J. Jance - Skeleton Canyon

“Killer bees?” Joanna repeated. “I thought there was some kind of an explosion.”

“That’s right. There was. A lady by the name of Ethel Jamison found a swarm of killer bees up under the roof of a tool shed. Her great-grandson is down visiting from Provo, Utah, for a couple of weeks. He offered to take care of them for her. So he and a buddy of his logged onto the Internet, consulted some kind of cyberspace Anarchist’s Cookbook, and blew the place to pieces, bees and all. Except they didn’t quite get all the bees. Like this one, for example,” Voland added, pointing to an ugly red welt on the back of his hand. “And this one, too.” A second vivid welt showed itself on the back of his neck, just above his wilted shirt collar.

“I wasn’t the only one who got stung, either,” Voland added. “A couple of the volunteer firemen did, too. Naturally, the two boys didn’t.”

Dick’s coffee came. He stopped talking long enough to add cream and sugar. “So what’s happening on the O’Brien deal?” “Nothing,” Joanna said.

“But I thought…”

“Brianna O’Brien may not have gone where she said she was going,” Joanna told him, “but she’s not yet officially missing. According to her parents, she’s not due back until tomorrow afternoon. If and when that deadline passes, we’ll make an official missing persons determination.”

“You’re going to wait the full twenty-four hours?” Dick Voland asked. “David O’Brien will have a cow.”

“He’s already having a cow, so I don’t see what difference it makes.”

“David O’Brien isn’t someone I’d want to get crosswise with,” Voland warned. “From a political standpoint if nothing else. With his kind of money, he can make or break you.”

Joanna gave her chief deputy a sidelong glance. “I’m surprised to hear you say that, Mr. Voland,” she told him. “Aren’t you the same guy who was out on the stump during the election, trying to get people to vote against me?”

Voland ducked his head and shrugged self-consciously. “Maybe I changed my mind,” he said while his ears glowed bright red.

It was Saturday night. Knowing small-town gossipmongers might read far more into this casual dinnertime meeting than it merited, Joanna picked up her ticket and slid off her stool.

“I’d better be going,” she said. “See you Monday.”

“Right,” Dick returned. “See you then.”

Joanna went out to the Crown Victoria and drove north toward the traffic circle where Jim Hobbs’s auto repair shop was located. Remembering Moe Maxwell’s advice that she put the Eagle in the shop for repairs as soon as possible, she glanced off in that direction. To her surprise, even after nine o’clock on a Saturday night, the lights were still on at Jim’s Auto Repair. One of the two garage bay doors was still open.

Instead of heading out toward the ranch, Joanna drove on around the circle and pulled in beside Jim’s cherished 1956 Chevy BelAir. Jim himself was hanging over the front fender of a Honda Civic. He straightened up when he heard Joanna’s car stop and sauntered out of the garage, wiping his greasy hands on a rag.

“It’s you, Sheriff Brady,” he said, grinning when he recognized Joanna. “1 thought it would be Margo come to tell me to get the hell home. But since I’m working on my mother-in-law’s car, I don’t figure I’ll be in too much trouble. What can I do for you?”

“It’s the air-conditioning on my Eagle,’’ Joanna began. “It went out on the way to Tucson today. Moe Maxwell says I’ll need to get in line for an appointment, so I thought I’d check.”

The congenial grin disappeared from Jim’s face. “It’s a setup deal, isn’t it? A sting. As soon as I got the call, I figured it would be something like this. Sorry, Sheriff Brady. I’m all booked up for air-conditioning work. I won’t be able to get around to you for a month or so, maybe even longer.”

“A month?” Joanna echoed. “That long? Right in the middle of the summer?”

“Too bad, isn’t it,” Jim returned coldly. “But like I said, it might even be longer than that.” Then, as if dismissing her, he turned and headed back into the garage.

For several moments Joanna sat there wavering in confusion. Jim Hobbs had done lots of work for her over the years. She had no idea what had provoked him or why she would de-serve such an abrupt dismissal. Something was wrong. Not wanting to leave the misunderstanding hanging, Joanna climbed out of the Crown Victoria and followed him into the garage.

Jim’s Auto Repair had arisen from the ruins of a defunct gas station, one that had become a permanent casualty in the EPA’s ongoing war against leaky gasoline tanks. Anyone walking into the orderly but run-down building would have known at once where Jim Hobbs’s priorities lay. The grungy cinder block walls, the fly-specked dirty glass, and the cracked cement flooring might have all been seventy-year-old original construction, but there was nothing old or lacking in the gleaming tools and up-to-date equipment lining the walls.

Walking inside, Joanna stood for a long time watching Jim in silence while he studiously ignored her. “All right, Jim,” she said at last, trailing him over to a metal tool chest where he slammed a wrench into one of the drawers. “What’s going on?”

“I’ll tell you what’s going on,” he growled, turning on her and poking the air between them with one of his stubby fingers. “That weasely Sam Nettleton character over in Benson gives me a call this afternoon and tells me he’s got a cool deal on some really cheap Freon if I want to go in with him on it. Well, here’s the real scoop, Sheriff Brady. I didn’t bite, so you can call off your dogs and forget it. I’ve got twenty thousand bucks tied up in legally approved equipment to do air-conditioning work the right way. The reason I’m as busy as a one-armed paperhanger right now is that hardly anyone else in the county has bothered to invest in that new equipment-including Mr. Sleazeball Sam Nettleton. If you think you’re going to waltz in here and find me using illegal Freon-”

“Wait a minute, Jim,” Joanna said. “Hold on. I don’t have any idea what you’re talking about. I stopped in here to see about getting my Eagle fixed because I almost roasted to death driving Jenny up to Mount Lemmon today.”

Jim looked suddenly abashed. “You mean Sam Nettleton didn’t try to sic you on me?”

“The person who sent me here is Moe Maxwell. I saw him in Daisy’s just a few minutes ago, and he said you had fixed the air-conditioning on his GMC. I don’t even know Sam Nettleton. From the sounds of it, though, maybe I should. Care to tell me about him?”

Now Jim looked downright embarrassed. “I shouldn’t,” he said. “But the whole deal makes me so damned mad.” “What deal?”

“Years ago, the tree huggers in Washington, D.C., got all hot and bothered about holes in the ozone. They fixed it so Congress passed some laws designed to fix ‘em. The holes, I mean, not the tree huggers. The first guys the feds went after for chlorofluorocarbon use were the big industries. Now they’re coming after us-the little guys. It turns out that Freon is bad for the ozone, and Freon just happens to be what makes most pre-1995 air conditioners run. The U.S. isn’t producing R-12 Freon anymore. Newer cars use R-134A. Dealers have to have proper, EPA-approved equipment to work on that or on any other R-12 substitute.

“Some of those supposed substitutes are so bad the cars blow up. Like the two little old ladies who burned to death up on I-40 last summer. Some shyster mechanic over in Gallup had filled up their compressor with something that was more butane than it was anything else.”