Skeleton Canyon (12 page)

Joanna looked across the room to where Daisy was separating yet another two people from the herd waiting near the door. For thirty years, a towering beehive—one with each peroxided blond hair lacquered firmly into place—had been Daisy Maxwell’s signature hairdo. The mere fact that the price of Freon had shot sky-high wasn’t enough to make her change it.

Daisy delivered the two waiting diners to a nearby booth and then detoured behind the counter on her way back to the cash register. Slipping past her husband, she gave him a swift jab in the ribs with one bony elbow. “Booth six needs bussing,” she told him. “So does table two.”

With a long-suffering sigh, Moe picked up a wet rag and went to clear the tables.

“He’d a whole lot rather gab than work,” Daisy complained, pulling a pencil out of her hair and an order pad out of her apron pocket. “If that man really was on my payroll, I would’ve fired him by now. Since he’s working for free, though, what can I do? Now, if you know what you want, I can put the order in on my way through the kitchen. Otherwise it’ll take a while for me to get back to you. We’re short-handed tonight. I didn’t expect this kind of crowd.”

“Chef’s salad,” Joanna said without bothering to look at the menu. “Ranch dressing on the side. Iced tea with extra lemon.”

“Corn bread or sticky bun?”

“Definitely sticky bun,” Joanna answered.

“You got it,” Daisy said, and hurried off.

The tea came within less than a minute. Stirring in sugar, Joanna became aware of the music playing through the speakers situated at either end of the counter.

Reba McEntire sang of a lonely woman living through the aftermath of a painful divorce. The lyrics were all about how hard it was to sleep in a bed once shared with a no-longer present husband. Regardless of the cause of that absence—death or divorce—Joanna knew that the loneliness involved was all the same, most especially so at bedtime, although meal-times weren’t much better.

Determined to shut out the words, Joanna sat sipping her tea and observing the people in the room through the mirror on the far side of the counter. Unfortunately, she could see nothing but couples. Pairs. Men and women—husbands and wives—eating and talking and laughing together. In the far corner of the room sat a young couple with a toddler in a high chair. The child was happily munching saltine crackers while the man and woman talked earnestly back and forth together.

Struck by a sudden jolt of envy, Joanna forced herself to look away. It reminded her too much of the old days when Jenny was at what Andy had called the “crumb-crusher stage.” It had been a period during which every meal out—whether in a restaurant or at someone else’s home—had included the embarrassment of a mess of cracker crumbs left around Jenny’s high chair.

Right about now,
Joanna thought,
I’d be so happy to have a few of those crumbs back again that I wouldn’t even complain about  having to clean them up.

By the time Joanna’s salad came, the hunger she had felt earlier had entirely disappeared. She picked at the pale pieces of canned asparagus and moved the chunks of bright red tomato from side to side. It was easy to feel sorry for herself, to wallow in her own misery and self-pity. Butch Dixon, a man she had met up in Peoria when she went there to attend the Arizona Police Officer’s Academy, had made it quite clear that he was more than just moderately interested in her. But Joanna didn’t think she was ready for that. Not yet. She was glad to have Butch as a friend—as a pal and as someone to talk to on the phone several times a week—but it was still too soon for anything beyond that, not just for Joanna but also for jenny.

“Mind if I sit down?”

Joanna looked up to see Chief Deputy Richard Voland standing with one hand on the back of the now-vacant stool next to her.

“Hi, Dick,” she said. “Help yourself.”

She was grateful Daisy’s was a public enough venue that Voland’s ears didn’t turn red as he eased his tall frame down onto the stool. Opening a menu, he studied it in silence for some time before slapping it shut. “Batching it is hell, isn’t it?” he grumbled. “Ruth maybe had her faults, but she was one helluva cook.”

Ruth Voland, Dick’s soon-to-be-ex-wife, had taken up with their son’s bowling coach from Sierra Vista. Their divorce was due to be final within the next few weeks. As that day loomed closer, Chief Deputy Voland was becoming more and more difficult to be around.

“You’re right,” Joanna agreed. “It’s not much fun, but thanks to people like Daisy Maxwell, neither of us is starving to death.”

Voland nodded morosely. “Hope you don’t mind my tracking you down. Dispatch said you were stopping off to have dinner. I needed to grab a bite myself.”

Daisy came to take his order. Joanna waited until she left before speaking again. “So what’s up over in St. David?”

“Killer bees,” Voland answered. “It was unbelievable.”

