Joanna took a deep breath. “I see,” she said. Sandra Henning waited, as though she had no idea what else to say.

“You say she drove up to the bank?”

“That’s right. In one of those cute little Geo Storms, one of the turquoise blue ones. It had Nevada plates. I noticed that much.”

“How old was she?”

“Not very old. Early twenties.”

Joanna nodded. She felt queasy. The lunch-time pasty that had tasted so good hours earlier was a leaden mass in her gut, groaning and wanting to rebel. It was all too much. Everywhere she turned, someone new was accusing Andy of something else. Could any of it be true? She had thought she knew Andy as well as she knew herself, but all around her were people telling her she was a fool, and blind besides.

A storm of tears came bubbling to the su r-face. Joanna wanted to duck out of the bank before they struck. She didn’t want to make a scene in public, any more so than she already had.

“Cora,” she murmured, standing up. “Cora from Nevada, a girl with no last name.”

Sandra met Joanna’s eyes. “I’m sorry,” she said.

“Believe me,” Joanna returned, stumbling blindly away from the desk. “So am I.”

Outside, Jenny was waiting in the car. “What’s the matter?” she asked, as soon as she saw her mother’s face. “Did Mrs. Henning say something mean?”

“I’m okay,” Joanna said.

“But you’re crying.”

“I’m all right.”

Jenny settled back in the car seat and crossed her arms. “Are we going home now?”

Joanna gripped the steering wheel and ought about the question. Finally she shook her head.

“No,” she said. “We have to make one more op along the way.”

“Where?” Jenny asked.

“Before we go home, we’re going to go see Sherriff McFadden.”

SIXTEEN

Walter McFadden’s house sat at the top end of Arizona Street, less than half a block from where town gave way to open desert. Usually he wouldn’t have been there at five o’clock, but Dick Voland had already told Joanna that today McFadden had gone home early. When the Eagle turned onto Cole Avenue, his Toyota was parked in the carport be-hind the redbrick house.

As Joanna stopped near the back gate, she saw a bright yellow Frisbee come sailing off the shaded front porch and fly along just under the eaves of the house. At almost the same instant, a dog launched itself into the yard from three steps up. The dog chased the Frisbee and overtook it halfway across the back yard, leaping up and snagging it out of the air in a graceful, four-foot arch. With the Frisbee clenched tightly in its teeth, the dog tore back toward the front porch.

“Good catch,” Jennifer commented. “I wish Sadie did that good with Frisbees.”

“Well,” Joanna corrected without thinking. “I wish Sadie did that well.”

Walter McFadden stood up and sauntered off the porch to greet them, carrying an open can of Coors, a Silver Bullet, in one hand. He walked over to the gate with the dog at his heels.

“Howdy, Joanna, Jennifer. What can I do for you?”

“Can we come in?”

“Sure.”

Stories about the sheriff’s ugly mutt were legend in Bisbee. The dog, an improbable mixture of half-golden retriever/half-pit bull, had destined for destruction before Walter Fadden had come to the animal’s rescue. As a puppy, the dog had belonged to an escaped felon who was discovered and apprehended while living in an abandoned shack in Old Bisbee. When the man was picked and sent back where he belonged, the dog, a starveling pup, was sentenced to death and would have been put down if the sheriff, newly widowed and terribly lonely, hadn’t intervened.

“Are you sure the dog will be okay?” Joanna asked.

The sheriff grinned. “He’s fine. You don’t yr to worry about Tigger. He may be ugly as all sin, but he’s real sweet-tempered.”

Jennifer, following her mother into the yard, peered critically at the dog and made a face. “He is kinda ugly, isn’t he?” she agreed. “Why’d you name him Tigger? After Winnie the Pooh?”

Walter McFadden smiled and nodded. “That’s right. How’d you know?”

“When I was little,” Jenny said, “Winnie the Pooh used to be one of my favorite books.”

“It still is one of mine,” McFadden said, “al-though I don’t have anyone to read it to now that my own little girl is all grown up.”

“What kind of dog is it?”

“I always say that Tigger’s a pit bull wearing a golden retriever suit,” McFadden replied seriously. “I’m not sure which was which, but either his daddy or his mama must’ve been a pit bull. That’s where he gets the square nose and that godawful circle around his one eye. The rest of him’s pretty much golden retriever. I don’t know where the jumping comes from.”

“Can I try throwing for him?” Jennifer asked.

McFadden glanced quizzically in Joanna’ direction, and he picked up on her almost imperceptible nod. “You bet,” he said. “As much as you like. There isn’t anything Tigger like: better than having someone new throw the Frisbee for him. You do that, while I talk to your mama.”

McFadden handed the tooth-pocked Frisbee over to Jennifer and then led Joanna up onto the porch and motioned her into the old-fashioned metal lawn chair. “Care for a beer?” he asked. Joanna shook her head. “Is something the matter?”

“I found out where the money came from,” she said. “Sandra Henning down at the bank told me.”

“The woman, you mean?”

Joanna nodded, and McFadden took a long swig of beer. “Doesn’t mean much,” he said. ‘Question is, where’d she get it? The money, that is. And nobody’s been able to track her down so far, either.”

“Why didn’t you tell me about her?” Joanna asked.

“Fact of the matter is, I didn’t know about myself, not until I got back home yesterday afternoon. The DEA guys turned most of that stuff up when they got the court order to at your account. My department’s been playing catch-up ball ever since.”

“So everybody in town knew about her but me,” Joanna commented bitterly.

“Maybe there’s not that much to know,” adden suggested.

And maybe there is,” Joanna returned.

“What’s Ernie Carpenter after really, Waiter’ Andy’s dead. It’s bad enough to lose him, but is anyone interested in finding out who killed him or are they just interested in dragging his name through the mud? If Andy was having an affair, it hurts, hurts like hell to find out about it now. I would a whole lot rather not have known about it at all, but to my way of thinking, that doesn’t matter nearly as much as who killed Andy and why. Those preliminary autopsy results…”

“Whoa, down, Joanna. Let me tell you something. You’re hurting. We all understand that. As Andy’s widow and as D. H.’s daughter, everybody’s trying to give you the benefit of the doubt, but…”

“Benefit of the doubt?” Joanna exploded. “What does that mean?”

“Joanna, no matter who you are, you can^’t go around the system. I don’t know how you laid hands on those preliminary autopsy results-that’s Pima County’s problem not mine-but you’ve got no business interfering with this investigation. You’re going to have to step back and let people like Ernie Carpenter do his job.”

“Ernie Carpenter isn’t investigating Andy’s death nearly as much as he’s investigating what he believes Andy did wrong. There’s a big difference.”

“See there?” McFadden pointed out. “You’re doing it again.”

“And what about Adam York? What’s his game?”

“Federal drug enforcement’s no game,” McFadden reasoned seriously. “If you think it is, you’re crazy.”

“Right, but if Adam York’s busy waging a war on drugs, why’s he nosing around town asking questions about me? This morning when I tackled him about it, he gave me some lame song and dance about possible insurance fraud, but as you just told me, that’s not his job. So what’s going on? There must be some reason he’s after me specifically, and I want to know what it is.”