Skeleton Canyon

CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

As usual, Marliss Shackleford couldn’t keep from gushing. “It was such a beautiful wedding,” she said to Joanna. “And it was so touching the way you and your brother both were part of it. What a wonderful gift for you to give the bride and groom. I can hardly wait to write it up for my column.”

Joanna managed a tight smile. When she had offered High Lonesome Ranch as the site for Eleanor Lathrop’s and George Winfield’s second wedding ceremony and reception, she hadn’t anticipated that she and her brother, Bob Brundage, would be cast in the supporting roles of best man and matron of honor. So, after spending the morning serving as grand marshal of-and riding Jenny’s quarter horse, Kiddo, in-Bisbee’s Fourth of July parade, Joanna had spent the afternoon doing her daughterly duty.

And it had been fine. With Marianne Maculyea in charge and with the guests assembled in the afternoon shade of Jim Bob Brady’s hand-nurtured apple tree, it had been a nice ceremony. A meaningful ceremony. Reverend Maculyea had a knack for always taking familiar words and Scriptures and then somehow infusing and personalizing them in such a way and with such little extra fillips of sentiment that what might have been commonplace was transformed into something memorable and special.

Now, as dusk settled into evening, the party was winding down. The champagne toast had been drunk. Wedding cake had been cut and served. The bride and groom had gone home to what had once been Eleanor and D. H. Lathrop’s cozy little house on Campbell Avenue. There was still plenty of Jim Bob’s mouth-watering barbecue beef left despite the fact that every-one had eaten more than their fill. Some of the guests were in the process of taking their leave. They were driving back into town early in hopes of locating the perfect parking place from which to view the evening’s coming fireworks.

Just as Joanna was wondering how she would ever manage to escape Marliss Shackleford’s clutches, Jenny came to her rescue. “Can’t we go now, Mom?” Jenny insisted. “It’s almost dark. I don’t want to miss the fireworks.”

Joanna glanced at her watch and then back at Marliss. “Please excuse us,” Joanna said. “I’m due at the ballpark in an hour. On a night like this, parking will be a mess.^”

“I’m sure that’s true,” Marliss said. “You go ahead. I’ll be right behind you, but I do want to say a few words to that charming brother of yours before I go.”

Gratefully, Joanna reached down and took Jenny’s hand. “Where’s Butch?” she asked, as they started across the yard.

“He’s out back,” Jenny answered. “Throwing the Frisbee for Tigger.”

Walking through the remaining guests took time. Joanna had to stop here and there long enough to chat and say hello.

“Mom,” Jenny said, when they finally cut through the last of the crowd. “Did Marianne call Grandma an awful wife?” “Awful,” Joanna repeated, as if in a daze.

Suddenly she burst out laughing. “Oh, honey, that’s not what Marianne said. She said lawful, not awful,” she corrected a moment later, just as they came around the corner of the house.

Butch Dixon paused in the act of tossing the Frisbee. “All right, you two,” he said. “I heard you laughing. What’s so funny?”

“Jenny’s way of hearing what’s said isn’t always on the money. She spent years of her life thinking the Lord’s Prayer had something to do with leading a snot into temptation. Now she’s worried that Mother is George’s awful wedded wife.”

Butch laughed, too. Jenny was offended. “You guys are making fun of me,” she objected, sticking out her lower lip.

“No, we’re not,” Butch told her. “Not really. We’re enjoying you. Now, what’s up?”

Joanna checked her watch again. Surprisingly, it was far later than she expected. “We’re going to have to leave pretty soon,” she said. “The fireworks are due to start at eight-thirty. I have to be on tap a little earlier than that. The dedication service is due to start about eight-fifteen.”

To her surprise, Butch turned his attention away from her and back to the panting and one-track-minded Tigger, who was watching his hand with unwavering interest, waiting to see if the Frisbee would once again fly through the air. Butch wound up and gave the Frisbee an expert toss, sending it into a complicated spin. The throw came with an extra bounce that faked the dog out twice before he finally managed to catch it on the fly.

“Why don’t you two go ahead,” Butch said as Tigger came sprinting back for yet another throw. “I’ll hang around here and help Jim Bob and Eva Lou clean up.”

“You mean you don’t want to see the fireworks?” Jenny demanded, her voice stiff with disbelief. “I thought everybody liked fireworks.”

“I do like fireworks,” Butch insisted. “It’s just that someone ought to stay here to help.”

Joanna turned to Jenny. “Go on into the house and get my purse and keys,” she said. “I’ll meet you at the car in a few minutes.”

Jenny hurried away while Joanna looked back to Butch. “Is something the matter?” she asked. “Did my mother say something to hurt your feelings?”

“Your mother?” Butch asked. “Nothing of the sort. Eleanor is fine. I just want to stay here, that’s all.”

Joanna’s own disappointment was clearly audible in her objection. “But I thought we’d go into town together,” she said. After spending the whole day in what had seemed like a three-ring circus, she had looked forward to having some time alone with Butch-some quiet time for the two of them to talk and decompress-before taking him back uptown to his hotel.

