Hoping to do better than that, Joanna sighed. "I'm going to miss you, sweetie," she said.

Jenny nodded. "I'll miss you, too," she replied seriously, sounding altogether too grown-up for Joanna's taste. "Will you be okay out on the ranch all alone?" Jenny continued.

Once again, jenny's innocent remark was so impossibly dead-on that it took Joanna's breath away. She had to swallow the lump in her throat before she could answer. Joanna held herself back, refusing to blurt out the whole truth about her very real dread of being left alone.

In her heart of hearts, she knew this separation of mother and daughter was a necessary step for both of them. It offered them an opportunity to move beyond the tragedy of Andy's death and to find new ways of functioning in the world. That was something Eleanor Lathrop had resisted doing after the death of her husband, Joanna's father. When D. H. Lathrop died, Eleanor had tried too hard to keep Joanna cocooned with her, creating a kind of hypertogetherness that had done nothing but drive Joanna away. It had been a motherly mistake and probably perfectly understandable under the circumstances, but it was an error in judgment that Eleanor's daughter was trying desperately not to repeat.

"I won't be all alone," Joanna corrected, hoping to keep her answer light and accompanying the comment with what she trusted was a convincing enough smile. "Not with two dogs, one horse, and ten head of cattle to take care of," she added.

"You know what I mean," Jenny insisted with a frown.

"Yes," Joanna conceded. "I do know what you mean. I'll be fine."

"You'll write to me?"

"Every day."

By then they had threaded their way up the narrow road In the parking lot at Camp Whispering Pines. They stopped next to the sign that said NO MOTOR VEHICLES ALLOWED BEYOND THIS POINT. Off to the left ahead of them, nestled at the end of a small clearing and backed by a grove of towering pines, sat a low-slung dining hall. Tucked here and there among the trees were large wood-floored canvas tents, each of them large enough to hold eight cots. The place was at once familiar and foreign. Joanna had stayed there herself years earlier. What seemed inconceivable now was that Jenny was already a "Junior" Girl Scout and old enough to stay there on her own.

Joanna opened the trunk of the Eagle. By the time they had Jenny's bedroll and duffel bag unloaded, a smiling, shorts-clad, and deeply tanned camp counselor came hurrying down the path in their direction. "Hi," she said, smiling down at Jenny and holding out her hand. "I'm Lisa Christman. You must be Jenny Brady, and this must be your mother."

"How did you know?" Jenny asked, gravely shaking the proffered hand.

Lisa laughed. "For one thing, you're the only camper we were missing. For another, ten minutes ago we had a telephone call from someone looking for Sheriff Brady."

Joanna flushed with annoyance. She had deliberately left her pager at home, leaving word with Dispatch that this was to be a real day off. She had planned to spend the whole morning with Jenny. In the afternoon there was that much-needed wardrobe rehabilitation expedition. Both Joanna's chief deputies, Dick Voland and Frank Montoya, had known where she'd be, but she had given strict instructions that, if at all possible, she was to be left off call.

"There's a phone in the camp director's office," Lisa offered helpfully. "You're more than welcome to use that. In the meantime, I'll help Jenny pack her gear up to the cabin. Did you already have lunch?" she asked, addressing Jenny.

Struck suddenly both subdued and shy, Jenny nodded and backed away.

Lisa, clearly an old hand at bridging troublesome parental farewells, forged ahead. "You'll be in Badger," she continued. "'That's just two cabins up the hill from the dining hall. There are some really great girls in there. If you can carry the bedroll, I'll take the bag. That way, I can help you find your bunk and he there to introduce you when the other girls come back from lunch. Is that all right?"

For a moment, Jennifer wavered, hovering between wanting lo go with Lisa and wanting to climb back into her mother's wheezing Eagle. As directed, she reached down and picked up her bedroll, only to drop it again a moment later to throw her arms around Joanna's waist.

"I've changed my mind," she said tearfully. "I don't want to stay. I'd rather go back home with you."

Had the decision been left to Joanna, she would have simply loaded the bedroll and bag back into the car. Lisa, however, remained unmoved and unperturbed. "Hurry up now, Jenny," she insisted. "Tell your mother good-bye so she can go make her phone call. Then we'll need to hurry, or you'll miss this afternoon's nature hike."

