Devil’s Claw

CHAPTER 20

Joanna’s eyes popped open with the sun, and her first thought on waking was, Three days to go. Most of the time she was able to compartmentalize her life enough that the wedding didn’t overwhelm her, but that morning it all seemed to be too much. No matter how hard she tried, she’d never get everything caught up at work. And the same was true at home. She’d never have the house in the kind of shape she wanted it to be in before Jim Bob and Eva Lou came to stay for a week to look after Jenny and the ranch while Joanna and Butch went off on their honeymoon.

And where were they going on their honeymoon anyway? Butch knew because he had made all the plans, but other than telling her she needed to have her passport in order, he had told Joanna nothing. Their destination remained top secret.

“But what kind of clothes am I supposed to pack?” she had asked.

“Minimal,” he had replied.

“What does that mean? Beachwear? What?”

He had shrugged. “Not beachwear,” he had said at last, relenting. “But again, I’d bring along as little as possible.”

By the time Joanna arrived in the kitchen, someone-Kristin, it turned out-was already in the shower. Joanna went out to feed and water the animals. When she had finished her chores and came inside, Kristin was already dressed for work.

“I’m on my way to meet Terry for breakfast,” she said. “I told him we’d better go early so neither one of us will be late for work.”

“Good,” Joanna said. “Are you feeling better this morning?”

“Much. I really did get a decent night’s sleep for a change.”

“And no morning sickness?” Joanna asked, thinking about the dreadful bouts of morning sickness that had almost hospitalized Marianne Maculyea during the early stages of her pregnancy.

“None.”

“You’re lucky then.”

A momentary shadow crossed Kristin’s face. “Right now, I don’t really feel very lucky,” she said.

“Well,” Joanna said. “You’ll just have to take my word for it.”

The extra shower had taxed Joanna’s aging hot-water heater. By the time Jenny emerged from the bathroom, Joanna had to settle for a very quick and barely lukewarm shower. On the way to work, Jenny seemed subdued.

“What’s wrong?” Joanna asked.

“Is it going to be very different?” Jenny asked.

“You mean after Butch and I get married?”

Jenny nodded.

“It’ll be different for all of us,” Joanna replied. “We’ll all have to learn to practice patience. Are you worried about it?”

“A little,” Jenny admitted.

“How come?”

“Last night when I went to bed, I thought about Kristin’s parents-about them throwing her out. I know you said you wouldn’t ever get so mad that you’d kick me out, but it could happen. What if you ended up loving Butch more than you love me? What if you had to choose?”

“Fortunately, I don’t think that’s something either one of us will have to worry about.” By then they had pulled up at the gates of Lowell School. “Go now,” Joanna urged. “Have a good day.”

Jenny made no effort to move or even open the door. “Where do I go after school?” she asked.

Joanna frowned. “I’m not sure. I don’t remember what Butch’s plans are for today. I think you’re supposed to go to his place, but if it turns out he’s busy with his folks, we may have to make some other arrangement.”

“See there?” Jenny asked, screwing up her face to keep from crying. “It’s already happening.”

“What’s already happening?”

“You’re not even married yet and you’re already forgetting about me. You can’t even remember who’s supposed to take care of me after school!”

Joanna shook her head. This was the same eleven-, almost twelve-year-old daughter who was always insisting that she should be treated as though she were several years older than her chronological age. And yet, when the chips were down and when Joanna could have used a real almost-teenager, she found herself dealing with a child who had suddenly regressed to a petulant seven or eight.

“Go to Butch’s,” Joanna said. “If that’s not going to work for some reason, I’ll call the principal’s office and have them send you a note.”

Jenny shook her head, climbed out of the car, slammed the door behind her, and then trudged off through the school gate with her head down and shoulders slumped. She looked so sad, hurt, and alone that Joanna’s heart ached for her. She wanted to leave the Blazer where it was, run after her daughter, and hold Jenny close in a reassuring hug, which Jenny probably wouldn’t have wanted either-not there in front of the school where all her classmates could see. Besides, a glance at her watch said there was no time for that. There was no time either to steal a brief visit with Butch in his remodeled Victorian a bare three blocks from Jenny’s school. Needing to hear his voice, Joanna called instead.

“So how’s the bride on three days and counting?” Butch asked cheerfully.

“Medium,” Joanna replied. “Jenny’s gone all teary and insecure on me. And it didn’t help matters that I couldn’t remember whether or not you were going to take care of her after school.”

“Let me look at the Gantt chart on my computer for a minute.”

“Gantt chart?” Joanna demanded. “What’s that?”

“You might call it a flowchart. It’s a graphical project timeline. I downloaded it into my computer from the Internet. It’s for keeping track of projects. It helps you make sure that all available resources are allocated properly. Since you put me in charge of logistics for this wedding, I live and die by my Gantt chart.

