Read Lena Jones 02 - Desert Wives for Free Online Page A

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 shadows. My mainly beige living room, the only spot of color being the huge George Haozous painting, proved free of lurking assassins. So did the hall closet, kitchen and bath.
    But the bedroom had always scared me the most, and as I approached it down the short hallway, my breath hitched as if I had run a four-minute mile. With a kick, I slammed the door back, hoping to injure anyone who might be lurking behind it. No one was. Then I walked over to the bed, jerked the spread away and knelt down, revolver thrust forward. All that greeted me there were a few harmless dust bunnies.
    But now came the worst part: the long, dark closet. My foster father had hidden in a closet.
    Gun still before me, I rolled back the sliding door and jumped away, ready to blast anything that moved.
    Nothing did.
    I sighed in relief, and after double-checking to make sure no one had crept into the apartment behind me, I returned to the front door and double-locked it.
    Now I was safe, or at least as safe as my .38 and my fortress of an apartment could keep me. I wandered over to the stereo, inserted a John Lee Hooker CD, then went back to the kitchen. As John Lee sang about empty beds and lonely nights, I put my gun down within easy reach on the kitchen counter, took a Michelina’s Lasagna with Marinara Sauce out of the freezer and nuked it. I ate my dinner standing up, my back to the sink all the while, keeping a steady eye on the front door.
    A girl can never be too