Missing and Endangered (Joanna Brady #19)(48)

“Don’t worry,” Butch assured her. “There’ll be plenty of wrapping for you to do—wrapping and baking both—so how about if we change topics. How are your finals going?”

“I’m almost to the end of them,” Jenny said. “Only two more to go, one tomorrow and one on Friday morning at eight o’clock. That one will be easy peasy. I’ll be done, packed, and headed down I-17 by noon, which should put me ahead of most of the traffic.”

“When is Beth’s last final?” Butch asked.

“That’s on Friday, too, but slightly later. Even so, we should still be on the road by noon.”

“Her folks live in Tucson, don’t they?” Butch asked.

“In SaddleBrooke,” Jenny answered.

“Meaning close to Tucson but not exactly inside the city limits,” Butch commented. “Are you going to stop by and see them on the way?”

“I doubt that. I don’t think Beth wants to.”

“So she’s still at loggerheads with them?”

“Yup, big time.”

“What seems to be the problem?” Butch asked.

Joanna was often mystified at how Butch always seemed to know so much more about Jenny’s private life than her mother did.

“I think it’s all about Beth’s boyfriend,” Jenny answered. “Her folks seem to hate the guy.”

“Will they come around?” Butch asked.

“Maybe,” Jenny replied. “Not necessarily because they’ll have a change of heart, but because the boyfriend seems to be turning into a short-timer. Things on that score seem to have gone haywire recently. Beth’s been down in the dumps for days now. She’s been a mess all weekend.”

“You think they’re breaking up?” Butch asked.

“That’s how I see it,” Jenny replied. “Beth hasn’t been doing much sleeping or eating. She’s so distracted right now that I’m surprised she’s able to take finals, much less pass them.”

The exchange gave Joanna a possible answer to her earlier question. Butch knew about Jenny’s life because he asked detailed questions and then—surprise, surprise—he actually listened to her answers. As for Joanna? She hadn’t the slightest clue about where Beth Rankin’s parents lived, and she certainly didn’t care whether or not this girl she didn’t know was breaking up with her current boyfriend.

“Have you met the guy?” Butch asked.

“Naw,” Jenny replied. “Beth met Ronald Cameron online at some kind of dating site. He’s into computers in a big way—cybersecurity, I think. He lives in Washington, D.C. I doubt we’d have anything in common. As you already know, geeks have never been my thing. I’m a lot more likely to go for guys who prefer riding horses and herding cattle to tapping keyboards.”

“Computer guys probably make more money than cowboys do,” Butch suggested, “but that’s all right. I don’t necessarily trust geeky computer guys either.”

They all laughed at that, and then Joanna changed the subject.

“What do the weather reports look like for Friday afternoon?” she asked.

Right that minute she was far less concerned about the possibility of collegiate love affairs going bad than she was about her daughter having to drive home from Flagstaff in adverse road conditions.

“It’s supposed to be clear and dry by then,” Jenny said. “Perfect weather for driving.”

“Good,” Joanna said, “but I’ll still be worried until you’re here safe and sound.”

“Mom,” Jenny said, “you worry too much.”

In actual fact it wasn’t a matter of Joanna Brady’s worrying too much. It was a matter of her worrying too much about the wrong things.

“Take care anyway,” she advised her daughter. “And good luck with those last two finals.”

“She doesn’t need luck,” Butch declared in the background. “That girl of ours has her finals aced.”

Once the phone call was over, Joanna noticed that some of the earlier tension had drained away. As they finished cleaning up in the family room, she began recounting everything that had happened in the course of the day. By the time she finished, they were on their way to bed.

“You might have been stuck at your desk all day, but your people were out working like crazy,” Butch said. “No wonder you were late to dinner.”

“I’m sorry. . . .”

Butch waved off her apology. “Not to worry,” he said. “You’re forgiven. It’s par for the course, and I’m over it.”

“But I shouldn’t—”

“Joey, you have a job to do. People are counting on you. And don’t pay that much attention if I get my nose out of joint occasionally.”

Joanna was lying in bed and not quite asleep when Butch spoke again. “So you think Madison was behind this whole thing?” he asked.

“I do,” Joanna said, “and I believe that insurance money was the motive.”

“Will you be able to charge her with anything?”

“I doubt it. I think she fully intended to take him out herself, most likely staging things to make it look like he’d attacked her. Unfortunately for Armando, he showed up at that critical juncture and things went in a very different direction.”