As Joanna approached, Marliss leaned over and whispered in Joanna’s ear, “Love is lovelier the second time around-but then I guess you and Eleanor already figured that out.”
Marliss’s first husband and high school sweetheart, Bradley Shackleford, had been out of the picture almost as long as Joanna could remember. Under her cloud of unruly and newly frosted curls, Marliss looked so undeniably happy that Joanna couldn’t help but soften a little.
“Yes, we did, Marliss,” Joanna agreed. “Congratulations to both of you.”
Wandering through the social hall with paper cups of punch in their hands, Joanna and Butch were the recipients of their own greetings and well-wishes. Regardless of how they had learned of Joanna’s pregnancy, everyone there made some comment about the news. Finished with her punch, Joanna was standing to one side of the room and waiting for Butch to finish a conversation with Jeff Daniels when Richard Voland sidled up next to her.
“How’s it going?” he asked.
Joanna looked at him warily. Everyone knew that, in the aftermath of his divorce, Voland had fallen victim to drinking too much, but no one other than Butch knew that the real reason behind Richard Voland’s resignation from the sheriff’s department had been his unrequited crush on Joanna Brady. She had seen him occasionally since then in social settings. Basking
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in this new romance with Marliss, Voland appeared to have overcome his personal demons and his feelings about Joanna, too, but she was nonetheless leery of spending too much time in his presence.
‘All right,” she said. “And you?”
“Couldn’t be better,” he replied. “Business is picking up a little, and you know Marliss. She keeps me hopping.”
“Yes,” Joanna agreed. “I’m sure she does.”
“There is one thing we don’t agree about, though,” Voland added.
“What’s that?”
“You.”
“Richard …” Joanna began as a blush started forming at the base of her neck. “Really, I-“
‘About the election,” Voland added quickly. “Marliss is anything but unbiased when it comes to Ken Junior, and I think she’s wrong. Pregnant or not, you really are the best man for the job.”
Across the room, Marliss noticed Joanna and Richard Voland standing together. Tossing her mane of curls, she caught her husband’s eye and summoned him with a come-hither finger. Joanna’s blush, which had started for one reason, finished for another.
“Thank you, Richard,” she said. “I really appreciate that.”
Butch appeared at her side half a minute later. “Ready?” he asked.
“Yes,” Joanna said gratefully. “More than ready.”
‘And what was that all about-the thing with Richard Voland?”
“I’m not sure,” she replied, “but I think he just gave me one of the biggest compliments of my life.”
Once Joanna and Butch had retrieved Jenny from the puzzle 229
and-game corner where she’d been involved in a killer game of Chinese checkers, they headed for Jim Bob and Eva Lou Brady’s duplex on Oliver Circle. As Jim Bob welcomed them inside, the whole house was filled with the delectable aroma of Eva Lou’s old-fashioned meat loaf.
Butch and Joanna’s former father-in-law went out to Jim Bob’s workshop to discuss one of the older man’s woodworking projects, while Joanna and Jenny ventured into Eva Lou’s undisputed domain, the kitchen. “Anything I can do to help?”
Her face red with exertion, Eva Lou was energetically mashing potatoes. “Not a thing.
Joanna, you sit down and relax. Jenny, do you mind setting the table?”
Without argument, both mother and daughter did as they were told. While Jenny pulled out plates and silverware and carried them into the dining room, Joanna sat at the kitchen table and gratefully kicked off her high-heeled shoes. She sighed with relief as she wiggled her liberated toes.
“What does your mother have to say about all this?” Eva Lou asked.
“She’s not exactly thrilled,” Joanna allowed.
Eva Lou laughed. “No, I don’t suppose she is, but what about you?”
“I’m thrilled, and so is Butch.”
“That’s all that matters then, isn’t it?” Eva Lou asked. “I learned a long time ago that if you spend your whole life worrying about what other people think, you’re not going to get anywhere.”
Just like Eleanor, Joanna thought. Worrying about other people’s opinions and not doing anything on her own.
“How come I can’t have you for a mother?” she asked.
Eva Lou looked at her and smiled. “Well, you do,” she said.
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“I’m just another mother. Now when exactly is this baby due? You and Butch aren’t the only ones with plans to make. Jim Bob and I have some things we want to do, too.”
That afternoon, Eva Lou’s down-home cooking hit the spot-meat loaf, mashed potatoes, fried okra, and freshly made biscuits, followed by fresh peach pie. As soon as dinner was over, Jenny retreated to the spare bedroom which was her special domain at the Brady household. As Butch, Eva Lou, and Jim Bob sipped their coffee, conversation turned to work.
Before Andy’s death, Jim Bob Brady had always expressed more than a passing interest in whatever cases his son, the deputy sheriff, had been involved in. Now that same curiosity was focused on Joanna’s cases, and she was happy to oblige. She had found that sometimes, in the process of explaining a case to a law enforcement outsider, she was able to gain a new perspective on it herself.
With regard to the Mossman/Ortega/Davis murders, Jim Bob homed in on the ammunition.
“The casings all come with the same stamp?” he asked.
Joanna nodded. “Initial for Springfield, Massachusetts, and ‘seventeen’ for 1917.
So we know where it came from, and obviously it still works. The question is, where has it been all this time?”
Jim Bob frowned. A faraway look came into his eyes. “I wonder,” he said.
“Wonder what?”
“You know what was going on around here in 1917, don’t you?”
“World War One?” Joanna offered tentatively.
Jim Bob shook his head. “No, that was over in Europe. Around here, the big news that year was the Bisbee Deportation.”
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“I remember now,” Joanna said. “Something about union activists being run out of town on a rail.”
“In boxcars, actually,” Jim Bob corrected. ‘A bunch of company-organized vigilantes rousted over a thousand men out of bed at gunpoint, marched them down to the Warren Ballpark, and then loaded them into boxcars that left the men standing for hours ankle-deep in manure. After some back-andforthing, they finally dropped them off in the desert near Columbus, New Mexico, before the U.S. Cavalry finally showed up to take charge of them. Some came back eventually, but others never did.”
“You seem to know a lot about this,” Butch observed.
“Sure thing,” Jim Bob said, nodding sagely. “When I went to work in the mines after the Korean War, the Deportation was still big news around here. Back then, considering whatever company you were keeping, if you came down on the wrong side of the Deportation, you were likely to get your ass kicked.”
“Jim Bob,” Eva Lou admonished, “watch your language. Jenny might hear.”
Joanna could picture Jenny lying on the floor, with her eyes closed and the earphones to her Walkman clapped to her ears.
There’s a good chance the language on the CD is a lot worse than that, Joanna thought.
Joanna had heard pieces of the story all her life. Butch, hearing about the Bisbee Deportation for the first time, listened with avid interest. “So if the vigilantes were company men …”
“Deputized by Sheriff Wheeler,” Jim Bob interjected.
“… who were the deportees?”
“Where’s that book of mine?” Jim Bob asked. “Bisbee Seventeen, it’s called. That tells the whole thing.”