Rattlesnake Crossing (40 page)

At last the organist stopped playing. In the hushed and expectant silence of the room, with no other sound but the distant rumble of the air-conditioning unit, Joanna knew it was time for her to stand and speak. She had expected her knees to knock, her hands to shake, and her voice to quiver, but none of that happened. She was doing this for Marianne. She was doing this because a friend had asked it of her as a favor. And that, Joanna realized, taking hold of the pulpit with both hands, was what made doing it possible. When Joanna Brady conducted Esther Maculyea-Daniels' funeral that afternoon, she did so with a poise and confidence that surprised her almost more than it surprised her mother.

"The first hymn today isn't listed by number in your program," she said. "I didn't think that was necessary, because it's one we all know by heart."

Down in the front pew, Butch Dixon shook his head and tapped his ear. Seeing that, Joanna knew she needed to readjust the volume. Clearing her throat, she spoke more clearly, more firmly into the microphone. "This particular song was one of Esther's favorites. It's the one her parents sang to her when she was restless and unable to sleep. Please join me in singing 'Jesus Loves Me.' "

Joanna had stayed up half the night on Sunday, writing and rewriting the service, searching her heart, hoping to hit on just the right combination of hope and comfort. Now, as Jeff Daniels and Marianne Maculyea rose from their seats and joined hands to sing, Joanna allowed herself to believe that she had achieved her goal.

Enough time had elapsed since Andy's funeral that she could no longer remember any of the specifics of that service. What she was left with was the sense that whatever words Marianne Maculyea had spoken that day, whatever songs had been sung or Scriptures read, they had all been exactly right. And maybe, she hoped, that would be true here as well. Perhaps, once the pain had lessened some, Jeff and Marianne would feel that way about this service. Maybe, in the long run, what was said or sung wouldn't matter nearly as much as that beautiful rainbow splash of stained-glass color reflecting off the snow-white petals of the roses.

The voices of the congregation rose in unison, finishing the first verse of the childhood hymn and marching inexorably into the second:

Jesus loves me. He will stay

Close beside me all the way.

If I love Him when I die,

He will take me home on high.

Up to then, Marianne had been singing right along with everyone else, but at that point her voice faltered. She stopped singing and turned into Jeff’s arms, burying her head against his chest. That moment of parental inattention was all the restless Ruth needed. Determined to escape the confines of the pew, she slipped away from her parents, dodging past Angie Kellogg and Dennis Hacker as well. The escape-bent child might have made it all the way to the side aisle if Jenny hadn't reached out, caught her, and dragged her back.

Wrestling the wriggly child into her own small lap, Jenny whispered something into Ruth's ear. Joanna more than half expected the toddler to let loose with a shriek of objection. Instead, nodding at whatever magic words Jenny must have uttered, Ruth snuggled close to Jenny's chest. With a contented sigh, she stuck one chubby thumb into her mouth and closed both her eyes. Instead of only one child sheltered under Butch Dixon's protective arm, now there were two.

The whole small drama played itself out in less time than it took the congregation to reach the end of the chorus. Watching it, Joanna was struck by her daughter's quick-thinking action and also by her kindness. Without any adult prodding, Jenny had seen Ruth making a run for it and had done what needed doing. There was an unflinching responsibility and a resourcefulness in Jenny's action that struck a responsive chord in Joanna's heart—something Joanna Brady recognized in herself.

Through the years, looking in wonder at her fair-haired, blue-eyed daughter, Joanna had thought of her as Andy's child. Jenny was, after all, a mirror image of her father. But seeing Jenny then, with Ruth nodding off in her lap, Joanna realized that Jennifer Ann Brady was a chip off more than one old block. She was her mother's daughter as well.

Joanna's eyes flooded with unwelcome tears—tears that were as much joy as they were sorrow. At the same time her heart was overflowing with sadness for Jeff and Marianne and Ruth, at the saint' time her whole body ached with hurt for their awful and wrenching loss, Joanna nonetheless felt a certain motherly pride. Looking down on Jenny, she could see into the future enough to know that her daughter was growing up to be a kind, loving, and caring person. Like her mother, she would someday be known as someone who was true to her friends and could be counted on for help in a time of crisis.

