If it is to be, it is up to me, Joanna thought with grim humor as she drove north through much lighter traffic. It would give her one more opportunity to live up to her mother’s worst expectations.
She made it back to Peoria in twenty minutes, which seemed like record time. When she came to the turnoff that would have taken her home to the APOA campus, she kept right on going across the railroad tracks and right on Grand, returning once more to the Roundhouse Bar and Grill. Instead of going back to the dorm and her reading assignment, she was going back to see Butch Dixon, her one and only slender lead in this oddball investigation. Even Joanna was forced to acknowledge the irony. She would be enlisting the bartender in a possibly ill-fated and harebrained crusade to save someone who wasn’t the least bit interested in being saved. Who was, in fact, dead set against it.
By ten o’clock, Monday Night Football was over. With only local news on TV, the bar was nearly deserted when she stepped inside. Butch waved to her as she threaded her way across the floor through a scatter of empty tables. There was only one other customer seated at the bar. Even though she could have taken any one of a number of empty seats, she made directly for the same spot she had abandoned several hours earlier.
“The usual?” Butch Dixon asked with a pleasant grin as she hoisted herself up onto the stool. Joanna nodded. Moments later, he set a Diet Pepsi on the counter in front of her. While she took a tentative sip from her drink, he began diligently polishing the nearby surface of the bar even though it didn’t look particularly in need of polishing.
“I suppose you get asked this question all time,” he said.
“What question?”
“What’s a nice girl like you doing in this line of work? I mean, how come you’re sheriff?”
“The usual way,” she answered. “I got elected.”
“I figured that out, but what did you do before the election? Is being a cop something you always wanted to be, or is it like me and bartending? I sort of fell into it by accident, but it turns out it’s something I’m pretty good at.”
Joanna considered before she answered. Butch must be one of the few people in Arizona who had somehow missed the media blitz about Andy’s death and about his widow being the first-ever elected female sheriff in the state. If he had seen some of the news reports or read the newspaper articles, he had long since forgotten. It was all far enough in the past that for him there was no connection between those events back in September, and Joanna’s name and title on the business card she had given him.
So what should she do? Tell Butch Dixon the painful story about what had happened to Andy? Or should she just gloss over it? After a moment’s hesitation, she decided on the latter. If she was going to try to enlist Butch Dixon’s help, it would be tier to approach him as a professional rather than play on his sympathies as some kind of damsel in stress.
“Fell into it by accident, I’d say,” she replied. “I used to sell insurance.”
“And what are you doing over at the academy, teaching classes?”
“I wish,” she answered. “No, I’m taking them. I’m there as a student, not as an instructor.”
When Butch stopped polishing the counter, his towel was only inches from Joanna’s hand. For a moment he seemed to be staring at it. Then he looked up at her face. “What does your husband do?”
Joanna’s gaze had followed his to where the diamond on her engagement ring reflected back one of the lights over the bar. No matter how hard she tied, there didn’t seem to be any way to avoid telling this inquisitive man about Andy.
“He’s dead,” Joanna said at last, feeling both relieved that she had told him and surprised by how easy it was right then to say the words that placed Andrew Roy Brady’s life and death totally in the past tense.
“Andy was a police officer,” she added. “He died in the line of duty.” She told the story briefly mild dispassionately, without giving way to tears.
Hearing what had happened, Butch Dixon was instantly contrite. “I’m sorry,” he apologized. “I didn’t mean to pry. It’s just that—”
Joanna held her hand up. “I know. The rings. I suppose I ought to take them off and put them away, but I’m not ready to do that yet. I’m used to wearing them. I may not be married anymore, but I still feel married.”
Butch nodded. “When did it happen?” he asked.
“Two months ago, back in the middle of September.”
“So it wasn’t all that long ago. Do you have kids?”
Joanna nodded. “Only one, a girl. Her name Jennifer. Jenny. She’s nine.”
“That’s got to be tough.”
“It’s no picnic.”
“Who’s taking care of her while you’re here going to school?”
“Her grandparents. My in-laws. They’re from Bisbee, too. They’re staying out at the ranch and looking after things while I’m away.”
“Ranch?” Butch asked.
Joanna laughed. “Not a big ranch. A little one. It’s only forty acres, but it does have a name. The High Lonesome. It’s been in Andy’s family for years. Right now it belongs to me, but it’ll belong to Jenny someday.”
“Hey, Butch, my margarita’s long gone. I know the broad’s good-looking, but how about paying a little attention to this part of the bar?”
A look of annoyance washed over Butch Dixon face as he turned toward the complaining customer. “Keep your shirt on, Mike,” he growled. “And keep a civil damn tongue in your mouth or go on down the road.”
Joanna watched as Butch mixed Mike’s drink. It was difficult to estimate how old he was. He looked forty but that could have been the lack of hair. He was probably somewhat younger than that. Butch wasn’t particularly tall—only about five ten or so but what there was of him was powerfully and compactly built. As soon as he dropped off the margarita and rang the sale into the cash register, Butch came back to where Joanna was sitting. Resting his forearms on the counter, he leaned in front of her.
“Sorry about that,” he said. “Mike’s one of those guys who gets a little out of line on occasion.”
“Compared to some of the things I’ve been called lately, broad’s not all that bad,” Joanna reassured him with a smile. “And I can see why you make a good bartender. You’re very easy to talk to.”
Butch didn’t seem entirely comfortable with the compliment. In reply he picked up her empty glass. “Want another?”
“No. Too much caffeine. When I go home to bed, I’m going to need to sleep. But I did want to discuss something with you. I’m just now on my way home from the Maricopa County Jail. I went down there talk to Jorge Grijalva.”
“Really? Did you manage to talk him out of that plea bargain crap?”
“No. He’s still hell-bent for election to go through with it. Even so, talking to him has convinced me that you may be right. Some of the things he said made me think maybe he didn’t kill her after all.”
“What are you going to do, go to the cops?”
Joanna shook her head. “I am a cop, remember?” he said. “But since this happened in Peoria PD’s jurisdiction, I wouldn’t be able to do anything bout it, not officially. And even if I tried, that case is closed as far as homicide cops are concerned cause they’ve already turned it over to the prosecutor.”
“What’s the point, then?”
“The point is I’m going to do a little nosing around on my own. Unofficial nosing around. Do you still have my card?”
Butch reached into his shirt pocket and pulled out Joanna’s business card. She jotted a number on the back and returned it to him. “That’s the number of my room over at the academy. There’s no answering machine, so either you’ll get me or you won’t. You won’t be able to leave a message.”