Desert Wind by Betty Webb Page A

clock until two deputies showed up at the door. I had to cancel my tennis date. Very annoying.”
    Oh, what a happy marriage those two must have had. “You and Mr. Donohue were married for how many years?”
    “Fifteen.”
    Recalling the newspaper article, I said, “I was under the impression you have grandchildren.”
    “They’re not mine, thank God. I’m Ike’s second wife.”
    “What happened to the first Mrs. Donohue?”
    A quick bark of laughter. “You mean, did I murder her to get him? Hardly. That dullard is still alive and kicking. She was one of those ‘stay-at-home-moms,’ as housewives like to call themselves these days. Always cooking and cleaning, absolutely no interest in anything outside the home. Ike was bored stiff. Unlike her, I do things. I’m not the domestic type and never have been. Or at least I wasn’t until Ike had to go and develop diabetes.”
    As self-involved and pathologically insensitive as Nancy Donohue was, living with a diabetic must have been frustrating, so my next question was a given. “Did Mr. Donohue carry life insurance?”
    “Not enough to kill for.” With that, she stood up. “Interview’s over, Jones.”
    “One more question.”
    She made a big show of looking at her watch, which like mine, was a cheap Timex. The solitaire nestled next to her wedding band didn’t have a diamond’s usual brilliance, either. Were the Donohues having financial problems? If so, a nice insurance payoff would come in handy. I’d ask Jimmy to check.
    Oblivious to the way my mind was tracking, she said, “One more question then I go back to the Bitches. Just because Ike was stupid enough to get himself killed doesn’t mean I have to stop living my own life.”
    “Who do you think killed your husband?”
    “If neither I nor that Indian did it, you mean? Offhand, I’d say Roger Tosches. The man’s a complete scoundrel.”
    With that, she escorted me to the front door and shut it behind me so quickly it slammed me in the ass.

Chapter Nine
Tuesday noon
    In some ways, Nancy Donohue reminded me of one of my least favorite foster mothers. Brisk. Unfeeling. Oblivious to the needs of others. When the social worker had turned me over to Mrs. and Mr. Putney, I was only nine years old and already in serious emotional trouble. But for some reason, no one seemed aware of that, especially not Mrs. Putney.
    Maybe my obvious physical disabilities just kept people from noticing the rest. The bullet that had entered my brain left me with a dragging left leg and a weak left arm. To give credit where due, Mrs. Putney saw to it that I continued my rehabilitation program until the left side of my body was as strong as my right. For that, I’ll always be grateful. But she didn’t handle my fragile emotional state nearly as well. When I cried, she told me to shut up. When I couldn’t eat, she forced me to until I threw up. When I begged for my bedroom light to be left on at night, she called me a baby.
    Had the social workers told her what had happened to me? That I’d been shot in the face by my mother, then left for dead on a Phoenix street? That when I regained consciousness in the hospital two months later, I could tell the social workers little—just that I remembered my mother screaming, “I’ll shoot her, I’ll shoot her now!” That my father was already gone, shot to death in the forest that haunted my nightmares? Whether Mrs. Putney knew or not, she wouldn’t leave a light on.
    I had no way of knowing that the next foster home would be much, much worse.
    Pushing the memory of Mrs. Putney out of my mind—and hating Nancy Donohue for resurrecting her in the first place—I called Katherine Dysart to get black-clad Olivia’s last name. Eames, Katherine told me. Olivia Eames. Mission accomplished, I sat in my rental car outside the gate of Sunset Canyon Lakes for a few minutes, digesting what I’d learned.
    The fact that Nancy Donohue hadn’t bothered to act the grieving widow was