by J. A. Jance
Seconds passed—it might have been eons—while neither of them moved and while the whole office waited to see the outcome. Finally, with a disgusted shake of his head, Dick Voland gave in and lumbered off ahead of her.
Not daring to let down her guard, Joanna kept her shoulders ramrod straight as she followed him down the hall. She might have won the first minor skirmish. No doubt, the people in the front office would be talking about it for days to come. But it was a damn long way from winning a single battle to winning the war.
And it was another long way from winning the election to winning your stripes.
Joanna followed Dick Voland down a hallway to the far back corner of the building, where he led her into a suite of comfortable offices built around a common reception area. The upholstered furnishings—a couch and several side chairs—were from the nouvelle Southwest school of design—dusty roses and browns and turquoises. Brass-and-glass coffee and end tables created the atmosphere of an upscale attorney’s office.
Everything about the place was a far cry from what Joanna remembered of D. H. Lathrop’s old industrially furnished courthouse days. Back then, scarred wooden chairs and battered gray metal desks had been the order of the day.
A slim blonde sat at a spacious desk in the common reception room, busily typing on a computer terminal. As she typed, she leaned forward and frowned nearsightedly at the screen. Joanna suspected that she needed glasses but was too vain to wear them. D. H. Lathrop’s four-by-four secretary—Miss Imogene Wyatt of the Coke-bottle glasses—had been every bit as industrial strength and no-nonsense as the serviceable old courthouse furniture.
Sensing that someone had entered the room, the young woman glanced up from her screen. Seeing Dick Voland, she grinned at him knowingly as soon as he walked through the doorway. “Well?” she said with a coyly raised eyebrow. “How’d it go with the dragon lady?”
Joanna managed to glimpse the almost imperceptible movement of Dick Voland’s head. The warning shake may well have been accompanied by a cautioning wink. If so, it was outside Joanna’s sight line. Obviously, the secretary had missed it as well.
“Kristin,” Dick Voland said hurriedly, “I’d like you to meet Joanna Brady. The new sheriff. At least she will be.”
Instantly, the grin disappeared from Kristin’s impeccably made-up face. “Oh,” she said, scrambling uncertainly to her feet as Joanna came into view. “Glad to meet you.”
I’ll bet, Joanna thought.
When the long-legged young woman stood up, the hem of her eye-popping leather miniskirt barely skimmed the surface of her desk. Joanna sometimes wore short-shorts that were longer than that almost nonexistent skirt.
Pointedly leaving the staring to Dick Voland, Joanna held out her hand. For a moment, a look of utter confusion washed over the younger woman’s startled features. Obviously, the “dragon lady” hadn’t been expected to venture uninvited down the hall. When Kristin finally came to her senses, she had presence of mind enough to offer her own hand.
After the weeks she’d spent practicing on the campaign trail, Joanna’s handshaking skills were considerable. She took no small pleasure in firmly grasping Kristin’s limp, flaccid fingers. Smiling cheerfully, Joanna thoroughly ground Kristin’s knuckles into one another. She pretended not to hear the satisfying crunch of bone on bone and seemed not to notice the surprised wince of pain that darted across the younger woman’s petulant features.
“What did you say your name was?” Joanna asked.
“Kristin Marsten.”
“And how long have you been working here, Miss Marsten?” Joanna inquired formally.
“I started out as a clerk/intern last summer,” Kristin answered. “The old secretary/receptionist quit a few weeks ago. Mr. Voland asked me to work in here for a while, to fill in on a temporary basis.”
“I see,” Joanna said. And she did, too.
She glanced around the room, assimilating all the details at once. Several separate doors opened off the reception area. A light was on in the far corner office, the one with the private walkway and private door leading in from the sheriff’s designated parking place. Without having to be told, Joanna knew that was the office she was looking for, but she asked anyway, just for form’s sake.
“Which office is mine?”
“This way,” Dick Voland muttered, heading off in that direction.
