Queen of the Night

by J. A. Jance

  Jonathan had made arrangements to meet up with new identification once he crossed into Mexico, but he had planned on crossing the border using his own ID. Now he spent some time second-guessing that decision, but since there was no alternative, he decided he would try going to the airport early. Maybe he’d be able to get his ticket and make it through security before anyone raised the alarm.

  He called for a cab to come take him to the airport. Ignoring Los Amigos’s paltry version of a breakfast buffet, he dragged his roll-aboard luggage out through the lobby. His minivan was parked in the far corner of the lot. Jonathan didn’t dare glance in that direction for fear someone might notice and wonder why he was taking his luggage and leaving without taking his vehicle with him.

  The cab arrived with amazing alacrity. On the ride to the airport, Jonathan couldn’t help glancing over his shoulder once or twice, but when they drove up to the departure gates, Jonathan was appalled to see a collection of cop cars gathered there. Not city cops—county cops.

  Jonathan understood at once why they were there—they were looking for him. They had to be. He also understood that if he stepped inside the airport, he might still be able to purchase a ticket, but he wouldn’t make it through security screening and out to a gate. That’s where the cops would be waiting and watching—at the security checkpoints.

  Worried about airport security, he had left his Glock in the car when he left the motel. He had been afraid that if the weapon showed up in his checked luggage, it might arouse suspicion. Now, though, he wanted it back. Once the cabdriver returned him to Los Amigos and dropped him off, he went straight to the minivan and retrieved the weapon from under the front seat.

  Is that how all this is going to end, he wondered, in a hail of bullets?

  Jonathan still had that collection of pills he had brought along from California. That and some booze—well, enough booze—would probably do the trick if it came to that, but he had to believe that it was still possible for him to make a clean getaway. That would only be possible if he made his move soon—very soon.

  He was hungry. He had planned on eating breakfast at the airport. Now he needed to find some food, but he didn’t want to spend a lot of time driving around town in case someone had caught on and put out a bulletin of some kind on his minivan. When he left the hotel, he wound through downtown. A mile or so from Tucson’s downtown area, he happened on a family-owned coffee shop called Chaffin’s, the kind of place that was crowded with Sunday-brunch-style gatherings.

  Seated at the long counter and relishing the anonymity, he ate his short stack and downed his coffee and orange juice. As he did so, he idly wondered if he’d even be able to find pancakes once he made it into Mexico. Years ago, in Tijuana, Esther had ordered French toast and had been disappointed when her order came with French bread toasted. Pancakes might suffer in translation the same way.

  Finally the guy next to him got up and went to pay his bill, leaving an untidy stack of maple-syrup-spotted Sunday newspaper sitting on the counter. Jonathan appropriated it and opened it to the front page. The article about the shootings on the reservation didn’t add much to what had already been reported on the local television news.

  Using the newspaper as cover, he sat there for some time, reading it and drinking one cup of coffee after the other, but he wasn’t really reading. Jonathan was thinking. When he finally put down the paper and went to pay his tab, he had analyzed his situation and come up with a plan of action. Leaving his waitress a respectable tip, he exited the restaurant and went looking for a grocery store. He was pretty sure that was where he’d find what he needed.

  Tucson, Arizona

  Sunday, June 7, 2009, 12:00 p.m.

  81º Fahrenheit

  By the time Brandon and Diana made it back to Tucson from Sonoita, it was early afternoon. They rode with the convertible’s top closed. Even so, they could tell that the Invicta’s aging air conditioner was losing ground in its war with the summer heat.

  Rather than driving straight through to Casa Grande in that, they stopped by the house in Gates Pass long enough to trade Diana’s vintage Buick for Brandon’s CRV. As for Damsel? After her morning’s adventure, she was more than happy to curl up in her favorite place on the couch and snooze the rest of the day away while her people went off to do whatever people do when they’re out.

