Queen of the Night by J. A. Jance Read Free Book Online Page A

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.
    “He’s not here now,” Lani said. “You must have been mistaken. Come on,” she added. “Oi g hihm.”
    Directly translated, that expression means “Let us walk.” In the vernacular of the reservation, it means: “Let’s get in the pickup and go.”
    Gabe evidently understood that this was one time when he’d be better off not asking any questions. Without a word of objection and with the dog at his side, he came into the house behind Lani, took a seat on the couch in a room filled with beautiful Tohono O’odham baskets, and waited patiently until it was time to leave.
    Tucson, Arizona
    Saturday, June 6, 2009, 1:00 p.m.
    93º Fahrenheit
    W hile the coffeepot burbled and burped, Dan