Judgment Call (3 page)

Wondering what had happened but not wanting to grill her daughter, Joanna changed the subject. “How was driver's ed?”

“Mr. Forte is having a hard time finding a stick-shift vehicle for me to practice on.”

Jenny had won her local rodeo crown, but there were other titles to conquer. If she intended to run for or win any of those, both Jenny and her horse, Kiddo, needed to attend the far-flung competitions, a reality which had underscored the fact that they needed suitable horse-hauling transportation.

With that in mind, Butch had gone on Craigslist and found a bargain-basement used dual-cab Toyota Tundra pickup complete with a heavy-duty towing package. It was a good enough deal that he had snapped it up on the spot. The only sticking point had to do with the fact that the Tundra came with a manual transmission, and all the vehicles used for Bisbee High School's driver's ed classes were automatics.

“If Butch finishes going over his copyediting, maybe he can take you out for a spin tomorrow since you don't have school.”

“I'm working tomorrow,” Jenny said. “We're planning to do the driving thing on Saturday.”

Faced with severe budget shortfalls, the school district had switched to four-day weeks, leaving the schools shuttered on Fridays and weekends. It cut down on utilities and transportation costs, but it left working parents scrambling for something to do with their kids each Friday when school was out and the parents still had to work. Joanna was fortunate. On those days when extra kids had to be accommodated at the church-run preschool and day care, Dennis was usually able to be at home with Butch. When Butch wasn't available, they could call on Carol Sunderson, their part-time housekeeper, and her two grandsons.

Joanna pulled over to the curb, and Jenny dashed inside to get her brother. While she was gone, Joanna called Alvin Bernard, Bisbee's chief of police. She was still on hold when Jenny came out with Dennis in tow. As Jenny strapped her little brother into the car seat that was a permanent fixture in Joanna's patrol car, Alvin finally came on the line.

“Sorry to make you wait so long,” Alvin said. “I'm busier than a one-legged man at a butt-kicking contest.”

Like Arlee Jones, Alvin Bernard was a good old boy of a certain vintage. When Joanna was first elected sheriff, Alvin hadn't exactly welcomed her to the local law enforcement community with open arms. Over time, however, they had buried the hatchet and learned to work together.

“What's the deal with Debra Highsmith?” Joanna asked.

“Sorry, I suppose I should have given you a call about this,” Alvin said, “but it's been crazy. When she didn't show up at school this morning and didn't call in, we sent out officers to do a welfare check. They found nothing—zip. Her purse and cell phone were there, but her car keys and car are missing. And there's a pair of shoes on the floor beside the door, as though she kicked them off as soon as she came inside. There was no sign of forced entry. No sign of a struggle. It's as though she went home after school yesterday afternoon and then both she and her vehicle simply vanished into thin air. We've checked with all the neighbors. No one admits to having seen or heard anything out of the ordinary with her or with her dog.”

“She's got a dog?” Joanna asked.

“A big Doberman,” Alvin replied. “The neighbors tell us she's only had him a couple of weeks, but he's gone, too. Dog dishes and doggy doo-doo are everywhere. No dog, but with the car and keys gone, it's unlikely that the woman's on foot, and chances are the dog is with her. All the same, we're searching the neighborhood in case she went out for a walk with the dog. It could be she suffered some kind of medical emergency and ended up in a ditch where no one can see her. Or else she's in a hospital. I've got someone calling hospitals in the area just in case.”

“Where does she live?”

“Out in San Jose Estates, so there's some distance between the houses. I've had uniforms out canvassing up and down the street. No one remembers seeing her out and about on foot or otherwise. However, we did find something pretty interesting.”

By then Joanna had put the Yukon in gear and was driving down Tombstone Canyon with Dennis jabbering happily in the backseat. His brand of nonstop talk was pretty much lost on everyone but his sister, who seemed to understand his every word. Neither of them appeared to be paying the slightest attention to Joanna's side of the conversation.

“What's that?”

“Remember when she gave you all that crap over her zero tolerance of weapons at school?”

“Yes,” Joanna said. “I remember it well. Why?”

“I knew she had applied for and received a concealed-weapons permit. After her giving you so much grief about bringing a weapon to school, I guess I never thought she'd go the distance, but she did. Guess what we found in her purse? One of those two-inch Judge Public Defenders loaded with five four-ten shotgun shells.”

A Public Defender loaded with shotgun shells certainly wouldn't have been Joanna's first choice of weapon. It was designed to do serious damage, and it wasn't something that lent itself to harmless practice shooting on a firing range.

“You've got to be kidding. She had one of those in her purse?”

“Yes, ma'am,” Alvin said. “Big as life. Considering her very public attitude toward firearms, I thought you'd get a kick out of that.”

As far as Joanna was concerned, “kick” wasn't exactly the word that came to mind.

“Sounds like she was worried about something,” Joanna said. “You don't go around with a handgun in your purse, especially one loaded with shotgun shells, if you haven't a care in the world.”

“Who has a gun in her purse?” Jenny asked.

If Jenny was tuning in, that meant that Joanna's part of the conversation was over. “Keep me posted if you learn anything more,” she said. “I need to get my kids home to dinner.”

Alvin took the hint. “Okay,” he said. “Talk to you later.”

“You still didn't say whose gun,” Jenny objected.

“Police business,” Joanna said.

In her family those two words carried a lot of weight, just as they had years earlier when her father had used them with Joanna. It was a conversational Do Not Cross line that was every bit as effective as a strip of yellow crime scene tape. It meant the subject was off-limits and any further discussion forbidden.

“I'm not a baby, you know,” Jenny complained.

“No, you're not,” Joanna agreed. “Which means that you understand I'm not allowed to discuss an ongoing investigation with anyone.”

