“All right,” Joanna said, choosing not to mention that throughout the hour long, late-afternoon interview with Ernie Carpenter, Bucky Buckwalter’s widow had never shown the slightest sign of any emotion other than her initial surprise.
“I suppose it’s too early to know about funeral arrangements,” Jim Bob ventured as he stood up to begin clearing the table.
“As a matter of fact it isn’t,” Joanna told them. “By the time Ernie Carpenter and I got around to talking to Terry, she had already contacted Norm Higgins. The funeral home will be picking up the body from Dr. Winfield’s office as soon as he finishes the autopsy. According to Terry, the funeral will be at the mortuary up in Bisbee on Friday morning.”
“We should go by all means,” Eva Lou said. “Put it on the calendar, Jim Bob.” Eva Lou turned back to Joanna. “Do you have any idea what time?”
“It’ll be ten o’clock,” Jim Bob said. “That’s when of Norm likes to schedule them things. Any earlier, he says, and you have to rush breakfast. Any later, and you end up missing lunch.”
“Norm Higgins could afford to miss a few breakfasts and lunches,” Eva Lou observed.
Jim Bob held up a hand. “Now, Eva Lou,” he told his wife. “Don’t you go being so hard on the man. Norm Higgins is an old buddy of mine.”
“An overweight old buddy of yours,” Eva Lou added.
Listening to her in-laws’ gentle bickering only under-scored the loving humor that was a hallmark of their long-term marriage. Their constant sparring back and forth was part of what made their relationship work. Their companion-able squabble somehow made Joanna feel better
She watched as Jim Bob Brady carefully made a penciled notation of the memorial service on the Davis Insurance Agency calendar that graced the Bradys’ kitchen wall. Looking at him, she realized fondly that here was a man-the genuine article. She’d bet her life that her father-in-law had never once been reduced to carrying a packet of condoms around in his wallet. If Jim Bob Brady died first, Eva Lou wouldn’t be in for any unpleasant surprises in that regard.
Joanna put down her empty cup, pushed back her own chair, and made for the kitchen sink. “Oh, no, you don’t,” Eva Lou told her. “You go on home and attend to your chores. Jim Bob and I will do the dishes. It’s his turn to wash, mine to wipe.”
“You’re sure?”
“Of course I’m sure.” Eva Lou smiled. “I wouldn’t want Jimmy here to have a chance to stop complaining about his dishpan hands.” She paused then, and looked her daughter-in-law in the eye. “How are you doing?”
Joanna gave her mother-in-law a wan smile. “You read me like a book, don’t you? I’m doing medium. I guess this is all hitting just a little too close to home. Once upon a time, in the good old days, murder was something that happened somewhere else, to people we didn’t know.”
“Well,” said Eva Lou kindly. “You go on home and try not to think about it.”
Leaving her stack of dishes on the counter, Joanna was only too happy to oblige. “Come on, Jenny,” she called down the short hallway.
It took several minutes to gather Jenny’s gear-school books, jacket, and lunch box-as well as Joanna’s own purse. It was only eight-thirty or so by the time they reached High Lonesome Ranch, but Joanna was so tired that it felt like much litter.
A single bulb burning outside the garage told Joanna that Clayton Rhodes, her eighty-something neighbor and hired hand, had come by and fed all the animals. Paying Clayton to do the outdoor chores on a regular basis had been Joanna’s first big concession to being a single mother with a young child and a demanding career. There simply wasn’t enough of her to go around when it came to taking care of Jenny, doing the housework, and looking after two dogs and ten head of cattle as well.
When she reached the back door, Joanna found a scrawled note from Clayton stuck on the door frame with a pushpin. “Fed Sadie,” the note said. “Couldn’t find no Tigger. He maybe run off.”
Guiltily, Joanna crumpled the note and stuck it in her pocket. It had been thoughtless of her not to have left word about Tigger for Clayton so he wouldn’t have worried or wasted any time looking for an animal that was safely stowed in a kennel at the Buckwalter Animal Clinic. Meantime, Sadie, lonely after a day on her own, was ecstatically licking Jenny’s face.
“Don’t let her do that,” Joanna admonished.
“She’s just kissing me because she missed me,” Jenny said. “It doesn’t hurt anything.”
Joanna managed to stifle an urge to deliver an Eleanor Lathrop-like lecture on the subject of dogs and germs. In-stead, she sent Jenny off to take her bath and settled down at the telephone desk in the living room to take messages off the machine. There were several.
“I’m home,” Eleanor Lathrop said through the recording machine’s speaker. She sounded chipper as ever, as though, for her cross-country plane flights were mere everyday occurrences. ‘‘Give me a call as soon as you get home. We need to get organized about tomorrow. Have you made any arrangements for Eva Lou and me to get out to Palominas t(the women’s club luncheon?”
Eleanor had been back in town only a matter of hours. Minutes, maybe. Already she was dishing out orders. Joanna seeing her mother through the prism of her own difficulties with Jenny, was determined not to let it affect her. She made a note to call her mother.
The next message came on. “Hello, Joanna,” said Bisbee Bee reporter Marliss Shackleford. “Do give me a call at home this evening.”
Joanna gritted her teeth. Marliss, who took a good deal of pride in her self-styled position as gossip columnist for the local paper, had been a thorn in Joanna Brady’s side for fat longer than she had been writing “Bisbee Buzzings.” Naturally Marliss was far too important to do anything as courteous or convenient as leaving her telephone number on the message.
“I guess I’m supposed to know it by heart,” Joanna muttered to herself, as she made a note on the pad.
The third call was from Joanna’s most unlikely friend-Angie Kellogg, a former L.A. hooker who, with Joanna’s and Marianne Maculyea’s help, had managed to escape “the life.” Angie now lived in her own little two-bedroom house and worked as a bartender up in Brewery Gulch. The Blue Moot Saloon and Lounge was right next door to the empty lot that had once held the Plugged Nickel. Because Angie was still relatively new to town and reveling in what she saw as the “Wild West” atmosphere, Joanna made a note to remind herself to tell Angie the story about Bucky Buckwalter and the second-story horse.
“You’re not going to believe this,” Angie’s message said breathlessly. “They’ve called me for jury duty. That’s never happened to me before. It says I have to go to the courthouse three weeks from now. Is this for real? Do I have to do it? Call me.”
Joanna laughed as she made another note and erased that one. Angie had only recently succeeded in passing her driver’s-license exam for the very first time. No doubt, that had landed her in the motor-voter rolls, and on the jury-selection list as well. Given the context of Angie’s previous life, her consternation was easy to understand. And if this was a first for Angie, Joanna thought, there was a good possibility that the reverse was also true. It was distinctly possible that having an ex-hooker on a jury would be breaking new legal ground in Cochise County.
The next two calls were both hang-ups with no message. “If you don’t leave a message, I can’t call you back,” Joanna informed her anonymous callers.
The last message was from Bebe Noonan. “Mrs. Brady, I’m sorry to call so late, but I wanted you to know that Dr. Wade just finished treating Tigger. He’ll be ready to come home tomorrow. Dr. Wade will be at the clinic early tomorrow morning to make arrangements either to send all remaining animals home or to transfer them to his facility down in Douglas. If you could come pick Tigger up sometime between seven and nine in the morning, we’d really appreciate it.