Desert Heat (9 page)

Lefty O’Toole had been fired from his teaching position at Bisbee High School the year Joanna was a freshman. The place on the year-book’s faculty page where his picture should have been was blank. O’Toole had been present in Andy’s book, missing in hers. Now, here he was back again. It was as though the man was some kind of terrible ghost who had returned years later to haunt her and tear Joanna’s life to pieces. How was it possible? How could it be happening?

And why was Andy lying in a hospital bed—pale, stricken, barely breathing, and unable to defend himself—while the world outside the hospital room, even friends of his like Dick Voland, accused him of all kinds of unspeakable actions? Andy. He wasn’t perfect by a long shot. Ten years of marriage had taught Joanna that, but he was hardworking, honest, and kind. He was the type of man who would spend a weekend helping patch a widow’s leaking roof or who would agree to take a carload of noisy kids to Sierra Vista for a bowling tournament. How could a man like that, a man so very much like her own father, have anything at all to do with the likes of Lefty O’Toole?

Joanna crossed Campbell and started up Elm, striding along in her heavy, clumsy boots, not caring how she looked, letting the sunlight warm her chilled body and mind.

Had Walter McFadden known about all this earlier when he dropped off Jennifer and the suitcase, Joanna wondered. If so, why hadn’t he told her? Surely if someone in his department was being investigated by the DEA, the sheriff himself would have been properly notified. Why had the reporter interviewed Dick Voland? Why not the sheriff himself? But then, maybe with the election coming up, Mc-Fadden figured it would be better if someone else broke the news that his opponent was under investigation.

Hours earlier Joanna had thought that having Dr. Sanders accuse Andy of attempting suicide was the worst possible thing that could happen. Obviously she had been wrong. This was far, far worse. She could see how, left to their own devices, the media would convict Andrew Brady of wrongdoing without him ever having an official day in court.

A car drove by, a silver Ford Taurus with a single male occupant. She realized dimly that she had seen that car twice now in the course of her short walk. At first the idea that someone might be following her seemed too preposterous to even consider. The events of the past few days had left her edgy and skittish, she told herself. She was being silly. But when she crossed the next intersection, she caught sight of the same car again. This time it was parked half a block away with the engine still running and the driver hunched behind the wheel.

Why would someone be following her, she wondered. At home in Bisbee, she wouldn’t have hesitated to walk up to the car and ask what the hell was going on, but this was Tucson, a big city by comparison, and only the night before, person or persons unknown had tried to murder her husband. Feeling isolated and vulnerable, she looked around her for someplace to turn for help. The houses nearby all seemed large and forbidding, mansions almost. The way she was dressed, in her blood-stained clothing and clumsy boots, she couldn’t see herself running up to the front door of any of those houses and asking for help. They’d take one look at her, call the cops, and have her arrested.

Ahead of her she saw the pink-and-blue wall of what at first seemed to be the largest house of all, but then, upon closer inspection, she realized the building was a hotel, a public building. Small blue letters on the side of the building announced, “Arizona Inn.”

She personally had never set foot inside the place, but she had heard of it. The Arizona Inn was some kind of posh resort. Maybe here she could disappear into a crowd of tourists. At the very least, she’d be able to find a telephone and summon help.

She ducked into the first available door. Looking around to get her bearings, she found herself standing in front of a small, densely stocked gift shop. Joanna had hoped for a crowd, and there was none, but perhaps the gift shop might have a pay phone she could use. Quickly, she slipped inside. The sales clerk behind the small counter was busy with someone else—a well-dressed older lady. Overhearing their conversation, Joanna learned the woman was making complicated arrangements to send gifts back home to her several grandchildren in Dubuque, Iowa.

While waiting impatiently for the clerk to finish with her customer, Joanna caught sight of a rack displaying a few end-of-summer items—bathing suits and smock-like beach jackets. Looking at them, she grew more self-conscious about the way she looked and about how out of place her bloodied, filthy clothing was in her present circumstances. She examined the clothing on the rack more closely.

