Lena Jones 02 - Desert Wives

time.”
    It wasn’t bad enough that I had lied to Esther. Now I was lying to her child.
    After a little more fussing at his desk, Jimmy was out the door, into his souped-up Camaro, rumbling down Main Street toward the Salt River Pima-Maricopa Indian Reservation, where tribal law ruled and the rest of the world could go hang.
    The afternoon shadows lengthened into darkness, and for a moment, I thought about changing into jogging gear and heading out to Papago Park. But since I had already worked out at the gym that morning honing my karate skills I gave it a pass. Besides, I still felt parched from my three days in Paiute Canyon, where I had learned to my surprise that Utah’s daytime temperatures climbed almost as high as Scottsdale’s.
    Instead, I decided to call Dusty, my boyfriend, and invite him over for the evening. He worked forty miles north on a dude ranch at the backside of Carefree, but now that the Pima Freeway was finished, the drive took less than forty minutes, even with traffic. After a bumpy beginning to our relationship, much of it my fault, we’d recently grown closer.
    I picked up the phone again and punched in the number.
    “Happy Trails.” The voice at the other end of the line belonged to Dusty’s boss, Slim Papadopolus, the owner of the ranch.
    “Hi, handsome. It’s Lena.”
    “Ah, the most beautiful blond in the world.” Before buying the dude ranch, Slim had been a jockey on the top racing circuits and his flattering ways had helped him become as popular with women as with the horses’ owners. None of them seemed to mind that he stood no more than 5’3” in his built-up cowboy boots.
    “What can I do for you, sweetheart? You want to come up here and ride tomorrow? You do, I’ll get Lady saddled first thing in the morning. Unless you want to try that new Appaloosa we just got in. I figure you can handle him.”
    The prospect appealed, but I declined. “I’d love to, but I’m in the middle of a case and can’t spare the time. I was just calling to see if Dusty was through for the day and wanted to be treated to a home-cooked meal.”
    Slim usually laughed when I said something like this, because my inability to cook was legendary. This time, though, he just said, “Dusty, he’s, ah, he’s not here.”
    That was odd. Dusty seldom went anywhere. Other than the times he took tourists out on a trail drive, his excursions to the nearby country-western bars or down to Scottsdale to see me tended to be the sum total of his worldly travels.
    I wasn’t Dusty’s baby-sitter. He’d probably taken that old truck of his out for a tune-up. “When he gets back, tell him I called.”
    “Will do.” Slim sounded relieved.
    I hung up the phone and prepared for my nightly ordeal. Hating myself for my weakness, I reached down into my carry-all and took out my .38 revolver. I turned off the office lights, leaving only the neon sign outside to glimmer “Desert Investigations” to an empty street. Since it was not an Art Walk night, the one evening during the week when the art galleries stayed open until nine o’clock, all the businesses had already closed. I was alone.
    But, hey, I’d been alone almost all of my life, so what was the big deal?
    Plenty,
a mean little voice inside me hissed.
Plenty.
    I locked the office and, revolver pointed before me, started up the narrow staircase at the side of the building to my apartment. Even though I had taken every security precaution possible, every time I entered my apartment all my childhood fears returned. Not too surprising since at the age of nine, I’d inadvertently locked myself in my own bedroom with my foster father, who then celebrated the occasion by raping me. The near-misses I’d endured during my last murder case hadn’t helped my nerves, either.
    The metal door with which I had replaced the wooden one looked solid enough to withstand an elephant stampede, but I examined the locks and the hinges carefully. As on other nights, my paranoia remained unfounded. I saw no gouges around the door’s frame; the locks and hinges remained intact. Still, I pressed my ear against the door and listened. Silence.
    Taking a deep breath, I unlocked the upper and lower deadbolts, shoved the door open with my foot, and entered the apartment gun-first, leaving the door ajar behind me in case I needed a fast exit.
    As usual, I had left the lights on before coming downstairs to work that morning, but I still checked every corner for telltale