Tombstone Courage (23 page)

“That's funny,” Isobel said. “For years, when we were first married, my husband, Jaime, drove a dump truck out there. I always worried about him, driving down into the pit, loading up the back of the truck with all those huge boulders, and then driving out here on the dump. I was always afraid he'd back up too close to the edge and fall off. He never did, though. He drove a truck like that for years, but I never asked him what was up there. Maybe I didn't want to know.”

Holly turned her gaunt face away from the window for once and studied the older woman's sturdy features. “Wouldn't you like to know what's up there now?” she asked.

Isobel Gonzales smiled wisely and shook her head. “Jaime doesn't drive dump trucks anymore,” she said. “And if it wasn't so important to me back then, it sure isn't now. Are you done with your tray? You must not like my cooking. You've barely touched it.”

“I'm done with it,” Holly Patterson said. “Your cooking's fine. I'm just not hungry.”

K
RISTIN DUMPED
Joanna's mail unceremoniously on her desk. “There's someone else here to see you,” she said.

With all these interruptions, how the hell did anyone ever get any work done? Joanna wondered. “Who is it this time?” she asked.

“Linda Somebody-or-other,” Kristin answered.

Obviously still offended by the bra-and-panties discussion, Kristin was doing her best to get even. Joanna knew how that game worked. In office politics, passing along incomplete or inaccurate information to the boss constitutes one of the milder forms of a surly receptionist's catalog of revenge.

“Linda who?” Joanna pressed.

“I don't know.” Kristin shrugged petulantly. “She didn't say.”

Joanna counted to ten. “Kristin,” she said, “regardless of whether or not the visitor volunteers the information, it's the receptionist's job to find out who wants to be admitted to my office. You're to tell me who's waiting out there in the lobby, and I decide whether or not I want to see them. Is that clear?”

“What do you want me to do?”

“Go find out who it is. Ask her.”

The testy Kristin dragged her feet leaving Joanna's office. The intercom buzzed angrily moments later. “Linda Kimball to see you, Sheriff Brady,” Kristin announced with ice crystals dripping from every word.

“Thank you very much, Kristin. Send her right in.”

The door opened seconds later, and a plain-Jane Linda Kimball bustled into the room. Heavyset and not worried about it, Burton Kimball's wife had a comfortable, down-home, no-nonsense way about her from her ironclad support panty hose to her naturally graying French twist. Some of the other legal-beagle wives in town tended to dress in designer jeans and play endless games of bridge, all the while holding themselves apart from those they considered lesser beings. Inelegant Linda Kimball, on the other hand, was known and appreciated throughout the community for her boundless energy and tireless work on behalf of those less fortunate than herself.

She routinely volunteered as an aide at the community hospital, and she had served as the money-raising spark plug to keep the local Meals-on-Wheels program under way while daily serving her own family well-balanced, home-cooked meals. Her two children were well mannered and smart. And each fall the vegetables Linda Kimball raised in her backyard garden walked away with a collection of red and blue ribbons from the Cochise County Fair in Douglas.

In addition to all that, Burton Kimball's wife had
a reputation for being virtually unflappable. As she hurried into Joanna's office that afternoon, however, her arm was in a sling and distress was written large across her troubled face. But Linda wasn't there to discuss her injured arm.

“I wanted to talk to Ernie Carpenter, but they told me he's been called out of the office. I hope you don't mind my dropping in like this.”

“Not at all, Linda. What can I do for you?”

“I'm in sort of a rush because I left the kids up in Old Bisbee for their piano lessons. I have to be back uptown to pick them up in another half hour, but I needed to talk to someone about what happened out on the ranch today.”

“What's that?”

Linda Kimball dropped heavily into one of the visitor chairs and took a deep breath. “Burton called me at lunchtime to tell me all about it. I suppose I should have told him what I thought right then, but he was so upset, I just couldn't bring myself to do it.”

“What you thought about what?” Joanna asked.

Linda's double chin quivered. “What I thought about the skeleton,” she answered doggedly. “About who I think it is. Or, rather, who it was.”

“You mean you know?” Joanna demanded, leaning forward in her chair.

Linda nodded miserably. “Yes, I do,” she answered. “At least I have a theory about it.”

“Tell me,” Joanna urged.