At the far end of the rack was a vivid yellow smock. That particular shade had never been one of Joanna’s favorites, but the size was medium, and so was she. Joanna pulled the garment off the hanger and held it up to her body, checking the price tag in the sleeve as she did so. Even at half off, the price was enough to raise her eyebrows, but at least the smock didn’t have any bloodstains on it.

Joanna peeled off the denim jacket and rolled it up into a wad. On a shelf near the door sat a small collection of leather
huaraches,
Mexican-made, sandal-type shoes that visiting tourists from back East loved to take home as much for their comfort as for their value as genuine Southwestern conversation pieces. Hoping her luck would hold, Joanna edged over to the display. Sure enough, she saw a pair that was half a size too big, but half a size off was close enough for
huaraches.
She kicked off the boots and slipped on the floppy leather shoes.

By the time the saleswoman finished with her first customer and turned to Joanna, the boots and jacket were securely wrapped together in a compact bundle. Hoping to imitate the anchorlady she had seen on the news, Joanna smiled her most sincere smile.

“I think I’ll wear both of these, if you don’t mind,” she said.

If the woman had any private thoughts about the suitability of the yellow smock with Joanna’s torn dress and skin coloring, she diplomatically kept them to herself as she clipped off the sales tags and put Joanna’s bundled jacket in a flimsy bag.

“Maybe I should double this,” she said, hefting the weight.

“Good idea,” Joanna agreed.

She held her breath while she wrote out the check, hoping against hope that it wouldn’t bounce. Friday was payday for both Joanna and Andy. Maybe their paychecks would make it to the bank before this check did. Or, if they didn’t, maybe Sandra Henning, the manager, would cover it for a day or so until Joanna could make it good.

“Can you tell me where to find a phone?” Joanna asked.

“Down the hallway,” the woman answered. “Beyond the bellman’s desk, across from the library.”

Joanna scuttled across the old-fashioned lobby and found the tiny telephone alcove. Seated in front of the phone, she paused for a moment, wondering who exactly she should call and what she should tell them. Not knowing who else to ask for help, she finally dialed the Cochise County Sheriff’s Department and asked to speak to Walter McFadden. When told he wasn’t in, she asked for Dick Voland instead.

“Hi, Dick,” she said curtly when he answered. “This is Joanna Brady. Where’s Sheriff McFadden? I want to speak to him.”

Voland cleared his throat uneasily. “He’s not here right now.”

“Where is he?”

“I can’t say, Joanna. We haven’t heard from him. What do you need? Can I help?”

As Joanna tried to frame an answer, a man entered the lobby from outside and walked past her. When he stopped at the bellman’s desk to ask a question, she recognized the distinctive profile and realized it was the man from the Taurus, the same one who had been following her.

“Joanna?” Dick Voland said. “Are you still there? Do you want me to take a message?”

Joanna’s hand shook and her heart hammered in her chest. “No,” she said softly, lest the man overhear. “No message.”

Carefully, she put down the phone. She had no idea who this man was or what he wanted, but it was clear that he was trailing her openly, in broad daylight as if he had a perfect right to do so.

The long lobby was nearly deserted. An old man sat on a bench next to the wall far beyond the registration desk, but except for him, the bellman, and the man who was following her, there were no other people in the lobby. The sounds of laughter and tinkling glassware came floating to her from someplace else, from a room that sounded like a dining room.

Her pursuer had stepped closer to the bell-man’s desk and was reading one of the news-papers lying there. The door to the dining room was just around the corner from the public telephone. Maybe if she went through the dining room, she could disappear outside through another exit.

Joanna got up and bolted around the corner, almost colliding head-on with a dining room hostess. “One for lunch?” the woman asked.

Joanna glanced back over her shoulder. Something, maybe the sudden flurry of movement, had caused the man to look up from the papers. Their eyes met, and he started toward her.

“One for lunch,” Joanna said hurriedly. “No smoking.”

“This way please.”

The large dining room with its old-fashioned cane-backed chairs was only half-full, but the room hummed with a relaxed, convivial atmosphere. Joanna followed the hostess to a windowed table that looked out on a small patio.

“Can I get you something to drink?”

“Coffee,” Joanna murmured. “Just coffee. Black.”

