Partner In Crime

The fact that Eleanor had finally unbent enough to call her son-in-law Butch rather than insisting on using the more formal given name of Frederick still gave Joa

“He said there wasn’t anything on his calendar, but that I should check with you,” Eleanor’s message continued. “Grown-ups only this time, but Je

Joa

The next voice she heard was Marliss Shackleford’s. “I understand you’ll be speaking to a high school career assembly later this week,” she said. “I wanted to put an item in my column about that. I was also wondering if you have any comment on the fact that Deputy Galloway has officially declared that he’s ru

With a decisive poke of her dialing finger, Joa

If he had made a public a

“Kristin Gregovich is out today,” Joa

Minutes later Sylvia Roark appeared in the office doorway, wheeling a large metal cart that was filled to the brim with a mass of papers. Joa

“What should I do with it?” Sylvia asked.

Sylvia was a mousy, painfully shy young woman with bad teeth and ill-fitting clothing who came and went from the mail room on a daily basis without exchanging a word with anyone. She spent most of her work hours closeted in the mail room. When not actively dealing with mail, she hunkered over a computer and transferred cold-case information from microfiche into files that could be accessed via computer.

“I’m going to need you to sort it for me,” Joa

Sylvia’s face turned crimson. “But I don’t know how!” she objected.

“Then you’ll have to learn,” Joa

“But doesn’t Kristin do that?”

“Kristin just had a baby,” Joa

“All right,” Sylvia said, backing up and scuttling toward the hallway. “I’ll take it back to the mail room and sort it there.”

“No,” Joa

“But…” Sylvia began.

“Please,” Joa

Nodding, Sylvia pushed the cart closer to Kristin’s desk. Joa

WITH THE NEW UNIDENTIFIED number in hand, I left the conference room and went looking for Frank Montoya. The desk outside Sheriff Brady’s office was almost buried under stacks of paper. Seated there was a young woman I hadn’t seen before. When I asked if Chief Deputy Montoya was in, she didn’t answer. Instead, she ducked her head and pointed.

When I entered the chief deputy’s office, Frank was on the phone patiently explaining to an out-of-town reporter that, until the dead suspect’s relatives had been contacted, he was unable to release any further information.

“How’s it going?” he asked, when the call finally ended.

I handed him a sheet of paper on which I had written the unidentified number, the next cog in my telephone Tinkertoy trail. “Can you find out whose phone number this is?” I asked.

“Sure,” he said. “It may take a few minutes.”

“Good,” I said. “I’ll be in the conference room.”

THE HEADLINE JOANNA SOUGHT was in the right-hand bottom corner of the Bee’s front page:

DEPUTY KENNETH GALLOWAY

OPPOSES SHERIFF BRADY

“Crime rates may be down in the rest of the country,” Cochise County Deputy Sheriff Ke

Citing increased numbers of undocumented aliens who are flooding into the county, Galloway says sheriff’s deputies are often outgu

That was as far as Joa

She had already decided she would run again. With the next election still more than a year away, she hadn’t wanted to start campaigning quite so early. But if Ke

For several minutes she sat brooding, wondering where she’d find the time and energy to do both. Gradually, though, her thoughts shifted. She was mentally back at Chico’s and analyzing the conversation she and Beau had shared there. She recalled the man’s painful admission about how A

Joa

With a growing sense of purpose, Joa

“No,” Tica Romero said. “I think he’s out in the lobby talking to some reporters. Want me to interrupt?”