Queen of the Night Read online

  On the way to the park, Zack had explained that Tohono Chul was devoted to preserving native desert flora. It was only natural, then, that the park would preserve some of the local fauna as well. Without turning a hair, Abby explained to Jack that rattlesnakes were as likely to show up at the Queen of the Night party as people were. Then she used a handheld walkie-talkie to summon a man with a snake-stick to take charge of the offending reptile and move it to a somewhat less traveled part of the park.

  Jack had been intrigued. He had never met a woman who could handle both a punch crisis and a rattlesnake crisis at the same time. Irene had been petrified of snakes—and lizards and spiders and bees and wasps. By comparison Abby had seemed downright fearless, and good-humored besides.

  “So you have to wrangle both the punch bowl and the rattlesnakes?” he had asked.

  “Yup,” she said with a grin. “That’s me all over.”

  Fascinated, Jack had spent most of the rest of the evening hanging out with her, and it was with Abby Southard at his side that he had seen his first-ever night-blooming cereus. Truth be told, he wasn’t that impressed—with the flower, that is. Oh, he managed a polite ooh and aah over the size of it and over the smell—which didn’t do that much for him, either, but he could see that Abby was enchanted with the night-blooming cereus, and he was enchanted with her.

  He made like the old woman in the Indian legend and put down roots right away. After only two nights in Zack and Ruth’s guest room, he had taken himself off to one of those corporate long-term-stay hotels, the kind that come furnished with everything from sheets and pillows (bad ones) to pots, pans, and dishes.

  Zack thought paying rent was a bad idea. He said that if Jack was going to stay around Tucson, he ought to find himself a real condo to buy, maybe one on a golf course. But Jack had no interest in going on a real estate hunt. He had set his sights on some other prey, and Abigail Southard was it. Because she came with a perfectly nice home of her own, he saw no need to fork over money to buy another. He figured two would be able to live as cheaply as one, especially if they had more money in the bank.

  Jack Tennant and Abby Southard had met on the twenty-sixth of June and had married on the twenty-sixth of July. Everyone had told them it was stupid to jump into matrimony that way. Zack and Ruth had both disapproved, and so had Abby’s older sister, Stephanie.

  “What’s the big rush?” Zack had asked. “I mean, at your age, it’s not as if you knocked her up or something.”

  Emmy and Lonnie, Jack’s own forty-something kids, hadn’t much liked the arrangement, either. They had both been invited to the justice of the peace ceremony, and both had declined. Jack suspected that Abby’s son, Jonathan, would have taken much the same position, but he had been estranged from his mother for years—in fact, he hadn’t spoken to her in over a decade. The good news there was that Jack and Abby hadn’t had to deal with Jonathan’s disapproval along with everyone else’s.

  All the naysayers were still nay-saying, waiting for the “hurried” marriage to end in disaster. In the process Zack and Ruth Tennant had pretty much removed themselves from Jack and Abby’s circle of friends. They had even gone so far as to sever their connections with Tohono Chul, including resigning their docent positions. Abby had worried about that, but their departure hadn’t fazed Jack.

  “So much for what the relatives think,” he had told her with a grin. “If they can’t take a joke, screw ’em. The only thing that matters is what you and I think. By the time we met, both of us were old enough to understand we don’t have all the time in the world. Let’s make hay while the sun shines.”

  And they had done so. On the fifth anniversary of their meeting and one month short of their fifth wedding anniversary, the two of them were as happy as they had ever been. They were better matched, too—better matched than Jack had been with Irene, once he retired, and than Abby had ever been with Hank.

  Irene hadn’t been that bad initially, he reminded himself. When Jack had been a young hotshot executive, working his way up, she had been a powerhouse. She had been a good mother to his two now grown children. When the kids were little and Jack was putting in the long hours at work, Irene had been the parent who had done most of the child rearing. By the time the kids were out of the house, however, and once Jack retired, he and Irene had discovered that they had nothing in common. Not only had they fallen out of love, they had fallen out of like as well.