The northwest corner office was spacious and bright, with a pair of spotlessly clean windows set in each outside wall. Those windows afforded a spectacular and unobstructed view of the surrounding desert. Joanna noticed that the furnishings in the room carried Walter McFadden’s distinctly masculine stamp. A long leather couch occupied one wall, while a matching wingback chair sat casually off to one side.
Walter McFadden’s parking place wasn’t the only thing Dick Voland had appropriated for himself. Next to the chair was a freestanding ashtray, filled to overflowing with the smelly leavings of several potent cigars. The fine grains of the cherry-wood desk and matching credenza were difficult to see beneath a hodgepodge of jumbled papers frosted by a shaky layer of opened newspapers. Beside the credenza, a stack of unused Al Freeman yard signs leaned conspicuously against the far wall.
Joanna stood in the center of the room and pivoted slowly, examining everything around her while Voland stood apprehensively beside the desk. “Good,” she said when she finished her 360-degree turn. “That’s all I wanted to know for now.”
Without waiting to be escorted from the room and ignoring both Kristin and Voland, Joanna stalked across the reception area, down the hallway, and let herself back out into the public lobby area.
She had come to the sheriff’s office that morning with nothing at all in mind other than signing that damn statement. By being there, however, by seeing it in person, she had learned things that were far more important—important and disturbing.
Predictably, the typed statement still wasn’t ready to be signed. Employee productivity was yet another thorny departmental issue. For now, it was Dick Voland’s problem. Eventually, it would be Joanna’s.
Eighteen
WHEN SHE left the justice complex, Joanna drove straight to the new county administration offices on Melody Lane. Her arrival there was much different from that at the Sheriff’s Department.
Although Joanna Brady arrived at the county manager’s reception desk without an officially scheduled appointment, Norbert DeLeon himself hurried out from his inner office as soon as his secretary announced Joanna’s name over the intercom. A warm, cordial smile beamed across Norbert’s face as he held out his hand in welcome.
“I believe congratulations are in order,” he said, ushering Joanna into his office. “Can I get you a cup of coffee?”
“No, thanks. I’ve had enough caffeine already this morning.”
“What can I do for you then?” he asked, easing himself down behind his desk—a light oak-veneer affair that didn’t come close in quality to the genuine cherrywood desk that graced Sheriff McFadden’s former office.
“I came to ask you to either verify or squelch a rumor I’ve heard.”
A concerned frown creased Norbert’s face. “We’ve had lots of rumors around here in the last few months. I hope it’s nothing bad.”
“Someone mentioned last night that since the position of sheriff is vacant, the board of supervisors was considering filling that office as soon after the election as possible.”
“Oh, that,” Norbert DeLeon said, dismissively. “Well, there had been some talk, but now that the election is over, no one wants to push you too hard. We’re all well aware of what you’ve been through these past few months. The final consensus was that we should give you a chance to rest up, give you a bit of a breather before you take on your new duties in January.”
“In other words, if Al Freeman or Frank Montoya had won the election, the board would have gone ahead and sworn in either one of them right away. But since I won, they won’t?”
DeLeon nodded. “I guess th
at’s about right.”
“Does that seem discriminatory to you?”
The county manager looked shocked. “Well,” he faltered, “I suppose it could be interpreted that way, but believe me, no one meant any harm. They were all looking out for you. I mean, you’ve had such a difficult time with Andy’s death and all….”
“Norbert,” Joanna interrupted firmly. “The supervisors may have my best interests at heart, but I doubt that decision is necessarily beneficial to the people of Cochise County.”
“What are you saying?” he asked.
“I was elected sheriff to solve the problems that currently exist in the Sheriff’s Department. That’s exactly what I intend to do, and I’d like to get started as soon as possible.”
DeLeon steepled his fingers under his chin and regarded her appraisingly. “When would you like to go to work?”
“The sooner, the better.”
“I see. Today?”
“Suits me.”
“But what about Milo Davis? You’ve worked for him a long time. Won’t you have to give him some kind of notice?”
“Milo’s already been working on a contingency plan,” Joanna replied. “Believe me, that won’t be a problem.”