  On their way north, Brandon and Diana talked. Yesterday Brandon had been trying to run away from his own worst fears. Today those fears were realized. Yesterday, isolated and dreading what the unknown future might hold, he had felt impotent and hopeless. Now he knew that there was a very real possibility that he would lose Diana—that she would drift away from him into that strange fog of unknowing. That was a terrible prospect—an appalling prospect, but if that truly was what was happening, if Diana’s strange visitations were part of early-onset Alzheimer’s, at least now they were dealing with a known opponent, a named opponent.

  And, if nothing else, he and Diana were finally talking about it. They were dealing with it together—would deal with it together. Somehow that made it less scary as far as Brandon was concerned. They had made it through tough times together before, and they would do so again.

  One by one they tried to look the worst-case scenario in the eye, attempting to sort out strategies that would help them navigate whatever was coming and make the best of it. Now that they had decided the Invicta would remain in the family, they also determined that from now on, in case the fog descended again—or, rather, when the fog descended again—Brandon would take charge of all car keys, including locking them away in his gun safe if he deemed that course of action necessary.

  Brandon had never tried his hand at golf. He just wasn’t interested in chasing little white balls across grassy lawns and trying to herd them into holes, but he remembered reading somewhere that Alzheimer’s patients who had once played golf were still able to do so long after their other mental faculties seemed to desert them.

  For that very reason he was enthusiastic about Diana’s sudden interest in trying her hand at making pottery. It was something that she had enjoyed once in the distant past. He hoped it would help hold her interest now. Since the Invicta would still be occupying its space in the garage, however, one of the bedrooms—most likely the one that had been Davy’s—would be turned into Diana’s pottery studio.

  And if they needed more help around the house—both of them carefully avoided saying the word “attendant”—maybe Lani could help them find someone from the reservation who would be willing to come live in and be there to help out out as necessary.

  As they talked, the miles seemed to melt away. Today, as Brandon drove into Geet and Sue Farrell’s neighborhood, it didn’t look quite as grim as it had appeared to him on the previous day. Yes, the trim on the house still needed scraping and painting and the thirsty palm trees were still wilting in the heat, but it wasn’t as distressing as it had seemed yesterday.

  The day before when he had noticed the wheelchair-accessible van parked in their driveway, he had taken that as a sign of defeat. Today, that same van with its handicapped-parking placard spoke to him in a different way. It was one of the tools Sue and Geet were using to get along—had used to get along. Brandon doubted Geet would be up to taking many more trips away from his living room hospital equipment and oxygen mask, but the van was part of how he and Sue had coped so far. It was how they had made it to here.

  And we’ll make it, too, Brandon thought.

  He pulled into the driveway and parked next to the van. “Do you want me to wait in the car?” Diana asked.

  “No,” he said. “It’s too hot. Come on in. You can talk to Sue while I visit with Geet. She needs company, too.”

  When the time comes, so will I, he thought.

  He led Diana around the house to the back-door entrance and knocked. When Sue answered she looked marginally better than she had the day before. The haircut helped, but she also looked better rested.

  “Back so soon?” she a
sked.

  Brandon nodded. It seemed odd to him that he and Geet had been friends for years, but until this moment their wives had never met. Once the necessary introductions were out of the way, Brandon left Diana in the kitchen with Sue while he made his way back into the living room. This time he was better equipped to deal with the hospice equipment he saw there. Sue’s tangle of sheets still covered the sofa, but now a kitchen chair had been drawn up close to the bed.

  Geet himself lay propped up in his hospital bed with his closed eyes turned toward a muted television set where the Padres were playing the Diamondbacks. It seemed to Brandon that in those few intervening hours the man had wasted away that much more. The skin on the gaunt bones of his face was gray. His lips were almost white. Death was coming and it was coming soon. Brandon knew what this looked like. He had seen the same thing in the hospital room where they had taken his father.

  Geet’s eyes blinked open without warning. He studied Brandon for a moment as if unsure of who he was. Then he grinned—at least it looked like a grin.

