“Butch,” Joanna said. “I have no idea what you mean.”
“You don’t remember my telling you about Mount Rushmore?”
“Not at all. Are you sure you’re not making this up?”
“It was after we went to bed last night. I told you how there was only one picture in the whole book that got Junior all excited, and that was the one of Mount Rushmore. When Jenny asked him if that’s where he lived, he nodded his head up and down and said, ‘Home. Home. Home.’ He was so excited, I was afraid he was going to pee his pants again. Yesterday it was Junior and his sheriff’s badge. Today it was Junior and his book. Whenever anyone came near him, he’d open the book to the Mount Rushmore page and make them look at it.”
“You told me all this last night?”
“Yes, and you said you’d call South Dakota today to see if anyone there has reported him missing.”
Joanna shook her head. “Sorry, Butch, but I don’t remember any of that. I must have dozed off and been talking in my sleep. Which also means that I didn’t do a thing about it today. But I will tomorrow. I promise.”
They drove back to Bisbee. Moe and Daisy Maxwell lived on Quality Hill uptown in Old Bisbee. When Junior came out to the car, he was wearing his badge and carrying his book, one well-worn page of which he insisted on showing to Joanna. “Home,” he announced proudly with one of his wide grins. “Home. Mine.”
“Pretty convincing, wouldn’t you say?” Butch asked. “Definitely convincing. Daisy Maxwell is one smart woman.”
Behind her, Junior tapped on her shoulder. “Daisy,” he said. “Me like.”
“Yes, junior,” Joanna agreed. “I like her, too.”
Driving around the abandoned black hole that was Lavender Pit Mine, Joanna had a thought. “What time is it?” she asked.
“Nine-thirty. Why?”
“Would you mind making a stop along the way?”
“What kind of a stop?” Butch asked.
“I think we should go by the house and show George and Eleanor the ring.”
“What a good idea,” Butch said. “That might go a long way toward getting us both out of the doghouse with her. But what do we do with Junior?”
“Take him along in and introduce him,” Joanna said. “That’ll give Mother something else to talk about the next time she runs into Marliss Shackleford.”
Minutes later, they pulled up in front of the house on Campbell Avenue that had been Joanna’s home when she was a girl. The porch light was on. A purple glow behind the living room windows showed that the television set was on.
“Joanna!” Eleanor Winfield said when she opened the door. “What are you doing here?”
“Now that I have a ring, I thought you’d want to be among the first to see it.”
Joanna held out her hand. Taking it, Eleanor pulled her daughter into the living room and switched on the overhead light. “George,” she called over her shoulder. “You have to come look at this. Frederick has given Joanna a ring.”
As usual, Eleanor’s insistence on using Butch’s given name irked Joanna. Eleanor was of the opinion that the name “Butch” wasn’t nearly a dignified enough name for a grown man.
“It’s beautiful,” Eleanor was saying, “although it does look a little like the one Andy gave you. It isn’t, of course.”
“Of course not,” Joanna agreed, and let it go at that.
Butch and Junior stepped inside long enough for Butch to be congratulated and for Junior to be introduced; then they climbed back into the car and drove out to high Lonesome Ranch. “We can come in for a while,” Butch offered hopefully,
Joanna looked in the backseat, where Junior was nodding off. “No,” she said. “Your charge looks pretty worn out. You’d better get him home and to bed.”
Butch shrugged. “You can’t blame a guy for asking,” he said.
He waited outside in the Subaru until Joanna had unlocked the door and taken the dogs into the house. As the car drove away, Joanna was touched by a feeling of being alone but not necessarily of being lonely. It was a sign that slowly, over lime, she was getting better, and that knowledge made her almost giddy. She wanted to call people and tell them what had happened-that she was in love and engaged-but it was too late. It was also too late to return the phone calls of the people who had called her office during the day. She went out to the kitchen, thinking she’d squander some of her excess energy on cleaning up the mess out there. Only the kitchen was spotless. The dishwasher had already been loaded and run. That was the way Butch always left any kitchen-clean and ready to use.
Looking for something to do and hoping for an occupation that would calm her down and help her sleep, Joanna pulled open the briefcase she had brought home the day before and hadn’t opened since. There, on top, sat MyLife and Times by Alice Rogers.
It worked yesterday, Joanna told herself. She had read one chapter and been out like a light. Maybe it would work the same way now. Undressing, she took the book to bed with her. Skimming, Joanna scanned through the rest of Alice Rogers’ childhood remembrances. Jessie Monroe was right. The book wasn’t written in smoothly flowing prose. Some of the sentences careened dangerously off track without ever coming up with something so simple as a subject and a predicate. Alice’s free-form punctuation also made for tough going.
Joanna’s eyes were growing heavy when she reached the part where the mine supervisor’s headstrong fifteen-year-old daughter met a handsome, fast-talking man-about-town named Calhoun Rogers. The unlikelihood of their pairing was enough that it roused Joanna to attention once more. And then it happened.
When my father could see that Cal and I were determined to get married, he offered Cal a job. I know Daddy could have found Cal a good position with Phelps Dodge. After all, Daddy was the superintendent of the smelter by then. It wouldn’t have been any trouble, but Cal didn’t want to be beholding. He liked being his own boss and doing his own thing, so we said no and went our own way. But sometimes now I wish we hadn’t done that and wonder what would have happened if we had accepted Daddy’s offer. For one thing, we would have had medical insurance and maybe the company doctors would have caught Cal’s diabetes before it got so bad that he had to go and lose his leg. That’s what the doctors said happened. That it went untreated for so long that by the time they figured out what was the matter with him a lot of the damage was already done.
Joanna finished reading that paragraph and went on to the next before she realized what she had read. Diabetes. Wasn’t that hereditary? And if so, who else might be diabetic in the family-diabetic and a user of insulin? Of course, Joanna realized with a jolt of excitement. Calhoun Rogers’ son, Clete.
She remembered the bad spell he had suffered up on Houghton Road after Susan arrived and raised such hell with him. What was it he had said? Something about having medication in his truck. She remembered, too, how concerned he had been that he have food along with him on the drive to Tucson. That had to be it. Cletus Rogers was an insulin-dependent diabetic, and his mother may have been murdered with an overdose of insulin.
Too excited to sleep, Joanna jumped out of bed, threw on a robe, and paced the floor. It was after midnight now-too late to call any of the detectives involved-too late to try contacting Dr. Fran Daly up in Tucson. No, the only thing to do was to go to bed, try to sleep, and go to work on the whole mess first thing in the morning.
Eventually she did go back to bed and to sleep. Long before her alarm sounded the next morning, Joanna’s eyes popped open of their own accord. She was up, dressed, and drinking coffee by the time Clayton Rhodes came to feed the livestock at six. By six-thirty she was on the phone to Fran Daly in Tucson.
“Well,” Fran said, “if we aren’t a pair of early birds worms and all. What’s got you up and going so bright and early?”