Outlaw Mountain

by J. A. Jance

  She made it through her speech by operating on remote control. Her whole body ached with weariness. Her head hurt. Her mouth felt dry. All she wanted to do was fall back into her warm bed. When the speech ended and Joanna opened the subject up to questions, she expected Marliss to be among the first to raise her hand. Instead, Marliss slipped out of the room early without asking a single query. That struck Joanna as odd, but she was too tired to be anything but grateful about having dodged a public firefight with her most vocal critic.

  Leaving the meeting, Joanna sat in the car for a few minutes and rested her head on the steering wheel. She felt rotten-almost as if she had the flu. So stop being a martyr, she told herself. Go home and go to bed.

  After all, she was allowed ten days of sick leave per year. So far she had used only two days total. In the past few weeks Cochise County had exacted far more than its pound of flesh from its lady sheriff. With that realization, she called in to the department and told Kristin that she wasn’t feeling well. She was taking the day off and going back to bed.

  “You and Chief Deputy Voland must have caught the same bug,” Kristin told her. “He called in sick, too.”

  “If Voland is out, maybe I should come in after all,” Joanna began.

  “No. Don’t bother. Chief Deputy Montoya is here this morning. He says he has everything under control. He offered to hang around all day if need be. You go on home.”

  Joanna was too tired to require any more persuasion. “Good,” she said. “I’m on my way.”

  When she turned onto the road to High Lonesome Ranch, she was surprised that Sadie and Tigger didn’t come racing to meet her. Their raucous greeting was so much a part of any homecoming that Joanna worried about it as she came up the road. Maybe Butch and Jenny had gone off to town that morning without remembering to put the dogs outside. In that case, it was a good thing Joanna hadn’t gone to work. No telling what mischief those two scoundrel dogs would get into if left to their own devices inside the house.

  Joanna came through the last stand of mesquite, then jammed on the brakes when she saw a vehicle parked by the gate. Dick Voland’s Bronco sat there with someone slumped against the driver’s window. On the ground nearby lay Sadie and Tigger, both of whom now bounded to their feet and came running toward Joanna, barking their tardy greeting. Inside the Bronco, the slumping figure stirred and then moved. As soon as he straightened into an upright position, Joanna recognized that the driver really was Dick Voland.

  Parking beside him, Joanna jumped out of her Blazer and walked up just as Dick rolled down his window. A cloud of boozy air erupted from the enclosed cab. The smell was so thick and pungent that it almost made her gag.

  “What are you doing here, Dick?” she asked. “I thought you were sick.”

  “I am sick,” he returned. “Why didn’t you tell me?”

  “Tell you what? About Lewis Flores? I tried. At least I think I did. But you had already put in a full day by then. You had gone home.”

  “About Butch Dixon,” Voland said doggedly.

  Joanna was dismayed. “There was no reason to tell you,” she said. “Butch and I are-”

  “I know. You’re engaged,” Voland finished, although that wasn’t close to what Joanna had intended to say. “1 know all about it. Marliss told me. She heard it from your own mother. How could you do that to me, Joanna? How could you?”

  “Dick,” she said reasonably, “I didn’t do anything to you. Butch and I have fallen in love. What do you expect-”

  Again Dick Voland cut her off. “I expected you to have the decency to tell me, that’s all. You must know how I feel about you. It’s been like that since you first came to the department. I’ve been waiting and waiting for you to give me some sign that it would be okay for me to ask you out. For you to say that you had spent enough time grieving over Andy and that you were ready to move on with your life. I didn’t see this coming. I didn’t think you’d do an end run around me and take off with someone else.”

  He paused long enough for Joanna to say something, but by then she was too floored to speak.

  “When Marliss came out to Oak Vista yesterday afternoon and told me all about it, I didn’t believe it. I was sure it was a lie-that she was just being Marliss. But she made it sound real enough that I had to know for sure. So I came out here to see for myself. I parked out on High Lonesome Road and waited. And sure as shit, the first person to show up is Butch Dixon in that little Outback of his. Jenny was in the car with him, and somebody else I didn’t recognize. Probably that cretin you dragged home from Saint David.”