Linda sighed as if not knowing where to start. “Burton said the one body has been there for a very long time.”

“That's right. Skeletal remains only.”

“Do you know anything at all about my husband?” Linda Kimball asked. “About his history, I mean?”

Joanna considered for a moment. With only six thousand people in town, residents of Bisbee tended to have some knowledge of one another's general histories, even for those people they didn't necessarily know well.

“Some, I guess,” she answered. “Wasn't he raised by the Pattersons? I seem to remember something about that.”

Linda nodded. “Harold Patterson was Burt's uncle, his mother's older brother. When Thornton, Burt's dad, was discharged from the service after World War II, he and his wife, Bonnie, stayed out on the Rocking P for a while. When Bonnie turned up pregnant, Thornton left her with her brother while he went off to California looking for work. He was supposed to send for her as soon as he found a job and a place to live, but he never did. No one ever heard from him again, and Bonnie Patterson Kimball died in childbirth a few months later. Aunt Emily and Uncle Harold took care of Burton from the time he was born.”

Linda broke off, as though just relating her husband's painful history hurt her as well.

“It sounds like a pretty rough thing all the way around,” Joanna offered by way of encouragement. “He was lucky there was someone to look after him.”

Linda nodded and continued. “They were wonderful to him; treated him just like one of their
own. All that ancient family history still bothers my husband, even though it isn't something he talks about. I mean, being abandoned like that does some damage, leaves scars, although, since it happened before he was born, it isn't something he personally remembers.”

Joanna was puzzled about where all this was going, but she knew enough to shut up and let Linda tell the story her way.

“It's one of the reasons family is so important to him,” Linda continued. “And it's why that terrible business between Uncle Harold and Holly upset him so. Burton would never say so, but he loved that crotchety old man just as much as if Uncle Harold had been his natural father. It tore him to pieces to think that Holly would come out of nowhere, armed with her high-priced lawyer and her therapist and all those horrendous stories.”

Linda paused and almost stopped, as though her talking engine were running low on steam. “That's also why he's always been so concerned about Ivy,” she added.

“Burton's worried about Ivy?” Joanna asked.

“Wouldn't you be?” Linda countered. “It sounds to me as though she's really gone off the deep end. The idea that she's getting married within hours of her father's death and without even mentioning it to Burton…It's breaking his heart. Not that we would have gone, but she didn't even bother to invite him to the wedding.”

“Why is Burton so upset?” Joanna asked. “I
know Ivy's timing is a little unorthodox and could raise a few eyebrows, but I'd think he'd be happy that she's finally found someone after all this time.”

“You don't understand,” Linda said. “Back when those three kids were growing up, Burton always considered Ivy his baby sister. All his life, he's tried to look out for her best interests the way a big brother should. Maybe even more than he should.”

Linda paused as if uncertain what to say next. Stifling her inclination to rush her, Joanna kept quiet.

“Getting back to this family stuff. I knew from the beginning that family connections bothered him. I had both my parents—still do—while his natural parents were both gone. For a long time, we didn't even discuss the subject. Later on, though, when he finally could tell me about it, he admitted that he'd always hoped that someday he'd have a chance to meet his father. He said he wanted to ask Thornton Kimball why he left town. Why he ran away and never came back. Why he never even acknowledged his son's birth. That dream of someday meeting his father is one he's carried around in his heart from the time he was just a little kid. When he told me about it, I thought my heart would break just listening to him. It was so sad, so unfair.”

Linda took another breath. “I love him, you see, and I finally had to do something about it.”

“About what?”

“About making that dream come true. I decided to try finding Thornton Kimball on my own, without telling Burt what I was up to. I wanted to surprise him. I thought that if he finally had the chance to meet and talk to his natural father, it might help him put some of his own personal demons to rest. He's spent a lifetime blaming himself, you know, not only for his mother's death, but also for his father's desertion.”

“Any luck finding his father?”

“No,” Linda answered. “None. I've checked everywhere—the Salvation Army, the V.A., the genealogical library up in Salt Lake. Everywhere I go, I keep running into blank walls. It was as though Thornton Kimball left the Rocking P one day and vanished into thin air.”

Feeling like some dimwitted comic-strip character, Joanna felt the light bulb switch on over her head when she finally made the connection. “You believe the other body in the glory hole might be Thornton Kimball's?”

