Desert Wind by Betty Webb Page B

actually a point in her favor, since I’d never met a homicidal wife who didn’t wail like a banshee over her husband’s murder. Still, her almost pathological coldness unsettled me enough to want Jimmy to delve into her background. Olivia Eames’ and Katherine Dysart’s past, too, and not merely out of curiosity. Both women were fish out of water in Sunset Canyon Lakes, and I wanted to know what they were doing there. One of the first things I’d learned when conducting murder investigations was to look for any object that seemed out of place, especially when that object was human.
    I checked my watch again. Although not yet noon, it felt as if hours had passed since I arrived at the resort’s gate. It was time to leave the Emerald City and return to the real world, so I pulled out of the parking lot and headed for Sunset Point, where Donohue’s body had been found. If I arrived a few minutes late for my lunch with Jimmy, he’d understand.
    After all that unnatural green, it was a relief to drive through a more subtle landscape, the desert’s stark beauty softened by the enormous blue sky. Above, red-tailed hawks soared along the updrafts. I even spotted a condor, one of the few that had been released into the Arizona wilderness in hopes of bringing the birds back from near-extinction. Condors are scavengers. They eat anything dead, including road kill. I wondered if one had been among the birds found snacking on what was left of Donohue’s body.
    As it turned out, Sunset Point was easy to find but difficult to reach. Situated at the top of Walapai Mountain, the highest point in the mountain range that created the Virgin River Gorge, the scenic viewpoint was only available to people with four-wheel-drive vehicles or hikers who had the stamina for the steep climb. It was all up and around, switchback after dizzying switchback, as my SUV hugged the inside of a poorly maintained gravel road. Heaven help any sight-seer who suffered from vertigo.
    Just as I thought the winding road would continue forever, it dead-ended at a metal barrier that kept me from driving straight into the canyon. After setting my emergency brake I stepped out and looked into the distance. Grand Canyon National Park lay twenty miles to the south. A million or so years ago the Virgin River Gorge had been formed by the seasonal runoff that fed into the Colorado, but while the gorge itself was no Grand Canyon, it was no mere arroyo, either. The sides presented a sheer drop of more than twelve hundred feet. At the bottom, the river surged along the rock walls like a silver snake, carving the canyon ever larger and deeper.
    What a great place to dispose of a body.
    However, as the fluttering remains of yellow police tape proved, Donohue had become snagged on a cactus-studded outcrop ten feet below the ledge I stood on. Easy pickings for scavengers, not so easy for law enforcement. The bad news was that the sheriff had been forced to call for an expert rock-climbing team to retrieve the body. The good news was that whoever dumped Donohue hadn’t been able to climb down to tumble him off the outcropping into the river below. Otherwise, the victim might have floated all the way to the Gulf of California and then onto the shoreline of Mexico.
    A mishmash of tire tracks criss-crossed the ground. Somewhere among them would be the tread of the killer’s tires, now covered by dozens of others: SUVs, sheriff’s office vehicles, and looky-loos who were always attracted to scenes of violent death. No matter. I’d already learned what I needed to know. It wouldn’t have taken a strong man to heave Donohue off Sunset Point. The spot where he’d gone over was less than three yards from the metal safety barrier, and the ground sloped sharply toward the drop-off. A woman could easily have rolled his body in, no problem.
    Satisfied, I climbed back into my rental and headed to Walapai Flats.
    The drive was uneventful until I neared the cutoff to Sunset Trails