“Let’s see. Your brother and sister-in-law fly in from D.C. this afternoon. Your mother will meet them at the airport, and then they’re scheduled to have dinner with the Winfields. My folks want to take us out to eat tonight. It’ll just be the five of us-you, Jenny, me, and the two of them. We’ll probably go somewhere here in town. Mother had heard about the Copper Queen and wanted to eat there. I told her that would be fine.

“Tomorrow night will be the whole group of out-of-towners-sort of a pre-rehearsal-dinner dinner. I’m voting for pizza for that one-probably out at your place, since you have more room than I do. Friday’s the real rehearsal dinner and-”

“Stop,” Joanna interrupted. “It’s too much. Let’s just stick to one day at a time. All I want to know is yes or no-are you taking care of Jenny after school today?”

“Yes.”

“Good. Let’s leave it at that. You can tell me everything else I need to know from the whatever-the-hell-it-is chart when I need to know it.”

“Gantt chart,” he repeated. “With two t‘s. But are you okay?” he asked after a pause. “You sound stressed.”

I am stressed! she wanted to shout at him. I’m stressed beyond bearing!

“I’m all right,” she answered carefully. “And I’m sure Jenny will be relieved to have a little bit of ordinariness back in her life for today at least.”

“You’re sure you’re not mad at me or anything, are you?” Butch asked.

“I’m not mad, but I am on my way to work. I’m about to be late, and I’m worried about how I’ll ever get caught up enough to be gone for a whole week. Do we have to stay away that long? Couldn’t we come back a day or two early-maybe in time for Jenny’s birthday?”

“No, we can’t, Joanna. Definitely negative on that. I’ve talked it over with Jenny, and she’s cool about us missing her actual birthday. Not only that, as your newly designated husband, I’m making it my first priority to see to it that you don’t work yourself into an early grave. I’m going to start by insisting that you actually take your vacation time as vacation. Working vacations like sheriffs‘-conference trips don’t count.”

“All right,” she said. “If you’re going to insist on taking care of me, the least I can do is stop griping about it.”

“Good decision,” he said.

Joanna made it to her desk right at eight, but when no one showed up for the morning briefing, she gathered up a collection of files and went searching for Frank Montoya and her two detectives. In the reception room outside Joanna’s office, Kristin was at her desk and sorting mail when Joanna walked in. “Where is everybody?” she asked.

“The conference room,” Kristin replied. “Chief Deputy Montoya said that since the Double Cs are coming, the conference room would be a better fit for the briefing than your office.”

Joanna grabbed a cup of coffee on her way past the corner pot and then hurried into the conference room in time to hear Frank Montoya say, “We’ll have to leave that up to Sheriff Brady.”

“What are you leaving up to me?” she asked.

“Contacting Bill Forsythe, the new sheriff up in Pima County,” Detective Carpenter replied. “If we’re going to have any kind of information sharing on Melanie Goodson’s death, OD or otherwise, we’re going to have to let them know what we’re up against on our end. What’s more, the only way it’s going to happen is from the top down, because it sure as hell isn’t going to happen from the bottom up.”

“I’ll work on it as soon as we finish up here,” Joanna said. “Now, what else have I missed?”

“Nothing much,” Frank replied. “We were just sitting around jawing and waiting for you to show up.”

Joanna took her place at the head of the table. The morning’s stack of incident reports sat in front of her. She moved that aside in favor of Frank Montoya’s Thomas Ridder file, which she had carried into the conference room along with her coffee cup.

“All right, gentlemen. Where do we stand on the Ridder murders, assuming of course that Melanie Goodson is connected? I’m guessing we still haven’t found any trace of Lucy?”

Frank shook his head. “Other than her busted-up bicycle, no. S and R, along with Terry Gregovich and Spike, spent all day yesterday combing the rest area and the adjoining part of Texas Canyon. In the hills above the rest area they found a spot where it looked as though she might have camped out for a day or so. Then they followed a trail down as far as the highway, where it disappeared. S and R offered to go back out there today, but I told them not to bother. My guess is she’s long gone.”

“She got into a vehicle,” Joanna suggested.

“Presumably, yes.”

“What about the bird? Didn’t Catherine Yates tell us that Big Red wouldn’t be caught dead riding in a car?”

Frank nodded. “She did say that,” he agreed. “But maybe Big Red is dead. After all, things do happen to hawks, especially around busy highways. And it’s not what he’s used to. Interstate Ten is a whole lot busier than the roads that lead to Cochise Stronghold.”

Nodding, Joanna turned to her detectives. “What’s happening up in Tucson?”

