“Is that why you came to see me?” Bebe asked. “To tell me that?”
“No,” Joanna said. “I came to ask you if you were with Bucky the night before he died. Terry told me he wasn’t home that night. I thought maybe he might have been with you.”
“He wasn’t with me,” Bebe said. “I only wish he had been. The last time I saw him was that afternoon. The day before he died. At work.”
“Do you have any idea where he might have been that evening, then?”
Bebe shrugged. “Probably playing poker. He did that a lot.”
“With whom?” Joanna asked.
“I don’t know. He never really told me. And I didn’t ask. I didn’t think it was any of my business. That’s what love is all about,” she added. “Learning to trust.”
Joanna was so astonished by that statement that she wanted to scream. He was married to another woman, screwing around with you, and you trusted him? How stupid can you get?
Exasperated beyond bearing, Joanna glanced at her watch. “I have to go now,” she said, getting to her feet. “I have plenty to do, and so do you.”
Bebe followed her out the door to the car. “Do you know which lawyer I should talk to?” Bebe was asking. “About the DNA thing, I mean.”
Joanna realized that she had already said far too much. If she said anything more, she would simply be helping to pit two bereaved women against one another. “No,” Joanna said. “I don’t have any idea who to suggest. You’ll have to figure it out for yourself.”
It’s part of being a grown-up, she wanted to say. Part of being a parent. But Joanna Brady had reached the limit on her ability to give advice. “If I were you,” she said. “I’d check in the phone book-the Yellow Pages.”
Belle’s face dissolved into a watery smile. “Thank you,” she said. “I’ll go to work on that right away.”
Feeling a little like King Solomon offering to carve up the baby, Joanna headed back toward the Cochise County Justice Center. Considering all that had happened in the past two days, that name had an ironic, almost cynical, ring to it. Was there any such thing as justice to be found in a case like this one? Or for people like Hannah Green? For two cents, right about then, Joanna Brady would have been happy to turn in her badge and go back to being the office manager of an Insurance agency.
By the time Joanna pulled into her parking place, it was well into late afternoon. She felt as though she had been dragged through a wringer. Lack of sleep from the night before gnawed at her whole body. Once again she was grateful for the privilege of that reserved parking space and for the private entrance that allowed her to come and go without having to face whatever crisis was currently in process in the main lobby.
The door between Joanna’s office and Kristin’s was closed, and Joanna didn’t rush to open it. Stuck to the middle of her desk was a stack of messages. Thumbing through them, Joanna found the usual assortment. Two calls from Eleanor Lathrop, one each from Frank Montoya and Dick Voland. The last one came from Marianne Maculyea. That was the first message Joanna attempted to return. There was no answer. The moment Joanna depressed the switch hook to try making another call, Kristin appeared at the door, closing it behind her as she entered.
“Until I saw your line light up, I didn’t know you’d come in,” she said. “There are some people outside waiting to see you.
“Who?” Joanna asked.
“One’s a priest. He said his name is Father Michael McCrady. The other is a really scary-looking guy in leathers. He says his name is Frederick Dixon. He claims he’s a friend of yours. I checked your calendar and didn’t see any appointments, so…”
“Frederick Dixon…” Joanna mused. “That doesn’t ring any bells. What does he look like?”
“Thirties or forties maybe,” Kristin answered. “I can’t really tell. But he’s bald. Not a hair on his head.”
“Butch Dixon!” Joanna exclaimed. “I always forget his name is Fred.”
“Who’s Butch Dixon?”
“He is a friend of mine. From up in Peoria. He runs cafe that’s close to the Arizona Police Officers’ Academy. I met him in November and again this month when I was u there. What’s he doing here?”
“I have no idea,” Kristin said sourly. “He showed up over an hour ago. I told him you were out and I didn’t know when you’d be back. He said it was all right, that he’d wait.”
“And who’s the other one again?”
“Father McCrady. Father Michael McCrady.”
Joanna nodded. “Hal Morgan’s friend.”
“By the way,” Kristin added, almost as an afterthought, “we had a call from the Highway Patrol a little while ago. There’s been a bad accident off Highway 80, east of Tomstone. A speeding van full of U.D.A.s lost control and flipped. It sounds like a real mess. We’ve got cars en route, but nobody from our department is on the scene yet.”
The fact that people were waiting for her in the front office faded into insignificance. Traffic incidents involving van packed to the gills with undocumented aliens, most of whom were never properly belted in, often resulted in terrible carnage.
“If the Department of Public Safety is investigating, how come they’re calling us?” Joanna asked.
“II was a pursuit. The officer tried to pull the van over for faulty equipment. Instead of stopping, the driver turner off onto a county road. That’s where the accident happened.
“Who all’s going?” Joanna asked.
“All three deputies from that sector, and Ernie Carpenter tip well.”
“It’s a fatality?”
Kristin nodded. “I guess,” she said. “At least one. There could be more.”
“What about Dick Voland?”
“He’s going, too. He’s still in his office right now, but he’ll be leaving in a minute.”
It would have been easy for Joanna to sit back and let her deputies handle what was bound to turn into a major incident. But Sheriff Brady was working very hard at earning the reputation of being a hands-on sheriff. “So will I,” she said.
“What should I tell the two guys out front, then?” Kristin asked.
“Nothing,” Joanna said. “I’ll handle them myself.”
Pulling herself together, she walked out into the reception area. Up in Phoenix, Joanna had heard Butch mention his Goldwing on occasion, but this was the first time she had seen him clad in full-leather motorcycle regalia. He was stretched out comfortably on the couch, feet on the glass-topped coffee table, reading a book. Appropriately enough, the book was none other than Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance. Meantime, an elderly gentleman in white-collared priests’ attire paced back and forth in front of Kristin’s desk.
The moment Joanna came into the room, Butch closed the book, smiled broadly, and hurried to his feet. “Joanna,” he said. “There you are.”
At only five feet seven or so, Butch Dixon was relatively short, but powerfully built. As Kristin had noted, Butch’s shaved head was absolutely bald, but the pencil-thin mustache he had sported several months earlier was gone. Its absence made him look younger.
“What are you doing here?” Joanna asked, walking for-ward to shake his hand.
“Decided to take a few days R and R,” he said. “A couple of years ago a guy showed up at the Roundhouse claiming that he could get drunk in any mining town in Arizona and wake up in any other mining town and never know the difference. I decided to put that to the test.”