“All right then,” Norbert said, nodding and reaching at once for his telephone. “Hold on here a minute, Joanna. I’ll make a few calls and see what I can do.”
As a result of those phone calls, Joanna Lee Lathrop Brady was sworn into office as the first female sheriff of Cochise County at two o’clock that afternoon: Wednesday, November 7, one day after her election.
The hastily organized ceremony was held in the chambers of Superior Court Judge Cameron Moore, with Jennifer Ann Brady holding her mother’s worn Bible. Joanna, dressed in a well-worn navy-blue blazer, was surprised to see tears in her mother’s eyes as Eleanor pinned Hank Lathrop’s old but newly polished badge over Joanna’s left breast pocket.
Eleanor was disappointed that no Tucson television stations or newspapers sent reporters to Bisbee to cover the event. Joanna didn’t mind at all. By then the purplish bruise under her eye had turned a full-fledged black.
After the swearing-in, the whole crew—minus Judge Moore—trooped down to the Davis Insurance Agency in Warren to celebrate. There they sipped champagne and devoured a special, hastily decorated-to-order cake topped with an artfully designed chocolate-frosting sheriff’s badge.
A beaming Milo Davis proposed the first toast. “All I can say is,” he said, raising his glass, “I sure know how to pick a winner.”
Joanna gazed around the crowded rooms. Winning was fine, but the prospect of leaving the homey office saddened her somehow. This was a place where she had grown to adulthood, advanced from a giddy high school part-timer to a responsible and self-assured businesswoman. With Milo’s help and support, she had worked for him all the while she commuted the hundred miles back and forth to the university in Tucson to earn her B.A.
The happy crew of supporters, jammed together wall-to-wall, consisted of both family and friends—Eleanor Lathrop and Jenny, Marianne Maculyea and Jeff Daniels, Eva Lou and Jim Bob Brady, Angie Kellogg, Milo Davis, and Lisa Connors. Despite her overnight stay in the hospital, Marianne seemed none the worse for wear. Unlike Joanna, she wasn’t sporting a black eye.
Acting as unofficial master of ceremonies, Milo went around the room asking for comments. He even cajoled Eleanor Lathrop into letting down her hair far enough to drink a second half-glass of champagne. Jenny, sitting cross-legged a little apart from the others and sipping sparkling cider in a champagne flute, was the last person Milo called on to speak.
“What about you, Jenny?” he asked. “Care to propose a toast?”
Struck suddenly shy, Jennifer rose to her feet and raised her glass the way she had seen the others do. “Even if you are sheriff,” she said, “I’m glad you’re still my mom.”
People smiled and laughed and said, “Here, here!” while Joanna fought to swallow enough of the lump in her throat so she could take the expected sip of champagne.
“Thank you, Jenny,” she murmured.
When post-champagne cleanup started, Joanna retreated to her desk and began the process of clearing and emptying. As she sorted and packed, Joanna was struck by the oddball bits of memorabilia that had somehow wormed their way into her work space, each bringing with it a separate and sometimes bittersweet echo from the past.
Why, for instance, had she kept Jenny’s orange-and-green kindergarten-sized handprint on the credenza behind her desk? Why was that tiny plaster-of-paris plaque from Jenny’s Daily Vacation Bible School more important to her mother, more worthy of display, than one of Jenny’s more recent school pictures?
And what about the worn buffalo-head nickel Andy had playfully dropped down her bra the night of their first date? Always lurking in the top right-hand corner of her pencil drawer, the nickel served as a talisman, one she picked up and rubbed from time to time. By now the surface designs were worn sufficiently thin that they were only vaguely visible.
And then there was the Montblanc fountain pen Milo Davis had presented to her last summer on the tenth anniversary of the day she went to work for him. When he gave it to her, she had expected to work for the Davis Insurance Agency as long as there was a Davis Insurance Agency. But then, between last summer and now, Joanna’s entire life had been thrown into a Waring blender.
She glanced up as Jim Bob Brady hobbled back to her desk and sank gratefully into a chair. “These dogs are killing me,” he said. “Mind if I set a spell and kick off my shoes?”