  For Abby and Jack Tennant, love really was lovelier the second time around. When they were out in public and holding hands, people sometimes said they were cute. That didn’t bother Jack, either. He still felt like a damned newlywed, and he didn’t care who knew it.

  Then there was the matter of quiet. The two of them had been sitting there for some time, sipping their drinks in companionable silence while watching several hummingbirds buzzing around the colorful feeder Abby had hung in the mesquite tree outside their front door. It seemed to Jack that Irene had never had a quiet, introspective moment in her life. There were the times when she had given him the silent treatment—sometimes for days on end—but that was always the calm before the storm when some big blowup was brewing. It wasn’t a comfortable silence so much as an ominous one.

  During the time Jack had been alone and in the years since he and Abby had been together, Jack had come to relish times like these when simply being in the same room together was enough.

  “What time is our reservation?” Abby asked, emerging from her own reverie and breaking into Jack’s.

  “We should probably leave around six,” he said. “It’ll take an hour to get there.”

  “What should I wear?”

  In fact, Jack had already handled that issue. Abby had a jumpsuit that she’d had made to use for outdoor workday events at Tohono Chul. Jack had smuggled that, along with Abby’s pair of hiking boots, into the trunk, along with the packed hamper and cooler. Hiking or work clothes would be far better suited for what he had in mind than some dress-up outfit that would snag on the first bit of mesquite that got in Abby’s way, but telling her that would give the game away. Jack was determined to keep the secret until the very last minute.

  “As long as you wear the blindfold,” he said, “you can wear anything you want.”

  Abby had one of those beauty-mask things for sleeping, one that would fit over her ears without messing up her hair. He had told her in advance that the blindfold was essential.

  “I thought you were kidding about that.”

  “Nope,” he said. “Not kidding.”

  Abby gave him a kiss and then stood up. “All right,” she said. “I think I’ll go have a little lie-down. A nap would be good for what ails me.”

  “Mind if I join you?” Jack asked.

  “You’re welcome, as long as you’re there to sleep. No funny business.”

  “Of course,” he said, but he had his fingers crossed when he said it.

  As he followed Abby back to the bedroom, he suspected she knew that all along.

  Casa Grande, Arizona

  Saturday, June 6, 2009, 4:00 p.m.

  96º Fahrenheit

  Geet was asleep again and Brandon was dozing on the sofa when Sue Farrell came back home. She looked like a new woman. Instead of going to see a movie, she had stopped off for a haircut. She looked altogether better.

  “How are things?” she asked anxiously. “I was gone longer than I planned.”

  “Once he woke up, we talked for the better part of an hour,” Brandon told her. “After that he went back to sleep.”

  She nodded. “An hour of conversation is about as much as he’s good for. Did he ask for more pain meds?”

  “No,” Brandon said. “He said they make him too groggy.”

  “Being groggy is better than being in pain,” Sue said.

  Of course that was a matter of opinion. For right now, Brandon Walker was willing to take Geet Farrell’s word for it over Sue’s.

  Brandon lugged the Ursula Brinker evidence box out of the
house and loaded it into the back of his Honda CRV. It was a relief to get out of the sickroom—to walk away from the hopelessness and heartbreak that was everywhere in Geet and Sue Farrell’s home. He started the engine. As he waited for the air-conditioning to cool things off enough so he could touch the steering wheel, Brandon thought about checking in with Diana, but then he remembered she wasn’t home. Lani had called last night to invite her mother along to Tohono Chul for lunch, after which they would hang around the park for the major evening do, held each year in honor of the night-blooming cereus.

  Brandon had two reasons to be happy about that. Number one: It meant that Diana would be out of the house and doing something fun for a change. Number two: He, Brandon, didn’t have to go along. He’d had tea on occasion at Tohono Chul’s Tea Room, and it wasn’t his kind of place. As for the party? That wasn’t his kind of thing, either. The people there would see to it that Diana was treated as a visiting dignitary, and that was fine, but there were times when Brandon could take only so much of being Mr. Diana Ladd.

