themselves.”
CHAPTER 17
By seven-thirty the next morning, Joanna was driving Jenny to school. “You’re awfully quiet this morning,” Joanna said. “What’s going on?”
“Did you like them?”
“Who?”
“Did you like Butch’s parents?” Jenny asked.
After years of telling her daughter that honesty was the best policy, Joanna decided a truthful answer was the best option. “Not very much,” she admitted.
“Me, either,” Jenny replied. “Mrs. Dixon seems really mean, and Mr. Dixon… well, he kept asking me all kinds of dumb questions. You know, the kind of questions grown-ups ask kids when they think they have to talk to them but they really don’t have anything to say.”
“I agree. They were both pretty annoying,” Joanna said. “But remember, they say you can choose your friends, but you’re stuck with your relatives.”
“They’re not
“They will be,” Joanna told her daughter grimly. “Since they’re Butch’s relatives, they’re going to end up being our relatives, too. We’ll just have to do our best to figure out a way to get along with them.”
“Okay,” Jenny said, nodding. “But I’m not going to like them any better.”
For the next few minutes, mother and daughter rode in silence. Finally, Joanna tackled another topic. “What about Clayton’s funeral?” she asked. “Have you made up your mind yet about whether or not you’re going to go?”
Jenny nodded. “I want to go,” she said. Then, after a pause, she added, “No, that’s not true. I don’t
“Good girl,” Joanna said. “I’ll call the school from my office and let them know that I’ll be by to pick you up at one-thirty. Since the funeral’s scheduled for two, that should be plenty of time.”
Only after Jenny jumped out of the Blazer and slammed the door did Joanna let her mind focus on her scheduled coming-to-God meeting with Kristin Marsten and Terry Gregovich. She had watched the blossoming romance between her secretary and the K-9 officer with amused tolerance. As long as they had remained discreet about it and hadn’t let their relationship get in the way of work, she had been willing to go along with it. Her department had no hard and fast rules about fraternizing between officers and staff as long as there was no inappropriate relationship between supervisors and reporting employees and as long as the relationship didn’t interfere with the performance of respective duties.
Clearly, though, what had happened the day before was anything but discreet. Joanna knew all about young love. After all, she was in love herself. She didn’t like being forced into taking a hard-nosed position, but as an elected administrator, it was her job to supervise her employees and see to it that they maintained a clear-cut line between love and duty. If Kristin and Terry weren’t prepared to function with a suitable degree of separation between their professional and personal lives, then, as sheriff, Joanna had to be prepared to demand someone’s resignation.
At the Cochise County Justice Complex, Joanna parked the Blazer in her reserved spot. As she stepped out of the SUV, she paused long enough to glance around the lot. It was only five of eight, but she noticed that both Kristin’s red Geo and Terry’s blue four-by-four were already in the parking lot. They were parked side by side in the farthest corner of the farthest row. So much for maintaining any kind of discretion.
Shaking her head, Joanna used the electronic keypad to let herself directly into her corner office through a private entrance-one that avoided her having to traverse the public lobby areas. Once in her office, she straightened her desk before squaring her shoulders and walking over to open the door that led to the outer reception area. A pale-faced, stricken Kristin sat at her desk. There were dark circles under her eyes, which were puffy and red. Across from her, Terry Gregovich sat on the waiting-room-style love seat, with Spike curled comfortably at his feet. The K-9 officer sat still and straight in his chair, his arms folded across his chest.
“You’d better come on in,” Joanna announced to them. “Let’s get this over with.”
Kristin entered Joanna’s private office first, followed by Terry and the dog. The two people sat on the captain’s chairs across from Joanna’s desk. As soon as Terry was seated, Spike circled three times and then settled in comfortably at his handler’s feet. For a time, no one spoke.
“Well,” Joanna said at last. “Would anyone care to explain exactly what went on around here yesterday afternoon and why you both seem to have gone AWOL at the same time?”
“I will,” Terry said.
“No, let me,” Kristin interrupted. “It was my fault. I’m the one who took off from work without really being sick. And I’m the one who told Terry that I had to see him no matter what-that we had to talk.”
“Don’t listen to her, Sheriff Brady,” Terry said. “It isn’t either her fault. I’m a big boy. I knew better than to turn off my pager, but I did it because I didn’t want to be interrupted even though I had a feeling Spike and I might be needed again yesterday. If anyone deserves to be in trouble over this, I’m the one.”
At the sound of his name, Spike raised his head, looked up, and thumped his bushy tail on the floor. When no orders were forthcoming, however, he sighed, put his head back down on his front paws, and closed his eyes once more.
Joanna sighed. “All right then,” she said. “What was it that you needed to discuss that was so all-fired important that you were both willing to risk losing your jobs over it?”
“I was late,” Kristin said in a small voice.
The way she said it, Joanna knew at once she wasn’t talking about being late for work. “A whole week,” Kristin continued after a pause. “And that’s not me. I’m one of those women who’s as regular as clockwork-every twenty- eight days.”
Joanna felt her eyes widen. “You mean to tell me you’re pregnant?” Kristin nodded miserably. “What happened? Weren’t you using birth control?”
Kristin nodded again as two fat tears spilled out of her eyes and ran down her cheeks. “We were,” she replied. “Condoms. But something must have happened to one of them. I couldn’t talk to my mother-she’d have a fit-so I was planning to talk to you about it on Sunday, after the shower, to ask your advice. But then Dick Voland showed up and I lost my nerve. So I talked to a friend instead. She gave me the name of a doctor down in Agua Prieta who would take care of it for me, but…” At that point, Kristin buried her face in her hands and sobbed.
Joanna took a deep breath. It was deja vu all over with a painful piece of her own life. She remembered all too well when she had been in Kristin’s shoes in a similar situation; when she, after agonizingly considering whether or not to have an abortion, had finally been forced to tell Andy that she, too, was pregnant. She hadn’t wanted to and had delayed for weeks, hoping she was wrong. Part of her reason for not wanting to tell was due to the fact that she and Andy had barely begun dating. She hadn’t wanted him to feel trapped into marrying her, but as soon as he found out, he had insisted. He and Joanna had run off to Lordsburg, New Mexico, the very next weekend, to tie the knot.
And the knot had worked. Theirs hadn’t been a trouble-free marriage, but it had been a good one. They had been in love and they had stayed that way. Together they had been happy. The only person who had seemed seriously offended by Jenny’s early arrival had been Eleanor Lathrop, who had, as it turned out, her own long-hidden and hypocritical reasons for being opposed to shotgun weddings.
With a jolt, Joanna emerged from an instant replay of her own past with the sudden realization that reliving the misery of her own experience was doing nothing to alleviate Kristin Marsten’s.
“She wasn’t even going to tell me,” Terry Gregovich was saying. “I could tell all last week that something was wrong, but I didn’t know what it was. I thought we’d get a chance to talk about it over the weekend, but then I had to work all day Sunday. Yesterday morning, I called her here at work. I told her I knew something was up, and if she wouldn’t meet me to tell me what it was, that I’d come here to her office and I wouldn’t leave until I knew where I stood.” He paused. “I was afraid there was somebody else and that she wanted to break up with me.
