Paradise Lost

ranch and you as well.”

“That’s another thing,” Jenny said crossly. “Grandma Brady found my stupid sit-upon. She says I have to take it along because it was on the list Mrs. Lambert gave us. You know, the sit-upon I made back when I was in Brownies? I always thought you threw it away. I asked you to throw it away. It’s so ugly. When the other girls see it, they’re going to laugh at me.”

“No, they won’t,” Joanna countered. “You girls were all in Brownies when you made those. I think there’s a good chance that some of theirs are every bit as ugly as yours is. Remember, Mrs. Lambert said you’re going to be listening to lectures from those young interns from the history department at the University of Arizona. You’ll need something to sit on during those lectures, and a sit-upon is just the thing. Would you rather come home with sandburs in your butt?”

“That means I have to take it?”

“Yes.”

“It’s not fair,” Jenny said. “You’re all just being mean to me. I don’t even want to talk to you anymore. Good-bye.” With that she hung up.

Joanna turned to Butch. “I don’t believe it,” she said. “My daughter just hung up on me.”

Butch didn’t seem overly dismayed. “Get used to it,” he said.

“Jenny’s twelve, going on twenty. She’s about to turn into a teenager on you, Joey. It goes with the adolescent territory.”

“Since when do you know so much about adolescents?”

“I was one once.”

“And now she wants to drop out of Girl Scouts,” Joanna con­tinued.

“So I gat I lewd, and maybe she should,” Butch said, from behind his newspaper. “It that’s what she really wants to do. Just because you stayed in Scouting as long as you did doesn’t mean your daughter has to.”

“You’re going to take her side in all this?” Joanna demanded.

“I’m not taking sides,” Butch said reasonably. “But if Jenny really wants to drop out of Girl Scouts, I think we should let her do what she wants to do.”

“What if she wanted to drop out of school?” Joanna returned. “Would you let her do that, too, just because it was what she wanted?”

Butch looked exasperated. “Joanna, what’s gotten into you?”

“I don’t know,” she said with a shrug. “I seem to be having a had morning.” With that, she grabbed her purse, stuffed her phone into it, and then stomped out of the room, slamming the door shut behind her. The loud bang from the closing door reverberated up And down the hallway. Two doors away, Pima County Sheriff Bill Forsythe turned and glanced back over his shoulder.

“My, my,” he murmured, clicking his tongue. “Sounds like a lovers’ spat to me.”

Before Joanna could reply, her phone rang again. Considering the fact that she was about to tell Bill Forsythe to mind his own damned business, the ringing phone was probably a lifesaver. There were two more roosterlike squawks before she managed to retrieve the distinctively crowing cell phone from the bottom of her purse. As soon as she picked it up, Joanna saw her chief deputy’s number on the phone’s digital readout.

“Good morning, Frank,” she said, walking briskly past Bill Forsythe as she did so.

Frank Montoya hailed from Willcox, Arizona, in northeastern Cochise County. He came from a family of former migrant work­ers and was the first member of his family to finish both high school and college. Years earlier he had been one of Joanna’s two opponents running for the office of Cochise County sheriff. After she won and was sworn into office, she had hired him to be one of her two chief deputies. Now Frank Montoya was her sole chief deputy. He was also the person Joanna had left in charge of the department during her absence.

“How’s it going?” she asked.

“Are you all right?” Frank asked. “Your voice sounds a little strained.”