  Thinking about the Tea Room, however, reminded Brandon that he hadn’t eaten since breakfast. It was now almost four o’clock in the afternoon—a very long way past his usual late-morning lunchtime. Once he left Geet and Sue’s neighborhood, he found himself on one of Casa Grande’s larger multi-lane streets. He drove past the first Burger King he saw without even slowing down, choosing instead to pull in at a Mexican food joint called Mi Casa Ricardo.

  It was the kind of place Brandon Walker liked—family-owned and unpretentious. He ordered iced tea, a cheese crisp, and carne asada fajitas. He knew he was ordering too much food, but he counted on having some leftovers to take home to Damsel, who firmly believed that restaurant doggie bags had been invented solely for her benefit.

  His cell phone rang as he took the first bite of cheese crisp. “How was it?” Ralph Ames asked,

  Brandon knew Ralph wasn’t referring to the cheese crisp. Brandon had called Ralph in Seattle as soon as he had received Sue Farrell’s phone call summoning him to Casa Grande.

  “Pretty rough,” he said.

  “How long do you think he has?” Ames asked.

  “Not long,” Brandon answered. “He’s put up a hell of a fight, but we’re down to short strokes. I’d say a couple of weeks at the most. Maybe only days.”

  “I had been planning to come down to Arizona the end of next week,” Ralph said. “I’ll see if I can move that up some. I’d like to see him before it’s too late.”

  “He gave me the Brinker file,” Brandon said.

  “Good,” Ralph said. “I expected that he would. You’re the logical successor on that one. Weeks ago Geet mentioned that he had a new lead. I know he was hoping he’d be able follow up on it himself, but of course—”

  “Right,” Brandon said. “The clock wound down before he had a chance. I told him I’d look into it right away. There’s nothing I’d like better than to tell Geet in person that we finally have some answers.”

  “Amen,” Ralph Ames said. “I know that would mean more to him than anything else you could possibly do.”

  “I’ll do my best,” Brandon said.

  Tucson, Arizona

  Saturday, June 6, 2009, 5:00 p.m.

  92º Fahrenheit

  Even though it was more than an hour early, by five o’clock Bozo was parked in front of the door that led to the garage. When it came time for Dan to leave, the dog wasn’t taking any chances on his being forgotten, and he wasn’t.

  When Dan saw K-9 units on Cops, the dogs always rode in the backseat. Not in Dan Pardee’s world. The dog that had saved his life was front and center. Well, front and rider’s side. As they headed out to the reservation, Bozo rode with his head hanging out the window. It was a lot hotter to ride with the window open, but Dan was happy to do it. Bozo deserved that and more.

  First they stopped by Motor Pool and filled up with gas. Then they headed out onto the reservation. Just east of Sells the highway climbed over a low pass. Each time he drove down the far side and saw the high school campus and the town of Sells spread out in front of him, Dan was always surprised by how alien he felt. When he had signed on with the Shadow Wolves he had imagined that being an Indian working on a reservation would make things simple—that this was a place where he would finally fit in. And that was true—he did fit in with his unit, with the Shadow Wolves themselves, but he didn’t fit in on this particular reservation any more than he had fit on the San Carlos.

  On the San Carlos the difficulty had stemmed from the fact that Dan was only half Apache. On the Tohono O’odham, it was because he was any Apache at all. His last name didn’t give it away. After all, Pardee was his father’s name, an Anglo name. But in almost no time at all, the people who lived there had figured out that Dan’s mother had been Apache. Just his manner of speech gave him away. Among the Tohono O’odham being Apache was not okay—definitely not okay.

  In the old days, the various Apache tribes—and there were several—had lived by their wits, raiding other tribes of what they had grown and gathered. It was no accident that in the vocabularies of any number of the Southwest Nations the word for “enemy” and the word for “Apache” were one and the same.

  In an effort to fit in and to know something about his surroundings, Dan had bought himself a worn paperback copy of an English/Papago dictionary. The faded red-covered volume was seriously outdated because the Tohono O’odham had stopped referring to themselves as Papagos several decades earlier.

