Skeleton Canyon

Not necessarily, Joa

The firmness in Joa

“On Saturday night, a young man was severely beaten out-side the gate to Green Brush Ranch,” Joa

Joa

“What do you mean?”

“I can’t believe it. How could he? What if we lose this job, too?” Maggie whispered brokenly but with far less drunken slurring. “And the roof over our heads, too, just like the other time. You don’t know what it was like then. We lost everything-our house, our furniture, our friends. Stevie will kill him when he finds out. He’ll just plain kill him.”

Overcome with a combination of emotion and booze, she fell into a long series of racking sobs. For several minutes, she was totally incapable of speech. Joa

Maggie took a ragged breath, blew her nose, and wiped her eyes. “Stephan Marcovich,” Maggie answered. “Alf’s cousin up in Phoenix. He’s an old friend of the O’Briens. He’s also the one who arranged this job for us. If it hadn’t been for Stevie, once the lawyers got done with us, we’da been sunk. We had no place to go. Alf couldn’t find a job anywhere in Yuma, not even flipping burgers. It was like we had a disease or something. We were one step away from living on the street when Stevie sent Alf here. Oh, my God. And now he’s done if again. 1 can’t stand it,” she wailed. “I just can’t.”

Once more Maggie’s voice trailed off into a torrent of hope-less tears.

“Mrs. Hastings, would your husband’s cousin have any idea where Alf might be?”

Blowing her nose again, Maggie shook her head. “I don’t think so,” she said. “If I don’t know where he is, how would Stevie?”

“Just the same, can you give us his number?”

“Stevie’s? Up in Phoenix?”

Joa

“I guess so.” Unsteadily, Maggie Hastings hoisted herself off the couch, then she wobbled across the room and staggered down a short hallway. For several minutes, Joa

“Here it is!” she a

She belched then, spewing a cloud of stale gin throughout the room. “Can I get you something?” she asked.

Looking down at the card, Joa

“No,” Joa

As soon as the door opened and they stepped out into the fresh air and light, the dog resumed its barking. “What’s going on?” Ernie asked as they headed toward the cars. “You look like you’ve seen a ghost.”

In a way, Joa

“Isn’t,” Eleanor had returned at once, correcting his gram-mar as usual. She was forever doing that, trying to weed out the remnants of her husband’s Arkansas childhood. “There isn’t any such thing,” she added for good measure.

It was one of the few times Joa

With that, he had stood up and stalked out of the house. “Well?” Ernie pressed. “What’s going on?”

“I’m remembering something my father said years ago,” she told him, handing over the card. “He told me once that, in a homicide case, there’s no such thing as coincidence.”

“I’d have to agree, but…”

“Did I mention anything to you about Jim Hobbs being offered the opportunity to get in on an illegal Freon buy? The guy trying to put the deal together was Sam Nettleton.”

“Nettleton? The scuzzball towing operator from up in Benson?”

“Right.”

Ernie shook his head. “You didn’t say a word to me about it.”

“Sorry. With everything else that happened, it must have slipped my mind. But I did call Adam York about it. He said the DEA is investigating a big Freon-smuggling deal up in Phoenix, something involving one of the big refrigeration con-tractors. So here we have a Cochise County Freon case, supposedly unrelated to theirs, and a Phoenix air-conditioning contractor co

Ernie handed Joa

“As soon as I have some lunch, I’m going back to the office to call Adam York. What about you?”

“I’m supposed to meet Rose uptown. After that, I’ll run by the coroner’s office to see if George has that official copy of the autopsy typed up for us by then.”

Joa

On her way back to the office, Joa

Leaving the restaurant, she glanced off to the south. A series of tall columns of cumulus clouds was rising up on the far horizon. Another afternoon storm was brewing. If this one turned out to be as bad as yesterday’s, there’d be another big bite in the overtime department. Frank Montoya would have a fit.

Back at her desk, Joa

“Just how mad are you?” the DEA agent asked as soon as Joa

“Mad?” she repeated. “Why would I be mad?”

“D.C. went over my head on this one,” he said. “I couldn’t help it. It’s all gone down since I talked to you this morning. I tried to call you about it the minute it happened, but you weren’t available, and it was too complicated-”

“Adam,” she interrupted. “What the hell are you talking about?”

“The Freon deal. We’ve been in touch with the guy you ‘old me about, the one in Bisbee.”