J. Jance - Dead to Rights

Maybe she’s right, Joanna found herself thinking. Maybe don’t understand.

Feeling frustrated, Joanna left the Rob Roy for the fifteen-mile drive back to Bisbee. Along the way, she mulled over what had happened with Terry. Joanna had been curious about whoever was with Terry on the day after Bucky Buckwalter’s death, but that hadn’t been her primary concern. More than anything, she had wanted to speak to Terry, widow-to-widow, long enough to mention the inadvisability of making any momentous financial decisions in too much of a hurry.

That heartfelt warning had gone unsaid in the face of Terry’s seemingly unprovoked anger. What was going on? Prior to Joanna’s arrival in the bar, she had observed Terry Buckwalter and Peter Wilkes from a distance for the better part of half an hour. During that time the two of them had been chatting away as though neither of them had a care in the world.

Maybe that was it in a nutshell. Maybe, with Bucky Buckwalter dead, that was absolutely true. If Peter Wilkes and Terry Buckwalter had something going, then Joanna’s seeing them together might well have precipitated Terry’s angry reaction.

Small towns have certain expectations of what’s appropriate and what isn’t after the death of one of their own. Bisbee, Arizona was no different. Joanna wondered how many other luncheon attendees had witnessed and been shocked by Terry’s carefree attitude the day after her husband’s murder. The difference between police officers and ordinary citizens, however, was that the former’s opinions could lead to questions of an official nature-to questions and, sometimes, to convictions.

Other people might disapprove-quietly or otherwise-of Terry’s actions: of her peeling off her wedding ring less than twenty-four hours after her husband’s death or of her possibly carrying on with Peter Wilkes. As for Joanna, personal reservations aside, she had a moral obligation-a duty-to learn whether or not cause and effect were involved. Was it possible that Terry Buckwalter and/or Peter Wilkes had something to do with Bucky’s death? If so, that would go a long way toward explaining the sudden chill in the air when Joanna had interrupted Terry’s lighthearted performance as the merry widow.

Joanna couldn’t recite the exact statistics, but she knew full well that people were far more likely to be murdered by those nearest and dearest to them than they were by complete strangers, mere acquaintances, or business associates. In some troubled marriages, homicides became a permanent substitute for divorce, although, once again, statistically speaking, violence-prone husbands used that escape hatch far more of-ten than did vengeful wives. Still, women weren’t immune. They resorted to such a method of dissolving a relationship, too, on occasion, especially when the murderous wife had a possible alternative to the troublesome husband already line(up and waiting in the wings.

Is that what’s going on here? Joanna wondered.

It was generally assumed that Peter Wilkes was involved in a devoted, long-term relationship with his partner-thy guy named Myron who ran the restaurant. But just because that was common gossip around town didn’t necessarily make it true. Maybe Peter Wilkes was a switch-hitter-AC/DC, as Andy used to say.

Clearly Peter Wilkes and Terry Buckwalter were up to something that went beyond a simple above-the-board pro/golfer relationship. Whatever it was, neither of them had been willing to discuss specific details in front of Joanna.

Suppose, Joanna told herself, Bucky was an insurmountable roadblock to whatever Wilkes and Terry had in mind. What might the two of them have done then when someone from out of town someone with a perfectly believable motive for Bucky’s murder, had shown up on the scene? Slowly, the idea began to coalesce it Joanna’s mind. If Terry wanted to ditch Bucky Buckwalter, wasn’t Hal Morgan the perfect fall guy?

Unbidden, Joanna’s mind wandered back to the previous afternoon. She remembered how Terry Buckwalter had casually reached into her pocket and pulled out that damning scrap of paper-the one containing Hal Morgan’s purportedly handwritten note. If, as Terry maintained, the note had been hidden in her makeup case for months, why did she suddenly and conveniently have it in her possession, to pas along to investigators on the very day of her husband’ death?

That’s easy, Joanna thought. To point a finger at someone else. At Hal Morgan.

One terrible injustice had already been visited on the man. He had lost his wife to a senseless, tragic death. Now another blow was about to fall if he ended up being charged with murder in the death of Bonnie Morgan’s killer.

That hadn’t happened yet, not officially, but only because Ernie Carpenter had so far been too busy to get around to crossing the t’s and dotting the i’s. At this point, Morgan was still only a suspect-some would have said prime suspect-in the case.

With her heart quickening in her breast, Joanna realized that Bucky Buckwalter’s killer had counted on that. Whoever the perpetrator or perpetrators were, they had killed the man with some confidence that the homicide investigation would go no deeper than the obvious: Hal Morgan had come to Bisbee with a clear motive for wanting to harm his wife’s killer. If that man was now dead, it naturally followed that Hal Morgan had killed him.

What came over Joanna then wasn’t exactly a chill. It was more like a vibration-a telling, steady thrum that came to her from the inside out, letting her know that she had stumbled onto something-something important. She had never experienced any sensation quite like it, but she knew at once what it was. Without understanding how, she knew-beyond a doubt-that Hal Morgan was innocent. He hadn’t killed Bucky Buckwalter. Somebody else had, someone who had cynically exploited Hal Morgan’s lingering grief and had used it to further his or her own deadly purposes.

The moment of realization rang so true that Joanna felt almost giddy. She was suddenly so excited-so energized and focused-that she had to concentrate on lifting her foot off the accelerator to keep from mashing it all the way to the floor.

And then, in that peculiar way minds work, a long-buried memory surfaced in her head. She was twelve years old again and sitting at the breakfast table in her parents’ home of Campbell Avenue. Eleanor had been cooking breakfast am was just then slamming the frying pan into the sink, whet Big Hank Lathrop came into the room and poured himself a cup of coffee.

Sheriff D. H. Lathrop had been out all night investigating a homicide crime scene. He had come home at sunup to shower, change clothes, and eat breakfast before heading back to the office.

“I don’t know why you had to be out there all night like that,” Eleanor complained as she slid a loaded plate in iron of him. “You’re not as young as you used to be, Hank. You can’t expect to work around the clock without having it affect you.”

“But Ellie…” he objected. Big Hank Lathrop was the only person in the world Eleanor Lathrop ever allowed to call her by a nickname. “You just don’t understand how great it feels. I knew from the beginning, from the moment we go there, that George Hammond was lying through his teeth when he said that him and his buddy-”

“He and his buddy.” Eleanor’s habitual corrections of her husband’s grammar were so much business as usual that Big Hank barely missed the beat of his story. “… he and his good buddy, Lionel Dexter, were out hunting. Hammond claimed that he stumbled and that his thirty-ought-six went off by accident. All of a sudden, right while he’s in the middle of telling this long, complicated story, I realize it’s a crock. Ol’ George is making it up as he goes along. I can’t tell you how I knew; I just did. As soon as I caught on to him, I couldn’t stand to walk away without managing to trip him up.”