Rattlesnake Crossing

Sonja glanced in Joanna's direction and caught her studying the diplomas. 'Looking at the artifacts, are you?' she asked with a smile.

'Artifacts?' Joanna repeated, ashamed to have been caught snooping.

Sonja laughed again. 'I was a Home Ec major,' she said. 'I don't think they make those anymore. Since I was in Home Ec and Alton was an Aggie, everybody thought it was a match made in heaven. We met at a mixer between my dorm and his fraternity the first week of school our freshman year. I was in Pima Hall-sort of an honors dorm for poor but smart girls.' She shrugged. 'What can I tell you? It was love at first sight.'

They've spent more than thirty-five years together, Joanna thought. The stab of hurtful jealousy that passed through her might have been Sonja Hosfield's paring knife plunged deep in her heart. She and Andy never had a chance to come near twenty-five years, much less thirty-five.

The words burst out of Joanna's mouth before she could stop them. 'You're lucky to have had so much time together. My husband died on the night of our tenth anniversary.”

Sonja slopped chopping. 'I'm sorry,' she said.

'I'm sorry, too,' Joanna said guiltily. 'I shouldn't have brought it tip.'

'No, it's fine. But you're wrong about the timing-ours, that is. We haven't had that many years together, either. Alton and I went together all through college, but then we broke up during spring semester of our senior year. We had a big fight over something stupid, and I gave Alton back his engagement ring. He wanted me to take birth control pills, you see. They were fairly new back then. He said he didn't want us to, as they called it back then, 'get in trouble and have to get married.' But birth control pills were against my religion-or at least they were against my parents' religion. I told him if he really loved me he wouldn't even ask me to do such a sinful thing.'

Sonja scraped the pile of finely chopped onions across the cutting board into a mixing bowl. Then she absently stirred the contents of the bowl with the blade of her knife. 'I'm not sure how I came to all those erroneous conclusions,' she said finally. 'Here we were sleeping together-had been for years. It seems to me now that risking an unwed pregnancy should have counted as more of a sin than taking birth control pills, but then Home Ec majors always were strong on cooking and short on philosophy.'

She stopped stirring and brought the dish of freshly made salsa over to the table. The combination of chopped tomatoes, onions, and cilantro was enough to make Joanna's eyes water as well.

'With everything that's on TV and in the movies nowadays,' Sonja continued, 'the whole thing sounds ridiculous-almost quaint, doesn't it? But it wasn't ridiculous b then. Not at all, and we broke up over it. Alton and I each married other people and spent the next eighteen or nineteen years in hell. I found someone who didn't want a stay-at-home wife, and Alton married someone who wasn't one. By the time we met again, at our twentieth class reunion, we were both divorced. In our case, it was re-love at first sight. So we haven't been married very long, either. More tea?'

As the jasmine-laced tea poured over Joanna's partially melted ice cubes, she was astonished at the ease with which she and Sonja had fallen into this conversation. They were strangers, and yet they might have been friends forever. Joanna suspected that a good deal of Sonja's volubility had do with plain, ordinary loneliness. Stuck out here on the far fringes of civilized Cochise County, Sonja Hosfield probably didn't have many people to talk to outside the confines circle of her own small family.

'Do you have any children?' Sonja asked.

Sipping her tea, Joanna nodded. 'A daughter. Her name's Jenny-Jennifer Ann. She's eleven.'

'So she's not all that much younger than Jake,' Sonja said. 'He just turned twelve this past March. He's ours together, Alton 's and mine, but we both have other kids besides. He has a son, Ryan, and a daughter, Felicia, from his first marriage, and I have two boys-men now-Matt and Jason. When I divorced their father, the boys couldn't understand why I was leaving. They opted to stay with the big bucks-with the house and the cars and the swimming pool. Living in a ratty little two-bedroom apartment wasn't for them. I don't think they've ever forgiven me. Not for leaving then, and certainly not for being happy now.'