“I'll bet you'll discuss it with Dad,” Jenny said.

Joanna's heart did a tiny flip. She and Butch Dixon had been married for years, but this was the first time she ever remembered hearing Jenny refer to him as “Dad” rather than “Butch.” Although the whole idea gladdened her heart, she didn't want to screw it up by overreacting. Besides, there was always a chance that, in this case, Jenny was deliberately zinging her mother.

“What do you want to bet?” Joanna asked.

“Never mind,” Jenny said. “I didn't want to know anyway.”

With that Jenny lapsed into a brooding silence that lasted the rest of the way home. Joanna tried not to take any of it too seriously. When it came to parenting teenagers, bouts of surly silence were par for the course. When they got to the house, Jenny grabbed her backpack, darted out of the car, and slammed her way into her bedroom before Joanna managed to drag Dennis and all his toddler gear into the house.

“What's up with Jenny?” Butch asked.

From the complex aroma in the kitchen, Joanna could tell that dinner was all but cooked. Butch was busy setting the table.

“Nothing five years won't fix,” Joanna said with a laugh.

“Oh, that,” Butch said, giving first her and then Dennis quick pecks on the cheek as they walked by. “Wash your hands, little man,” Butch added to Dennis. “Dinner's almost ready.”

WHEN JOANNA BRADY WAS FIRST ELECTED SHERIFF, SHE HAD
dutifully followed in the footsteps of her father, who had once held the same position. Her own election had come about in the aftermath of the shooting death of her first husband, Andrew Roy Brady, who had been running for the office of sheriff when he was killed by a drug kingpin's hit man. Friends of Andy's had prevailed on Joanna to run in his stead. When she was elected, everyone had more or less written her off as a figurehead, sheriff in name only, but she had rejected those assumptions, making the effort to learn the job by sending herself off to the police academy.

In the process Joanna had surprised both her supporters and her critics; she had also surprised herself. She soon discovered that law enforcement fever ran in her veins. Being sheriff wasn't just a job, it was her passion. Like her father, D. H. Lathrop, before her, she lived and breathed the job, working too many hours and bringing home mountains of paperwork to do in the evening at the dining room table. Before long she was living to work instead of working to live. Big difference.

She hadn't anticipated falling in love again, and the idea of having another baby had never crossed her mind. Both of those had come as complete surprises. When first Butch Dixon and later Dennis came into her life, those two additions had caused a sudden reordering of Joanna's priorities. Yes, her job was still important to her; yes, she still loved it; but now she made a conscious effort every day to maintain a balance between home and work.

A big part of achieving that balance had to do with the fact that, in their two-career family, Butch and Joanna were beyond lucky in having good help. A year or so earlier, Carol Sunderson and the two grandsons she was raising had been left homeless when an electrical fire had swept through their mobile home, taking the life of her invalid husband. At the time, Joanna's old house on High Lonesome Ranch had been rented out and was left in terrible shape by departing tenants who had torn the place apart before they skipped town without paying the rent. In a stroke of enlightened self-interest, after fixing it up Joanna and Butch had offered the house to Carol at a reasonable rent while at the same time hiring her as part-time household help.

It had turned out to be a match made in heaven. Having Carol to backstop Butch with cooking, housework, and child care gave him more time to devote to his writing. Now that his third crime novel was due to be published in several months' time, Carol's capable presence made it feasible for him to go on a book tour—which his publisher definitely wanted him to do.

When dinner was over and the dishes done, Butch retreated to the office to finish reviewing his copyediting and Jenny shut herself up in her room to do homework, leaving Joanna to spend some one-on-one time with Dennis. They went out into the yard and turned on the yard light. Long after sunset, she and Dennis continued playing a rousing game of fetch with their two remaining dogs—Lucky, a deaf black Lab, and Lady, the shy Australian shepherd. The dogs didn't tire of fetching and Dennis didn't tire of throwing.

Jenny had taught Lucky to respond to sign language, and he was more her dog than he was anyone else's. When they had first rescued Lady, Joanna was the only member of the family the dog would tolerate. Now, to everyone's surprise, she had switched loyalties by taking Dennis under her wing as though he was her special charge. When Dennis was home, inside or outside, Lady literally dogged his heels wherever he went. She had even abandoned her special spot on Joanna's side of the bed, choosing instead to sleep on the rug next to the trundle bed in Dennis's room.

It was fully dark before they finally went inside. Once Dennis was bathed and in bed, Joanna settled down with a book in the family room where the model trains on Butch's train track were, for once, mercifully still. She was reading quietly when, well after nine, Butch finally emerged from his office.

“Done?” she inquired.

Nodding, he picked up the remote control and switched on the TV. “Mind if I turn on the news?”

“Help yourself.”

“Thanks for chasing after Denny tonight,” he said. “The manuscript needs to go out by FedEx tomorrow so it can be in New York on Monday. I needed to finish it tonight, especially since both kids will be home from school tomorrow. When they're here, it's almost impossible to work. Besides, Jenny and I have to schedule some stick-shift driving lessons over the weekend.”

“You're fearless,” Joanna said. “By the way, Jenny gave you a promotion this afternoon. She actually called you Dad.”

“That is a promotion,” Butch agreed, “but why was she so grumpy at dinner? She barely said a word and seemed really out of sorts.”

“We had a disagreement coming home in the car,” Joanna said. “She overheard part of a conversation about a current investigation, and she was put out that I wouldn't spill the beans about what was going on.”

“What investigation?” Butch asked.

The ten o'clock news was just coming on with a teaser about a missing high school principal. “If you watch the news,” Joanna said, “you'll know exactly which investigation. You'll also understand why I couldn't discuss it with her.”