Lena Jones 02 - Desert Wives

truck stop. As I ran up to the bank of pay phones to relay my information to the Utah State Police, I saw the taillights on Rebecca’s Geo disappear over a ridge. I didn’t blame her for not stopping. After six months’ forced separation, Esther and her daughter had a lot of catching up to do.
    What I didn’t know was that they would soon be separated again.
    This time, by jailhouse bars.

Chapter 2
    A week after my return from Utah, my old boss walked through the door of Desert Investigations.
    I blinked in surprise. Usually, when Captain Kryzinski, head of the Scottsdale Violent Crimes Unit, wanted to see me, he simply phoned and asked me to come down to Scottsdale Main, where his glass-walled office was only ten feet away from my old cubicle. Then I noticed two other men behind him, one of them wilted from the 115-degree heat. They were in their early thirties, both well over six feet, both blonds. Mr. Wilted’s muscles bulged like a professional wrestler’s, but Mr. Cool, the man who did not have a bead of sweat on him, looked more whippet-thin than buff. If I were a betting woman, I’d lay three-to-one odds that Mr. Cool could beat the crap out of anybody in the room.
    Cops. But not from any Arizona law enforcement agency that I knew of. With their plain gray suits and Temple white shirts, they looked like Utah.
    Jimmy turned away from his computer and stole a worried glance at me before wiping all expression from his face.
    I forced a smile. “Why, Captain Kryzinski, you old hound. It’s been a coon’s age.” Actually, it had been two days since we’d run into each other at an art opening just down the street. After we’d both worked together on a case involving the murder of an art dealer, Kryzinski had developed an interest in painting.
    Today the usually affable Kryzinski wasn’t smiling, a bad sign. He merely gestured toward Mr. Cool. “Lena, this is Sheriff Howard Benson from Zion City, Utah, and his deputy, Scott Yantis. They’re here about a homicide with Arizona ties, and I want you to know that the Scottsdale P.D. is extending them every courtesy.”
    Of course. In Scottsdale, just about one in every four passers-by had Mormon relatives. Those who didn’t knew enough not to offend those who did, because Mormons counted among the state’s major power brokers and held controlling interest in several industries and banks.
    I stood up and held out my hand. Deputy Yantis stepped forward and shook it in friendly enough fashion, but when I held it toward Sheriff Benson, he let my hand hang in the air until I finally lowered it.
    Kryzinski gave him a dirty look but his voice remained neutral. “Sheriff Benson here says he wants to ask you and Jimmy some questions. How about we go into the conference room, Lena? We got lots to talk about.”
    I liked Kryzinski but I didn’t feel like making nice, so I motioned to the hard wooden chairs scattered around the office. “Sit, stand, whatever.”
    Jimmy frowned. Like most Pima Indians, he was very polite. Left to his own devices, he would not only have ushered Sheriff Benson and his deputy into the conference room, but would also have offered them cold drinks of his own private stock of organic prickly pear cactus juice.
    As Kyrzinski and Deputy Yantis sat down and started mopping the sweat off their faces with wrinkled handkerchiefs, I stole a glance through the window. They must have driven up together because I could only see Kryzinski’s blue-and-white parked at the curb. The rest of Main Street’s gallery row appeared deserted, a not unusual situation for early afternoon, when heatstroke could fell the unwary art lover within minutes. Most Scottsdale folk wouldn’t troll the galleries until sunset. The tourists, well, for them Scottsdale employed a state-of-the-art Medi-Vac system. I figured that to brave this heat, the lawmen from Utah had to be in one all-fired rush.
    When I returned my attention to the room, I saw that Benson remained standing. He towered over my desk in the old I’m-Bigger-Than-You-Are game that certain men seem to love so much.
    “Ms. Jones, we have reason to believe you have some knowledge about the murder of Mr. Solomon Royal, of Purity, Utah.”
    But Benson wasn’t the only person who liked to play games. Smiling, I put my jeans-clad legs up on my desk and leaned back, nice and slow and lazy. I folded my hands behind my head and smiled. “Solomon who?”
    “Oh, I think you’ve heard of him, Ms. Jones.