Rattlesnake Crossing (23 page)

"My, my," the columnist said, her voice dripping with sarcasm. "Are we power-tripping or what?"

"You're welcome to call it whatever you want," Joanna returned. "As you said, I'm merely doing my job."

"And getting a swelled head in the process," Marliss added. "It might be a good thing if you took a good, long look in the mirror once in a while, Joanna. Maybe you'd see how you're treating some of your old friends. Maybe you'd come to your senses."

"Who are you trying to kid, Marliss? The two of us have never been friends, and you know it. And if you ask me, I don't think we're likely to be buddies in the future, either. So give it a rest. Forget the phony friendship stuff. Stay away from me and stay away from my crime scenes."

"Why, I'll ..."

As Joanna drove away, she glanced in the rearview mirror. Marliss Shackleford stood frozen in a billowing cloud of dust, her mouth open in astonished but silent protest.

Within half a mile of driving away, Joanna regretted what she'd done. She understood at once that she had taken a bad situation and made it infinitely worse. If Marliss Shackleford had been gunning for Sheriff Joanna Brady be-fore this, now the columnist would be downright rabid.

Way to go, girl, Joanna scolded herself. You and your big mouth.

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

Half a mile down the road, Joanna was so caught up in mulling over the confrontation with Marliss Shackleford that she barely noticed an early-eighties F-100 Ford pickup coming toward her. Only when the truck wheeled in a sharp U-turn and came speeding after her with its lights flashing on and off did she pay attention. She pulled over immediately. Stepping out of the Blazer, she was standing on the shoulder of Pomerene Road when the pickup stopped beside her. There were two men in the truck—Alton Hosfield, owner of the Triple C, and a younger man who looked to be in his mid-twenties.

"Sheriff Brady, what the hell is going on out here?" Hosfield demanded, leaning forward to speak across the young man in the passenger seat. "The phone's been ringing off the hook. My ranch is crawling with people I don't know, but I can't get any of them to talk to me. I think I deserve some kind of explanation."

"We're conducting a homicide investigation," Joanna said. "Two actually. One body was found up on the ledges just below the cliffs last night. Another was found by Search and Rescue this morning."

"Two homicides," Hosfield echoed. "On my property? You can't be serious."

"I am," Joanna returned. "Katrina Berridge was the cook at Rattlesnake Crossing, just up the road. From the looks of it, the weapon that killed her may very well turn out to be the same one that killed your cattle and wrecked the pump. The other victim, Ashley Brittany, was a biology student from N.A.U. in Flagstaff. She was down here doing a master's degree internship."

Hosfield rammed the pickup into neutral and then climbed out. He came around the front of the truck, clutching a frayed Resistol Stetson in his hands. Meanwhile, his passenger stepped out of the truck as well.

"This is my son Ryan," Alton Hosfield said. "Ryan, this is Sheriff Brady."

Nodding politely in Joanna's direction, Ryan doffed his Denver Rockies baseball cap. He was tall and lean like his father, but his bright blue eyes, unruly mop of long blond hair, and finely chiseled features bore little resemblance to his red-haired father's craggy features. Had Joanna encountered Alton and his two sons on the street, she would have known at once that Alton Hosfield and Jake were father and son. Ryan, on the other hand, didn't look as though he was remotely related to either his father or his half brother.

Joanna acknowledged the polite greeting by offering her hand.

"Glad to make your acquaintance," he said.

Joanna turned back to Alton Hosfield, whose face was knotted with a puzzled frown. "Why does the name Ashley Brittany sound familiar to me?" he asked.

"As I said, she was a student intern," Joanna told him. "Working on a project for the U.S. Department of Agriculture."

"Wait a minute," Ryan offered helpfully. "I think I remember her. Wasn't she the cute little blonde who came around earlier this summer, talking about how we needed to get rid of all the oleanders in the yard because they were damaging the environment and killing off wildlife?"

Comprehension washed across Alton's tanned features. "That's right," he said. "The oleander lady."

"You knew her, then?"

