safely out of Cynthia’s hearing.
“But, Mom,” Jenny protested. “I didn’t ask for it. Mrs. Sawyer offered. And not just because it’s my favorite. She asked me if you liked it, too. I said you did. You do, don’t you?”
Joanna laughed in spite of herself. “Oh, all right,” she said. �
�I suppose I do like it. Praline cake is one of those things that grows on you . . . in more ways than one.”
Juanita Grijalva sat at her wobbly Formica-topped kitchen table wearing only a bra and slip, waiting Lucy, her brother’s wife, to finish ironing her best dress. The starched cotton was so well worn it had taken on a satiny sheen. Juanita knew the dress was getting old. She could tell that from the gradually changing texture of the aging material, but glaucoma kept her from being able to see it.
Thee navy-blue dress—brand-new then and with all the stickers still pinned to the sleeve—had been a final, extravagant gift from the lady whose house Juanita had cleaned and whose washing and ironing she had done for twenty years before failing vision had forced her to stop working altogether. If Juanita had worked as a maid in the hotel or as a cook in the county hospital, she might have had a pension and some retirement income instead of just a blue dress. But it was too late to worry about that now.
Juanita had lain awake in her bed all night long, worrying about the coming interview. She had finally fallen asleep just before dawn when her brother’s rooster next door started his early-morning serenade. Now, as noon approached and with it time for Frank Montoya to come pick her up, Juanita found herself so weary that she could barely stay awake. Her sightless eyes burned. Her shoulders ached from the heavy weight of her sagging breasts. To relieve the burden, she heaved them up and rested them on the edge of the table,
“Who’s coming for you?” Lucy asked.
“Maria Montoya’s son. Frank. He used to be city marshal over in Willcox, but he works for the Sheriff’s Department now. He told me last night that he’d drive me up to Bisbee to see that new woman sheriff.”
Lucy plucked the dress off the ironing boar then held it up, examining the garment critic under the light of the room’s single ceiling fix Finding a crease over one pocket, she put the dr back on the board.
Lucy was quiet for some time, seemingly concentrating on eradicating the stubborn crease in Juanita’s dress. She and her husband, Reuben, had long since decided that their no-good nephew, Jorge, was a lost cause. He drank too much—at least he always used to. For years he had bounced from job to job, frittering away whatever money he made. Not only that; anyone his age who would mess around with a girl as young as Serena Duffy had been wasn’t worth the trouble.
Finally, Lucy set the steaming iron back down on the cloth-covered board. “I don’t know why you bother about him,” she said. “It’s not going to do any good.”
“I bother because I have to,” Juanita replied reproachfully, staring with unblinking and unseeing eyes in the direction of her sister-in-law’s voice. “Because Jorge’s my son. If I don’t stick up for him, who will?”
Nobody, Lucy thought, but she didn’t say it. She had already said far too much.
“Besides,” Juanita added a moment later, if Jorge to goes to prison, I’ll never see Ceci and Pablo again.”
Lucy nodded. “I suppose that’s true,” she said.
Lucy Gomez understood about grandchildren. She loved her own to distraction and spoiled them as much as she was able. Living next door, she saw had how it grieved Juanita when her daughter-in-law took Ceci and Pablo and moved to Phoenix. But then there had still been the possibility of seeing hem occasionally. With Jorge accused of Serena’s murder, things were much worse than that now.
Lucy plucked the carefully ironed but threadbare dress off the ironing board and handed it to Juanita. “You’re right,” Lucy said, shaking her head. “I feel sorry for the kids. They’re the only reason I’m here.”
CHAPTER FOUR
Eva Lou Brady shooed her daughter-in-law out of the kitchen at High Lonesome Ranch. “Get out of here, Joanna,” she ordered. “Either go load your things into the car or sit down and take it easy, but get out from under hand and foot. I’ve certainly spent enough time in’ this kitchen to know how to put a Sunday dinner, together.”
No doubt Eva Lou Brady knew Joanna’s kitchen, backward and forward. Joanna and Andy had lived’ in the house on High Lonesome Ranch for years now, but there were still times when Joanna felt: like an outsider—as though the kitchen continued to belong to her mother-in-law rather than to the new generation of owners. It was the house where she and Jim Bob had raised their son, Andrew.
A country girl born and bred, Eva Lou had loved the cozy Sears Craftsman bungalow, but the whole time she had lived there, she had harbored the secret dream of one day living in town. When Andy and Joanna were ready to start looking for a place of their own, Eva Lou was the one who had broached the radical idea of selling the ranch to the younger couple so she and Jim Bob could move into Bisbee proper.
Right that minute, though, with her face red and with a steaming pot on every burner of the stove, Eva Lou Brady was clearly in her element and back on her home turf.
