“I’ll be a son of a bitch!” Joanna exclaimed. “I’m thirty years old. I’ve been elected sheriff, and I’m being married for the second time. How dare my mother still think she can tell me what to wear? That in itself would be bad enough, but here’s Butch-my fiancé-helping her do it.”

“I wouldn’t be too hard on the man if I were you,” Frank said.

“Why not?” Joanna demanded. “What did he say to you to get you on his side?”

“Butch didn’t say a thing,” Frank answered. “He didn’t have to. If I were about to inherit your mother as my mother-in-law, I’m sure I’d jump when she said so, too.”

“We’ll just see about that,” Joanna retorted. “No matter what Eleanor says, I’m sure what I wore to work today will be plenty good enough for my mother, and for meeting my new mother-in-law as well. And if it isn’t,” she added, “Eleanor Lathrop Winfield can go jump in the lake. Or else, she can send me home.”

For a time after ringing off, Joanna was still so torqued with both Butch and her mother that she didn’t trust herself to speak. Finally, after giving herself ten or fifteen miles of driving to settle down, she picked up the phone again and left almost identical messages on answering machines at Terry Gregovich’s apartment and at the home of Kristin Marsten’s parents. “Sheriff Brady. Be in my office tomorrow morning at eight o’clock sharp. Both of you. No excuses.”

That should settle that hash, Joanna thought grimly. And the only thing I have to worry about in between now and then is doing battle with my mother.

By the time Joanna finished driving the hundred miles between Tucson and Bisbee, she had cooled down considerably. The situation with Terry Gregovich and Kristin Marsten would be resolved the next morning one way or the other. And as for Eleanor… Joanna realized that she was just being Eleanor. How typical of her to want to pull off some elegant, sit-down meal to impress Joanna’s incoming relatives. The problem was, just because Joanna understood what was going on with her mother didn’t make it any easier to deal with. And it also didn’t mean Joanna was going to knuckle under and obey.

She came over the divide and down into Bisbee’s Tombstone Canyon just at sunset. There would have been plenty of time to run by the department, change into the specified outfit, and still be at Eleanor and George’s house within five minutes of the appointed hour. Instead, Joanna drove straight to their place on Campbell Avenue.

Joanna was surprised to see Jim Bob and Eva Lou Brady’s car parked out front right along with Butch’s Subaru. Although Eleanor got along fine with Joanna’s former in-laws, the down-home Bradys hardly qualified as the kind of elegant dinner guests Eleanor much preferred to have gracing her dining room.

As soon as Joanna opened her car door, her ears were assailed by the steady thrum of blaring mariachi music that seemed to emanate from George and Eleanor Winfield’s backyard along with bursts of laughter and the party sound of several voices talking at once. The whole neighborhood was permeated with the tantalizing odor of meat cooking over open-air charcoal.

“A barbecue?” Joanna said aloud to herself. “My mother’s having a barbecue?”

When it came to the Eleanor Lathrop Winfield Joanna knew, an outdoor barbecue was something totally out of character. In the months before D. H. Lathrop’s death, he had devoted all his spare hours to planning and building a massive used-brick barbecue in the far corner of the backyard. During the construction process, Eleanor had disdained the whole idea. She claimed that if she had to have grilled meat, she much preferred going to a restaurant. Despite his wife’s objections, Big Hank Lathrop had persisted. Once the grill was completed, D. H. had been inordinately proud of his do-it-yourself handiwork. Unfortunately, he had been able to use it only twice. Within two weeks of finishing the project, D. H. Lathrop was dead.

Once he was gone, his widow never once deigned to use the thing, and she hadn’t allowed Joanna that privilege, either. For years the grill had sat untouched, protected from dust beneath a layer of multiple blue tarps. But now, with George Winfield in residence and from the looks of the smoke wafting skyward, the tarps were obviously long gone.

Just then the front door slammed open and Jenny came flying down the wooden steps. “Mom,” she shouted. “You’re home.” She stopped two feet away, just inside the gate. “How come you didn’t change clothes?” she added with a sudden scowl.

Jenny was wearing jeans, sneakers, and a Mickey Mouse sweatshirt. Her mother, on the other hand, was dressed for work in a dry-clean-only two-piece suit and a creamy blouse along with a pair of sensibly-low high heels.

“What’s the matter with what I have on?” Joanna asked.

Jenny shrugged. “It’s going to look pretty funny out in the backyard at Grandma’s picnic table. Everybody else is wearing jeans and stuff.”

“We’re having a picnic?” Joanna asked. “It’s only the end of March. Isn’t this a little early for a picnic or a barbecue?”

Jenny shrugged. “It’s what Mr. and Mrs. Dixon wanted.” She paused. “They told me to call them Grandma and Grandpa Dixon, but I don’t really want to. I mean, I just met them. It seems kinda weird.”

“What are they like?” Joanna asked.

“Okay, I guess,” Jenny replied, wrinkling her nose. “But they talk funny. Their words are so sharp they hurt my ears. And they must think it’s summer, because they’re both wearing shorts. Shorts and white socks and black sandals. Ugh.”

“They’re from Chicago,” Joanna said. “I think it’s a lot colder there than it is here. Maybe this feels like summer to them.”

“Maybe,” Jenny said. “Anyway, when Butch introduced them to Grandma Lathrop this afternoon, she asked them if there was anything special they wanted for dinner. Mr. Dixon said what he wanted more than anything was Mexican food and he wanted to eat it outside. So Grandma Winfield went down to Naco and bought tamales and tortillas. And Grandpa Winfield is making carne asada.”

“Who hired the mariachis?” Joanna asked.

“They’re not real. That’s just a tape on Butch’s boom box. He said it would add atmosphere.”

Butch met them just inside the door. “You didn’t change,” he said, frowning. “Didn’t you get my message? Frank said he’d be sure to tell you.”

Joanna sighed. “Frank did give me the message, but there wasn’t enough time to go out to the department and still be here on time. I’m sure the clothes I’m wearing will work. I promise not to spill anything.”

“It’s not that,” Butch said. “It’s just that everyone else is dressed a lot more casually than you are.”

“Don’t worry,” Joanna said. “I’ll be fine. Now come on. Where are your parents? Let’s go get the introductions out of the way so I can stop being nervous about meeting them.”

Outside, Joanna found that the backyard was lit with a series of festive-looking lanterns complete with lighted candles. Predictably, three men-George Winfield, Jim Bob Brady, and a portly man in shorts, sandals, and socks, who made Jim Bob look slim by comparison-were clustered near the barbecue. Even across the yard, Joanna could see that Butch Dixon resembled his father, Donald. The older man was taller and much heavier than his son. In contrast to Butch’s clean-shaven head, his father had thick, curly gray hair, but their facial features were almost identical.

Halfway down the yard, Eva Lou Brady sat at Eleanor’s cloth-covered picnic table engaged in subdued conversation with a heavyset woman with thinning gray hair who looked to be in her mid-sixties.

“Come on,” Butch said to Joanna, taking her hand and leading her down the backyard. “I’ll introduce you to my father first.”

They met Eleanor Winfield halfway to the barbecue. She looked her daughter up and down, pursed her lips, and said nothing, but Joanna got the message all the same.