by J. A. Jance
“They haven’t seen your woodpile,” Diana said.
Their mood was still light, right up until they drove up to the house in Gates Pass. “Damn it,” Brandon said. “It looks like Lani left every light in the house burning. One of these days she’ll have to pay her own utility bills. It’s going to come as a real shock.”
Brandon hit the automatic door opener and the gate on the side of the house swung open. “She also left her bike in the middle of the damn carport. What on earth is she thinking of?”
Diana sighed, dismayed to hear Brandon’s mood change from good to bad in the space of a few yards of driveway. “Stop the car,” she said. “I’ll get out and move the bike out of the way.”
She pushed the bike up to the front of the carport, giving Brandon enough room to park his Nissan next to her Suburban. No doubt the fragile mood of the evening was irretrievably broken. One way or another, children did that to their parents with astounding regularity.
The back door was unlocked, which most likely meant that Lani was home, but that was something else that would annoy her father. When Lani was home alone, she was supposed to keep the front and back doors locked.
Shaking her head, Diana went inside and discovered that Brandon was right. Almost every light in the house was blazing, but the note for Lani that Diana had left on the counter—the Post-it containing Davy’s phone number and telling Lani to call him back—was still on the counter, exactly where Diana had left it.
Through years of mothering teenagers, Diana Ladd Walker had discovered that looking in the sink and checking the most recent set of dirty dishes was usually a good way of getting a handle on who all was home, how long they’d been there, and whether or not they had dragged any visitors into the house with them.
The evidence in the sink this time left Diana puzzled. Other than the pair of champagne glasses she and Brandon had left there earlier in the afternoon, there was nothing but a pair of rubber-handled kitchen tongs. Knowing it wasn’t hers, Diana picked the utensil up and examined it under the light. The gripper part was somewhat scorched. It looked as though it had been used to cook meat of some kind, but there was nothing in the kitchen—no accompanying greasy mess—that gave Diana any hint of what that might have been.
As Diana automatically moved to the phone to check for messages, she could hear Brandon walking through the rest of the house, calling for Lani and switching off lights as he went. When Diana punched in the code, she found there were a total of five messages waiting for her. That bugged her. It was Saturday night. Couldn’t she and Brandon even go out to dinner without having the whole world phone in their absence?
The first message was timed in at three twenty-one. “Lani,” a female voice said. “This is Mrs. Allison from the museum. If you aren’t able to take your shift, you should always call in as soon as possible to let us know. I know tomorrow is scheduled to be your day off. If for some reason you aren’t going to be able to make your next shift on Monday, please call in on Sunday if you can. If I’m not there, leave word on the machine.”
Lani hadn’t made it to work? That didn’t make sense. She had left for work. How could it be that she was absent? The next message, at six-eleven, moments after Diana and Brandon had left for the banquet, was from Jessica Carpenter.
“Lani, what are you going to wear? Call me and let me know.”
“That figures,” Diana muttered as she erased that one.
The one after that was more worrisome. “Lani,” Jessica Carpenter said. “I thought you were going to be here by now. Mom has to go someplace after she drops me off, and if we don’t leave in a few minutes, she’ll be late. She says I should leave your ticket at the box office. I’ll put it in an envelope with your name on it.”
The next message, at nine-fifteen, was another one from Davy. “Hi, Mom and Dad. I’m still trying to get hold of Lani, but I guess nobody’s home. Give me a call. Bye.”
The last one was from Jessica once again. “It’s intermission and you’re not here. Are you mad at me or sick, or what? I’ll try calling again when I get home.”
Brandon came back into the kitchen just as Diana was putting down the phone. “Still taking messages?” he said.
“Lani didn’t go to work,” Diana said. “And she didn’t go to the concert, either.”
“Didn’t go to the concert?” Brandon echoed. “Where is she then? I’ve gone through the whole house looking for her.”
“Hang on,” Diana told him. “I’ll call the Carpenters and see if she ever showed up there.”
