Outlaw Mountain (26 page)

Slipping into the dining room, she dived as unobtrusively as possible for the open seat next to Jeff Daniels. “Where’s Marianne?” Joanna asked, her eyes searching the room as she poured herself a much-needed cup of coffee.

“At home,” Jeff said. “She’s really feeling rotten. I’m afraid it’s something serious, Joanna. What if it’s stomach cancer or something like that?”

“Has she been to see a doctor?”

“No. I guess she doesn’t want to know.”

“What about her resignation? Did she hand that in?”

“No. Not yet,” Jeff admitted. “It’s like she’s paralyzed, Joanna. Emotionally paralyzed. She’s just going through the motions. Ruth keeps asking me what’s the matter with Mommy. I don’t know what to tell her. Would you try talking to her, Joanna? She won’t listen to a word I say, but maybe you can get through to her.”

“I’ll see what I can do.”

By then the business portion of the meeting was winding down and Joanna knew it would only be a matter of seconds before she would be called upon to speak. She had been invited to discuss the county-wide DARE program. But, in view of what had happened at Oak Vista the night before, Joanna had already scrapped her planned speech and was busily constructing another in her mind. No doubt people would have heard rumors about Lewis Flores’ suicide. The story had hit too late to make the morning edition of the
Bisbee Bee,
but sketchy reports had probably been aired on Tucson television and radio news broadcasts. Once again, unfortunate events in Cochise County were providing headline fodder for the rest of Arizona.

It wasn’t until Joanna stood up to speak—until after she had launched off into her rendition of what had happened the night before—that she noticed Marliss Shackleford seated at table on the far side of the room. An openly smiling Marliss Shackleford.
What’s she so happy about?
Joanna wondered.

She made it through her speech by operating on remote control. Her whole body ached with weariness. Her head hurt. Her mouth felt dry
.
All she wanted to do was fall back into her warm bed. When the speech ended and Joanna opened the subject up to questions, she expected Marliss to be among the first to raise her hand. Instead, Marliss slipped out of the room early without asking a single query. That struck Joanna as odd, but she was too tired to be anything but grateful about having dodged a public firefight with her most vocal critic.

Leaving the meeting, Joanna sat in the car for a few minutes and rested her head on the steering wheel. She felt rotten--almost as if she had the flu.
So stop being a martyr,
she told herself.
Go home and go to bed.

After all, she was allowed ten days of sick leave per year. So far she had used only two days total. In the past few weeks Cochise County had exacted far more than its pound of flesh from its lady sheriff. With that realization, she called in to the department and told Kristin that she wasn’t feeling well. She was taking the day off and going back to bed.

“You and Chief Deputy Voland must have caught the same bug,” Kristin told her. “He called in sick, too.”

“If Voland is out, maybe I should come in after all,” Joanna began.

“No. Don’t bother. Chief Deputy Montoya is here this morning. He says he has everything under control. He offered to hang around all day if need be. You go on home.”

Joanna was too tired to require any more persuasion. “Good,” she said. “I’m on my way.”

When she turned onto the road to High Lonesome Ranch, she was surprised that Sadie and Tigger didn’t come racing to meet her. Their raucous greeting was so much a part of any homecoming that Joanna worried about it as she came up the road. Maybe Butch and Jenny had gone off to town that morning without remembering to put the dogs outside. In that case, it was a good thing Joanna hadn’t gone to work. No telling what mischief those two scoundrel dogs would get into if left to their own devices inside the house.

Joanna came through the last stand of mesquite, then jammed on the brakes when she saw a vehicle parked by the gate. Dick Voland’s Bronco sat there with someone slumped against the driver’s window. On the ground nearby lay Sadie and Tigger, both of whom now bounded to their feet and came running toward Joanna, barking their tardy greeting. Inside the Bronco, the slumping figure stirred and then moved. As soon as he straightened into an upright position, Joanna recognized that the driver really was Dick Voland.

Parking beside him, Joanna jumped out of her Blazer and walked up just as Dick rolled down his window. A cloud of boozy air erupted from the enclosed cab. The smell was so thick and pungent that it almost made her gag.

“What are you doing here, Dick?” she asked. “I thought you were sick.”

“I am sick,” he returned. “Why didn’t you tell me?”

