Page 6 of The Girl from Devil's Lake
Joanna was taken aback. “You’re willing to give her up? Are you sure?”
Jenny nodded. “When Nick discovered that he couldn’t handle participating in rodeos and going to vet school at the same time, hedid the same thing with Dexter. Dex and Maggie are stablemates at Equine Helpers now, but I’m sure they’d let us take them back. After all, Bisbee is a lot closer to Tucson than Flagstaff is, and if both Dexter and Maggie were at High Lonesome, maybe Nick and I could come down and go riding together sometimes too.”
“You’re serious then?” Joanna asked.
Jenny nodded. “I can’t do it for Sage’s birthday, though. I already promised her a late birthday shopping trip in Tucson once I get back home.”
“She’ll love going shopping with you,” Joanna said. “Trying to do that with both Dennis and Sage in tow is like mixing oil and water. It never works. But if you and Nick want Dexter and Maggie to stay with us, I’m sure it will be fine with Butch and me.”
“Let’s think about Christmas then,” Jenny said. “Nick will have some time off then, and he could probably go up to Flag and trailer both horses down to Bisbee.”
“You’re sure he won’t mind?”
“Not at all,” Jenny said. “He misses his Dex as much as I miss Maggie.”
Their waiter showed up just then. They both ordered filet mignons with baked potatoes and crispy Brussels sprouts, accompanied by single glasses of merlot.
Once they were alone again, Joanna steered the conversation back to Jenny’s APOA experience. “How’s it been?” she asked.
Jenny paused before she answered. “Not a walk in the park,” she said finally.
“Hazing?” Joanna asked.
“Some,” Jenny agreed with a nod. “How did you know?”
“Been there, done that,” Joanna replied. “When I was here, there were only two women in our class. I had already been elected sheriff, and LeAnn Jessup was an unapologetic lesbian. That made us both fair game.”
Jenny frowned. “I seem to remember LeAnn. Wasn’t she hurt somehow in all that mess? Whatever happened to her?”
Joanna found it interesting that Jenny had focused on what had happened to LeAnn without mentioning the fact that, as part of “all that mess,” Jenny and one of her friends had been locked away in an abandoned bomb shelter while Joanna had engaged in a fatal shoot-out with their would-be kidnapper. Since Jenny hadn’t made reference to that, neither did Joanna.
“At the time I met her, LeAnn was a new hire with the Arizona Department of Public Safety. Eventually she joined the FBI. The last I heard, she was still in DC working as a criminal profiler.”
“So you both made it through.”
“Yes, we did,” Joanna agreed. Then, after a pause, she asked, “What kind of hazing?”
Jennifer sighed and her expression darkened. “There are a couple of other guys from Pima County in the class. They got everybody to call me CJ, short for Calamity Jenn.”
“Calamity Jenn?” Joanna repeated. “How come?”
“It’s a play on Calamity Jane because of all my years in rodeo, but they also spread the rumor that I was underqualified and only got hired because of my personal connection to Dan Pardee, a close family friend of Sheriff Fellows. They passed that one along to anyone who would listen.”
“Sounds somewhat familiar,” Joanna said. “Try being here as a trainee when you’ve already been elected sheriff but you have zero law enforcement experience.”
“No fun?” Jenny asked.
“Pretty much, but as far as your being underqualified? I’d guess that, after your year of internship with MMIV, the reality is the exact opposite.”
“I learned so much there that it’s amazing,” Jenny said. “Forensics, collecting and handling evidence, DNA profiling, you name it, but I was also incredibly miserable. I cried my eyes out almost every night. If Nick hadn’t talked me down out of my tree time after time, I wouldn’t have lasted a month.”
Joanna was dumbfounded. “That doesn’t sound like you. I’ve never known you to be miserable for even a single day much less for a whole year. How come? What happened?”
“I was the only Anglo,” Jenny answered. “I never knew what it’s like to be a minority, but now I do. Everybody else was Indigenous, and I wasn’t. Anna Rae Green was great. She couldn’t have been nicer. And whenever Dan Pardee was around, he was like a breath of fresh air, but most of the people I interacted with on a daily basis—the lab techs, the clerks, the secretaries? They seemed to resent me and made me feel like an unwelcome interloper.”
“Which only goes to show that prejudice works in both directions,” Joanna observed. “But you know what? I’m guessing having that kind of experience in your background is going to serve you in good stead as a law enforcement officer, especially when you’re dealing with people who’ve had that same kind of treatment at the hands of people who look like you.”
“Maybe,” Jenny said, after a moment. “I hope so.”
