Fire and Ice. J. A. Jance

her nose into it. Then she straightened her shoulders and looked back at the ATV. “They ran him down, didn’t they?”she said.

      “That’s what it looks like,”Joanna agreed. “We won’t know for sure until we finish our investigation.”

      “And who did it?”

      “We don’t know that, either. Is there a chance your brother got involved with some unsavory characters?”

      “Les has been involved with ‘unsavory characters’ all his life,”Margie replied. “He didn’t hardly know any other kind. I thought he’d left all that behind him—those kinds of friends, but maybe he had a slip.”

      “A slip,”Ernie said, latching on to the sobriety lingo. “Are you saying he’d been through drug or alcohol treatment?”

      “Alcohol,”Margie answered. “Three times, to be exact, but this last time it finally took. Les had been sober for a little over a year. Fourteen months, to be exact. Said the only kind of booze he still had around the house was Miller.”

      “Miller High Life?”Ernie asked. “You mean he still drank beer?”

      “Not that kind of Miller,”Margie said. “His dog. Les was still drinking two years ago when somebody dumped an almost dead puppy out by the garbage cans at the trailer court in Tucson where Les used to live. The puppy was a tiny little thing. To begin with, Les fed him with an eyedropper and later with a toy baby bottle. He finally managed to nurse him back to health. Les named the dog after his favorite beer—Miller—and even taught him to bring him a cold one from the fridge. He thought that was funnier ’an a rubber crutch. ‘Hey, Miller,’ he’d say, ‘bring me a Miller.’ And that dog would do it just as cute as can be. Truth be told, Les let that dog drink some of his beer as well. But finally Lester went through treatment and sobered up. It turns out that when Les stopped drinking, so did Miller. But when Les wanted a soda from the fridge, he’d still say the same thing—for Miller to bring him a beer. Les told me it was just too much trouble to try teaching that dog a new command. Besides, Les liked it. He said asking the dog to bring him a soda didn’t have quite the same ring to it; wasn’t as funny.”

      Margie paused and looked around. “Les loved that dog to distraction,”she added. “What’s going to happen to him now?”

      Joanna had learned over time that dealing with pets left behind by homicide victims was often a tough call. Sometimes any number of people—friends and relatives—came forward to lay claim to the suddenly orphaned animal. Other times no one did and the unwanted dog or cat or gerbil ended up being hauled away to the pound. As head of Animal Control, Jeannine Phillips was a tiger about finding homes for abandoned animals, but sometimes even she came up empty.

      “Miller loved Lester, but ever since he stopped being a puppy, I’ve been half scared of him,”Margie admitted. “And after getting used to living out here with all this room to run around, I think he’d be too much dog for me and my little single-wide. I doubt he’d get along with my pug, Miss Priss, either.”

      Joanna had learned enough about animal control to see that sending Miller to live with someone who was scared of him was an invitation to disaster—for Marge Savage, for her little pug, and for Miller as well. A second choice would be to send Miller to live with some other relative so the dog wouldn’t be shipped off either to the pound or to live with complete strangers.

      “Is there anyone else who’s familiar with the dog?”Joanna asked.

      “My stepsons know him, of course,”Margie said.

      “Could one of them take him?”Joanna asked.

      The woman shook her head. “They both have little kids,”she said. “Miller’s a Doberman, after all—part Doberman, anyway. He’s used to being around grown-ups.”

      Joanna sighed. “All right, then,”she said. “You have enough on your plate right now to worry about the dog, but we certainly can’t leave the poor thing here. I’ll have my ACO take Miller back to the pound in Bisbee.”

      “You won’t let them put him down, will you?”Margie asked. “I mean, none of this is Miller’s fault.”

      That was certainly true.

      “I can’t promise,”Joanna said, knowing how often her pound filled up with unwanted animals. “We’ll do our best to find a place for him, but if you happen to think of anyone else who might want him…”

      The sentence was interrupted by the ringing of Joanna’s cell phone. “I’m here,”Guy Machett announced in her ear. “At least I think I’m here. I’m at a place where the sign on the gate says ‘Action Trail Adventures.’ This is where the guy at the post office told me to come. There’s an Animal Control truck parked out on the shoulder of the road. I don’t see anyone in it.”

      “You asked for directions from the post office?”Joanna asked.

      “Yeah, right here in Bowie,”the M.E. replied. “Why not? Those people have to know where to find people.”

      Joanna noticed the man was still using the bow-and-arrow pronunciation of Bowie. He had also disregarded her advice about calling her for directions. She knew that his driving up to Bowie’s post office in a vehicle marked COCHISE COUNTY MEDICAL EXAMINER would have caused a firestorm of small-town interest even it hadn’t been Margie Savage’s place of employment.

      “The crime scene is out here in the dunes,”she told him. “If you like, I could send Ernie or Debra to come guide you in.”

      “I don’t need a babysitter,”he said. “I’m perfectly capable of getting there myself. Just tell me where you are.”

      Joanna turned to Ernie. “How far is it from the gate to where we turned off?”

      “Three-quarters of a mile,”he said. “Give or take.”

      Joanna returned to the phone. “All right,”she said. “Turn right on the gravel road and follow that for three-quarters of a mile. You’ll see where the tracks lead off to the left into the dunes.”

      Joanna ended the call. “The M.E.,”she replied in answer to Ernie’s quizzical look. “He’s coming.”

      For the next several minutes she took a backseat to her detectives while Debra and Ernie plied Margie for information about her brother. “How long did Les work here?”Ernie asked.

      “Since he got out of treatment,”Margie said. “A little over a year. My two stepsons own the place, and they hired him as a favor to me. The ranch has been in the family—their mother’s family—for generations, and they inherited it after Monty died. Monty was my husband, you see. Third husband. The boys—Arnie and Chuck—have wanted to turn it into an ATV playground for years. Monty was against it, but once it belonged to them, they went ahead and did what they wanted.”

      “Is there any bad blood between your stepsons and your brother?”Debra Howell asked.

      “Between Les and the boys? Good heavens, no!”Margie exclaimed, rolling her eyes. “They’ve been good as gold to him, and to me, too. Just as Les was getting out of treatment, their previous caretaker quit. I asked them if they’d mind hiring him. He’d had to move out of his other place when he went in for treatment, and I knew the job here came with a place to live. I sure as hell didn’t want Les and his dog living with me.

      “It was a huge relief for me when they hired him. That way I knew Les had a roof over his head, and he made a little money, too, enough to supplement his Social Security and keep him and Miller in food. Chuck and Arnie let him have that old pickup truck and the ATV to drive around here and use for chores, but the rule was, Les wasn’t allowed to take either one of them off the property or onto the highway. With all those DUIs on his record, he’d lost his driver’s license and couldn’t have gotten insurance on a bet. So I’d take him into town if he needed groceries and dog food. Or one of my daughters-in-law would. Like I said, Chuck and Arnie and their families were all as good to him as they could be, even