Paradise Lost

Joanna, too, was trying to grab on to Amy and hold her. She felt a sharp pain on her face as Amy’s doorknob-sized diamond raked across her cheek. As Joanna’s hand went reflexively to her face, Amy Bernard scuttled away. Before she made it to the open door of the Lexus, Joanna tackled her again. Jaime came charging back as well. By then, most of Amy’s initial fury had been spent, and with two against one, it wasn’t much of a contest. Between them, Joanna and Jaime shoved the struggling woman to the ground long enough to fasten a pair of handcuffs around her wrists. Once they were secure, Jaime hauled the still-screeching woman to her feet.

“You can’t do this,” Amy wailed. “It’s police brutality. I have witnesses.”

“Why?” Joanna managed, still gasping for breath.

It was almost as though she had thrown a glass of cold water in the woman’s face. Amy Bernard stopped yelling and grew strangely still. “Why what?” she asked.

“Why did you kill Dora Matthews?” Joanna asked.

“She was a little piece of shit,” Amy snarled. “She was going to ruin my son’s life.”

“I don’t think so,” Joanna said, shaking her head. “If anyone’s going to ruin Christopher Bernard’s life, it’s you.”

Jaime Carbajal was still holding on to Amy Bernard with one hand. Using his other hand, he reached into his pocket and pulled out a clean hanky, which he passed to Joanna.

“What’s this for?” she asked.

“You’re bleeding, Boss,” he said. “Didn’t think you’d want to wreck that brand-new uniform.”

That night, when Joanna finally came home to High Lonesome Ranch, she had three ugly stitches in the jagged gash on her cheek and a sore butt from the tetanus shot.

“What in the world were you thinking?” Butch Dixon demanded once she told him what had happened. “Tackling her like that when you thought she had a gun; God knows what might have happened.”

“She didn’t have a gun in her hand,” Joanna explained patiently. “And there wasn’t one in her purse, either. We looked. She was bluffing the whole time.”

“I don’t care; you still could have been killed.”

“I had to do something,” Joanna said. “There were innocent bystanders everywhere. Someone else could have been hurt.”

“You could have been hurt,” Butch growled at her. “And it could have been a whole lot worse than just that cut on your cheek. What about Jenny and me?” he added. “Did you give a sin­gle thought to what the two of us would do without you?”

“I did, actually,” Joanna admitted. “The whole time I was in the emergency room waiting to have my face stitched up and the whole way home from Tucson. Did you know,” she added in a bla­tant bid for sympathy, “that when they’re stitching up a facial wound, they can’t deaden it because they might damage one of the nerves?”

Butch sighed. “I’m sorry,” he relented. “I’ll bet those stitches hurt like hell.”

He took her in his arms then, and all the while he held her, Joanna felt more than a little guilty. It was bad enough that Butch had fallen for his wife’s unconscionable womanly wiles. What was worse, Joanna Brady liked it. She doubted D. H. Lathrop would have been very proud of her just then, but somehow Joanna knew that Eleanor Lathrop Winfield would have been.

“By the way,” Butch said. “You had a phone call a few minutes ago. Deputy Galloway”

Joanna’s green eyes darkened. Considering everything that had happened since morning, her conversation with Ken Galloway could have been days ago rather than hours. “What did he want?” she asked.

“He asked me to give you a message,” Butch replied. “He said, ‘Its handled,’ whatever that means. It was almost like he was talking in code and didn’t want to give me too information.”

“It was code,” Joanna said with a laugh. “I strong-armed him this morning into doing something nice. He’s still pissed about it, but he did it. Good. That’s all that counts.”

“Did what?”

“Remember Yolanda Cañedo?”

“The jail matron with cancer, the one in the hospital in Tucson?”

Joanna nodded. “Right,” she said. “Ted Chapman, the chaplain with the jail ministry, got all the inmates to join together and do something for Yolanda and her family. It seemed to me that the deputies ought to shape up and do as much, if not more. Ken Gal­loway wasn’t exactly overjoyed at the prospect, but it looks as though he’s come through.”

“But his nose is still slightly out of joint,” Butch said with a laugh.

“Too bad,” Joanna replied.