“Killer bees?” Joanna repeated. “I thought there was some kind of an explosion.”

“That’s right. There was. A lady by the name of Ethel Jamison found a swarm of killer bees up under the roof of a tool shed. Her great-grandson is down visiting from Provo, Utah, for a couple of weeks. He offered to take care of them for her. So he and a buddy of his logged onto the Internet, consulted some kind of cyberspace
Anarchist’s Cookbook,
and blew the place to pieces, bees and all. Except they didn’t quite get all the bees. Like this one, for example,” Voland added, pointing to an ugly red welt on the back of his hand. “And this one, too.” A second vivid welt showed itself on the back of his neck, just above his wilted shirt collar.

“I wasn’t the only one who got stung, either,” Voland added. “A couple of the volunteer firemen did, too. Naturally, the two boys didn’t.”

Dick’s coffee came. He stopped talking long enough to add cream and sugar. “So what’s happening on the O’Brien deal?” “Nothing,” Joanna said.

“But I thought ...”

“Brianna O’Brien may not have gone where she
said
she was going,” Joanna told him, “but she’s not yet officially missing. According to her parents, she’s not due back until tomorrow afternoon. If and when that deadline passes, we’ll make an official missing persons determination.”

“You’re going to wait the full twenty-four hours?” Dick Voland asked. “David O’Brien will have a cow.”

“He’s already having a cow, so I don’t see what difference it makes.”

“David O’Brien isn’t someone I’d want to get crosswise with,” Voland warned. “From a political standpoint if nothing else. With his kind of money, he can make or break you.”

Joanna gave her chief deputy a sidelong glance. “I’m surprised to hear you say that, Mr. Voland,” she told him. “Aren’t you the same guy who was out on the stump during the election, trying to get people to vote against me?”

Voland ducked his head and shrugged self-consciously. “Maybe I changed my mind,” he said while his ears glowed bright red.

It was Saturday night. Knowing small-town gossipmongers might read far more into this casual dinnertime meeting than it merited, Joanna picked up her ticket and slid off her stool.

“I’d better be going,” she said. “See you Monday.”

“Right,” Dick returned. “See you then.”

CHAPTER NINE

Joanna went out to the Crown Victoria and drove north toward the traffic circle where Jim Hobbs’s auto repair shop was located. Remembering Moe Maxwell’s advice that she put the Eagle in the shop for repairs as soon as possible, she glanced off in that direction. To her surprise, even after nine o’clock on a Saturday night, the lights were still on at Jim’s Auto Repair. One of the two garage bay doors was still open.

Instead of heading out toward the ranch, Joanna drove on around the circle and pulled in beside Jim’s cherished 1956 Chevy BelAir. Jim himself was hanging over the front fender of a Honda Civic. He straightened up when he heard Joanna’s car stop and sauntered out of the garage, wiping his greasy hands on a rag.

“It’s you, Sheriff Brady,” he said, grinning when he recognized Joanna. “1 thought it would be Margo come to tell me to get the hell home. But since I’m working on my mother-in-law’s car, I don’t figure I’ll be in too much trouble. What can I do for you?”

“It’s the air-conditioning on my Eagle,’’ Joanna began. “It went out on the way to Tucson today. Moe Maxwell says I’ll need to get in line for an appointment, so I thought I’d check.”

The congenial grin disappeared from Jim’s face. “It’s a setup deal, isn’t it? A sting. As soon as I got the call, I figured it would be something like this. Sorry, Sheriff Brady. I’m all booked up for air-conditioning work. I won’t be able to get around to you for a month or so, maybe even longer.”

“A month?” Joanna echoed. “That long? Right in the middle of the summer?”

“Too bad, isn’t it,” Jim returned coldly. “But like I said, it might even be longer than that.” Then, as if dismissing her, he turned and headed back into the garage.

For several moments Joanna sat there wavering in confusion. Jim Hobbs had done lots of work for her over the years. She had no idea what had provoked him or why she would de-serve such an abrupt dismissal. Something was wrong. Not wanting to leave the misunderstanding hanging, Joanna climbed out of the Crown Victoria and followed him into the garage.

Jim’s Auto Repair had arisen from the ruins of a defunct gas station, one that had become a permanent casualty in the EPA’s ongoing war against leaky gasoline tanks. Anyone walking into the orderly but run-down building would have known at once where Jim Hobbs’s priorities lay. The grungy cinder block walls, the fly-specked dirty glass, and the cracked cement flooring might have all been seventy-year-old original construction, but there was nothing old or lacking in the gleaming tools and up-to-date equipment lining the walls.

