“All I can say is good work, Frank. That was an ingenious solution to a tough problem.”
Frank laughed. “That’s what you hired me for, isn’t it?”
“I guess it is.”
Just as Joanna was signing off, the door to the student lounge popped open, and Leann Jessup walked inside carrying a video. “There you are,” she said. “There wasn’t any answer in your room, but your Blazer was still in the parking lot so I figured I’d find you here somewhere. My morn just dropped off her tape of the news from last night. She says we’re both on it. She dropped it by in hopes your family could get a look at it over the weekend because she’d really like to have it back in time to take it to work next week.”
“That shouldn’t be a problem,” Joanna said. “We’re booked into the Hohokam on a special holiday package that offers kids under sixteen the use of two free videos a day during their stay. That must mean there are VCRs available. If push come to shove, we could always come back here and ask Dave Thompson to let us use the one in his classroom.”
“Fat chance of that.” Leann laughed. She sobered a moment later. “How soon does your company show up?” she asked.
“Not until eight or later. They can’t even leave Bisbee until after Jenny gets out of school. It’s a four-hour drive.”
“How about some lunch, then?” Leann suggested. “I’m hungry.”
“So am I, now that you mention it,” Joanna said. “What do you want to eat?”
“I wish I knew somewhere around here to get a decent hamburger,” Leann moaned.
Joanna laughed. “Boy, do I have a deal for you,” she said. “Come with me.”
By then Joanna wasn’t particularly worried about going back to the Roundhouse Bar and Grill with Leann Jessup in tow. Of all the people Joanna knew, Leann was the one most likely to be sympathetic and understanding of Joanna’s more than passing interest in a case that was, on the face of it, none of her business. Besides, what were the odds that they would actually encounter Butch Dixon? Since he was evidently the nighttime bartender, he
probably wouldn’t be anywhere near his nighttime place of employment at one o’clock in the afternoon.
At least that was Joanna’s line of reasoning as she and Leann Jessup walked out to the Blazer and then drove north to Old Peoria. She was wrong, of course. Butch Dixon was the first person she saw once her eyes adjusted to the dimness of the darkened room. He was hunkered over the bar, eating a sandwich. A yellow legal pad with a pen on top of it lay beside an almost empty plate.
“Why if it isn’t the sheriff of Cochise, star of News at Ten.” He grinned in greeting when he saw Joanna. “And this must be your sidekick. You both looked great on TV.”
“You saw us?” Leann asked.
“That’s right. So what will Madam Sheriff have today, the regular?”
Joanna smiled as she sat down next to him. “You make me sound like a real barfly.”
“Aren’t you?” he returned. “Is your friend here a heavy drinker, same as you?”
Leann glanced questioningly in Joanna’s direction. “Not at one o’clock in the afternoon,” she protested. “I’ll have a Coke.”
“Pepsi’s all we have. Diet or regular?”
“Diet.”
“Hey, Phil,” Butch Dixon called to a bartender who was only then emerging from the door that evidently led to the kitchen. “How about bringing a pair of Diet Pepsis for the ladies.” He focused once more on Joanna. “You looked fine on the tube but I think you’re a lot better looking in person,’
She laughed. “Flattery will get you nowhere,” she said.
“Rats,” he returned.
Joanna laughed again. “Besides, not everybody liked our performances nearly as much as you did. Dave Thompson, the morning lecturer, climbed all over us about it this morning.”
“That’s right,” Leann put in on her own. “He seems to think he’s running a convent instead of a police academy. He wants his students to live cloistered lives with no outside distractions.”
“That would be a genuine shame.” Butch Dixon grinned, looking at Joanna as he spoke. “Not only is this lady good-looking, she’s a real mind reader, too. I was just about to finish my opus here and was wondering how to get it to her. The next thing know, she shows up on my doorstep.”
“This is Butch Dixon,” Joanna explained to Leann Jessup. “I asked him to write me a brief summary of what he could remember from the night Serena Grijalva died. Mr. Dixon here was one of the last people to see her alive.”
“When you say it that way, you make me sound like a prime suspect,” Butch Dixon returned darkly. “I hope I’ve remembered all the important stuff, although I don’t see what good it’s going to do. I gave the exact same information to that first homicide detective when she came around asking questions right after it happened. As far as I can tell, it didn’t make a bit of difference.”
“You didn’t tell me you were conducting your own independent investigation,” Leann said accusingly Joanna.
Joanna shrugged and tried to laugh it off. “I can’t afford to advertise it, now can I? And God knows I shouldn’t be doing it, especially since there’s more than enough going on in my own little bailiwick. One case in particular could be called the Case of the Missing Cook.”
“Are we talking about a real cook?” Leann asked. “It sounds like one of those Agatha Christie pries.”
“That’s ‘The Adventure of the Clapham Cook,’ “ Butch Dixon said in a casual aside without bothering to look up from his pen and paper.
“You read Agatha Christie?” Joanna asked.
“Among other things,” he replied.
“I’m talking about the jail cook, down in Bisbee,” Joanna continued, turning back to Leann. “He quit sometime between dinner last night and breakfast this morning. He took off without giving notice and without making any arrangements for breakfast this morning, either. Not only that, he stole all the Thanksgiving turkeys in the process.”
“I’ve been stung like that a time or two,” Butch Dixon put in sympathetically. “Fly-by-night cooks. Don’t you just hate it when that happens? It sounds to me like being a sheriff is almost as bad as running a bar and restaurant. What are you going to do about it?”
Phil arrived with the drinks. After Joanna and Leann gave him their lunch order, Joanna went on to explain about the Ruby Starr/Burton Kimball solution to the Cochise County Jail Thanksgiving dinner dilemma.
“Isn’t the term ‘undeserving poor’ from My Fair Lady?” Butch asked. “I think that’s what Liza Doolittle’s father calls himself.”
Joanna and Jenny sometimes watched tapes of musicals on the VCR. Since My Fair Lady was one of Jenny’s all-time favorites—right after The Sound of Music—Joanna knew most of the dialogue verbatim. Undeserving was exactly what Liza’s father had called himself.
Joanna looked at Butch Dixon with some surprise. Most of the men around Bisbee—Andy Brady included—didn’t sit around dropping either Agatha Christie titles or lines from plays into casual conversation, especially not lines from musicals,
“Agatha Christie? Lerner and Lowe? That’s pretty literary for a bartender, isn’t it? My mother always claimed that you guys were only marginally civilized.”
Dixon grinned. “Mine told me exactly the same thing. No wonder I’m such a disappointment to her.”
Once again Joanna returned to her story. “The upshot of all this is that one of the jail inmates—a lady who allegedly took after her husband wit sledgehammer on Monday—is currently serving as interim cook in the Cochise County Jail. Just wait until the media gets wind of that. There’s one particular local reporter, a lady of the press, who’ll have a heyday with it.”