Lena Jones 02 - Desert Wives

shook.
    Abel Corbett stood in the center of the office for a moment, obviously loathe to speak to a lowly woman. Then necessity conquered philosophy, and he looked down at me.
Really
down, as if at a bug.
    “You must be Lena Jones.” Nature, having one of her little jokes, gave him a girlishly high voice. It sort of tickled me.
    “That’s me, sure enough.”
    “Where’s my daughter?” With his almost-white hair and light blue eyes, he bore a vague resemblance to Sheriff Benson, and I wondered briefly if the two were related. It wasn’t impossible. The gene pool ran pretty small on the Arizona Strip.
    “Danged if I know.” I smiled.
    For a moment he didn’t know how to respond to my denial, then male supremacy reasserted itself. “Don’t hand me that. I demand that you turn Rebecca over to me. Now.”
    “Why? So you can pimp her out to some other prophet?”
    I thought he’d faint from shock. From the stories Esther had told me about Purity, women never challenged men. Then again, Abel must have become used to it once he moved away.
    Maybe that was why he’d returned to the compound.
    He sputtered for a few seconds, then leaned over my desk, not noticing Jimmy rise quietly from his chair and begin toward him. “Tell me where my daughter is or I’ll…”
    “Get your skinny white ass out of this office before I party on it.” Jimmy stood right behind him.
    Abel Corbett twirled around and for a moment, it looked like he was going to throw a punch. But after taking note of Jimmy’s own height and considerably heavier bulk, he obviously thought better of it.
    “The law’s on my side,” he squeaked, as he backed away from my partner.
    I motioned toward the door. “Leave.”
    He looked at me, then at Jimmy. He left.
    “Oh, Jimmy, what are we going to do?” My voice trembled, but I didn’t care.
    Jimmy thought a moment, then said, “I have this cousin, Donny, he’s in one of the reservation gangs, the Rez Bloods. His posse could take care of Abel for us.”
    I didn’t say anything. For a long while, neither did Jimmy. Then he sat back down and put his head in his hands. When he finally looked back up at me, he said, “Well, we’ve got to do something.”
    “Yeah.”
    He turned back to his computer and tapped fitfully at it. I tried to immerse myself in paperwork, but the names and numbers jumbled together until they looked like Cyrillic.
    I studied them for probably another half hour, then gave up.
    “Jimmy?”
    He turned around so quickly I knew he’d had the same trouble concentrating. “What?”
    “I have to go back to Utah. The only way to prove Esther didn’t murder Solomon Royal is for me to find out who did it. That Benson clown certainly won’t.”
    To my surprise, Jimmy nodded. “I’ll go with you.”
    Shaking my head, I said, “We’re in the middle of several investigations here, including that damned firebug and the microchip thefts. Someone has to handle them.”
    He nodded. “Then take Dusty. That place is too dangerous for a woman alone.”
    I rolled my eyes. “Oh, please, not you, too. Besides, I haven’t been able to reach Dusty for days. That’s why I’ll need a special favor from you. You used to live in Utah and you still have contacts up there.”
    “Yeah, my parents, for instance.” You don’t often get a chance to hear a Pima turn sarcastic on you, but when they do, it can be cutting.
    “Then help me find a place to stay near the compound, someplace even closer than the motel. But not Paiute Canyon. I have no way of knowing how much time it’ll take me to figure out this mess, and I’ll need access to a phone and other modern conveniences. Hell, if you can somehow get me into the compound, that would be ideal.”
    He scowled, another Pima rarity.
    “Jimmy? If you won’t help me, do it for Rebecca. And Esther.”
    He picked up the phone.

Chapter 5
    Jimmy worked his magic again, and two days later I was on my way back to the Arizona Strip.
    The drive up I-17 toward Flagstaff was pleasant, watching the low Sonoran Desert evolve slowly to high chaparral, then miles and miles of sweet-scented Ponderosa pine. But once I turned out of Flagstaff on Route 89 to circumvent the Grand Canyon, the terrain morphed back into high desert. By the time I’d looped around the canyon, took 89A over the mountains, then dropped back down to the Kaibab Indian Reservation, the scenery looked as bleak as the Sonoran on a very bad day.
    Then the scenery flipped on me