When the motion-detector yard light came on, Butch and the two dogs materialized all at once from the relative shadow of the front porch. The dogs gamboled and Butch sauntered toward the Blazer to meet her. Joanna climbed out of the truck, slamming the door behind her.
"Long day," Butch observed. "It's about time you got home." He grinned so she would know he was just kidding.
Temper, temper, Joanna warned herself. She wanted to be glad to see him. Maybe she was glad to see him, but she was too tired, too depleted. Joanna Brady was a foot soldier in the war against good and evil, and evil was definitely winning.
"What are you doing here?" she asked.
Standing with hands in his pockets and managing to look both foolish and contrite at the same time, Butch shrugged. "When Kristin called, I had already made up my mind what we were having for dinner. Or supper. Which do you call it?"
"Dinner."
"Well, dinner, then. So I thought, why not go ahead and bring it on out here and wait for you? I used the dog-turd key-that turd is very realistic, by the way-and let myself in. I hope you don't mind."
"Mind?" Joanna returned. "Why should I mind?"
"But you look worn out," he said. "And from what I heard on the radio, I can understand why. This is probably a bad idea. Tell you what, I'll just go straighten the kitchen back up, wrap up the bread, and then I'll go."
Joanna was torn. She wanted Butch to leave, to go away and leave her alone. Unaccountably, she also wanted him to slay. "You mean dinner's already on the table?"
“Pretty much. It's no big deal. It's the kind of supper my mother used to make on hot summer nights back in Chicago-chef's salad, some fresh-baked bread…”
"You baked bread?"
"Actually, I cheated. I bought one of those ready-to-bake loaves from the store. I have my own bread machine, but it's locked up in the storage unit at the moment. Still, you can't beat the smell of fresh-baked bread to make a person feel all's right with the world."
They had been walking as they talked. When Joanna opened the back door, the two dogs darted inside. She followed, drawn forward by the magical scent of newly baked bread. As her mouth began watering, it suddenly occurred to her that at almost eight-thirty at night, maybe she was more hungry than she was tired.
"It smells wonderful," she said. "Don't go."
"Really?" Butch asked.
"Really. Just give me a chance to clean up and change." Stripping off her blazer, she left it on the dryer. Then she walked into the kitchen, removing her underarm shoulder holster with her Colt 2000 as well as the small-of-back holster that held her Glock 19. She loaded both weapons into the deep bread drawer beneath the kitchen counter and then dug her cell phone out of her purse.
As she plugged the phone into the battery recharger on the kitchen counter, she realized Butch was watching her-watching and frowning. "What's wrong?" she asked.
"That's where you keep all that stuff, right there in the kitchen? Shouldn't the guns be locked up in a cabinet or something?"
"Andy always used to lock up his gun when he came home from work, but Jenny was a lot younger then. Jenny and I talked about it a few months back. She knows enough to leave the guns alone, and when we're rushing around here to leave in the morning, it's a lot more convenient for me to finish cleaning up the kitchen and then grab them on my way out the door."
"Oh." That was all Butch said, but it seemed to Joanna that she noted a trace of disapproval in the way he said it. That got her back up. What right does he have to come barging into the house, uninvited, and start criticizing the way jenny and I live together? She was about to say something about it when she looked through the kitchen doorway and caught sight of the dining room table. It was set with good dishes, cloth napkins, champagne glasses, and an ice bucket with a chilled bottle of champagne.
"The idea was to celebrate buying my house," he said apologetically. "The current owner gave me permission to go there and have a picnic supper on the front porch. Since there's no furniture inside, it had to be an outside paperplates-and-plastic-forks kind of affair. Once I got here, though, and had real dishes and glassware to work with, it turned into something more elaborate. Would you like me to pour you a glass of champagne?"
Butch stopped talking abruptly, like a windup toy whose spring had come unwound. Joanna had been ready to nail him for what she regarded as uncalled-for interference, but her momentary anger dissolved in the face of his sudden stricken silence.
Why, he's nervous, Joanna realized. He's almost as nervous and unsure of himself as I am.
"No champagne until after I shower," she told him.
A few minutes later, standing under a soothing stream of hot, steamy water, Joanna felt the awful events of the day slowly drain out of her body. In her mind's eye she kept replaying that little scene in the kitchen and Butch's unspoken disapproval as she the guns away in thelie drawer. Initially the incident had made her cross, but in retrospect it opened a window onto a whole series of bittersweet memories.
The day Jenny was born, a little girl from Douglas-a two-year-old toddler-had died as a result of playing with her father's loaded pistol. While Joanna had been in the early stages of labor at the Copper Queen Hospital in Bisbee, Andy had been down in Douglas at the Cochise County Hospital, taking a report from the bereaved parents. That little girl's death had made a profound impression on Andrew Roy Brady, new father and rookie cop. From then on, whenever possible, he had left his.357 closed up in his locker at work. The.38 Chief, his backup weapon, he had kept in a locked drawer of the rolltop desk in the bedroom.
Only now, long after the fact, did Joanna realize how conscientious Andy had been about that. He had never once complained about the day-to-day inconvenience. He had simply done it. It struck Joanna that, in that regard, Butch and Andy weren't so very different.
Stepping out of the shower, she toweled her hair dry and applied a few strokes of makeup. Then, wearing a comfortable short-sleeved blouse and a pair of shorts, she emerged from the bathroom and headed straight for the kitchen, where she retrieved the two guns from the drawer and started back toward the bedroom.
"You're right," she said in answer to Butch's raised eyebrow and unasked question as she hurried past. "You and Andy are both right on this one, and I'm wrong. Even though Jenny and I talked this over, I should have been keeping the guns locked up all along."
Butch followed her as far as the bedroom door. "Look," he said, "I didn't mean to sound like I was telling you what to do…"
"It's okay," she said. "When you're right, you're right. Now, didn't somebody say something about champagne?"
"Coming right up," he said. "Do you want to sip it first, or would you rather eat?"
"Eat, I think," she told him. "Until I smelled that freshly baked bread, I didn't have any idea how hungry I was."
In the dining room, the candles were lit. Butch held out the chair for Joanna to be seated. He poured a glass of the sparkly golden liquid and handed it to her, then poured one for himself.
"To your new house," Joanna said, smiling and lifting her glass to his.
"Yes," he responded. "To my new house"
There was a momentary silence; then they started talking at once. Butch said, "I hope you like-"
And Joanna said, "I'm sorry I-"
They both dissolved into nervous laughter. "All right, now," Butch said. "One at a time. I hope you like chef's salad."
"I love chef's salad," Joanna replied. "And I'm sorry I didn't get to see your house today. Maybe tomorrow."
"Given what's been going on around here, I won't hold my breath," he said. "It's been real bad for you, hasn't it?" He handed her a basket filled with thick slices of the freshly baked bread. She took one slice-still slightly warm to the touch-and slathered it with butter, nodding as she did so.