Butch set a bowl of soup in front of Junior. Jenny seated herself next to their guest, picked up a piece of Butch’s crusty, freshly baked bread, spread it with butter, and then laid it next to his place. Without a word, Junior picked up his spoon and buried it in the thick, steamy soup.
“Careful,” Butch warned. “It’s hot.”
Nodding, Junior held the loaded spoon to his lips and blew on it noisily. Most of the soup slopped back into the bowl, but as soon as he put the remainder in his mouth, his face cracked into the same wide grin Joanna had seen when she had first pinned the sheriff’s badge on his chest.
“Good!” he exclaimed happily. “Good, good, good.” Transfixed by all this activity, Joanna stood just inside the door and watched. She didn’t know which was more gratifying-Butch’s and Jenny’s compassion toward Junior, or the total ease with which they dealt with his obvious abnormalities. Overcome by emotion, Joanna’s eyes brimmed with tears. She tried to speak, but her voice caught in her throat.
Joanna was still struggling to find words when Butch took her gently by the shoulder and led her to a chair. “Will Madame be seated?” he asked with a comically formal bow. “And what are we drinking this evening? I can recommend the Cabernet…”
“Milk for me, too,” Joanna said. “I may still have some work to do tonight.”
Jenny made a face at that, but she didn’t say anything to Joanna. Instead, she turned her wide blue eyes full on Junior’s face. “Where are you from?” she asked.
Ladling his soup and blowing on each spoonful, Junior didn’t answer. Jenny, however, seemed determined to draw him into conversation. “Is it near or far?”
Junior paused and looked at her. “Far,” he said. A speech impediment made it difficult for him to pronounce the letter r, but Jenny wasn’t fazed by that, either.
“How big is your family?” she asked.
Junior stopped eating. He put his spoon down and stared back at Jenny. Worried that any discussion of his family might provoke the same kind of outburst that had bruised Sister Ambrose’s elbow, Joanna tried to interrupt, but Butch laid one hand on hers and shook his head, warning her to silence.
Junior held up one finger. “Mama,” he said. Then he raised another finger. “Junior.”
“So it’s just the two of you,” Jenny said. “That’s like Mom and me. Butch here is our friend, and this is his house. But at home where we live, it’s just Mom and me. Just the two of us, same as you.”
A short silence settled over the table. “Do you like to play video games?” Butch asked.
Junior brightened. He reached for what would have been his pockets, then the smile faded. He knew enough to realize that video games required money and he had none.
“Don’t worry,” Butch told him. “I have some video games in the other room that came from my restaurant when I sold it. I’ve fixed them so they don’t take quarters anymore. You can play them all you want, for free.”
Junior’s mouth dropped. “No quarters?” He started to push his chair away from the table.
“No,” Butch said. “Soup first, then video games.”
Without a murmur of objection, Junior settled back onto his chair and resumed eating. If Father Mulligan thought the badge trick was impressive, Joanna thought, he ought to see this.
When the soup was gone, Jenny led Junior into what had once been a small parlor but which was now a tiny video arcade. As soon as they were out of the kitchen, Butch turned a penetrating gaze on Joanna. “How are you doing?”
“Better now,” she said. “Much better. How did you know how to handle him like that? You were great.”
“I used to coach Special Olympics,” Butch said. “The Roundhouse used to sponsor a team to the games over in Tempe every summer. I liked doing it, and I pride myself in thinking I was pretty good at it.”
“I’d say very good,” Joanna told him.
Butch stood up. “If you want to clear the table, I’ll go outside, gather up his clothes, and stick them in the washer.”
“Once we get him dressed again, though, what am I going to do with him?” Joanna asked.
‘‘Leave him here,” Butch replied. “I have an air mattress out in the shed. I’ll blow that up and have him sleep right there on the living room floor. He’ll be fine, and on the air mattress, if he has an accident overnight, it won’t hurt anything
“You don’t mind?”
“Of course I don’t mind. If I did, I wouldn’t have offered. What do you expect me to do, leave you to handle this whole mess by yourself? No way!”
While Butch went to look after the clothes, Joanna cleared the table and loaded the dishwasher. Butch’s house was a high-ceilinged, 1880s kind of place. It had once been part of a neighborhood called Upper Lowell. In the early fifties, this house and all of its neighbors had been loaded onto axles and hauled down out of the canyon to make way for the Lavender Pit Mine. When Butch had bought the place months earlier, it had been a run-down mess, with a bathroom so small that he claimed he’d had to stand in the kitchen to pee. It was Butch’s own handiwork that had remodeled the place, reallocating the space, putting in new fixtures, appliances, and cabinets. Working in the small but convenient kitchen, Joanna couldn’t help admiring his craftsmanship.
Joanna had finished loading the dishwasher and was just adding soap when Butch came back into the kitchen. “That took a while,” she said.
“I know. I have a rug shampooer out in the garage. I took a crack at the upholstery in your car. It helped some, but it’s not going to solve the whole problem. Unfortunately it had a chance to really soak in.”
Reaching into his pocket, he pulled out Joanna’s badge. “This looks like the real McCoy. It wouldn’t happen to be yours, would it?”
Drying her hands, Joanna look the badge and returned it to the leather carrying case in her purse. Once she did that, she walked over to Butch and gave the base of’ his neck a nuzzling kiss. In the process his hand bumped against the elbow that had swatted up against the cholla. She winced.
“What’s the matter?” Butch asked. “Are you hurt?”
“A little.”
She rolled up her sleeve and looked. Her elbow was punctured by more than a dozen tiny pinpricks, all of them red and sore. “What happened?” Butch asked
“I had a run-in with a batch of cholla,” she told him.
Shaking his head, Butch reached into a drawer and brought out a tube of Neosporin. “Maybe you’d better tell me the whole story,” he said.
For the next forty-five minutes, she told him everything, starting with finding Alice Rogers’ body and ending with Junior. When Joanna finished, Butch leaned back in his chair and folded his arms behind his head. “What’s it going to take to find someone who doesn’t want to be found?”
“I don’t know,” Joanna admitted. “I’ve never encountered a case quite like this before.”
“I have,” Butch said grimly. “Two years ago the family of one of my athletes took off out of town while Brad was away at Special Olympics. When the games were over and we tried to take him home, no one was there. One of the neighbors told us they’d packed up and left on vacation. In a way, you can understand it. It’s got to be a terrible strain for the family members. For caregivers it’s a never-ending, lifetime’s worth of responsibility, with no hope and no respite. Still, abandoning ship like that is unforgivable. At least, that’s how it seemed to me then, and it still does.
“But I’ll bet the same thing that happened with Brad will happen with junior. Somebody is going to notice that Junior isn’t at home anymore, and they’ll start asking questions. In the meantime, we’re going to have to look after him, that’s all.”
“You mean that, don’t you,” Joanna said. “The ‘we’ part, I mean.”
“Yes,” Butch said. “If we don’t, who’s going to? And if you and Jenny and I all take a crack at this thing together, it won’t be that big a problem. I’m sure Jeff Daniels will help out, and maybe even Marianne, if she’s able.”