Desert Heat (13 page)

“Yes.”

“Maybe this sounds crazy, but couldn’t I ride back home with you? Be a friend. Go upstairs and tell my mother that I’ve got things to do. Make something up if you have to. Tell her I’ve got to go see the Medical Examiner or talk to someone from the Tucson PD. Tell her anything, whatever you want. Just so I don’t have to ride in the same car with her for the next two hours. I couldn’t stand it.”

Ken nodded sympathetically. “Sure,” he said. “I understand. There are times when the last thing you need is a mother. You go on over to the billing department and do what-ever you have to do. Then wait for me down in the cafeteria. I’ll come get you as soon as she’s gone. Is that all right?”

Joanna nodded. “It’s what I want,” she said, “but you must think I’m crazy.”

“No,” Ken Galloway said with a pained expression on his face. “You forget. You’ve been away from the hospital for the last two hours. I’ve spent that whole time upstairs in the waiting room with your mother and her pal Margaret Turnbull. I know exactly what you mean.”

Ken hurried back to the bank of elevators and Joanna followed the signs to the billing department. She was enough of an insurance bureaucrat to understand how many things could go awry in paying a hospitalization claim. To head off as many difficulties as possible, Joanna wanted to be sure everything was in the best possible order to begin with. First she asked the clerk on duty for a computerized printout of all current hospital charges. With that in hand, she’d be able to check any subsequent bills for possible discrepancies. Her second precaution was to verify that the paperwork reflected that Andy’s policy with the county would provide primary coverage, while Joanna’s insurance from work would finish paying any bills that hadn’t been handled in full by Andy’s carrier. Finally she picked up the small plastic bag containing Andy’s personal effects. She didn’t even look inside it.

Having done all that, she made her way to the cafeteria. By this time it was late afternoon and the place was deserted except for a few stray hospital workers taking off-hour breaks. She bought herself a cup of coffee and took it to a table near the door.

Too tired to feel guilty about ditching her mother and too wrung out to feel apologetic about her outburst with the young reporter, Joanna stared vacantly down at the cup of coffee without even bothering to lift it to her lips. Beyond tears and almost beyond thought, she tried desperately to grapple with the reality of Andy’s death, but every attempt left her with a gaping hole in her being that was beyond her ability to fathom. Maybe, if she’d been there to see him before they took him away, it wouldn’t be so hard for her to believe that he was really gone.

Ken Galloway turned up, startling her out of her reverie by placing the battered suitcase on the table in front of her.

“Your mother’s gone,” he announced. “She and Margaret are going to caravan back to Bisbee. They told me that they’ll be stopping at the Triple T for deep-dish apple pie in case we want to catch up with them on our way out of town. I said I didn’t think we’d make it, that you had papers to sign, things to do.”

Joanna breathed a sigh of relief. “Thank you, Ken. I’m not nearly as irrational as I sound. It’s just that I couldn’t face dealing with my mother right now.”

“No problem. I understand completely.” He settled down on the chair opposite her and earnestly studied her face. “You look like hell. How’re you doing?”

“Better, I think. I’m tired though. I can barely hold my head up.”

“I wonder why. Do you have any other errands to run? Do you want to stop someplace on the way and get cleaned up before we head out?”

“No. I’ve been a mess this long, it won’t hurt me to stay that way a little while longer. I just want to go home.”

“Let’s do it then.”

Galloway’s white Bronco was parked in the hospital garage. Joanna climbed into it and settled gratefully in the rider’s seat. While waiting for Ken to go around and open his own door, she realized with a pang how familiar the seat felt. This vehicle was almost the same make and model as Andy’s. It hurt her to realize that she would never again have the pleasure of riding in a vehicle with Andrew Brady at the wheel. That part of her life was over forever.

Ken climbed in and started the engine. Neither of them said a word as he maneuvered out of the garage and headed south on Camp-bell. As she rode along, Joanna realized that it might be a long time before she had another opportunity to ask anyone else the questions that were bothering her. Ken Galloway had been one of Andy’s best friends. She was sure she could count on him to give her the straight answers she needed.

“Why’s Dick Voland doing this?”

