J. Jance - Rattlesnake Crossing

As she plugged the phone into the battery recharger on the kitchen counter, she realized Butch was watching her-watching and frowning. "What's wrong?" she asked.

"That's where you keep all that stuff, right there in the kitchen? Shouldn't the guns be locked up in a cabinet or something?"

"Andy always used to lock up his gun when he came home from work, but Jenny was a lot younger then. Jenny and I talked about it a few months back. She knows enough to leave the guns alone, and when we're rushing around here to leave in the morning, it's a lot more convenient for me to finish cleaning up the kitchen and then grab them on my way out the door."

"Oh." That was all Butch said, but it seemed to Joanna that she noted a trace of disapproval in the way he said it. That got her back up. What right does he have to come barging into the house, uninvited, and start criticizing the way jenny and I live together? She was about to say something about it when she looked through the kitchen doorway and caught sight of the dining room table. It was set with good dishes, cloth napkins, champagne glasses, and an ice bucket with a chilled bottle of champagne.

"The idea was to celebrate buying my house," he said apologetically. "The current owner gave me permission to go there and have a picnic supper on the front porch. Since there's no furniture inside, it had to be an outside paperplates-and-plastic-forks kind of affair. Once I got here, though, and had real dishes and glassware to work with, it turned into something more elaborate. Would you like me to pour you a glass of champagne?"

Butch stopped talking abruptly, like a windup toy whose spring had come unwound. Joanna had been ready to nail him for what she regarded as uncalled-for interference, but her momentary anger dissolved in the face of his sudden stricken silence.

Why, he's nervous, Joanna realized. He's almost as nervous and unsure of himself as I am.

"No champagne until after I shower," she told him.

A few minutes later, standing under a soothing stream of hot, steamy water, Joanna felt the awful events of the day slowly drain out of her body. In her mind's eye she kept replaying that little scene in the kitchen and Butch's unspoken disapproval as she the guns away in thelie drawer. Initially the incident had made her cross, but in retrospect it opened a window onto a whole series of bittersweet memories.

The day Jenny was born, a little girl from Douglas-a two-year-old toddler-had died as a result of playing with her father's loaded pistol. While Joanna had been in the early stages of labor at the Copper Queen Hospital in Bisbee, Andy had been down in Douglas at the Cochise County Hospital, taking a report from the bereaved parents. That little girl's death had made a profound impression on Andrew Roy Brady, new father and rookie cop. From then on, whenever possible, he had left his.357 closed up in his locker at work. The.38 Chief, his backup weapon, he had kept in a locked drawer of the rolltop desk in the bedroom.

Only now, long after the fact, did Joanna realize how conscientious Andy had been about that. He had never once complained about the day-to-day inconvenience. He had simply done it. It struck Joanna that, in that regard, Butch and Andy weren't so very different.

Stepping out of the shower, she toweled her hair dry and applied a few strokes of makeup. Then, wearing a comfortable short-sleeved blouse and a pair of shorts, she emerged from the bathroom and headed straight for the kitchen, where she retrieved the two guns from the drawer and started back toward the bedroom.

"You're right," she said in answer to Butch's raised eyebrow and unasked question as she hurried past. "You and Andy are both right on this one, and I'm wrong. Even though Jenny and I talked this over, I should have been keeping the guns locked up all along."

Butch followed her as far as the bedroom door. "Look," he said, "I didn't mean to sound like I was telling you what to do…"

"It's okay," she said. "When you're right, you're right. Now, didn't somebody say something about champagne?"

"Coming right up," he said. "Do you want to sip it first, or would you rather eat?"

"Eat, I think," she told him. "Until I smelled that freshly baked bread, I didn't have any idea how hungry I was."

In the dining room, the candles were lit. Butch held out the chair for Joanna to be seated. He poured a glass of the sparkly golden liquid and handed it to her, then poured one for himself.

"To your new house," Joanna said, smiling and lifting her glass to his.

"Yes," he responded. "To my new house"

There was a momentary silence; then they started talking at once. Butch said, "I hope you like-"

And Joanna said, "I'm sorry I-"

They both dissolved into nervous laughter. "All right, now," Butch said. "One at a time. I hope you like chef's salad."

"I love chef's salad," Joanna replied. "And I'm sorry I didn't get to see your house today. Maybe tomorrow."

"Given what's been going on around here, I won't hold my breath," he said. "It's been real bad for you, hasn't it?" He handed her a basket filled with thick slices of the freshly baked bread. She took one slice-still slightly warm to the touch-and slathered it with butter, nodding as she did so.

"This afternoon I thought I had it all figured out," she told him. "Then the whole thing fell apart on me. By the time it was over, it turned out that what I thought I knew I didn't know at all."

"Do you want to talk about it?" Butch asked.

"Not really. I guess what I need to do now is just forget about it. Try to keep work at work and home at home."

Butch passed her a bowl of dressing. "It's Roquefort," he said. "My own recipe.”

"Homemade?"

"But of course. If it's any consolation, the same thing happened to me today. What I thought I had all figured out for Chapter One wasn't figured out at all."

"So you've started, then-writing, I mean."

"Everybody always says make an outline," Butch said. "So I tried that. I worked on the damned outline for a solid week and wasn't getting anywhere. Then I finally figured out what the problem is. I've always hated outlining. Always. So I threw out the outline and started over from scratch."

Dipping a sprig of asparagus into the dressing, Joanna took a tentative bite of her salad. "This is delicious," she said, savoring the tangy flavor on her tongue.

"See there?" Butch said with a grin. "I'll bet you thought I was just another pretty face." And then they laughed some more.

"Seriously, though. You said you were going to write mysteries," Joanna said. "What kind?"

"Well," Butch said, "that's what I thought I had figured out. I thought I'd write books about a kind of tough-guy cop. Now I'm not so sure."

"Why? What changed your mind?"

"You."

"Me?" Joanna said. "How come?"

"Because from what I've seen in the last few days around here, being a cop is a whole lot harder than I ever thought. And I'm not so sure I want to write about a tough guy, either. There are a lot of those in fiction, you know."

"Are there?"

"Sure. So maybe I'll write a book with a female protagonist instead."

"I see. A lady detective." Joanna thought about that for a time before she spoke again. "Have you always liked mysteries?" she asked. "Did you read all those old books when you were a kid, the ones about the Hardy Boys and Nancy Drew?"

"I was a boy, I'll have you know," Butch replied indignantly. "I wouldn't have been caught dead reading a Nancy Drew."

"But you did read the Hardy Boys," Joanna persisted.

"Of course. Didn't everybody?"

Again silence filled the room and they ate without speaking. Joanna, wanting to keep things light, tried drawing him out. "Have you chosen a pen name yet?"