J. Jance - Kiss the Bees

"You think your son Quentin has something to do with your daughter's disappearance?"

Brandon Walker sighed. In the space of a few minutes' time, the former sheriff seemed to have aged ten years.

"With my daughter's murder," he corrected. "It's all on the tape, but before you turn it over to a detective, I want it checked for prints. Diana's and mine are on there along with whatever others there are. You understand, don't you, Alvin?" he asked. "I need to know for sure." He glanced in Diana's direction. "We both need to know."

"Right," Alvin said.

He took the bag and carried it over to his lab area, where he carefully dusted both the tape and the case with graphite, bringing out a whole series of prints. Then, using a magnifying glass, he examined the results for several long minutes.

Finally, putting down the glass, he turned back to Brandon and Diana. "It's here," he said. "On the case, at least."

Brandon Walker's eyes blurred with tears. His legs seemed to splinter beneath him.

"I was afraid it would be," he said. "We'd better go out front and talk to a detective. I'm sure whoever's assigned to this case will need to hear that tape as soon as possible."

"How come?" Alvin Miller asked. "What's on it?"

Brandon Walker took a deep, despairing breath before he answered. "We believe…" he said, fighting unsuccessfully to keep his voice steady, "… that this is a recording of our daughter's murder."

Together, Diana and Brandon Walker started toward the door. "Ask to talk to Detective Leggett," Alvin Miller called after him. "He doesn't know it yet, but it turns out he's already working this case."

By the time Davy and Candace picked up their tickets at the counter and then went racing through the terminal to the gate, they were both worn out. Once aboard America West Flight 1, bound for Tucson, Candace fell sound asleep. Davy, although fidgety with a combination of nerves and exhaustion, fought hard to stay awake. They were flying in a 737, and Davy was stuck in one of the cramped middle seats, sandwiched between Candace, sleeping on his left, and a bright-eyed little old lady on the right. The woman was tiny. Her skin was tanned nut-brown. The skin of her lips and cheeks was wrinkled in that distinctive pattern that comes from years of smoking. Rattling the pages, she thumbed impatiently through the in-flight magazine.

David sat there, bolt upright and petrified, worried sick that if he did fall asleep, he would instantly be overtaken by yet another panic attack. If, as the emergency room doctor had insisted, the attacks were stress-induced, then Davy figured he was about due for another one. There was, after all, some stress in his life.

His experience with Candace in the hotel earlier meant that he was no longer quite so concerned about what she would think of him when another attack came along. What would other people think, though? The lady next to him, for instance, or the flight attendants hustling up and down the aisle, dispensing orange juice and coffee, what would they do? He could imagine it all too well. "Ladies and gentlemen," one of them would intone into the intercom. "We have a medical emergency here. Is there a doctor on board?"

Stress. Part of that came from finishing school and going home and getting a real job without even taking whatever had happened to Lani into consideration. In the years while Davy was attending law school in Chicago, he had held himself at arm's length from his family back home. Somehow it seemed to him that there wasn't room enough in his heart for all of them at once-for the Arizona contingent and for the Ladd side of the family in Illinois. To say nothing of Candace.

Looking at her sleeping peacefully beside him, Davy couldn't quite believe she was there. In his scheme of things, Candace had always been part of his Chicago life, and yet here she was on the plane with him, headed for Tucson. Not only that, she was going there with Astrid Ladd's amazingly large diamond engagement ring firmly encircling the ring finger on her slender left hand.

Davy hadn't exactly popped the question. Nevertheless, they were engaged. Candace was planning a quick wedding in Vegas while Davy squirmed with the knowledge that his mother and stepfather had barely heard her name. He hadn't told them any more about her than he had told them about his other passing romantic fancies. It hadn't seemed necessary.

Now, given the circumstances, telling was more than necessary. It was essential and tardy and not at all one-sided. Just as he hadn't talked about Candace to his parents, the reverse was also true. There was a whole lot he hadn't told Candace, either.

The lush lifestyle in which Candace Waverly had grown up in Oak Park, Illinois, was far different from what prevailed in the comparatively simple house in Gates Pass. And if Candace's experience was one step removed from the Tucson house, it was forever away from Rita Antone's one-room adobe house-little more than a shack, really-which had been Nana Dahd' s ancestral home in Ban Thak.

Coyote Sitting, Davy thought. Just the names of the villages were bad enough. Hawani Naggiak — Crow Hanging; Komkch'eD e Wah'osidk — Turtle Wedged; Gogs mek — Burnt Dog. Davy knew them equally well in English and in Tohono O'othham, but what would Candace think when he tried to explain them to her?

Conflicting geography was one thing. What about when he started dealing in the crossed wires of personalities? There had been no particular need to tell Candace much about being raised by Rita Antone, who in turn had been raised by her own grandmother, Understanding Woman. Over time Davy had mentioned a few things, of course, but only the simple, straightforward parts, not any of what Richard Waverly, Candace's father, would derisively call the woo-woo stuff.

Davy had never mentioned Looks At Nothing's Peace Smoke, for instance. He hadn't told Candace or any of her family how the blind old medicine man from his childhood would light his foul-smelling wild tobacco with a flame sparked by his faithful Zippo lighter. He hadn't told them about Looks At Nothing's spooky way of knowing things before they happened or of the blind man telling others what he had "seen" in his divining crystals.

How would Candace and her family react to a discussion of medicine men and divining crystals-and medicine baskets, for that matter? Or try scalp bundles on for size. The one from Rita's medicine basket-an Ohb scalp bundle, no doubt-was the main reason Rita's medicine basket was still sitting in his parents' safety deposit box eleven years after Rita's death.

Davy was sure now that the scalp bundle had been the primary reason Rita had insisted that it be kept out of Lani's hands until she was old enough to handle it with proper respect. Davy cringed at the idea of sitting down and trying to explain to Richard Waverly how improper handling of a scalp-bundle could bring on a bout of Enemy Sickness, the best cure for which was a medicine man singing scalp-bundle songs at night.

Old Man Waverly will just love that one, Davy thought.

And yet, those things-which he could imagine Candace and her family not quite understanding-were far too much a part of Davy's life and experience for him to dismiss them. The stories about I'itoi and Earth Medicine Man were as deeply woven into Davy's background as Aesop's Fables and the Brothers Grimm were into Candace's. How would somebody raised on watered-down versions of Little Red Riding Hood and Cinderella respond to having her son or daughter hear about how I'itoi chopped the head off the monster Eagleman's baby?

Almost without realizing what he was doing, Davy reached into his pocket and pulled out Father John's rosary. At age twenty-seven, David Ladd closed his eyes and saw in his mind's eye those three aged adults who had played such important roles in his childhood-Rita, Looks At Nothing, and Father John. They were all so very different and yet, despite those differences, they had drawn a healing circle of love around him-a little half-orphaned Anglo boy-and held him safe inside it.