Desert Wives (9781615952267) Read Online Free PDF

couldn’t stand. Oh, Lena! Rebecca’s just a child!”
    I remembered Rebecca’s face when we discovered Prophet Solomon’s body. The man who’d been about to rape her was dead, and yet she reacted with an odd mixture of grief and guilt. Had the brainwashing Esther described already taken hold?
    It wouldn’t help Esther to know that I shared her fears, so I kept my worries to myself. “Look, first thing we do, we’ll hire a good attorney. You’ll need one here in order to stop the extradition process.”
    Frustration crossed Esther’s face. “I don’t have any money left. I used everything I had for the custody case.”
    No surprise there. Esther’s had been yet another pro bono case for Desert Investigations. In fact, I worked so many pro bonos that Jimmy was in danger of being our company’s only moneymaker. Not that it mattered. Unlike most detective agencies, we had an angel. Desert Investigations existed due to the financial goodwill of Albert Grabel, the Scottsdale computer magnate whose innocent son I had managed to get out of prison while I’d still worked for the Scottsdale Police Department. When Grabel heard I’d opened my own agency, he promised to finance the cases of others I believed were unjustly accused.
    Grabel’s largess didn’t necessarily extend to exorbitant attorney’s fees, though. If we left Esther’s extradition case to a public defender, she would be Utah-bound in a heartbeat. Fortunately, Grabel was not the only person in Scottsdale who owed me.
    But first, I had to get my client to tell me the truth for a change. “Esther, what kind of case do the Utah authorities have against you?”
    â€œNothing but lies.” She lowered her eyes and pretended to find something of interest on the cell floor.
    I waved her own lie away. “When Rebecca and I got back to the motel, I noticed that your car was covered in dust. You drove out to the compound, didn’t you?”
    She shook her head, but kept her eyes lowered.
    I grabbed her by the chin and forced her to look at me. “Esther, I’m on your side, remember? But I can’t help you if you don’t tell me everything. That includes your movements while Jimmy and I were waiting outside the compound.”
    Her eyes filled with tears again. “All right, all right. Yes. I drove out there.”
    â€œAnd?”
    â€œAnd nothing.” She jerked her chin away. “What did you expect me to do, Lena? You’d been gone for days and I was desperate to see my daughter!”
    â€œWhen was this?”
    She looked away. “The same day you brought her to the motel. Around dinner time.”
    I tried not to groan. “Tell me exactly what you did and what you saw.”
    She met my eyes again. Now I was going to get the truth. “I hid my car in a stand of creosote bushes about a mile away from the compound and hiked down into the canyon. I thought I might even run into you, but I guess you were over in the other direction.”
    I nodded. I’d camped far enough back into the twenty-mile-long canyon to make discovery difficult. But Esther had placed herself right at the murder scene. Could her situation have been any worse?
    She must have seen the consternation on my face. “All I wanted was just a glimpse of Rebecca, Lena. You’d told me how dangerous it would be if I tried to grab her myself.”
    â€œYou ran into Solomon, didn’t you?”
    The tears came back. “Yes,” she whispered.
    Only the pain in her eyes kept me from screaming at her in frustration. “Tell me what happened. Don’t leave anything out.”
    â€œWe…we argued.”
    â€œI’ll bet you did. Give me the gory details.”
    Her voice trembled but she managed to maintain control. “He was out hunting with two other men, and when I saw him walking along like that, looking so self-satisfied and arrogant,