That evening it was as though someone had posted an OPEN HOUSE sign at the end of the road that led to High Lonesome Ranch. Half a dozen cars showed up for a celebratory but impromptu potluck. As the kitchen and dining room filled up with guests and while Butch, Jeff Daniels, and Eva Lou Brady organized the food, Joanna and Marianne Maculyea sat in a quiet corner of the living room while Marianne nursed little Jeffy.

“I embarrassed myself in the emergency room this afternoon,” Joanna admitted. That quiet confession, made to her best friend, was something she had yet to mention to her husband.

“What happened?” Marianne asked.

“I burst into tears.”

“So what?” Marianne returned. “From the looks of those stitches, I would have done the same thing. That cut must hurt.”

Joanna shook her head. “It’s not that bad,” she said. “And the cut isn’t what made me cry. I was sitting there in the ER lobby, bleeding and waiting to see the doctor, when the full force of it finally hit me. That woman was after Dora. Poor Dora Matthews was the only target; Jenny wasn’t. She wasn’t in danger and never was. That’s when I burst into tears. One of the nurses stopped by to see what was wrong; what I needed. She thought I was in pain. There were other people in the room who were in a lot worse physical shape than I was, Mari. I couldn’t very well tell her it was just the opposite—that I was so relieved I could barely contain myself.”

Marianne hefted little Jeffy to her shoulder and patted his back until he let loose with a satisfied burp.

“I know,” Marianne said thoughtfully. “I felt the same way—that incredibly giddy sense of relief—right after Esther had her heart transplant. And then, when we lost her anyway . . .” Mari­anne paused, shook her head, and didn’t continue.

Just then Jenny bounded into the living room with Marianne’s daughter Ruth hot on her heels. Sensing the prospect of a possible game, both dogs trotted behind the girls. As Joanna looked at the two children, her heart swelled once more with love and pride and another spasm of enormous relief.

“Time to eat!” Jenny announced, standing with both hands on her hips.

“Time to eat!” Ruth mimicked, imitating Jenny’s every gesture. “Come and get it before we throw it out,” Jenny added.

“Throw it out,” was all Ruth could manage before dissolving into a gale of giggles.

Joanna reached out and took the sweet-smelling baby while Marianne set about fastening her bra and buttoning her blouse. Looking down at Andy’s namesake, Jeffrey Andrew Daniels, with his fuzz of bright red hair, Joanna felt fiercely protective about the little grinning lump of toothless humanity.

She looked up to find Marianne smiling at them both. “He’s cute as a button,” Joanna said.

“But do you think motherhood is worth it?” Marianne asked.

Joanna thought about Irma Sorenson and Amy Bernard. “I don’t know,” she said. “Ask me again in another twenty years.”

“It’s a deal,” Marianne said. “Now let’s go eat. I’m starved.”

CHAPTER TWENTY

Christopher Bernard came alone to Dora Matthews’s funeral on Friday afternoon. Joanna saw him sitting stiffly on a folding chair in the back row of Norm Higgins’s funeral chapel. His navy sport coat, white shirt, and tie seemed totally at odds with his spiky purple hair, his braces, and his multi-ply pierced ears. Joanna smiled at him. He nodded briefly, but he left as soon as the service was over, and Joanna didn’t see him again—not at the graveside service at Evergreen Cemetery and not during the coffee hour later at the Presbyterian Church’s reception hall.

The second pew was occupied by Faye Lambert’s Girl Scout troop, all of them wearing their uniforms and sitting at respectful attention. At the coffee hour after the service, while Jenny and the other girls milled around the refreshment table, Joanna sought out Faye.

“Oh, Joanna,” Faye Lambert said. “I feel so awful about all this. I never should have sent the girls home. I guess I overreacted. It’s just that I had tried so hard to help Dora tit in. I knew things weren’t good at home, but it was stupid of me not to realize how bad they really were. Then, when I found out what Dora and Jenny had been up to that night—that they’d been off hiking around alone in the dark and smoking cigarettes—I was so terribly disap­pointed. I shouldn’t have taken it personally, but I did. If only—”

“Stop it, Faye,” Joanna told her. “What happened to Dora would have happened regardless. It’s not your fault.”

“But I can’t keep from blaming myself.”

“And my mother thinks it’s her fault for calling CPS. And I think it’s my fault for being out of town. It’s nobody’s fault, Faye. Nobody’s except the killer’s.”

