Judgment Call

“I’ve been happy to have the extra business this week,” Daisy said, “but I think that’s what pushed Junior over the edge. He’s used to all the regulars, but couldn’t handle so many strangers.”

“He’s going to be all right, isn’t he?” Joanna asked.

Daisy shook her head. “No,” she said. “I don’t think so. His doctor says he believes it’s early-onset Alzheimer’s. It’s not that unusual in cases like Junior’s.”

Daisy’s eyes filled with sudden tears as she punched the numbers into the register. Joanna wanted to offer some kind of comfort, but as two additional customers stepped into line behind her, she kept quiet rather than risk upsetting Daisy even more.

Back in her dust-covered Yukon, Joanna put the vehicle in gear, backed out of the parking lot, and headed for Dr. Millicent Ross’s veterinary clinic in Bisbee’s Saginaw neighborhood.

In the early fifties, before the opening of Lavender Pit, clusters of frame houses that had dotted the hillsides and canyons of Upper Lowell, Lower Bisbee, and Jiggerville had stood in the way. One at a time, the houses were pried off their foundations, loaded onto axles, and then trucked through town, where they were attached to new foundations that had been dug on lots that had formerly been company-owned land in neighborhoods that would ultimately come to be known as Bakerville and Saginaw.

As far as Joanna was concerned, this was all ancient history—almost as lost on her as the fact that townspeople in Bisbee had once sheltered in mines when Apaches had threatened to ride through town causing trouble. Joanna remembered seeing photos of the houses being moved, but that was all. By now, those houses had been in place on their “new” lots long enough that mature trees and bushes had grown up around them.

On arriving in town Dr. Millicent Ross had bought two adjoining houses in a part of Saginaw that fronted on the highway. She lived in one with her partner, Jeannine Philips, who was head of Joanna’s Animal Control unit. The other housed Millicent’s veterinary clinic as well as a pet boarding and day-care facility. Jenny worked at the boarding area—feeding and walking animals who were either recuperating from procedures or being boarded. Her shifts ran for two hours a day after school, for several hours on Fridays, and sometimes on weekends as well, if working didn’t conflict with a scheduled rodeo. Jenny’s work for the clinic was ostensibly done on a volunteer basis, but Dr. Ross had assured her that once Jenny was ready to go off to college and vet school, there would be a college fund awaiting her in exchange for her hours of work.

Joanna and Butch had regarded this unorthodox arrangement as a win-win situation all the way around. Through her own efforts, Jenny was making a very real down payment on her college education, and she was far too busy with work and school to get into any trouble. Up to now, that is.

Joanna pulled into the small parking lot in front of the clinic. A chain-link fence surrounded a yard between the clinic and Dr. Ross’s home. Through the chain-link mesh, Joanna could see Jenny walking a placid pit bull who seemed totally unconcerned about the plastic surgical cone fastened around his broad neck. Joanna used a self-locking gate to let herself into the tree-shaded yard. Only up close did she see the straight line of stitches going down the dog’s right rear leg.

“Hi, Mom,” Jenny said. “This is Prince. He got out of his yard and got hit by a car. Dr. Ross had to install rods and pins in his leg to put it back together. He’s really doing good.”

“He’s doing well.” Joanna corrected her daughter’s grammar automatically. “I’m glad to hear that, but it’s not why I’m here. You’re in trouble, young lady.”

Jenny frowned. “I am?”

“Yes, you certainly are.”

“How come?”

“Because you took an unauthorized photo of Ms. Highsmith this morning before I got to the crime scene. What did you use, your cell phone?”

Jenny nodded, her blue eyes wide. “I did,” she replied, “but I only sent it to Cassie.”

Cassie Parks, Jenny’s best friend, lived in a decommissioned KOA campground near Double Adobe that her parents had turned into a mobile-home park.

“She may be the only person you sent it to, but Cassie must have passed it along to someone else. Now it’s all over the Internet. Someone, one of the students from the high school, has even posted it on her Facebook page. I saw that one with my own eyes. Because of the photo Marliss Shackleford is threatening to write an article identifying the homicide victim without bothering to wait for a next-of-kin notification, something my detectives have not yet been able to accomplish.”

Jenny’s bright blue eyes widened even more. A flush of embarrassment flamed the skin of her cheeks and neck.

“I’m sorry,” she said. “I never meant for that to happen.”

“I can understand that this isn’t at all what you intended,” Joanna conceded, “but it’s what has happened, and it’s serious, Jenny—terribly serious. What if this is how Ms. Highsmith’s family members find out about her death—because some uncaring idiot posted a gory picture of her body on the Internet?”

