Liza dropped the book on the passenger seat before going around to the other side to climb in. When she turned to fasten her seat belt, the tail end of her ponytail swished in front of her face. That’s when she smelled it—the same pungent combination of foul odors that had plagued her as a girl and that had been the cause of so much painful bullying from other kids. The odor of decay in her mother’s home had somehow permeated Liza’s hair and clothing. She could barely tolerate sitting in the car knowing that she was probably leaving the same stinky residue on the car seats and carpeting.
Hating the very idea, Liza headed for her apartment rather than for the hospital. She would go see her mother and deliver the book, but only after she had showered and washed her hair. Looking at the book, she realized it probably smelled the same way. Once she hit Great Barrington, she pulled in to the drive-in window of the local Dunkin’ Donuts and ordered a bag of their Breakfast Blend coffee beans. She had heard that coffee beans helped get rid of bad smells. It seemed worth a try.
At home, Liza located a gallon-size Ziploc bag. She placed the book inside that along with all the bills she had stuffed in her pockets. Then, having added the whole beans, she zipped the bag shut before going into the bathroom to shower.
She stood under the stream of hot water for the next fifteen minutes, trying to wash away the dirt and grit from her mother’s house. With her eyes closed, she hoped she was washing off something else as well—the soul-destroying contamination of her mother’s many betrayals.
She needed to send Selma Machett’s perfidy circling down the drain every bit as much as she needed to rid herself of the odor of mouse droppings and rotting food that, despite all her scrubbing, still seemed to cling to her skin.
Chapter 1
THE SUN WAS just coming up over the distant Chiricahua Mountains to the east of High Lonesome Ranch when a rooster crowed at ten past five in the morning. At that hour of the day, it might have been one of the ranch’s live resident roosters announcing the arrival of a new day, but it wasn’t. This was the obnoxiously distinctive crowing of Sheriff Joanna Brady’s cell phone.
Groping for the device in its charging stand on the bedside table, Joanna silenced the racket and glanced across the bed. Her husband, Butch, slept undisturbed with a pillow pulled over his head. Taking the phone in hand, Joanna scrambled out of bed. Now that Lady, her rescued Australian shepherd, had decamped to a spot next to Joanna’s son’s bed, she no longer had to deal with tripping over a dead-to-the-world dog when it came to late-night callouts, which usually meant there was serious trouble somewhere in Cochise County.
Hurrying into the bathroom and closing the door behind her, Joanna answered, “Sheriff Brady.”
“Chief Bernard here,” a male voice rumbled in her ear. “Sorry to wake you at this ungodly hour, but I could sure use your K-9 unit if you can spare them.”
Alvin Bernard was the police chief in Bisbee, Arizona. Once known as a major copper-producing town, Bisbee’s current claim to fame was its reputation as an arts colony. It was also the county seat. Alvin Bernard’s departmental jurisdiction ended at Bisbee’s city limits, the line where Joanna’s countywide jurisdiction began.
Years earlier, Joanna had been elected to the office of sheriff in the aftermath of her first husband’s death. Andy Brady had been running for the office when he died in a hail of bullets from a drug cartel’s hit man. When Joanna was elected sheriff in her late husband’s stead, members of the local law enforcement old boys’ network had sneered at the outcome, regarding her election as a straight-up sympathy vote, and had expected Joanna to be sheriff in name only. She had surprised the naysayers by transforming herself into a professional police officer. As she developed a reputation for being a good cop, that initial distrust had melted away. She now had a cordial working relationship with most of her fellow police administrators, including Bisbee’s Chief Bernard.
“What’s up?”
“Junior Dowdle’s gone missing from his folks’ house up the canyon. He left his room sometime overnight by climbing out through a bedroom window. His bed hasn’t been slept in. Daisy’s frantic. She and Moe have been up and down the canyon several times looking for him. So far there’s no trace.”