The newest member of the board, Charles Longworth Neighbors, was a man no one ever referred to as Charley – at least not to his face. He was a full-bird colonel who had retired from the army at Fort Huachuca a year or so earlier. He had now been appointed to fill out another board member’s unexpired term of office.
Since Charles Neighbors was career army, the United States government had seen to it that he had earned a Harvard MBA while in the service. Now in civilian life, he loved to wield his relatively recent degree as a double-edged sword. He had no compunction about inflicting everything he had learned on the unwashed masses in every branch of Cochise County government, one reluctant department at a time. Today he homed in on the sheriff’s department, going over budget items line by line, convinced that there were substantial cuts that could and should be made.
“If it can be done, it should be done,” he told Joanna, with a patronizing smile that made her want to grind her teeth.
Three and a half grueling hours later, she and Frank escaped the boardroom, having taken a 10-percent-across-the-board hit. She waited until they were safely outside the building and out of earshot before she exploded.
“If it can be done, it should be done,” she grumbled, doing a credible job of imitating Charles Longworth’s pedantic, school-principal-like delivery. “If he had said that one more time, I think I would have thrown something! Of course, his should-bes are all one-way streets. Budget items are to be taken out and never put back in.”
“Now, now,” Frank counseled, “give the man a break. He’s new and trying to get a grip on how things work. Supervising county government has to be different from being an officer in the army.”
“Right,” Joanna agreed. “We can’t afford two-hundred-dollar toilet seats. And then there’s Harry I. Ball.”
“What hairy eyeball?” Frank asked. “I don’t remember anyone saying a word about that.”
“Not ‘hairy eyeball,’ “ Joanna returned. “That’s a man’s name,” she said, reading off the scrap of paper she had stuffed in the pocket of her blazer. “First name is Harry, middle initial I, and last name Ball. I made him spell it out for me.”
“Who the hell is he?”
“Some high mucky-muck with the Washington State Attorney General’s Office. He called me at home this morning when I should have been on my way to work.” She didn’t add that Harry Ball’s unwelcome call was the only reason she hadn’t been even later to the board of supervisors meeting.
“What did he want?”
“His office is sending someone to bring us Latisha Wall’s file because the material is too volatile to be sent any other way than in person. Not only that, whoever they send is supposed to hang around and keep an eye on us – an observer to bird-dog us the whole time we’re doing the Latisha Wall investigation. I believe the exact phrase he used is that his boss didn’t want anyone to ‘let something slip.’ The good folks up in Washington are evidently convinced that our department is totally incapable of conducting an adequate homicide investigation. If you ask me, Mr. Ball sounded exactly like some of those high-handed yahoos from the other Washington, and just as screwed up.”
“When does this so-called observer arrive?” Frank asked mildly.
“Who knows?” Joanna shot back. “And who cares? His name’s…” She paused again to consult her note. “J.P. Beaumont. All I can say is, Mr. Beaumont had better stand back and stay out of my way.”
Frank shook his head and unlocked the door to his waiting Civvie. “Want to stop off and grab some lunch before we head back to the office?” he asked. “Something tells me you’re running on empty.”
Joanna gave him a sidelong glance. “What makes you say that? Just because I’m ranting and raving?”
Frank nodded. “The thought crossed my mind.”
“We’ve been working together for too long,” Joanna said, grinning in spite of herself. “And lunch is probably a good idea. Butch left the house early this morning. I ran late and skipped breakfast.”
“I thought so,” Frank said.
Minutes later Frank and Joanna turned their matching Crown Victorias into Chico’s Taco Stand in Bisbee’s Don Luis neighborhood. The building that housed Chico’s had once served as the office of a junkyard. The wrecked cars had all disappeared, and now the building itself had been transformed. The tiny restaurant consisted of a counter where people lined up to place their orders. In addition to the counter’s four stools, there were five booths that consisted of sagging, cigarette-scarred red vinyl benches with matching chrome-and-chipped-Formica tabletops. All of the furnishings had been purchased secondhand from a soon-to-be-demolished diner in Tucson. Several dusty, fading piñatas and a few unframed bullfight posters provided what passed for interior decor.
Fortunately, Chico’s lunchtime clientele was in search of good food rather than trendy surroundings. Customers lined up daily for some of Chico Rodriguez’s signature tacos, made from a recipe passed down from his great-grandmother to his grandmother, then to his mother, all of whom had spent decades cooking in various Bisbee-area Mexican eateries. When the last of the Rodriguez women retired, Chico had followed in their footsteps and opened his own establishment, one where his mother still filled in occasionally so Chico could have a day off.
Joanna and Frank went to the counter and placed their order. Taking their drinks, they retreated to a recently vacated booth, where they were obliged to clear their own table. Minutes later, Chico himself delivered their orders. The food came on paper plates accompanied by paper-napkin-wrapped plastic utensils. The shredded-beef tacos, made from crunchy homemade corn tortillas, were piled high with chopped lettuce. The lettuce was sprinkled with a generous helping of finely grated sharp cheese and topped by a dollop of tomato salsa that was more sweet than hot. It was that special combination of ingredients that made Chico’s tacos taste better than any Joanna had eaten elsewhere.
As she took her first bite, Frank grinned at her. “As soon as you’re no longer a raving maniac, tell me more about your call from the Washington State Attorney General’s Office and this so-called observer they’re sending.”
“I’ve pretty much told you what I know,” Joanna returned. “The guy’s name is Beaumont. That’s about it.”
“When can we expect him?”
“Tomorrow or Sunday, I suppose,” she said.
“And the purpose of his visit?”
“Other than spying on us and getting in the way? Beats the hell out of me. Like I said before, talking with Mr. Eyeball, as you called him, was like dealing with feds from back east. He fully expected me to spill my guts and tell him everything we know. But that isn’t going to happen, at least not until that file gets here.”
“He didn’t go into any details as to why the state of Washington is so concerned about Latisha Wall’s death?”
“No, and the longer they keep us working in the dark, the easier it’ll be for us to make that slip Harry Ball seems to be expecting.”
Frank jotted himself a note. “When we get back to the office, I’ll go on-line and find out what I can about Ms. Latisha Wall. It must be a pretty high-profile case to garner this much attention from the attorney general’s office. There may be newspaper coverage that will tell us some of what we need to know.”
“Good idea,” Joanna said. “We should also check with Casey and Dave to see how they’re doing with processing all the evidence they brought back from the crime scene.”
Frank nodded and made another note as Joanna finished the second of her two tacos. She was scraping the last of the refritos off her plate when the phone in her purse crowed.
“Hello, boss,” Detective Jaime Carbajal announced when she answered. “Sorry to bother you. Kristin said you were at a board of supervisors meeting. Hope I’m not interrupting.”