“Tell you what? About Lewis Flores? I tried. At least I think I did. But you had already put in a full day by then. You had gone home.”

“About Butch Dixon,” Voland said doggedly.

Joanna was dismayed. “There was no reason to tell you,” she said. “Butch and I are—”

“I know. You’re engaged,” Voland finished, although that wasn’t close to what Joanna had intended to say. “1 know all about it. Marliss told me. She heard it from your own mother. How could you do that to me, Joanna? How could you?”

“Dick,” she said reasonably, “I didn’t do
anything
to you. Butch and I have fallen in love. What do you expect—”

Again Dick Voland cut her off. “I expected you to have the decency to tell me, that’s all. You must know how I feel about you. It’s been like that since you first came to the department. I’ve been waiting and waiting for you to give me some sign that it would be okay for me to ask you out. For you to say that you had spent enough time grieving over Andy and that you were ready to move on with your life. I didn’t see this coming. I didn’t think you’d do an end run around me and take off with someone else.”

He paused long enough for Joanna to say something, but by then she was too floored to speak.

“When Marliss came out to Oak Vista yesterday afternoon and told me all about it, I didn’t believe it. I was sure it was a lie—that she was just being Marliss. But she made it sound real enough that I had to know for sure. So I came out here to see for myself. I parked out on High Lonesome Road and waited. And sure as shit, the first person to show up is Butch Dixon in that little Outback of his. Jenny was in the car with him, and somebody else I didn’t recognize. Probably that cretin you dragged home from Saint David.”

“Dick,” Joanna said warningly. “I told you—”

“I don’t care what you told me,” he said. “I saw it with my own eyes. First he drove up and then, hours later, who should show up? You, Sheriff Brady—you and nobody else. Come home to shack up. If you didn’t care any more than hat about yourself, it seems to me that you’d at least care about Jenny.”

“That’s about enough,” Joanna said. “I think you’d better go now.”

“No, it isn’t enough. Not nearly. Here.” He reached in his shirt pocket and fumbled out a wrinkled, much-folded piece f paper.

“What’s this?” Joanna asked.

“My letter of resignation. I quit. As of now.”

Dick Voland had tried to quit once before—right after Joanna’s election. Back then she had talked him into staying because she needed his help, his expertise. Even now, she still could use his experience, but not without respect. Lacking that, sere was no way they could continue to work together. She unfolded the letter and glanced at the contents.

“All right,” Joanna said when she finished reading. “Considering what’s happened, that’s probably for the best. I’ll expect you to turn in your vehicle and your departmental weapons before the close of business today.”

“Don’t think this is the last you’re going to hear from me,” Voland warned as he turned his key in the ignition. The Bronco’s engine roared to life.

“No,” Joanna said. “I don’t suppose it is.” As soon as the heater fan caught hold, another cloud of rancid air blasted into Joanna’s face. “Are you sure you should be driving’?” she added. “It’s possible you’re still drunk.”

“I’m not drunk,” he insisted. “Besides, who’s going to stop me? You? I don’t think so.”

Voland rammed the Bronco into reverse and then stepped on the gas. Joanna had to sidestep out of the way in order to keep from being creamed by the outside mirror. He drove off, leaving Joanna in a cloud of dust.

Fleeing into the house, it was all she could do to press her door key into the lock. She dropped the letter on the dryer and then ran weeping through the house. She threw herself across the bed and buried her face in the covers. Joanna hadn’t cried that way for months. A wild fit of racking sobs came from deep inside her and shook her whole body. Her tears didn’t have their source in any one thing. It was everything: Dick Voland quitting. Eleanor bossing her around. Butch asking her if being sheriff was what she really wanted. Lewis Flores blowing his brains out right in front of her. And that was not all. There was also the fact that Joanna had lost her nerve and hadn’t actually told Jenny what was really going on with Butch. Now, thanks to Marliss Shackleford, everyone else in town already knew about it or soon would.

Eventually the combination of tears and exhaustion caught up with her. Joanna fell asleep. The next thing she knew, she and Butch were standing together at the altar of Canyon United Methodist Church. Butch, wearing a tuxedo, was grinning from ear to ear. Junior, standing beside him, was evidently best man, although the badge he wore in place of a boutonniere looked a little out of place on his tux.

