Tombstone Courage (19 page)

Ivy shrugged. “That doesn't matter. I suppose we can go up later and get it back. That's how
we brought it home from the convention center yesterday. Is that what you came to tell me?”

“No,” Joanna said. “There's something else.” She paused for a moment, searching for the right words. “I was up there with Dick Voland and Ernie Carpenter, the homicide investigator.”

“Homicide,” Ivy repeated. “As in murder? You mean my dad didn't just fall in? It wasn't an accident?”

“No,” Joanna said. “I'm afraid it doesn't look like an accident. In the meantime, that's not all. There's something else you need to know.”

“What else?” Ivy demanded impatiently, sitting forward on the couch. “What more could there be?”

Joanna took a deep breath. “Your father's isn't the only body down in that hole, Ivy,” she said. “Ernie Carpenter found a human skeleton down there with him, someone who's been in the glory hole for a very long time. For years.”

Ivy Patterson's eyes grew wide with shock. Her hand flew to her mouth. “Oh, my God!” she exclaimed. “It's true then!”

“What's true?” Joanna asked.

Suddenly, a fresh torrent of tears coursed down Ivy Patterson's cheeks. All color drained from her cheeks. She buried her face in her hands, while her whole body convulsed with sobs. For a moment, there was no sound in the room except Ivy's desperate weeping and the crackles and pops from the mesquite log fire. No one else had anything to say.

Eventually, Ivy drew herself erect, but the look
on her face was far more dismayed than grief-stricken. “Mother always said there was a body in that hole,” she said softly. “She always said so, and I never believed her.”

Joanna felt her own jolt of shock. “You mean to say your mother knew something about this?”

Ivy nodded. “I'm sure of it.”

“What about your father?”

A strange look washed over Ivy's face. Her flesh seemed to harden. Her jawline froze with visible anger. “That son of a bitch,” she murmured. “That rotten, low-down son of a bitch. He must have known it was true the whole time.”

“Who must have known what was true?” Joanna asked, confused by the sudden shift in Ivy Patterson's demeanor.

“My father. That there was a body. When Mother told me that, he insisted she was crazy. Every time she brought it up, he claimed she was talking out of her head. That was about the time he started having someone watch her constantly—every minute, day and night. He said that if she was capable of making up such bizarre stories and of getting people to believe her, we'd have to be careful or they'd haul her away to Phoenix and lock her up in the state hospital.”

“Wait a minute,” Marianne said. “If your mother was telling the truth, if the body was really there the whole time, then maybe she wasn't so crazy after all.”

“That's right, maybe she wasn't,” Ivy added grimly, with a ferocity that was chilling to hear. “At least not at first, but she was later. And why
not? Dad started locking her in her room at night. He stopped trusting her, and she went downhill fast. Before long, he wouldn't even let her out of his sight. Or mine. She did go crazy then, and maybe it happened because he drove her to it. Damn him anyway! How could he do that to her? How could he?”

Ivy collapsed against Yuri's shoulder, her whole body convulsed by a new paroxysm of broken-hearted sobs.

Sitting there, Joanna sensed something odd. Before Ivy Patterson had learned about the second body, her reaction to her father's death had been completely appropriate and understandable. But this new storm of tears was something else.

The woman weeping inconsolably on Yuri Malakov's massive shoulder wasn't simply Harold Patterson's grieving daughter. She was instead the betrayed child of a betrayed mother, a child who now—perhaps for the first time—finally was forced into seeing her once-trusted father through new eyes. Joanna's revelation had coerced Ivy into holding Harold responsible for any number of past sins—either real or imagined.

And Ivy's betrayal, her profound distress, clearly stemmed from the fact that two bodies had been found in the glory hole up on Juniper Flats. Two bodies, not one.

But there's far more to it than that, Joanna thought uneasily, as she waited for Ivy Patterson's spate of wild tears to subside.

If Harold Patterson had betrayed his own wife and daughter, if he had somehow tricked them
into believing he was something he wasn't, then what had he done to the rest of the world?