"I talked to her that one time," Alton admitted. "Long enough to tell her to get the hell off my property. She showed up in one of those little Toyota 4x4s, wearing her ID badge around her neck and packing a laptop computer. Ryan's right. She was real full of business, too. She had been up to the house and had seen the oleander we have there—oleander my grandmother planted. Next thing I know she shows up in her shorts, a tank top, and tennis shoes and wants me to get rid of it. Wants me to pull it out by the roots. 'Whatever you do, don't burn it,' she says to me. 'The smoke's poisonous, too.' Give me a break!"

"So what happened?" Joanna asked.

"I told her to take a hike. I told her if she wanted to do something useful, to get her ass up to Montana or North Dakota and do something about leafy spurge. Now, there's something the Feds ought to be worrying about. We've had oleander around the house for seventy-five years and it's never killed even so much as a damned horned toad to say nothing of cattle or deer. Now, leafy spurge, that stuff's a killer."

"Leafy spurge?" Joanna repeated. "I've never even heard of it."

"So far," Hosfield said ominously. "That's because it hasn't shown up in Arizona yet. But that's what I told this woman girl, really that it she wanted to do something useful, she should go to work on the spread of that.
Euphorbia esula
is nightmare stuff. That's the whole problem with the Feds. They get all hot and bothered about things that aren't important, like oleander, for God's sake, and totally ignore the kind of thing that will put me and hundreds of people just like me out of business."

"Well, I can tell you that Ashley Brittany is out of business," Joanna said quietly. "Somebody shot her and then buried her under a pile of rocks up there on the ledge just under the cliffs. When's the last time you saw her, Mr. Hosfield?"

"I only saw her the one time, and I'm not sure when it was. A month ago? Three weeks, maybe? All I remember is, the river had flooded one of my pastures. I needed to get the cattle moved to higher ground or they were going to drown. And here's this little twit of a girl who wants me to drop everything else and chop down a bunch of oleander. Give me a break!"

"What happened?"

"I ran her off. I told her she must have missed the sign when she drove onto my property, or maybe she couldn't read it. But I told her that the little plastic badge with the USDA printed on it meant she was persona non grata on the Triple C and that she'd better get the hell out."

"And she left?"

"You bet."

"And you never saw her again?"

"Sheriff Brady, I already told you ..

"Let me ask you another question, Mr. Hosfield. Have you seen any other strangers around here in the last couple of weeks—somebody who looked like he didn't belong?"

"On the Triple C?"

"Yes. Or anywhere in the neighborhood for that matter."

He considered. "Well," he said, "there are those stupid pretend Indians. Seems like there's always one or two of them wandering around where they're not supposed to, either on foot or riding horseback. Other than that, I don't guess I've seen anybody. But then, Ryan and I have had our hands full, too. I haven't been on the west side of the river since we finally managed to move the stock over here. With the river doing its thing all summer long, we've been keeping most of the stock in fenced pastures on this side. That way, we can get trucks to 'em if we need to."

"So you haven't seen anyone?" Joanna asked.

"Like I told you, nobody except those yahoos from Rattlesnake Crossing," Alton answered.

"What about you?" Joanna turned to Ryan. "Have you seen anyone?"

"No, ma'am," he replied. "Not a soul. Dad and I are working pretty much sunup to sunset, so I don't have time to see anybody."

"There you are," Alton said with a shrug.

"Well," Joanna concluded, "keep your eyes open, and don't hesitate to call if you see anyone or anything suspicious. Right now my detectives are all tied up with crime-scene investigation. When they finish up with that, they'll be around asking questions. Detectives Carpenter and Carbajal will be spearheading the investigation, but they may be joined by officers from Pima and Maricopa counties as well, just so you'll be prepared."

"All right," Alton Hosfield said, clapping his hat back on his head. "I'll expect 'em to be dropping by in the next day or so. In the meantime, Sheriff Brady, I appreciate your taking the time to bring me up to speed. I was beginning to feel just a little paranoid." He paused and grinned. "If you ask Sonja, she'll probably tell you maybe even a bit more paranoid than usual. See you around."

With that he turned on his dusty Tony Lama hoots and returned to his truck. Joanna went back to the Blazer.

It was so late in the afternoon when she reached Benson that she should have driven past the ongoing press conference at the Quarter Horse Cafe without a trace of guilt. She had already put in a very long day after several other very long days. But her father, D. H. Lathrop, had imbued his daughter with his own fierce work ethic. In addition, Joanna Lathrop Brady had been raised in her mother's spotless household, where free-floating guilt outnumbered dust motes three to one. So she
did
drive past, but not without suffering a few guilty pangs over the fact that she was some-how shirking her duty.

