Glancing at her own left hand, Joanna caught sight of the two rings she still wore. One was the plain gold band she had worn from her wedding day on. The other was the diamond solitaire engagement ring, an anniversary present from Andy that she hadn’t actually received until after he was already in the hospital, dying. She had gone from the middle of September to almost the end of January without finding the strength to remove either one of them. Terry Buckwalter had removed hers within the first twenty-four hours.
“So what do you want?” Terry asked, as her eyes met Joanna’s in the reflection of the mirrored bar. Distractedly, she ran the ringless hand through her hair. When she took her hand away, the precision-cut hair fell flawlessly back into place. For a change, Helen Barco had outdone herself.
“I just wanted to talk to you,” Joanna said.
“To talk or to lecture?” Terry Buckwalter demanded. “You disapprove, don’t you-of my new haircut, of my playing golf, of everything about me.”
“Terry, I certainly didn’t mean-”
“Didn’t you?” Terry Buckwalter interjected, her whole body radiating hostility. “That’s why you didn’t leave when all those other women did. You wanted to have a private word with me. You wanted the opportunity to give me the benefit of all your vast experience as a recent widow. You wanted to let me know what’s appropriate and what isn’t. Well, Sheriff Brady, here’s some news from the front. I’m not nearly as good as you are at playing that role. The part suits you to a T. On me, it sucks.”
As Terry’s voice rose, heads turned in their direction as other people in the bar-mostly male foursomes-glanced their way.
“Please, Terry,” Joanna began. “You don’t understand. All I “
“Yes, I do understand,” ‘Terry returned. “I understand perfectly. So you and Andy had a fairy-tale marriage. Lucky for you. Bucky and I didn’t. I made the best of a bad bargain, and maybe so did he. But all that’s over now. Your Andy’s dead, Joanna. Here you are getting to play sheriff and to do things maybe you’ve always wanted to do. It’s time for m. to do the same thing-time for me to do what I want for o change. Do you understand?”
“Yes,” Joanna murmured, hoping to calm the woman down. If nothing else, to get her to lower her voice. “Yes, I’m sure I do.”
“No, you don’t,” Terry Buckwalter returned coldly. “I don’t think you do at all.”
With that, she slammed a five-dollar bill down on the counter. “Keep the change, Nate,” she called to the bartender then she stood up and stalked out the room.
Left behind with the men in the room still staring at her Joanna wondered what she had done wrong and why he] asking to talk to Terry had unleashed such a powerful reaction. Half a minute later, a speeding white T-Bird flashed by the glassed-in front entryway on its way out of the parking lot.
Maybe she’s right, Joanna found herself thinking. Maybe don’t understand.
EIGHT
Feeling frustrated, Joanna left the Rob Roy for the fifteen-mile drive back to Bisbee. Along the way, she mulled over what had happened with Terry. Joanna had been curious about whoever was with Terry on the day after Bucky Buckwalter’s death, but that hadn’t been her primary concern. More than anything, she had wanted to speak to Terry, widow-to-widow, long enough to mention the inadvisability of making any momentous financial decisions in too much of a hurry.
That heartfelt warning had gone unsaid in the face of Terry’s seemingly unprovoked anger. What was going on? Prior to Joanna’s arrival in the bar, she had observed Terry Buckwalter and Peter Wilkes from a distance for the better part of half an hour. During that time the two of them had been chatting away as though neither of them had a care in the world.
Maybe that was it in a nutshell. Maybe, with Bucky Buckwalter dead, that was absolutely true. If Peter Wilkes and Terry Buckwalter had something going, then Joanna’s seeing them together might well have precipitated Terry’s angry reaction.
Small towns have certain expectations of what’s appropriate and what isn’t after the death of one of their own. Bisbee, Arizona was no different. Joanna wondered how many other luncheon attendees had witnessed and been shocked by Terry’s carefree attitude the day after her husband’s murder. The difference between police officers and ordinary citizens, however, was that the former’s opinions could lead to questions of an official nature-to questions and, sometimes, to convictions.
Other people might disapprove-quietly or otherwise-of Terry’s actions: of her peeling off her wedding ring less than twenty-four hours after her husband’s death or of her possibly carrying on with Peter Wilkes. As for Joanna, personal reservations aside, she had a moral obligation-a duty-to learn whether or not cause and effect were involved. Was it possible that Terry Buckwalter and/or Peter Wilkes had something to do with Bucky’s death? If so, that would go a long way toward explaining the sudden chill in the air when Joanna had interrupted Terry’s lighthearted performance as the merry widow.
Joanna couldn’t recite the exact statistics, but she knew full well that people were far more likely to be murdered by those nearest and dearest to them than they were by complete strangers, mere acquaintances, or business associates. In some troubled marriages, homicides became a permanent substitute for divorce, although, once again, statistically speaking, violence-prone husbands used that escape hatch far more of-ten than did vengeful wives. Still, women weren’t immune. They resorted to such a method of dissolving a relationship, too, on occasion, especially when the murderous wife had a possible alternative to the troublesome husband already line(up and waiting in the wings.
Is that what’s going on here? Joanna wondered.
It was generally assumed that Peter Wilkes was involved in a devoted, long-term relationship with his partner-thy guy named Myron who ran the restaurant. But just because that was common gossip around town didn’t necessarily make it true. Maybe Peter Wilkes was a switch-hitter-AC/DC, as Andy used to say.
Clearly Peter Wilkes and Terry Buckwalter were up to something that went beyond a simple above-the-board pro/golfer relationship. Whatever it was, neither of them had been willing to discuss specific details in front of Joanna.
Suppose, Joanna told herself, Bucky was an insurmountable roadblock to whatever Wilkes and Terry had in mind. What might the two of them have done then when someone from out of town someone with a perfectly believable motive for Bucky’s murder, had shown up on the scene? Slowly, the idea began to coalesce it Joanna’s mind. If Terry wanted to ditch Bucky Buckwalter, wasn’t Hal Morgan the perfect fall guy?
Unbidden, Joanna’s mind wandered back to the previous afternoon. She remembered how Terry Buckwalter had casually reached into her pocket and pulled out that damning scrap of paper-the one containing Hal Morgan’s purportedly handwritten note. If, as Terry maintained, the note had been hidden in her makeup case for months, why did she suddenly and conveniently have it in her possession, to pas along to investigators on the very day of her husband’ death?
That’s easy, Joanna thought. To point a finger at someone else. At Hal Morgan.
One terrible injustice had already been visited on the man. He had lost his wife to a senseless, tragic death. Now another blow was about to fall if he ended up being charged with murder in the death of Bonnie Morgan’s killer.