J. Jance - Fire and Ice

“But nothing happened,” I said as I finished. “Nothing at all.”

There was a long disturbing moment when Mel said nothing. Finally she nodded. “All right then,” she said, making up her mind to accept what I’d told her at face value. “You should call Sheriff Brady. If the victim’s brother works for her, she’s the one who should tell him. It’ll be better coming from her rather than from a complete stranger over the phone. And we shouldn’t make that kind of call from here.”

Mel looked around the sidewalk patio and caught the waiter’s eye. “Check, please,” she said. “We need to go.”

We started back toward Belltown Terrace walking hand in hand.

“Did I ever tell you about Big Al Lindstrom?” I asked.

“Not really,” Mel said. “Other than what you told me today. Why?”

“He’s a great guy,” I told her. “I worked with him for a couple of years-up until he got himself shot.”

“Oh, boy,” she said. “Don’t tell me this is another one of those J. P. Beaumont missing partners stories, is it?”

“Pretty much,” I said.

“You’d better tell me then,” she said. “I need to know.”

So I told her about that, too. Thinking about it now, I can see exactly what I was doing-stalling. The longer it took us to get back to Belltown Terrace, the longer I could put off making the call to Sheriff Brady and ultimately to Jaime Carbajal.

No matter how long I do this job, making those tough calls never gets any easier.

Once dinner was over, people began sorting themselves into tables for the poker games. Joanna had learned to play poker at her father’s knee. D. H. Lathrop had taught her well, and her skill at the game was well known both within the department and beyond. As a consequence, her table was the last one to fill up.

The other tables had already started playing and Joanna was about to cut the cards for hers when the landline phone rang in the kitchen. For several years after Joanna’s first election, she had served as county sheriff while still keeping her residential phone number listed in the phone book. In the course of a rancorous reelection campaign, however, she’d been the target of so many crank calls that she and Butch had finally been forced to move to an unlisted number. Now when calls came in on the landline, they were usually for Jenny.

When the phone rang, Joanna assumed that would be the case this time as well. Instead, a moment later Butch appeared in the doorway between the rooms, holding the kitchen’s portable receiver in one hand and motioning for her to come answer it with the other. Joanna tried shaking her head, hoping he’d take the hint and tell whoever was calling that she wasn’t available. Her head shake seemed to make Butch’s motions that much more insistent.

What now? she wondered irritably. Can’t Tom Hadlock handle anything on his own?

With a resigned sigh and without dealing the cards, she passed the deck to the guy sitting next to her-Bisbee’s chief of police, Alvin Bernard. Then she excused herself and went to the kitchen to take the call.

“Sheriff Brady?” an unfamiliar male voice said when Butch handed her the phone.

“Yes,” she said. “Who is this? I’m really busy at the moment. I have guests. If you’ll excuse me-”

“It’s Beaumont,” the man said urgently. “J. P. Beaumont. Remember me?”

The words stunned her. Beaumont? She remembered-all too well. Hearing both the voice and the name, she was reminded of that one moment in particular. To her dismay she found herself blushing from the top of her collar to the roots of her hair.

Even though their encounter was years in the past, she remembered it as if it had been yesterday. She and the Washington State investigator had found themselves conducting a joint investigation, one that had ended with a life-threatening encounter with a dangerous killer. In the aftermath of that, Joanna and the visiting detective had been caught up in a moment of emotional heat that could easily have gotten out of control.

There was no question that the attraction had been mutual. They had both felt the momentary magnetism. What shamed Joanna now was knowing she had been the instigator in that situation, the one who had made the first move. She might well have gone on to moves two and three as well if Beaumont hadn’t called a halt by summoning her back to reality. She was, after all, a married woman. And once Joanna came to her senses, she agreed wholeheartedly.

As the blush subsided, Joanna stepped into the doorway of her home office to continue the call.

“Of course I remember,” she said. “How nice to hear from you again.”

That was an outright lie. Hearing from him again was anything but nice. With Butch back in the kitchen cleaning up after the party and with a houseful of company, this was not a good time to be reminded of things past. It wasn’t that Joanna had been unfaithful to her husband-it was that she might have been.

“How are you doing?” she asked. “And how did you get my number?”

It seemed unlikely to her that Beaumont would have kept her old phone number or had access to her new one.

“I called your office and spoke to your chief deputy,” Beaumont told her. “A Mr. Hadlock, I believe. When I told him why I was calling, he said I should probably speak to you directly.”

Joanna’s heart gave a little squeeze-a premonition that something was seriously out of whack. Everyone in the department, including Tom Hadlock, knew that handing out her unlisted number to anyone was a big no-no. This had to be important.

“Why?” she asked. “Is something wrong?”

“Actually, there is,” Beau replied. “I’m calling about one of your cases-a missing persons case from last year, a young woman named Marcella Maria Andrade.”

Jaime’s sister! Joanna thought at once. “Marcella,” she repeated. “Have you found her?”

“Yes,” he said. “I’m afraid we have.”

Right at that moment Joanna was unable to recall the name of Beau’s agency, but she understood that he worked homicide and the tone of his voice told her what she didn’t want to hear-Marcella’s story wouldn’t have a happy ending.

“She’s dead, then?” Joanna asked.

“Yes,” Beaumont responded. “I’m afraid so. It turns out she has been for several months. The partial remains of an unidentified female homicide victim were found near a town called North Bend, Washington, late last week. It took until today for the M.E. over in Kittitas County to get around to entering the victim’s dental X rays into a national missing persons database. Notification of the hit came back to her office late this evening. When the local homicide dick called to tell me about it, I felt I should make the call.”

During the course of the evening, Jaime had gradually loosened up. For the first time in months, Joanna had actually heard him laugh. The previous summer, Jaime’s life had been slammed with two separate disasters. First had come the line-of-duty death of his young protege, Deputy Dan Sloan. At about the same time, Jaime’s sister, Marcella, had abandoned her son and disappeared. Since then, Jaime had walked around with a black cloud over his head. Peering around the doorjamb, Joanna looked into the family room, where she spotted Jaime chatting amiably and sharing a joke with Frank Montoya’s new second in command.

Joanna wished she could preserve that precious moment of lighthearted banter, but she couldn’t. It would be gone the moment Jaime heard the bad news.

“Her next of kin is listed as her brother,” Beaumont continued. “A man named Jaime Carbajal. I think we met when I was there in Bisbee.”

As he spoke, Joanna could find no discernible subtext in Beau’s Joe Friday, “just the facts, ma’am” delivery. Maybe she was the only one who actually remembered that moment.