  “Hey,” he said. “Weren’t you just here, or do I have you mixed up with someone else?”

  “I was here,” Brandon said. “Yesterday. You handed over that case file.”

  “Ursula’s,” he said.

  “Yes,” Brandon agreed. “Ursula’s.”

  Geet stirred. Cancer had robbed him of almost everything, but for a few moments the old intensity burned through. His eyes focused. He paid attention. “Did you talk to her—to the witness?”

  “To June Holmes?” Brandon returned. “Yes, I did.”

  “Why wouldn’t she talk to me before this?” Geet asked. “Why now?”

  “Because her husband was still alive,” Brandon explained. “She didn’t send you that note until after Fred Holmes died.”

  “Why?” Geet asked. “What does that have to do with the price of peanuts?”

  “She claims Fred was the one who did it—the one who murdered Ursula Brinker. She said she didn’t know about it until five years ago. When Fred finally got around to telling her, he had just been diagnosed with cancer. She waited until after he was dead to send you that letter.”

  “But I checked Fred Holmes’s alibi,” Geet objected. “I had witnesses who placed him in Phoenix that whole weekend.”

  Brandon was struck by the fact that even after all these years and even in the throes of cancer, Geet still had a complete grasp of the details of that case. He had no difficulty recalling the names of the people involved.

  For him it’s like golf, Brandon thought. Or throwing pots.

  “The alibi came from his mother?” Brandon asked.

  “Yes.”

  “She may have thought he was there, but he wasn’t. He drove to San Diego and back without his mother ever knowing he was gone.”

  “Why did it happen?” Geet asked.

  “Ursula and June started out as friends. On that trip they evidently became closer than friends.”

  “As in a homosexual encounter?”

  Brandon knew Geet had suspected as much. He nodded. “Someone walked in on them and caught them in the act. Word about what had happened got back to Fred. According to June, it was just a onetime thing. Maybe it was; maybe it wasn’t. At any rate, this was a long time before Don’t Ask/Don’t Tell. Fred and June had both been raised as devout Mormons where that kind of thing was then and still is a big no-no. When Fred heard about it, he went ape and drove straight to San Diego to put a stop to it. Ursula ended up dead.”

  “Who spilled the beans and told him about what was going on?”

  “June said she thought maybe it was Margo.”

  “The girl who owned the car.”

  Brandon nodded.

  Geet thought about that for a moment. “A couple of people hinted around that something like that might have happened between Ursula and June. I wondered about Fred from the beginning, but as far as I could tell, his alibi checked out. What if she’s lying?”

  “What if June Holmes is lying now?” Brandon asked.

  Geet nodded. “What if June was the one who ran up the flag to Fred in the first place?” he asked. “Maybe she knew he was likely to overreact?”

  “I don’t think so,” Brandon said. “I don’t think she told Fred about what happened before Ursula died, but she did shortly after it happened. She thought that when she made her confession to him that he’d drop her like a hot potato. She’s spent most of the last fifty years being grateful that he didn’t. When he finally got around to telling her what had really happened, he was counting on her standing by him the same way he had stood by her. He figured those forty-five years of gratitude would keep her from spilling the beans. It was also a form of punishment.”

  “Sounds like it worked on both counts,” Geet grumbled.

  Brandon nodded. “She didn’t say a word to anyone about it until after he was dead. By the time you reopened the case, Fred had already confessed to her. That’s why she refused to talk to you. She didn’t want her kids and grandkids to know what Fred had done. And she didn’t want them to know about what she and Ursula had done, either.”

  Geet shook his head. “If you ask me, it seems a little suspect and way too convenient that she’s blaming Fred now, after he’s dead and unable to defend himself. Do you believe her?”

  “Actually, I do,” Brandon told him. “She had her suitcase packed and her cat crated. She fully expected that I was coming to pack her off to jail. She was under the impression that by knowing about it and not telling, that made her an accessory after the fact. I think she was on the level.”

