Rather than go directly to the convention center and into the glaring lights of the waiting cameras, Joanna delayed her entrance by crossing the street and approaching the building with the wary attention of a battle-weary scout reconnoitering enemy territory. Stopping in the park, she gazed at the pale green building that appeared a ghostly gray in the evening light.
And truly, the convention center was a ghost. The structure that now functioned as the Bisbee Convention Center had once housed Phelps Dodge Mercantile branch of the company store in the days before most of the jobs in the domestic copper-mining industry literally went south-to Mexico and South America.
In their heyday, P.D. stores in a dozen separate mining communities had been true department stores-places where, by signing a chit, company employees could purchase everything from groceries to furniture, from washing machines to ladies fine millinery, and have the cost automatically deducted from future paychecks.
Joanna didn’t actually remember shopping in this particular store, although she must have accompanied her mother there on occasion when she was little. She did have a dim, lingering recollection of being lost on a store elevator once, of searching frantically for her mother, and of being found much later among the glass-walled showcases. Eleanor had been furious with Joanna for wandering away on her own. In the very best of times, Bisbee had boasted a grand total of only three elevators, so the chances were good that Joanna’s vaguely remembered incident had actually occurred in the uptown P.D. store, especially since that had been Eleanor’s favorite place to shop. Before the relatively upscale P.D. closed for good, Eleanor Lathrop wouldn’t have been caught dead shopping at a J.C. Penney.
Since the store had been closed now for twenty some years, Joanna’s knowledge of the building’s faded merchandizing glory came to her primarily secondhand, through her mother’s steady harping back to the once-glorious good old days. Back then the P.D. store in Bisbee had been the place to shop.
In its heyday the store had offered so much, much more than its withered successor humdrum, lowly grocery store that still clung stubbornly to life a few miles away in the Warren business district.
With modest renovation, the building’s interior main floor had been redesigned into a meeting hall configuration. The Bisbee Convention Center hosted each year’s flurry of summer high-school reunions as well as other events. An echo of the store’s retailing glory remained in the thin inner shell of shops that lined the edge of the marbled main floor. There, enterprising merchants hawked turquoise jewelry, curios, and knickknacks to any stray tourists who happened to wander inside. A modestly upscale restaurant occupied one corner of the building and usually catered whatever required catering.
Joanna Brady knew almost all those individual merchants on a first-name basis and had played on the tennis team with the woman who owned and operated the restaurant. All things considered, the Bisbee Convention Center should not have been a scary place for her, yet tonight it was. Impossibly so. Standing outside in the cold, watching others arrive and hurry inside, was far preferable to going inside herself.
“I see you’re not all that eager to go inside, there,” a familiar male voice teased from behind her.
Joanna turned to greet Frank Montoya, the Will cox city marshal, who was one of her two opponents in the race for sheriff. During a series of joint-candidate appearances in front of local civic groups, Joanna had come to like Frank-a tall, scrawny, crew-cut Mexican-American of thirty five. Frank’s ready wit and screwball sense of humor camouflaged real dedication to his work and a serious sense of purpose.
Frank Montoya was the son of once-migrant farmworkers who had, years before, settled in Wilcox on a permanent basis. He came to law enforcement through a hitch in the army as an MP and with an associate of arts degree in police science from Cochise College. In an area of the country where Mexican-Americans were still often deemed second-class citizens, voters in Wilcox had surprised themselves and Frank, too, by electing him to serve as city marshal while he continued to commute back and forth to the university in Tucson to earn his B.A. in law enforcement.
“Hi, Frank,” Joanna returned lightly. “You’re right. I’m not looking forward to it. I’d much rather have a root canal.”
“Me, too,” Montoya agreed with a laugh. “The Big Guy showed up a few minutes ago. I watched him go inside. He was in seventh heaven with a television camera following his every move and with two microphones stuck in his face. It makes it easier for him to talk out of both sides of his mouth.”
Joanna couldn’t help laughing.
Al Freeman, the heavyset former chief of police in Sierra Vista, was the third candidate in the three way race for sheriff. In campaign appearances and brochures, Freeman had self-importantly characterized himself as the “only law-enforcement professional” running for the office of sheriff. That tactic had effectively thrown Joanna and Frank Montoya together in an uneasy alliance, which, to their mutual wonder, had blossomed into an un likely friendship.
With a lessening of tension, Joanna grinned back at Frank. “I don’t know what’s been worse, limping around with doorbelling blisters on both feet or having to sit through Al Freeman’s endless red neck-and-proud-of-it speeches.”
“No question in my book,” Frank Montoya said, “Al Freeman’s speeches win that contest hands down.”
They both laughed then, in unison. Frank held out his hand and smiled. “So may the best token win, Joanna,” he said solemnly. “I hope to hell one of us beats the pants off that loudmouthed bastard.” They shook hands. “By the way,” Frank added, “I like the haircut. Your mother’s doing?”
“How did you know?”
“Take one guess,” Frank said, running one hand over his own freshly trimmed hair. “Joanna, our mothers may be from opposite sides of the
THE USUALLY mild-mannered and easygoing Linda Kimball was on a tear. The Election Night bash in Bisbee’s new convention center, a bipartisan effort where political enemies buried the hatchet and socialized, was also the primary fund-raiser for a prominent local arts group called the Bisbee Betterment Society.
As one of the movers and shakers behind the annual event, Linda was required to play hostess.
Armed with a glass of plain fruit punch and an ironclad smile, she was doing her duty, but she was also looking for her husband. With some real fire in her eyes.
Three hours after he should have been home and two hours after they were due at the convention center, Burton still hadn’t showed up or even called. Normally, that wouldn’t have bothered her.
Linda understood that the unexpected often happened in Burton’s work life, especially the day be fore he was due in court with an important case.
And if he had been working, she wouldn’t have minded or said a word. After all, Burton’s job was what made their comfortable lifestyle possible.
They lived a far more affluent existence than Linda had ever dreamed possible growing up in Cotton wood as the daughter of a school-cafeteria worker and a none-too-successful used-car salesman.
Burtie’s tardiness had nothing to do with work.
That was the problem. Linda already knew from several different sources that it had more to do with booze than the practice of law. Word had come back to Linda that Burton had spent a good part of the afternoon in the Blue Moon Saloon up Brewery Gulch. Of all places! If Burtie was going to go drinking, couldn’t he at least do it someplace a little more respectable?