Devil’s Claw

Carol shook her head and laughed. “My goodness. Whatever did you say to set my tongue to wagging so much? You must think I’m a terrible gossip.”

Joa

“My second husband,” she corrected. “Hank died years ago. A couple of years after that, Molly died as well, but Clayton and I remained friends. Force of habit, I guess.”

“Why, Carol Hubbard,” Reba Singleton said from just over Joa

Carol held out her hand long enough for it to be pressed by Reba’s ring-bedecked fingers. “Your father was such a good man,” Carol Hubbard murmured. “And such a dear friend, too. I’m so sorry he’s gone.”

With a curt nod, Reba acknowledged Carol Hubbard’s comment, then she rounded on Joa

As conversation in the rest of the room came to a complete standstill, Joa

“Please what?” Reba demanded. “Please shut up and don’t let anyone know what you’ve been up to? Please go away so people won’t know about your underhanded dealings and how you’ve cheated me out of my birthright?”

“Reba,” Joa

“The hell you haven’t!” Reba Singleton snarled back while her whole body trembled in a fit of ill-suppressed fury. “I guess you don’t want these nice people to know that their little Miss Goody Two-shoes of a sheriff is actually a double-dealing bitch! What I want to know is what makes you think you can get away with it? Who says I’m not going to stop you?”

Behind Reba, Marliss Shackleford’s eyes widened. Like Joa

They left then, leaving behind a silent room full of people and a stu

“I take it from that she’s learned about Clayton’s will,” Carol said in a low voice.

“You knew about that too?” Joa

“Oh, yes. Clayton told my husband and me all about it when he first had his will redrawn. He and Reba had that huge falling-out when Molly got so sick. Reba wanted her father to send Molly out to California to some specialist she knew about, and neither Clayton nor Molly wanted to do that. When they refused, everything went downhill in a hurry. It was right about then-right after Molly’s funeral-that Reba went to court and tried to have her father declared incompetent. She wanted to be appointed his legal guardian so she could have power of attorney over him and manage his affairs. But Clayton fooled her. He hired his own attorney. The guardianship petition never went through.”

“That was what the quarrel was all about?” Joa

“The quarrel was about control,” Carol Hubbard replied. “Reba is the kind of person who has to be in the driver’s seat at all times. Once Clayton beat her back, his first intention was to leave his ranch to the Nature Conservancy. But then Clayton changed his mind. He said he didn’t think you’d ever want to actually move into his place because it’s so old and run-down, but he knew you’d like having the land. I believe he told me you’re pla

Blushing again, Joa

“Well,” Carol Hubbard said, rising. “I’m sure you and your new husband will be very happy together. Whoever he is, he’s lucky to have found you. And your daughter, too. Now, I have to be going. It’s a long drive back to Tucson, and we don’t like being out after dark. My husband’s night vision is none too good these days.”

She held out her hand. Joa

“She was nice,” Je

Joa

Je

“It means that Butch’s mother is the way she is, and we’re just going to have to learn to live with it and accept her the way she is.”

“Even if we don’t want to?”

“Even if.”

By four o’clock, Joa

Talking about Butch had made her realize that she hadn’t heard from him all day long, and she was missing him. However, having just made a big stink with Kristin and Terry about the hazards of mixing love and work, she was glad no calls from Butch had come in through the switchboard during the course of the day. “Do as I say, not as I do” wasn’t the way Joa

Once the most pressing calls had been handled, Joa

Guiltily, Joa

“No problem,” Frank said, “but I didn’t know you were back, and I thought you’d want to hear the news.”

“What news? Did Search and Rescue locate Lucy?”

Frank shook his head. “No, but we think we’ve found her bike. At least we found somebody’s bike. It was hidden in among some of those huge rocks in Texas Canyon about half a mile from the rest area. It looks like somebody took a sledgehammer to it and turned it into a piece of junk. There was also a canteen and a sleeping bag.”

“Do you know for sure the gear is Lucy’s?” Joa

“We haven’t confirmed it yet, but we’re pretty sure. Catherine Yates told us there was a leather thong tied to the handlebars to give Big Red something to hang on to. The bike S and R found had a leather thong on the handlebars.”

“And Lucy?”

“No sign of her. She had been there, but she’s evidently not there any longer, and there’s no sign of that damned hawk of hers, either. But that’s not why I called you. The real news is about Melanie Goodson.”

“What about her?”

“She’s dead,” Frank said.

Joa

“You heard me. Dead.”

“When? What did she die of?”

“No way to tell. The Pima County ME’s office says they saw some signs of needle tracks, so maybe she overdosed. At any rate, she didn’t turn up for work today. Nobody was really all that concerned because her first appointment wasn’t until after one, when she was supposed to meet with Ernie and Jaime. According to her secretary, if she had worked late the day before, she sometimes didn’t come in at all in the morning. By the time somebody started to worry and called Pima County to go out to her place on Old Spanish Trail to check on her, she’d been dead for some time.”

Joa

“The last I heard, they were on their way, but it’s Pima County’s deal, Joa