  Reaching into his pocket, Brandon withdrew the Ziploc bag containing the hunting knife and handed it over to Geet.

  “What’s this?”

  “That may be the murder weapon,” Brandon told him. “After Fred died, one of their sons was going through his tools and found this hidden in the back of one of the drawers in his father’s tool chest. In all the years June and Fred were married, she said she had never seen it before, didn’t know it existed. I’ll get it over to the crime lab and see if they can find any DNA evidence. There might be some, right there in the crack where the blade meets the handle.”

  Geet examined the knife through the clear plastic and then gave it back to Brandon. “What if there is?” he asked with an exasperated shrug. “What’s the point? Ursula is still dead. So are her parents. So is Fred. What about justice? No one is ever going to pay for that crime.”

  “June is paying,” Brandon said quietly. “She may not have murdered Ursula, but she knows now that what the two of them did together that day was the ultimate cause of her friend’s death. I believe she’ll regret it every day for the rest of her life.”

  Geet leaned back against his pillows, closed his eyes, and shook his head in obvious disgust. “So that’s it, then,” he said. “I’ve spent a lifetime chasing after this case and it’s all for nothing.”

  “Not for nothing,” Brandon told him. “We finally have a better idea about what happened. Regardless of whether it goes to trial, I believe we can both know that this case is finally closed.”

  “If Fred’s the one who did it, I should have caught him sooner,” Geet insisted. “There must have been something I missed, something that would have given the game away.”

  “What if you had solved it?” Brandon asked. “What then? Fred might have gotten sent up for a couple of years, but you and I wouldn’t be here right now, Geet. It was because Ursula’s murder wasn’t solved that Hedda Brinker used her lotto millions to start The Last Chance. I personally know of at least fifteen separate families that TLC has helped over the years—families who now have answers about their murdered loved ones that they wouldn’t have had otherwise.”

  Geet nodded. “I suppose that’s true,” he admitted, but the spark of focus that had briefly animated him seemed to have run its course. He closed his eyes briefly, then held out his hand. When Brandon took it, Geet’s skin was hot and paper-thin, but the grip of his handsh
ake was surprisingly firm.

  “Thank you, Brandon,” he said. “Following up on this last case of mine means more to me than you know.”

  “You’re welcome,” Brandon said, rising to his feet. “Glad to help out.” He walked toward the door, then stopped. “Turns out it’s probably my last TLC case, too.”

  Geet’s eyes popped open. “Why’s that?”

  “Diana,” Brandon said with a shrug. “I think we’re facing some health issues, too. I’ll probably let Ralph know that I’m going to have to stand down.”

  The fact that he’d made the admission surprised him. It was one thing to tell the kids. It was something else to mention the situation outside the immediate family.

  “I’m sorry,” Geet said. “I hope it works out.”

  “Thanks,” Brandon said. “I hope so, too.”

  Tucson, Arizona

  Sunday, June 7, 2009, 1:30 p.m.

  87º Fahrenheit

  When Brian’s cell phone rang, he expected it to be Kath. He had told her he was still working—that he wouldn’t be able to be there that afternoon to watch the girls while she went shopping.

  The caller, however, turned out to be Alex Mumford. “Who the hell is Jake Abernathy?” she wanted to know.

  “That would be one of Sheriff Forsythe’s fair-haired boys. I take it he called you?”

  “Why didn’t you call me?” she returned pointedly.

  “I got pulled from the case,” he said. “Abernathy’s lead.”

  “That may be, but he’s also a jerk,” Alex said. “He called me up and started throwing his weight around. Make that he was trying to throw his weight around.”

  “I take it that didn’t work out for him all that well?”

  “You think?” Alex replied with a laugh. “I’m all for interagency cooperation and all that crap, but not when someone pisses me off. So here’s the deal. I did get those phone numbers added to the warrant, but I don’t have any information back on that just yet. It is Sunday, after all, but when I do get some information, I’ll be calling it in to you. I seem to have lost Detective Abernathy’s number.”