J. Jance - Judgment Call

“Come on, Marliss,” she said. “You know the drill. No comment at this time. We don’t release any information about the victim until we’ve made a positive ID and until we’ve notified the next of kin. Once we do that, we’ll be sure to let you know.”

Marliss wasn’t dissuaded.

“Right,” she muttered. “Along with everyone else. This is a big story, Joanna.” In a piece of gamesmanship of her own, the reporter deliberately avoided the use of Joanna’s official title. “A big local story. You can’t expect me to sit on a scoop like this indefinitely.”

Marliss had been divorced for a long time when she scored big by marrying a man a decade and a half younger than she was. Since then she had invested in any number of “image-enhancing” procedures. In the harsh sunlight, when her lips shifted into a pout, glimpses of her history of cosmetic changes showed through her carefully applied makeup, making it clear that she was far older than a first impression might have indicated.

“It’s exactly what I expect,” Joanna replied firmly. “We’ll have a press briefing maybe later on today. In the meantime, I’d like to know where you’re getting your information.”

“Have you ever heard of freedom of the press?” Marliss shot back. “I’m a reporter, and I’m under no obligation to reveal my confidential sources.”

“True,” Joanna said, “but you also don’t get preferential treatment.”

“I don’t have to not publish something I know just on your say-so.”

“What you think you know,” Joanna corrected. “And you’re right. You’re welcome to publish whatever you want. Putting something about a victim in your paper prior to our notifying the family would be reprehensible, but it wouldn’t be against the law. You should leave now.”

Marliss’s cheeks glowed with fury and her Botoxed lips pulled into a sneer, but she kept her tone civil. “Very well,” she said. “I’m leaving.” She reached out to open the door on the RAV4. Then she stopped and turned back to Joanna. “By the way,” she said, “how’s Jenny doing these days?”

It was an out-of-the-blue question. As far as Joanna knew, Jenny’s only meetings with Marliss had occurred mostly during coffee hours after Sunday services at Tombstone Canyon United Methodist Church, although she supposed Jenny could have encountered Marliss when she was out with Joanna’s mother.

“Jenny’s fine,” Joanna answered.

“Good,” Marliss replied with a smile that was as unsettling as it was insincere. “Glad to hear it.”

Once in the SUV, she slammed it into gear, made a quick U-turn, and then took off, leaving Joanna standing there in a cloud of gravel and dust. She looked down at the grimy uniform she had put on clean only a couple of hours earlier. She’d have to shower and change before she showed up at the office.

JOANNA SENTDeb Howell off to start tracking down the victim’s next of kin while Jaime, Dave, and several uniformed officers stayed at the crime scene conducting a systematic search of the area. Unfortunately, they came up empty-handed. The killer had evidently picked up all his brass. In spots where there might have been footprints, there was evidence that the ground had been swept clean. Dave was able to make casts of one set of tire tracks, but it seemed likely that they would match the tires on Debra Highsmith’s vehicle, which had now been hauled off to the department’s impound lot.

The only conclusion to be drawn from this was that the perpetrator was someone who was careful enough to cover his tracks—literally.

By the time Joanna finally got back home to High Lonesome Ranch to shower and change, she was famished and hoping for breakfast, but Butch had Dennis in his car seat, and the two of them were just pulling out of the garage.

“I’m on my way to FedEx first,” Butch said. “You probably don’t remember, but it’s Friday, when kids get all-they-can-eat tacos for three bucks at Daisy’s. Jeff and his kids and Dennis and I are meeting there for lunch, then we’re going to the park. Care to join us? I already know the park excursion is out, but you still need to eat.”

Jeff was Jeff Daniels, the stay-at-home husband of Marianne Maculyea, the pastor of their church. Marianne and Joanna were lifelong friends. Now their husbands and kids were friends as well. Jeff and Marianne’s daughter, Ruth, now nine, was an adoptee from China. Their biological son, Jeffy, had arrived as something of a surprise some time after they had adopted Ruth. Because of the long friendship between Joanna and Marianne, Jeffy’s full name was Jeffrey Andrew in honor of Joanna’s first husband, Andrew Roy Brady. Jeffy was more than a year older than Dennis. Despite the age difference, they were great pals.

“You’re sure I won’t be horning in on your guy time?” Joanna asked.

“Hardly,” Butch said with a laugh.

“All right, then,” Joanna said. “Order a machaca chimichanga for me, and I’ll be there once I get cleaned up.”

Twenty minutes later, showered, newly made up, and dressed in a fresh uniform, Joanna arrived at the restaurant, where she was astonished to see her former mother-in-law, Eva Lou Brady, stationed at the hostess stand and handing out menus.

“What are you doing here?” Joanna wanted to know.

“Jim Bob and I came in for an early lunch,” Eva Lou explained. “Junior was here when we got here, but there was some kind of problem. He got upset about something—really agitated. Daisy had to call Moe to come take him home. This is the week that Daisy’s is serving lunch to that whole out-of-town Plein Air painting group in the back room every day. With Junior off the floor, I could see they were really under the gun, so I offered to fill in. I told Daisy that if Junior can figure out how to make change, hand out menus, and bus tables, so can I.”

Years earlier, Junior Dowdle, a developmentally disabled man in his midforties, had been abandoned by his caregivers at an arts festival in Saint David. Realizing the man was incapable of caring for himself, Joanna had brought him back to Bisbee with her. Eventually the owners of Daisy’s Café, Moe and Daisy Maxwell, had taken him in. Later, they had gone to court to become Junior’s official guardians. In the years since, Junior had become a fixture at the restaurant and in the community, greeting people with his constant smile and perpetually cheerful attitude, conducting customers to tables, and then handing out menus.

As for Plein Air? Once Bisbee stopped being a copper-mining town, it had morphed into an arts community and tourist attraction. Three years earlier, Maggie Oliphant, a relatively new arrival in town, had decided it was time to make a difference. The well-to-do widow of a retired army officer, she had spent years living on post at Fort Huachuca. After her husband’s death, she had returned to southeastern Arizona, but she had decided against living in Sierra Vista. She had wanted a new life that was different from her old one. She had settled in Bisbee, and seeing a need, she had decided to fill it.

Living the vagabond life first as an army brat and later as an army spouse, Maggie had found art to be her salvation. It had done the same for her two daughters. When she returned to Bisbee, she found that things had changed from the time when her girls were attending school. When loss of revenue caused the school board to make budget cuts, art was an easy target. So not only was art out of the curriculum, Bisbee’s school-age kids were also at loose ends on those school-free Fridays.

Maggie Oliphant’s favorite credo was “If it is to be, it is up to me,” and she lived by those words. She had established the Bisbee Art League and had raised enough money to rent a suite of rooms in the once abandoned and now repurposed Horace Mann School, where, on Fridays, qualified art teachers taught pottery making and charcoal drawing along with pastels and oil painting. When Maggie needed money to pay the rent or pay the teachers, she found it by writing grants or raised it by holding fund-raisers.