Looking down, Joanna discovered that she, too, was dressed for the occasion. She was wearing her wedding dress—the same dress she had worn years earlier when she and Andy were married. Beside her, as maid of honor, stood Angie Kellogg, the ex-hooker Joanna and Marianne Maculyea had rescued from the clutches of a sadistic drug-enforcer. Living in Bisbee, Angie had achieved a certain kind of respectability, but in Joanna’s dream she had regressed. Standing in front of the church, the lushly voluptuous Angie looked anything but prim. One hip was cocked at a suggestive angle. She looked like a hustler standing on a street corner and waiting for her next trick to show up and make her an offer.

In front of them a smilingly oblivious Marianne Maculyea looked past the bridal party toward the rest of the congregation. “If anyone here present knows of any reason why these two should not be joined in holy matrimony,” Marianne in-toned, “let them speak now or forever hold their peace.”

Behind them, at the far end of the aisle, the church door slammed open. Joanna turned and looked back, but in her dream Canyon Methodist’s beautifully varnished mahogany doors had vanished. In their stead, separating the sanctuary from the entryway vestibule, was a shabby swinging door straight out of the Blue Moon Saloon and Lounge in Brewery Gulch, where Angie Kellogg now worked as relief bartender. And in front of the door, posing with his feet apart like some latter-day gun-slinging John Wayne, stood Dick Voland.

“I object,” Voland said. “I saw her first and that makes her mine. If anybody here disagrees with that, I’ll be happy to meet him outside and settle this man to man.”

That was all it took. Butch Dixon turned and strode down the aisle, leaving Joanna standing alone. “Come back,” she called after him. “This is stupid. Don’t do this.” But he just kept on walking. He didn’t even look back.

Joanna awakened with a start. One hand, trapped under her cheek, felt as though it were made of wood. As soon as she moved her weight off it, circulation began returning, sending a painful tingling all the way from her fingertips up to her elbow.

Turning over, Joanna glanced at the clock. It said one-thirty. That meant she had been out of it for over four hours. Her clothing was wrinkled. There was a wet spot on the bedspread where she had drooled in her sleep. She was thinking about getting up and maybe making herself something to eat when the phone rang.

“Mrs. Brady?” a voice asked.

That was strange. Joanna wasn’t used to being called Mrs. Brady any more. Most people addressed her as Sheriff. “Yes,” she said. “Who’s this?”

“Enid Sutton,” was the reply. “I’m the principal at Lowell School.”

Enid Sutton was new to Bisbee, but Joanna remembered meeting her once at a school open house. She hadn’t been particularly impressed one way or the other.

“I’m afraid you’re going to have to come pick up your daughter,” Mrs. Sutton continued.

“What’s wrong? Is Jenny sick? Hurt?”

“She’s not hurt, but I am putting her on a three-day suspension.”

“Suspension!” Joanna gasped. “What on earth for?”

“For fighting, Mrs. Brady. I’ve tried to get to the bottom of it. She claims that some of the boys were teasing her at lunch. Apparently it was something about your upcoming marriage. I can certainly understand how a child might feel upset and threatened at having to deal with that sort of thing, but I’m sure you can see my position. We have a zero-tolerance policy when it comes to violence on the school grounds. Jenny bloodied one boy’s nose and tore the other one’s shirt right off his back.”

Drowning in Enid Sutton’s words, Joanna closed her eyes and let the guilt wash over her. Once again she had failed her daughter. She had been so busy trying to save the world—trying to rescue people like Lewis Flores and Karen Brainard from their own foolishness—that she had left Jenny, her own precious daughter, vulnerable to attack from none other than the likes of Marliss Shackleford. It wasn’t at all a fair contest, and the awful realization of Joanna’s own culpability left her shaken.

How could I have done such a thing?
she wondered. All it would have taken was a few minutes on her part—a few minutes and a few meager words of explanation to Jenny—and none of this would have happened. Jenny would be sitting in class at the end of her school day instead of being locked up in disgrace in the principal’s office.

How could I have been so cowardly and neglectful?
Joanna demanded of herself. Instead of giving Jenny what she needed, Joanna had thrown her child to the wolves. It was unthinkable. Inexcusable. And totally unacceptable.