J. Jance - Desert Heat

“I haven’t seen it, not with my own eyes, but evidently something was found on Lefty’s body, a letter of some kind from him to Andy. From the sound of it, they must have been working together for some time.”

Ten minutes or so passed in silence while Joanna tried to assimilate what she had heard. If everything Ken Galloway said was true, then she had spent the last ten years of her life married to a complete stranger. None of this squared with her understanding of the man she had known and loved. And loved still.

“What if it’s a setup?” she ventured.

“Look, Joanna,” Ken Galloway returned gruffly. He sounded disgusted. “Andrew Brady would have been the last person in the world I would have expected to turn into a crooked cop, but the evidence is overwhelming. The letter’s there, the note’s there, and evidently the money’s in your checking account as well.”

“You’ve heard about that, too?”

“Bisbee’s a small town. Word gets around.” “It certainly does,” she said bitterly. “I can see that it does.”

Not another word was exchanged for the next ninety miles. Most of that time Joanna sat staring straight ahead of her. Resting in her lap was the small plastic bag the clerk had given her. Under the thin layer of plastic she could feel the familiar contours of Andy’s worn bill-fold. Her fingers closed round it, and she held it tightly, as though it were some precious, life-giving talisman.

Only as they drove through the Mule Mountain Tunnel, did Joanna rouse herself enough to speak. “We have to stop by Marianne Maculyea’s parsonage up the canyon and pick up Jenny

“Sure thing,” Ken Galloway replied easily, swinging off the highway onto the exit. “Hang on. We’ll have you both home in two shakes of a lamb’s tail.”

Tony Vargas was in an expansive mood when he came home in the middle of the afternoon. He rousted Angie out of the pool for a quick fuck on the living room floor in front of the mangled television set. This time he had no difficulty achieving an erection. As he grunted above her, Angie was grateful she’d been so meticulous about cleaning up all the shattered glass. Otherwise her bare back and buttocks would have been full of it.

Finished, he rolled off her and then lay be-side her, leaning on one elbow and absently toying with her nipple. “We’ll go out to dinner,” he said. “I feel like celebrating.”

She didn’t dare ask him what they were celebrating. She was smarter than that. Eventually he headed for the bathroom to shower. She went into the kitchen, squeezed fresh grapefruit, mixed drinks, and then followed him into the bedroom. He had evidently switched on the small television set on the dresser. The local edition of the evening news was just starting. The lead story told that Andrew Brady, the wounded deputy and candidate for Cochise County sheriff, had died at University Hospital in Tucson earlier that afternoon.

Transfixed by what she was hearing, Angie stood in the middle of the room holding the two drinks. It had been bad enough, earlier that afternoon when her vague suspicions about Tony’s “consultation business” had once and for all solidified into harsh reality. Then, he had broken the television in a blinding rage when he heard the news that Andrew Brady was still alive. Now, with the announcement that the very same man had died, Tony was taking her out to dinner. To celebrate.

With horror, Angie realized that somehow Tony Vargas had gone to the hospital and finished what he had set out to do, just as she had known he would. And by not doing something to prevent it, Angie realized that she, too, was somehow responsible.

And with that sickening realization came another one as well. Angie had always imagined that somehow she’d find a way to slip away from Tony and leave him, but now she understood that wouldn’t be possible. He’d never let her go. And if he ever discovered how much Angie really knew about him, she, too, would be living under a death sentence.

The water shut off, and Tony stepped out of the shower.

“Hey, Angie, where the hell’s my drink?” he demanded as he began toweling himself dry. “I thought you went out to the kitchen to make me a Sea Breeze.”

Taking a deep breath, she stepped into the narrow bathroom beside him. He ran his hands over the bare skin of her buttocks as she set both drinks down on the bathroom counter.

“Nice ass,” he said, then he slapped her hard with the flat of his hand before she could move out of reach. That was something he liked to do occasionally-leave a hand print on her backside just for the hell of it. He liked to see how long the imprint lasted.

Without saying a word, Angie stepped into the shower, pulled the door shut, and turned on the water full blast, hoping the steaming water would somehow clear her head.

As a working whore in L.A., she had been busted more times than she could count-often enough to have learned the cops’ tired right-to-remain-silent speech by heart. In fact, she could recite the whole thing from beginning to end without any prompting.

But now we were talking about murder, and this was far more than just a right to remain silent. Silence was now an absolute necessity. Not only would anything she said be held against her, in the wrong hands, it could also prove deadly.

Silently, standing under the running water, Angie Kellogg began to cry, because, for the first time since that long-ago night in Battle Creek, Michigan, when her father’s unspeakable violation had turned her little-girl world upside down, she was utterly terrified.

Coming down Tombstone Canyon with Jennifer in the back seat of Ken Galloway’s Bronco, Joanna guiltily remembered their ten head of cattle for the first time. There was plenty of water for them in the stock tank, and she had fed them the night before, but between then and now she hadn’t given them another thought. There was still some forage left over from the summer’s rainy season, but not much. By now they were probably very hungry.

Joanna doubted her mother had thought about the cattle or made arrangements to feed them, either. And why should she? They weren’t her responsibility; they were Joanna’s. Eleanor had made it abundantly clear that she was a confirmed town-dweller who had little patience with Joanna and Andy’s “cockamamie” decision to take over what remained of the Brady family holdings.

Preoccupied with berating herself over neglecting the cattle, Joanna barely noticed when Ken turned off the highway onto Double Adobe Road. Then, as they crossed the first cattle guard onto High Lonesome, her heart filled with sudden dread. Traveling down the dirt road, they were fast approaching the bridge, the place where she had found Andy lying wounded and dying in the sand. Concerned not only about what she might see but also her reaction to it, Joanna breathed a sigh of relief when she realized that in the deepening twilight nothing at all was visible. For now, at least, she didn’t have to look at whatever physical evidence remained of that horrible ordeal.

“Somebody’s here,” Jennifer announced when they caught sight of lights from the house glimmering through the surrounding mesquite. A hundred yards into the ranch proper, Sadie appeared in the slice of head-lights ahead of them, racing toward the Bronco at full throttle. Jennifer rolled down the window and called to her, urging the dog to keep pace. When they pulled into the yard, two extra vehicles were parked next to Joanna’s Eagle in the brassy glow of the solitary yard light-Grandma and Grandpa Brady’s Honda and Clayton Rhodes’ ancient Ford pickup.

Clayton Rhodes, a wizened eighty-six-year old neighbor from up the road, stood on Joanna’s back porch with his thumbs hooked through his belt loops. When Ken Galloway’s car stopped in front of the gate, Eva Lou and Jim Bob Brady, Andy’s parents, came out through the backdoor and joined him. By then Sadie was barking and running around the Bronco in madly joyous circles. As soon as the wheels stopped turning, Jennifer tumbled out of the truck and threw herself at the dog.