"We're not exactly on the same wavelength, then, are we, Marliss?"
"What do you mean?"
"You say your job is to find an angle," Joanna told her. "Mine is to enforce the law. Between the two, I don't think there's a lot of common ground."
Marliss Shackleford's jaw stiffened. Joanna Brady had landed a blow, and both women knew it.
"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."