The phone rang several times and then the answering machine came on. Diana left a message for them to call her as soon as possible. “Nobody’s home,” she told Brandon. “Maybe they’re all still at the concert.”
“But Lani’s bike is here. Where would she be if her bike’s here?”
Brandon looked grim. “Something’s wrong. I’ll go back through the house and check again. Maybe I missed something. Do you have any idea what she wore when she left the house this morning?”
Diana shook her head. “I heard the gate shut, but I didn’t see her leave.”
This time they got as far as Brandon’s study. Before, Brandon had simply reached into the room and switched off the light without bothering to look into the room itself. Barely a step inside the door, he stopped so abruptly that Diana almost collided with him. “What the hell!”
Sidestepping him, Diana was able to see into the room herself. A fine spray of shattered glass covered most of the floor. In the center of the glass lay several broken picture frames. Looking beyond that, Diana saw that the wall behind Brandon’s desk—his Wall of Honor as he had called it—was empty. All his service plaques, his civic honors—including his Tucson Citizen of the Year and the Detective of the Year award—the one he’d received from Parade Magazine for cracking a dead illegal alien case years before—were all on the floor, smashed beyond recognition.
“Oh, Brandon!” Diana wailed. “What a mess. I’ll go get the broom—”
“Don’t touch anything and don’t come into the room any farther until we get a handle on exactly what’s happened here. It looks to me as though whoever it was broke into my gun case, too.”
Diana’s stomach sank to her knees. She had to fight off the sudden urge to vomit. “What about Lani…”
Brandon turned toward her, the muscles working across his tightened jaw. “Let’s don’t hit panic buttons,” he advised. “The first thing we should do is call the department and have them send somebody out to investigate.” Walking back to the kitchen, he picked up the phone. “Did you notice anything else out of place?” he asked as he dialed. After all those years with the department, the number of the direct line into Dispatch was still embedded in his brain as well as his dialing finger.
Diana thought for a minute. “Only that set of tongs over there in the sink. It looks as though somebody used it to cook meat or something, but I can’t tell what.”
Alicia Duarte was fairly new to Dispatch, but she had been around the department long enough that Brandon Walker’s name still carried a good deal of weight. Her initial response was to offer to send out a deputy.
“A deputy will be fine,” Brandon told her. “But I think we’re going to need a detective too. There’s a good chance that our daughter has disappeared as well, and the two incidents are most likely related.”
“Sure thing, Sheriff Walker,” Alicia said, honoring him with the title even though it was no longer his. “I’ll get right on it.”
Brandon put down the phone and then walked over to wrap his arms around Diana. “You heard what I said. Someone is on the way, although it’ll take time for them to get here.”
“What if we’ve lost her?” Diana asked in a small voice. “What if Lani’s gone for good?”
“She isn’t,” Brandon returned fiercely. It wasn’t so much that he believed she wasn’t lost. It was just that when it came to his precious Lani, believing anything else was unthinkable.
Br
andon’s initial reluctance about adopting Clemencia Escalante disappeared within days of the child’s noisy entry into the Walker household. He was captivated by her in every way, and the reverse was also true. It wasn’t long before his daily return from work was cause for an ecstatic greeting on Clemencia’s part. When he was home, she padded around at his heels, following him everywhere, always underfoot no matter where he was or what he was doing.
When it came time to work on turning their temporary appointment as foster parents into permanent adoptive ones, Brandon had forged through the reams of paperwork with cheerful determination. Later, during caseworker interviews, he was charming and enthusiastic. But when the time came to drive out to Sells to appear before the tribal court for a hearing on finalizing the adoption, he was as nervous as he had been on the day he and Diana Ladd married.
“What if they turn us down after all this?” he asked, standing in front of the mirror and reknotting his tie for a third time. “What if we have to give her back? I couldn’t stand to lose her now, not after all this.”
“Wanda seems to think it’ll go through as long as we have Rita in our corner.”