Sitting with her hands clenched in front of her chin, Joanna watched as the hostess ushered the man into the room and seated him a few tables away. A busboy delivered the coffee and Joanna’s hands were shaking badly enough that some of the coffee spilled the first time she raised the cup to her lips.

What should she do, she wondered. Make a run for it out a side door and hope to elude him long enough to get back to the hospital? She took another sip of coffee and tried to calm herself. Surely there was some way out of this if she could just force herself to think clearly.

“What can I get for you today?” a smiling waiter asked.

Joanna hadn’t intended to stay, much less eat, but she felt trapped. Not eating would make her even more conspicuous. Without even bothering to check the price on the menu, she ordered a club sandwich.

She sat back and took another sip of coffee. Gradually the clanking silver and glassware combined with the enticing smells emanating from the kitchen reminded her that she had eaten almost nothing in nearly twenty-four hours.

She would eat her sandwich when it came and whoever it was who was so interested in where Joanna Brady went and what she did could sit right there and watch her eat.

It would serve him right.

SIX

Angie Kellogg sat on the soft leather couch in the living room, her satin robe untied and gaping open, one naked leg tucked demurely under her. An almost empty and long-forgotten coffee mug was nestled in the soft mound of auburn pubic hair, but coffee in the cup had grown far too cold to drink. Totally a lone, she sat absolutely still.

Her attention was focused on the antics of a pair of comical road runners who regarded the gravel-covered backyard as their own private preserve. Angie Kellogg was a lifetime city dweller. Initially, Tucson’s strange desert creatures had been a complete mystery to her. Tony had jeered at her lack of knowledge, laughing and calling her stupid. Eventually though, he had condescended to buy her what a bookstore manager had called, “the bird-watchers’ Bible,” the
Field Guide to North American Birds.

With the help of that, she had gradually learned to identify some of her neighbors—quail, dove, road runners, hummingbirds, and even an industrious cactus wren that had taken up residence in the yard’s solitary saguaro.

Drinking coffee, reading the newspaper, and watching the various birds and animals provided the sum total of Angie Kellogg’s morning diversions. She was an early riser; Tony wasn’t. When she was awake and he was sleeping, she wasn’t allowed to turn on either the radio or the television set, not even with the volume set on low.

Instead, Angie watched for the glimpses of life her backyard afforded her. She especially enjoyed the hour just before and after sunrise because that was when the cute little cotton-tails sometimes ventured out to eat and play. They came scampering into the yard through a small natural depression where the wrought-iron fence didn’t quite meet the ground. Sometimes she would see a horned toad or a small lizard perched in the sun on the rockery. Less often, she would spy a snake, sometimes even a rattler, sunning itself beside the graveled path. You had to look really carefully to catch sight of the snakes because they blended so well into the surrounding terrain.

The first time she had seen one, she had panicked and yelled for Tony. He had come running outside and had been only too happy to chop the poor snake in half with a shovel. It had seemed to Angie the two halves of the severed snake had wiggled forever. Months later the agonizing death of that writhing snake still haunted her. Now when she did happen to see a snake, any kind of snake, she didn’t mention it to Tony at all. In fact, sometimes she wished that the whole yard would fill up with slithering rattlesnakes and that Tony would go outside barefoot, but of course that didn’t happen.

She envied them all—the birds, the rabbits, and yes, even the snakes—because they at least were free to come and go as they liked. Angie Kellogg wasn’t.

All morning long she had itched to go check in the coat closet and see if this was the morning when the newest briefcase would appear, hut she hadn’t dared, not with Tony in the house and only asleep. She had learned that he was a very light sleeper, and she didn’t want him to catch her prowling around where she shouldn’t. Later on, if he went out, which he usually did, she’d have ample opportunity to check.

Tony knew a lot about her, but not everything. Her ability to pick the locks on briefcases, for instance, was a carefully guarded secret. Every time the doorbell rang like that in the middle of the night, she knew that in the morning a different briefcase would show up on the shelf in the entryway closet. It would stay there, for a day or two, until Tony was called out of town, then the briefcase would disappear, along with the banded packets of currency inside it.