  “Dick,” Joanna said warningly. “I told you-”

  “I don’t care what you told me,” he said. “I saw it with my own eyes. First he drove up and then, hours later, who should show up? You, Sheriff Brady-you and nobody else. Come home to shack up. If you didn’t care any more than hat about yourself, it seems to me that you’d at least care about Jenny.”

  “That’s about enough,” Joanna said. “I think you’d better go now.”

  “No, it isn’t enough. Not nearly. Here.” He reached in his shirt pocket and fumbled out a wrinkled, much-folded piece f paper.

  “What’s this?” Joanna asked.

  “My letter of resignation. I quit. As of now.”

  Dick Voland had tried to quit once before-right after Joanna’s election. Back then she had talked him into staying because she needed his help, his expertise. Even now, she still could use his experience, but not without respect. Lacking that, sere was no way they could continue to work together. She unfolded the letter and glanced at the contents.

  “All right,” Joanna said when she finished reading. “Considering what’s happened, that’s probably for the best. I’ll expect you to turn in your vehicle and your departmental weapons before the close of business today.”

  “Don’t think this is the last you’re going to hear from me,” Voland warned as he turned his key in the ignition. The Bronco’s engine roared to life.

  “No,” Joanna said. “I don’t suppose it is.” As soon as the heater fan caught hold, another cloud of rancid air blasted into Joanna’s face. “Are you sure you should be driving’?” she added. “It’s possible you’re still drunk.”

  “I’m not drunk,” he insisted. “Besides, who’s going to stop me? You? I don’t think so.”

  Voland rammed the Bronco into reverse and then stepped on the gas. Joanna had to sidestep out of the way in order to keep from being creamed by the outside mirror. He drove off, leaving Joanna in a cloud of dust.

  Fleeing into the house, it was all she could do to press her door key into the lock. She dropped the letter on the dryer and then ran weeping through the house. She threw herself across the bed and buried her face in the covers. Joanna hadn’t cried that way for months. A wild fit of racking sobs came from deep inside her and shook her whole body. Her tears didn’t have their source in any one thing. It was everything: Dick Voland quitting. Eleanor bossing her around. Butch asking her if being sheriff was what she really wanted. Lewis Flores blowing his brains out right in front of her. And that was not all. There was also the fact that Joanna had lost her nerve and hadn’t actually told Jenny what was really going on with Butch. Now, thanks to Marliss Shackleford, everyone else in town already knew about it or soon would.

  Eventually the combination of tears and exhaustion caught up with her. Joanna fell asleep. The next thing she knew, she and Butch were standing together at the altar of Canyon United Methodist Church. Butch, wearing a tuxedo, was grinning from ear to ear. Junior, standing beside him, was evidently best man, although the badge he wore in place of a boutonniere looked a little out of place on his tux.

  Looking down, Joanna discovered that she, too, was dressed for the occasion. She was wearing her wedding dress-the same dress she had worn years earlier when she and Andy were married. Beside her, as maid of honor, stood Angie Kellogg, the ex-hooker Joanna and Marianne Maculyea had rescued from the clutches of a sadistic drug-enforcer. Livin
g in Bisbee, Angie had achieved a certain kind of respectability, but in Joanna’s dream she had regressed. Standing in front of the church, the lushly voluptuous Angie looked anything but prim. One hip was cocked at a suggestive angle. She looked like a hustler standing on a street corner and waiting for her next trick to show up and make her an offer.

  In front of them a smilingly oblivious Marianne Maculyea looked past the bridal party toward the rest of the congregation. “If anyone here present knows of any reason why these two should not be joined in holy matrimony,” Marianne in-toned, “let them speak now or forever hold their peace.”

  Behind them, at the far end of the aisle, the church door slammed open. Joanna turned and looked back, but in her dream Canyon Methodist’s beautifully varnished mahogany doors had vanished. In their stead, separating the sanctuary from the entryway vestibule, was a shabby swinging door straight out of the Blue Moon Saloon and Lounge in Brewery Gulch, where Angie Kellogg now worked as relief bartender. And in front of the door, posing with his feet apart like some latter-day gun-slinging John Wayne, stood Dick Voland.

