J Jance: Queen of the Night

At first she knew so little that all she could do was work as a stocker and a cashier in the museum shop. Later, once she was better adjusted to the climate, she went through docent training so she could lead tours and speak knowledgeably about the native plants of her newly adopted home. Because of her enduring fascination with the night-blooming cereus, it was a natural progression of her volunteerism that she went from leading daytime tours to working on the annual Queen of the Night party.

Initially she served on the Queen of the Night Committee, but when the complexity of the event outstripped the committee’s groupthink capability, Abby had finally given up and taken charge. When she came on board, there had been a complicated phone-tree system for notifying workers and guests of the impending bloom. Under her direction, phone trees had given way to a more streamlined form of e-mail notices. But after five years of running the show, it was time to pass the reins to someone else, and Shirley Folgum was her handpicked successor.

“So how are things?” Abby asked when Shirley finally came on the line. “Did you hear back from the band?”

“I was talking to the manager when you called. They’ll be here for a sound check no later than five. I told them to come in by way of the loading dock.”

“And the caterer?”

“She’s having trouble locating servers.”

“Don’t worry. She’ll find them. This party is a big deal for her, and we pay her a bundle of money during the summer when there’s not much else going on. She’ll come through. She always does.

“What about the storyteller?” Abby asked.

Abby had come to love the enduring Tohono O’odham legend about the wise old grandmother whose bravery had given rise to the Queen of the Night. Including that story in the annual festivities was one of the ways Abby had put her own distinctive stamp on the party. She insisted that each year some guest of honor would come to the event and recount the story that had struck a chord in her heart. It seemed to Abby that in saving her grandson, Wise Old Grandmother had saved Abby Tennant as well.

“That’s handled,” Shirley reported. “Dr. Walker and her mother are planning to have lunch in the Tea Room this afternoon before the party starts. Unfortunately, she’s due back at work in the ER at the hospital in Sells by midnight. That means the last scheduled storytelling event can’t be any later than nine.”

“Good,” Abby said. “Earlier is better than later.”

“Are you going to stop by for a last-minute checklist?” Shirley asked.

“No,” Abby said with a laugh. “I don’t think that’s necessary. It sounds as though you have everything under control.”

Tucson, Arizona

Saturday, June 6, 2009, 1:30 p.m.

93º Fahrenheit

Lani Dahd used her key to unlock the front door of her parents’ house. She stepped inside, with Gabe following close on her heel. He had been here before and was always astonished by the place.

For one thing, the house, built of river rock, was bigger than any of the houses he knew on the reservation. Although the people who lived here were Milgahn, Anglos, the place was full of a rich profusion of baskets-Tohono O’odham baskets. There were yucca and bear-grass baskets on every available surface-on walls and tables and the mantelpiece. Gabe had been told that many of them had been made by his great-aunt Rita.

“How did your parents get so many baskets?” Gabe had asked. “Are they rich?”

Lani Dahd thought about that for a moment before she answered. By reservation standards, the Anglo couple who had adopted her when she was little more than a toddler were rich beyond measure.

“Yes,” she said finally. “I suppose they are.”

“But why?” Gabe asked.

“Because my mother writes books,” Lani answered.

“What about your father?”

“He was a police officer.”

“Why are they so old?” Gabe asked.

Lani’s father was almost seventy. Her mother was in her mid-sixties. In the Anglo world that wasn’t so very old, but on the reservation, where people were often cut down by alcoholism and diabetes in their forties and fifties, that seemed like a very advanced age.

“They just are,” she said.

“Why do they have different names?” Gabe asked. “Mr. Walker and Mrs. Ladd. Aren’t they married?”

“Yes, they’re married,” Lani explained, “but my mother was already writing books by then. It made sense for her to keep her own name instead of changing it to someone else’s.”

This time Gabe was without questions as he followed Lani through the house. While she stopped off in a bathroom, Gabe walked on alone to the sliding door that he knew led to the patio.

Damsel, the household dog, stood outside the sliding door. Gabe opened the door and leaned down to pet the dog. Looking away from Damsel, he saw Mrs. Ladd-an older Milgahn woman with pale skin and silvery hair-sitting in the shade of a little shelter on the far side of the pool. A very ugly blind man was sitting there with her.

Once again the dog demanded Gabe’s attention. When he turned away from Damsel, Lani was stepping through the slider and coming outside. By then the man had disappeared. Gabe hadn’t heard him leave. He glanced around the backyard, looking for him. It seemed curious that he could have left so silently, but the man was nowhere to be seen. He was simply gone.

“Mom,” Lani said, frowning when she noticed her mother’s bathrobe and bare feet. “Why aren’t you dressed?”

“I am dressed,” Diana said. “What’s wrong with a robe?”

“But I thought you were going into town with us-to Tohono Chul. The three of us have a reservation for lunch at the Tea Room, and then tonight there’s the night-blooming cereus party.”

“I can’t,” Diana said. “I’m busy.”

Lani had lived with her adoptive mother’s career as a reality all her life. From an early age she had understood how deadlines worked. When there was something to do with writing that had to be completed by a certain time, her mother was simply unavailable.

“What?” Lani asked. “An emergency copyediting job? How come the deadlines always come from the publisher and never the other way around?”

“Not copyediting,” Diana said. “Something else.”

“Look,” Lani said. “It’s Saturday afternoon. You’ve already worked all morning. Let it go. I talked to Dad. He’s on his way to Casa Grande to see a friend of his. Take a break. Come with us right now. It’ll be fun. The blossoms start opening around eight. I’ll have you back home no later than ten-thirty. You can work all day tomorrow if you need to.”

Diana thought about that for a moment. Finally, making up her mind, she picked up her computer. “All right,” she said. “I’ll go get dressed.”

She stood up and walked into the house, closing the door behind her.

“Who was that man?” Gabe asked.

“What man?”

“The man who was talking to your mother.”

“I didn’t see any man,” Lani said.

“He was right there,” Gabe said, “and then he was gone.”

Lani glanced around the yard. Like Gabe, she saw no one. “Maybe he went out through the gate.”

Gabe shook his head.

“What did he look like? Was he young or old?”

“Old,” Gabe said. “The skin on his face was all lumpy.”

“Like wrinkled?”

“No. Bumpy. Like a popover when you cook it.”

In other tribes, popovers are called fry bread. Flattened pieces of dough are dropped into hot grease. As the dough cooks, the outside surface fills with air and puffs up.

Despite the hot air around her, Lani Walker felt a chill. She knew of only one man whose face had puffed up like a popover when it was covered with hot grease thrown by her mother, but that had happened long before Lani was born. Lani knew about it not only because her brother, who had been there at the time, had told her the story. Lani also knew because she’d seen the photographs in her mother’s book, which had also mentioned that Andrew Philip Carlisle had been dead for years.