“I called Santa Theresa’s first thing this morning to see when we could make an appointment to see Sister Celeste,” Jaime Carbajal put in. “The lady who answered the phone told me she won’t be in all day today, either. I should try calling back tomorrow.”

“Sounds to me like you’re getting the runaround,” Joanna said.

“Sounds like it to me, too,” Jaime replied. “I tried asking if maybe she was attending a meeting somewhere, thinking we might be able to catch up with her at lunchtime, wherever she is, but the secretary clammed up on me and said I’d have to talk to her once she returns.”

“Great,” Joanna sighed. “Now what about the Pima County detectives working the Melanie Goodson case?”

Ernie Carpenter shrugged. When he frowned, his eyebrows seemed to come together, forming a solid caterpillar of hair across his broad forehead. “What about them? Like I said before, they’re not going to give us the time of day unless a specific order comes down to them from upstairs, preferably one signed in God’s own handwriting.”

Joanna scribbled Bill Forsythe’s name on the top line of her day’s to-do list. “I’ll get right on it,” she said. “Any information about when the Goodson autopsy will be completed?” she continued.

“Preliminary results today,” Ernie said, consulting his own notes. “But it’s going to boil down to toxicology reports, so you know that’s going to take time-a week or so, most likely.”

“Frank, what about you?” Joanna asked. “Do you have anything to add?”

“Fortunately, our working relationship with the City of Tucson PD is a little less troubled than our dealings are with Pima County,” Frank answered. “Consequently, I did manage to lay hands on a copy of the original case file for the Thomas Ridder shooting.”

“Complete with ballistics reports?” Joanna asked.

“Yes,” Frank said. “I think so.”

“Does it say what size bullet killed him?”

Montoya opened the thick file and thumbed through several pages before stopping to peruse one in particular. “Here it is,” he said. “Says here he died of a twenty-two-caliber bullet wound. The slug hit him in the heart, killing him instantly.”

“Was the weapon ever recovered?” Joanna asked.

Once again Frank consulted the file. “Not that it says here; why?”

“How soon can we get a ballistics report back from the DPS gun lab on the bullet that killed Sandra Ridder?”

“Today, probably, if I call up and ask them to rush it. But what’s going on?”

“What if the murder weapon is what was hidden in Sandra Ridder’s Tupperware bowl all this time?” Joanna asked. “All along I’ve been thinking that Sandra Ridder may have been killed with the gun Lucy lifted from her grandmother’s place. But what if that isn’t the case? What if she was killed with the same gun she used to shoot her husband years ago?”

“I’ll call up to Tucson and check as soon as we finish up with this meeting.”

“Would a twenty-two fit in that Tupperware container?” Jaime Carbajal asked.

“Sure,” Frank said. “One of those little featherweights would fit in a minute.”

Joanna turned to her detectives. “Ernie, what are you and Jaime doing today?”

“Paper, mostly. Then, if you can clear us to talk to those Pima County guys, I’d like to be able to shadow their investigation as closely as possible. Sandra Ridder’s funeral is scheduled for this afternoon at two over in Pearce. I don’t see any reason for both of us to go, so Jaime’s going to handle that.”

Joanna looked at the younger detective. “And here’s something else you can take care of at the same time. I’ve gone through all the Tom Ridder material Frank gave me yesterday. Nowhere does it refer to Melanie Goodson as being Sandra Ridder’s court-appointed attorney.”

“Somebody paid the bill,” Jaime said at once.

“Right,” Joanna returned. “Since you’ll be at the funeral, maybe you can ask Catherine Yates if she’s the one who paid Melanie Goodson’s fee. If it was somebody other than Sandra’s mother, let’s find out who that person was.”

“Will do,” Jaime said.

Joanna directed her next request to Detective Carpenter. “Ernie, you’re the one with contacts out at Fort Huachuca. I want to know more about Thomas Ridder’s dismissal from the army. He evidently punched out a superior officer, but that officer is never once mentioned by name. I want to know who he was and what the beef was all about.”

“I’ll see what I can do. Anything else?”

“Yes, there is one more thing. As you know, I’ll be gone all next week. I’m going to expect you to give Chief Deputy Montoya here your utmost cooperation. With any kind of luck, things will stay pretty quiet, but we all remember what happened last summer as soon as Doc Winfield left town on his honeymoon.”

“We’ll keep things under control, Sheriff Brady,” Ernie Carpenter assured her, standing up. “Don’t worry about a thing.”

The two detectives were almost to the door when Joanna called Jaime Carbajal back. “What happened at Pepe’s game last night?” she asked.

A wide grin suffused her young detective’s face. “I made it to the field in time for the last two innings, including Pepe’s third home run of the season.”

