J. Jance - Dead to Rights

“Li ll Bucky got his picture in the paper afterward, too. Everybody said he was a hero. Once they sobered up, those cowboys sure as heck thought so, too. Get thinkin’ about it, I do believe they even gave him a reward.”

“Nobody ever said he wasn’t good with animals,” Joanna said quietly, thinking of Terry Buckwalter and Hal Morgan. “But when it came to people…” Deciding against saying anything more, Joanna let the unfinished statement linger in the air.

“So the killer’s that fellow from Wickenburg then?” Eva Lou said, changing the subject. “The one whose wife died up in Phoenix? That’s what it sounded like on the news tonight.”

“Hal Morgan is under investigation in the case,” Joanna told them. “But that’s all. Under investigation. It’s still too early to say. Ernie Carpenter talked to some of the i e lilt who used to work with Morgan when he was a police officer in southern California. They all said he was a great cop who would never take the law into his own hands.”

“But who knows what a fella will do if he’s pushed too far?” Jim Bob Brady asked. “I, for one, can see that the poor guy’s got a point. After all, his wife is dead. Gone for good. All Bucky gets hit with for doin’ it is nothin’ more than a little ol’ slap on the wrist. What’s a man supposed to do?”

“Let justice take its course,” Joanna said. “Bucky was given a legal sentence for vehicular manslaughter. He was also sentenced to undergo drug- and alcohol-treatment. He did both those things. According to our judicial system, he paid his debt to society. That should have been the end of it.

“Guess that’s pretty much Arlee Campbell’s position, too,” Jim Bob said.

Arlee Campbell ran the county attorney’s office, and Jim Bob’s assessment was right on the money. One of the reasons Joanna had been late leaving the office was due to the fact that she had been tied up talking on the phone with the county attorney himself. She had listened to old Windbag Campbell go on and on, at tedious length, telling her all about how murder is murder, no matter what. About how vigilante justice amounts to no justice at all.

“You’re right,” Joanna said. “Arlee told me this evening that if we end up charging Hal Morgan with Bucky’s murder the county attorney’s office will prosecute him to the full ex .tent of the law.”

“How’s Terry taking all this?” Eva Lou asked. “She’s al-ways seemed like such a down-to-earth person and just a: pleasant as she could be.”

“All right,” Joanna said, choosing not to mention that throughout the hour long, late-afternoon interview with Ernie Carpenter, Bucky Buckwalter’s widow had never shown the slightest sign of any emotion other than her initial surprise.

“I suppose it’s too early to know about funeral arrangements,” Jim Bob ventured as he stood up to begin clearing the table.

“As a matter of fact it isn’t,” Joanna told them. “By the time Ernie Carpenter and I got around to talking to Terry, she had already contacted Norm Higgins. The funeral home will be picking up the body from Dr. Winfield’s office as soon as he finishes the autopsy. According to Terry, the funeral will be at the mortuary up in Bisbee on Friday morning.”

“We should go by all means,” Eva Lou said. “Put it on the calendar, Jim Bob.” Eva Lou turned back to Joanna. “Do you have any idea what time?”

“It’ll be ten o’clock,” Jim Bob said. “That’s when of Norm likes to schedule them things. Any earlier, he says, and you have to rush breakfast. Any later, and you end up missing lunch.”

“Norm Higgins could afford to miss a few breakfasts and lunches,” Eva Lou observed.

Jim Bob held up a hand. “Now, Eva Lou,” he told his wife. “Don’t you go being so hard on the man. Norm Higgins is an old buddy of mine.”

“An overweight old buddy of yours,” Eva Lou added.

Listening to her in-laws’ gentle bickering only under-scored the loving humor that was a hallmark of their long-term marriage. Their constant sparring back and forth was part of what made their relationship work. Their companion-able squabble somehow made Joanna feel better

She watched as Jim Bob Brady carefully made a penciled notation of the memorial service on the Davis Insurance Agency calendar that graced the Bradys’ kitchen wall. Looking at him, she realized fondly that here was a man-the genuine article. She’d bet her life that her father-in-law had never once been reduced to carrying a packet of condoms around in his wallet. If Jim Bob Brady died first, Eva Lou wouldn’t be in for any unpleasant surprises in that regard.

Joanna put down her empty cup, pushed back her own chair, and made for the kitchen sink. “Oh, no, you don’t,” Eva Lou told her. “You go on home and attend to your chores. Jim Bob and I will do the dishes. It’s his turn to wash, mine to wipe.”

“You’re sure?”

“Of course I’m sure.” Eva Lou smiled. “I wouldn’t want Jimmy here to have a chance to stop complaining about his dishpan hands.” She paused then, and looked her daughter-in-law in the eye. “How are you doing?”

Joanna gave her mother-in-law a wan smile. “You read me like a book, don’t you? I’m doing medium. I guess this is all hitting just a little too close to home. Once upon a time, in the good old days, murder was something that happened somewhere else, to people we didn’t know.”

“Well,” said Eva Lou kindly. “You go on home and try not to think about it.”

Leaving her stack of dishes on the counter, Joanna was only too happy to oblige. “Come on, Jenny,” she called down the short hallway.

It took several minutes to gather Jenny’s gear-school books, jacket, and lunch box-as well as Joanna’s own purse. It was only eight-thirty or so by the time they reached High Lonesome Ranch, but Joanna was so tired that it felt like much litter.

A single bulb burning outside the garage told Joanna that Clayton Rhodes, her eighty-something neighbor and hired hand, had come by and fed all the animals. Paying Clayton to do the outdoor chores on a regular basis had been Joanna’s first big concession to being a single mother with a young child and a demanding career. There simply wasn’t enough of her to go around when it came to taking care of Jenny, doing the housework, and looking after two dogs and ten head of cattle as well.

When she reached the back door, Joanna found a scrawled note from Clayton stuck on the door frame with a pushpin. “Fed Sadie,” the note said. “Couldn’t find no Tigger. He maybe run off.”

Guiltily, Joanna crumpled the note and stuck it in her pocket. It had been thoughtless of her not to have left word about Tigger for Clayton so he wouldn’t have worried or wasted any time looking for an animal that was safely stowed in a kennel at the Buckwalter Animal Clinic. Meantime, Sadie, lonely after a day on her own, was ecstatically licking Jenny’s face.

“Don’t let her do that,” Joanna admonished.

“She’s just kissing me because she missed me,” Jenny said. “It doesn’t hurt anything.”

Joanna managed to stifle an urge to deliver an Eleanor Lathrop-like lecture on the subject of dogs and germs. In-stead, she sent Jenny off to take her bath and settled down at the telephone desk in the living room to take messages off the machine. There were several.

“I’m home,” Eleanor Lathrop said through the recording machine’s speaker. She sounded chipper as ever, as though, for her cross-country plane flights were mere everyday occurrences. ‘‘Give me a call as soon as you get home. We need to get organized about tomorrow. Have you made any arrangements for Eva Lou and me to get out to Palominas t(the women’s club luncheon?”