  “I object,” Voland said. “I saw her first and that makes her mine. If anybody here disagrees with that, I’ll be happy to meet him outside and settle this man to man.”

  That was all it took. Butch Dixon turned and strode down the aisle, leaving Joanna standing alone. “Come back,” she called after him. “This is stupid. Don’t do this.” But he just kept on walking. He didn’t even look back.

  Joanna awakened with a start. One hand, trapped under her cheek, felt as though it were made of wood. As soon as she moved her weight off it, circulation began returning, sending a painful tingling all the way from her fingertips up to her elbow.

  Turning over, Joanna glanced at the clock. It said one-thirty. That meant she had been out of it for over four hours. Her clothing was wrinkled. There was a wet spot on the bedspread where she had drooled in her sleep. She was thinking about getting up and maybe making herself something to eat when the phone rang.

  “Mrs. Brady?” a voice asked.

  That was strange. Joanna wasn’t used to being called Mrs. Brady any more. Most people addressed her as Sheriff. “Yes,” she said. “Who’s this?”

  “Enid Sutton,” was the reply. “I’m the principal at Lowell School.”

  Enid Sutton was new to Bisbee, but Joanna remembered meeting her once at a school open house. She hadn’t been particularly impressed one way or the other.

  “I’m afraid you’re going to have to come pick up your daughter,” Mrs. Sutton continued.

  “What’s wrong? Is Jenny sick? Hurt?”

  “She’s not hurt, but I am putting her on a three-day suspension.”

  “Suspension!” Joanna gasped. “What on earth for?”

  “For fighting, Mrs. Brady. I’ve tried to get to the bottom of it. She claims that some of the boys were teasing her at lunch. Apparently it was something about your upcoming marriage. I can certainly understand how a child might feel upset and threatened at having to deal with that sort of thing, but I’m sure you can see my position. We have a zero-tolerance policy when it comes to violence on the school grounds. Jenny bloodied one boy’s nose and tore the other one’s shirt right off his back.”

  Drowning in Enid Sutton’s words, Joanna closed her eyes and let the guilt wash over her. Once again she had failed her daughter. She had been so busy trying to save the world-trying to rescue people like Lewis Flores and Karen Brainard from their own foolishness-that she had left Jenny, her own precious daughter, vulnerable to attack from none other than the likes of Marliss Shackleford. It wasn’t at all a fair contest, and the awful realization of Joanna’s own culpability left her shaken.

  How could I have done such a thing? she wondered. All it would have taken was a few minutes on her part-a few minutes and a few meager words of explanation to Jenny-and none of this would have happened. Jenny would be sitting in class at the end of her school day instead of being locked up in disgrace in the principal’s office.

  How could I have been so cowardly and neglectful? Joanna demanded of herself. Instead of giving Jenny what she needed, Joanna had thrown her child to the wolves. It was unthinkable. Inexcusable. And totally unacceptable.

  “I’ll be right over to get her,” a repentant Joanna Brady whispered into the phone. “Tell my daughter I’ll be right there.”

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  “I’m sorry, Mom,” Jenny said as she climbed into the Blazer. “I know you don’t like me fighting, but I couldn’t help it. They made me so mad!”

  “I’m the one who should be sorry,” Joanna returned. “I should have told you that Butch had asked me to marry him, Jenny. I never should have left you hanging like that. You should have heard it from me, and not through some second-hand newspaper story. I meant to tell you about it last night. That’s why I wanted just the two of us to go out for pizza-so we could talk. Then the call came in. Rather than make a bad job-a rushed job-of telling you, I decided to wait until a better time.”

  “You mean it is true then?” Jenny demanded.

  Joanna nodded. “It’s true.”

  “You and Butch really are getting married?”

  “Yes. But Marliss had no business putting it in the paper before we were ready to make an official announcement.”

  “Why did you tell Marliss before you told me?” Jenny asked.

  “I didn’t tell her, and neither did Butch.”

  “How did she find out then?”

  Jenny’s pointed questions made Joanna feel as though she were in the hands of some trained interrogator. Jennifer Ann Brady would make a hell of a detective someday if that was what she chose to do.