“Go right ahead. You do look tired.”
Her father-in-law nodded. “I’m not nearly as young as I used to be. Just that piddly-assed little bit of tramping around out in them hills this afternoon was enough to wear me out. Used to be I could go all day and not think twice about it.”
“Still nothing on Harold?”
“Not by the time I left,” Jim Bob replied. “We mostly worked the lower pastures because that’s where Ivy said she thought he’d most likely be, repairing fences and such. Tomorrow, I guess, if he’s still missing, they’ll head on up toward Juniper Flats. Don’t think I’ll go on that one. Terrain’s too rough. Besides, if they haven’t found him by now…”
Jim Bob Brady left off without finishing the sentence. He leaned forward in the chair and began massaging his feet.
“You think Harold Patterson is dead then?” Joanna asked.
“Don’t you?”
Joanna nodded. “I guess so. With the weather as cold as it’s been, if he’s been out in it all this time, I suppose he’s done for.”
“Yup,” Jim Bob agreed. “Like as not he had himself a heart attack or a stroke out there in a pasture somewhere. And if it was me, I couldn’t think of a better way to go. Given my druthers, I’d do the same damn thing. Die with my boots on.
“I keep telling Eva Lou I don’t want none of those doctors to get hold of me and keep me hanging on with all those goldurned tubes and machines when it’s time for me to go and meet my Maker.”
Abruptly straightening up, Jim Bob Brady peered sharply at Joanna over the top of his wire-rimmed glasses. “How are you doing, Joanna? You holding up all right?”
“I’m fine, Daddy Jim,” she said. “Tired. And a little apprehensive.”
“How come?”
She shrugged. “I had planned to take the next two months to study policies and procedures so I could hit the ground running. Instead, I had to go shoot off my mouth. Now I’m caught flat-footed, wearing a badge two months too early.”
“It’s not too early. You’ll be fine. Just take it as it comes, one thing at a time. And don’t let the turkeys get you down.”
“I’ll do my best,” she answered.
It was six by the time Joanna and Jenny stowed all the packed boxes in the back of the Eagle for the drive back home to the High Lonesome. During the campaign, an elderly neighbor named Clayton Rhodes had become the ranch’s self-appointed man of all work, dro
pping by the place both mornings and evenings to see what needed doing and picking up the slack wherever there was some. After much badgering on Joanna’s part, Clayton had finally agreed to accept some token payment for his work.
When Joanna and Jenny arrived at the turnoff to the ranch, Clayton’s rattletrap Ford pickup was just clattering over the cattle guard. Never one to indulge in unnecessary conversation, the old man raised the brim of his cowboy hat with one finger, nodded in their direction, and kept right on driving.
They made their way up to and into the house through a melee of ecstatic doggy greetings. While Jenny gamboled on the floor with the two dogs, Joanna checked the answering machine. A series of blinking lights told her there were numerous messages. Joanna tried counting them but lost track after eight. She gave up and punched the Playback button.
The messages were mostly congratulatory calls, some from high-school acquaintances she hadn’t talked to since graduation. Mercifully, most required no call back.
One did. It came from Adam York, the DEA agent in charge of the Tucson office. Although York had, at one time, suspected Joanna of illicit connections to a South American drug dealer, they were now on good terms. In fact, Adam York had been one of the first people to encourage Joanna to campaign for the office of sheriff in Andy Brady’s place. She was gratified to know that he had phoned her, but she waited until after Jenny was in bed and asleep before returning his call.
“Congratulations,” Adam York said, sounding the now-familiar refrain. “Good going.”
“Thank you,” she responded. “I think,” she added a little lamely.
“You think? What’s this? I’ve been watching the newspaper reports. You ran a good strong campaign, and you wound up garnering yourself a good solid base of support. I also heard they might go ahead and swear you in prior to January.”
“You heard right,” Joanna said, “but you’re behind times. It’s a done deal. I’m a sworn officer as of two o’clock this afternoon.”
“So why this distinct lack of enthusiasm? Nerves?”
