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“What time did you say Alice left her daughter’s house last night?”
“About eight-thirty. Susan says she usually takes the Charleston Road back and forth to Tombstone.”
Charleston Road, named after a long-gone mining town near the San Pedro River, was a short cut from Sierra Vista to Tombstone. It was a ribbon of cracked, curvy, up-and-down pavement. Because it crossed the San Pedro River, Charleston Road had its own share of meandering animals that sometimes came to grief with speeding vehicles.
“Had Alice Rogers been drinking?” Joa
“Some. According to the daughter, they had drinks before di
“There’s not much nighttime traffic on Charleston Road,” Joa
“I already thought of that,” Frank said. “I contacted Patrol and told them to have a deputy take a run out that way to see if he can find her. Just to be on the safe side, I also plan on filing a missing persons report. I don’t want to give His Honor the Mayor anything else to complain about.”
“Good thinking, Frank,” Joa
“‘Thanks, Chief. Always glad to be of service.”
She put down the phone just as a pajama-clad Je
“No. It was Frank Montoya calling about work. Did you want it to be Butch?”
For months now, Joa
So far, though, things seemed to be all right. Butch Dixon was the kind of man who had been born to be a father. Since he had no children of his own, he had thrown himself into an affectionate, easy kind of relationship with Je
And why shouldn’t Je
Je
“Well, Butch is on his way, but he probably won’t be here until after you go to bed.”
“Oh,” Je
Joa
When she didn’t, Joa
“Your homework’s all done?” The motherly question was a cowardly attempt at sidestepping the issue.
Je
Joa
Je
“Come on,” Joa
“I just need to talk to him, that’s all.”
“What about?”
“I can’t tell you,” Je
The lack of an answer bothered Joa
Je
“Only if you’re still awake,” Joa
“Sadie, Tigger, come on,” Je
Obediently, both dogs got up and padded after Je
What kind of secret? she wondered. Everybody seemed to have secrets these days. The topper still had to be her mother, Eleanor Lathrop, hauling off and marrying Dr. George Winfield, Cochise County ’s new medical examiner, without saying a word to her daughter in advance of the nuptials. Even though Joa
She had gone just that far in her thinking when Butch’s new Subaru Outback drove into the yard. Rather than risk having the dogs start barking in Je
Pulling on her jacket against the November chill, Joa
“Nothing like a couple of dogs and a good woman to make a guy feel at home.”
“Be quiet and come inside,” she said. “It’s too cold to stand around out here making jokes.”
Butch followed Joa
“Asleep.”
That a
Dodging out of Butch’s arms, Joa
“Je
“Any idea what’s on her mind?” Butch asked.
Joa
Butch shrugged. “You’ve got me,” he said.
Joa
“How was it?” she asked.
“The auction?”
Joa
“Okay. We made some money on the deal. Of course, if we’d had to pay wages for all the work we did, we wouldn’t have made a dime. The good thing is that several of the collector types got a chance to see the kind of work Jeff does. I think they were impressed. My guess is he’ll get some more business out of it. Advertising. The main thing we did, though, going and coming, was talk. Jeff’s really worried about Maria
“That she’s going to quit the ministry?”
Butch turned to study Joa
“This afternoon. She says her letter of resignation is written and ready to hand in at the next board meeting.”