DNS Suffixes not working properly

I have multiple domains in my 2000-2003 forest
i.e
contoso.com
acme.com
widgets.com

Let's say my primary corp domain is contoso.com and I have a production datatcenter in acme.com

I need to point a contoso.com client at a dns server in widgets.com for QA to do some testing.

I have a production jboss server...we'll call it jboss1.acme.com with an alias prod-sw1
the alias exists in each domain:
i.e
prod-sw1.contoso.com points to jboss1.acme.com
prod-sw1.widgets.com points to jboss1.widgets.com (widgets is a test environment)

In the past, I was able to set a contoso clients DNS server to a widgets.com DNS server and then set the primary DNS suffix to widgets.com.
pinging prod-sw1 would result in getting a response from prod-sw1.widgets.com
Now with the DNS server and DNS suffixes set, i still only get a response from production: prod-sw1.acme.com

i do an nslookup and i AM pointed at the widgets DNS server BUT it responds with the acme result.

Note: each DNS server has forward lookup zones for every other domain. I am perplexed why a DNS server does not give a response for the host from within its own domain and why DNS sufixes do not override DNS queries. This used to work fine for us. Please help!!!

Thank you!

I