Taking another knife from a wooden block on the counter, Sonja began to slice up the cornbread. 'What happened to your husband?' she asked. 'Was he ill?'

Joanna steeled herself to tell the story once again. 'He was a police officer,' she said. 'He was shot.'

'In the line of duty?'

Even though Deputy Andrew Roy Brady had been officially off duty at the time of the incident, the county commissioners had ruled his fatality as line of duty. 'That's right,' she said.

Sonja nodded. 'I remember now. He was running for office at the time, for sheriff.'

'Yes,' Joanna said. 'After the funeral, some of his supporters asked me to run in his stead, and here I am.'

'I've never been one of those women's libbers,' Sonja said. 'Being a woman in a man's job must be difficult at times.'

Joanna glanced around Sonja Hosfield's old-fashioned and industrious but nonetheless spotless kitchen. It was Sheriff Brady's turn to smile. 'I don't know,' she said. 'I'm not so sure being a woman in a woman's job isn't just as hard.'

Sonja shrugged. 'Maybe it is.'

For a little while it was quiet in the kitchen, except for the noisy hum of a teapot-shaped electric clock on the wall over the stove. The sound of it served as a reminder to Sheriff Brady that she was neglecting her responsibilities. 'About last night…' Joanna began.

'I heard them,' Sonja told her. 'The gunshots, that is. There were several of them, one right after another. Then, after a pause, there were several more. They sounded like the M-80 firecrackers my boys used to like so much when they were kids. It's not the first time I've heard them in the last few weeks. I figured they were just leftovers from somebody's Fourth of July. Now, though, I'm thinking Martin's not much of a shot and this was the first time he’s actually managed to hit something.'

Noting that Sonja Hosfield immediately assumed that Martin Scorsby was the person responsible, Joanna let that slide for the moment. 'You said you heard shots. Does that mean your husband didn't?'

'Right,' Sonja said. ' Alton went to Vietnam, you see. A land mine blew up close enough to him that it knocked him out. He wasn't badly hurt. Unlike some of his buddies, he didn't lose an arm or a leg, but he came home with a severe hearing loss. Without his hearing aids, he's deaf as a post. According to the VA, his deafness isn't service- related. He's been fighting the benefits people about it for years, but it hasn't done any good. I guess the people in charge of claims are just as deaf as he is.'

'I noticed the sign down by the road. No feds allowed. Is that why he's mad at them, because he thinks they mismanaged his VA claim?'

Sonja shook her head. 'He's mad at them because every time he turns around, there's some other federal regulation or requirement that gets in the way of his being able to run his ranch. He's sick and tired of governmental interferenc and as far as I'm concerned, the man's entitled to his opinion.'

'Does that opinion extend to the Cochise County Sheriff's Department?' Joanna asked.

Sonja smiled. 'I shouldn't think so, especially since you're here to help straighten out this mess with Scorsby.”

Somewhat reassured, Joanna resumed her questioning. 'So, getting back to that, what time did you hear the shots?

'Ten-thirty, maybe? The ten o'clock news had just gone off and I was getting ready for bed. Alton was already asleep.'

Just then there was a rumbling outside the house. It sounded like several vehicles arriving at once. When Joanna lanced out the window, however, she saw only two-Jake Hosfield's ATV and a 1980s-era Ford pickup. While she watched, Jake jumped off the ATV, pulled off his helmet, and dashed toward the house. Two men climbed out of the other vehicle. After what looked like a brief conference across the bed of the pickup, one of the two walked away and disappeared into a barnlike structure, while the other-thee driver-limped toward the house.

Sonja Hosfield peeked out the same window. 'I'd better go let him know what's what,' she said. With that she slipped off her apron and hung it on one peg of a hat rack just to the left of the back door.

Feeling a little like a voyeur, Joanna watched as Sonja darted out the back door and hurried up the path to meet her husband. Tall and angular, Alton Hosfield doffed his cowboy hat and had to lean down to kiss the top of his wife's head. Then, holding hands, the two of them continued on toward the house.