“Not totally quiet,” Joanna countered. “Try to raise Frank on the radio and ask him to give me a call at home. Tell him I’ve had a call from Hizzoner Mayor Rogers.”
“Will do,” Tica said.
“Is there anything else going on?” Joanna asked.
“Nothing out of the ordinary,” Tica told her.
“Good,” Joanna said. “Let’s hope it stays that way.”
When Tica dropped off, Joanna returned the phone to its cradle. Then, thinking better of it, she picked up the receiver, stuffed it into the pocket of her jeans, and took it with her when she returned to the porch.
“Who was it?” Marianne asked. “Butch and Jeff?”
Butch was Butch Dixon. Over Joanna Brady’s initial objections, he had meandered into her life and, invited or not, assumed the role of “boyfriend.” While attending police academy courses in the Phoenix area, Joanna had happened into Butch’s Roundhouse Bar and Grill up in Peoria. The two of them had hit it off. Joanna had enjoyed Butch’s company when he was around, but she hadn’t exactly encouraged the relationship.
Concerned about public reaction as well as Jenny’s feelings and her own, Joanna had thought it far too soon after Andy’s death for her to become involved with anyone. Had it been left up to her, she would have relegated Butch to a back burner and let him stay there. He, however, had taken matters into his own hands. When the opportunity presented itself, he had sold out his business holdings in Peoria and moved to Bisbee. Once settled into his new digs in Bisbee’s Saginaw neighbor-hood, he had gone to work on his lifelong ambition of writing a novel. He had also set himself the task of being useful to Joanna, and to her friends as well.
A bad case of writer’s block and a mutual interest in old cars had drawn him into an easy friendship with Jeff Daniels and his business, Auto Rehab, The two men had joined forces to recondition a ‘5(1 Chevrolet Bel Air. Working together, they had bought the car for a song and than refurbished it on speculation. The previous afternoon the two men had gone off to Scottsdale together, towing their pride and joy behind Jeff’s International and hoping to unload the Bel Air for a modest profit at one of Scottsdale ’s collector car auctions.
The fact that Jeff and Butch were both out of town was one of the reasons Joanna had invited Marianne and Ruth out to High Lonesome Ranch that Sunday after church. She had thought waiting for the menfolk together would be more fun than waiting separately.
“It was work,” Joanna said, in answer to Marianne’s query.
“Is something wrong?” Marianne asked. “Are you going to have to go in to the department?”
“I doubt it. It sounds as though everything is under control, although Frank Montoya will probably be giving me a call in a little while.”
By then Ruth had tired of the leaf game and clambered up onto the porch, displacing Sadie’s long-eared head from Marianne’s lap. The child lay there, struggling to keep her eyes open while a worn-out and panting Tigger flopped down in the grass nearby. Jenny, both elbows planted on the ground, lay beside him. She looked up at her mother.
“I hope he doesn’t call,” Jenny said with a pout. “You never used to have to work on Sundays. Now you almost always do.”
“We’ve been over this before many times, Jenny,” Joanna said. “The kind of job I have now doesn’t come with set nine-to-five hours.”
Unconvinced, Jenny tossed her blond hair. Still pouting, the child turned to Marianne. “What about you?” she asked.
“What about me?” Marianne returned.
“Don’t you hate it that you have to work on Sundays?”
For the first time all day a seemingly genuine smile spread across Marianne Maculyea’s haggard face. “I never have minded,” she said, “but I must confess, I never thought about it quite that way.”
CHAPTER TWO
As the sun sank behind the Mule Mountains, a sudden chill settled over the porch. Raking the steaming, foil-wrapped potatoes out of the remaining embers, Joanna announced it was time to move the party inside. One by one, the fully cooked spuds were divested of blackened foil and scooped onto dinner plates where they were smothered with butter, sour cream, and chopped green onions and joined by thick slices of freshly baked meatloaf. After hours of play, the two girls were famished. Joanna, too, was surprisingly hungry. Once again, how-ever, Marianne Maculyea pushed food around on her plate and made only the slightest pretense of eating it.
Dinner was over, the table cleared, and dishes mostly in the dishwasher before the telephone rang again. Joanna had left the cordless phone sitting by her place at the dining room table. Jenny raced to answer it before her mother could dry her hands.
“It’s for you,” Jenny announced, carrying the handset into the kitchen. “It’s Butch. I already told him we’re saving him a potato and some meatloaf.”
“Does that mean Jeff and I are invited out to the ranch when we get home?” Butch Dixon asked when Joanna came on the line.
“Sure,” Joanna said.
“Anything besides potatoes and meatloaf on the menu?” Butch asked.
Knowing his slyly stated question had nothing at all to do with food, Joanna ducked her face away from Marianne and Jenny in order to conceal the crimson blush that swept up her neck and face. Her best line of defense was to ignore his remark altogether.
“Where are you?” she asked.
“ Tucson,” he said. “We’re making a pit stop, getting gas, and grabbing some coffee.”
“When do you expect to be home?”
“Not much later than an hour and a half.”
“Where are they?” Marianne asked from across the room. Joanna held the phone away from her mouth. “In Tucson,” she answered. “Getting gas.”
Marianne nodded. “Have Butch tell Jeff that Ruth and I will meet him at home. If we don’t go home until after he gets here, it’ll be too late for Ruth to have a bath before bedtime. Tell him we’ll bring his dinner home and he can eat it there.”
“Did you hear that?” Joanna asked Butch.
“Got it,” he said. “I’ll have Jeff drop me off at my place so I can pick up my car. I’ll be out at the ranch as soon as I can. See you then.”
“Be careful,” Joanna said. The warning was out of her mouth before she could stop it. No matter how hard she tried, Joanna could never quite forget that she had failed to say those cautioning words to Andy as he left home on the morning he died-the morning he went off to work never to return. With Butch those once unspoken words were never far from her lips or her heart.
“Don’t worry about Jeff and me,” Butch replied. “Neither of us is big on taking chances.”
By the time Joanna put down the phone, Marianne was already gathering her stack of traveling-mother equipment-a diaper bag, an old briefcase packed with toys and books, as well as a purse. She loaded the collection into the backseat of her venerable VW bug. When it came time to strap Ruth into her car seat, the weary child turned suddenly cranky. She fought the seat belt and was screaming at the top of her lungs as they headed down the road for the seven-mile trip back uptown to the Canyon United Methodist parsonage in Old Bisbee. As Ruth’s earsplitting wail receded into the distance, Joanna felt a sudden wave of gratitude that Jenny had grown far beyond the unreasoning tantrums of toddlerhood.
“Come on, Jenny,” Joanna said. “Fun’s over. Time to do the chores.”
Six days a week Clayton Rhodes, Joanna’s octogenarian neighbor, took care of the animal husbandry duties on High Lonesome Ranch. Sunday was Clayton’s one day off.
For the next half hour Jenny and Joanna worked together, feeding and watering the High Lonesome’s menagerie of animals. There was Kiddo-Jenny’s quarter horse gelding; four head of cattle; two dogs; and half a dozen noisy, squawking chickens. The flock of birds had started out as cute and cuddly, living decorations for in-town children’s Easter baskets, but once the chicks sprouted feathers and stopped being cute, they had all been discarded. The animal control officer who had convinced Joanna to take the first one knew when he had found a soft touch. He soon brought her several more, and she took those as well.