The song ended. The last note lingered in the hushed sanctuary as Sheriff Joanna Brady moved once more to the pulpit. There, resting on the polished dark wood, lay Marianne Maculyea's worn Bible. The book was open to the third chapter of Ecclesiastes. Taking a deep breath, Joanna steadied her voice and spoke.

"The Scripture today comes from the old Testament, the Book of Ecclesiastes, Chapter Three, Verses One to Eight. 'To every thing there is a season, and a time to every purpose under heaven'."

The words were familiar to her. Joanna had heard them time and again over the years, and yet this time when she read them aloud in that hushed, listening church, it seemed as though the words were intended for her alone. They were speaking about the triumphs and tragedies of her own life: “.. a time to weep and a time to laugh; a time to mourn and a time to dance ..."

For the first time she understood, to the very depths of her being, that without surviving terrible sadness, she might well have been blind to the astounding miracle of joy. The one made the other possible.

Finished with the Scripture reading, Joanna sat down while choir director Abby Noland stepped forward to sing a solo rendition of "Amazing Grace." Sitting at the front of the church, Joanna found her eyes drawn to Jenny—to Jenny and the now sleeping Ruth. Rather than smiling, Joanna reached up, and tugged at her ear. With that simple gesture, a silent signal passed between mother and daughter. Like the signal television actress Carol Burnett had often sent to her grandmother, Joanna sent an unspoken "I love you" to Jenny.

Jenny sat with her chin resting on Ruth's tousled hair. Over the sleeping toddler, Jenny beamed back at her mother and tugged at her own ear in reply.

Yes,
Joanna Brady thought, smiling an almost invisible smile.
Definitely a chip off the same block.

Author’s Note

Ideas for books come from strange places.
Partner in Crime
had its origins in reading an article on the dangers of sodium azide I discovered in my University of Arizona alumni magazine. From that article and from subsequent research, I’ve come to believe that the widespread availability of this hazardous and so-far uncontrolled substance poses a real threat to the safety of far too many people.

When used as intended to inflate air bags in automobiles, the substance is transformed into a harmless nitrogen-based gas. Originally, the idea was that the unused air bags and canisters would be removed from wrecked vehicles and recycled, but in the real world, that’s not happening. No one wants to risk his own life or the lives of his family members to somebody else’s cast-off air bag. As a result, tons of unused and unsecured containers of this deadly, poisonous, and easily water-soluble compound are readily available. They lie, unguarded and unsecured, in junked cars and on junkyard shelves all over the country. And that’s what worries me.

I completed writing this book prior to September 11, 2001, when the world suddenly became a vastly different and more dangerous place. I’m hoping that somewhere there’s a courageous lawmaker who’ll be willing to take on the automotive industry and introduce legislation requiring that all air bags in vehicles must be deployed and the sodium azide rendered harmless at the time the vehicle is scrapped.

A Statement by Joanna Brady

My name is Joanna Brady. Joanna Lee Lathrop Brady. A few years ago I was elected sheriff of Cochise County, Arizona. I’m a widow who never expected or wanted to be drawn into law enforcement. I was working for an insurance company and trying to be a good wife and mother when Andy, my husband and a deputy sheriff, was killed by a drug dealer. Originally, Andy’s death was mislabeled as a suicide. First I had to convince the authorities that it was really a homicide. After I managed to apprehend the killer almost single-handedly, I was asked to run for sheriff myself.

Cochise County, in southeastern Arizona, is eighty miles wide by eighty miles long. That means my department is responsible for six thousand square miles of territory filled with cattle ranches, mines, ghost towns, hordes of undocumented aliens, and even a genuine city — Sierra Vista. My department is spread far too thin to have any permanent partnership kinds of arrangements. Sometimes I’m thrown in with one or the other of my two chief deputies – homicide detectives, Ernie Carpenter or Jaime Carbajal. Chasing crooks with those guys is as new for me as having a female boss is for them, but to give credit where it’s due, we’re all making it happen.