After all, a man capable of deceiving his family was more than smart enough to trick a mere insurance agent.

Or a brand-new sheriff.

W
ITH SOME
effort, Ivy pulled herself together and leveled her gaze on Marianne. “That settles it then,” she said. “I've changed my mind. I want to go through with it after all, just the way I talked about in the first place.”

“But, Ivy…” Marianne protested.

“No,” Ivy interrupted forcefully, “I've had it. I'm not going to change my mind again. I've spent my whole life looking out for everybody else. I'm not going to do that anymore.”

At that juncture, the front door slammed open, and Burton Kimball rushed uninvited into the room. “Is it true?” he demanded. “Did they find him? Is he dead?”

Beyond tears, Ivy's eyes suddenly glimmered with cold fury. “He's dead all right,” she said.

Burton Kimball closed his eyes and shook his head. “Ivy,” he said, “I'm so sorry. But these things happen. It'll be all right. You'll see.”

“It is not all right!” Ivy insisted. “It'll never be all right. Don't you understand? Dad lied to me.”

A stricken look washed across Burton Kimball's face. “If it's about the will, Ivy, there shouldn't be any problem. He said he was going to change it,
he may have wanted to change it, but I wouldn't do it for him. Not the day he asked about it. And I doubt he found anyone else to do it on such short notice. You should still end up with the ranch. That's the way we set it up originally. And even if Holly were to attempt to go against the will or try to continue the lawsuit against his estate, I don't see how she'd win.”

“I'm not talking about Dad's will,” Ivy cut in icily. “It's worse than that. Way worse. Mother was right all along, Burtie. About the glory hole. They just found another body in it.”

Dismayed, Burton Kimball stopped short. “What do you mean, another body?”

“Just what I said. Somebody else is dead and down in the glory hole with Dad,” she answered.

Stricken, Burton Kimball staggered toward a chair. “How can that be? It's crazy.”

“That's what Dad always told Mother, too—that it wasn't possible for a body to be down there, that she was crazy for saying so, remember? Dad used us, Burtie,” she added bitterly. “He used us both, to spy on her and keep her in line, when the whole time she was telling the truth. It must have been true all along.”

With every word, Ivy's voice had risen both in pitch and outrage. Yuri soothingly rubbed her upper arm. “Be still,” he murmured. “Do not be so upset.”

Ivy burrowed under Yuri's arm not so much like a lost wild thing seeking the warmth of its nest, but more like an angry wounded bear retreating to her cave. As she rested against him, Burton shot
Yuri Malakov a single scathing and questioning glance, but his full attention soon settled back on Ivy.

“Who is this other body?” he asked. “Does anyone know?”

“There's no way to tell who it is until we can raise it out of the hole,” Joanna said. “From the looks of it, it's not so much a body as it is a skeleton. It's been down there a long time.”

“Do you hear that, Burtie?” Ivy demanded. “Don't you remember? Mother made us both promise never to go near that place. She even made me swear that, on the family Bible.”

Burton Kimball nodded. “Until after your father was dead,” he added. “I do remember that much. At the time, I thought it was just more of her ranting and raving. In fact, it was one of the things that helped convince me Uncle Harold was right, that Aunt Emily was really completely around the bend. She would go on and on about that glory hole for hours on end, insisting it would be the death of your father someday.”

“She was right,” Ivy Patterson said shortly. “Now it is.”

She took a deep breath. “I kept my promise to her,” Ivy added. “I stayed away right up until last night.”

Yuri pulled Ivy close in what seemed a warning for her to drop the subject, but Joanna had already caught the small discrepancy in their story.

“You went up there last night?” she asked, glancing meaningfully at Yuri Malakov, wanting him to understand that she knew he had lied to
her earlier about the way he had found the body. “So the part about seeing the buzzards wasn't true?”

“It's true,” Ivy said. “I saw them late yesterday afternoon, just as the search party was giving up and shutting down for the night. I wanted to go see for myself. I went up and checked as soon as I could.”

“You're saying you found him yesterday afternoon then?”

Ivy nodded. “Just before sundown.”