“I heard someone had been arrested,” Faye said. “Some doctor’s wife from up in Tucson? I can’t imagine what the connection is.”

Joanna sighed. “And I can’t tell you, although I suppose the whole state will be reading about it soon enough. In the meantime, though, I almost forgot. I have something I need to give you.”

“For me?” Faye Lambert asked.

“For the troop, really,” Joanna said, digging in her purse for the envelope in which she had stored her poker-playing winnings. “When I was at the Arizona Sheriffs’ Association meeting last weekend, some of my fellow sheriffs were kind enough to take up a collection for your troop—to help out with that planned trip to Disneyland at the end of the summer.”

Faye opened the envelope and peered inside. Her eyes widened. “Why there must be close to seven hundred dollars here.”

“Six ninety-nine, to be exact,” Joanna said.

“How wonderful of them. I’ll need to have the names of the people who made the donations,” Faye said. “The girls will cer­tainly want to send thank-you notes.”

Joanna shook her head. “Don’t bother,” she said. “In this case, I believe they’d all prefer to remain anonymous.”

Faye was called away just then. Joanna looked around the room for Butch and found him chatting with his mother-in-law. “Was that him?” Eleanor asked, when Joanna carne up to join them. “That boy in the back row, the one with the purple hair?”

Joanna nodded. “That was Christopher Bernard,” she said.

Eleanor’s eyes filled with tears. She dabbed at them daintily with a lace-edged hanky. “Under the circumstances, it was very good of him to come, wasn’t it? Very brave.”

Joanna leaned over and gave her mother a hug. “Yes, Mom,” Joanna said. “It was.”

“That cut still looks awful. I wouldn’t be surprised if it leaves a terrible scar.”

“It probably will,” Joanna agreed. “And if it does, I deserve it. That’s the price of stupidity.”

EPILOGUE

That night, when Joanna and Butch finally climbed into bed, Joanna scooted over and snuggled under his arm.

“Tough day?” he asked.

“Tough week.”

“Was it only a week?” Butch asked, pulling her close while at the same time being careful not to touch her stitches. “It feels like more than a year since we got back home on Monday afternoon. I’ve barely seen you. You’re working too hard, Joey. You’ll wear yourself out.”

“Sorry,” Joanna said. She was so tired that she was almost falling asleep, but for a change Butch wasn’t sleepy at all. He went right on talking.

“Whoever would have thought they’d do all that in the name of motherhood. I’ve always thought my mother was a couple of bub­bles out of plumb, but Irma Sorenson and Amy Bernard put Mom to shame. And speaking of mothers, yours was certainly teary-eyed at the funeral this afternoon. It’s nice that so many people came to the funeral and acted like they cared about Dora, but wouldn’t it have been better if they had cared about her more when she was alive?”

“Amen to that,” Joanna said.

“And would a male sheriff have sorted it all out the way you did?” Butch asked. “That yahoo from Pima County, what’s his name?”

“Bill Forsythe.”

“I can’t imagine him seeing through Amy Bernard the way you did, or charming that confession out of Irma Sorenson, either. And even if I was upset with you for tackling Amy and getting hurt, it was still good work, Joey. I’m really proud of you, stitches and all.”

Joanna was awake now. She sat up, turned on the bedside lamp, and looked Butch in the eye. “How proud?” she asked.

“What do you mean?”

“How proud are you?” Joanna asked. “Proud enough that you wouldn’t mind if I ran for office again? I’ve been thinking about it, and I’ve decided I want to.”

“Oh, oh. When do we start campaigning?”

“Soon,” Joanna said. “Not right away, but soon.”

“All right,” Butch replied. “I’m new at this, so you’ll have to tell me what I’m supposed to do.”

“You have to smile a lot,” she told him. “You have to go on the rubber-chicken circuit and nod your head attentively while I make speeches.”

“Well, Scarface,” he said, “I think I can manage that much. I can probably even do a fairly good job of it, but is there anything in it for me?”

She leaned over and kissed him. “I think so,” she said. “I believe I know one or two things you happen to like. The good news is, you won’t have to wait until after the election to get them.”

Butch kissed her back. “Show me,” he said.

And she did.