Hauling one of her suitcases down from the shelf in the closet, Joanna tossed in two changes of clothing, her nightgown, and a selection of toiletries. She sighed at the size of the next reading assignment and dropped her copy of The Law Enforcement Handbook on top of the heap before she zipped the suitcase. On her way to the parking lot, Joanna stopped by the student lounge long enough to call home and ask Eva Lou to please bring along Jenny’s extra bathing suit just in case Ceci Grijalva wanted to try swimming in the hotel pool.
“She’s the little girl whose mother died, isn’t she?” Eva Lou asked.
“That’s the one.”
“How’s she doing?”
“Medium,” Joanna answered, thinking about the less than friendly Ernestina Duffy and her frail, oxygen-dependent husband. “Not as well as Jenny,” Joanna added. “Unfortunately for her, Ceci Grijalva doesn’t have the same kind of support system Jenny does.”
“Poor little thing,” Eva clucked. “I’ll go hunt down that bathing suit just as soon as I get off the phone.”
For a change there wasn’t anyone else waiting in line to use the phone. Dialing the Sheriff’s Department number, Joanna savored the privacy. Trying to handle both her personal and professional life from an overused pay phone in an audience-crowded room was aggravating at best.
Once again, Kristin was chilly on the telephone, but she was also relatively efficient. “Chief Deputy Voland is out to lunch, and Chief Montoya’s still over in the jail kitchen.”
“What’s he doing over there?” Joanna asked. “Micromanaging the cook?”
“He’s been there all morning,” Kristin answered. “The last I heard he was supervising the crew of inmates who are washing all the walls.”
“Washing walls? Maybe you’d better try connecting me to the jail kitchen,” Joanna said. A few moments later, Frank Montoya came on the line.
“What’s my chief of administration doing was washing walls?” Joanna asked without preamble.
“Putting out fires,” Frank answered, “but I think we’ve got this little crisis pretty well under control.”
“What crisis?” Joanna demanded.
“The cook crisis,” Frank Montoya answered. “I wrote you a memo explaining the whole thing. Didn’t you get it?”
“Not yet. My father-in-law picked up the packet a little while ago, but I won’t get it until later on tonight. What’s going on?”
“As soon as the cook figured out I was on his case, he took off, but before he left, he cleaned out the refrigerator.”
“Good deal,” Joanna said. “He cleaned the refrigerator, and now you’ve got a crew washing the walls. Sounds like the place is getting a thorough and much-needed housecleaning.”
“Not really,” Frank Montoya returned wryly. “When I said cleaned out the refrigerator, I meant as in emptying it rather than making it germ-free. When I came in to work this morning, we almost had a riot on our hands. The cook didn’t show and the inmates were starving. I thought maybe he just overslept, but when I tried calling him, his landlady said he left.”
“Left. You mean he moved out? Quit without giving notice?”
“That’s right. Not only that, when I went home last night, there were a dozen frozen turkeys in the walk-in cooler waiting to be cooked for Thanksgiving dinner tomorrow. Today they’re gone, every last of them.”
“Gone? He took them?” Joanna asked in disbelief. “All of them?”
“That’s right, the turkey. He left town under the dark of night without leaving so much as a forwarding address. Nada.”
This was just the kind of crisis someone like Marliss Shackleford could turn into a major incident. “Somebody should have called me,” Joanna said. “That settles it. I’ll call Eva Lou and tell her not to come up. I can cancel the hotel reservations and be home in just over four hours.”
“No need to do that,” Frank reassured her. “I already told you. It’s pretty well handled.”
“What did you do, cook breakfast yourself?”
“Are you kidding? I don’t have a valid food handler’s permit. Besides, I’m a lousy cook. No, Ruby did the whole thing.”
“Who the hell is Ruby?” Joanna demanded crossly. “Did you already hire another cook?”
Frank paused momentarily before he answered. “Not exactly,” he said.
“What exactly does ‘not exactly’ mean?” Joanna asked.
“Ruby is Ruby Starr. I think I told you about her. She and her husband are the people who leased the Sunset Inn. She’s the one who did the actual cooking.”
“In other words, the lady who took after her husband’s windshield with a sledgehammer and deadly intent is the one who cooked breakfast in my jail this morning?”
“That’s right. When she went before Judge Moore, he set her bail at only five hundred dollars. I think everybody—including Burton Kimball, her lawyer—expected her to get bailed out, but she refused to go. She said if she left on bail that her husband would expect her to go to work and keep the restaurant open while he sits on his tail in his mother’s home over in Silver City. She said she’d rather stay in jail.
“So this morning, when I heard the cook had skipped, I drafted Ruby. Right out of the cell and into the kitchen. Seemed like the only sensible thing to do. Breakfast may have been a few hours late, but it drew rave reviews from the inmates. Great biscuits. After that, I asked Ruby if she’d consider cooking Thanksgiving dinner. She turned me down cold. Said she wouldn’t set foot in that filthy kitchen again until after it got cleaned up. That’s when the most amazing thing happened. Once word got out that their Turkey Day dinner hung in the balance, I had inmates lining up and begging for me to let them help clean and cook.
“Believe me, Ruby Starr’s a hell of a tough taskmaster. She’s been working everybody’s butts off all morning long, mine included.”
“So you’ve got an almost clean kitchen and a cook,” Joanna said. “But you’re missing the fixings.”
“I told you, Joanna, everything is under control.”
“So what’s on the revised menu?”
“Turkey, dressing, and all the trimmings,” Frank answered, sounding enormously pleased with himself.
“Wait a minute,” Joanna objected. “Where are you going to find a dozen unsold, thawed turkeys in Bisbee the day before Thanksgiving, and how are you going to pay for them twice without cutting into next month’s food budget?”
“That’s the slick thing. Ruby’s lawyer is taking care of all that.”
“Burton Kimball?”
“That’s right. He and his wife donated the whole dinner,” Frank answered smugly. “All of it.”
“How come?”
“He says with all the defense work he does, most of the inmates in the jail are clients of his, one way or the other, anyway. He said it was about time he and Linda did something for the undeserving poor for a change. As soon as Burton heard Ruby was willing to cook, he sent Linda to the store to buy up replacement turkeys. They both seemed to be getting a real kick out of it.”
Good-hearted people like Linda and Burton Kimball were part of what made Bisbee a good place to live. Part of what made it home.
“That’s amazing,” Joanna said, “especially considering all they’ve been through in the past few weeks.”
Two weeks earlier, Burton Kimball’s adoptive father and sister had both been killed. He had also been divested of whatever positive memories he might have cherished concerning his own biological father. In the face of that kind of personal tragedy, Burton Kimball’s selfless generosity was all the more remarkable.