Desert Heat

She fled down the hallway. When the elevator didn’t come right away, she pounded down the stairway with the sound of her boot heels reverberating in the stairwell. Reaching the first floor, she galloped through the lobby, almost crashing into a delivery man carrying two huge bouquets of flowers. Once she reached the sidewalk outside, she stood for a minute in the early afternoon sun.

The air conditioner had been ru

Not caring where she went, she headed across an expanse of green lawn toward Campbell Avenue. “I won’t cry,” she told her-self determinedly. “I will not cry!”

She had already cried enough. Besides, crying would interfere with the thinking process, and that was what she had to do now. Think.

How was it that Lefty O’Toole had emerged from the dim, dark reaches of the past to some kind of suspected illegal involvement with Andy? Who the hell was Lefty O’Toole any-way? Her only real recollection of him was from a poor black-and-white photo of a necktie-clad man in the faculty section of Andy’s senior-year Cuprite, Bisbee High School ’s a

Lefty O’Toole had been fired from his teaching position at Bisbee High School the year Joa

And why was Andy lying in a hospital bed-pale, stricken, barely breathing, and unable to defend himself-while the world outside the hospital room, even friends of his like Dick Voland, accused him of all kinds of unspeakable actions? Andy. He wasn’t perfect by a long shot. Ten years of marriage had taught Joa

Joa

Had Walter McFadden known about all this earlier when he dropped off Je

Hours earlier Joa

A car drove by, a silver Ford Taurus with a single male occupant. She realized dimly that she had seen that car twice now in the course of her short walk. At first the idea that someone might be following her seemed too preposterous to even consider. The events of the past few days had left her edgy and skittish, she told herself. She was being silly. But when she crossed the next intersection, she caught sight of the same car again. This time it was parked half a block away with the engine still ru

Why would someone be following her, she wondered. At home in Bisbee, she wouldn’t have hesitated to walk up to the car and ask what the hell was going on, but this was Tucson, a big city by comparison, and only the night before, person or persons unknown had tried to murder her husband. Feeling isolated and vulnerable, she looked around her for someplace to turn for help. The houses nearby all seemed large and forbidding, mansions almost. The way she was dressed, in her blood-stained clothing and clumsy boots, she couldn’t see herself ru

Ahead of her she saw the pink-and-blue wall of what at first seemed to be the largest house of all, but then, upon closer inspection, she realized the building was a hotel, a public building. Small blue letters on the side of the building a

She personally had never set foot inside the place, but she had heard of it. The Arizona I

She ducked into the first available door. Looking around to get her bearings, she found herself standing in front of a small, densely stocked gift shop. Joa

While waiting impatiently for the clerk to finish with her customer, Joa

At the far end of the rack was a vivid yellow smock. That particular shade had never been one of Joa

Joa

By the time the saleswoman finished with her first customer and turned to Joa

“I think I’ll wear both of these, if you don’t mind,” she said.

If the woman had any private thoughts about the suitability of the yellow smock with Joa