Joanna lingered in the doorway for a moment, watching her mother-in-law’s efficient movements. Eva Lou cooked without ever wasting a single motion. She never seemed hurried or rushed. Her skillful gestures and businesslike approach to meal preparation always left Joanna feeling like an inept home ec washout.
“At least I could set the table,” Joanna offered lamely.
“Jenny will help with that, won’t you?” Eva Lou asked, pausing with the rolling pin poised over the biscuit dough and raising a flour-dusted eyebrow in Jenny’s direction.
“How many places?” Jenny asked.
“Seven,” Eva Lou answered. “Grandma Lathrop phoned after church to say that she’s coming, too.”
“That’s a switch,” Joanna said. “If she changed her mind about coming to dinner, maybe she’ll change her mind about Phoenix as well.”
Eva Lou shook her head. “I doubt it. I asked her again, but she said no—that she’s meeting someone here in Bisbee over the weekend, but she wouldn’t say who.” Eva Lou shot Joanna an inquiring glance. “You don’t suppose Eleanor Lathrop has a boyfriend after all these years, do you?”
“Boyfriend?” Joanna echoed. “My mother? You’ve got to be kidding. Whatever makes you say that?”
Eva Lou shrugged. “I don’t know,” she said. “Eleanor hasn’t been at all herself the last few weeks. She’s been acting funny—funnier than usual, I mean. It’s like she’s carrying around some secret that she can barely keep from spilling.”
“Spilling secrets is my mother’s specialty,” Joanna said shortly. “I don’t think she’s ever kept one in her life, certainly not anybody else’s. And a boyfriend? No way. It couldn’t be.”
“Your mother’s an attractive woman,” Eva Lou returned. “And stranger things than that have happened, you know.”
Joanna considered for a moment, then shook her head. “I agree,” she said, “It would be strange, all right.”
With that, banished from the kitchen, Joanne did as she’d been told. She retreated to her bedroom for one last check of her luggage to make sure she had packed everything she would need. When it came time to open the closet door, she hesitated, knowing that the sight of it would leave her with a quick clutch of emptiness in her stomach that had nothing at all to do with hunger.
At her mother’s insistence, Joanna had finally found the strength to take Andy’s clothing to a church-run used-clothing bank down in Naco, Sonora. Although half of the closet was now totally empty, Joanna’s clothing was still jammed together at end of a clothes rod while the other end held nothing but a few discarded hangers. Two months had passed, but Joanna could not yet bring herself to hang her own clothes on the other side of that invisible line that divided her part of the closet from that she still thought of as Andy’s. The time for claiming and rearranging the whole closet would come eventually—at least, she hoped it would—but for now, she still wasn’t ready.
As she turned away from the closet, there was a gentle tap on the bedroom door. “Joanna, Eva Lou says you may need some help packing your stuff out to the car,” Jim Bob Brady said. “Are you ready or do you want to do it later?”
�
��Why not now?” Joanna returned. “Things are pretty well gathered up.”
Her father-in-law carried two suitcases while Joanna took one. She also lugged along a briefcase crammed full of paperwork in need of her perusal. “I’ve never been away from home this long before. I’m probably bringing too much,” she said, as they e1 the luggage into her county-owned Blazer.
“Better to take too much than too little,” Jim Bob replied.
When all of the suitcases were stowed in the back, Jim Bob Brady closed the cargo gate, then looked at Joanna quizzically. “Seems to me like Peoria’s pretty much flat. And last time I was up in those parts, I do believe all the streets were paved. So how come you’re going up there in a Blazer, for Pete’s sake? You’d get a whole lot better gas mileage from that little Eagle of yours than you will from this gas-guzzling outfit.”
“It’s a requirement,” Joanna explained. “The academy suggests that, wherever possible, students bring along the vehicle they’ll actually be using once they’re out patrolling on their own. That way, when it comes time to practicing pursuit driving, not only will we be learning pursuit-driving techniques, we’ll also be learning the real capabilities of our own vehicles.”
“Oh,” Jim Bob said, scratching his almost bald head. “Guess it does make sense, after all. Need anything else hauled out?”
Joanna shook her head. “That’s it.”
“I’m gonna go on back inside, if you don’t mind,” he said. “Maybe I can watch a few minutes of pro football before Eva Lou makes me turn off the set to come eat dinner. She’s real stubborn that way. Fussy. To hear her tell it, you’d think food eaten in front of a television set is plumb wasted.”
“It does seem like a waste of good cooking to me,” Joanna said.
Jim Bob Brady squinted at her and then grinned. “You women are all alike, aren’t you?” he muttered. “Not a hair of difference.”
As he marched off toward the house, Joanna stayed behind, enjoying the warmth of the early-afternoon sunshine and the crystal-clear blue of the sky overhead. It had been a strange fall with unseasonably cold and wet weather in October. Now, the week before Thanksgiving, warm, shirt-sleeve temperatures had returned, even in the high desert country of southeastern Arizona.
