Field of Bones: A Brady Novel of Suspense (Joanna Brady Mysteries) Read online

  Dedication

  To Carl and Barbara, you know why

  Contents

  Cover

  Title Page

  Dedication

  Prologue

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Chapter 37

  Chapter 38

  Chapter 39

  Chapter 40

  Chapter 41

  Chapter 42

  Chapter 43

  Chapter 44

  Chapter 45

  Chapter 46

  Chapter 47

  Chapter 48

  Chapter 49

  Chapter 50

  Chapter 51

  Grandpa Jeb’s Sunday Meat Loaf

  About the Author

  Also by J. A. Jance

  Copyright

  About the Publisher

  Prologue

  AS SHERIFF JOANNA BRADY AND HER REELECTION COMMITTEE gathered in the social hall at the Tombstone Canyon United Methodist Church in Old Bisbee to await the results, everyone expected it would be an election-night nail-biter, one that would end with either a victory celebration or a concession speech.

  This was the third time she had stood for election, and this battle had been by far the toughest. For one thing, her opponent, Donald Hubble, was a well-heeled good old boy who had money to burn. He had paid for his run for office out of pocket without having to do any outside fund-raising, either. He had outspent Joanna three times over, papering the whole of Cochise County with thousands of yard signs and buying spots on Tucson television channels that broadcast throughout southern Arizona. His favorite tagline, “Cochise County needs a full-time sheriff as opposed to a part-time one,” was a not-so-subtle reference to Sheriff Brady’s very obvious and advancing pregnancy. The one thing his paid-for commercials couldn’t paper over was Hubble’s well-deserved reputation as a bully of both people and animals, a reputation he had earned during the years he’d been in charge of running his father’s massive cattle ranch south of Wilcox.

  Being both pregnant and outspent hadn’t been Joanna’s only stumbling blocks during this election cycle, not by a long shot. Late in August her world had been shattered when her mother, Eleanor, and her stepfather, George Winfield, had both fallen victim to a freeway shooter on I-17 south of Flagstaff, Arizona. The tragic loss of Joanna’s parents should have been more than enough to derail her reelection effort. Unfortunately, fate had much more in store.

  Back home in Cochise County, what started out as a routine homicide investigation had revealed that one of her longtime officers, Deputy Jeremy Stock, despite showing a “good guy” face to the world, had actually been an abusive and ultimately murderous husband and father. When the truth finally came out, he turned his wrath on Joanna herself. Only the timely intervention of Joanna’s K-9 unit—Deputy Terry Gregovich and his dog, Spike—had saved her life, but not before the dog had been gravely injured. Three months later he was still recovering and had been medically retired from his K-9 duties. As for Jeremy Stock? Rather than be taken into custody, he had taken his own life, plunging to his death off a rock-bound cliff.

  The fact that Joanna had been totally bamboozled by someone she thought she knew well had shattered her confidence in her ability to read people and made her wonder how many more troubled souls might be hiding in plain sight inside her department. For a time she’d seriously considered dropping out of the race. She might well have done so had not members of her department rallied behind her.

  Both her sworn officers and civilian staff members had urged her to stay in contention. Most of them had worked with her for the better part of eight years, and they’d come to trust her. Although she could often be a demanding boss, she required as much of herself as she did of others, and she made every effort to be fair.

  With their backing she fought the good fight. After her parents’ funeral and once the ink had dried on the paperwork surrounding the Jeremy Stock homicides, Joanna had gone back to campaigning with renewed effort and purpose. And now here they were—nine o’clock on election night with the results just starting to trickle in.

  Using a bottomless checkbook to fund his run for office, Don Hubble had been able to hire a professional campaign manager and campaign workers, while Joanna’s effort had relied on an army of volunteers mobilized by two of her greatest cheerleaders, her first in-laws—Jim Bob and Eva Lou Brady, the parents of her long-deceased husband, Andy. When it came time to undo the pause button on the campaign, and once Joanna made the decision to continue her run for office, they had stepped up in a big way, functioning as her campaign co-chairs.

  Jim Bob might have been a novice when it came to local politics, but he knew almost everyone in town, if not in the county as a whole, and he wasn’t afraid to ask for help. Eva Lou had served as the campaign’s volunteer coordinator and was a killer when it came to door-to-door canvassing. She had also stepped in as a pinch-hitting grandmother and babysitter, looking after five-year-old Dennis when late-night campaign events in far-flung corners of the county had kept Joanna, and sometimes her husband, Butch Dixon, as well, out on the road far past their son’s bedtime.

  One item that had escaped Jim Bob’s attention until the last minute was lining up a location for a post-election party, something that should have been done well in advance. By the time the novice campaign manager figured it out, the preferred venues in town—the ones at the Copper Queen Hotel and in the basement of the Convention Center—were already booked, which explained why tonight’s post-election gig was being held in the parish hall of the Tombstone Canyon United Methodist Church.

