J Jance - Queen of the Night

“I doubt it,” Dan said. “Time will tell. Gotta go,” he added.

“Right,” Marco said, thinking Dan meant something else entirely. “So by all means, go!”

“Did you bring me another coloring book?” Angie asked when he came back into her room. “I’ve used up all the stickers for this one.”

And you already have me pegged for a sucker, he thought. “Not right now,” he said.

“When is lunch?” she asked. “I’m hungry.”

“Soon,” he said, and hoped like hell it was true.

Sonoita, Arizona

Sunday, June 7, 2009, 10:00 a.m.

73º Fahrenheit

When Brandon went inside to interview June Holmes, he left the convertible parked in the generous shade of a towering cottonwood. As Diana and Damsel settled in to wait, Diana wasn’t surprised when Garrison Ladd was the next one of her unending collection of bad boys to show up. Why wouldn’t he?

Even though she’d been expecting him, it was disturbing that he appeared right beside her in the driver’s seat, sitting there with both hands on the wheel. At least Max Cooper had stayed in the backseat where he belonged. The good news about that was that the remains of the exit wound in his head were mostly invisible to her.

“No matter what you think, sometimes suicide is the best solution for all concerned,” he said, taking up Max’s line of attack.

“You of all people should know about that,” Diana said derisively. “After all, that was your solution of choice. By my count you’ve been dead for more than thirty years.”

“But don’t bother selling the car,” he went on as though he hadn’t heard a word she said. “If you’re gonna do it, you’re gonna do it. It’s as simple as that. Brandon has a gun. You know where he keeps it. Even someone as dim as you are should be able to figure out how to use it.”

This was nothing new. Garrison Ladd had always maintained that Diana was pretty much too stupid to live.

“Don’t even mention Brandon Walker’s name,” Diana snapped at him. “You’re not in his league. Besides, I’d never use a gun for something like that. I wouldn’t leave that kind of mess behind for someone else to clean up.”

“You mean like Brandon or Davy or maybe even Lani?”

“Get out of the car,” she ordered. “You’re not here. You’re dead. I don’t have to listen to you. I won’t listen to you.”

When he made no move to leave, Diana did. She got out, collected Damsel’s leash, and walked up to the front door of the ranch house, where she rang the bell.

“I’m Brandon Walker’s wife,” she said to the silver-haired lady who answered the door. “Sorry to barge in like this, but it’s too hot to sit in the car. Do you mind if we wait inside?”

“Of course not,” June Holmes said, smiling hospitably. “Do come in. Let me get you something cool to drink and something for your puppy, too. What’s the dog’s name?”

“Damsel,” Diana answered. “For Damsel in Distress.”

Sells, Tohono O’odham Nation, Arizona

Sunday, June 7, 2009, 11:00 a.m.

87º Fahrenheit

When Lani jolted awake at eleven, Fat Crack’s crystals were still in her hand and her mind was made up. The answer to Delia’s question was yes-yes, she would take Angie. How could she not? Before she could turn that decision into action, however, there was something else she needed to do.

Once showered and dressed, Lani returned to the medicine basket she had woven for herself so long ago. As her fingers and awl had worked with the bear grass and yucca, she had sensed that she was communing with the spirits of those who had come before her, the people who had schooled her in the traditions and teachings of the Tohono O’odham-Understanding Woman, Looks at Nothing, Betraying Woman, and Nana Dahd, and, of course, Fat Crack himself. As the basket took shape strand by strand, it had seemed to Lani that bits of each of those wise old people were being woven into the pattern.

Once it was finished, it was only fitting that the basket should be stocked with all the treasured relics that had come to her from those folks as well.

Rita Antone’s grandmother, Oks Amachuda, Understanding Woman, had been dead for decades before Lani was born, but two of the precious items came from her-a shard of red pottery with the form of a turtle etched into it and a hunk of geode covered with purple-shaded crystals. Understanding Woman had sent them with Rita, in a medicine basket very much like this one, when, as a young girl, Rita had been shipped off to boarding school at Phoenix Indian. That original basket still belonged to Lani’s brother, Davy.

Nana Dahd ’s owij, the awl she had used to make countless baskets, was there, as was the Purple Heart that was Rita Antone’s sole remembrance of her only son, who had died during the Korean War. The other important men in Rita Antone’s life were represented as well. Lani ran her fingers through the worn beads of Father John’s lasolo, his rosary. Smiling, she examined Looks at Nothing’s old Zippo cigarette lighter. The brass was smooth and fading to black in spots. It hadn’t lit anything in years, but the lighter’s connection to the past and to the old blind medicine man who had used it was almost palpable.

Now, returning the crystals to the basket, she pocketed the tobacco pouch. Each year she made a special trip out into the desert to replenish her supply of wiw, the Indian tobacco used in the traditional ceremony called the peace smoke. Today, in her meeting with Delia Ortiz, that pouch of tobacco was all Lani needed.

It was almost noon and scorching hot when Lani drove up to the Ortiz family compound behind the gas station. In the dusty open space inside the cluster of several mobile homes, two children-Gabe and Baby Rita-played a desultory game of kickball. The kids were evidently impervious to the heat while the adults of the several families hunkered down inside their air-conditioned houses and napped off the effects of being up all night at the Vamori dance.

“Hey, Lani,” Gabe said. “Want to play kickball?”

“Not right now,” she told him. “I need to talk to your mom.”

“She’s asleep. Want me to wake her up?”

“Please,” Lani said. “Tell her it’s about Angie and that I’ll meet her at her office.”

Lani was grateful when Gabe headed inside to awaken his mother without asking any of his usual questions.

Lani drove to the Tohono O’odham Nation’s office complex and parked next to the spot reserved for the tribal chairman. Before Lani formally agreed to Delia’s suggestion about Angie, she needed to be sure that she and the tribal chairman were on the same page.

Sitting for several moments in her parked car, Lani reflected on her long-term rivalry with Delia Ortiz. Fat Crack had chosen both of them. Delia had been designated to be his political successor, and he had expected Lani to carry forward the traditional teachings that had been given to him by Looks at Nothing.

Both women had done all they could to live up to Fat Crack’s expectations, with one major exception. He had thought they would become friends rather than enemies. Now, though, working together with the common purpose of salvaging Angie Enos, Lani glimpsed far enough into the future to see that perhaps Fat Crack had been right all along and that she and Delia would become friends.

Exiting the Passat’s broiling interior, Lani walked over to the shaded picnic table where regular smokers of ordinary cigarettes could light up. Opening the pouch, Lani pulled out the paper and Indian tobacco and began rolling a smoke.

Sells, Tohono O’odham Nation, Arizona

Sunday, June 7, 2009, 11:30 a.m.

88º Fahrenheit

When Fat Crack first brought Delia Chavez Cachora back home to Sells to serve as tribal attorney, she had been away from the reservation for far more years than she had lived there. Her East Coast schooling and the years of living in D.C. made her seem far more Anglo than Indian. What made things happen in D.C. was thought to be pushy and abrupt on the reservation.