To Joanna’s astonishment, Jenny sank to the ground. She sat there with her knees pulled up to her chest, sobbing inconsolably. With a grateful sigh, Prince, the wide-load butterball pit bull, sank down beside her. Resting his muzzle on his front paws, he closed his eyes contentedly.

“I just wanted to get her back,” Jenny said. “That’s all.”

“Get who back?” Joanna asked. “What are we talking about?”

“Cassie. It’s like we’re not even friends anymore,” Jenny hiccuped through her tears. “She’s going to be a cheerleader next year, and she thinks that makes her a really big deal. She has all kinds of new friends. The only time I even get to see her is in class or on the bus on our way to school. I thought if I sent her that picture, she’d feel like I was giving her some special inside information and that we’d be friends again. Instead, she did this. How could she?”

Crouching next to her devastated daughter, Joanna came face-to-face with her own culpability, served up with a huge helping of motherly guilt. How long had Jenny and Cassie been on the outs? As Jenny’s mother, how had Joanna not known about this crisis that was tearing away at her daughter’s well-being? How could she have left Jenny to make her way through such a painful loss on her own?

With all that in mind, the idea of Jenny’s taking and sending the photo was still wrong, but it was certainly more understandable.

Quieter now but still sniffling, Jenny mumbled, “Am I grounded then? Are you going to take my cell phone away?”

Joanna and Jenny’s birth father, Andy, had never been on quite the same page when it came to disciplining Jenny. With Butch, Joanna had found a partner who was a master at presenting a united front.

“We’ll need to talk it over with Dad,” Joanna said.

The day before, Jenny was the one who had first used the term “Dad” to refer to Butch. This was the first time Joanna tried it. To her surprise Jenny voiced no objection.

“Okay,” she said, drying her eyes with her sleeve. “I’m really sorry, Mom. Honest.”

Joanna patted her daughter’s shoulder. “I know,” she said consolingly. “Sometimes that’s the only way to get smarter—to learn from our mistakes. We’re a law enforcement family, Jenny. That makes us different. That’s why I didn’t discuss the Highsmith situation with you yesterday. I didn’t want you to mention the case to friends and classmates. Some of the things that are discussed around our dinner table are things you shouldn’t talk about with anyone outside our immediate family.”

“You mean like it’s privileged information or something?” Jenny asked. “Like what clients tell their lawyers?”

“Not exactly like that,” Joanna said. “There isn’t a legal requirement that I not tell you about Ms. Highsmith. It’s more a matter of discretion.”

“You mean like using common sense.”

“Yes,” Joanna replied.

Jenny stood up and dusted off her jeans.

“I’m sorry about you and Cassie,” Joanna said. “I wish you had told me.”

Jenny bit her lip. “It started last fall, after she made the JV cheerleading squad. I kept thinking it would get better. It’s like she’s fine when we’re on the bus going to school, but once we get there, she acts like I’m invisible. It hurts my feelings, Mom. I can’t help it.”

Joanna remembered all too well her own struggles in high school. First it had been because the kids were wary of being friends with the sheriff’s daughter. Then, after her father was killed by a drunk driver, Joanna had been considered the odd kid out because her father was dead. It was like people thought being without a father was somehow contagious. Her social situation in high school was one of the things that had made an “older man,” Andy, so attractive to her. Through it all, even in the face of a hurried “have-to” wedding, Marianne Maculyea had been Joanna’s true-blue loyal friend. Was then; still was. Unfortunately, Jenny’s friend Cassie wasn’t made of the same stuff.

“Of course it hurts your feelings,” Joanna agreed. “Have you talked about it with Butch?” She couldn’t quite justify playing the “Dad” card twice in the same conversation.

Jenny shrugged. “I guess I thought you’d notice.”

Joanna smiled at her daughter. “We didn’t,” she said. “You’re probably giving us way too much credit. We’ll talk about it tonight. All of us together.”

“Except Dennis.”

“Yes,” Joanna agreed. “Except Dennis.”

Bored with what must have seemed like endless prattle, Prince continued to sleep, snoring soundly. Pit bulls may have had a reputation for being scary and fierce; Prince was anything but.

“You’d better get that big guy up and back inside,” Joanna added, nodding toward the snoozing dog. “Dr. Ross is going to be wondering what became of you.”

As Jenny and Prince meandered back inside, Joanna returned to the Yukon. She had handled the Jenny situation to the best of her ability, but there were still outstanding issues on that score, not the least of which was making sure Debra Highsmith’s family was notified in a timely fashion. That included getting the jump on whatever story Marliss Shackleford was getting ready to publish.