Fire and Ice by J. A. Jance

girlfriend?” Deb asked.
    Margie snorted at the very idea. “Not a girlfriend,” she said. “More like a drinking buddy.”
    “Does she have a name?”
    “LaVerne,” Margie said.
    “Last name?”
    “LaVerne,” Margie replied. “I believe her last name’s Hartley and I think she lives in Benson, but once Les sobered up, Old LaVerne gave him the brush-off. My reading is that if he was off the sauce, she didn’t want anything to do with him. Besides, she didn’t like Miller, and Miller didn’t like her. ‘Les,’ I told him more than once, ‘when it comes to women, that dog of yours has got way better sense than you do.’”
    “Do you happen to have LaVerne’s phone number?”
    “No. It’s probably in the phone book, but I doubt this has anything to do with her.”
    Deb jotted a note, and Joanna knew that one of her detectives would be calling on LaVerne Hartley soon to verify whether or not that was the case.
    “What about drugs?” Debra asked. “Was your brother mixed up with any of that?”
    “I already told you. As far as Les was concerned, alcohol was his drug of choice—his only drug of choice. He wasn’t into meth or coke or pot or even cigarettes. Just booze.”
    Joanna’s phone rang. “I’m stuck,” Guy Machett said when Joanna answered.
    He sounded aggrieved—as though the fact that he’d gotten his vehicle mired down in sand was all Joanna’s fault. She turned andlooked back over the path she and Ernie had used to drive from the gravel road to the crime scene. Debra had come in that same way, and so had Margie Savage. There was, however, no sign of the M.E.’s van.
    “Stuck where?” Joanna asked.
    “In the sand,” he snapped irritably. “Where do you think?”
    Joanna covered the mouthpiece. “The M.E.,” she told the others. “He’s stuck.” Removing her hand, she spoke into the phone. “I’m looking back toward the road,” she said. “I don’t see any sign of you.”
    “I didn’t bother with the road,” Machett said. “I ran into that woman from the truck—the one from the dog pound. She told me you were out this way. I didn’t see any point in following the road when the shortest distance between two points is a straight line.”
    Not when you’re driving through sand, you jerk, Joanna thought. It turned out Guy Machett did need a babysitter.
    “Where are you exactly?” she asked.
    “Somewhere between the gate and where you are,” he said. “Can you come pull me out or send someone who can?”
    “You need a tow truck,” Joanna said.
    “Then call one for me,” Machett replied.
    Months earlier, Joanna’s department had been forced to eat a five-thousand-dollar towing bill when a murder victim’s vehicle had crashed through a guardrail and come to rest on a steep mountainside. She didn’t want to fall into a similar trap. She suspected that if she or someone from her department called for the tow, Guy Machett would somehow find a way to have the costs come out of her budget instead of his.
    “I’ll get you a number and call you back.”
    “Come on,” Machett said. “That homicide cop of yours hasfour-wheel drive. I’ve seen it. Couldn’t you just send him over here with a tow chain?”
    And get Ernie stuck, too? Joanna thought. Not on your life.
    “He’s interviewing a witness right now,” she said. “And I don’t think our insurance covers DIY towing. If something happened to your vehicle or ours, the damage wouldn’t be covered.”
    “Have a heart, Sheriff Brady,” he wheedled. “Help me out here.”
    But on this matter, Joanna’s mind was made up. “I’ll get you the number,” she said.
    She called Dispatch, got the names and numbers of several towing companies, and relayed them back to Guy Machett. Then Joanna called in to Animal Control and spoke to Jeannine Phillips. It was easier and faster to call on the phone than to work with the nonworking radio system.
    “Have Officer Wilson take the homicide victim’s dog into