J. Jance - Devil’s Claw

Joanna looked down at her untouched bowlful of Malt-o-Meal that, without the benefit of milk and brown sugar, had now cooled and congealed into a hard gray lump. “Give us an hour,” she said. “That’s the soonest we can be there.”

Two hours later, Joanna was sitting in a pew in Canyon United Methodist Church, while her pastor and best friend, the Reverend Marianne Maculyea, read the morning’s scripture. Pregnant women are supposed to glow. That was especially true for Marianne, who was in the last stages of a long-sought but unexpected pregnancy. Her face was alight as she read the passage from Deuteronomy 30:19. “I have set before you life and death, blessing and curse; therefore choose life, that you and your descendants may live.”

For years Joanna had sung in the church choir, but the countervailing pressures of work and single-motherhood had eventually made regular attendance at weekly practice sessions an impossibility. Sitting in the choir loft behind the minister, it had been necessary to remain both awake and properly attentive.

Now, though, seated discreetly in the fifth pew back, Joanna paid scant attention to Marianne’s sermon for the day, “Choose Life!” Instead, she was preoccupied with her own set of issues. Most of Joanna’s wool-gathering focused on the letter in her purse, one Clayton Rhodes had laboriously written in ink in a spidery, old-fashioned scrawl. The letter had been dated barely two months earlier.

Dear Joanna,

By now you know of my intention to leave my place to you. I understand that if you marry Butch Dixon, it will be partially his, too.

I want you to know how much working for you these past few years has meant to me. When you’re old, it’s easy to get thrown on the scrap heap and forgotten. I’ve enjoyed getting to know Jenny and watching her grow. She’s a sweet kid in a way my own daughter never was.

I’ve seen how you are with High Lonesome Ranch. I know how much it means to you, and how hard you’ve had to work to keep it. If I were to pass my place along to Reba, she would take the first offer to sell it and wouldn’t care what became of it later. She may say this isn’t fair and she may try to make you feel sorry for her, but don’t fall for it. She treated her mother and me like scum. If she gets anything at all, it’s more than she deserves.

I wish you and yours the best, Joanna. You and Andy and Jenny have always been good neighbors.

Sincerely,

Clayton Rhodes

Joanna’s eyes had blurred with tears as she finished reading the text of the letter. After that, Burton Kimball had read aloud the applicable passages in Clayton Rhodes’ will. Since being given the letter, Joanna had read it through only twice-once in Burton Kimball’s office and presence, and again, aloud, when she returned to the Outback, where Butch and Jenny were waiting. Even so, sitting there in the church pew, Joanna could have recited the entire letter from memory. The words were etched on her heart.

“He can’t mean this” was the first thing Joanna had said to Burton.

“He meant it all right,” the attorney had returned calmly.

“But what about Reba? She’s his daughter, after all.”

“She’s also a complete bitch, if you’ll pardon the expression,” Burton said. “The will was properly drawn and witnessed a year and a half ago. And, as I told you on the phone, it isn’t as though she’ll be left with nothing. After taxes, she’ll still have a fair chunk of cash which, as far as I can tell, is all she’s interested in anyway.”

“A year and a half,” Joanna echoed. “But the letter is dated…”

“There was another letter,” Burton Kimball said kindly. “One that was written at the time we drew up the will. Clayton threw that one away and wrote this one after you and Butch Dixon announced your engagement. He told me he didn’t want Butch to feel left out. This isn’t in the letter, but Clayton told me he thought Butch was a fine young man. I guess the two of them had a long talk about the advisability of removing mesquite and trying to reintroduce native grasses.”

Joanna nodded. “It is something we’ve talked about, but there didn’t seem to be much point to doing it on a paltry little forty acres.”

Burton Kimball smiled. “Now you’ll have three hundred and sixty. That’ll be a lot more work.” The lawyer paused and smiled. “By the way,” he added, “congratulations from Linda, and me as well. On your engagement, that is. When’s the big day?”

“Next Saturday.”

“Well, then. I’m sure Clayton would be happy to know that he’s giving the two of you a terrific wedding present. The place will have to be appraised. The IRS will want us to establish current market value for estate-tax purposes. And, of course, that valuation will give you an official basis in the property should you later decide to sell it.”

“What about the will?” Joanna asked. “Is it contestable?”

Burton’s smile disappeared abruptly. “Every will is contestable if someone wants to go to the trouble, that is. However, Clayton stipulated that all costs related to contesting the will are to be deducted from the cash portion of the proceeds. In other words, if Reba tries to go against the will, she’ll have to pay her attorney’s expenses and mine as well. That’s assuming, of course, that you want me to handle it. That would also apply to the expenses of any other attorney you might choose to represent you.”

“Is that why Reba thinks I murdered her father?” Joanna asked. “State law dictates that people found guilty of killing someone aren’t allowed to profit from their actions. If she can somehow cast enough suspicion on me, she’ll be able to destroy the will without actually having to contest it.”

Burton Kimball sighed and nodded. “Let me remind you that I’m also a damned fine defense attorney, but that is what I meant when I warned you that she might make trouble.”

And now, as Joanna sat in church not listening to the sermon, that was what she was worried about, too. Clayton Rhodes had probably been dead for several hours when she had found him in his exhaust-filled garage, but she had had no way of knowing that at the time. She hadn’t been worried about preserving evidence when she smashed a hole in the door to get inside. She hadn’t been wearing gloves or worrying about leaving a trail of fingerprints when she reached in through the driver’s window to turn off the ignition key. She had been intent on saving the man’s life.

Unfortunately, her fingerprints would be found there, and they wouldn’t be wear-dated. If Reba set out to do so, she might be able to make the case that the prints had been placed on Clayton Rhodes’ ignition key long before he died rather than after. The idea that Sheriff Joanna Brady herself could turn into a homicide suspect should have been laughable. It might have been, if it hadn’t been so scary.

“Therefore choose life,” Marianne was saying from the pulpit. “Choose it for yourself and for your children. Choose it with all your heart and all your mind and all your soul. Because it’s how you choose life now that determines both the now and the hereafter. If you can’t choose this simple living and breathing life, how will you choose eternal life? Because they go hand in hand, you see. It’s like what that old fifties song says about love and marriage,” she added, aiming a beaming smile in Joanna and Butch’s direction. “You can’t have one without the other. Therefore choose life. Let us bow our heads in prayer.”

With his shaven head glowing deep-red, Butch reached over and folded Joanna’s hand in his. “I told you we should have sat in the back row,” he muttered under his breath.