“Congrats, Joanna,” he enthused. “Welcome aboard and all that shit. Excuse me, all that crap. What can I do for you?”
“I was calling for some information about that hit-and-run incident last night.”
“Ask away. We’ve got letters of mutual aid out the kazoo. What do you need?”
“Can you tell me what’s happening on that case?”
“Sure thing. My guys talked to Holly Patterson’s sleazebag lawyer. He says it’s nothing. That her foot slipped on the accelerator or some such thing, and that by the time Holly had the car back under control, she was too upset to come back.”
“Right.”
“That’s what I say. But we picked up another angle on it from someone else. One of my officers’ aunts, Isabel Gonzales, and her husband work at Cosa Viejo. She’s the cook, and he’s the gardener, for the new owner.
“Isabel told her sister that Holly Patterson has really been going downhill ever since she got back home. Sounds almost like a rerun of what happened to her mother. From what I’ve been able to pick up, Burton expected Harold Patterson to offer Holly some kind of settlement yesterday. Harold stopped by to see her, but when they couldn’t come to terms, Holly went ballistic. She blames her cousin, Burton Kimball, for talking her father out of settling.”
“What does Burton say?”
“He flat out denies it. He says he tried to talk Harold out of it but that he didn’t get to first base. He did succeed in talking old Judge Moore into granting a continuance when Harold didn’t show up in court this morning. I guess the out-of-town lawyer was screaming like a scalded Indian.”
Joanna thought about all that for a minute. “I’ll bet he was. So one person says Harold was going to settle, the other says he wasn’t. Who’s right? What do you think is going on?”
“Well,” Alvin Bernard replied cheerfully, “I’d have to say somebody’s lying through his teeth. It’s just too damned soon to tell which is which. But then, that’s what you and I get paid for, isn’t it-to find out who’s lying?”
“Yes,” Joanna Brady answered. “I suppose it is.”
Joanna Expected to toss and turn after those two disquieting phone calls. Instead, she fell asleep the moment her head hit the pillow; her eyes closed, and she fell into a heavy, dreamless sleep. Toward morning, though, she drifted into a dream-an un usually happy one at first, a dream about the old days, about when Andy was still alive.
Joanna and Jenny were sitting in the back of a moving pickup. Jenny was holding an old wicker picnic basket, and the two of them were laughing and singing songs at the top of their lungs.
They were driving down a bumpy dirt road. It took some time before Joanna realized they were in Hank Lathrop’s old Chevrolet pickup the terrible old half-ton truck her father had promised would be Joanna’s someday when she had her license, the truck her mother had sold to a farmer from out in the Sulphur Springs Valley the week after Hank’s funeral.
The time frame of the dream was disjointed and confusing. Details were disturbingly out of synch.
There were two dogs riding along in the pickup, but not Liz and Pearl, Hank Lathrop’s two old black-and-tans, but Joanna’s present-day Sadie and Tigger.
Eventually, Joanna turned around to look in the cab and see who was driving. She was startled to find that the driver was none other than Hank Lathrop himself, while Andrew Brady rode shot gun in the passenger seat. The two of them were talking and laughing, enjoying some private joke.
Like the time-warped dogs, that part of the dream could never have happened in real life, there. D. H. Lathrop might have known Andy Brady as a child by name or reputation, but certainly not as Joanna’s future husband-as Hank Lathrop’s future son-in-law. By the time Andy came home from the service and he and Joanna became a hot item, Joanna’s father was already dead.
But this was a dream. In the dreamscape, those things were possible, and both men were together.
And the Joanna Lathrop Brady who was riding in the back of that silver Cheyenne was overjoyed to see them. She tapped on the window, wanting to catch their attention. Since there was plenty of room in the front, she wanted to ride up there with them, to join in the stories and jokes, but they were too busy laughing and having a good time to hear her. She tapped on the window again and again. Still they didn’t notice.
Suddenly, a cloud seemed to pass in front of the sun, darkening the sky overhead. Joanna looked up and saw a rainstorm marching across the valley toward them. It was one of those fierce summer storms, the kind that kicks up clouds of swirling dirt and sends those out as reconnaissance troops in advance of the driving rain. Not wanting to be soaked, she turned back to the cab and pounded on the window again, only now no one was there.
The truck was still barreling down the road, but the cab was empty. The doors were open. Both her father and Andy had disappeared. No one was holding on to the steering wheel, which twisted wildly from side to side while the truck careened drunkenly down the narrow track, picking up speed as it went.
Joanna woke up slick with sweat. She fought her way out from under the covers and then lay there with her heart hammering in her chest, waiting for the fright to pass.
Gradually, her heartbeat slowed to normal, and a sort of calm numbness spread over her. You don’t need a PhD. in dream interpretation to understand what that one meant, she thought. In the dream-as in life both Andy and her father had bailed out on her, abandoning her to fight the good fight alone, leaving her stuck in the bed of the moving pickup of life with no way for her to reach either the steering wheel or the brakes.
As she knew it would, eventually the clarity of the dream grew fuzzy and disappeared, taking with it both the terrifying end as well as the pleasant, carefree beginning. That was the problem with dreams. In order to shake off the bad parts, you usually had to let go of the good ones as well. Joanna glanced at the bedside clock: 4am, too late to go back to sleep but still far too early to get -up. That’s when she noticed where she was lying.
Ten years of habit are hard to break. Even after almost two full months, her sleeping body had yet to adjust to the changed circumstances of her life.
When autumn chill penetrated the bedroom or when late-night dreams changed to terrifying nightmares, force of habit still sent Joanna scurrying toward Andy’s side of the bed. Her cold or frightened body still sought comfort and refuge in the spot where his fading scent lingered in the lumpy down of what had once been his pillow.
With a sigh, and knowing now she wouldn’t go back to sleep, Joanna crawled out of bed. She pulled on her heavy terry-cloth robe and went out to the kitchen, where she heated water and made herself a cup of instant cocoa. Not the old-fashioned made from-scratch kind that Jim Bob Brady favored, but a close enough substitute to help shake off the chill.
Carrying the steaming mug with her, Joanna made her way into the darkened living room. It wasn’t necessary to turn on any lights. She knew the way.
Sitting down on the couch, she dragged one of Eva Lou’s heavy, hand-crocheted afghans over her icy feet. Moments later, Sadie, the big bluetick hound, emerged from Jenny’s bedroom and thrust her warm, smooth muzzle into Joanna’s lap.
“I didn’t mean to wake you, girl,” Joanna apologized, patting the dog’s seemingly hollow head.
It no longer disturbed her to find herself speaking aloud to the dog. In the preceding weeks, Sadie had given more than her share of late-night comfort to a grieving Joanna Brady. Tigger-an ugly and improbable mixture of pit bull and golden retriever, had been adopted by Jenny in the aftermath of his previous owner’s death. Tigger stuck with Jenny no matter what, while Sadie was more evenhanded about sharing herself. Even pawed, Joanna thought, smiling at the self correction.
With a sigh, Sadie flopped down on the floor near Joanna’s feet, and the woman was grateful for the creature’s company. It made the early-morning house seem less silent and alien. In the old days, she might have turned on the radio, tuned in some far-off countrywestern station. She didn’t do that anymore, didn’t make that mistake. Those songs were all about couples, about relationships. The words always hurt too much and made her own loneliness that much worse.