09 Paradise Lost by J A Jance

Author:J A Jance [Jance, J A]
Format: epub
Published: 0101-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

11

It was long after dark when Joanna finally rolled back into the yard at High Lonesome Ranch to the sound of raucous greetings from Sadie and Tigger. She was relieved to find that Jim Bob and Eva Lou’s Honda was no longer there. Lights behind curtains glowed invitingly from all the windows.

Weary beyond bearing, Joanna was frustrated as well. The meeting with Ron Haskell had left her doubting that he had been involved in his wife’s death. And if that was true, they were no closer to finding out who had killed either Connie Haskell or Dora Matthews, which meant that Jenny, too, was possibly still in grave danger.

As she got out of the car, Joanna heard the back door slam. Butch came walking toward her.

“How’s Jenny?” she asked over an aching catch in her throat.

Butch shook his head. “About how you’d expect,” he said.

“Not good?”

“Not good. She’s barely ventured out of her room since you left this afternoon. I tried cajoling her into coming out for dinner. No dice. Said she wasn’t hungry. Maybe you’ll have better luck.”

Remembering that last difficult conversation with her daughter, Joanna shook her head. “Don’t count on it,” she said.

“Hungry?” he said. Joanna nodded. “I don’t think Eva Lou trusts my cooking abilities,” Butch continued. “She left the refrigerator full of leftovers and the freezer stocked with a bunch of Ziploc containers loaded with precooked, heat-and-serve meals. What’s your pleasure?”

“How about a Butch Dixon omelette?”

“Good choice.”

Inside the kitchen, Joanna noticed that the table was covered with blueprints for the new house they were planning to build on the property left to Joanna by her former handyman, Clayton Rhodes. “Don’t forget,” Butch said as he began rolling up the plans and securing them with rubber bands, “tomorrow night we have a mandatory meeting scheduled with the contractor.”

“I’ll do my best,” she said. “Right now, I’m going to change clothes and see if Jenny’s awake. I just talked to Ernie Carpenter. Jenny will have to come to the department with me tomorrow morning so the Double Cs can interview her.” Since both detectives had last names beginning with the letter C, that’s how people in the department often referred to Joanna’s homicide detective division.

“Because of Connie Haskell, because of Dora, or because Jenny herself may be in danger?” Butch asked.

Joanna sighed. “All of the above,” she said.

She went into the bedroom, removed her weapons, and locked them away. Thinking about the threat to Jenny, she briefly considered keeping one of the Glocks in the drawer of her nightstand, but in the end she didn’t. As she stripped off her panty hose, she was amazed to discover that they had survived her crime scene foray. That hardly ever happens, she thought, tossing them into the dirty-clothes hamper.

Dressed in a nightgown and robe, she went to Jenny’s bedroom and knocked on the door. Her questioning knock was answered by a muffled “Go away.”

“I can’t,” Joanna said, opening the door anyway. “I need to talk to you.”

The room was dark, with the curtains drawn and the shades pulled down.

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