“But you didn't report it until this morning. Why not?”

“Because I didn't feel like it. There was something I had to do first,” Ivy Patterson answered. “Something important.”

“What?”

Ivy's hand sought the top of Yuri Malakov's knee and rested there lightly. As she answered the question, though, her eyes were defiant and focused full on Joanna's face.

“Yuri and I spent the night on an air mattress in the back of the Scout. It wasn't very romantic, but it was okay.”

“You did what?” Burton exploded.

Ivy looked at him. “You heard me.”

“But why on earth would you pull a crazy stunt like that?”

“To prove I could,” she said defiantly. “Because I wanted to. And why not? Dad turned against me, and don't try to tell me he didn't. In my book, turnabout is fair play. I did it to get even. I did it to prove a point. I did it because it was the closest
I could come to dancing on my father's grave. Mother's grave is next to his down at Evergreen Cemetery. I couldn't do it there.”

Burton Kimball was clearly thunderstruck.

“You mean to tell me, you and this…this…jerk”—he finally spit out the word with a heartfelt glare in Yuri's direction—“spent the night together next to a glory hole with your father's body in it, and you didn't even bother to report it until this morning? What kind of craziness is that, Ivy? What in the world's gotten into you?”

“You think it's crazy, do you? Well, maybe it is. Maybe craziness runs in our family. I think I finally just got sick and tired of being the good girl, of doing my duty and getting shit on for it, of having other people tell me what to do.”

Burton Kimball held up both his hands as though trying to see through the blaze of Ivy's anger to some kind of reasonableness. “Wait a minute here,” he said. “Let's try to think straight for a change. This is a tough time for all of us, Ivy. I only came by because I heard from Marliss Shackleford up at the
Bisbee Bee
that something was up. I came to see if there was anything at all Linda and I could do to help.

“Do you want me to call Norm Higgins for you? I could start working on funeral arrangements, calling relatives, that sort of thing. What exactly do you need? I guess the first thing is to find out when the body will be released and go from there.” He looked at Joanna. “Any idea, Sheriff Brady?”

“That's entirely up to Ernie Carpenter,” Joanna
answered. “He's the one handling the investigation. He'll be the one making that call.”

“How soon can I check with him?”

“Maybe later this afternoon.”

Burton turned back to Ivy. “Would you like me to call Norm then and see if he can come out here for a consultation? Maybe later on this evening—say, around eight o'clock.”

“No,” Ivy Patterson said decisively, answering her cousin but with her eyes focused on Marianne Maculyea's face. “Not tonight. I'm busy tonight. Yuri and I are getting married. At seven o'clock.”

Kimball's jaw dropped. “You're doing what?”

“Getting married. In the Canyon Methodist parsonage, at seven o'clock.”

Burton looked at Marianne Maculyea. “Surely, this is some kind of joke,” he asked helplessly.

Marianne shook her head. “It's no joke. I spent all morning trying to talk her out of it, but she changed her mind back to going ahead with it just a few minutes ago.”

“But with your father not even…”

“Don't tell me one more word about my father,” Ivy Patterson warned. “I don't want to hear any more. You already told me enough, the other day.”

“Ivy, I've already told you how sorry I am about that. I was drunk and way out of line. Shooting off my mouth like that was a terrible breach of ethics. I never should have mentioned a word about it.”

“But the point is, you did. I figured if Dad was going to give away half of what I'd worked for,
then I wasn't going to wait around any longer. Yuri and I started making plans right then. That very day. On such short notice, we haven't found anyone to come look after the stock, so we're going to spend the night in Tombstone. The motel will probably have a banner over the door—Welcome Old Maids of America. Besides, you don't need me to talk to Norm Higgins. You can do it yourself, or Holly can.”

“But, Ivy,” Burton argued. “Getting married like this isn't right. It's not…seemly. Think what people will say.”

“I don't give a damn what they say. They can say whatever they like.”

“But your father just died. People around here, especially those who knew Uncle Harold, aren't going to like it. It shows a terrible lack of respect, of propriety.”