The four of them rode out to Sells together. Rita and the baby sat in the backseat—Clemencia sleeping in her car seat and Rita sitting stolidly with her arms folded across her lap. She said very little, but everything about her exuded serene confidence. They found Fat Crack waiting for them in the small gravel parking lot outside the tribal courtroom. While Brandon and Diana unloaded the baby and her gear, Rita turned to her nephew.
“Did you do it?” she asked Fat Crack, speaking to him in the language of the Tohono O’othham. “Did you look at her picture through the divining crystals?”
“Heu’u—yes,” Fat Crack said.
“And what did you see?”
“I saw this child, the one you call Forever Spinning, wearing a white coat and carrying a feather, a seagull feather.”
“See there?” Rita said, her face dissolving into a smile. “I told you, didn’t I? She will be both.”
“But—”
“No more,” Rita said. “It’s time to go in.”
Molly Juan, the tribal judge, was a pug-faced, no-nonsense woman who spent several long minutes shuffling through the paperwork Wanda Ortiz handed her before raising her eyes to gaze at the people gathered in the courtroom.
“Both parents are willing to give up the child?” she asked at last.
Wanda Ortiz nodded. “Both have signed terminations of parental rights.”
“And there are no blood relatives interested in taking her?”
“Not at this time. If the Walkers’ petition to adopt her is denied, my office has made arrangements to place Clemencia in a facility in Phoenix.”
“Who is this then?” Molly Juan asked, nodding toward Rita.
“This is Mrs. Antone—Rita Antone—a widow and my husband’s aunt,” Wanda replied.
“And she has some interest in this matter?”
Ponderously, Rita Antone wheeled her chair until she sat facing the judge. “That is true,” Rita said. “I am Hejel Wi i’thag—Left Alone. My grandmother, my father’s mother, was Oks Amichuda, Understanding Woman. She was not a medicine woman, although she could have been. But she told me once, years ago, that I would find one, and that when I did, I should give her my medicine basket.
“Do you know the story of Mualig Siakam?”
Molly Juan nodded. “Of course, the woman who was saved by the Little People during the great famine.”
Brandon Walker leaned over to his wife. “What the hell does all this have to do with the price of tea in China?”
“Shhhh,” Diana returned.
“Clemencia has been kissed by the ants in the same way the first Mualig Siakam was kissed by the bees,” Rita continued. “Clemencia was starving and might have died if the ants had not bitten her and brought her to my attention. Some of her relatives are afraid to take her because they fear Ant Sickness. The Walkers are Mil-gahn, so Ant Sickness cannot hurt them. And I am old. I will die long before Ant Sickness can find me.
“The Walkers are asking for her because everyone knows that I am too old to care for her by myself, just as her own great-grandmother was. But I know that this is the child Oks Amichuda told me about—the very one.”
“And you think, that by keeping her with you, you can help her become a medicine woman?” Molly Juan asked.
Rita looked at Fat Crack. “She already is one,” Rita said. “She may not be old enough to understand that yet, and I will not tell her. It’s something she must learn for herself. But in the time I have left, I can teach her things that will be useful when the time comes for her to decide.”
Rita started to move away, but Judge Juan stopped her. “Supposing you die?” she asked pointedly. “What happens then? If Clemencia is living with a Mil-gahn family, who will be there to teach her?”
“The Walkers have a son,” Rita answered quietly. “His Mil-gahn name is David Ladd. His Indian name—the one Looks At Nothing gave him when he was baptized—is Edagith Gogk Je’e—One With Two Mothers.”
Molly Juan pushed her wire-framed glasses back up on her nose and peered closely at Rita. “I remember now. This is the Anglo boy who was baptized by an old medicine man years ago.”
Rita nodded. “Looks At Nothing and I both taught Davy Ladd things he would need to know, things he can teach Clemencia as she gets older even though the medicine man and I are gone.”
“How old is this boy now?”
“Twelve.”
