Paradise Lost

Association, what else could she expect?

Peeling off her skirt and blouse, she draped those over the chair as well, hoping that hanging out in the air-conditioned room overnight would remove at least some of the stale-smelling smoke. Then, going over to the dresser, she peered at herself in the mirror. There was an impish gleam in her green eyes that even the lateness of the hour failed to dim. Reaching into her bra, she plucked a wad of bills, along with some change, from one of the cups. After counting the money, she found the total amounted to a little over two hundred dollars. Those were her winnings culled from all but one of her poker-playing opponents and fellow Arizona sheriffs. Leaving that money on the dresser, she removed a much larger wad from the other cup of her bra. That was the money she had won from one poker player in particular, Pima County Sheriff William Forsythe. That sum came to just under five hundred dollars, $488.50, to be exact. Over the course of the evening, the other players had dropped out one by one until finally it had been just the two of them, Joanna Brady and Bill Forsythe, squaring off. It had done Joanna’s heart good to clean the man’s clock.

For the first two years of her administration, Joanna had kept a low profile in the Arizona Sheriffs’ Association. She had come to the annual meetings, but she had stayed away from the camaraderie of the association’s traditional poker party. This year, though, fresh from yet another slight at the hands of the obnoxious Sheriff Forsythe and his department, she had gone to the meeting intent on duking it out with the man over beer, cards, and poker chips.

Joanna Lathrop Brady had learned to play poker at her father’s knee. Cochise County Sheriff D. H. “Big Hank” Lathrop had been a skilled player. Lacking a son with whom to share his poker-playing knowledge, he had decided to pass that legacy on to his daughter. To begin with, Joanna hadn’t been all that interested. Once her mother, Eleanor, began voicing strenuous objections, however, Joanna had become far more enthusiastic. She had, in fact, turned into an apt pupil and an avid devotee. Now, years alter Big Hank’s death, his patiently taught lessons were still paying off.

Quietly casing the door shut behind her, Joanna hurried into the bathroom, stripped off the remainder of her clothing, and then stepped into a steaming shower. When she returned from the bath room with a towel wrapped around her head and clad in one of the hotel’s terry-cloth robes, Butch had closed the laptop, stripped off his own clothes, and was back in bed.

“Sorry,” she said. “I didn’t mean to wake you.”

“That’s all right,” he said. “I wasn’t really asleep. So how’s my redheaded dynamo, and what time is it?”

“Your redhead is great, thank you,” she told him crisply. “And the time is just past one.”

“How’d you do?”

Smiling smugly, Joanna walked over to the dresser and retrieved both wads of money. She handed Butch the smaller of the two, giv­ing him a brief peck on his clean-shaven head in the process. “Whoa,” he said, thumbing through the money. “There must be two hundred bucks here.”

“Two hundred eleven and some change,” Joanna replied with a grin.

“Not bad for a girl.” Butch Dixon smiled back at her. He had been only too aware of the grudge-match status behind his wife’s determination to join the poker game. “How much of this used to belong to Sheriff Forsythe?” Butch added.

“Some of that,” Joanna told him triumphantly. “But all of this.” She plunked the other chunk of money down on Butch’s chest. ‘Then she went around to her side of the bed, peeled off the robe, and crawled in. Sitting with her pillow propped against the head board, she began toweling her hair dry.

On his side of the bed, Butch started counting the money and then gave up. “How much?” he asked.

“Four eighty-eight.”

Butch whistled. “And all of this is his?”

Joanna dropped the towel. Naked and still damp, she lowered her pillow and snuggled up against Butch’s side. “He deserved it, too,” she said. “Bill Forsythe was drunk. He was showing off and making stupid bets. Eventually everybody but the two of us dropped out, but they all hung around to watch the fireworks. The drunker Bill got, the worse he played. I wound up wiping the floor with him.”

“Beating the pants off Sheriff Forsythe isn’t going to do much for interdepartmental relations, is it?” Butch asked.

Joanna giggled. “He never was a fan of mine to begin with. This isn’t likely to make things any worse. They were already in the toilet anyway.”