Dick Voland followed her into the kitchen and then stood leaning against the kitchen counter as she rinsed what was left of the scorched potatoes and rescued the pork chops from being burned to a crisp.
“This is a nice place you’ve got here,” Voland observed, looking around the efficient but spacious kitchen.
“Thank you,” Joanna said. “You’ve never been here before, have you?” Voland shook his head. “Well,” Joanna said, “I can’t take any credit for it. My in-laws are the ones who did the kitchen remodel.”
Voland nodded. “It is a long way out of town.”
Joanna stopped stirring the gravy and stared up at her chief deputy. She didn’t have to be psychic to know where he was going on this one. “It’s not that far,” she said.
“But what if Jenny hadn’t been smart enough to call me and let me know what was happening? What would you have done then?”
Joanna went back to the gravy. “I would have thought of something,” she said. “Actually, I don’t think we were ever in any real danger. It may have been scary at the time, but Hannah Green wasn’t armed. She didn’t try to do either Jenny or me any harm.”
“But she could have,” Voland countered. “And so could any other crazy who might choose to show up here.”
“What are you saying?”
Voland shrugged. “With a house like this, on some acre age with your own well, you could probably sell it in a minute. Maybe buy something in town. A place where Jenny could walk back and forth to school and where you wouldn’t be out here all by yourselves.”
Joanna and Dick Voland were so at odds most of the tiff that Joanna found it oddly touching for him to be concerned about her safety. The fact that he would actually come right out and say something about it was downright disconcerting.
Joanna shook her head. “I appreciate the suggestion Dick,” she said. “But the High Lonesome is Jenny’s and my home. It’s the one Andy and I planned and worked for together. I’m not letting someone scare me out of living here.”
“No,” Dick Voland said a moment later. “I suppose not.”
The afternoon had stretched so long after the luncheon that her trip out to the Rob Roy with her mother and mother-in-law seemed eons ago. Still, Dick Voland’s suggestion about Joanna’s selling the High Lonesome had reminded her something else, something Eleanor had said. Joanna knew that even raising the issue would put an end to this amicable but highly unlikely truce between Dick Voland and her. She decided to go ahead and risk it.
“Speaking of selling,” she said. “Did you know Terry Buckwalter is making arrangements to sell out Bucky’s practice?”
Voland looked surprised. “So soon’“ lie asked. “With a business like that, especially one with a professional involved, I would have thought it would take months, it not years, to unload it. Where’d you hear about that?”
“At the luncheon today,” Joanna replied. “Actually, that little nugget of intelligence came straight from my mother, who got it from Helen Barco at Helene’s Salon of Hair and Beauty.”
“Who’s buying the place?” Dick asked. “Most likely someone from out of town.”
“Mother didn’t say,” Joanna told him. “I meant to mention it to Ernie, but we didn’t have time to talk about anything but Hannah Green.”
“It’s probably not that important,” Voland said. “But I’m going by the department on my way home. If Ernie’s still there, I’ll let him know.”
“While you’re at it, there’s something else I forgot to mention,” Joanna continued. “I ran into Terry Buckwalter out at the Rob Roy today, too. When I saw her, she was just coming back from a game of golf. She looked like a million dollars, her wedding ring was among the missing, and it looked to me like she might have something going with her golf pro. The guy’s name is Peter Wilkes. Tell Ernie to check him out, too.”
“Peter Wilkes!” Dick scoffed. “Isn’t he one of the”-he paused, searching for some kind of acceptable phraseology-”gay blades,” he said finally, “who started the Rob Roy in the first place?”
Joanna nodded. “He and his partner.”
“What would he have going with Terry Buckwalter, then?” Voland asked.
“I don’t know,” Joanna said. “That’s what I want Ernie to check out. I le might want to start by talking will Helen Barco.”
“Wait a minute,” Voland said. “Aren’t you reaching on this one?”
Joanna had been right. Word by word, sentence by sentence, the truce between Joanna and her chief deputy was disintegrating.
“What do you mean, reaching?” she asked.
“Look, Joanna,” Dick Voland said reasonably. “I can see where you’re coming from. What happened to Hal Morgan wife is more or less the same thing that happened to Andy. They’re not exactly the same, mind you. But they’re close enough for you to have lost perspective-to be viewing things through some misguided sense of sympathy.”
“Sympathy!” Joanna began, but Voland went right on talking.
“You shot Tony Vargas dead, but it wasn’t a premeditated thing. Hal Morgan came here to Bisbee with every intention of doing exactly what he did-of taking the law in his own hands. This afternoon and tonight, I sent those two deputies over to Saginaw, just like you wanted me to. They didn’t find anything, Joanna-not one blessed thing-to support Hal Morgan’s lame story. Now here you come with this fruitcake business about Terry Buckwalter and Wilkes. It’s just… just ridiculous.”
The heat Joanna felt rising up her neck had nothing to do with either the bubbling gravy on the stove or with the potatoes she had just mashed.
“Leaving no stone unturned isn’t ridiculous,” she said curtly. “It’s called doing a thorough investigation, Dick. At before you start casting aspersions about who has and who hasn’t lost perspective, you might consider that, if nothing else, I’m looking at Hal Morgan with a presumption of innocence. You and Arlee Campbell keep acting like the man’s already been tried and convicted. I want Peter Wilkes checked out, and Terry Buckwalter as well.”
“Right,” Dick Voland said. “I’ll make sure to pass the word along.”
The food was ready to be put on the table. “Would you like something to eat?” Joanna asked in the awkward pause that followed.
“No, thanks,” Voland said. “In fact, maybe I’d better head out and get on this right now. After all, I wouldn’t want any of these valuable leads to slip through our fingers.”
The sarcasm in Voland’s last sentence wasn’t lost on Joanna. She had heard it before on other occasions. She was learning to live with it, and most of the time it didn’t bother her. Tonight it did. For a while it had seemed she might be gaining ground in Dick Voland’s opinion. Earning her stripes. But his parting remark proved otherwise.
Even so, she didn’t want him to go away angry. She followed him as far as the back porch. “Thanks, Dick. Especially for dropping everything and coming as soon as Jenny called.”
He looked back at her. “You don’t have to thank me,” he said. “Of course I came. It’s my job.”
Shaking her head, Joanna went back inside and called Jenny to dinner. The child came at once and attacked her food with more enthusiasm than she had shown in months. She had polished off her very well-done pork chop and was working her way through a mound of peas before she slowed down enough to talk.
“I was watching out the window when Detective Carpenter took Mrs. Green out of the house and put her in his car,” Jenny said thoughtfully. “I felt sorry for her. She seemed more sad than crazy, and she didn’t do anything to hurt us. What’s going to happen to her?”
“I don’t have any idea, Jenny, and that’s the truth.”
“Will she have to go to prison?”
“Maybe. That’ll be up to the judge to decide,” Joanna said.
“Will she have to go to court?”