J.A. Jance: Dead Wrong

She reached out, longing to cuddle up to Butch’s comforting presence, but he wasn’t there. He had left early the previous afternoon for El Paso and a weekend mystery conference, where he would be on what his editor called the “limbo” panel-made up of first-time writers whose books were sold but not yet published. Butch’s first novel, Serve and. Protect, wasn’t due out until September, but his editor, Carole Ann Hudson, had engineered his being placed on a panel at the conference so he could “start getting his name out there.”

“I’m not going to go running off to El Paso for three days when the baby’s due in less than a week,” Butch had declared.

“Due dates aren’t exactly chiseled in granite,” Joanna had responded. “Look at Jenny. She was ten days late, and I was in labor for the better part of eight hours before she was born. Think about it. El Paso is only five hours away, especially the way you drive. If I called you right away, you’d be here in plenty of time. Besides, Carole Ann must have gone to a lot of trouble to make this happen, including having bound galleys available. You need to be there.”

But now, with the nightmare still lingering and her back hurting like crazy, Joanna wished she hadn’t insisted Butch go. What she would have liked more than anything right then was one of his special back rubs. And although massages helped, Joanna was tired of having a sore back. Tired of not being able to sleep on her stomach. Tired as hell of being pregnant. And, as if to add its own two cents’ worth, the baby stirred suddenly inside her and began hammering away at her ribs.

“All right, all right,” she grumbled. “Since we’re both wide awake, I could just as well get up.”

Pulling on a wool robe that no longer connected around her middle, Joanna waddled out into the kitchen and started heating water. The bouts of morning sickness that had plagued the beginning of her pregnancy no longer existed, but her aversion to the taste of coffee lingered. Tea, not coffee, was now her drink of choice.

Joanna stood at the back door while Lady, the loving Australian shepherd she had rescued the previous summer, went outside to investigate the news of the day. In the crisp chill of early morning, Joanna savored the gentle warmth of the heated floor on her bare feet. Radiant heat in the floor was one of the things Butch had built into their rammed-earth house. At the time he suggested it, Joanna had thought it a peculiar thing to be worrying about heating a house in the Arizona desert. In the past few months, though, when her feet had been swollen after a long day at work, it had been wonderful to kick off her shoes and walk barefoot on the warmed floor. The dogs seemed to like radiant heat every bit as much as she did.

Once her tea was ready, Joanna repaired to her cozy home office, opened her briefcase, and removed her laptop. In the months before and after the election, she and Butch, along with her chief deputy, Frank Montoya, had strategized on how best to handle the complications of juggling being both sheriff and a new mother-the very question Ken Galloway had harped on throughout the campaign.

Under departmental guidelines, Joanna could have taken up to six weeks of paid maternity leave, but that didn’t seem like a reasonable way to run her department. Barring some kind of unforeseen complication, she had settled on the idea of taking only two weeks of maternity leave. Beyond that, she’d do as much of her paperwork from home as possible. In a world of telecommuting, that wasn’t such an outlandish idea. Between them, Butch and Frank had installed a high-speed Internet connection at High Lonesome Ranch and created a teleconferencing network that would allow Joanna to participate in morning briefings without her having to be at the Cochise County Justice Center in person.

“As long as you cooperate,” she said, patting the lump of her belly where the as-yet-unnamed baby was still kicking away. Months earlier she had brought home the ultrasound report her doctor had given her that would have revealed whether the baby was a boy or a girl.

Butch had taken the envelope from her fingers and stuck it on the fridge with a heavy-duty magnet. “I’m an old-fashioned kind of guy,” he told her. “When we unwrap the baby will be time enough to know what it is.” And there the unopened envelope remained to this day-much to Joanna’s mother’s dismay and despite her many remonstrances to the contrary.

For the next hour or so, Joanna answered e-mail. Yes, she would be honored to be the commencement speaker for Bisbee High School‘s graduation. No, she would be unable to participate in the Girl Scout Cookie-Selling Kickoff Breakfast in two weeks. No, she would not be able to speak to the Kiwanis Key Club meeting on March first. Yes, she would come to the May 2 Career Day assembly at St. David High School. Baby or no baby, Joanna could see that her calendar was already filling up for the months ahead, even without a reelection campaign to worry about.

The next e-mail was an announcement that the annual sheriffs’ convention would be held in June. What about that? Some of her fellow lady sheriffs (there were now approximately thirty of them nationwide) would be having their first-ever meeting of the newly formed LSA (Lady Sheriffs Association) at the convention. Joanna was eager to meet some of the women who did the same job and faced the same struggles she did. In fact, she now corresponded regularly with someone she had never met in person- the female sheriff of a tiny department in San Juan County, Colorado. Much as she wanted to be in attendance, Joanna knew that a final decision on that needed to be discussed with Butch. She saved that e-mail as new.

At six, as Joanna began scanning on-line news articles and with the sun just coming up, Lucky, a gangly black Lab pup, trotted into Joanna’s office, proudly carrying one of Jenny’s socks. At sixty-plus pounds and less than a year old, Lucky’s oversize paws indicated that he still had some growing to do. The dog had been born deaf, but he was smart, and Jenny’s patient training was paying big dividends. When Joanna signaled for him to sit and to drop the sock, he immediately complied. After checking to see that the sock was still in one piece, Joanna rewarded the dog with one of the dog treats she kept in her top drawer.

“Mom,” Jenny said from the doorway. “Since Butch isn’t here, can I fix a pot of coffee?”

“May I,” Joanna corrected. “And no. You’re too young for coffee.”

“Butch lets me have coffee,” Jenny countered.

“He does?”

“Sometimes.”

There was a lot that went on between Jenny and Butch that Joanna wasn’t necessarily consulted on or even knew about.

Blond and blue-eyed, Jenny was a willowy teenager who was already a good two inches taller than her mother. She was a responsible kid who got good grades and did more than her fair share of chores around the ranch.

“All right,” Joanna relented. “Go ahead.”

As Jenny left for the kitchen, their third dog, an improbably ugly half pit bull/half golden retriever named Tigger, joined the others and padded along after her. Just then the phone rang. “I didn’t know you let Jenny have coffee in the morning,” she told Butch once she knew who it was.

“It won’t kill her,” he returned. “I started drinking coffee when I was eight. It didn’t stunt my growth. Well, on second thought, maybe it did. Maybe I’d be a few inches taller if I hadn’t started drinking Java so early, but still. One cup isn’t going to hurt her. Besides, wouldn’t you rather have her drinking it at home with us instead of hanging out with her friends at the local Starbucks?”

“There is no local Starbucks,” Joanna pointed out.

“Oh, that’s right,” Butch said. “I forgot.”