  The intention was to collect incoming election results in real time and immediately upload them to a PowerPoint display projected onto a screen. So far that process wasn’t going well. While Jim Bob and Butch fought to get the balky hardware and software to work together, Eva Lou coordinated setting up the kitchen to serve coffee and refreshments. As for the candidate herself? Joanna sat at a cloth-covered table near the front of the room, keeping an eye on Denny, who was deep into the Lego project that Eva Lou had wisely brought along to keep him occupied.

  This was not Joanna Brady’s best night ever. The waistband of her latest uniform had undergone several discreet expansions. Nonetheless, it no longer fastened. A strategically placed safety pin three inches below the top of the zipper was all that was keeping the placket more or less in place. Unfortunately, her equally snug-fitting jacket could no longer be trusted to keep the resulting gap from showing. In other words, her clothes didn’t exactly fit, and neither did her shoes.

  Tonight her ankles were swollen. Under the cover of the tablecloth, she’d managed to slip off her heels in order to give her sore f
eet a rest. Her back hurt. Any minute now she’d need to put the shoes back on and make a quick trip to the restroom. In the meantime her baby girl—due to make her first appearance three weeks from now in early December—was kicking up a storm.

  As guests began to meander into the room, the PowerPoint display finally went live, and numbers began coming in. That was also the same moment when Joanna’s phone rang with her daughter’s photo showing in the ID window. “Hey, Mom,” Jenny said. “How’s it going?”

  This was not the time to mention either the swollen feet or the aching back. “Fine,” Joanna said.

  “How are the returns looking?”

  Jenny had been intimately involved in both of her mother’s previous campaigns. She knew about keeping election-night vigils. Tonight, however, as a freshman at Northern Arizona University, she was three hundred fifty miles away in Flagstaff.

  “Just starting,” Joanna replied. “According to the screen, some of the smaller precincts have already reported in, mostly up around the northeast corner of the county—Bowie, San Simon, and Kansas Settlement.” She paused. “Results from Elfrida and Portal just came in.”

  “And?” Jenny prodded.

  “We’ve got a small margin so far,” Joanna said. “Only about a thousand votes, but still a margin. The problem is, Hubble is a big deal out in Sierra Vista, his home base, and Sierra Vista alone accounts for almost a quarter of the county’s voters.”

  “So if Sierra Vista goes for Hubble . . .” Jenny began.

  “Right,” Joanna said, glancing at the screen where the display was now showing final tallies from precincts in Wilcox, Bisbee, Douglas, Tombstone, and Benson. So far that thousand-vote differential seemed to be holding steady.

  “How’s Denny doing?” Jenny asked. “You brought him along, didn’t you? I always loved getting to stay up late on election night.”

  Yes, Joanna thought, but both those other times we won. This time we might not.

  “He’s here all right. Grandma Brady brought along a new Lego set to help keep him occupied.”

  “What about Marliss Shackleford?” Jenny asked. “Is she there, too?”

  Marliss, a reporter for the local paper, the Bisbee Bee, had been a burr under Joanna’s saddle for as long as she’d been sheriff. She had also been an unapologetic supporter of Joanna’s opponent.

  “No sign of her so far,” Joanna answered. “I’m guessing she’s making herself at home at someone else’s post-election party.”

  “I’m sure,” Jenny grumbled. “I wonder whose. Do you have your victory speech ready to deliver?”

  “Not a speech so much,” Joanna said, “just a few words thanking the people who’ve done all the work.”

  In actual fact Joanna had prepared two separate sets of remarks, one for a win and the other for a loss. She was still a Girl Scout at heart, and Girl Scouts are always prepared.

  A couple of women, two of her loyal volunteers both proudly displaying their BRADY FOR SHERIFF buttons, approached the table. Joanna knew them both—they were old friends of her mother’s from the Presbyterian church who had also shown up at Eleanor and George’s post-funeral barbecue, but right that moment a weary Joanna couldn’t for the life of her come up with either of their names. Despite almost eight years in elected office, Joanna Brady had yet to master the one essential task that is the mark of a true politician—the ability to remember names.

  “Some of the guests are here, so I have to go,” Joanna told Jenny quickly. “But I’ll call you when we have a final tally.”

  “You promise?” Jenny asked.

  “I promise.”

  “No matter how late it is?”

  “No matter how late.”

  “Sorry,” Joanna said to the new arrivals, stowing the phone and hoping to cover her momentary failure in the name department. “It was my daughter checking in from Flagstaff.”

  “I can’t believe Jenny’s already away at college,” said one. “Eleanor was just as proud as punch over her. Bragged about her constantly, like she was the greatest thing since sliced bread.”

  If Eleanor Lathrop Winfield had bragged about her granddaughter to others, very little of that praise had ever made it back to Joanna’s ears.

  Dennis chose that moment to slip away from his Lego project. He came over to where Joanna was sitting and snuggled up to her. “Are we still winning?” he asked.

  Joanna glanced at the screen. The vote count had increased, so results from some of the more populous precincts must have come in. The difference between her votes and Hubble’s was now under a thousand—only a few votes under, but under nonetheless.

  She gave her son a hug. “So far so good,” she said.