Ken gave her a sidelong glance. “Dick Voland? Doing what?”

“Why’s he saying Andy committed suicide? He was murdered, Ken, I know he was, but the news on TV, the woman in the lobby, they’re all saying something else, that the case is being investigated as a suicide. That sounds like an official pronouncement, and it’s got to be coming from either Dick Voland or from Sheriff McFadden himself.”

Ken Galloway sighed. “Joanna, listen to me. Nobody’s making anything up. I know you don’t want to hear it, but you’re going to have to listen and come to terms with it no matter how much it hurts.”

“So you’re saying the same thing?”

He nodded. “Look, Andy Brady was a good friend of mine, but from what I’ve learned the past few days, I sure as hell didn’t know everything about him, and I don’t think you did, either. The evidence is all there, Joanna. Believe me.”

“What evidence?”

“I hate to be the one to tell you, but they found a note.”

“What kind of note?”

“A suicide note, Joanna.”

“No.”

“Sorry, but it’s true.”

“Where was it? In Andy’s own handwriting?”

“In one of Andy’s personal files in the computer at work.”

“What did it say?”

“That he was sorry to put you and Jenny through this, that he never should have taken the money in the first place. He said that even with Lefty out of the way, he was afraid the DEA was still closing in. He said he’d never let them take him alive.”

Joanna shook her head stubbornly. “Somebody must have broken into his file and written it then. Andy wouldn’t.”

Ken sighed in exasperation. “Come on, Joanna. Get real.”

For a long time Joanna didn’t speak again. Despite her forcible denial, she felt as though a bucket of ice water had been thrown in her face. For the first time she felt the tiniest bit of doubt. Was there maybe some small grain of truth in what the reporter had told her?

“What about Guaymas?” she asked finally. “The reporter said something about evidence found at the scene in Mexico that linked Andy to that.”

“I haven’t seen it, not with my own eyes, but evidently something was found on Lefty’s body, a letter of some kind from him to Andy. From the sound of it, they must have been working together for some time.”

Ten minutes or so passed in silence while Joanna tried to assimilate what she had heard. If everything Ken Galloway said was true, then she had spent the last ten years of her life married to a complete stranger. None of this squared with her understanding of the man she had known and loved. And loved still.

“What if it’s a setup?” she ventured.

“Look, Joanna,” Ken Galloway returned gruffly. He sounded disgusted. “Andrew Brady would have been the last person in the world I would have expected to turn into a crooked cop, but the evidence is overwhelming. The letter’s there, the note’s there, and evidently the money’s in your checking account as well.”

“You’ve heard about that, too?”

“Bisbee’s a small town. Word gets around.”

”It certainly does,” she said bitterly. “I can see that it does.”

Not another word was exchanged for the next ninety miles. Most of that time Joanna sat staring straight ahead of her. Resting in her lap was the small plastic bag the clerk had given her. Under the thin layer of plastic she could feel the familiar contours of Andy’s worn bill-fold. Her fingers closed round it, and she held it tightly, as though it were some precious, life-giving talisman.

Only as they drove through the Mule Mountain Tunnel, did Joanna rouse herself enough to speak. “We have to stop by Marianne Maculyea’s parsonage up the canyon and pick up Jenny

“Sure thing,” Ken Galloway replied easily, swinging off the highway onto the exit. “Hang on. We’ll have you both home in two shakes of a lamb’s tail.”

Tony Vargas was in an expansive mood when he came home in the middle of the afternoon. He rousted Angie out of the pool for a quick fuck on the living room floor in front of the mangled television set. This time he had no difficulty achieving an erection. As he grunted above her, Angie was grateful she’d been so meticulous about cleaning up all the shattered glass. Otherwise her bare back and buttocks would have been full of it.

Finished, he rolled off her and then lay be-side her, leaning on one elbow and absently toying with her nipple. “We’ll go out to dinner,” he said. “I feel like celebrating.”

She didn’t dare ask him what they were celebrating. She was smarter than that. Eventually he headed for the bathroom to shower. She went into the kitchen, squeezed fresh grapefruit, mixed drinks, and then followed him into the bedroom. He had evidently switched on the small television set on the dresser. The local edition of the evening news was just starting. The lead story told that Andrew Brady, the wounded deputy and candidate for Cochise County sheriff, had died at University Hospital in Tucson earlier that afternoon.

