“I saw an announcement in the paper this morning saying that the Salvation Army needed volunteers to come help serve their holiday meal. You and Jenny were gone, and I couldn’t see Jim Bob and me just sitting around all day with him doing nothing hut watching football. We decided to go to help out for a little while. Now I’m going to take a little nap and let Jimmy watch one football game before dinner. What are you and Jenny up to?”
Briefly, Joanna brought Eva Lou up to date on what had happened to them. “I’d better get off the phone. Jenny has her suit on, finally. She’s champing at the bit to get in the pool. I’m going to go down and watch her, but I’m taking along that packet of mail you brought me. I’ll use the time to work on my correspondence.”
Once Jenny was happily paddling back and forth in the pool, Joanna emptied the contents of a large manila envelope onto a nearby patio table. The item pled on top of the pile was a second envelope, much smaller than the first. That one, with a Sheriff’s Department return address, was hand-addressed to Joanna. Inside she found a handwritten memo from Frank Montoya detailing the problem with the cook. Nothing to do about that one, she thought as she tossed it aside. As Frank had said, that one was handled.
An hour later, she had plowed through the whole collection. There wasn’t anything particularly exciting. A whole lot about being sheriff wasn’t more interesting than tracking a life insurance application or reading the proposed agenda for the next Board of Supervisors meeting, which was dutifully enclosed. It dawned on Joanna that she had signed up to do the nuts-and-bolts part of the job—the administrative part—as well as the more exciting ones. When she finished reading through the mail and jotting off answers to whatever required a reply, she felt better.
She wasn’t neglecting her duty by leaving home to learn what she needed to know to do the job better. Things at the department were going along just fine without her. She had delegated responsibilities in a way that was getting things done without allowing her absence to undermine her new position.
At ten to three she dredged a protesting Jenny out of the pool. “We need to be back in the room to answer the phone in case Grandma Lathrop calls. Do you want to shower first or should I?”
“You go first,” Jenny said.
Joanna was showered, had her makeup on, and was half through drying her hair when Jenny pushed open the bathroom door to say Joanna had a phone call.
“Who is it?” Joanna asked.
Jenny shrugged. “I dunno,” she said. “Some guy.”
“Hello,” Joanna answered.
“Sheriff Brady?”
The voice sounded vaguely familiar. “Yes,” she said warily.
“My name’s Bob Brundage. I’m down here in the lobby. I was wondering if you’d care to join me for a drink.”
“I’m sorry, Mr. . . . What did you say your name is?”
“Brundage,” he replied.
“I’m not in the habit of meeting strangers for drinks. Besides, I’m expecting company…”
“We have a mutual acquaintance,” Bob Brundage insisted. “I’m sure she’d be very disappointed if we didn’t take advantage of this little window of opportunity to get together.”
“This isn’t about Amway, is it?” Joanna asked.
Bob Brundage laughed so heartily at that question that Joanna found herself laughing as well. “I promise you,” he gasped at last. “This has absolutely nothing to do with Amway or with life insurance or with making a donation to your college alumni building fund, either.”
The clock on the bedside table said 3:30. There was a whole hour between then and the time Adam York was supposed to show up for dinner. If Eleanr called, Jenny would be right there in the room to answer the phone.
“All right,” Joanna agreed finally. “I’ll come down for a few minutes, although I can’t stay long because we’re due in the dining room for dinner at five. How will I know who you are?”
“I’ll recognize you,” he said. “I’ve seen your picture.”
“Who was that?” Jenny asked, as Joanna put down the phone.
“A man. His name is Bob Brundage. He wants me to meet him downstairs in the lobby to have a drink.”
“Are you going to go?”
“Yes, but if Grandma Lathrop calls while I’m gone, tell her that I’m away from the phone and that I’ll call her back just as soon as I can.”
Joanna returned to the bathroom. As she finished drying her hair, she began reconsidering her decision. The call had been vaguely unsettling, especially the part about Bob Brundage knowing so much about her while she knew nothing at all about him. Staring at her reflection in the mirror, Joanna shivered, remembering the bathroom of her dormitory room on campus, the one with the two-way mirrors. Carol Strong’s assumption was that Dave Thompson was most likely the only person who had availed himself of those two-way mirrors to spy on the female inhabitants of the dormitory’s lower-floor rooms.
But standing in the brightly lit bathroom of her room at the Hohokam, Joanna wondered about that. Dave Thompson might have shared the wealth with someone else—maybe even with several people. Some of the other instructors, perhaps, or maybe even some of Joanna’s fellow students. As the thought of a whole group of peeping toms crossed her mind, Joanna’s cheeks burned with indignation.
Who was to say Dave Thompson would limit invitees to people involved with the APOA? For all Joanna knew, he might have dragged people in of the street and charged admission. In fact, what if Bob Brundage turned out to be as much of a p as Dave Thompson was? Brundage claimed he had seen Joanna’s picture, but that might not true. What if he had actually seen her stark-naked in the presumed privacy of her own bathroom? That would explain his knowing her without her knowing him. And what if he was dangerous as well? There was no reason to assume that Dave Thompson had acted alone in the attack on Leann Jessup. If Bob Brundage turned out to be Dave Thorn partner in crime .. .
There was only one answer to all those questions and it came straight out of The Girl Scout Handbook: be prepared.
Joanna emerged from the bathroom wearing only her underwear and found Jenny totally engrossed in watching Beauty and the Beast. Taking advantage of the video diversion, Joanna dressed quickly and carefully, concealing from Jenny the Kevlar vest she put on under her best white blouse and the shoulder-holstered Colt 2000 she strapped on under her new boiled-wool blazer.
Downstairs, the lobby outside the elevator was crowded with a combination of hotel guests and holiday diners. Efforts to market the Hohokam’s Thanksgiving dinner had evidently been wildly successful. Formal seatings in the Gila Dining Room started as early as one o’clock in the afternoon.
Coming through the lobby, Joanna had planned on stopping by the dining room to let someone know Brady party with reservations at five would be reduced from eight diners to seven. After glancing at the crowded dining room door and at the harried hostess trying to seat parties, Joanna decided against it.
Instead, threading her way through the crush of people, she headed for the lobby cocktail bar. On the way, she walked past the gas-log fireplace where she had sat for such a long time the previous evening. Was that only yesterday? she wondered. It seemed much longer ago than that.
“Joanna,” a man’s voice called. “Over here.”
Without the subtle distortions of the telephone, Bob Brundage’s voice stopped her cold. The timbre was so familiar, she hardly dared turn her head to look. At the far end of the massive fireplace, a man in a military uniform rose from one of a pair of wing chairs and gestured for her to join him. Unable to move, Joanna stood as if frozen in middle of the room.
D. H. “Big Hank” Lathrop himself could have been standing there. Her father was standing there. And yet he wasn’t. He couldn’t be. Big Hank been dead for years. Besides, this man was younger than Joanna’s father had been when he died. But the resemblance was eerie. It was as though the ghost of her father had stepped out of one of those old black-and-white photos and turned into a living, breathing human being.