Part of what had made selling Tupperware difficult for Joanna had to do with the fact that many people in town were broke. Once the mines closed, most of Bisbee’s economic base disappeared. For a long time the expected boom in out-of-state visitors had simply bypassed the little town. In those cash-strapped days, Tupperware had been hard to come by. You had to be invited to a party, go and play dumb games, and then fork over hard-earned cash in order to cart home a set of four of those stupid bowls. And, for Joanna, that had been the real difficulty in selling the stuff-she didn’t actually believe in it. Her mother did. Eleanor claimed to adore the stuff. Joanna remained firmly in the camp of margarine containers.
Joanna couldn’t remember her mother ever storing a dishful of leftovers without first using the distinctive little tab to raise the lid and let out excess air. And in Eleanor’s fastidiously run household, no Tupperware-stored leftovers were ever allowed to spoil or go to waste.
The same thing couldn’t be said of Joanna Brady’s more casually managed existence. Containers of food were sometimes inadvertently shoved to the back of a lower shelf in her refrigerator where the contents might well mutate into a new life form before finally being rediscovered. With margarine tubs or cottage-cheese or sour-cream containers, there was never any question of what to do then-throw them out, leftovers and all. But Tupperware was different and came with an entirely different set of rules. No matter how disgusting what had been left to molder inside, those had to be cleaned out and rehabilitated with bleach, detergent, and elbow grease. To do anything less seemed un-American somehow.
Taking Joanna’s own deep-seated prejudices and experience into account, that meant Sandra Ridder hadn’t intended to lose her Tupperware bowl-ever. Not the first time when she hid it, and not the second time when she had gone back to retrieve it. And whatever she had stowed in the bowl all those years earlier, she had meant it to be protected from the elements.
By the time Joanna neared High Lonesome Ranch, she had left off worrying about Sandra Ridder’s Tupperware and was dealing with concerns much closer to home. She wondered what had happened that evening in her absence. It was one thing to be a hands-on sheriff, but how about being a hands-on mother? What had her presence contributed to the investigation into Sandra Ridder’s death, and how much had she missed by being away from the High Lonesome and Jenny and Butch? The fact that she wasn’t alone-the fact that Joanna Brady was dealing with the daily ball-juggling contest of every other working mother in America-didn’t make her feel any better about it.
Halfway up the winding road that led to the house, Joanna had to slow to negotiate the wash. A tow truck had removed Reba Singleton’s stranded limo, but in the process the well-worn track across the dry creek bed had been obliterated. Boulders that hadn’t been there before had been churned to the surface, while wheel-swallowing pits had been left behind in the sand. Using the Blazer’s four-wheel drive to negotiate this new obstacle path was the only thing that kept Joanna herself from becoming stuck in her own driveway. As a result, Joanna wasn’t thinking fond thoughts about tow-truck drivers, limo drivers, or Reba Rhodes Singleton by the time she finally pulled into her own yard.
She was relieved to see Butch’s Subaru was still parked near the gate. Knowing Jenny had been looked after in the meantime was the only thing that made being gone so long possible or bearable.
The lights were on in the living room as she parked the Blazer, but as soon as she opened the car door, the back porch light came on and Sadie and Tigger came tumbling out of the house. Behind the two dogs walked Butch, in stocking feet, gingerly picking his way across the yard.
“You shouldn’t be out here without shoes,” she scolded. “Don’t you know there are sandburs in the yard?”
“I do now,” he said, hopping gingerly on one foot. “How are things?”
“It’s late, and I’m tired,” she told him. “How are things with you?”
Butch wrapped one arm around her shoulders and gently pulled her against his chest. “We had some company,” he said, leading her toward the house.
“Not your parents!” Joanna exclaimed. “Don’t tell me they turned up early.”
“Not my parents.”
“Who then?”
Butch waited until they were all the way inside the house before he answered. “Dick Voland,” he said.
Joanna blinked. Dick Voland had been a long-term deputy with the Cochise County Sheriff’s Department. He had served as chief deputy in the administration of Joanna’s predecessor, Walter V. McFadden, and had continued in that capacity, sharing responsibility with Frank Montoya, once Joanna was elected. She had been able to deal with the man in the beginning, when he was simply gruff and overbearing. The situation had become much more complicated when Joanna discovered that he had developed a serious middle-aged crush on her. Voland had mostly pined in silence, but Joanna’s betrothal to Butch had pushed him over the edge. The morning after her engagement was made public, Voland had turned up on High Lonesome Ranch, drunk and belligerent. He had handed in his resignation on the spot. Under the circumstances, Joanna had been only too happy to accept it.
Since then, Joanna had seen little of the man. She had heard that he was in the process of hanging out his shingle as a private investigator. She had also heard that he and Marliss Shackleford were now an item. Marliss, a columnist for a local rag called The Bisbee Bee, wasn’t one of Joanna’s favorite people either. When she heard Marliss and Dick were dating, Joanna figured that the two of them deserved each other.
“Dick wasn’t drunk, was he?” Joanna asked carefully.
At six-four, Voland was a massive bear of a man who outweighed Butch by a good fifty pounds. “Not that I could tell.”
“What did he want?”
“He didn’t say. I offered to take a message, but he said he needed to talk to you. He wanted you to call as soon as you got home tonight. I left the number there on the table.”
Joanna felt a sudden fury wash through her. “I know his number,” she stormed. “And if it was that damned important, he could have called me on my cell phone. He knows my numbers, too. I sure as hell haven’t changed them! He just wanted to come by, hassle me, and nose around in my business.”
“Come on, Joey,” Butch said, using the private nickname he had bestowed on her. “Don’t be upset. He didn’t cause any trouble, and he didn’t say anything out of line.”
“He should have told you what he wanted,” Joanna insisted. “That was rude, treating you as if you’re incapable of passing along a simple message.”
Butch laughed aloud at that. “You don’t understand very much about men, do you?”
Joanna frowned. “What’s so funny? And what do you mean by that?”
“I mean Dick Voland and I were in a contest, and I won. Dick’s the big loser here. I’ve got you, and he doesn’t. Believe me, Dick Voland isn’t ever going to sit down and have a long, heart-to-heart discussion with me. He hates my guts, and he’s going to do his best to pretend I don’t exist.”
“What about you?” Joanna asked.
“I feel sorry for him, but not that sorry.”
“Regardless,” Joanna said. “It’s late, and I’m not calling him back tonight. Whatever the big secret is, it’s going to have to wait until morning.”
“Good enough,” Butch said. “Now, did you have any dinner?”
“No,” Joanna answered, noticing for the first time that she was hungry.
“After that big, late lunch, all Jenny and I had were a couple of scrambled eggs and toast. Would you like me to make you some?”
“Please.”
While Butch scrambled eggs, Joanna undressed and locked her weapons away. Then, wearing her nightgown and robe, she returned to the kitchen to make toast and pour a glass of milk while she told Butch about the situation with Catherine Yates, her dead daughter, Sandra, and her missing granddaughter, Lucy.