After locking her weapons away and changing clothes, Joanna dished up a serving of the casserole and put the plate in the microwave. “Looks like I’m in the doghouse, too,” she said to Sadie and Tigger, who sprawled comfortably on the kitchen floor. Other than thumping their tails in unison, the dogs made no further comment.

Joanna picked halfheartedly at the casserole – a dish that was usually one of her favorites. All the while she couldn’t help wondering if Butch was still mad at her about the model train situation. He said he wasn’t, but he still must be, she surmised. After all, he hadn’t bothered calling to remind her about having to eat early due to Jenny’s rehearsal. If he had, she could have come home earlier rather than waiting for Ross Connors to have the common decency to return her call. Now Joanna was home by herself when she didn’t especially want to be alone.

No longer hungry, she divvied the remaining casserole on her plate into two portions and plopped them into the dog dishes. Uncharacteristically, Sadie showed no interest in the proffered treat. She stayed where she was, allowing Tigger to lick both dishes clean.

Joanna leaned down and patted the bluetick hound on her smooth, round forehead. “We’re both a little out of sorts today, aren’t we, girl,” she said.

Joanna spent the evening catching up on reading, watching the clock, and waiting for the telephone to ring. It was after nine before Butch’s Subaru finally pulled into the yard. Joanna and the dogs went out to greet the new arrivals.

“How was rehearsal?” Joanna asked.

“Awful,” Jenny said. “The show’s just two weeks away and most of the boys still don’t know their lines. It’s going to be a gigantic flop, Mom. I wish Miss Stammer would cancel it. We’re all going to be up on stage looking stupid.”

“It’ll be fine, Jen,” Joanna reassured her, tousling Jenny’s blond curls. Behind Jenny’s back, Butch rolled his eyes and shook his head as if to say Jenny’s assessment was far closer to the truth than any motherly platitudes.

Jenny took the dogs and went into the house. Joanna turned to Butch. “Is it really that bad?”

“I’ll say,” Butch said.

Joanna changed the subject. “You should have called and reminded me to come home early.”

Butch reached into the car and removed the roll of blueprints that, these days, seemed to be a natural extension of his arm. When he turned to reply, he wasn’t smiling.

“I had to remind you to come to lunch today,” he said. “I figured you were a big enough girl that you could decide when to come home for dinner on your own.”

Ouch, Joanna thought.

She followed him into the house and locked the back door once she was inside. Butch put the blueprints on the dining room table. Joanna thought he would unroll them and pore over them as he did almost every night. Instead he said, “I think I’ll turn in.”

“You just got home,” Joanna objected. “Don’t you want to talk?”

Butch shook his head. “I’m beat. Quentin and I have a meeting first thing in the morning. Night.”

He gave Joanna a halfhearted peck on the cheek and left her standing in the middle of the dining room. Rebuffed and hurt, Joanna returned to the kitchen. In a bid for sympathy, she had wanted to tell her husband about her day. She had wanted Butch to give her a loving pat and tell her that of course Ross Connors from Washington State was an unmitigated jerk. But Butch Dixon had surprised her. He had given her a cold shoulder rather than one to cry on.

Joanna sulked in the kitchen for a while. Then, wanting to talk and thinking Butch must still be awake, she crept into the bedroom, only to find him snoring softly. So much for that! she thought.

It was midnight before she finally went to bed and much later than that before she fell asleep. And overslept. If it hadn’t been for the telephone ringing at ten after eight the next morning, she might have missed the board of supervisors meeting altogether.

“Hello,” she mumbled into the phone. Staring wide-eyed at the clock, she staggered out of bed. The caller ID box next to the phone said the number was unavailable. Taking the phone with her, she headed for the bathroom.

“Sheriff Brady?”

“Yes. Who’s this?”

“My name’s Harry Eyeball and-”

“Look, mister,” she said, cutting him off. “If this is some kind of joke-”

“Believe me, Sheriff Brady, it’s no joke. My name is Harry, initial I, Ball. I’m with the Washington State Attorney General’s Special Homicide Investigation Team. I’m returning the call you made to Ross Connors yesterday afternoon.”

“Oh, yes,” Joanna said. “I called about Latisha Wall.”

“Making any progress?”

Joanna bristled. “My call was to Mr. Connors,” Joanna said. “I’m not in the habit of discussing ongoing cases with people I don’t know.”

“I just told you-”

“Yes, yes, I know. Your name is Harry Ball. But I don’t know you from Adam’s Off Ox, Mr. Ball,” she said, resorting to one of her father-in-law’s favorite expressions. “My homicide detective, Jaime Carbajal, has been trying to contact Mr. Connors’s office for information regarding this case. Up to now there’s been no response.”

“So Latisha Wall was murdered, then?”

Joanna ignored the question. “What Detective Carbajal needs, I believe, is for someone to fax Latisha Wall’s information to us so we’ll know where to start. All we have so far is her real name and her family’s address in Georgia.”

“That file isn’t faxable, ma’am,” Harry Ball told her.

“What do you mean, it isn’t faxable?” Joanna returned. “What is it, chiseled in granite?”

“It’s confidential. We have no assurances that it might not fall into unauthorized hands in the process of transmitting it.”

“You’re implying that someone in my department might leak it?” Joanna demanded. “And why is it so damned confidential? Let me remind you, Mr. Ball: Latisha Wall is already dead. If she was in a witness protection program you guys set up, I’d have to say you didn’t do such a great job of it. And I still need the information.”

“That’s what I’m trying to tell you, ma’am. We’re sending it to you.”

“How? By pony express?”

Joanna glared at the clock, whose hands were moving inexorably forward. The board of supervisors meeting would start at nine sharp. Even skipping a shower, it was going to be close.

“One of the members of my team, an investigator named J.P. Beaumont, will be delivering it in person. Once he does so, Mr. Connors would like him to stay on as an observer.”

“A what?”

“An observer. This is an important case with long-term, serious financial implications for the state of Washington,” Harry Ball continued. “We wouldn’t want someone to inadvertently let something slip.”

Joanna was dumbfounded. “Let something slip?” she deman-ded. “Connors thinks my department is so incompetent that he’s sending someone to bird-dog my investigation? I don’t believe this! You can give that boss of yours a message from me. Tell him he has a hell of a lot of nerve!”

Slamming down the phone, she hopped into the shower after all. She was too steamed not to. Her hair was still damp and her makeup haphazardly applied when she slid into a chair next to Frank Montoya at the board of supervisors’ Melody Lane conference room fifty minutes later. Frank glanced at his watch and sighed with relief when he saw her. The board secretary was already reading the minutes of the previous meeting.

“What happened?” he whispered.

“I overslept.”

“Oh,” Frank said. “Is that all? From the look on your face, I thought it was something serious.”

Sheriff Joanna Brady hated having to attend board of supervisors meetings. For routine matters, Frank Montoya usually attended in her stead. This meeting, however, was anything but routine. The general downturn in the national economy had hit hard in Cochise County, requiring budget cuts in every aspect of county government. Today, with the board’s cost-cutting knives aimed at the sheriff’s department, she and Frank had decided they should both appear. Within minutes, Joanna knew they’d made a wise decision.