Paradise Lost Read Online Free

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.”
    “You just added salt to the wound.”
    “He shouldn’t have said I was hysterical,” Joanna said, referring to an incident that had occurred a good two months earlier.
    “And some people shouldn’t pack grudges,” Butch replied. “So now that you’ve won all this cash, what are you going to do with it? It’s almost seven hundred dollars.”
    “I was thinking about that while I was in the shower,” Joanna said. “I think I’ll do something Bill Forsythe wouldn’t be caught dead doing. I think I’ll donate the whole amount to the Girl Scouts. Jenny’s troop is trying to raise enough money for a trip to Disneyland at the end of the summer, just before school starts. Seven hundred dollars that they weren’t expecting would give them a big leg up.”
    “Speaking of Scouts, Eva Lou called.”
    Eva Lou and Jim Bob Brady, Joanna’s former in-laws and her daughter’s paternal grandparents, were staying out at High Lonesome Ranch to look alter the house and the animals during Joanna’s and Butch’s absence at the Sheriff’s Association conference and for the remainder of the weekend as well.
    Joanna raised herself up on one elbow. “Is something the matter with Jenny?” she asked, as a note of alarm crept into her voice. Being away from her daughter for extended periods of time still made her nervous.
    “Nothing’s the matter,” Butch reassured her. “Nothing to worry about, anyway. It’s just that because of the severe drought conditions, the Forest Service has posted a statewide no-campfire restriction. They’re closing the public campgrounds. No fires of any kind will be permitted.”
    “Great,” Joanna said glumly. “I suppose that means the end of penny’s camp-out. She was really looking forward to it. She said she thought she’d be able to finish up the requirements on two separate badges.”
    “Surely you can give Faye Lambert more credit than that.”
    Faye Lambert, wife of the newly appointed pastor of Bisbee’s First Presbyterian Church, had stepped into the vacuum left by two