"Onions," she explained. "Crying's the best part of making salsa. If there aren't a few tears mixed in, it's not real salsa."

Looking around the room, Joanna saw the usual kitchen clutter and homey counter stuff-a can opener and coffee-pot; an aging toaster oven; an old gray-and-blue crock holding a selection of spoons and spatulas. Across the room sat an old Tappan gas range and a Frigidaire refrigerator, both of which looked like they belonged on the 1950s-era set of I Love Lucy. There was no dishwasher, only a drainboard with an empty wire dish rack sitting to one side of the double rink.

On the ledge of the window stood a series of several handmade clay pitchers. Roughly formed and out of balance, they struck a familiar note-the kind of handiwork that childish hands might create in a Bible school arts and crafts session. Well-used pots and pans dangled from a metal framework attached to the high ceiling. Old-fashioned wooden cupboards complete with white knob handles went all the way to that same ceiling. A worn step stool in one corner of the room hinted that it might be the secret to making Sonja's top shelves more accessible.

Next to the cupboard at the far end of the table was a wall-mounted phone-the old-fashioned dial type. Next to that hung two framed diplomas from the University of Arizona. One listed the recipient as Sonja Marie Hemmelberg. The other had been issued to David Alton Hosfield. Both of them dated from the mid-sixties.

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?"