Free Partner In Crime by J. A. Jance Page A

mess. The wooden surface of her desk was barely visible under stacks of neglected files and paper.
    Organizing the Fallen Officer portion of Yolanda Cañedo’s funeral had taken far more of Joanna’s personal time and effort than she had expected. She and Frank Montoya had shared the responsibilities. All essential law enforcement work had been handled, but some of the more routine matters had been allowed to slide. Now, though, as Joanna dug into the paperwork on her desk, she discovered items that had been routine on Monday. By Thursday they had moved to the “urgent” column.
    Wanting to have some quiet time to attack the daunting backlog of paper, Joanna set to work without bothering to announce her presence to anyone, not even to Kristin Gregovich, her secretary in the outside office. Twenty minutes later, as Joanna whaled away at the mess, Kristin came into her office to deliver yet another batch of paperwork. Startled to find Joanna seated at her desk, Kristin almost dropped what she was carrying.
    “You scared me to death!” she exclaimed. “Why didn’t you tell me you were here?”
    “Because my phone would have been ringing off the hook,” Joanna answered. “The only way I’m going to make any progress with this mess is to work on it without interruptions.”
    Kristin nodded and placed a neatly arranged stack of papers on the one part of the desk Joanna had finally managed to clear. Then, instead of taking the hint and returning to her own office, Kristin sighed and sank, uninvited, into one of the two captain’s chairs facing Joanna’s desk.
    In the past two months, Kristin Gregovich had gone from being slightly pregnant to being profoundly pregnant. Her once showgirl-worthy ankles were now severely swollen by the end of each workday. The baby, a girl, wasn’t due for another three weeks, but Kristin, rubbing her aching back, was vocal about hoping to deliver sooner than that. On the other hand, money concerns made her want to stay on the job as long as possible.
    Hearing Kristin’s sigh, Joanna looked at her secretary with concern. She worried that there might be some third-trimester complication brewing. “Are you all right?” she asked.
    Kristin nodded, but she didn’t look all right.
    “Weren’t you supposed to see the doctor yesterday?” Joanna asked.
    Kristin nodded again. “That’s what I wanted to talk to you about, Sheriff Brady. We did go, Terry and I both.”
    Terry Gregovich, Kristin’s husband, and Spike, his German shepherd, comprised the Cochise County Sheriff’s Department’s K-9 Unit.
    Joanna stood up and came around to the front of the desk. “You look upset, Kristin,” she said. “What is it? Is there something the matter with the baby?”
    “Oh, no, nothing like that,” the young woman answered hurriedly. “Shaundra’s fine. The thing is, the only time we could get in for the ultrasound was late yesterday afternoon. We went right after the church service ended. By the time we finished up at the hospital, it was too late to go to the graveside service. I was too beat to go to the reception, so Terry and I just stayed home. But I didn’t want you to think we didn’t come because . . .” Kristin’s voice trailed off uneasily.
    When Joanna had first taken over the job of sheriff, she and her young secretary had needed to sort out some issues between them. For a time after Joanna’s election, Kristin’s loyalties had remained with members of the previous administration. With the passage of time, however, the two women had developed a comfortable working relationship. Months earlier, Joanna was the person to whom Kristin had first confided the news of her unexpected pregnancy. And it was Joanna who had helped Kristin and Terry arrange their nice but hurried shotgun wedding.
    In the months since, Joanna Brady had taken a kind of proprietary interest in the young couple’s situation. She had been more than a little disappointed the day before when she’d been