Linda nodded. “As soon as Burt told me about the skeleton, this terrible feeling of certainty washed over me. I can't explain it. I don't know where it came from, but as far as I can tell, from the time he left here in 1945, no one ever heard a single word from Thornton Kimball. And maybe that's why—because he never really left.”

Joanna felt a swift rush of rising excitement. Linda Kimball's theory made good sense. She reached for the phone. “I'll pass this information along to Ernie Carpenter right away.”

“Wait,” Linda said. “Don't call him yet.”

“Why not?” Joanna said. “With this information, maybe we can get some help from the state crime laboratory—utilize some of their new DNA technology.”

“I don't think you'll have to do that,” Linda Kimball said quietly.

Joanna put down the phone. “Why not?”

Linda shifted uneasily in her chair. “Promise me you won't tell Burton how you found out. It's embarrassing. He'd be so angry if he ever found out about it.”

Joanna thought she had been following all the nuances of the twisting story line, but now she was suddenly lost. “If he found out about what?” she asked.

Linda Kimball bit her lower lip while a pair of fat tears squeezed out of her eyes and ran down both cheeks, leaving behind twin tracks of dark-brown mascara. One-handed, Linda fumbled in her massive purse long enough to extract a packet of tissues. After dabbing her eyes and blowing her nose, she forged ahead.

“Do you ever go to yard sales?” she asked.

“Not often,” Joanna answered. “I usually don't have either the time or the money.”

“I shouldn't go to them myself, but I do,” Linda said. “It's one of those things that drives Burton crazy. He really disapproves. He says it's not dignified for people in our position to go around buying other people's cast-off junk, but I can't help it. One of my hobbies is refinishing antiques, and going to those private sales is how I've found
some of my very best pieces. Do you remember when Grace Luther died?”

Joanna nodded. At the time ninety-six-year-old Grace Luther passed away, her death had been the talk of the town. Since it happened while Hank Lathrop was still sheriff, Joanna knew more of the gory details than she probably should have. Everyone in town had thought Grace was up in Tucson visiting her niece, but it turned out the niece had brought her back to Bisbee and left her off at home. Somehow word of her return didn't get passed along to Grace's at-home caregiver.

While everyone in Bisbee continued to believe that Grace was out of town, the old lady was actually dead as could be, lying flat on her back in her own bed with the thermostat cranked up to eighty-some degrees. The corpse was three weeks old and pretty well cooked by the time people realized something was wrong and broke into the house. It wasn't a pretty sight. Or smell. After investigating the scene, Hank Lathrop had come home and burned all the clothes he had been wearing.

Afterward, there was a protracted battle among a bunch of feuding heirs, including the scatter-brained niece who had dropped the old lady off at home without letting anyone know. For years, while lawyers battled back and forth, the house sat vacant—boarded up but crammed full of a century's worth of junk.

“I went to that estate sale,” Linda Kimball continued. “The house was a shambles—stacked with
trash from floor to ceiling. But there were some treasures buried in there as well. In fact, I found that wonderful ivory-inlay table I still have in my living room. And down in the basement, I found everything from her husband's office.”

“That's right,” Joanna said. “I remember that, too. Wasn't Dr. Luther a dentist with an office somewhere in Upper Lowell?”

Linda nodded. “Right where the open-pit mine is now. Doc Luther was already dead in the early fifties when they tore the building down to make way for Lavender Pit. Grace had Phelps Dodge haul all her husband's equipment and everything else from his office down to her house in Warren. They loaded it into her garage and basement—chairs, drills, and everything—and there it stayed. I don't think that woman ever in her life threw anything away.”

Once again Linda Kimball reached for her purse. This time she extracted a small white envelope.

“This is the part that's so embarrassing,” she said. “I still can't believe I did it. Promise me you won't tell Burton. He'd have a fit.”

“Tell him what?”

“While I was down in the basement that day—the day of the sale—I was rummaging around looking for antiques when I came across a huge stack of Dr. Luther's old files that had been dumped out of a file cabinet. I knew he was the dentist Burton had gone to as a young child. I thought it might be fun to have his earliest dental records, just as sort of a keepsake. But while I was looking, I found this—and I stole it.”