Since I spend most of my work hours in a world of men, I find myself looking to the women in my life to provide balance. My best friend is also my pastor at Canyon United Methodist Church. No matter what’s going on in her own life, Marianne Maculyea, has always been there for me, and I try to do the same for her. I’ve also come to appreciate one of my newer and more unlikely friends, Angie Kellogg. Angie is an ex-L.A. hooker who ended up in Bisbee while trying to escape the clutches of a former boyfriend who turned out to be my husband’s killer. I helped Angie, and she helped me. We’ve been friends ever since. Another valued personal resource is Eva Lou Brady. Officially, Eva Lou is my former mother-in-law. Unofficially, she’s more of a real mother to me than my own mother is. She’s someone I can go to any time of the night or day with any kind of problem. I wish I could say the same for Eleanor Lathrop Winfield.

I was born and raised in Bisbee and have never lived anywhere else. High Lonesome Ranch, the place where my daughter and I live, is a few miles outside the Bisbee city limits and has been in the Brady family for three generations. My father, D.H. Lathrop, died when I was in high school. Dad started out as a lowly miner in Bisbee’s copper mines. Later he went into law enforcement and eventually was elected sheriff. That’s what he was doing when he was killed in a tragic Sunday afternoon drunk-driving traffic incident.

If I had to have a single role model in life, my father would be it. When D.H. was alive, I guess I always favored him over my mother — he was a lot easier to get along with. And that’s still true today. Dad didn’t live long enough to drive me crazy the way Mom does. Maybe it’s easier to gloss over his faults since I don’t have to look at them every day. What is it they say about distance making the heart grow fonder? Or does it have more to do with familiarity breeding contempt? I don’t know which is more applicable.

Pet peeves? Other than my mother, I can’t really think of any. I always thought I understood Eleanor Lathrop — thought I knew her like a book. Unfortunately, in the last few years, she’s proved me wrong time and again. First my long-lost brother showed up, and it turns out he was so long lost that I didn’t even know he existed. He was born before my parents tied the knot and was adopted out as an infant. Neither of my parents ever mentioned him to me, and that’s something I’m having a tough time forgiving. Then, as if that weren’t enough, after years of being a widow, my mother recently dived back into the sea of holy matrimony – without bothering to give me a single word of advance warning. Is it any wonder Eleanor’s my pet peeve?

Don’t ask me about hobbies. I don’t have any. Between working full time and raising my daughter (Jenny’s twelve going on twenty-one!) I don’t have time. Of course Jenny has hobbies – a pair of dogs named Tigger and Sadie, as well as a horse named Kiddo. Jenny expects to take Kiddo off on the barrel racing circuit one of these days. Inevitably, looking after the menagerie has become as much of a hobby of mine as it is Jenny’s. Still, I’m not complaining. I’m glad we’re able to live out in the country where owning horses and dogs – even porcupine-chasing dogs – isn’t as much of a problem as it would be in town. I’m a reasonably good cook. I’m a capable if under-motivated housekeeper. (If you had spent your childhood and adolescence living in my mother’s obsessively clean house, maybe you’d have much the same attitude.)

As I mentioned before, I’m a widow – something most people my age (early thirties) are not. Andy and I married young, but I expected to be married all my life. I didn’t intend to be thrown back into the so-called dating game. And I haven’t been dating – not exactly and not so far. It’s just that this wild and crazy guy named butch Dixon seems to have set his sights on me. I met Butch when I was growing up in Peoria, Arizona attending a law enforcement-training academy. I keep telling him I need more time to sort myself out before I can become involved in any kind of long-term relationship. The problem is, Butch doesn’t seem inclined to take no for an answer.

J.A. Jance on the Origin of Joanna Brady

After writing my first thriller,
Hour of the Hunter
, when it was time to go back to J.P. Beaumont I found that writing was fun again. That was when my editor suggested that I might consider starting a second series so I’d be able to alternate between sets of characters.

I had written ten books through a middle-aged male detective’s point of view. It seemed to me that it would be fun to write about a woman for a change. Because Beau was a Seattle homicide detective, most of the books took place in and around Seattle. Up to that time, I had spent the bulk of my life living in Arizona. And it seemed like it would be fun to use some of the desert stuff that was percolating in the back of my head.

In many of the books I’d read that featured female sleuths, I had found that the characters seemed to live isolated, solitary lives with maybe a cat and a single dying ficus for company. Most of the women I knew lived complicated lives that involved husbands and children, in-laws and friends. They juggled family responsibilities and jobs along with church and community service. I set out to make my character, Joanna Brady (Yes, yes, I know. Another J. B. name) into someone whose life would reflect that complicated act of juggling.