“I did help,” Kristin admitted. “Reverend Maculyea wanted to have the party sometime during the week, but I told her she’d be better off having it on a weekend when I could make sure Chief Deputy Montoya was on call and looking after things.”

“Is that why my beeper hasn’t gone off even once today?” Joanna asked.

Kristin glanced shyly in her boss’s direction. “Could be,” she said. “I told Frank not to call you out unless it was a dire emergency.”

“Thanks, Kristin, it must be working. I was beginning to worry that maybe my pager was out of order.”

“I’ll go get the last load of presents,” Kristin told her. “You wait here.”

Joanna was standing next to the open passenger door when she heard a car waiting to park in the next space. She moved out of the way. Only when the driver unfolded his long legs and stepped out of a late-model white Camry did she recognize Dick Voland. It was the first time she had encountered the man in person since their confrontation on the road to High Lonesome Ranch months earlier.

“Hello, Dick,” she said, struggling to keep her tone of voice even. It was bad enough seeing him again after so many months. The fact that she had to peer up at him from under the brim of that ridiculous bride-inscribed baseball cap made it that much worse. “How’s it going?” she asked.

“Fine,” Voland answered. When he hoisted his pants, Joanna noticed they were quite loose around the middle. His belt showed marks where it had once been fastened before a considerable loss of weight. Joanna could see that the man was in far better shape than he had been in those first unhappy months after his divorce when he had been drinking too much and not taking care of himself.

“You look good,” she said. “You’ve lost weight.”

Nodding, Dick Voland patted what had once been a bulging belly. “I’ve been working out again,” he told her.

“I’ll say,” Joanna replied.

Just then Kristin emerged from the restaurant bearing the last load of gifts. On top of the stack was the box from Victoria’s Secret. Kristin paused uncertainly when she caught sight of Dick Voland.

“Hello, Mr. Voland,” she mumbled. “Good to see you.”

As she bent over to put the armload of gifts in the car, the topmost lid caught on the side of the trunk door and spilled a flimsy froth of tissue-wrapped green nightgown out onto the ground. “Oh, no,” she wailed. “I’ve probably ruined it.”

Dick Voland reached down and picked it up, dusting it off as he did so. “No harm done,” he said, holding it out to her. “A little bit of dust never hurt anything.”

Embarrassed, Kristin ignored the proffered gown and fled back inside, leaving Joanna the task of dealing with the gown herself.

“Thanks,” Joanna said as she stuffed it back into the box. Waiting long enough for her own blush to dissipate, she closed the trunk. When she straightened up, Dick Voland was still looming over her. He may have lost weight, but he was still six feet four. Joanna was wearing two-inch heels. The top of her baseball cap barely grazed the bottom of his chin.

“What can I do for you, Dick?” she asked, trying to put their conversation on some kind of businesslike basis.

For his part, Voland didn’t appear to be any happier about the situation than Joanna was. Acting for all the world like a dumbstruck teenager, he stared down at his feet for some time before he spoke.

“Marliss told me about the shower. I didn’t mean to upset anything, but I needed to talk to you.”

“The shower’s over. It’s fine. What do you want to talk about?”

“It’s awkward.”

“What’s awkward?”

Dick took a deep breath. “Look, Joanna. Reba Singleton has hired me to investigate her father’s death. I told her I thought she was way off-base. I told her that you and I had worked together for a long time and that, in my opinion, she’d just be throwing her money away. So she said did I want her to throw her money in my direction, or did I want her to hand it over to someone else? I couldn’t very well turn her down. I need the work.”

He paused, then continued. “I wanted to warn you,” he added. “Wanted to let you know what was going on so you wouldn’t be blindsided by all this. I came by last night and left a message. I guess Butch didn’t see fit to give it to you.”

The last thing Joanna would have expected from Dick Voland was kindness. “Butch did give me the message,” Joanna said, “but by the time I got home, it was already too late for me to return any calls. And, as you can see, so far today I’ve been caught up in a dozen other things.”

Dick glanced toward the interior of the restaurant. Standing up, the bank of balloons was still clearly visible through the windows. “I’m surprised Marliss wasn’t invited to the shower,” he mused, as if puzzled by an unintentional oversight. “I’m sure she would have enjoyed it.”

That one took Joanna’s breath away. Surely Dick Voland understood that she and Marliss Shackleford weren’t friends-would never be friends-any more than he would be buddies with Butch Dixon.

“It was a small shower,” Joanna said defensively. “Family, mostly. But, Dick, thanks for the heads-up on this other thing, about Reba, I mean.”

“You do know about Clayton’s will then?” he asked.

“I do now. Burton Kimball called this morning and clued me in.”

“She’s something, Reba is,” Dick said. “And she sure is on a tear about this. She’s going to push it all the way to the end.”

“Which is?”

“She wants me to gather enough evidence that she can present a case to the FBI.”

“The Feds?” Joanna yelped in surprise. “You can’t be serious.”

“Serious as can be. She claims her husband is friends with some big-wig assistant director who specializes in investigating wrongdoing in local law-enforcement jurisdictions. She’s also going to court first thing tomorrow morning to request an additional autopsy. Since Doc Winfield is your stepfather, she wants him to be required to turn over both his results and his tissue samples to another medical examiner for a second opinion.”

Sighing and scuffing one foot on the ground, Voland looked even more ill at ease than he had before. “So I guess you could call this a courtesy call,” he continued. “I’ll be coming around to the department tomorrow morning, Joanna. I’ll be asking for fingerprint information-on you.”

The whole time Dick Voland was speaking, Joanna hadn’t taken her eyes off his face. Rather than his usual bluster and bravado, she saw something else there, something she never would have expected to see-regret. She and Dick Voland had worked together for years. He had been her Chief Deputy for Operations, and he was someone Joanna had looked up to. At the beginning of her administration, while she had been fighting her way through an overwhelming mire of on-the-job training, she had counted on Dick Voland’s good sense and his years of law-enforcement experience for counsel and advice. Despite the unfortunate way things had ended between them, there remained a lingering respect-one that hadn’t been entirely obliterated and probably never would be.

“My prints are on Clayton Rhodes’ ignition key,” she said. “I’m the one who found the pickup in his garage. The engine was still running. At that point I had no way of knowing whether Clayton was dead or alive. There wasn’t time to go hunting for a pair of latex gloves. I had to shut the engine off.”

Voland nodded. “I figured as much, but try explaining a concept like that to a crazy woman. It’s hopeless. She didn’t believe a word of it.”

“No,” Joanna agreed. “I don’t suppose she did.”

Just then Marianne Maculyea emerged from the restaurant. Catching sight of Dick Voland standing there talking to Joanna, she frowned with concern. “You’ve been out here a long time,” she called across the top of Eleanor’s Buick. “Anything wrong?”

Marianne Maculyea was one of the few people in whom Joanna had confided the real reasons behind Dick Voland’s abrupt departure from the sheriff’s department.