Exit Wounds (25 page)

“I’m almost home,” Joanna told her. “Have Frank call me when he finishes up out there.”

It was still raining when she finally reached High Lonesome Ranch. Water more than a foot deep partially covered the road that led to their old house. If she had been going there, she would have had to abandon the car and walk. As it was, she was able to drive to the new house with no difficulty. When she finally pulled into the garage, the door from the laundry room opened and three dogs shot out, followed immediately by Butch.

“I’m really glad to see you,” he said. “I was worried. How was it?”

“The drive was wet,” she told him as she divested herself of her weapons and locked them away. “But I’m glad I went. We’ve got a positive ID on the two New Mexico victims and a definite connection between them and Carol Mossman. How was your day?”

“I made real progress,” Butch replied. “I was sitting on the couch in the living room when the first clap of thunder rolled overhead. Lady was over under the dining room table, but as soon as she heard the thunder, she came streaking out of there and landed in my lap. She was so petrified, I ended up holding her for the better part of an hour.”

Joanna laughed. “Does that mean you and Lady are friends now?” She laughed.

Butch shook his head. “I think it means any port in a storm. The funny thing is, Lucky slept right through the worst of the thunder. Is it possible he’s deaf?”

“Deaf?”

Butch nodded. “He comes when he’s called, but that may be because he’s mimicking what the other dogs do.”

Joanna thought about it. “I wonder if that’s how he ended up being left behind at Carol Mossman’s house. Maybe when she called the other dogs, he wasn’t with them.”

Butch grinned. “As you said, lucky for him. But how do you go about training a deaf dog?”

“Sign language, maybe?” Joanna asked.

“Remind me to check with Dr. Ross and see what she says,” Butch said thoughtfully.

“Where’s Jen?”

“At Cassie’s, remember? I thought I told you that she’s staying the night. I called to make sure they were out of the pool as soon as the thunder and lightning started. The big news of the day is that one of the girls from school is planning a slumber party that’s supposed to be the social event of the summer. Both Jenny and Cassie are hoping for invitations.”

“What about parental supervision?” Joanna asked.

“How about if we don’t worry about that just yet,” Butch advised. “First let’s see if Jenny’s invited or not.”

“Fair enough.”

“Hungry?” Butch asked.

“Not very. I had a tuna sandwich a while ago. Why? What’s for dinner?”

“Roast-beef hash,” Butch answered.

“In that case, the tuna sandwich was hours ago and I’m starved.”

“By the way,” Butch added, “Dr. Lee called today. Tommy said that his feelings are permanently hurt that he had to read all about your pregnancy in the
Bee
. He wants to know when you’re going to show up at his office for your first prenatal checkup.”

Dr. Thomas Lee, a Taiwanese immigrant, had come to Bisbee right out of medical school. He had planned to stay long enough to pay off his student loans. Ten years later, he was still there. Joanna had known him first as patient to doctor, but through his friendship with Jeff and Marianne Maculyea he had become friends with Joanna and Butch as well. Tommy Lee was also an exceptional cook who had set out to teach his group of new friends the fundamentals of Chinese cooking, which they were all still learning.

“What did you tell him?”

“That you’ll call for an appointment next week.”

“Fair enough.” Joanna went into the bedroom and slipped into shorts and a T-shirt. More comfortable now, she returned to the kitchen. “Anything else?” she asked.

“Nothing much. You remember we’re having dinner with Jim Bob and Eva Lou after church tomorrow?”

“Thanks for the reminder,” she said. “I had forgotten all about that.”

After dinner Joanna and Butch enjoyed a quiet evening together. Joanna Brady reveled in just watching TV, while several of Butch’s O-gauge trains chugged around and around the room on the shelf that had been built for them just over the tops of the windows and doors. Frank Montoya never called her, and for a change Joanna resisted calling him. If there was nothing that pressing demanding her attention, she was better off lying low. And tomorrow or the next day would be time enough to write up her reports and pass along to her investigators the information she had gleaned from her trip to New Mexico. The past few days had been hell for her department. She figured they all needed a bit of a break.

At nine-thirty, though, the phone rang. It was late enough that Joanna was tempted not to answer, but when she saw the call was coming from Jeannine Phillips of Animal Control, Joanna took it.

