“Are you all right?” she asked solicitously. Her double chins waggled when she spoke. So did the ample cleavage that showed over the top of her peasant-style blouse.

“Goddamn it, Nancy!” Clete Rogers grumbled at her. “I know if I’m fine or not! Leave me the hell alone. Don’t hover, and get back to work!”

Behind red-framed glasses, Nancy ’s enormous blue eyes filmed with tears. Her lower lip trembled right along with her chins, but after a moment she seemed to pull herself together. “Well, excuuuse me!” she snapped back at him, and flounced off.

Clete Rogers looked after her. “Sometimes it’s hard to tell who’s the owner around here and who’s the employee.”

Even though Frank Montoya had warned Joanna about Clete Rogers’ arrogance and ill temper, she was nonetheless surprised by his shabby treatment of someone who was, as far as Joanna could see, a fiercely loyal employee.

Finished with what appeared to be an unwarranted attack on Nancy, Clete turned his attention back to Joanna. “So what’s the deal here, Sheriff Brady? Have you found my mother or not?”

“We’ve located her car,” Joanna said carefully.

“Where?”

“A group of juveniles were stopped while attempting to take it across the border into Mexico.”

“What about Mother?” Rogers asked. “Where’s she?”

“We don’t know,” Joanna said. “Not for sure. We haven’t found her yet.”

Clete Rogers took a swig of his juice. “What exactly does that mean?”

“Just what I said. It means we’re looking for her. So are authorities from Pima and Santa Cruz counties. According to Frank Montoya, they’ve just received what they regard as an informed tip up in Tucson. There’s a Search and Rescue group heading out there now. They’ll be concentrating their efforts along Houghton Road between I-10 and Old Spanish Trail.”

Clete Rogers raised his hand. Despite having been ordered not to hover, Nancy appeared from nowhere as if she’d been hanging fire to see what, if anything, her lord and master might require.

“I’m leaving,” he announced. “Have Ken put together a care package for me. The usual. I’m driving up to Tucson. I don’t want to be stuck out in the middle of nowhere with nothing to eat.”

“Excuse me, Mayor Rogers,” Joanna said. “As I said, there is a search, all right. But it’s being conducted by members of the Pima County Sheriff’s Department. Since it sounds as though that’s where your mother’s car was stolen, officers from Pima County are the ones in charge at this point. I doubt very much that they’ll want any unauthorized onlookers clambering around under hand and foot and possibly disturbing crime scene evidence.”

“And let me remind you, Sheriff Brady, that the person those people are searching for is my mother,” Rogers put in. “Like it or not, I’m involved, and I’m going to stay that way.”

Inside her purse, Joanna’s pager buzzed, sending out a warning that sounded for all the world like a rattlesnake. She reached inside and stifled the thing before Clete Rogers seemed to notice what was going on.

“Really, Mr. Rogers,” she said. “I don’t think your showing up there is wise. As I said before, the more people milling around a crime scene, the greater the chance that important information will be overlooked or destroyed. I believe we’d be better off if-”

“I didn’t hear anyone asking for your advice or yourpermission, Sheriff Brady. Are you coming with me or not?”

It took all of two seconds for Joanna to make up her mind. No way did she want to be trapped into three hours’ worth of car travel with this overbearing jerk, but she also wanted to be on hand to defend her department and her people in case Rogers launched into an all-out attack over how his mother’s case was being handled.

“Not,” she replied. “I’ll head on up to Tucson as well, but I’ll drive my own vehicle. In fact, I think I’ll leave right now. How much for the coffee?”

What Joanna had left unsaid was that while Rogers waited for his “care package,” she would go on ahead and help run interference for whoever was in charge. Hopefully, she’d have enough of a head start to beat him to the crime scene.

“Never mind about the coffee,” Clete Rogers said. “It’s on the house.”

Reaching into her purse, Joanna pulled out two ones and slapped them down on the table beside her empty cup. She wasn’t going to be beholden to Clete Rogers for anything at all, including two cups of unbelievably bad drip coffee.

“I’ll see you there.”

Out in the car, Joanna checked the pager. Not surprisingly, the number listed was Dick Voland’s direct line at the department. She called him on her cell phone. “It’s Joanna, Dick,” she said when he answered. “What’s up?”

“Frank Montoya just called in. They’ve found Alice Rogers.”

“Alive or dead?” Joanna asked.

“Dead, unfortunately. The kid-Morales-showed them where he and his friends found the car. Search and Rescue turned a dog loose, and he went right out and found the body. It’s six miles east of I-10 on Houghton in a big stand of cholla on the south side of the road.”

“They’re sure it’s Alice Rogers?”

“Pretty sure, pending an official identification from a relative. The clothes the dead woman is wearing match the ones Susan Jenkins told Frank her mother was wearing when she came to dinner Saturday night.”

“What did she die of?”

“No way to tell. Not so far. According to Frank, they found her in the middle of a grove of cholla. He says she’s full of spines. She must have fallen down in the stuff. Not a nice way to go. Frank was hoping to give you a heads-up while you were still in Tombstone so you could let Clete Rogers know.”

Glancing in the rearview mirror to check for traffic, Joanna eased her Crown Victoria onto the street. At that point it would have been no trouble at all to return to the restaurant and give Clete Rogers the news. The bottom line was, Joanna didn’t feel like it. The mayor had been quite specific in saying he wanted no part of her advice. No, let him find out for himself.

“Negative on that,” she told Dick Voland. “You’re too late. I’m already on my way to Tucson. So’s Clete Rogers. If you want to give anyone a heads-up, Frank’s the one who’s going to need it. Let him know Rogers is coming so he can pass the information along to whoever’s in charge for Pima County.”

“Clete’s going to the crime scene?” Dick Voland asked. “The boys from Pima County aren’t going to like that at all.”

“No kidding!” Joanna told him. “In terms of inter-agency cooperation, his showing up will probably put us back ten years. They’ll be ecstatic when a whole crowd shows up. Which reminds me, you’d better send Detective Carpenter along as well. If Pima County has homicide detectives on the scene, so should we.”

Two miles east of I-10 on Houghton Road, Joanna could a-ready see the flashing lights several miles farther east that indicated the presence of several emergency vehicles parked on either side of the road. She stopped directly behind a van from the Pima County Medical Examiner’s office. As Joanna stepped out of the Crown Victoria, the familiar figure of Dr. Fran Daly emerged from the back of the van.

“Well, if it isn’t Sheriff Brady,” Fran Daly drawled, dropping a man-sized equipment case onto the ground between them. “Long time no see,” she added, wiping her hands on the worn leg of her jeans before proffering one of them in greeting. “We’ve got to stop meeting like this.”

Fran was a tough-talking chain-smoker who had, during the previous summer, worked on a series of homicides with Joanna’s department. When George Winfield, the Cochise County medical examiner, had taken off for Alaska on a honeymoon cruise, the board of supervisors had opted to contract with a neighboring county for whatever forensic services might be necessary in Winfield’s absence. Fran Daly, the assistant medical examiner for Pima County, had been drafted into service. At the time the arrangement was made, no one could possibly have anticipated that during the two weeks Dr. Winfield was out of the county, Joanna’s department would unmask Cochise County’s first-ever serial killer, uncovering the remains of several brutally mutilated victims along the way.