  “Are we going to go home soon?” he wanted to know.

  Joanna glanced at her watch and saw that it wasn’t quite ten. “Probably not very soon,” she told him. “Are you tired?”

  Denny nodded and snuggled some more, a sure sign that he was right at the end of his endurance.

  There was a seating area in one corner of the social hall that held a sofa and two matching chairs. “Why don’t you go over there and rest on that couch for a while?” she suggested, pointing.

  “You’ll wake me up if anything happens?”

  “I will.”

  Without a murmur of objection, Denny headed for the sofa. “What a good boy,” one of the two women exclaimed, watching him go.

  “Thank you,” Joanna said. “And yes, he is a good boy.”

  “Come on, Alva,” the other said. “They’re putting out the coffee. Let’s go get some.”

  That’s when the name surfaced: Alva—Alva Bullard. “Thank you both for all your help,” Joanna said.

  “You’re most welcome, Sheriff Brady,” Alva replied with a smile. “It’s the least we can do.”

  Joanna glanced up at the screen. Another 5,000 votes had been added to the total, and it looked as though her lead was slowly being whittled away. Now there was an 830-vote difference. Yes, once her lead disappeared completely, she’d be more than happy to let Denny sleep through the outcome.

  More of her supporters filed in. As the room began to fill up, Joanna realized that aching back or no, it was time for her to put a smile on her face, pull on her big-girl panties—to say nothing of her shoes—and start working the room. She had located the stray shoes and was in the process of forcing her feet back into them when it happened—the sudden, undeniable gush of liquid as her water broke, accompanied by the pressure of that first full-on contraction. The baby didn’t give a whit that she was three weeks early or that her mother was up to her ears in election-night festivities. It was Sage’s time, and she was coming now!

  The jolting intensity of the first contraction took Joanna’s breath away. When it finally passed, she turned around and tried to catch Butch’s eye. It seemed to take forever before he noticed her frantic wave.

  “Don’t worry,” he said, hurrying over to her. “We’re still ahead.”

  “It’s not the election,” she told him through gritted teeth. “It’s the baby!”

  “The baby?” Butch repeated. “What, she’s coming now? Are you sure? Isn’t it too soon?”

  “It may be soon, but yes, I’m sure. This isn’t my first rodeo. My water just broke,” she said. “I left a mess under the table, but we need to get me to the hospital now.”

  “Where’s Denny?” Butch demanded. “I thought he was right here.”

  “He’s over in the corner, sleeping, and let’s leave him there. If you tell Jim Bob what’s going on, I’m sure he and Eva Lou will look after him.”

  “Okay,” Butch said. “I’ll go get the car.”

  Except that was when the next contraction hit, and it was another surprisingly forceful one. With the second contraction coming so close on the heels of the first, Joanna knew that the baby was coming in one hell of a hurry.

  “No car,” she gasped. “Call 911. We’re going to need an ambulance and an EMT!”

  For a second it look
ed as though Butch was prepared to argue, but then he thought better of it and reached for his phone. Just then Marianne Maculyea appeared beside him. “Is something wrong?”

  Not only was the Reverend Marianne Maculyea the pastor of the Tombstone Canyon UMC, she had been Joanna’s best friend since junior high.

  “My water just broke,” Joanna told her. “Butch is calling 911.”

  A minute or so later, when Butch and Marianne led Joanna outside, she was still barefoot and wrapped head to toe in a flowing robe of borrowed tablecloth. No doubt the party would continue without them, but regardless of how the final voting tallies came out, Joanna had other fish to fry that night and wouldn’t be on hand either to declare victory or face down defeat.

  It turned out that summoning an ambulance was the right call, because Eleanor Sage Dixon refused to be kept waiting. She made her appearance just as the EMTs were wheeling Joanna’s gurney into the ER at Bisbee’s Copper Queen Community Hospital. They never made it anywhere near the delivery room. Dr. James Lee, Joanna’s longtime GP, didn’t make it to the hospital in time. Dr. Mallory Morris, the recently appointed head of ER in the hospital’s newly remodeled emergency unit, later joked that he needed a catcher’s mitt more than latex gloves when they rolled her in from the ambulance.

  An hour later, having been pronounced early but healthy, the six-and-a-half-pound baby girl was wrapped in blankets and sleeping in a bassinet in her mother’s room, blissfully unaware that her parents were in the process of sorting out birth-certificate paperwork. Joanna and Butch had been seesawing back and forth on the name issue for weeks. Sometimes the preferred name was Eleanor Sage, and sometimes it was the other way around.

  “Maybe we should call her Electra Sage in honor of election night,” Joanna suggested.

  “Not a good idea,” Butch said at once.

  “Why not?” Joanna asked. “Isn’t Electra some kind of Greek goddess?”

  “Sort of,” Butch allowed, “but not necessarily in a good way. She joined forces with her brother, Orestes, to murder both their mother and their stepfather. Orestes got punished for the crime, while Electra pretty much got away with it. So let’s just stick with naming the baby after your mother, shall we?”