Lena Jones 02 - Desert Wives

ugly story.
    After three months of marriage, Alice became pregnant. Two months later she was dead. Half-crazed from grief, Virginia left Solomon’s house one night and began walking up the dirt road. The next day, dehydrated and filthy, she reached the gas station at the highway junction, where Leo had just finished filling up his truck. He knew by her clothes where she had come from, so he drove her into Zion City and left her at the battered women’s shelter run by a local church.
    “She was so sad, so pathetic, I couldn’t get her out of my mind,” he said. “When I ran into her again a year later, it was like meeting a different person.”
    As soon as I trusted my voice, I said, “Virginia, you had one hell of a motive for killing Solomon Royal.”
    She looked me straight in the eye. “I never killed that man.”
    That’s what all murderers say, isn’t it?
    I tried to act normal on the ride back to Purity but from the looks Saul threw in my direction, I knew I’d failed.
    “You’re awful quiet,” he said, after we’d covered more than ten miles in silence. “Your partner tell you anything interesting?”
    “Not much.”
    “C’mon, Lena. You haven’t been yourself since we left Virginia’s. I’ve heard more conversation from rocks.”
    While we barreled along the highway the arid landscape slid by with all the charm of the surface of the moon. I wondered how I’d ever found it beautiful. This was truly a no-man’s land, filled with nothing but dried brush, sand, and rocks. Here and there, the desperate green of a prickly pear cactus added some color to the vegetation, but other than that, everything was beige, beige, and more beige. If the sky hadn’t been blue and the nearby cliffs a fiery scarlet, I could have believed the hand of God had reached down and sucked all the color out of the land in Divine retribution. I was just thinking that my Baptist foster parents might have been right when they told me God punished the world for its sins when Saul pulled the truck over to the shoulder and stopped.
    “What’s wrong?”
    I searched for a usable lie, but for once, came up empty-handed.
    Saul settled back in the seat. “You found out about Micah and Karen, didn’t you? And you’ve already tried and convicted me. Funny. I expected better from you.”
    I could probably have bluffed my way out of it, but what would be the point? If we were going to have a physical confrontation over this, I’d rather have it near the highway. Saul was no spring chicken and I figured I could handle him unless he was armed, and I’d never seen him carry a gun.
    “My partner ran an Internet search on everyone in the compound and, yes, your name came up.”
    He didn’t say anything for a few seconds, then burst out, “Goddamn computers are going to be the death of us all!”
    A Dodge van passed us, going in the opposite direction. Just the knowledge that we were still on a public highway comforted me. That and my .38 strapped to my thigh under my dress. “Saul, is that all you have to say?” I figured it would take no more than two seconds to lift up my skirt, unsnap my holster, and pull my gun. Yeah, I could handle him.
    After taking a few deep breaths, he said in a tight voice, “I didn’t kill Micah, Lena. The Salt Lake police believe an old business associate of his killed him in retribution for a deal gone bad.”
    I took a few deep breaths of my own. “Then why didn’t they arrest him?”
    “Because he was killed in a head-on collision on I-80 before they could.”
    “How convenient.”
    The smile he attempted didn’t quite come off. “I can’t help that, Lena. And as for my wife, we’d been having some trouble, I’ll not deny that. Yeah, she had an affair with Micah, but I didn’t hold it against her. She’d finally become tired of my own running around and decided to show me how it felt. She was never in love with him.”
    “She
left
you.”
    His knuckles grew white as he clutched the steering wheel. Another van passed, a Japanese mini of some sort, followed closely by two pickups, both American-made. “Remember, she came back.”
    “Only after Micah died.”
    “She’d have come back anyway.”
    “So you say.”
    “Right. So I say.”
    Only fools and self-servers pretended to know the probable actions of dead people, and Saul was no fool. “Did Karen show any previous symptoms before the heart attack that killed her?”
    Saul shook his head. “She’d never been sick a day