“Jenny’s been asked to spend the night with a girlfriend,” she said. “After the fireworks, I thought maybe we’d hang out for a while, just you and me.”

To Tigger’s dismay, Butch dropped the Frisbee, letting it fall without bothering to throw it. “Are you sure?” he asked.

“Of course, I’m sure. Why wouldn’t I be?”

Butch looked uneasy. “Didn’t you tell me that this was your and Andy’s first date years ago-Bisbee’s Fourth of July fireworks? I thought you and Jenny would want to go by yourselves.”

Inexplicably, Joanna’s eyes filled with tears. Butch was right. Years before, the fireworks had been the occasion for her first date with Andrew Roy Brady, but in the busy rush of the day’s events, she had forgotten all about it. It touched her deeply to realize that not only had Butch remembered, he had also made allowances.

“That’s sweet of you,” she said, smiling mistily up at him. “But it’s not necessary. I really want you to go with me tonight. There are people in town I’d like to introduce you to. I want to show you off.”

“In that case,” Butch said with an affable grin, “your wish is my command.”

As he followed her toward the car, she gave him a sidelong glance over one shoulder. “You know,” she told him, “for a non-Wedgwood kind of guy, you’re not bad.”

“Non-Wedgwood?” he asked with a puzzled frown. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

“Never mind,” Joanna said. “It’s an ‘in’ joke.”

Minutes later the three of them headed into town in Joanna’s Eagle. She had decided that if she and Butch were going out on the town later that evening, she didn’t want to he seen driving around in a county-owned car. Besides, if an emergency did arise, Dispatch could always reach her through the brand-new cell phone safely stowed in her blazer pocket.

“Did you know Mom had to have the air-conditioning fixed before she could come get me at camp?” Jenny asked from the backseat.

“I know,” Butch replied. “She told me all about it on the phone.”

Jenny shook her head. “You guys must talk all the time.^” “I guess we do,” Joanna said.

At the ballpark, Jenny took charge of Butch and disappeared into the grandstand while Joanna was led to the flag-draped platform that had been erected in the middle of the baseball diamond. It was close enough to starting time that the platform was already crowded with VIPs. Agnes Pratt, Bisbee’s mayor, might not have been sufficiently recovered from her appendectomy to ride a horse, but that didn’t keep her away from the platform, where she stood chatting with several members of the city council.

On the far side of the platform, near the top of a ramp that had been built to accommodate a wheelchair, sat David O’Brien. He was involved in a conversation with Alvin Bernard, Bisbee’s chief of police.

It was the first time Joanna had seen David O’Brien since Brianna’s funeral, a week and a half earlier. During and after the service Joanna had heard a few mumbled questions concerning the surprising absence of Katherine O’Brien, who had chosen not to attend her own daughter’s funeral. However, since David O’Brien had refused to give any explanation concerning his wife’s whereabouts, neither had Joanna.

Two days after Brianna’s funeral, Bisbee’s Fourth of July celebration had been dealt an almost fatal blow when the fire-works budget had come up $10,000 short of the money necessary to release the fireworks package from the supplier. With the evening’s celebration on the brink of cancellation, David O’Brien had stepped into the fray. Saying that his daughter had always loved fireworks, he had coughed up the missing financial shortfall. Not only that, he had agreed to provide a sizable ongoing endowment in Brianna O’Brien’s name that would guarantee the continuation of Bisbee’s fire-works display for many years into the future. This, then, would be the occasion of the First Annual Brianna O’Brien Memorial Fireworks Display.

Observing the man from the sidelines, Joanna could see that the strain of the last few weeks had aged him severely. He looked old and haggard and beaten. Still, she had to give him credit for being strong enough to show up at all. Joanna respected him for it. She knew what kind of effort it took to carry that off. She had done much the same thing herself.

The intervening days had brought some surprises in terms of the Aaron Meadows/Alf Hastings investigation. Meadows’s plea-bargained confession was making life difficult for Marco Marcovich. In terms of bringing down a friend of the governor, Aaron’s word alone might not have carried that much weight, but Maggie Hastings, threatened with coconspirator status, had also joined the plea-bargain parade. She had come forward and had named names of some of the other people Alf Hastings had dealt with in Marco’s behalf. In addition, she had contributed one more important piece of the puzzle.

One of the reasons Marco had helped his cousin Alf get the job at Green Brush Ranch had been the expectation that eventually Aaron Meadows’s smuggling route through the Peloncillos would end one way or the other. When that happened, Marco had expected Alf to have an alternate route already in place-one that would have continued to ferry Freon into the country from Mexico directly across David O’Brien’s well-fortified property and without any member of the O’Brien family knowing a thing about it.

Poor guy, Joanna thought, still looking at David O’Brien. No wonder he looks old. He’s outlived his three children, all of whom died for no reason other than being in the wrong place at the wrong time. He’s lost one wife to death and the other has abandoned him in favor of a convent. And one of his supposedly good friends has played him for a fool.

