it as well.
“Oops,” she whispered, as they ducked between other students’ chairs and tables to reach their own. “The head honcho looks a little surly today. We’d better be on our best behavior.”
Moments later, Dave Thompson closed the door behind the last straggler and marched forward to e podium. “I hope you’ve all read last night’s assignment, boys and girls,” he said. “We’re going to spend the morning discussing some of the material on the worldwide history of law enforcement as well as some additional material on law enforcement here in the great state of Arizona. I’m a great believer in the idea that you can’t tell where you’re going if you don’t know where you’ve been.”
During the course of Dave Thompson’s long lecture, Joanna almost succeeded in staying awake by forcing herself to take detailed notes. As the midmorning break neared, she once again found herself counting down the minutes like a restless school kid longing for recess.
When the break finally came, Joanna raced out of the classroom and managed to beat everyone to the student lounge. She poured herself a cup of terrible coffee from the communal urn and then made for the pay phone and dialed her own office number first. Kristin Marsten, her nubile young secretary, answered the phone sounding perky and cheerful. “Sheriff Brady’s office.”
“Hello, Kristin,” Joanna said. “How are thing?”
Kristin’s tone of voice changed abruptly as the cheeriness disappeared. “All right, I guess,” she answered.
Kristin’s tenure as secretary to the Cochise County sheriff preceded Joanna’s arrival on scene by only a matter of months. Kristin started out the previous summer in the lowly position of temporary clerk/intern. Through a series of unlikely promotions, she had somehow landed the secretarial job. Joanna credited Kristin’s swift rise far more to good looks than ability. No doubt in the pervasively all-male atmosphere that had existed under the previous administrations, blond good looks and blatant sex appeal had worked wonders.
By the time Joanna arrived on the scene, Kristin had carved out some fairly cushy working conditions. Because Joanna’s reforms threatened the status quo, the new sheriff understood why Kristin might view her new female boss with undisguised resentment. Given time, Joanna thought she might actually effect a beneficial change in the young woman’s troublesome attitude. The problem was, between the election and now there had been no time—at least not enough. Kristin’s brusque, stilted replies bordered on rudeness, but Joanna waded into her questions as though nothing was out line.
“Is anything happening?” she asked.
“Nothing much,” Kristin returned.
“No messages?”
“Nothing happening. No messages. Joanna recognized the symptoms at once. Kristin was enjoying the fact that her boss was temporarily out of the loop. The secretary no doubt planned to keep Joanna that way for as long as possible.
“Something must be happening,” Joanna pressed. “It is a county sheriff’s office.”
“Not really,” Kristin responded easily. “I’ve been sling things along to Dick ... I mean, to Chief Deputy Voland, or else to Chief Deputy for Administration Montoya.”
“What kind of things?”
“Just routine,” Kristin answered.
Joanna had to work at keeping the growing annoyance out of her own voice. She knew there was no possibility of effecting a miraculous adjustment Kristin’s attitude over long-distance telephone lines. But if Kristin wanted to play the old I-know-and-you-don’t game, it was certainly possible to II her bluff.
