Skeleton Canyon (9780061752216)

by Jance, Judith A.

“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-laws 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 Bob 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.”

  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.

  I stopped by Jim Hobbs’s place tonight and made an appointment to have the Eagle fixed. You’ll be happy to know that by the time I come pick you up, we’ll once again have a fully working air conditioner.

  Joanna paused again. She had already decided to say nothing at all about work or about the type of case that had occupied the whole of her Saturday afternoon. There was no point in mentioning
Brianna O’Brien’s disappearance. Chances were the missing teenager would show up safe and sound the next afternoon. In that case, if she had been off somewhere fooling around with a boyfriend, the less said, the better. On the other hand, if David O’Brien was right and his daughter had fallen victim to some awful fate, then word of that would come soon enough for everyone—Jennifer Brady included.

  With a shock, Joanna realized that Jenny, at ten, was a mere eight years younger than Bree. Determinedly thrusting that disturbing thought aside, Joanna returned to her writing.

  Grandpa and Grandma Brady have invited me over for dinner tomorrow after church. I think they’re afraid that with you gone for two weeks, I’ll dry up and blow away or starve to death.

  Speaking of drying up, I can see lightning way off in the distance to the south, somewhere down in Sonora. Maybe the summer rains will get here a little early this year—sooner than the Fourth of July. But not so soon, I hope, that they spoil any of your time at camp.

  I guess that’s all for now. It’s so hot inside the house and so nice out here on the porch that I think I’ll do what we used to do on hot summer nights when Dad was alive. Remember how we’d bring those old army cots out here and sleep on the porch? That way, you’ll be camping out tonight, and so will I.

  Love,

  Mom

  Joanna addressed an envelope, sealed the letter inside it, and then carried the letter, the phone, and her writing materials back inside. The three old army cots were stowed in the back of Jenny’s closet. Joanna dragged one out, brought her pillow and a set of sheets, and returned to the porch. For tonight, at least, she wouldn’t be dealing with Reba’s double bed problem.

  She was on her way back outside for the last time when the phone rang. That late at night, there were only two real possibilities—something had happened at work, some new emergency that demanded the sheriff’s attention; or else, things had quieted down enough at the Roundhouse Bar and Grill up in Peoria and Butch Dixon had found a spare moment to give her a call.

  “Did you get Jenny off to camp safe and sound?” Butch asked. “How did it go?”

  Glad to hear the sound of his voice, Joanna slipped onto the chair beside the telephone table and tucked her feet up under her. “It went fine,” she said, giving Butch the benefit of only the smallest of white lies. “No problems at all.”

  Later, lying there on the porch, waiting to fall asleep and watching the intermittent flickers of lightning, Joanna reviewed what had gone on during the day. One of the things that stood out in her mind was Ernie’s objection to Joanna’s use of the word enemies in conjunction with Bree O’Brien. Having raised only sons, Ernie was more familiar with little boy kinds of disputes—ones that included straightforward fistfights and uncomplicated rock throwing.

  Joanna, however, was acquainted with the kinds of insidious, ego-damaging warfare traditionally practiced on young women by other young women. Joanna Lathrop Brady had been there and done that. Her nemesis at Bisbee High School had been a girl named Rowena Sharp.

  Popular and smart and blessed with two doting parents, Stub and Chloe Sharp, Rowena had been everything Joanna Lathrop wasn’t. In fact, now that she thought about it, Bree O’Brien reminded Joanna of Rowena. Going through adolescence is tough enough, but Joanna Lathrop had also been dealing with the loss of her father. For some reason, Rowena had singled Joanna out as the object of unmerciful torment and contempt. Not only that, Rowena’s gal pals had risen to the occasion and joined in the fun, not unlike a flock of cannibalistic chickens pecking to death some poor wounded and defenseless bird that had happened to wander into their midst.

  Joanna never knew what she had done to merit Rowena’s scorn, but it was something she had been forced to endure, day in and day out. There had been bitchy remarks about “Miss Goody Two-shoes” in the girls’ rest room and the cafeteria lunch line. There had been numerous and undeniably deliberate pushings in the hall and gym when Joanna’s back was turned to open her locker. It wasn’t until late in their senior year that things had changed ever so slightly.

  Rowena had been one of two contenders for the position of salutatorian, but she was having a terrible time grasping the basics of chemistry. On her own, she would have earned a solid B in the course, but a B wouldn’t have done enough for her GPA. She had persuaded one of her friends—a girl who worked in the principal’s office during second period—to lift a copy of Mr. Cantrell’s final exam. Word of the pilfered exam had traveled like wildfire through the senior class. Even Joanna heard about it, and she alone had tackled Rowena on the issue.

  “Why cheat?” Joanna asked. “Why not just take the grade you’ve earned on your own?”

  “Because it won’t be good enough,” Rowena shot back. “Because if Mark Watkins is salutatorian instead of me, my parents will just die.”