Composing herself, Joanna walked up the ramp and went directly to where David O’Brien and Alvin Bernard were still visiting.

“Hello there,” she said, shaking hands with them both. “From the looks of all the cars circling around in search of parking, it should be a great crowd.”

“Chief,” somebody called from across the platform. “Chief Bernard. Could I talk to you a minute?”

Alvin excused himself, leaving Joanna and David O’Brien on the platform together. “How soon do we start?” she asked.

“Five minutes.” O’Brien answered without bothering to glance at his watch. “Although I don’t suppose we need to worry about being late. The display won’t get under way until I give the official signal to turn off the ballpark lights.^”

“I see,” Joanna said.

It pleased her to hear a hint of the old imperiousness back in David O’Brien’s voice, even though he no longer had Katherine to cater to his every whim. “If you’ll excuse me, I guess I’ll go find my chair,” she added.

“No, wait,” O’Brien said. “I’m glad the two of us have a moment to talk. I wanted to ask a favor of you.”

“A favor? What kind?”

David O’Brien reached into his pocket and pulled out a small velvet-covered jewelry box. “Here,” he said. “1 found this box in Brianna’s room. When the coroner’s office returned Bree’s personal effects to me, I realized where the box must have come from.”

Popping the lid open, he held out the tiny black box, cradling it in the palm of his hand, offering it to Joanna. She looked down at the box. There, nestled in a velvet bed, sat two pearl earrings. One had been found on Brianna’s body. The other had been located later outside the gate to Green Brush Ranch.

“I believe you know the young man who gave my daughter these, don’t you?” David O’Brien asked.

Joanna nodded. “His name’s Ignacio,” she said. “Ignacio Ybarra.”

“I’ve read Bree’s journal,” O’Brien continued huskily. “In it she usually referred to him as Nacio. I was wondering, would you mind seeing to it that these are returned to him? Now that I’ve had them repaired, I thought he’d probably like to have them back. I certainly have no use for them.”

Carefully, Joanna took the tiny box from David O’Brien’s hand, closed it, and then dropped it into her pocket. “I’ll be glad to,” she said.

“I understand this Nacio wants to be a doctor someday,” O’Brien went on. “He expected to go to school on a football scholarship, but that’s impossible now. The opportunity evaporated when he was injured in that football game last November.”

“Yes,” Joanna said. She knew all about that, too. She had learned it the same way David O’Brien had-from reading Brianna’s journal.

“Would you mind giving him a message from me?” David asked.

Joanna nodded. “Certainly,” she replied. “What kind of message?”

“Tell him I have some college monies set aside that I don’t want to see go to waste. Tell him my banker, Sandra Henning, will call him next week to set up an appointment. It’s a scholarship now,” O’Brien added. “Not a loan. And it’s not really from me, it’s from…” Choked with emotion he broke off without finishing.

Looking at the man’s ravaged face, it was easy for Joanna to see what was going on. Faced with his own culpability, David O’Brien was trying to make amends-to Bree and to Nacio both.

“It’s from Bree,” Joanna finished for him. “A scholarship from Bree.”

“Come on,” Agnes Pratt interrupted, tapping Joanna on the shoulder. “It’s time to take our seats.”

As soon as Joanna sat down, she was able to see Jenny and Butch sitting in the front row of the grandstand. They weren’t difficult to pick out since Jenny was standing on her feet, waving frantically. Joanna waved back at them-a tiny, discreet wave-letting them know she had seen them, too.

A few minutes later, the crowd was asked to stand for the playing of “The Star-Spangled Banner.” As the organist from Bible Baptist Church struck up the first notes of the national anthem, Joanna glanced at David O’Brien’s face. He was sitting at attention with tears glistening on both haggard cheeks while his lips mouthed the familiar words:

“Oh, say can you see, by the dawn’s early light…”

As the music swelled and washed over the crowd, Joanna felt tears in her own eyes as well-tears in her eyes and goose-flesh on her arms and legs. That always happened to her when she heard those wonderfully stirring notes of music. On this occasion, though, it was different somehow. It was more than just the music. It was David O’Brien, too.

Here was a man who had lost everything that mattered to him-lost it not once, but twice. And yet he had somehow found the courage to go on. He had figured out a way to turn his personal tragedy and culpability into something else-into something good for other people, for a townful of children who otherwise would have been disappointed by missing the magic of a Fourth of July fireworks celebration. Not only that, David O’Brien was also finding a way to break free of a life-long history of prejudice in order to reach out to someone else.

Watching him sing, Joanna had no doubt that David O’Brien’s unexpected generosity in the face of his own loss would help a brokenhearted boy from Douglas fulfill his dream of becoming a doctor.

Halfway through the song, Joanna reached into her pocket and let her fingers close tightly around the sturdy little velvet-covered box. Somehow, holding on to it helped her hold her own tears in check. For a while anyway. But by the time they reached “land of the free and the home of the brave” Joanna Brady just gave up and let herself cry.

Because she needed to. And because, for a change, crying felt good.