“And he speaks Tohono O’othham?”
“Yes.”
“But what makes you think he would be willing to serve as a teacher and guide to this little girl?”
“I have lived with David Ladd since before he was born.” Rita said. “He is a child of my heart if not of my flesh. When he was baptized, his mother—Mrs. Walker here—and I ate the ceremonial gruel together. He is a good boy. If I ask him to do something, he will do it.”
That was when Judge Molly Juan finally turned to Diana and Brandon Walker. During the course of the proceedings, in an effort to keep the restless Clemencia quiet, Diana had handed the child over to Brandon. By the time the judge looked at them, Clemencia had grasped the tail of Brandon’s new silk tie in one tiny fist and was happily chewing on it and choking him with it at the same time.
“Sheriff Walker,” Molly Juan said, “it sounds as though your family is somewhat unusual. What do you think of all this?”
Still holding the child, Brandon got to his feet to address the judge. “Clemencia is just a baby, and she needs a home,” he said. “I hate to think about her being sent to an orphanage.”
“But what about the rest of it, Sheriff Walker? I know from the paperwork that your wife taught out here on the reservation for a number of years. She probably knows something about the Tohono O’othham and their culture and beliefs. What about you?”
Brandon looked down at the baby, who lay in his arms smiling up at him. For a moment he didn’t speak at all. Finally he looked back at the judge.
“On the night of my stepson’s second baptism,” he said slowly, “I stood outside the feast house and smoked the Peace Smoke with Looks At Nothing. That night he asked three of us—Father John from San Xavier Mission; Gabe Ortiz, Mrs. Antone’s nephew; and myself—along with him to serve as Davy’s four fathers. It seems to me this is much the same thing.
“If you let us have her, my wife and I will do everything in our power to see that she has the best of both worlds.”
Judge Juan nodded. “All right then, supposing I were to grant this petition on a temporary basis, pending final adoption proceedings, have you given any thought as to what you would call her?”
“Dolores Lanita—Lani for short,” Brandon answered at once. “Those would be her Anglo names. And her Indian name would be Mualig Siakam—Forever Spinning.”
“And her home village?” Judge Juan asked.
“Ban Thak—Coyote Sitting,
” he answered. “That is Rita’s home village. It would be hers as well.”
“Be it so ordered,” Judge Juan said, whacking her desk with the gavel. “Next case.”
13
Then all the people near the village of Gurli Put Vo—Dead Man’s Pond—were told to come to a council so they could arrange for the protection of their fields. Everything that flies and all the animals came with the Indians to the council. And everybody promised to watch carefully so that the Bad People of the south should not again surprise them.
When PaDaj O’othham had eaten all the corn which they had stolen, they were soon hungry again. So they began once more to think of the nice fields of the Desert People. They began to wish they could steal the harvest, but they did not know how to accomplish this because, as you know, the Indians and their friends, the Flying People and all the animals, were on guard.
Then a wise old bad man told PaDaj O’othham what to do.
Now when the Desert People held that council to arrange for the protection of their fields, they were so excited that they called only the people who live aboveground. So this wise old bad man told PaDaj O’othham to call all the people who live under the ground: Ko’owi—the Snakes, Nanakshel—the Scorpions, Hiani—the Tarantulas, Jewho—the Gophers, Chichdag—the Gila Monsters, and Chuk—the Jackrabbits. The Bad People said they would give all these people who live under the ground good food and beautiful clothes if they would go through the ground to the fields of the Desert People and fight the Tohono O’othham while the Bad People stole the crops.
Chuk—Jackrabbit—did not like this plan. The Indians had always been good to Chuk, and he did not want to fight them. But Jackrabbit did not know what to do.
Some bumblebees were sitting in a nearby tree. Hu’udagi—the Bumblebees—told Chuk to run with all his speed to the Desert People and tell them how PaDaj O’othham were planning to steal their harvest. The Bumblebees said they would tell U’uwhig—the Birds.