“What’s up?” she asked, worried that some of the AWE activists had decided to picket the Animal Control offices.

“How’s Blue Eyes?” Jeannine asked.

“You mean Lady?” Joanna returned. “Jenny renamed her, and she’s settling in fine. She’s great with the other dogs, and she’s even starting to accept Butch.”

“Good,” Jeannine said awkwardly. “That’s good.”

There was a long pause. “Is that all you wanted?” Joanna asked. “To check on the dog?”

“Well, not really.”

“What then?”

Jeannine took a deep breath. “I just wanted to thank you,” she said. “For what you said about us—about Animal Control. It was nice. When I saw it on the news, I felt like…well…like somebody had finally noticed what we’re doing here. And how.”

“You’re welcome, Jeannine,” Joanna said. “You are doing a good job.”

There was another strained pause. It seemed as though there was something else Jeannine Phillips wanted to say, but she couldn’t quite bring herself to do it.

“It’s about hoarders,” Jeannine said. “We used to call them collectors. Now we call them hoarders. What exactly do you know about them?”

Joanna gathered her thoughts. “As I understand it, it’s a kind of mental disorder, an obsessive-compulsive disorder that causes people—women, mostly—to gather animals in hopes of taking care of them, of protecting them. The disorder can be controlled with medication and it comes back without it.”

“But do you know what causes it?”

“No,” Joanna said. “Not really.”

“The women almost always have one thing in common,” Jeannine Phillips said.

“Really. What’s that?”

There was another long pause. “They almost always have a history of childhood sexual abuse.”

For a moment Joanna had nothing to say.

“If I didn’t have this job, Sheriff Brady, I’d be one, too,” Jeannine added softly. “In fact, I guess I am one. It’s just that I don’t take the animals here to my own place. It’s why I do what I do, Sheriff Brady. But it’s important for me to know that you think I do a good job anyway, and I wanted to say thank you.”

“You’re welcome, Jeannine,” Joanna murmured as she put down the phone.

“Who was that?” Butch asked. “Not an emergency, I hope.”

“No,” Joanna said. “Believe it or not, it was someone calling to say thank you.”

Joanna and Butch went to bed early that night. Butch went right to sleep. Joanna lay awake for a long time, thinking about what Jeannine Phillips had said and what she had left unspoken.

Having been saved from the thunder and lightning by Butch, Lady was ready to switch her loyalties. For the first time the dog curled up on Butch’s side of the bed rather than on Joanna’s, which made it easier the next morning when it was time for Joanna’s daily hand-over-mouth race to the bathroom.

“Didn’t take as long this morning,” Butch observed when she came into the kitchen for her single cup of tea.

“Maybe I’m getting used to it,” Joanna returned.

After breakfast, Butch and Joanna stopped by Cassie’s house to pick Jenny up and take her along to church. On the way into town Joanna was amazed to notice that less than twenty-four hours after that first drenching downpour, the long-bare stalks of ocotillo were already showing a hint of green as a new crop of round leaves poked out of what, for months, had seemed to be nothing more than a bundle of dried thorn-covered sticks. In another day, six-inch-long clumps of red tube-shaped flowers—the kind of flowers hummingbirds loved—would pop out along the top of each of those newly leafed branches.

“That’s why I love ocotillos so much,” Joanna said.

“Why’s that?”

“Because it takes so little rain and time for them to spring back to life. It always seems like a miracle to me.”

“I feel the same way about you,” Butch said.

She smiled, took his hand, and squeezed it.

When they stepped out of the Subaru in the parking lot at Tombstone Canyon United Methodist Church, the sky overhead was a brilliant washed-clean azure with a few puffy white clouds perched on top of the surrounding red-and-gray hills. But with the onset of the rainy season, the humidity was also on the rise—so much for Arizona’s supposedly dry heat.

Church that morning was warm and awkward, too. Marliss Shackleford was there, front and center, along with her fiancé, Richard Voland, a man who had once been Joanna Brady’s chief deputy and whose resignation she had been forced to engineer and accept. Out of law enforcement, he now worked as one of Cochise County’s few private investigators.

Marliss Shackleford and Richard Voland had been engaged for some period of time with no hint of whether or when they would take the plunge and marry. During the time of sharing, however, Marliss ended all speculation by standing up and announcing that they had recited their marriage vows in a private ceremony on Saturday of the previous week and that the wedding cake to be served during the social hour after church would be part of an informal reception.