  “Grandma Lathrop told her,” Joanna explained. “She found out because she rode over on her broom yesterday morning and put the question to Butch. She wanted to know if his intentions were honorable.”

  “What does that mean?”

  “Whether or not he planned to marry me.”

  “Why?” Jenny asked. “Because he slept over?”

  Joanna was taken aback by the perceptiveness behind the question. Once again a well-thought-out talk with her daughter wasn’t going at all the way Joanna had intended, but she wasn’t prepared to tell any more half-truths, either. “Yes,” she said.

  “It’s my fault then,” Jenny said. “I’m the one who told Grandma that Butch was there the other day when she called-the other morning. I didn’t mean to. As soon as I did, I could tell it made her mad. Now Grandma thinks Butch has to marry you?”

  “Well, yes. Grandma’s a little old-fashioned that way.”

  “But do you want to marry him?” Jenny asked. “I mean, really, really want to?”

  Another direct question that deserved an equally direct answer-one that came from the heart. “Yes,” Joanna said. “I really do.”

  Jenny sighed. “All right then, as long as you want to. Just don’t do it because Grandma says. She can be pretty bossy, you know.”

  Joanna laughed outright at that. “I know,” she said. “And so can a few other people I could mention.”

  “You’re not mad at me then?” Jenny asked.

  “No. I’m not.”

  “You won’t mind if. I tell you a secret, then?”

  “What’s that?”

  “I asked Butch if he’d go with me to the Father and Daughter Banquet next week. You know the one. For Scouts. You don’t mind, do you?”

  In Bisbee the Girl Scouts’ annual Father and Daughter Banquet was a traditional affair. After the death of Joanna’s father, she and her mother had gone to war over the next scheduled banquet. Eleanor had insisted that Joanna attend alone, and had gone so far as to drive her to the high school and drop her off. Instead of going into the cafeteria, Joanna had bugged out on the festivities, walked for hours in the cold November wind and rain, and had ended up with a case of pneumonia for her pains. Jenny, it seemed, had taken charge of a similar situation in her own fashion.

  “No,” Joanna replie
d. “I don’t mind at all. Of course not. Why would you think I would?”

  “You know,” Jenny said. “Because of Daddy. I was afraid it was too soon. That you’d think I was forgetting him. I didn’t want to hurt your feelings.”

  Joanna reached over and patted Jenny’s leg. “My feelings aren’t hurt,” she said. “I’m thrilled. You must like Butch almost as much as I do. But that doesn’t mean we’re forgetting Daddy. Or being unfair to him. Okay?”

  “Okay,” Jenny said. And then, after a pause, “Where are we going?”

  “Well, since you’re out of school an hour and a half earlier than anyone else will be and earlier than Butch is expecting you, I thought we’d go uptown and see what Marianna is doing. And Ruth, too, if she isn’t spending the afternoon at Jeff’s garage.”

  “Don’t you have to go back to work now?”

  “No,” Joanna replied. “It turns out I’m taking the day off, too.”

  With temperatures in the fifties, the weather was cool and crisp. The sky overhead was a clear cobalt-blue. As Joanna drove up through Old Bisbee, she noticed that the red-and-gray hills, dotted with scrub oak, stood out in stark relief against the distant sky. The contrasts between earth and sky were so sharp that they reminded Joanna of the three-dimensional pictures she remembered from her father’s treasured old View Master.

  When they pulled up to the parsonage, Joanna was relieved to see Marianne Maculyea’s old VW Bug parked out front. It was bad manners to show up unannounced like that, but most of what Joanna wanted to discuss with her friend wasn’t telephone-conversation material. In the past few days, telephones had intruded in her life far too much. She craved the comfort of human companionship, of looking someone in the eye and pouring out her heart.

  “Run up and knock on the door,” Joanna told Jenny. “Ask Marianne if it’s all right for us to come in, or would it be better if we came back later?” Jenny clambered out of the Blazer, slamming the door behind her. “And if you can avoid it,” Joanna added, “don’t tell her what you’re doing out of school so early. I want to tell her myself.”