Kiss of the Bees by J. A. Jance Read Free Book Online Page B

When the party was over and as he and Wanda were getting ready to leave, the grandkids had gathered up the presents and what was left of the birthday cake for Wanda and Gabe to take back home to Sells with them. Five-year-old Rita, the baby, had come racing to the door carrying the book. Afraid that whatever evil lurked in the book might somehow infect her, Gabe had reached down and snatched it from her hand.
    Tears welled in her eyes. “I only wanted to carry it,” she pouted. “I wouldn’t drop it or anything. I like books.”
    “I know, baby,” he said, bending over and giving the child a hug. “But this one is very special. Let me carry it, okay?”
    “Okay,” she sniffed. “Can I carry your hat then?”
    For an answer, Gabe had put his huge black Stetson on her head. It had engulfed the child, falling down over her eyes, covering everything down to her lips, which suddenly burst into a wide grin.
    “I can’t see anything,” she said.
    “That’s all right,” Gabe had said, reaching out and taking her hand. “I’ll lead you to the car.”
    “What’s wrong?” Wanda asked, once they were in the Ford. “You got mad at Rita for just touching the book.”
    “I wasn’t mad,” Gabe returned, although his protest was useless. After all their years together, Wanda knew him far too well for him to be able to get away with lying.
    “It’s the book,” he said. “It’s dangerous. I didn’t want her near it.”
    “How can a book be dangerous?” Wanda asked. “Rita’s just a little girl. She can’t even read.”
    Gabe did not want to argue. “It just is,” he said.
    “So what are you going to do?” Wanda asked. “Take the book to some other medicine man and have him shake a few feathers at it?”
    With that, Wanda had squeezed her broad form against the door on the far side of the car. She had sat there with her arms crossed, staring out the window in moody silence as they started the sixty-mile drive back to Sells. It wasn’t a good way to end a birthday party.
    Looks At Nothing had taught Gabe Ortiz the importance of understanding something before taking any action. And so, in the week following the party, he had read the book, Shadow of Death, from cover to cover. It was slow going. In order to read it he had to hold it, and doing that necessitated overcoming his own revulsion. It reminded him of that long-ago day, when, as a curious child, he had reached into his Aunt Rita’s medicine basket and touched the ancient scalp bundle she kept there.
    Ni-thahth Rita had warned him then about the dangers of Enemy Sickness. Told him that by not showing proper respect for a scalp bundle he could bring down a curse on her—as the scalp bundle’s owner—or on some member of her family. She had told him how Enemy Sickness caused terrible pains in the belly or blood in the urine, and how only a medicine man trained in the art of war chants could cure a patient suffering from that kind of illness.
    It was late when Fat Crack finally finished reading. Wanda had long since fallen asleep but Gabe knew sleep would be impossible for him. He had stolen outside, and sat there on a chair in their ocotillo-walled, dirt-floored ramada. It was early summer. June. The month the Tohono O’othham call Hahshani Bahithag Mashath —saguaro-ripening month. Although daytime temperatures in the parched Arizona desert had already spiraled into triple digits, the nighttime air was chilly. But that long Thursday night, it was more than temperature that made Gabe Ortiz shiver.
    It was true, he had known much of the story. In the late sixties, his cousin, Gina Antone, his Aunt Rita’s only grandchild, had been murdered by a man named Andrew Carlisle. Diana Ladd, then a teacher on the reservation, had been instrumental in seeing that the killer, a once well-respected professor of creative writing at the university, had been sent to prison for the murder. Six years later, when the killer got out and came back to Tucson seeking