“You expect me to respect the man?” Ivy raged. “After everything he did? Forget it. I did respect him for forty years, and you can see how far that got me. When he decided to throw me to the wolves in favor of divvying this place up between Holly and me, he didn't hesitate, not for a minute. Maybe he didn't change his will, but only because he ran out of time. He didn't give a damn about all the years I worked here. I poured my whole life into this place. If Holly's portion and mine are exactly the same, then what I did for him and with him all those years didn't mean a thing.”

“Ivy, you're being too hard on the man.”

“Hard? No I'm not. Not only did he turn on me, he destroyed Mother, Burton. Maybe you don't see
it the same way I do. I was here every day taking care of her. He even made me help him do it to her, dammit. That's something I'll never forgive. Never.”

She paused long enough to take a ragged breath, and then a strange look passed over Ivy's face, a look of terrible comprehension. “That's it, isn't it?”

“What now?” Burton asked wearily, as though he were too exasperated to care anymore.

“Don't you see? That must be why he swore she was lying and why she insisted that we stay away from the glory hole.”

“What are you talking about, Ivy?”

“The other body. The skeleton. I know now who killed that other person.”

“Who?” Joanna asked.

“My father, of course,” Ivy Patterson said matter-of-factly. “Don't you see? Why else would he have covered it up all these years?”

Why else? Joanna thought with her own heart constricting in her breast. Why else indeed?

Ivy cut off all further discussion by getting up, taking Yuri's hand to pull him off the couch, and leading him out the door. The other three people were left in the living room, trapped in their own stunned silence.

“I don't understand what's going on with that woman,” Burton grumbled as the front door closed behind Yuri and Ivy. “Who the hell is that guy? Where's he from?”

“Yuri Malakov,” Marianne answered. “He's from someplace in Russia, of course. Or from
someplace in what used to be Russia. You mean you don't know him?”

“I've never laid eyes on the man, and yet Ivy says they're engaged? They're getting married? What kind of craziness is this?”

“From the way Ivy brought it up to me this morning, she sounded as though it was all decided long ago. I would have thought for sure you'd know all about it.”

“Well I don't. Not a word,” Burton said. He shook his head. “What did he say his name is? Malakov? What kind of name is that and what's he doing in this country? How'd he get here? And how did he meet up with Ivy?”

“He's an immigrant,” Marianne explained. “And a very nice man. It's part of our national church mission to help newcomers to this country. Jeff and I actually helped him find sponsors. Hale and Natasha Robertson, from just up the road.”

“You and your husband helped bring him here?” Burton asked reproachfully.

Marianne nodded. “Jeff's actually more involved with that part of our outreach program than I am. You've met Natasha Robertson, haven't you?”

Burton nodded. “Years ago. I remember when Hale brought her home as a G.I. bride right after World War II. They moved into a place a few miles down the road.”

“Hale's in a wheelchair now,” Marianne continued. “He was in a car accident years ago. He's turned himself into an accountant, keeping books for various ranchers. For a long time, Natasha
looked after their place all by herself, but she's getting up in years now, too. It finally got to be more than she could handle. Jeff was the one who came up with the idea of putting them together with Yuri. And it's a perfect match. Natasha speaks Russian and needed somebody to help her with chores. Yuri needed a job and a place to stay, and he didn't speak much English. It seemed like a match made in heaven.”

“You still haven't told me how he and Ivy got together,” Burton Kimball objected. “And just what kind of man is he? You can sit there and blithely tell me what a nice man he is, but for all you know he may be taking Ivy for all she's worth.”

“It's nothing like that,” Marianne assured him. “Yuri Malakov is totally on the up-and-up. Ivy started out tutoring him in English. The two of them just hit it off. Right from the start. Actually,” she added, “I like seeing them together. I think it's sweet.”

“I hope you're happy then,” Burton said sarcastically. “I suppose holding the wedding tonight was your idea?”

“Absolutely not. Having the wedding now is a terrible idea. I already told you I tried my best to talk Ivy out of it, but, as you can see, her mind's made up.”