Out of sight, out of mind, she thought. But that gave her pause, too. Wasn’t that exactly what had happened with Butch? Evidently, the moment Joanna had been out of sight, she had been out of his mind as well, enough so that Lila Winters had been able to walk in and make her move.
Just then a group of skateboarders and in-line skaters—bronzed, bare-chested teenagers oblivious to the scorching, one-hundred-fifteen-degree sun—appeared at the far end of the parking lot. Not willing to let even strangers see her in such a state, Joanna put the Crown Victoria back in gear and drove away. For a while, she drove aimlessly through Peoria, Glendale, and North Phoenix. She could think of only one person who might be able to help her, only one who would understand her sense of betrayal and offer comfort—her best friend, pastor, and confidante, Marianne Maculyea. The problem was, Marianne was more than two hundred miles away, back home in Bisbee.
So distracted that she hardly noticed her surroundings, Joanna was brought up short by a blaring horn. To her dismay she discovered she’d gone through an amber light and had almost been broadsided by someone jumping the green. With her heart pounding in her throat, she turned right at the next intersection, a side street which led to the back entrance of one of Phoenix’s major shopping malls, Metrocenter.
Realizing it wasn’t safe for her to continue driving, she parked in the broiling parking lot. Her cell phone had slipped off the end of the seat. She had to walk around the car and open the passenger door in order to retrieve it. When she picked it up, the readout said she had missed fifteen calls, all of which were from UNAVAILABLE. All from Butch, no doubt, she told herself.
Slamming the car door shut, she made her way into the mall. Finding a bench near a noisy fountain, she glanced down at her watch. One o’clock was time enough for Jeff and Marianne to have finished up with both the church service and the coffee hour and to have returned home to the parsonage. Gripping the phone tightly, Joanna punched Marianne’s number into the keypad.
“Maculyea/Daniels residence,” Julie Erickson said. Julie was the live-in nanny who cared for Jeff and Marianne’s two children—their almost-four-year-old adopted daughter, Ruth Rachel, and their miracle baby—the one doctors had assured the couple they would never have—one-and-a-half-month-old Jeffrey Andrew.
For years, Marianne Maculyea had been estranged from her parents. A partial thaw had occurred a year earlier, when Ruth’s twin sister, Esther Elaine, had been hospitalized for heart-transplant surgery. Marianne’s father, Tim Maculyea, had unbent enough then to come to the hospital in Tucson. Later, when Esther tragically had succumbed to pneumonia, he had come to the funeral as well. Marianne’s mother, Evangeline Maculyea, had not. Only the birth of little Jeffy had finally effected a lasting truce. Julie Erickson, complete with six months’ worth of paid wages, had been Evangeline’s peace offering to her daughter. It was Julie’s capable presence that had made possible Marianne’s rapid post-childbirth return to her duties as pastor of Bisbee’s Tombstone Canyon United Methodist Church.
“Marianne,” Joanna gulped.
“Who’s calling, please?”
“It’s Joanna,” she managed to mumble. With that, she dissolved into tears.
CHAPTER EIGHT
“Why, Joanna!” Marianne exclaimed, the moment she heard Joanna’s voice. “What on earth is the matter?”
“It’s Butch,” Joanna whispered.
“What about him?” Mari demanded. “Is he hurt? Has there been an accident?”
Joanna shook her head. “No,” she whispered. “No accident.”
“What is it, then? You’ve got to get hold of yourself, Joanna. Tell me what’s going on.”
“Oh, Mari,” Joanna sobbed. “What am I going to do? What am I going to tell Jenny? It’ll break her heart.”
“Tell her what? What’s happened?”
Joanna drew a shuddering breath. “Butch stayed out all night. He was with another woman. I saw them together, just a little while ago.”
Marianne was all business. “Where did this happen?” she asked.
“At a hotel up in Phoenix—Peoria, really. “There’s a wedding tonight ...”
“I remember now,” Marianne said. “Butch is the man of honor.”
“Right,” Joanna said. “The rehearsal dinner was last night. I was supposed to go, but I ended up having to work. I had to drive a homicide victim’s sister down to Bisbee to identify the body. Then there was a huge flap with my mother calling CPS and upsetting everyone out at the ranch. By the time things settled down, it was too late to drive back, so I spent the night and came back to Phoenix this morning. I had tried calling Butch to let him know. I left several messages on voice mail in the room, and they were all still there because he never came back to the room. He was with another woman, Mari. When I saw them, they had just finished having breakfast together.”
Like a wind-up toy running down, Joanna subsided into silence.
“Breakfast,” Marianne interjected. “You said they had break-fast. What makes you think there’s anything more to it than just that?”
“I saw them,” Joanna said. “I saw them together. And he introduced me to her. He said she was an old friend, Mari. But if she was such a good friend, why haven’t I ever heard her name before? Why wasn’t she invited to our wedding? Believe me, they’re more than good friends. And I can’t stand it. We’ve been married less than two months, and already Butch may have been unfaithful to me. I can’t believe it.”
“Do you know that for sure?” Marianne asked. “Did he tell you he’s been unfaithful?”
“No, but—”
“How do you know then?”
“I just know. I’m not stupid, Mari. I saw them together. I know what I saw.” In the silence that followed, Joanna heard Lila Winter’s voice once more. “Thank you for everything.”
“What you think you saw,” Marianne admonished. “Have you actually talked to Butch about this? Did you ask him?”
“No. Ever since I left the hotel, he’s been trying to call me. He says he wants to explain. Explain! As if there could be any explanation. But I won’t talk to him. He thinks all he has to do is give me some kind of lame excuse, and the whole thing will go away. I t won’t!”
“You still haven’t spoken to him?” Marianne asked.
“No. What’s the point? What’s tearing me up is what am I going to tell Jenny, Mari? She loves Butch almost as much as she loved her dad. What will happen to her if she loses Butch, too? And how am I going to face all the people in town, the ones who came to our wedding—the ones who told me I was jumping iii too soon? The ones who said I should have given myself more time? It turns out that they’re right and I’m wrong. How will I ever be able to live this down?”
“Where are you right now?” Marianne asked.
“Metrocenter,” Joanna answered. “When I left the hotel, I didn’t know where to go. I thought about coming home, but I was crying so hard that it wasn’t safe to drive. I stopped here at the im.ill because I was afraid I was going to kill someone.”
“Good decision,” Marianne said. “Nobody should try to drive when they’re crying their eyes out. So what are you going to do now?”
“Come home,” Joanna said in a small voice.
“Where’s Butch?” Marianne asked.
“Back at the hotel,” Joanna answered. “At the Conquistador, in Peoria. That’s where the wedding’s going to be held, the one where Butch is the man of honor. What a joke!”
“And how’s he getting home?”
“How should I know?” Joanna asked.
“Does he have a car?”
“No. We took my county car up to the Sheriffs’ Association Conference in Page. We stopped off in Phoenix for the wedding on the way back down.”