“Oh,” Joanna said. “‘That’s a relief then.”
And Eva Lou said something else,” Butch added. “She said to tell you she managed to find Jenny’s sit-upon. What the hell is a sit-upon?”
“Jenny will kill me,” Joanna said at once. “The girls made them years ago when they were still in Brownies. Jenny wanted me to throw hers away the minute she brought it home, but I insisted on keeping it. Because it was up on the top shelf of Jenny’s closet, it didn’t get wrecked along with everything else when Reba Singleton did her job on the house.”
Days before Joanna and Butch’s wedding, a distraught woman who blamed Joanna for her father’s death had broken into the house on High Lonesome Ranch, leaving a trail of vandalism and destruction in her wake. Although Reba had wrecked everything she could lay hands on in the rest of the house, she had left Jenny’s bedroom entirely untouched—including, as it turned out, Jenny’s much despised sit-upon.
“You still haven’t told me what a sit-upon is,” Butch grumbled.
“The girls made them—as part of an arts-and-crafts project—by sewing together two twelve-by-twelve-inch squares of vinyl. Jenny’s happens to be fire-engine red, but there were several other colors as well. The girls used white yarn to whipstitch the two pieces of vinyl together. Once three sides were sewn together, the square was stuffed with cotton batting. Then they closed the square by stitching tap the last side. And, voila! The next time the girls go out into the woods, they have a sit-upon to sit upon.”
“I see,” Butch said. “So what’s the matter with Jenny’s? Why did she want you to get rid of hers?”
“You know Jenny, how impatient she is—always in a rush. She did tine with the stitches on the first side. They’re really even and neat. On the second side the stitches get a little longer and a little more ragged. By the third side it’s even worse. On the last side, there were barely enough stitches to hold the batting inside.”
“In other words, it’s pug-ugly.”
“Right. That’s why she wanted me to throw it away. But I maintain that if I’m going to keep mementos for her, I should keep both good stuff and bad. It’s what Eleanor did for Inc. I knew Faye Lambert had put sit-upons on the list of required equipment for the camp-out. Knowing Jenny’s feelings on the matter, I had planned to just ignore it, but Eva Lou isn’t the kind to ignore some-thing if it happens to be on an official list of required equipment.”
“That’s right,” Butch agreed with a laugh. “Eva Lou Brady’s not the ignoring type.”
He wrapped an arm around Joanna’s shoulder and pulled her five-foot-four frame close to him. “The poker game was obviously an unqualified success. How did the rest of your day go?”
Joanna sighed. “I spent the whole afternoon in a terminally boring meeting run by a nerdy little guy who’s never been in law enforcement in his life. His job—as an overpaid ‘outside’ consultant from someplace back East—Massachusetts, I think—is to get us to sign up our departments for what his company has to offer.”
“Which is?”
“They do what he calls ‘team building’ workshops. For some exorbitant amount of money, everyone in the department is cycled through a ‘rigorous outdoor experience’ where they learn to ‘count’ on each other. What the hell does he think we do out there day after day, sell lollipops? And what makes him think I can afford to pay my people to go off camping in the boonies instead of patrolling the county? He claims the experience ‘creates an atmosphere of trust and team spirit.’ I felt like telling him that I’m a sheriff, not a cheerleader, but some of the other guys were really gung-ho about it.”
“Bill Forsythe’s such a cool macho dude,” Butch offered. “‘That program sounds like it would be right up his alley.”
“You’re on the money there,” Joanna said. “He and a couple of the other guys are ready to write the program into their budgets the minute they get back home. Maybe their budgets can handle it. Mine can’t. I’ve got my hands and budget full trying to deal with the ten thousand Undocumented Aliens who come through Cochise County every month. What about you?”
Butch grinned. “Personally speaking, I don’t have a UDA problem.”
Joanna whacked him on the chest. “You know what I mean. What did you do today?”
She glanced at the clock. In anticipation of the late-night poker session, she had drunk several cups of coffee during dinner. Now, at almost two in the morning, that dose of late-in-the-day caffeine showed no signs of wearing off.
“Nothing much,” Butch replied.
“You mean you didn’t go antiquing with the wives?”
Butch shook his head. “Nope. You know me and antiques. I opted out of that one.”
“Golfing, then? I heard somebody raving about the golf course here.”
Butch shook his head. “No golfing,” he said.
“Did you go someplace then?” Joanna asked.
“We drove up to Page in a county-owned vehicle,” Butch reminded her. “‘That makes it a vehicle I’m not allowed to drive, remember?”
Joanna winced. “Sorry,” she said. “I forgot. So what did you do?”
“I finished.”
“Finished what?”
“The manuscript.”
For over a year Butch had been working on his first novel, hanging away at it on his Toshiba laptop whenever he could find time to spare. He had even taken the computer along on their honeymoon trip to Paris the previous month. He had spent the early morning hours working while Joanna had reveled in the incredible luxury of sleeping in. Shy about showing a work in progress, Butch had refused to allow anyone to read the text while he was working on it, and that had included Joanna. Over the months she had come to regard his work on the computer as one of those things Butch did. In the process, she had lost track of the idea that eventually his book might be done and that she might actually be allowed to read it.
Joanna sat up in bed. “You finished? You mean the book is really finished? That’s wonderful.”
“The first draft is done,” Butch cautioned. “But that doesn’t mean the book is finished. I doubt it’s what an agent or editor would call finished. I’m sure there’s a lot of work still to do.”
Joanna’s green eyes sparkled with excitement. “When do I get to read it?”
Butch shrugged. “I’m not sure. I’d rather you read a printed copy. That way, if you have any comments or suggestions, you can make note of them in the margins on the hard copy”
Joanna brimmed with enthusiasm. “But I want to read it now. Right away.”
“When we get home,” Butch said, “I’ll hook up the computer and run you off a copy.”
“But we won’t be home until Monday,” Joanna objected.
With Jenny off on a three-night camp-out with her Girl Scout troop, Joanna and Butch had some time to themselves, and they were prepared to take till advantage of it. They were scheduled to stay over in Page until Saturday morning. Leaving there, they would drive back only as far as Phoenix, where Butch was scheduled to be a member of the wedding of one of his former employees, a waitress from the now-leveled Roundhouse Bar and Grill up in Peoria. Drafted to stand up for the bride, Butch had been appointed man of honor, as opposed to the groom’s best man. The rehearsal dinner was set for Saturday evening, while the wedding itself would be held on Sunday afternoon.
“I want to read it now,” Joanna wailed, doing a credible imitation of a disgruntled three-year-old’s temper tantrum. “Isn’t there some way to have it printed before Monday? I’m off work the whole weekend, Butch. You’ll be busy with the wedding and man-of-honor duties tomorrow and Sunday both. While you’re doing that, I can lie around and do nothing but read. I haven’t done something that decadent in years.”