“You’re bleeding, Boss,” he said. “Didn’t think you’d want to wreck that brand-new uniform.”
That night, when Joanna finally came home to High Lonesome Ranch, she had three ugly stitches in the jagged gash on her cheek and a sore butt from the tetanus shot.
“What in the world were you thinking?” Butch Dixon demanded once she told him what had happened. “Tackling her like that when you thought she had a gun; God knows what might have happened.”
“She didn’t have a gun in her hand,” Joanna explained patiently. “And there wasn’t one in her purse, either. We looked. She was bluffing the whole time.”
“I don’t care; you still could have been killed.”
“I had to do something,” Joanna said. “There were innocent bystanders everywhere. Someone else could have been hurt.”
“You could have been hurt,” Butch growled at her. “And it could have been a whole lot worse than just that cut on your cheek. What about Jenny and me?” he added. “Did you give a single thought to what the two of us would do without you?”
“I did, actually,” Joanna admitted. “The whole time I was in the emergency room waiting to have my face stitched up and the whole way home from Tucson. Did you know,” she added in a blatant bid for sympathy, “that when they’re stitching up a facial wound, they can’t deaden it because they might damage one of the nerves?”
Butch sighed. “I’m sorry,” he relented. “I’ll bet those stitches hurt like hell.”
He took her in his arms then, and all the while he held her, Joanna felt more than a little guilty. It was bad enough that Butch had fallen for his wife’s unconscionable womanly wiles. What was worse, Joanna Brady liked it. She doubted D. H. Lathrop would have been very proud of her just then, but somehow Joanna knew that Eleanor Lathrop Winfield would have been.
“By the way,” Butch said. “You had a phone call a few minutes ago. Deputy Galloway”
Joanna’s green eyes darkened. Considering everything that had happened since morning, her conversation with Ken Galloway could have been days ago rather than hours. “What did he want?” she asked.
“He asked me to give you a message,” Butch replied. “He said, ‘Its handled,’ whatever that means. It was almost like he was talking in code and didn’t want to give me too information.”
“It was code,” Joanna said with a laugh. “I strong-armed him this morning into doing something nice. He’s still pissed about it, but he did it. Good. That’s all that counts.”
“Did what?”
“Remember Yolanda Cañedo?”
“The jail matron with cancer, the one in the hospital in Tucson?”
Joanna nodded. “Right,” she said. “Ted Chapman, the chaplain with the jail ministry, got all the inmates to join together and do something for Yolanda and her family. It seemed to me that the deputies ought to shape up and do as much, if not more. Ken Galloway wasn’t exactly overjoyed at the prospect, but it looks as though he’s come through.”
“But his nose is still slightly out of joint,” Butch said with a laugh.
“Too bad,” Joanna replied.
That evening it was as though someone had posted an OPEN HOUSE sign at the end of the road that led to High Lonesome Ranch. Half a dozen cars showed up for a celebratory but impromptu potluck. As the kitchen and dining room filled up with guests and while Butch, Jeff Daniels, and Eva Lou Brady organized the food, Joanna and Marianne Maculyea sat in a quiet corner of the living room while Marianne nursed little Jeffy.
“I embarrassed myself in the emergency room this afternoon,” Joanna admitted. That quiet confession, made to her best friend, was something she had yet to mention to her husband.
“What happened?” Marianne asked.
“I burst into tears.”
“So what?” Marianne returned. “From the looks of those stitches, I would have done the same thing. That cut must hurt.”
Joanna shook her head. “It’s not that bad,” she said. “And the cut isn’t what made me cry. I was sitting there in the ER lobby, bleeding and waiting to see the doctor, when the full force of it finally hit me. That woman was after Dora. Poor Dora Matthews was the only target; Jenny wasn’t. She wasn’t in danger and never was. That’s when I burst into tears. One of the nurses stopped by to see what was wrong; what I needed. She thought I was in pain. There were other people in the room who were in a lot worse physical shape than I was, Mari. I couldn’t very well tell her it was just the opposite—that I was so relieved I could barely contain myself.”
Marianne hefted little Jeffy to her shoulder and patted his back until he let loose with a satisfied burp.
“I know,” Marianne said thoughtfully. “I felt the same way—that incredibly giddy sense of relief—right after Esther had her heart transplant. And then, when we lost her anyway . . .” Marianne paused, shook her head, and didn’t continue.
Just then Jenny bounded into the living room with Marianne’s daughter Ruth hot on her heels. Sensing the prospect of a possible game, both dogs trotted behind the girls. As Joanna looked at the two children, her heart swelled once more with love and pride and another spasm of enormous relief.
“Time to eat!” Jenny announced, standing with both hands on her hips.
“Time to eat!” Ruth mimicked, imitating Jenny’s every gesture. “Come and get it before we throw it out,” Jenny added.
“Throw it out,” was all Ruth could manage before dissolving into a gale of giggles.
Joanna reached out and took the sweet-smelling baby while Marianne set about fastening her bra and buttoning her blouse. Looking down at Andy’s namesake, Jeffrey Andrew Daniels, with his fuzz of bright red hair, Joanna felt fiercely protective about the little grinning lump of toothless humanity.
She looked up to find Marianne smiling at them both. “He’s cute as a button,” Joanna said.
“But do you think motherhood is worth it?” Marianne asked.
Joanna thought about Irma Sorenson and Amy Bernard. “I don’t know,” she said. “Ask me again in another twenty years.”
“It’s a deal,” Marianne said. “Now let’s go eat. I’m starved.”
CHAPTER TWENTY
Christopher Bernard came alone to Dora Matthews’s funeral on Friday afternoon. Joanna saw him sitting stiffly on a folding chair in the back row of Norm Higgins’s funeral chapel. His navy sport coat, white shirt, and tie seemed totally at odds with his spiky purple hair, his braces, and his multi-ply pierced ears. Joanna smiled at him. He nodded briefly, but he left as soon as the service was over, and Joanna didn’t see him again—not at the graveside service at Evergreen Cemetery and not during the coffee hour later at the Presbyterian Church’s reception hall.
The second pew was occupied by Faye Lambert’s Girl Scout troop, all of them wearing their uniforms and sitting at respectful attention. At the coffee hour after the service, while Jenny and the other girls milled around the refreshment table, Joanna sought out Faye.
“Oh, Joanna,” Faye Lambert said. “I feel so awful about all this. I never should have sent the girls home. I guess I overreacted. It’s just that I had tried so hard to help Dora tit in. I knew things weren’t good at home, but it was stupid of me not to realize how bad they really were. Then, when I found out what Dora and Jenny had been up to that night—that they’d been off hiking around alone in the dark and smoking cigarettes—I was so terribly disappointed. I shouldn’t have taken it personally, but I did. If only—”
“Stop it, Faye,” Joanna told her. “What happened to Dora would have happened regardless. It’s not your fault.”
“But I can’t keep from blaming myself.”
“And my mother thinks it’s her fault for calling CPS. And I think it’s my fault for being out of town. It’s nobody’s fault, Faye. Nobody’s except the killer’s.”
“I heard someone had been arrested,” Faye said. “Some doctor’s wife from up in Tucson? I can’t imagine what the connection is.”