Damage Control by J. A. Jance

house.”
    And out of harm’s way, Joanna thought.
    By then she was gearing up to deliver a heated response of her own—one that would defend both her father and herself—but something held her back. For one thing, Hank Lathrop had been dead for years. It seemed likely to Joanna that Eleanor’s current tirade had far less to do with her daughter’s working or with her first husband’s long-ago marital transgressions than it did with some of George Winfield’s current ones.
    “What’s going on, Mom?” Joanna asked.
    Just then, Dennis gave an involuntary little jump. It wasn’tenough to awaken him, but it was enough of an interruption to allow Eleanor to fall silent in an attempt to disregard her daughter’s question.
    “Mom?” Joanna insisted.
    To Joanna’s astonishment, Eleanor’s eyes suddenly filled with tears. She set the baby bottle down on the side table next to the rocker and plucked a tissue from a nearby box.
    “I just wanted to spend the weekend with my husband, that’s all,” she said, dabbing at her eyes. “It feels like I’m living through exactly the same thing—same song, second verse.”
    Seeing her mother dissolve into tears of self-pity was almost as unexpected as hearing Frank Montoya lose his temper on the telephone. In Joanna’s experience, both were wholly unprecedented.
    “Mom, I’m sorry things are so busy right now,” Joanna said placatingly. “And I’m sure George is, too. Four unexplained deaths occurred inside our jurisdiction this weekend. Four. All of them are George’s and my responsibility. I have a whole department of people working for me. George has to make do with one full-time clerk, weekdays only, and one assistant who’s currently off on a two-week vacation.”
    “Madge doesn’t do all that much,” Eleanor said. “She’s next to useless. George should definitely have more people working for him—more qualified people.”
    Tell that to the Board of Supervisors, Joanna thought. “Yes, he should,” she agreed.
    “At his age, he shouldn’t be working so hard,” Eleanor added.
    He likes working this hard, Joanna thought. He actually enjoys it. “He likes being useful,” she said aloud.
    “Well, so do I,” Eleanor said. “That’s why it’s a good thing Iwas able to come here and help out today—so I can feel useful, too. You’re almost out of laundry detergent, by the way.”
    As Eleanor made the sudden shift back to business as usual, the effect on her daughter was jarring. Joanna didn’t think there was any purpose to be served in mentioning that Butch was the one who handled most of the grocery shopping and that their need for laundry detergent should be added to his list rather than hers.
    “Thanks,” Joanna said. “I’ll make a note of it.”
    “And I gave the rest of that dead pizza to the dogs. It looked ghastly.”
    That one hurt. With a growing teenager in the house, leftover pizza was an unusual and welcome treat. Joanna had been hoping there might still be a single piece of double-pepperoni lingering in the fridge that she could grab for her lunch.
    Eleanor turned her attention back to the sleeping baby. “Have you noticed that Dennis looks just like you?” she asked. “Those long reddish-blond eyelashes. That funny half-smile when he’s sleeping. George thinks he looks like Butch, but then George didn’t know you when you were a baby.”
    First the tears and now this? Joanna wondered. Sentimentality on her mother’s part was totally out of character.
    “Mom,” Joanna said. “What’s wrong?”
    “Nothing,” Eleanor said abruptly. “Nothing at all.”
    Her sharp-toned denial was enough to startle Dennis out of his doze. His bright blue eyes popped open, and he looked around. Focusing on his grandmother’s face, which was familiar but not familiar enough, he started tuning up for a good bawl. Before he managed that, however, Eleanor rose to her feet and handed him over to his mother.
    “There you go,” she said.