J. Jance - Devil’s Claw

“That is weird,” Frank mused along the way.

“What is?”

“If Sandra’s mother lived just a few miles away, why not hide whatever it was on her mother’s property instead of someplace as public as the entrance to a national monument?”

“Because she didn’t want whatever it was she was hiding to be connected to her mother or to her,” Joanna said. “A weapon, maybe. What about the gun that was used to kill Tom Ridder? Was that ever recovered?”

“I don’t know,” Frank replied. “I can probably find out tomorrow. It would have to be damned small to fit inside that bowl.”

“So we’re looking for something that’s small and valuable,” Joanna added. “What about you, Frank? Supposing your house was on fire or about to be washed away in a flood, and all you could rescue was whatever would fit in a bowl that size. Given that set of circumstances, what would you have put in there?”

“My grandfather’s Purple Heart,” Frank replied with hardly a moment’s hesitation. “My birth certificate, a couple of photos, and my wallet. That way I’d have some ID and my credit cards when it came time to start over. What about you?”

Joanna nodded. “I’d probably do pretty much the same thing, only instead of a Purple Heart, I’d save my father’s sheriff’s badge.” As a teenager, Joanna had been given D. H. Lathrop’s sheriff’s badge after her father’s funeral. It had been one of her most treasured mementos before she was elected sheriff. Now it was even more so.

By then Frank had stopped the Crown Victoria next to Joanna’s Blazer. “See you Monday,” he said as Joanna climbed out of the Civvie. “If not sooner.”

“Let’s hope not sooner,” she returned. “I’d like to have one whole day to myself this weekend.”

Driving back across the Sulphur Springs Valley toward home, Joanna kept mulling the same question. What would have been in a bowl that small? And why Tupperware? The one thing Joanna remembered from her abortive and relatively unhappy career as a Tupperware representative was that those sturdy plastic containers-especially the round ones-were supposed to be both air- and watertight. Driving through the night, Joanna smiled at a recollection of Andy teasing her back then, telling her that if nuclear warfare ever broke out, that, after hundreds of years, the only artifacts left to testify to human existence in the late twentieth century would be warehouses chock-full of still usable Tupperware and still edible Twinkies.

Part of what had made selling Tupperware difficult for Joanna had to do with the fact that many people in town were broke. Once the mines closed, most of Bisbee’s economic base disappeared. For a long time the expected boom in out-of-state visitors had simply bypassed the little town. In those cash-strapped days, Tupperware had been hard to come by. You had to be invited to a party, go and play dumb games, and then fork over hard-earned cash in order to cart home a set of four of those stupid bowls. And, for Joanna, that had been the real difficulty in selling the stuff-she didn’t actually believe in it. Her mother did. Eleanor claimed to adore the stuff. Joanna remained firmly in the camp of margarine containers.

Joanna couldn’t remember her mother ever storing a dishful of leftovers without first using the distinctive little tab to raise the lid and let out excess air. And in Eleanor’s fastidiously run household, no Tupperware-stored leftovers were ever allowed to spoil or go to waste.

The same thing couldn’t be said of Joanna Brady’s more casually managed existence. Containers of food were sometimes inadvertently shoved to the back of a lower shelf in her refrigerator where the contents might well mutate into a new life form before finally being rediscovered. With margarine tubs or cottage-cheese or sour-cream containers, there was never any question of what to do then-throw them out, leftovers and all. But Tupperware was different and came with an entirely different set of rules. No matter how disgusting what had been left to molder inside, those had to be cleaned out and rehabilitated with bleach, detergent, and elbow grease. To do anything less seemed un-American somehow.

Taking Joanna’s own deep-seated prejudices and experience into account, that meant Sandra Ridder hadn’t intended to lose her Tupperware bowl-ever. Not the first time when she hid it, and not the second time when she had gone back to retrieve it. And whatever she had stowed in the bowl all those years earlier, she had meant it to be protected from the elements.

By the time Joanna neared High Lonesome Ranch, she had left off worrying about Sandra Ridder’s Tupperware and was dealing with concerns much closer to home. She wondered what had happened that evening in her absence. It was one thing to be a hands-on sheriff, but how about being a hands-on mother? What had her presence contributed to the investigation into Sandra Ridder’s death, and how much had she missed by being away from the High Lonesome and Jenny and Butch? The fact that she wasn’t alone-the fact that Joanna Brady was dealing with the daily ball-juggling contest of every other working mother in America-didn’t make her feel any better about it.

Halfway up the winding road that led to the house, Joanna had to slow to negotiate the wash. A tow truck had removed Reba Singleton’s stranded limo, but in the process the well-worn track across the dry creek bed had been obliterated. Boulders that hadn’t been there before had been churned to the surface, while wheel-swallowing pits had been left behind in the sand. Using the Blazer’s four-wheel drive to negotiate this new obstacle path was the only thing that kept Joanna herself from becoming stuck in her own driveway. As a result, Joanna wasn’t thinking fond thoughts about tow-truck drivers, limo drivers, or Reba Rhodes Singleton by the time she finally pulled into her own yard.

She was relieved to see Butch’s Subaru was still parked near the gate. Knowing Jenny had been looked after in the meantime was the only thing that made being gone so long possible or bearable.

The lights were on in the living room as she parked the Blazer, but as soon as she opened the car door, the back porch light came on and Sadie and Tigger came tumbling out of the house. Behind the two dogs walked Butch, in stocking feet, gingerly picking his way across the yard.

“You shouldn’t be out here without shoes,” she scolded. “Don’t you know there are sandburs in the yard?”

“I do now,” he said, hopping gingerly on one foot. “How are things?”

“It’s late, and I’m tired,” she told him. “How are things with you?”

Butch wrapped one arm around her shoulders and gently pulled her against his chest. “We had some company,” he said, leading her toward the house.

“Not your parents!” Joanna exclaimed. “Don’t tell me they turned up early.”

“Not my parents.”

“Who then?”

Butch waited until they were all the way inside the house before he answered. “Dick Voland,” he said.

Joanna blinked. Dick Voland had been a long-term deputy with the Cochise County Sheriff’s Department. He had served as chief deputy in the administration of Joanna’s predecessor, Walter V. McFadden, and had continued in that capacity, sharing responsibility with Frank Montoya, once Joanna was elected. She had been able to deal with the man in the beginning, when he was simply gruff and overbearing. The situation had become much more complicated when Joanna discovered that he had developed a serious middle-aged crush on her. Voland had mostly pined in silence, but Joanna’s betrothal to Butch had pushed him over the edge. The morning after her engagement was made public, Voland had turned up on High Lonesome Ranch, drunk and belligerent. He had handed in his resignation on the spot. Under the circumstances, Joanna had been only too happy to accept it.