Desert Lost (9781615952229) Read Free

all.” Which is what I hoped, since most murder victims were killed by their nearest and dearest, and when threatened—even by her relatives—Rosella could play rough.
    â€œYou’d better call her, Lena. She’ll want to know.”
    And she could help with the I.D. “Right. But yesterday she called and told me she was headed toward Second Zion to pick up a couple of runaways, that if I don’t hear from her within twenty-four hours, to alert DPS.”
    Rosella wasn’t being paranoid. Prophet Shupe didn’t appreciate people who helped his cash cows break out of the pasture. The God Squad, his private police force, obeyed his every command, and it was rumored that he wanted my friend dead.
    I did some quick math. If Rosella left Scottsdale before six and cheated the speed limit all the way to Second Zion, she could have arrived around midnight. The girls would be waiting for her in some agreed-upon desert canyon. It would take around a half hour to hike them out and get back on the road, six ticket-risking hours for the drive back, then another hour to get them settled in a Phoenix safe house. If the rescue went according to schedule, Rosella could possibly be in her own bed by nine a.m. I checked my watch. Nine-thirty. Waving a hovering Jimmy away, I dialed her home number, but it switched over to voice mail. I left a quick message, then tried her cell. Same thing.
    â€œShe’s probably sleeping,” Jimmy said. “Try again in a few minutes. Or if you want, I can drive to her house right now and roust her.”
    In case the victim was Rosella’s sister—she had at least thirty—I wanted my friend to get as much rest as possible before confronting grief. “I’ll go over there in a couple of hours.” That said, I began returning phone calls from the lame, the halt, and the heartbroken.
    I’d started Desert Investigations right after leaving Scottsdale PD, having learned the hard way that following a superior officer’s orders could be dangerous to my health. Running a P. I. business had turned out not to be the safest profession, either, but at least I was my own boss.
    In the beginning, Jimmy had brought in the bulk of Desert Investigation’s income via his pre-employment background checks for various corporations. But due to my involvement in a murder investigation that took place on an Arizona film set, I’d been hired as a consultant for a television series. Desert Eagle , so-named for the big handgun its Cherokee private detective carried, was partially filmed here, necessitating that I attend only one Los Angeles production meeting a week. While I disliked the travel, the retainer was so exorbitant that my contributions to Desert Investigations’ coffers now topped Jimmy’s. Ordinarily, I would fly to Los Angeles every Friday morning for a production meeting, but due to the current writers’ strike, the series was on hiatus. In the meantime, I busied myself with the standard P.I. cases.
    My first client call of the morning was to Emily Glendenning, a wealthy, fiftyish widow who wanted to believe she’d met the man of her dreams on the tennis court at one of the local resorts. After doing a basic background check and then following her European heartthrob around town for a few days, I needed to deliver some bad news. Werner Emil Hoffman, supposedly born in East Berlin, where as a teenager he had heroically braved Soviet guns while leading an escape party over the Berlin Wall, was a phony. Actually born in the Red Hook section of Brooklyn, his real name was Antonio Nezniacu, and he made a living by fleecing women like Emily. He did, however, have an ear for languages, and during his various scams, had picked up enough German to fool non-German speakers.
    Emily’s reaction was straightforward, if sad. “I’ll give him his walking papers tonight.”
    I felt a spike of alarm. “Maybe I’d better be