“Right,” Joanna said.

“I believe she expected to be home by now.”

“She is,” Joanna answered stiffly. “She came home last night.”

George Winfield smiled again. “Good,” he said. “Ellie’s a lovely lady. We met at the Arts and Humanities Council. Mel Torme is doing a show in Vegas over the next three weeks. I told Ellie that as soon as she got back from D.C., I’d try to get us tickets. Now that she’s back in town, I’ll have to give her a call.”

Joanna attempted a weak smile. “You do that,” she said. And so will I!

Stunned, Joanna headed back to the department. Mother is dating? Eleanor had a boyfriend? All that seemed unthinkable, yet Winfield’s use of the name “Ellie” confirmed it.

So what are you so upset about? Joanna chided herself. Why shouldn’t she?

After all, Big Hank Lathrop had been gone for years. What startled Joanna-what bothered her-was that she was on the outside looking in. Obviously Eleanor had a life of her own, one her daughter knew very little about.

Once back at the Justice Center, Joanna quickly became so embroiled in what was going on there that her personal concerns were temporarily pushed aside. First she briefed both Frank Montoya and Dick Voland on the Buckwalter autopsy preliminaries. Then, after being briefed herself on how the Sunizona investigation was proceeding, Joanna shut herself away in her corner office to try to retake control of her day.

There were more than a dozen telephone calls waiting to be returned. As she made her way through them, one by one, she sat with her phone to her ear, staring out the window of her corner office at the employee parking lot and at the desert landscape beyond it.

She knew the desert was anything but empty. Occasionally jackrabbits and coyotes would show up outside her window. Quail and roadrunners were commonplace. Once she had glimpsed a small herd of foraging javalenas. They had lodged between the cars and trucks on their way to make a scavenging raid on the garbage outside the jail kitchen.

Today, though, there was nothing visible in the animal Kingdom to lighten Joanna’s mood. Even the majestic landscape itself failed to move her.

To the north stood a jagged wall of rugged gray hills. Each steep hillside wore a jaunty crown of perpendicular limestone cliffs. To the west were the shale-covered foothills of the Mule Mountains. Their deep-reddish flanks hinted that perhaps unmined copper still lingered beneath their rock scrub-oak-dotted surfaces.

Usually, this particular view comforted Joanna. Not today. As the sun went down, sending long grotesque shadow of shiny ocotillo dancing across the gradually emptying par ht}; lot, Joanna felt even more bereft. More wronged.

How dare Eleanor do that!

For as long as Joanna could remember, Eleanor had extracted information from her daughter with all the finesse and expertise of a trained inquisitor. She had expected-no, demanded-that her daughter have no secrets. But the reverse wasn’t true-not even close. And why was that? Joanna was expected to share everything about her own life, why wasn’t Eleanor?

He called her Ellie! Joanna thought, hurt anew that George Winfield could so casually call her mother by that private and, to Joanna, very precious name. The man had been town only a matter of months. How was it possible that 1 and Eleanor had grown so close without Joanna knowing anything about it?

Lost in reverie, Joanna was shocked when Kristin popped her head in the door. “It’s five o’clock,” she announced. “I’m leaving.”

When the door closed behind her, Joanna looked down the untouched mounds of correspondence that still littered her desk. In contemplating a run for the office of sheriff, had never occurred to her that her days would be devoured by paper. She hadn’t anticipated having to sort through stacks of junk mail in order to find and deal with those few pieces of correspondence that actually contained something of consequence.

Disgusted as much with the process as with herself, she was stuffing the piles into a briefcase when Dick Voland tapped on her door. When he stepped into her office, he was smiling. “I just picked up a little something I thought you’d like to know about,” he said.

Joanna finished filling her bulging briefcase and forced it shut. Voland looked so smug, so pleased with himself, that she knew it had to be bad news-for someone.

“What’s that?” she asked.

“I got to thinking about what you told Frank and me earlier, about Doc Winfield saying the murder weapon might possibly be a pitchfork.”

“Yes,” Joanna said.

“A little later I remembered Ernie saying something about a pitchfork being found at the crime scene, so I checked in the evidence room. Sure enough, the pitchfork was there, all right, although no one had gotten around to doing anything with it. I took it on myself to order a set of prints. Guess what?”

“I hate to think.”

“Hal Morgan’s prints were on it. How do you like them apples?”

Voland’s gleeful grin reminded Joanna of an obnoxious, sharpshooting kid from Greenway School who had wiped out everyone else’s collections of marbles without ever learning the art of graceful winning.

The withering look Joanna leveled at Voland wiped the smile off his face. Had someone held a mirror in front of her right then, Joanna would have been shocked to see a much younger version of the unsmiling, soul-searing gaze that was Eleanor Lathrop’s stock-in-trade. “So what’s the point?” Joanna asked.

Voland’s face fell. “Isn’t it obvious?” he returned. “Morgan’s prints are on the murder weapon. He’s lying about all it, including this ‘second-man’ stuff that sounds like it’s straight out of the old ‘Fugitive’ reruns on TV. I’m in favor of turning my deputies loose from the wild-goose chase you’ve got them on.”

“What other prints were on the pitchfork?” Joanna asked

Voland look dismayed. “There weren’t any others.”

“Why not?” Joanna asked. “Doesn’t that strike you as odd? I happen to have a pitchfork in the barn at my play right now,” she added. “I can assure you that if anyone dusted the handle, there’d be all kinds of prints-ones from every person who’s ever used it. Most people aren’t in the habit of wiping pitchfork handles before they go to work on the business end of it.”

“What are you saying?” Voland asked.

“‘That if there aren’t any other prints on that handle, then the ones that are there were put there deliberately. Planted.”

“You mean, as in put there to frame Hal Morgan?”

“Exactly.”

Dick Voland’s head began to shake. “No way,” he said “You’re reaching,”

“That may be,” Joanna conceded, “but I’m telling you this, Mr. Voland. The search for Hal Morgan’s ‘second man’ isn’t a wild-goose chase until I say it’s a wild-goose chase. that clear?”

I le looked at her for a moment as if he was prepared argue. Dick Voland wasn’t any better at losing than he was at winning. “Yes, ma’am,” he said. “You’re the boss.”

“Thank you,” she said. “And now, if you don’t mind think I’ll go home. It’s been a long day.”

She drove straight to her in-laws’ house, picked up Jenny, and then headed out to the Safeway in Don Luis for an abbreviated grocery-shopping trip. Bread, milk, eggs, juice, fruit, luncheon meat. “What are we having for dinner?” Jenny asked as they hurried up and down aisles, stacking itms into the cart.

“How about chorizo, eggs, and flour tortillas?” Joanna suggested. Jenny made a face.

“What’s the matter?” Joanna asked. “The last time we had you told me you loved chorizo.”

“It’s okay,” Jenny said. “But eggs are for breakfast. Why couldn’t we eat with the G’s? Grandma was making stew. She said there was plenty.”

“We can’t eat with Grandma and Grandpa every night, even if they invite us,” Joanna told her daughter. “I know they don’t mind, and Grandma is a wonderful cook. But still, it’s an imposition. We don’t want to wear out our welcome.”