Walking inside, Joanna stood for a long time watching Jim in silence while he studiously ignored her. “All right, Jim,” she said at last, trailing him over to a metal tool chest where he slammed a wrench into one of the drawers. “What’s going on?”

“I’ll tell you what’s going on,” he growled, turning on her and poking the air between them with one of his stubby fingers. “That weasely Sam Nettleton character over in Benson gives me a call this afternoon and tells me he’s got a cool deal on some really cheap Freon if I want to go in with him on it. Well, here’s the real scoop, Sheriff Brady. I didn’t bite, so you can call off your dogs and forget it. I’ve got twenty thousand bucks tied up in legally approved equipment to do air-conditioning work the right way. The reason I’m as busy as a one-armed paperhanger right now is that hardly anyone else in the county has bothered to invest in that new equipment—including Mr. Sleazeball Sam Nettleton. If you think you’re going to waltz in here and find me using illegal Freon—”

“Wait a minute, Jim,” Joanna said. “Hold on. I don’t have any idea what you’re talking about. I stopped in here to see about getting my Eagle fixed because I almost roasted to death driving Jenny up to Mount Lemmon today.”

Jim looked suddenly abashed. “You mean Sam Nettleton didn’t try to sic you on me?”

“The person who sent me here is Moe Maxwell. I saw him in Daisy’s just a few minutes ago, and he said you had fixed the air-conditioning on his GMC. I don’t even know Sam Nettleton. From the sounds of it, though, maybe I should. Care to tell me about him?”

Now Jim looked downright embarrassed. “I shouldn’t,” he said. “But the whole deal makes me so damned mad.” “What deal?”

“Years ago, the tree huggers in Washington, D.C., got all hot and bothered about holes in the ozone. They fixed it so Congress passed some laws designed to fix ‘em. The holes, I mean, not the tree huggers. The first guys the feds went after for chlorofluorocarbon use were the big industries. Now they’re coming after us—the little guys. It turns out that Freon is bad for the ozone, and Freon just happens to be what makes most pre-1995 air conditioners run. The U.S. isn’t producing R-12 Freon anymore. Newer cars use R-134A. Dealers have to have proper, EPA-approved equipment to work on that or on any other R-12 substitute.

“Some of those supposed substitutes are so bad the cars blow up. Like the two little old ladies who burned to death up on I-40 last summer. Some shyster mechanic over in Gallup had filled up their compressor with something that was more butane than it was anything else.”

“Let’s get back to Sam Nettleton,” Joanna urged. “Who is he? What does he do?”

“He runs an outfit called Sam’s Easy Towing and Wrecking up in Benson. He’s the kind of guy who gives every other mechanic in the universe a bad name.”

“And what’s his connection to Freon?”

“Like I said, the U.S. is out of the R-12 business, but other countries are still making it. If they can figure out a way to ship it here, there’s a ready black market. Arizona has lots of pre-1995 automobiles that are still on the road. Here in the desert, air-conditioning is a necessity rather than an option. A thirty-pound container of Freon that would have cost thirty bucks a few years ago now sells for nine hundred.”

Joanna whistled. “No wonder there’s a black market.”

Jim nodded. “No wonder.”

“Why did Nettleton call you?”

“Who knows? My guess is he needed someone to go in with him on it, someone who could bring along some cash. I’ve got a reputation for doing more automotive air-conditioning work than anyone else in the county, so he probably figured I could use it. If I bought it at his price and charged the usual markup for the real stuff, it would be a regular gold mine—for a while anyway. Until somebody got wise. But like I told Nettleton on the phone, if the EPA inspectors come in and find me using illegal Freon, I’m out of business, just like that. I’m not going to risk it. And I’ve been standing here all night, working and stewing about it.”

“When’s Nettleton’s cut-rate Freon supposed to be here?” Joanna asked.

“Sometime soon, I guess,” Jim said. “He told me he’s got to have the money by Monday noon at the latest.”

“He didn’t say where the shipment was coming from?”

Hobbs shook his head. “No, but you can pretty much figure it out. It’s gotta be Mexico. Maybe all the old drug dealers have switched over and are carrying Freon these days instead of heroin and cocaine.” He paused for a moment. “So do you still want me to work on your car?” he asked somewhat sheepishly.