Dead to Rights

Joa

Reggie headed toward where Terry Buckwalter was standing, talking to someone else. It took a moment for Joa

Seeing him there, Joa

Joa

Eva Lou arrived just then. “What is the matter with that girl?” Eva Lou Brady whispered to her daughter-in-law, nodding in Bebe’s direction. “Doesn’t she realize that she’s making a complete spectacle of herself?”

Still almost strangling on her own flashback of grief Joa

Eva Lou abruptly changed the subject. “Are you coming to the luncheon?” she asked.

By then, all Joa

Eva Lou peered at her closely. “Are you all right?”

“I’m fine.”

“You don’t look fine,” Eva Lou said. “You’re so pale that you look as though you might keel right over. You must be working too hard.”

‘‘Probably,” Joa

“Well, cut it out,” Eva Lou said severely. “It’s tempting to try to be everything to all people, but you can’t keep it up forever. It’s too hard on you. You forget to stop and smell the roses. As you know, when those roses are gone, they’re gone forever.”

It was as close as Eva Lou Brady had ever come to bawling her out. Deservedly so. Joa

Someone else arrived-Don and Louise Watson, bringing Jim Bob with them. After somber greetings all around, the four of them left Joa

She had barely glimpsed at Ernie earlier in her office. Now she was shocked by the look of him. His color was bad. There were dark circles under his eyes. The snowballing events of the past few days had put a terrible strain on every-one in the department, but with Ernie as the sole homicide detective, the brunt of the pressure had landed squarely on his broad shoulders.

“The L.P.G.A.?” he muttered. “I still think it’s just too damned convenient that Terry Buckwalter happens to have her big-deal golf tryout this weekend. What do you think?”

Joa

As sheriff, Joa

“Now that I know about this paternity thing, I need t talk to Terry again. Late this afternoon is probably the firs I’ll be able to get to it.”

“What about sleep?” Joa

Ernie stopped cold. “Sleep?” he repeated, as though were a totally foreign word. “Who needs sleep?”

“You do,” Joa

“Some,” Ernie admitted.

“Five hours? Ten?”

“Something like that,” he said.

“That’s about what I thought,” Joa

“But what about Terry going up to Tucson? What if she takes off and doesn’t come back?”

“Then let it be on my head. If she runs away, we’ll find her,” Joa

Before Ernie had a chance to reply, the Reverend Billy Matthews launched off into the “dust to dust, ashes to ashes” part of the service. Moving close enough to hear, Joa

Glancing over her shoulder, she could see the distant part of the cemetery that held Andy’s low-lying granite marker. She and Je

The service wasn’t yet over when Joa

Once there, she stooped to pluck the faded flag out of the ground. Slipping it into the pocket of her coat, she knelt over the plain red granite marker. Chiseled into the smooth red rock was Andy’s full name-Andrew Roy Brady-along with the dates of both his birth and his death. At the very bottom of the marker, almost melting into the long yellowed grass, were four simple words: “To serve and protect.”

One at a time, she ran her fingers over each of the letters. To serve and protect. That had been Andy’s job-his whole mission and purpose in life. It was the reason he had joined the service after high school and it was the reason he had signed on as deputy sheriff once he was discharged from the army. Now those same words constituted Joa

“They can be mighty tough to live by,” Jim Bob Brady observed, walking up behind her and laying a steadying hand on her shoulder.

Startled by her father-in-law’s voice and touch, Joa

“They are,” she mumbled. “Especially right about now.”

“Why? What’s wrong?”

Joa

He shook his head. “Aw now,” he said. “I wouldn’t go so far as to say that. Seems to me you and your people are doin’ all right.”