“What did you call her?”
“A hoarder,” Joanna said. “Carol Mossman was what’s called an animal hoarder. It’s a mental condition.”
“Really,” Charles Longworth Neighbors said with a concerned frown. “I had no idea.
And what’s this about all that adoption nonsense?”
“It’s not nonsense,” Joanna returned. “The more pets we place in adoptive homes, the fewer we have to euthanize.”
They were nearing the boardroom now. Charles Longworth Neighbors appeared to be lost in thought. “How many people do you think were out there?” he asked.
“Out in the parking lot? Fifty, I suppose,” Joanna answered.
“On a Friday morning,” he mused. “That’s quite a few. Do you think they really do vote?”
In that moment Sheriff Joanna Brady understood exactly what was at stake. Charles Longworth Neighbors had been appointed to fill out someone else’s unexpired term.
Now he faced the prospect of running for election on his own and based on his own record.
In the years since her election, Joanna Brady had learned a little about politics herself.
“I’d be amazed to think they didn’t,” she said. “Vote, that is. And if they can summon this many folks for a Friday morning rally, who knows how many votes they can muster?”
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This was news Charles Longworth Neighbors clearly found disturbing. “We should do something about this,” he said.
“Yes,” Joanna agreed amiably. “We certainly should.”
“Do you have any ideas?”
Yes, Joanna thought, like breaking Animal Control out of the sheriff’s department and putting jeannine Phillips in charge.
“One or two,” Joanna said.
“Good, good,” Neighbors said distractedly as he held the boardroom door open for Joanna to enter. “Write up something on that and get it to me, would you, please?
I’ll put it on the agenda for next week.”
“Sure,” Joanna said. “I’ll see what I can do.”
She took her seat in the room and waited for the meeting to get under way. It was hard not to smile. After all, doing what it took to give the AWE vote to Charles Longworth Neighbors was also going to help Sheriff Brady.
Frank Montoya showed up just as the meeting was called to order. He leaned over to her and asked, “What’s going on? You look like you just won the lottery.”
“Tell you later,” she said.
The meeting that morning wasn’t as bad as meetings sometimes were, but when Joanna emerged just before noon, she wasn’t surprised to see that the protesters had evaporated in the face of the hot sun. She checked her phone and found she had five missed calls.
Scrolling through them, she discovered they were all from home. She called there immediately. Jenny answered on the second ring.
“Hi, Mom.”
“What’s going on?” Joanna demanded. “Is anything wrong?”
“No,” Jenny said. “Everything’s fine. Butch and I just got back from taking Lucky to the vet. Dr. Ross says Butch is right.
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Lucky is stone-deaf. She gave us the name of a book on sign language for dogs. She said we might be able to train all the dogs to respond to hand signals. Wouldn’t that be neat?”
“Yes, it would. Is Butch there?”
“No. He’s in town. He said that if you called, he’d meet you at Daisy’s for lunch.”
“Want to grab some lunch?” Frank asked, coming up behind her.
“Sorry,” Joanna told him. “It turns out I’m having lunch with my husband.”
As she drove to Daisy’s, Joanna had to pull over at the traffic circle to let a funeral cortege go past. She knew whose funeral it was-Stella Adams’s-and she was glad the windows in the limo following the hearse were dark enough that she couldn’t see inside.
She was glad not to see Denny Adams and his son, Nathan, coping with their awful loss. She had read in the paper that the services for Stella Adams would be private, but still, it seemed wrong that more people weren’t there. This was a time when Dennis and Nathan Adams needed people around them-even if they didn’t want them.
As the procession with its woefully few cars drove past, Joanna said a small prayer for Dennis and Nathan Adams and for all the remaining Mossmans as well.
It was a subdued Joanna Brady who arrived at Daisy’s Cafe. Butch was seated in their favorite booth, the one at the far corner of the restaurant. He was grinning from ear to ear.
“What’s up?” she asked as she slipped onto the bench seat.
“What makes you think something’s up?” Butch returned.
“Your face, for one thing. You’d never make it playing poker.”
“Drew called,” Butch said, bubbling over. “Carole Anne Wilson is making me an offer.
She wants Serve and Protect to be the
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first title in her new Hawthorn Press Mystery imprint. Can you believe it, Joey?
It’s not that much money, but it’s a start.”
He leaned across the table and kissed her full on the lips. A few nearby diners looked askance.
“Yeah,” Daisy Maxwell added as she walked by, carrying a tray laden with glasses of iced tea. “You keep that up, Butch Dixon, and you’ll make all the other women in here jealous.”
But Butch’s infectiously happy mood was catching.
“I can’t believe it, Butch. This is wonderful!”
“You can’t believe it,” Butch returned. “Just wait until I tell my mother. She always told me I’d never amount to anything. When she finds out I’m going to be published, she’ll be amazed.”
“I’m not,” Joanna said with a smile. “When does it come out?”
“September of next year.”
“Over a year away?” Joanna asked. “It takes that long? That’s even longer than it takes to have a baby.”
“I guess so,” Butch agreed.
“So what are the love birds having today?” Daisy asked, stopping at their booth.
“The special is all-you-can-eat machaca tacos, five ninety-nine. And for the tenderhearted …” she added, peering pointedly over her glasses at Joanna “for them, I’ve got a nice new batch of chicken noodle soup.”
Joanna looked at Butch and realized she was suddenly feeling better. “Today,” she said, “I’m going for gusto and grabbing the machaca.”
“Me, too,” Butch said, beaming. “Whatever the lady’s having, I’ll have the same, and don’t spare the salsa.”
Minutes later, Joanna bit into the crunchy tortilla shell on the 363
first of three delectable tacos. “So how did the board meeting go?” Butch asked.
“It was fine,” Joanna said.
“Really?” Butch gave her a searching look. “After everything that’s happened, for a change Charlie Neighbors didn’t give you too much grief?”
A lot had happened. In terms of Cochise County, the human death toll for the last week and a half was off the charts. As far as Charlie Neighbors was concerned, those deaths weren’t worth mentioning. What counted for him were the votes that could be delivered to an opponent by the group protesting the deaths of Carol Mossman’s dogs.
Ever since his appointment to the board of supervisors, Charles Longworth Neighbors had made Joanna’s life miserable. Only today had she realized that he wasn’t nearly as all-powerful as she had once assumed him to be. And the next time Sheriff Brady had to go up against him in defense of her department, she wouldn’t be nearly as intimidated.
“No,” Joanna said, giving her husband a thoughtful smile, “when it comes to grief and Charlie Neighbors, today was my day to dish it out.”
After that, she lapsed into silence. “You’re awfully quiet,” Butch said finally.
“What’s going on?”
“Nothing.”
“Come on, Joey. I know you better than that. Tell me.”
“I drove past the ballpark this morning,” she said. “There’s already a For Sale sign posted on the Adams place.”