Read Online Devil's Claw by J. A. Jance - Free Book Online

going?”
    Junior Dowdle was a fifty-six-year-old developmentally disabled man who had been abandoned by his court-appointed guardians and left on his own at a local arts-and-crafts fair the previous fall. The priest who had found him had turned Junior over to the care and keeping of the Cochise County Sheriff’s Department. Through Joanna’s own efforts and those of her people, not only had Junior’s mother been found, so had a new set of local, Bisbee-area guardians. Moe and Daisy Maxwell, the owners of Daisy’s Café, had taken on that demanding role.
    With infinite patience, Daisy and Moe had taught Junior how to bus tables. Now he spent several hours each day helping out at the restaurant. And, for the first time in his life, Junior Dowdle was earning his own spending money. One look at Junior’s beaming countenance offered mute testimony as to how well that arrangement was working.
    Grinning from ear to ear and carrying a plastic pan loaded with dirty dishes, he came hurrying toward Jenny. On the pocket of his shirt he still wore the sheriff’s badge Joanna had given him the day she had brought him home from the monastery in Saint David.
    “You come,” he said, motioning for them to follow him toward a booth he had just finished clearing. “You come and eat.”
    From behind the counter, Daisy Maxwell watched, nodded, and smiled her approval. She waited until the party was seated before she followed with coffee and menus. “Most of the time Junior remembers menus,” she said. “But not when he sees someone he knows. Then he gets too excited. Come to think of it, though, you guys probably don’t need menus. What’ll you have?”
    Removing the stub of a pencil from her beehive hairdo, Daisy took two orders for choriso and eggs and one for French toast along with two coffees, one milk, and orange juice all around.
    “I just heard about poor Mr. Rhodes,” Daisy said, once she returned her order pad to its customary place in her apron pocket. “It’s too bad. He was the one who usually did your chores for you, wasn’t he?”
    Joanna nodded.
    “What are you going to do now? Who are you going to get to help out?”
    Joanna glanced slyly at Butch. “I don’t know,” she said with a laugh. “I guess I’ll just have to get married.”
    Daisy looked at Butch and grinned. “Sounds like a good idea to me. We women have to stick together and make sure you men pull your weight.” With that, Daisy Maxwell marched off to the kitchen.
    That leisurely breakfast at Daisy’s was the beginning of something Sheriff Joanna Brady didn’t have too many of—a wonderfully carefree day. Together she and Butch and Jenny drove to Tucson and spent several hours in Guzman’s Horse Hotel, Saddlery, and Tack Shop on the far east end of Fort Lowell Road. Once Jenny’s all-new matching saddle, bridle, halter, and saddle blanket had been loaded into the back of the Subaru, they drove to Tucson Mall and spent some time mall-crawling. Then, after a late lunch at La Fuente, they headed back home.
    Jenny, in the backseat next to her saddle, was once again lost in her book. “A penny for your thoughts,” Butch said softly to Joanna, somewhere beyond Saint David.
    “What?” Joanna asked.
    “Where are you?” Butch asked. “We’ve driven sixty miles and you haven’t said a single word.”
    “I was thinking,” Joanna said.
    “About what?”
    “Cleaning house.”
    “Are you kidding?”
    “No. Your mother’s coming to town day after tomorrow and my cabinets haven’t been properly cleaned and neither have my closets.”
    “Don’t worry about it,” Butch offered consolingly. “My mother’s a terrible housekeeper.”
    “No, she’s not. You’re lying.”
    “If my mother didn’t have a cleaning lady—her name’s Irma, by the way, and she’s cleaned Mom and Dad’s house for years. If not for Irma, my folks would have been buried under clutter years ago. Believe me, you don’t have to clean house on account of my