  Not wanting to be saddled with more “Miss Goody Two-shoes” remarks, Joanna had kept her mouth shut. Rowena Sharp received her illicit A and graduated second in their class, with Mark Watkins coming in a close third. As for Joanna, she could never look at that page in her senior yearbook without feeling a stab of guilt whenever she saw Rowena’s smiling face staring back out at her.

  The last time Joanna had seen Rowena Sharp Bonham had been at their ten-year class reunion, where the printed bio had announced that Rowena was an attorney practicing law in Phoenix. Clearly, the passage of time hadn’t helped Rowena forget any more than it had helped Joanna. When they encountered one another in the buffet line, Rowena had cut Joanna dead.

  Good riddance, Joanna thought as a surprisingly cool breeze wafted over her, letting her drift off to sleep. As Eva Lou would say, good riddance to the bad rubbish.

  Long after midnight, Francisco Ybarra sat in the kitchen of his darkened home, keeping company with a bottle of Wild Turkey and worrying.

  Frank wasn’t much of a drinker. Nonetheless, he poured himself another glassful of bourbon. The hundred-proof liquor warmed his gut as it went down. Maybe eventually sleep would come, but right now he was still wide awake.

  Frank’s worries had two separate sources—his ailing wife, Yolanda, and Pepito. Hector had told him about the blond girl in the red truck, about how she had come by the station the previous afternoon and about how today Nacio had been in a foul mood all day long. Frank’s nephew had left the station after first lashing out at Hector. When he had returned to the station much later in the day, Hector claimed Pepito hadn’t been worth a plugged nickel.

  Hector had long ago alerted Frank Ybarra to the existence of the girl in the red pickup truck—the one who came by the station, usually when Frank wasn’t there and sometimes even when he was. He knew about her long blond ponytail, her long tan legs, and her cute little ass. Frank was sure she had to be the same girl from Bisbee, the one Yolanda had been all over Pepito about last winter.

  Frank had known from very early on about what was going on, but he had decided to let it go—to allow the affair to run its own course—because he was confident Pepito would get over it eventually. Now he wasn’t so sure.

  From outside the house, came the sound of familiar tires crunching the gravel of the back alley. A pair of glowing headlights dissolved into darkness. Not moving, not reaching for the light, Frank Ybarra sat in the dark and waited, listening for the telltale creak of the iron gate and for Nacio’s limping steps on the wooden planks of the back porch.

  Stealthily, almost as though he were willing the sometimes fussy lock to silence, Nacio’s key clicked in the keyhole. The door opened. Almost simultaneously, the overhead light came on. Illumined in the glaring fluorescent glow, Ignacio Ybarra was a bruised and bloodied mess. His scraped and scabby face looked as though it had been dragged along a sidewalk. Underneath the torn material of a ragged shirt, Frank glimpsed a layer of bandages encircling the boy’s chest.

  “What happened?” Frank asked, even though he thought he already knew the answer.

  The door was still open when Nacio saw his uncle. He turned and would have fl
ed back into the night, had Francisco Ybarra not stopped him. “I asked you, what happened?”

  “I got in a fight,” Nacio said, slipping unconcernedly onto a chair and trying to sound casual. “A guy beat me up.”

  Uncle Frank stood up, a little unsteadily, and walked around the table to the far side of Nacio’s chair. He stared down at his nephew for a moment, then, walking with great dignity, Frank returned to his chair. He had seen beatings before. He knew what they looked like.

  “What guy?” he asked, his face going still and cold. “An Anglo?”

  Nacio nodded.

  “Which one?”

  “Just a guy,” Nacio answered. “I can’t say.”

  “The hell you can’t!” Uncle Frank returned savagely, pounding the table with his fist. He realized then he was more than a little drunk. “You can tell me, and you will. People can’t get away with this kind of shit anymore. You tell me who it was who did this. I’ll call the cops.”

  “No,” Ignacio insisted. “No cops.”

  “Why not, Pepito?” Frank’s voice grew softer suddenly, almost cajoling. Nacio was the little boy he had raised from an infant, the one he loved almost as much or maybe even more than his own son. The fact that once again someone had hurt his beloved Pepito shook Francisco Ybarra to the core. His fury was made that much worse by the fact that it could so easily have been prevented. Frank knew that he himself should have put a stop to Nacio’s dangerous romance. If nothing else, he should have told his wife about it. Yoli would have handled it.

  “Were you doing something wrong?” Frank asked gently. “Something you shouldn’t?”

  Nacio’s chin trembled. His Adam’s apple wobbled up and down with the effort of speaking. “No,” he replied. “I wasn’t doing anything wrong. But still, no cops.”

  He stood up then, walked over to the light, and switched it back off. “I’m going to bed, Uncle Frank. We can talk about this in the morning.”

  Feeling sick, Frank Ybarra waited until the door swung shut before he reached for the bottle. This time, though, instead of pouring another drink, he grasped the bottle by the neck. Holding it in one knotted fist, he stood up and staggered as far as the back door. After wrenching open the door, Frank hurled the bottle as far as he could into the inky darkness of the backyard. The bottle splattered against the brick wall of the garage and splintered into a thousand pieces.