Judgment Call Read Online Free Page A

any of it too seriously. When it came to parenting teenagers, bouts of surly silence were par for the course. When they got to the house, Jenny grabbed her backpack, darted out of the car, and slammed her way into her bedroom before Joanna managed to drag Dennis and all his toddler gear into the house.
    “What’s up with Jenny?” Butch asked.
    From the complex aroma in the kitchen, Joanna could tell that dinner was all but cooked. Butch was busy setting the table.
    “Nothing five years won’t fix,” Joanna said with a laugh.
    “Oh, that,” Butch said, giving first her and then Dennis quick pecks on the cheek as they walked by. “Wash your hands, little man,” Butch added to Dennis. “Dinner’s almost ready.”

CHAPTER 2
    WHEN JOANNA BRADY WAS FIRST ELECTED SHERIFF, SHE HAD dutifully followed in the footsteps of her father, who had once held the same position. Her own election had come about in the aftermath of the shooting death of her first husband, Andrew Roy Brady, who had been running for the office of sheriff when he was killed by a drug kingpin’s hit man. Friends of Andy’s had prevailed on Joanna to run in his stead. When she was elected, everyone had more or less written her off as a figurehead, sheriff in name only, but she had rejected those assumptions, making the effort to learn the job by sending herself off to the police academy.
    In the process Joanna had surprised both her supporters and her critics; she had also surprised herself. She soon discovered that law enforcement fever ran in her veins. Being sheriff wasn’t just a job, it was her passion. Like her father, D. H. Lathrop, before her, she lived and breathed the job, working too many hours and bringing home mountains of paperwork to do in the evening at the dining room table. Before long she was living to work instead of working to live. Big difference.
    She hadn’t anticipated falling in love again, and the idea of having another baby had never crossed her mind. Both of those had come as complete surprises. When first Butch Dixon and later Dennis came into her life, those two additions had caused a sudden reordering of Joanna’s priorities. Yes, her job was still important to her; yes, she still loved it; but now she made a conscious effort every day to maintain a balance between home and work.
    A big part of achieving that balance had to do with the fact that, in their two-career family, Butch and Joanna were beyond lucky in having good help. A year or so earlier, Carol Sunderson and the two grandsons she was raising had been left homeless when an electrical fire had swept through their mobile home, taking the life of her invalid husband. At the time, Joanna’s old house on High Lonesome Ranch had been rented out and was left in terrible shape by departing tenants who had torn the place apart before they skipped town without paying the rent. In a stroke of enlightened self-interest, after fixing it up Joanna and Butch had offered the house to Carol at a reasonable rent while at the same time hiring her as part-time household help.
    It had turned out to be a match made in heaven. Having Carol to backstop Butch with cooking, housework, and child care gave him more time to devote to his writing. Now that his third crime novel was due to be published in several months’ time, Carol’s capable presence made it feasible for him to go on a book tour—which his publisher definitely wanted him to do.
    When dinner was over and the dishes done, Butch retreated to the office to finish reviewing his copyediting and Jenny shut herself up in her room to do homework, leaving Joanna to spend some one-on-one time with Dennis. They went out into the yard and turned on the yard light. Long after sunset, she and Dennis continued playing a rousing game of fetch with their two remaining dogs—Lucky, a deaf black Lab, and Lady, the shy Australian shepherd. The dogs didn’t tire of fetching and Dennis didn’t tire of throwing.
    Jenny had taught Lucky