She was still battling her attack of guilt when she reached the Rita Road overpass on I-10. That was when inspiration struck.
Belle Philips.
As soon as the woman's name crossed her mind, Joanna reached for her radio. Then, realizing that a dozen reporters probably had their all-hearing scanners tuned to Cochise County frequencies, she fumbled for her phone instead.

Dispatcher Tica Romero took the call. "Where's Detective Carbajal?" Joanna asked.

"Still at the Triple C crime scene, as far as I know," Tica replied. "Do you want me to put you through to him?"

"No. Ask him to contact me by phone rather than radio. Cell phones may not be one hundred percent secure, but they're better than broadcasting everything we say over the airwaves."

"I'll have him get right back to you," Tica said. And she did. Joanna was on the horn with Jaime Carbajal before she had made it as far as Tucson's Wilmot Road.

"What's up, Sheriff Brady?" he asked.

"Jaime, have you had a chance to interview Belle Philips yet?"

“Are you kidding? We've been so busy since the medics hauled her away in the ambulance that I've barely given the woman another thought. Why?"

"Where is she?"

"University Medical Center," he replied. "At least that's where I understood they were taking her."

"It happens that I'm on my way there myself," Joanna told him. "That's where Marianne Maculyea and Jeff Daniels' daughter had surgery today. I was thinking, though, as long as you and Ernie are still tied up with the crime scene, I could just as well stop by and see Ms. Philips. She might actually know something about her husband's business."

"It couldn't hurt," Jaime agreed.

Armed with both official and unofficial reasons for being in Tucson, Joanna fought her way through rush-hour traffic and drove straight to the hospital. After stopping in the gift shop long enough to buy a small bouquet of daisies, she headed upstairs. As the elevator rose through the building, Joanna was grateful that the pediatric ICU was in a different part of the hospital from the adult surgical ICU, where Andy had died. That meant Jeff and Marianne would be in a different waiting room.

Expecting to find one or the other of them inside, Joanna stepped off the elevator and pushed open one of the swinging doors that led into the waiting room. To her surprise, the first person she encountered was Butch Dixon. "What are you doing here?" she asked.

He had been working on a small laptop computer. As soon as he saw Joanna, he closed the lid. "I've been waiting for you," he said.

"What's going on? Are you on your way back to Peoria?"

"Not exactly," he replied. "When Kristin called and said you were coming here to visit Jeff and Marianne, I decided I would, too. That may be the only way I'll have a chance to see you—to turn up wherever you are—sort of like a bad penny. You're not avoiding me, are you?"

"No. Of course not." Joanna was flustered by finding him there. To her consternation, she could feel a hot-faced blush blooming at the base of her neck. "And we did have lunch today," she reminded him.

"That wasn't what I call having lunch," Butch objected. "You breezed in and sat down, but before we had a chance to exchange two words, that woman ..."

"Marliss," Joanna supplied. "Marliss Shackleford."

"Whatever-her-name-is showed up and monopolized the conversation for as long as you were there."

"I'm sorry," Joanna said. "That's what she's like. Pushy."

"And you're skittish," Butch said.

She nodded. "Well, I suppose I am. I'm afraid people will talk, I guess. Afraid of what they'll think."

"What will they think?"

"That you and I are involved. Seriously involved."

"Are we?"

Butch was making it tough for her. Standing there with the little vase of daisies in her hand, while she fielded his questions like a complete ninny. "Yes, we're involved," she said. "But I'm just not ready to be serious. You understand what I mean, don't you?"

"I'm trying," he said. "So far, the signals are a little mixed. Look, Joanna, I want to have a chance to talk." He glanced around the waiting room. "As far as I'm concerned, this isn't the place to do it. How about dinner? Eight o'clock. I'll pick you up here, and we can go someplace nice. The Arizona Inn is just a few blocks away ..."

Along with the hospital itself, the Arizona Inn was an-other place that held painful memories for Joanna Brady. She'd been there, in the dining room talking to Adam York of the DEA when Tony Vargas had walked into Andy's hospital room to finish the job he had started a day earlier in a wash off High Lonesome Road.