Sitting several pews back, Joanna was stunned by this news. Her ongoing difficulties with Marliss and the complications surrounding Richard Voland’s resignation made her relationship with the bridal couple strained, to say the least. She resented the idea that she was being coerced into attending a surprise wedding reception. All through Marianne Maculyea’s sermon, Joanna stewed about the upcoming social hour and made up her mind to leave as soon as the last hymn was sung. That plan was foiled by Jenny’s disappearing into the basement for cake and punch before Joanna had a chance to stop her.

Taking Butch’s arm, she allowed herself to be led into the social hall with about as much enthusiasm as a prisoner being led to execution. A beaming Marliss, with Richard Voland at her side, waited at the door, greeting each new arrival.

As Joanna approached, Marliss leaned over and whispered in Joanna’s ear, “Love
is
lovelier the second time around—but then I guess you and Eleanor already figured that out.”

Marliss’s first husband and high school sweetheart, Bradley Shackleford, had been out of the picture almost as long as Joanna could remember. Under her cloud of unruly and newly frosted curls, Marliss looked so undeniably happy that Joanna couldn’t help but soften a little.

“Yes, we did, Marliss,” Joanna agreed. “Congratulations to both of you.”

Wandering through the social hall with paper cups of punch in their hands, Joanna and Butch were the recipients of their own greetings and well-wishes. Regardless of how they had learned of Joanna’s pregnancy, everyone there made some comment about the news. Finished with her punch, Joanna was standing to one side of the room and waiting for Butch to finish a conversation with Jeff Daniels when Richard Voland sidled up next to her.

“How’s it going?” he asked.

Joanna looked at him warily. Everyone knew that, in the aftermath of his divorce, Voland had fallen victim to drinking too much, but no one other than Butch knew that the real reason behind Richard Voland’s resignation from the sheriff’s department had been his unrequited crush on Joanna Brady. She had seen him occasionally since then in social settings. Basking in this new romance with Marliss, Voland appeared to have overcome his personal demons and his feelings about Joanna, too, but she was nonetheless leery of spending too much time in his presence.

“All right,” she said. “And you?”

“Couldn’t be better,” he replied. “Business is picking up a little, and you know Marliss. She keeps me hopping.”

“Yes,” Joanna agreed. “I’m sure she does.”

“There is one thing we don’t agree about, though,” Voland added.

“What’s that?”

“You.”

“Richard…” Joanna began as a blush started forming at the base of her neck. “Really, I—”

“About the election,” Voland added quickly. “Marliss is anything but unbiased when it comes to Ken Junior, and I think she’s wrong. Pregnant or not, you really are the best man for the job.”

Across the room, Marliss noticed Joanna and Richard Voland standing together. Tossing her mane of curls, she caught her husband’s eye and summoned him with a come-hither finger. Joanna’s blush, which had started for one reason, finished for another.

“Thank you, Richard,” she said. “I really appreciate that.”

Butch appeared at her side half a minute later. “Ready?” he asked.

“Yes,” Joanna said gratefully. “More than ready.”

“And what was that all about—the thing with Richard Voland?”

“I’m not sure,” she replied, “but I think he just gave me one of the biggest compliments of my life.”

Once Joanna and Butch had retrieved Jenny from the puzzle-and-game corner where she’d been involved in a killer game of Chinese checkers, they headed for Jim Bob and Eva Lou Brady’s duplex on Oliver Circle. As Jim Bob welcomed them inside, the whole house was filled with the delectable aroma of Eva Lou’s old-fashioned meat loaf.

Butch and Joanna’s former father-in-law went out to Jim Bob’s workshop to discuss one of the older man’s woodworking projects, while Joanna and Jenny ventured into Eva Lou’s undisputed domain, the kitchen. “Anything I can do to help?”

Her face red with exertion, Eva Lou was energetically mashing potatoes. “Not a thing. Joanna, you sit down and relax. Jenny, do you mind setting the table?”

Without argument, both mother and daughter did as they were told. While Jenny pulled out plates and silverware and carried them into the dining room, Joanna sat at the kitchen table and gratefully kicked off her high-heeled shoes. She sighed with relief as she wiggled her liberated toes.