Walking haltingly, like someone uncertain of footing on rough terrain, she made her way to the bed and sat down on the edge of it. Gingerly she began unwrapping the layers of faded pillow case surrounding the gun until at last a Colt.44, naked and deadly, lay in her hand. Remembering Molly Rhodes’s voluminous aprons, Joanna could see how the gun would easily have fit into one of her pockets. And living out on the Rhodes place through the years, Joanna could see how Molly might have needed to take a shot at an occasional chicken-stealing coyote or at a rattlesnake that might choose a spot under the clothesline to sun itself.
But Clayton Rhodes wasn’t thinking about either rattlesnakes or coyotes when he gave the gun to Joanna. And now that she was holding the weapon in her hand, Joanna wasn’t either.
For a few moments it was almost as though Joanna’s father himself was standing there in the room with her, reminding her of all the old lessons-how she should never handle a gun of any kind without knowing for sure whether or not it was clean and loaded. She checked. The answer was yes as far as the cleaning was concerned, but the weapon wasn’t loaded.
Joanna loaded it herself, taking bullets from the box Clayton Rhodes had given her, then she hefted the.44 in her hand, gauging the weight of it, fingering the grip, remembering the importance of balance and the necessity of the two-handed, spread-footed stance her father had taught her. And she recalled how he’d patiently worked with her, teaching her how to handle recoils-to expect them and flow with them rather than fighting against them.
In remembering D. H. Lathrop’s lessons, Joanna missed him anew with almost the same force as she missed Andy. A wave of grief that was also physical pain washed over her.
Resolutely, she stood up and tried to think of something else. Clayton was right. She would have to practice in order to regain some of her former proficiency, and that wouldn’t be tonight. Probably not in the next few days, either. In the meantime, she needed a safe place to keep the weapon, a place where Jenny wouldn’t accidentally stumble across it.
Kicking off her shoes, Joanna got up and padded over to Andy’s rolltop desk. It was locked, but the key was in its usual place in the pencil cup on top. Joanna turned the key in the lock and shoved up the lid, thinking the small drawer at the back of the desk would be a good place to keep the gun, but when she opened the drawer and tried to put the gun inside, it wouldn’t fit. Something else was in the way.
Exploring the drawer with her fingers, she drew out a small address book. It was Andy’s-she recognized it instantly-but she was surprised to find it there. He usually kept it with him, and she would have expected it to be with the packet of personal effects she had been given in the hospital.
She put the gun and the extra ammunition in the drawer in place of the address book, closed the top of the desk, locked it, and put the key in the pocket of her jeans. Then, taking the book with her, she started to return to the bed.
On the way, a piece of paper slipped out from between the leaves and fluttered to the floor. Joanna scooped it up and unfolded a piece of rich, creamy white stationery with the
Ritz Carlton logo emblazoned across the top. In the upper right-hand corner the date was listed as September 10.
Dear Andy,
I’ve been thinking about your offer. It’s hard to get to be my age and realize you’ve been a first-class asshole all your life. Thanks for giving me a chance to make the world a better place, if not for me, than maybe for my kids and yours.
There are a few things I need to straighten out before I can leave here. When I get those cleared up, I can meet you in Nogales or Tijuana, wherever, and we’ll go to York then. Together we ought to be able to make it stick. I guess I don’t need to tell you that if anybody finds out about this I’m a dead man. And so are you.
Be careful, Lefty
Joanna read the note through several times in rapid succession. Each time another little piece of understanding slipped into place. Without telling her, Andy had been in touch with Lefty O’Toole. Why had he been so secretive? She had thought that she and Andy had a good marriage, that they had shared almost every-thing, yet here was another proof, almost as damning as Sandra Henning’s, that Andrew Brady’s sharing with his wife had been woefully incomplete.
In the note, Lefty had warned Andy to keep whatever was going on between them a secret. Andy had certainly complied with that request, at least as far as Joanna was concerned, she thought angrily, but someone else must have guessed or found out. Whoever that person was, Joanna was convinced he was responsible not only for Lefty O’Toole’s murder but for Andy’s as well.
It wasn’t until the third reading that the name “York” registered. Andy and Lefty had been planning to go to York. That would have to be Adam York with the DEA. Who else could it be? But why, Joanna wondered. Were they going to tell York something about someone else, or was York himself the source of the problem? The DEA agent’s attitude toward her had been a puzzle from the start. What could explain his antagonistic suspicion of her when Joanna knew she had done nothing wrong?
Sitting there, she tried to remember what had happened in each of her encounters with the man. What if he was the one who was actually behind all this and his questions about possible insurance fraud were only a device to throw suspicion in someone else’s direction. He had been with her at the Arizona Inn at the exact moment of Andy’s death, but he had also been lurking around the waiting room off and on all morning. It would have been simple for him to alert an accomplice that Joanna was leaving for a time, thus clearing the field for the real killer, the man with the gold in his teeth.
So what did an ordinary citizen do if they suspected a federal peace officer of wrongdoing? Did you go to the local authorities, someone you knew and trusted like Walter McFadden or Ken Galloway? Did you tell them what you knew and hand over your evidence, or did you go looking for someone else, someone further up the DEA chain of command and report your suspicions to him?
Regardless, Joanna knew there was nothing to be done about it tonight, and until she chose a definite course of action, it was important that Lefty’s letter, a vital piece of evidence, be kept in a safe place. Her first instinct was to lock it away in the desk drawer along with the gun, but that seemed too obvious. Besides, even with the desk locked, she wasn’t sure it would be safe from Eleanor’s prying eyes. In the end, she took the only reasonable course of action and placed the carefully folded paper in the side pocket of her purse.
Then, she picked up the address book once more. No matter how much it hurt, it was time to find out. For years she and Andy had argued over his unorthodox filing system. They kept separate address books because he, with-out a truly bureaucratic mentality, kept things filed under first names rather than last. With trembling fingers, she turned to the “C” page, and there it was, at the very bottom, the single name Cora with two phone numbers, both with Nevada prefixes.
Fighting back tears, Joanna copied them onto a note pad she carried in her purse. She was just fastening the purse shut when the phone on Andy’s night stand rang shrilly. The noise startled her, and she jumped involuntarily before picking up the receiver. “Hello.”
There was a slight pause. For a moment Joanna thought it might be a crank call with no one on the line, but then a woman spoke. “Joanna Brady?” the caller asked hesitantly, speaking in little more than an exaggerated whisper.
Joanna strained to hear, trying to recognize if the voice belonged to someone she knew. “Yes,” she answered. “This is Joanna. Who’s this?”