To Joanna's amazement, that little bit of gentle prodding was all it took. With one more quick hug, Jenny let go of her mother, picked up her bedroll, and walked away without so much as a single backward glance. Joanna was the one who was left behind with a mist of tears covering her eyes. Grateful lot the dark sunglasses that covered half her face, Joanna glanced at Lisa. If the counselor saw anything amiss, she pre-tended not to notice.

"You go ahead and make your phone call, Sheriff Brady," she said to Joanna.

"When I finish, I can come up ... " Joanna began lamely.

Lisa shook her head. "No," she said. "It's probably better if you just go after that. Jenny will be fine. You'll see."

Sure I will, Joanna thought, looking after them. Just wait until you're a mother. Then you'll know how it feels.

It was almost noon before Hector finally showed up at the station. He was sober by then, but he looked like hell.

"Where've you been?" Nacio demanded. "Uncle Frank just called looking for you. I was supposed to leave hours ago."

"I got held up," Hector said.

"Right," Nacio growled back at him. "You're just lucky Uncle Frank keeps you on. If it was up to me, you'd be out of here. Now, get to work. Mrs. Howard is due back in half an hour. Her Buick needs an oil change, and I haven't had a chance to get near it."

"What's the matter with you this morning, Pepito?" Hector asked with that slow, lazy smile of his. "Did that little blond bruja of yours cut you off?"

Nacio looked at him. He couldn't afford to make any denials. Half sick, he realized that if Hector knew about Bree, most likely so did Uncle Frank and Aunt Yoli.

"Shut up and get to work," he said. "We're too far behind this morning to stand around arguing."

Without another word, Hector headed for the Buick in the far bay and disappeared under the opened hood. An hour later, with things pretty much back under control, Nacio went in search of Ron Torres.

"Hector's here now. Uncle Frank should be in later on. Will you be all right until then?"

Ron grinned and gave him a thumbs-up. "No problem," he said, as a car pulled up to the full-service pumps. "We can handle it."

"Good, then," Nacio said. "because I'm going."

CHAPTER FOUR.

With a hard lump blocking her throat and almost cutting off her ability to breathe, Joanna watched Jenny walk away until she disappeared behind the dining hall with Lisa following twenty or thirty paces behind. It took every bit of effort Joanna could muster to restrain herself from jogging after them. Finally, sighing, she plucked her purse out of the Eagle and went off in search of the camp director's office. Joanna paused in the doorway of the dining hall.

Years before, when Joanna had attended this same camp, she had eaten meals at long narrow tables in this very room. The wood-and-stone building that had once seemed wonderfully spacious and comfortable now appeared cramped and surprisingly shabby. It was packed full of noisy, disheveled girls downing an uninspired-looking lunch. They sat on benches at drearily functional Formica-topped cafeteria tables. Seen through adult eyes, the place reminded Joanna of a few prison dining rooms she had seen. Still, the high-spirited girls who were wolfing down sandwiches at those tables seemed absolutely delighted by both the food and their surroundings,

"May I help you?" someone asked.

"I'm looking for the camp director," Joanna said.

"'That's me. My name's Andrea Petty."

The smiling speaker was a young, nut-brown, shorts-clad African-American woman with a scatter of freckles sprinkled across an upturned nose. She wore a headful of shiny, beaded braids. She didn't look a day over sixteen.

"What can I do for you?" Andrea continued.

"My name's Joanna Brady. Lisa met my daughter and me at the car and said there was a message for me. She also said that if I needed to, I could use the phone in your office."

Andrea gave Joanna an appraising once-over. "All the message said was for you to call your office, but you don't look old enough to be a sheriff."

That makes us even, Joanna thought. You don't look old enough to be a camp director, either. "Thanks," she said. "If you don't mind, I'll take that as a compliment."

Andrea smiled back. "The phone's in here," she said, leading the way into a small Spartan office that opened off the south end of the dining hall. "It's behind the door. There's not much privacy. If you need me to leave . . ."