J. Jance - Skeleton Canyon

“You here by yourself?” Daisy asked, picking up a fistful of menus.

Joanna nodded.

“There’s a single up at the counter. You’re welcome to that if you like,” Daisy told her. “Everybody else is at least a two-top.”

Collecting a menu of her own, Joanna headed for the single empty stool. She waited while Daisy’s husband, Moe, finished clearing the spot of dirty dishes before she sat down. “What are you doing here?” she asked.

Moe Maxwell’s usual place of employment was the Bisbee branch of the post office. His primary role in his wife’s restaurant was as chief occupant of the booth nearest the door. There, ensconced with a view that included both the cash register and a tiny black-and-white TV, he would while away his weekend hours drinking coffee and visiting with whichever one of his many cronies happened to stop by.

Sorrowfully, Moe shook his head. “Don’t even ask,” he said, placing a glass of ice water in front of Joanna. “I was drafted. When it got crowded, Daisy said I could either go to work or plan on spending the night with old Hoop out in his doghouse tonight when we get home. That didn’t leave me much of an option.”

Joanna laughed. “I suppose not,” she said.

“Hot enough for you?” Moe continued, halfheartedly wiping the counter.

Joanna nodded. “And wouldn’t you know, the air-conditioning went out in my car today. I had to take my daughter to camp up on Mount Lemmon. Between now and when I go to pick her up, I’ll have to get it fixed.”

“Good luck with that,” Moe said. “You’d better call for an appointment right away. Jim Hobbs is the only mechanic I know of around town who’s doing that right now. People are lined up out the door. I just went through it myself a couple of weeks back, me and my old GMC I can tell you this, it lightened my wallet by a thousand bucks.”

Joanna almost choked on a single sip of water. “A thousand dollars?” she repeated in dismay. “You’re kidding. To fix an air conditioner?”

Moe nodded, looking even sadder than before. “That’s right,” he replied. “I’m not sure I understand all the details. Has something to do with global warming and holes in the ozone. According to Jim Hobbs, one itty-bitty little thirty-pound canister of Freon costs a thousand bucks a pop these days. Jim retrofitted my truck with some new kind of compressor that uses something else. I can’t remember exactly what it’s called. Had a whole bunch of letters and numbers. R2D2, maybe? Anyways, the damned thing cost me a fortune, and it doesn’t work nearly as well as the Freon did, either. I would have just let it go, but you know Daisy. With her hair the way it is, she can’t even ride to the grocery store with the windows rolled down.”

Joanna looked across the room to where Daisy was separating yet another two people from the herd waiting near the door. For thirty years, a towering beehive-one with each peroxided blond hair lacquered firmly into place-had been Daisy Maxwell’s signature hairdo. The mere fact that the price of Freon had shot sky-high wasn’t enough to make her change it.

Daisy delivered the two waiting diners to a nearby booth and then detoured behind the counter on her way back to the cash register. Slipping past her husband, she gave him a swift jab in the ribs with one bony elbow. “Booth six needs bussing,” she told him. “So does table two.”

With a long-suffering sigh, Moe picked up a wet rag and went to clear the tables.

“He’d a whole lot rather gab than work,” Daisy complained, pulling a pencil out of her hair and an order pad out of her apron pocket. “If that man really was on my payroll, I would’ve fired him by now. Since he’s working for free, though, what can I do? Now, if you know what you want, I can put the order in on my way through the kitchen. Otherwise it’ll take a while for me to get back to you. We’re short-handed tonight. I didn’t expect this kind of crowd.”

“Chef’s salad,” Joanna said without bothering to look at the menu. “Ranch dressing on the side. Iced tea with extra lemon.”

“Corn bread or sticky bun?”

“Definitely sticky bun,” Joanna answered.

“You got it,” Daisy said, and hurried off.

The tea came within less than a minute. Stirring in sugar, Joanna became aware of the music playing through the speakers situated at either end of the counter.

Reba McEntire sang of a lonely woman living through the aftermath of a painful divorce. The lyrics were all about how hard it was to sleep in a bed once shared with a no-longer present husband. Regardless of the cause of that absence-death or divorce-Joanna knew that the loneliness involved was all the same, most especially so at bedtime, although meal-times weren’t much better.

Determined to shut out the words, Joanna sat sipping her tea and observing the people in the room through the mirror on the far side of the counter. Unfortunately, she could see nothing but couples. Pairs. Men and women-husbands and wives-eating and talking and laughing together. In the far corner of the room sat a young couple with a toddler in a high chair. The child was happily munching saltine crackers while the man and woman talked earnestly back and forth together.

Struck by a sudden jolt of envy, Joanna forced herself to look away. It reminded her too much of the old days when Jenny was at what Andy had called the “crumb-crusher stage.” It had been a period during which every meal out-whether in a restaurant or at someone else’s home-had included the embarrassment of a mess of cracker crumbs left around Jenny’s high chair.

Right about now, Joanna thought, I’d be so happy to have a few of those crumbs back again that I wouldn’t even complain about having to clean them up.

By the time Joanna’s salad came, the hunger she had felt earlier had entirely disappeared. She picked at the pale pieces of canned asparagus and moved the chunks of bright red tomato from side to side. It was easy to feel sorry for herself, to wallow in her own misery and self-pity. Butch Dixon, a man she had met up in Peoria when she went there to attend the Arizona Police Officer’s Academy, had made it quite clear that he was more than just moderately interested in her. But Joanna didn’t think she was ready for that. Not yet. She was glad to have Butch as a friend-as a pal and as someone to talk to on the phone several times a week-but it was still too soon for anything beyond that, not just for Joanna but also for jenny.

“Mind if I sit down?”

Joanna looked up to see Chief Deputy Richard Voland standing with one hand on the back of the now-vacant stool next to her.

“Hi, Dick,” she said. “Help yourself.”

She was grateful Daisy’s was a public enough venue that Voland’s ears didn’t turn red as he eased his tall frame down onto the stool. Opening a menu, he studied it in silence for some time before slapping it shut. “Batching it is hell, isn’t it?” he grumbled. “Ruth maybe had her faults, but she was one helluva cook.”

Ruth Voland, Dick’s soon-to-be-ex-wife, had taken up with their son’s bowling coach from Sierra Vista. Their divorce was due to be final within the next few weeks. As that day loomed closer, Chief Deputy Voland was becoming more and more difficult to be around.

“You’re right,” Joanna agreed. “It’s not much fun, but thanks to people like Daisy Maxwell, neither of us is starving to death.”

Voland nodded morosely. “Hope you don’t mind my tracking you down. Dispatch said you were stopping off to have dinner. I needed to grab a bite myself.”

Daisy came to take his order. Joanna waited until she left before speaking again. “So what’s up over in St. David?”

“Killer bees,” Voland answered. “It was unbelievable.”