“And Delcia didn’t kill you?”

“Not yet,” Jaime answered, “but there’s another game tonight.”

“Get out of here,” Joanna said.

Once the two detectives were gone, Joanna and her chief deputy turned their attention to the stack of incident reports. Forty-five minutes later, Joanna was back in her office and dialing Sheriff Bill Forsythe’s number up in Pima County.

“What can I do for you, Sheriff Brady?” he asked.

“We have a murder down here in Cochise County with possible links to one of yours-the Melanie Goodson death out on South Old Spanish Trail.”

“What kind of links?”

“One of Melanie Goodson’s neighbors saw her driving her Lexus with another woman in the vehicle. Two hours later, our homicide victim was spotted with that same Lexus near a campground in the Dragoon Mountains down here in Cochise County. The next morning, Melanie Goodson called your office and reported the Lexus stolen, even though she herself was the last person seen driving it.” Joanna paused for breath. “It seems to me that, based on all that, there should be enough connections to justify the sharing of information.”

“That remains to be seen.” Bill Forsythe replied. “I take it the officers in question are the same ones who were making nuisances of themselves out at our crime scene yesterday afternoon?”

“My detectives were doing their jobs,” Joanna answered evenly. “They were asking questions. They had an early-afternoon appointment to speak with Melanie Goodson at her office. When she stood them up, it was for the very good reason that she was dead. Wouldn’t you find that a coincidence worthy of asking questions, one of which has to be: ”Who didn’t want Melanie talking to my investigators?“ ”

“Give me the name of the neighbor who talked to your guys,” Forsythe said. “The one who claimed to have seen Melanie Goodson driving her car. Once my dicks talk to him or her, I’ll see what I can do.”

“What you’re saying is, none of your ”dicks,“ as you call them, have yet spoken to Melanie Goodson’s neighbors.”

“We’re still very early in the investigation-”

“Can it, Sheriff Forsythe. You want your department to piggyback on my detectives’ work and then you may or may not decide to share information with us. Is that what you’re saying?”

“Not in so many words.”

“The hell it isn’t.”

“Sheriff Brady, you don’t have to get hysterical about it.”

Hysterical? The word buzzed in Joanna’s ear like an angry wasp.

Her voice dropped to the bare whisper that people who knew Joanna Brady well also knew as a warning to duck for cover. “Believe me, Sheriff Forsythe,” she told him icily, “I’m a long way from hysterical. I am pointing out, however, that our two departments have a long-standing mutual-aid agreement-one that predates your election, and mine as well. I expect both of our departments to live up to the terms of that agreement.”

“Right,” Sheriff Bill Forsythe responded. “When pigs fly!” With that he slammed the receiver down in her ear.

A stunned Joanna Brady was still sitting with the phone in her hand when Kristin came into her office moments later carrying that day’s stack of mail.

“Sorry,” she said. “I didn’t realize you were still on the phone.”

“I’m not. That rotten SOB hung up on me. He had the gall to say I was hysterical. Do you believe it?”

“Well,” said Kristin guardedly, “you do look a tiny bit upset-”

“Upset?” Joanna repeated, as flame rose in her cheeks. “I’ll say I’m upset! First I’m going to solve these two damned cases-his and mine both-with no help from him or from those arrogant jerks he mistakenly calls detectives. And then, after that-”

Joanna paused in mid-sentence while a faraway look crossed her face and a slight smile curved her lips.

“What now?” Kristin asked. “What’s so funny?”

“This,” Joanna replied. “When Butch and I go to that Arizona Sheriffs’ Conference meeting in Page the last week in May, maybe I can lure Sheriff Bill Forsythe into a late-night poker game and whip his ass.”

“You can do that?” Kristin stared at Joanna in wide-eyed amazement. “I didn’t know you knew how to play poker.”

“Neither does Sheriff Bill Forsythe,” Joanna said grimly. “But with any kind of luck, the man’s sure as hell going to find out.”

An hour later, at lunch with Butch, Joanna told him about the personality clash with her neighboring sheriff. “So basically, you’re mad because you regard yourself as a woman scorned,” Butch philosophized. “Professionally scorned, but scorned nonetheless.”

“Forsythe wouldn’t have talked to me that way if I were a man,” Joanna declared. “Men get mad; women get hysterical. Men are aggressive; women are pushy.”

“Isn’t there a chance you’re being overly sensitive about this?”

Joanna thought about it. “Maybe,” she finally admitted reluctantly, “but what do you suggest I do?”

Butch shrugged. “Seems to me like you already have a handle on that.” He grinned back at her. “Solve the two murders and then whip Forsythe’s ass at poker. What could be better than that?”

“Nothing,” she replied. “Nothing at all.”