  It was in perusing the dictionary and trying to teach himself some of the necessary place names that Dan had learned that as far as the Tohono O’odham were concerned, the all-encompassing Apache/enemy word was ohb.

  Once the reservation gossip mill managed to spread the information that the new Shadow Wolf, the one with the dog—gogs—was ohb, Dan got the message. Bozo, the gogs, was okay. As for the human with him? Not so much.

  They arrived in Sells in the broiling late-afternoon heat. Dan parked his green-and-white Ford Expedition in the shade of a mesquite tree at the far end of the parking lot in the town’s only shopping center.

  Dan had no qualms about rolling down the windows and leaving Bozo alone inside the vehicle while he went into the grocery store. Bozo had an unerring understanding of who constituted a threat and who did not. Little kids who came by the Expedition to say hello to Bozo or give him a pat on the nose ran the very real risk of being kissed on the ear or slobbered on. If a bad guy happened to venture too close to the vehicle, however, he might well lose a hand or a finger.

  Inside the store, Dan gathered a few items including two ham sandwiches—one for him and one for Bozo—a couple of bags of chips, two Cokes, and several bottles of water. Those would give him enough calories and help keep him alert through the long nighttime hours—hopefully long empty hours—before his shift ended at six the next morning.

  Even though the line at Rosemary Sixkiller’s register was longer than the other ones, Dan went through hers anyway. Of all the clerks in the store, she was the only one who was consistently nice to him.

  “There’s a dance at Vamori tonight,” she told him as she rang up his items. She gave the ham sandwiches a disapproving shake of the head as she put them in the bag. “You know you could go to the feast house there instead of eating these. They’re probably old.”

  Dan had checked the sell-by date on the package, and Rosemary was correct. The sandwiches were right at the end of their sell-by date. He also knew she was teasing him about the dance. That was one of the reasons he always stopped at her register. To Dan Pardee’s ear, “Sixkiller” didn’t sound like a Tohono O’odham name. He suspected that Rosemary, like Dan, wasn’t one hundred percent T.O., or maybe even any percent. He appreciated the fact that she didn’t seem scared of him and that she joked around with him a little, even though they both knew why he wouldn’t be showing his Apache face at a Tohono O’odham feast house anytime soon.

  “Can’t,” he said. “I’m working.�
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  Which was more or less the truth. Other Shadow Wolves did stop by feast houses now and then. Chatting with the locals gave the officers a chance to learn about what was going on in any given neighborhood—what people might have seen that was out of the ordinary, including the presence of any unfamiliar vehicles coming or going. Because the Tohono O’odham’s ancestral lands had been cut in two by the U.S./Mexican border, those strange vehicles often belonged to smugglers of various stripes and were, as a consequence, of interest to Homeland Security. Dan knew better than to try using the feast-house chitchat routine. He was the ultimate outsider here. What he found out about activities in his sector he had to find out the hard way—by personal observation.

  Leaving the store with his small bag of groceries, Dan found two little girls standing outside the Expedition feeding bits of popcorn to a very appreciative Bozo. When Dan walked up to the vehicle, however, the two girls ducked their heads and sidled away without speaking to him or even acknowledging his presence.

  Yup, he told himself. Daniel Pardee, the ultimate outsider.

  “Okay,” he said aloud to Bozo. “Let’s go to work.”

  Bozo looked at him, thumped his tail happily, and grinned his goofy canine grin.

  With that they headed out of town, driving south toward the village of Topawa and then, beyond that, along the west side of the Baboquivari Mountains. Baboquivari itself, Waw Giwulk, or Constricted Rock, was an amazing rock monolith that towered over the surrounding flat desert landscape.

  Driving through the pass just east of Sells always left Dan with the sense that he was a foreigner, but when he drove past Waw Giwulk, Baboquivari, his apartness seemed to melt away. That odd sensation puzzled him. He had no idea why that would be. He understood that Baboquivari was the legendary home of I’itoi, the Tohono O’odham’s Elder Brother. As such, it seemed to him that the mountain should have rejected Dan Pardee in the same way the people did.