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“Maybe they’re cousins. Maybe a thousand other possibilities. Maybe Cecilia Burgess went to the good father for confession. Are the little old lady gossips assuming that there’s an affair going on? That’s pretty thin, Estelle.”
    “I’m just telling you what Mary Vallo told me. It’s another angle.” She nodded at my Blazer. “Let’s drop that off at my house.”
    I followed her car north until, just beyond the gas station, she turned off on a lane between two irrigated cornfields. A quarter-mile farther on, tucked under two massive ancient cottonwoods, was a tiny adobe. Estelle pulled into the driveway and gestured for me to park close to the wire fence. Judging from the outside, the house had four rooms at most. But it was neat and clean, and the nearest noisy railroad or interstate was seventy-five miles away. It would be peaceful as a tomb at night.
    “Cute place,” I said as I settled into the county car.
    “It’s cheap,” Estelle said. “Until Francis and I decide what we want to do this fall.”
    “Do?”
    Estelle shrugged. “We might not want to spend the winter here. The house has just a couple of those little wall heaters…and they’re not much good.”
    “I don’t imagine either one of you is home much.”
    “No. Especially not this week. But he’s always said he wanted to practice in a tiny village.”
    “He got his wish. This is hardly Denver.” We rode silently for a few minutes, and I watched civilization thin as we drew away from the village. “How do you like it here?”
    “Interesting,” she said. “It’s quite an experience being the only cop in town. You wouldn’t believe some of the domestic disputes I’ve been called to.”
    “I think I would. What do the
solteronas
think?”
    Estelle grinned. “About me, you mean?”
    “Uh huh. If the old maids are upset at the idea of a woman talking to a priest, what must they think about a female deputy sheriff?” She didn’t answer right away, and I added, “Has there ever been one around here?”
    She shook her head. “I don’t think so.”
    “I imagine that takes some adjustment.” I stretched to ease the seat belt tension on my full stomach. “They’ll get used to it, like anything else. And in time, they’ll all wonder how the hell they ever did without.”
    “I don’t know,” she said. “My mother isn’t used to the idea yet.”
    I knew Felipina Reyes pretty well. The old woman, a widow for twenty years, lived alone in Tres Santos, a tiny village thirty miles south of the U.S.-Mexican border.
    When Estelle had worked for me in Posadas, she was only an hour’s drive north from her mother, but to Felipina Reyes, her daughter might as well have worked on the moon.
    And ay! To be carrying around a revolver as an
agente del Alguacil Mayor de un contado en los Estados Unidos!
Double ay.
    “So what else did you find out this morning?” I asked.
    “Well, I talked with Orlando Garcia.”
    “Who’s he?”
    “He owns Garcia’s Trading Post, right across from where you were eating.”
    “Son of a gun. I never saw your car over there.”
    Estelle grinned briefly and left me hanging. Maybe she could go invisible; I don’t know. “Garcia had a lot to say about Cecilia’s boyfriend up at the springs. Not much of it good.”
    Before she had time to elaborate on all the juicy particulars, we reached the turnoff. She swung the patrol car into the campground below Steamboat Rock and then drove to the far end of the parking lot. A grove of runty Douglas firs would provide enough shade to keep the Ford from turning into an oven.
    The trail east to the hot springs followed a small stream that ran into Isidro Creek. We walked slowly in deference to the discomfort in my gut. After a couple of minutes, I felt better. Maybe there was something to this exercise business. I even had enough breath for a question.
    “What’s the boyfriend’s name? Did Garcia know that? Mary Vallo never said.”
    Estelle nodded. “H. T.