Transfixed by what she was hearing, Angie stood in the middle of the room holding the two drinks. It had been bad enough, earlier that afternoon when her vague suspicions about Tony’s “consultation business” had once and for all solidified into harsh reality. Then, he had broken the television in a blinding rage when he heard the news that Andrew Brady was still alive. Now, with the announcement that the very same man had died, Tony was taking her out to dinner. To celebrate.

With horror, Angie realized that somehow Tony Vargas had gone to the hospital and finished what he had set out to do, just as she had known he would. And by not doing something to prevent it, Angie realized that she, too, was somehow responsible.

And with that sickening realization came another one as well. Angie had always imagined that somehow she’d find a way to slip away from Tony and leave him, but now she understood that wouldn’t be possible. He’d never let her go. And if he ever discovered how much Angie really knew about him, she, too, would be living under a death sentence.

The water shut off, and Tony stepped out of the shower.

“Hey, Angie, where the hell’s my drink?” he demanded as he began toweling himself dry. “I thought you went out to the kitchen to make me a Sea Breeze.”

Taking a deep breath, she stepped into the narrow bathroom beside him. He ran his hands over the bare skin of her buttocks as she set both drinks down on the bathroom counter.

“Nice ass,” he said, then he slapped her hard with the flat of his hand before she could move out of reach. That was something he liked to do occasionally—leave a hand print on her backside just for the hell of it. He liked to see how long the imprint lasted.

Without saying a word, Angie stepped into the shower, pulled the door shut, and turned on the water full blast, hoping the steaming water would somehow clear her head.

As a working whore in L.A., she had been busted more times than she could count—often enough to have learned the cops’ tired right-to-remain-silent speech by heart. In fact, she could recite the whole thing from beginning to end without any prompting.

But now we were talking about murder, and this was far more than just a right to remain silent. Silence was now an absolute necessity. Not only would anything she said be held against her, in the wrong hands, it could also prove deadly.

Silently, standing under the running water, Angie Kellogg began to cry, because, for the first time since that long-ago night in Battle Creek, Michigan, when her father’s unspeakable violation had turned her little-girl world upside down, she was utterly terrified.

NINE

Coming down Tombstone Canyon with Jennifer in the back seat of Ken Galloway’s Bronco, Joanna guiltily remembered their ten head of cattle for the first time. There was plenty of water for them in the stock tank, and she had fed them the night before, but between then and now she hadn’t given them another thought. There was still some forage left over from the summer’s rainy season, but not much. By now they were probably very hungry.

Joanna doubted her mother had thought about the cattle or made arrangements to feed them, either. And why should she? They weren’t her responsibility; they were Joanna’s. Eleanor had made it abundantly clear that she was a confirmed town-dweller who had little patience with Joanna and Andy’s “cockamamie” decision to take over what remained of the Brady family holdings.

Preoccupied with berating herself over neglecting the cattle, Joanna barely noticed when Ken turned off the highway onto Double Adobe Road. Then, as they crossed the first cattle guard onto High Lonesome, her heart filled with sudden dread. Traveling down the dirt road, they were fast approaching the bridge, the place where she had found Andy lying wounded and dying in the sand. Concerned not only about what she might see but also her reaction to it, Joanna breathed a sigh of relief when she realized that in the deepening twilight nothing at all was visible. For now, at least, she didn’t have to look at whatever physical evidence remained of that horrible ordeal.

“Somebody’s here,” Jennifer announced when they caught sight of lights from the house glimmering through the surrounding mesquite. A hundred yards into the ranch proper, Sadie appeared in the slice of head-lights ahead of them, racing toward the Bronco at full throttle. Jennifer rolled down the window and called to her, urging the dog to keep pace. When they pulled into the yard, two extra vehicles were parked next to Joanna’s Eagle in the brassy glow of the solitary yard light—Grandma and Grandpa Brady’s Honda and Clayton Rhodes’ ancient Ford pickup.