Missing and Endangered (Joanna Brady #19)(7)
Standing there, enjoying both the chill and the stars, Joanna focused on one star that clearly outshone all the rest. She wasn’t sure what star it was—Venus, most likely—but it reminded her of the star, the one that had shone over Bethlehem. After all, wasn’t this a time for peace on earth and goodwill to men? As a sense of peace really did settle over her, Joanna called to the dogs.
“Come on, guys,” she said. “Let’s go to bed.”
Lucky and Lady came at once, and they all went inside, but as far as peace on earth was concerned? Joanna Brady couldn’t have been more wrong.
Chapter 2
It was almost midnight, and Beth Rankin sat on the cold tile of the bathroom floor, leaning against the chill of the porcelain tub and waiting for her phone call. She had silenced the ringer so as not to awaken her roommate, Jennifer Brady, sound asleep in the room they shared in Conover Hall at Northern Arizona University. The last thing Beth wanted was for Jenny to wake up and start asking questions about who would be calling so late at night.
Beth supposed she ought to be using the time for studying rather than just sitting here staring at her silent cell phone. After all, finals were coming up. She needed to do well. Her late grandmother, Granny Lockhart, had bequeathed her a generous trust for the sole purpose of enabling Beth to attend college, but that bequest came with strings attached, including keeping up with her classes and getting good grades. If Beth were to blow it and end up dropping out of school, that money would be forfeited, with no way of ever getting it back.
Shivering and in a futile effort to keep warm, Beth drew her Lumberjack sweatshirt more tightly around her body and pulled the hood up over her ears. Her mother wouldn’t have approved. Madeline Rankin thought sweatshirts, especially hoodies, were vulgar and common. She claimed they made ordinary people look like gangbangers, not that her mother had ever met one of those. Beth had purchased the forbidden sweatshirt in the bookstore that first week of school in the vain hope of fitting in. The strategy hadn’t worked. The other kids, with the possible exception of Jenny, looked on Beth as though she came from another planet. And maybe she did. Maybe Hastings, Nebraska, was another planet, even though she didn’t live there anymore. That was where she had grown up, but none of her family still lived in Hastings. This past October her parents had sold out and had moved—lock, stock, and barrel—into Beth’s deceased grandmother’s old place in SaddleBrooke, a fifty-five-plus community near Tucson.
Beth had visited her grandmother there once, and she hadn’t minded it then—mostly, she supposed, because she hadn’t minded her grandmother. Granny Lockhart was one of the nicest people Beth had ever met. Too bad Granny’s niceness hadn’t been passed along to her daughter, Madeline. Granny had been easygoing and fun. Beth’s mother was neither.
Beth’s first visit to SaddleBrooke once her mother was in charge—the one over Thanksgiving weekend—had been a total disaster. At home Beth had lived under Madeline’s many strictly enforced guidelines, including a lights-out deadline of 10:00 P.M., no exceptions. The night before Thanksgiving, Madeline had noticed a light under the guest-room door at midnight. She had stormed inside and caught her daughter red-handed, talking on the phone with Ronald. Madeline had pitched a conniption fit, not only because of the lateness of the hour but also because of the presence of the phone.
For religious reasons, Madeline didn’t approve of devices of any kind. Typewriters were okay, up to a point, she supposed, but as for computers, cell phones, and iPads? No way! Those were not allowed in her house under any circumstances!
Naturally, that was the other piece of forbidden fruit, in addition to the sweatshirt, that Beth had purchased that first week of being away at school—her very first and very own cell phone. She’d wanted to purchase her own laptop as well, but with all the other expenses of starting school, her monthly stipend hadn’t been able to stretch that far. Fortunately, her new roommate, Jennifer, had allowed Beth to use her laptop until a month later, when Beth’s next stipend came in and she was able to purchase one of her own. For that first month or so, the phone was all Beth had needed.
When her mother had barged in on her that night, naturally Beth had ended Ron’s call. What followed had been a blazing shouting match between mother and daughter in which Madeline had demanded Beth hand over the phone, something Beth refused to do. It was her private property, and she was keeping it. The exchange became so heated that eventually Beth’s dad, Kenneth, had bestirred himself long enough to insert himself into the fray, not that he’d had a word to say in Beth’s defense. He never did. In any disagreement between mother and daughter, Beth’s dad always took Madeline’s side. Only now was Beth beginning to realize that maybe it was easier for him to do that and take the path of least resistance. There was little doubt that if he’d come down in Beth’s favor, Madeline would have made his life a living hell.
In any event, the fight between Beth and her mother, staged in the early-morning hours of Thanksgiving Day, had been epic. Finally, with her mother still standing there screeching at her, calling her daughter an ungrateful wretch among other choice names, Beth had calmly climbed out of bed, gotten dressed, packed her things, and left the house in the middle of the night, curfew be damned!
It was a three-mile hike from her folks’ place out to the highway—a difficult three-mile hike at that, especially since Beth was dragging a Rollaboard behind her and wearing a heavily loaded backpack. It had been cold, too, but not that cold. After all, she was accustomed to winters in Nebraska, and those were cold down to the bone.