Free Desert Cut by Betty Webb

lowered his voice. After a minute, the younger doctor took his clipboard and moved off, pacified.
    Lanphear approached, a frown on his face. “If you’re looking for the nurses’ station, it’s that way.” He gestured toward the elevators.
    Although the chances of getting him to share the results of the dead child’s autopsy were zero, I made the effort, but the minute the words “Precious Doe” emerged, he shut me down. “Anything you need to know about the autopsy, Sheriff Avery will tell you.”
    There seemed no point in telling him that the sheriff had already declined to share information. “If you change your mind, here’s my card.”
    “Good day, Ms. Jones.” Refusing my card, he stalked down the hall, not before I had seen a muscle twitch underneath his eye. Either he had a bad case of nerves, which seemed unlikely given his patience with the younger doctor, or something about the child’s autopsy bothered him.
    Before leaving the hospital, I rode the elevator up to Pediatrics, where I was gratified to see several children already cuddling their new stuffed toys. “How many kids are usually in here?” I asked a passing nurse.
    “Anywhere from five to twenty,” she replied, before moving on. “Right now, there’s six. When summer comes and school’s out, the accidents increase. As well as other things.”
    By “other things,” I knew what she meant. Most parents control their tempers, some don’t. In case there was a sudden increase in broken arms, I returned to Wal-Mart and filled my shopping cart with any toy that did not seem sexist or foolish. Then I headed to the hospital again and handed the shopping bags over to the same nurse.
    What now? Duane Tucker would not arrive home from work for another couple of hours, so after reaching the parking lot, I used part of the lag time to check my voice mail. Angelique Grey had called twice, not a good sign. Her persistence probably meant trouble on the set of
Desert Eagle.
    The fact that Angel was Warren’s ex-wife no longer fazed me. They had both moved on emotionally: her, to another actor; him, to a string of actresses, then me. Working with Angel had its challenges, though. She tended to be overly dramatic, which I found tiring. But business is business, so I hit the redial button.
    She must have been holding the phone in her hand, because her answer interrupted its first ring. “Lena, you have to fly out here right away.” Her voice, so melodic in her films, had taken on an edge.
    I leaned back in the Jeep’s seat, making myself comfortable for what promised to be a long, stressful conversation. “What’s going on? Did
Desert Eagle
lose one of its sponsors?”
    Since being hired on as a script consultant to the TV show, I had learned that sponsors were more important to the networks than sensible plots. My contribution to the series was to make certain the storylines did not become too ridiculous, always an uphill battle. For instance, during the first season, the producers saddled Angel’s character, a half-Cherokee private investigator living in Arizona, with an ex-convict for a partner. The fact that no felon was allowed to have a P.I. license didn’t matter to the show’s producers.
    At least not until “Giff” Gifford, the actor cast as the felonious P.I., got caught driving a hundred-and-five miles per hour along Pacific Coast Highway, his glove compartment filled with cocaine. After Giff checked into rehab, his character “died” saving a woman from a cougar attack. The producers had wanted to make it a shark attack, but I managed to dissuade them by explaining that Arizona had been sharkless for several million years.
    Given the program’s history, I was not astounded when Angel wailed, “They’re messing with the storyline again, Lena!”
    Same old, same old. “Calm down, Angel. Nothing could be worse than Giff and we survived him, didn’t we? How’s he doing, by the way?”
    A theatrical groan. “Same as always.