“What did you think about?” Ernie Carpenter asked.

Joanna’s eyes filled with tears. Four and a half months after the fact, tears could still sneak up on her and catch her unawares. “That I would never see him again,” she managed. “That I’d never be able to talk with him or laugh with him. That we would never eat another meal together or sleep in the same bed.”

Ernie Carpenter listened gravely and then he nodded. “Maybe Terry Buckwalter isn’t quite as sad to lose Bucky as you were to lose Andy, Sheriff Brady. Andy was a quality type of guy. Bucky was… “ The detective paused and shrugged. “Well, Bucky was Bucky,” he finished at last. “From what I hear, that wasn’t all good.”

He waited long enough for Joanna to dry her own tears. “Do you still want to come with me while I talk to her?” Joanna nodded.

“Come on then. I really meant what I said a little while ago. I’m hoping we’ll be able to make a respectable homicide investigator out of you yet. Women’s intuition and all.”

It was so late by the time Joanna finally escaped the office that Eva Lou and Jim Bob Brady, Jenny’s paternal grandparents, insisted that they both stay in town for dinner. Joanna was only too happy to accept what was offered. Eva Lou’s winter evening fare included a hearty bowl of navy bean soup and a thick slab of her prizewinning, skillet-baked corn bread.

Naturally, Bucky Buckwalter’s death was one of the major topics of conversation, although Joanna tried to keep the discussion as low-key as possible. Joanna avoided the use of the word “murder,” saying only that Doc Buckwalter had died in a fire in the animal clinic’s small barn.

“But Kiddo’s all right?” Jenny asked in a subdued voice. “He didn’t get hurt or anything, did he?^”

One of the reasons Jenny had always liked going to the clinic was that Bucky had often let her go out to the corral to give the vet’s rangy gelding a carrot or two.

“No,” Joanna assured her. “Kiddo’s fine.”

Jenny turned her fathomless blue eyes on her grandfather. “Kiddo^’s a nice horse,” she said. “Dr. Buckwalter promised me once that he’d let me ride him someday. I guess now that’ll never happen.”

“No,” Jim Bob agreed. “I don’t suppose it will.”

“What about Tigger?” Jenny asked. “Will he be able to come home tomorrow?”

Joanna knew from talking to Bebe Noonan that Bucky hadn’t managed to pull out Tigger’s porcupine quills prior to his death. Terry Buckwalter had been in the process of getting Dr. Reginald Wade, the vet from Douglas, to come look after whatever animals were still in need of treatment-Tigger included. But Jenny seemed to be on a fairly even keel this evening, and Joanna didn’t want to say or do anything that would upset her.

“Most likely he’ll be home tomorrow, although I’m not sure when.”

“Before I go to school?”

“We’ll see,” Joanna told her. If there was going to be an-other blowup on the subject, Joanna wanted it to take place after they left Jim Bob and Eva Lou’s cozy duplex rather than before.

Jenny finished the last of her soup, put down her spoon, and pushed her chair away from the table. “Can I be excused then?” she asked, addressing her grandmother.

“May I,” Joanna corrected automatically.

Eva Lou smiled. “Sure, sweetie,” she said. “You run along and play for a while. It’ll give your mom a chance to relax a little.”

Jenny darted out of the dining room, heading for the bedroom/playroom her grandparents had declared her private domain in a house that was often Jennifer Brady’s home away from home. Jim Bob Brady waited until she was out of earshot. ‘‘So old Bucko bit it,^” he said solemnly. “He couldn’t have been very old.”

“Fifty-three,” Joanna answered, sipping the cup of after-dinner decaf Eva Lou had placed in front of her.

“He was always a great one with horses, even when he was little,” Jim Bob continued. “I’ll never forget that deal with the second-story horse up Brewery Gulch. You ever hear about that?”

Eva Lou nodded. It was a story they had all heard many times, but Joanna obligingly shook her head. “Second-story horse?” she asked.

“Bucky wasn’t no more’an eleven or twelve when he pulled that one off. A couple of drunken rodeo riders raised so much trouble in Tombstone during Heldorado that they got run out of town. They ended up in a rented room up over the old Plugged Nickel. That was back before the place burned down. The next day they went right back to Tomb-stone, got in a card game, and won themselves a horse. I don’t know if they cheated or what, but that night, because they were afraid the former owner would come try to steal the horse back, they took the critter upstairs with them when they went to bed.”

“Upstairs?” Joanna asked, egging him on. “You mean over the bar?”

“That’s right. The bartender heard the horse moving around up there and called the cops. None of the city cops had any idea what to do. When they first got there, they could barely open the door to the room because that horse’s butt was right in the way. He was standin’ there tied to the bed-post, just as pretty as could be, with both the drunks passed out cold on the bed.

“The one cop had a camera with him. He was gonna take a picture to prove it was real, that it wasn’t something he and his partner had just made up. Fortunately, the other cop had the good sense to talk him out of it. If a flash had gone off behind him like that, the horse most likely would’ve gone straight out the window and ended up splattered all over the street.

“Anyways, the police were still millin’ around out front and scratchin’ their heads when Bucky Buckwalter came down the Gulch to pick up the papers for his paper route. Except for him, his whole family was a shiftless bunch of donothin’s, but that Bucky was a worker. He was out making his own way long before he shoulda.

“So Bucky showed up and found out what was goin’ on. He convinced the cops to give him a chance to bring the horse out. And he did it, too. Covered the horse’s eyes with his jacket and then led him right down them wooden stairs, one step at a time, talkin’ to him a mile a minute like those so-called horse whisperers you hear so much about these days.

“Li^ll Bucky got his picture in the paper afterward, too. Everybody said he was a hero. Once they sobered up, those cowboys sure as heck thought so, too. Get thinkin’ about it, I do believe they even gave him a reward.”

“Nobody ever said he wasn’t good with animals,” Joanna said quietly, thinking of Terry Buckwalter and Hal Morgan. “But when it came to people…” Deciding against saying anything more, Joanna let the unfinished statement linger in the air.

“So the killer’s that fellow from Wickenburg then?” Eva Lou said, changing the subject. “The one whose wife died up in Phoenix? That’s what it sounded like on the news tonight.”

“Hal Morgan is under investigation in the case,” Joanna told them. “But that’s all. Under investigation. It’s still too early to say. Ernie Carpenter talked to some of the i e lilt who used to work with Morgan when he was a police officer in southern California. They all said he was a great cop who would never take the law into his own hands.”

“But who knows what a fella will do if he’s pushed too far?” Jim Bob Brady asked. “I, for one, can see that the poor guy’s got a point. After all, his wife is dead. Gone for good. All Bucky gets hit with for doin’ it is nothin’ more than a little ol’ slap on the wrist. What’s a man supposed to do?”

“Let justice take its course,” Joanna said. “Bucky was given a legal sentence for vehicular manslaughter. He was also sentenced to undergo drug- and alcohol-treatment. He did both those things. According to our judicial system, he paid his debt to society. That should have been the end of it.