Day of the Dead

by J. A. Jance

  Señor the Doctor, Maria Elena whispered to herself. That is good. That is very good.

  Weak with relief, she grabbed up her knapsack and raced for the door.

  Two

  APRIL 2002

  Under a clear blue April sky, Brandon Walker swam his laps one after the other. He didn’t bother about timing them. At age sixty-one, he was no longer interested in setting speed records, and he didn’t count laps, either. What he wanted was to maintain his endurance, so he swam until he couldn’t swim any longer, then he stopped. He was a little winded, but not too bad. The heated water in the newly installed lap pool was kind to his joints, especially his right hip and left knee, both of which had been giving him trouble recently.

  When he had gone in for his annual physical, Dr. Browder had hinted that it was about time to discuss the possibility of hip- and knee-replacement surgery. Brandon was considering the possibility all right, but not very seriously. He’d get around to having joint replacement surgery about the same time someone perfected the art of human brain transplants. In the meantime, he’d get along as best he could without complaining. If he didn’t gripe about it, maybe he could keep his wife, Diana Ladd, from setting another doctor’s appointment.

  The cordless phone he had carried out to the patio rang with the distinctive ringer that said someone was calling from the locked security gate at the front wall. Had he been home alone, he would have had to scramble out of the pool to see who was there and let them in. Fortunately, Diana was home and in her study, locked in mortal combat with the stalled beginning of her next book. Convinced she would welcome any interruption, Brandon kept swimming. Besides, the visitor was probably UPS or FedEx bringing some new missive or assignment from Diana’s New York publishers. Most of the mail, packages, and e-mails that arrived at their Gates Pass home near Tucson these days were part of Diana’s ongoing business. Years after Brandon’s failed reelection bid for the office of Pima County sheriff, he had adjusted to being retired and mostly out of the loop. Diana Ladd was still working hard; Brandon was hardly working.

  His wife came out through the sliding door onto the patio trailed by Damsel, a now three-year-old long-eared mutt Diana had found as a shivering, starving, and abandoned pup outside their front gate on a chilly Thanksgiving morning two and a half years earlier. Brandon and Diana had agreed that, with their daughter Lani off at school, the last thing they needed was a puppy. In the end, however, sentimentality had won out over good sense. Their Damsel in Distress—Damn Dog, as Brandon often called her, since she was usually underfoot—was now a well-loved and decidedly spoiled member of the family.

  Walking toward the pool, Diana beckoned her husband to climb out. They had been married for more than twenty-five years, but in his eyes she was still as beautiful as she had been that stormy summer afternoon some thirty years earlier, when he had knocked on the door of her mobile home in a teachers’ living compound near the Papago village of Topawa. He had gone there looking for Diana’s first husband, Garrison, who was a suspect in a homicide that then Pima County homicide detective Brandon Walker was investigating.

  By the time Brandon arrived at Diana’s house, Garrison Ladd was already dead of what would be ruled a self-inflicted gunshot wound, but neither Brandon Walker nor Diana Ladd had known that then. The detective had sat across from her in the living room of a threadbare single-wide mobile home, asking tough questions about her husband’s doings and whereabouts. As he did so, Brandon was struck by Diana’s delicate beauty; by the hard-won poise with which she answered his troubling questions; and by her unwavering loyalty to her jerk of a husband, even though by then she must have suspected some of what had gone on behind her back.

  That very afternoon, as Diana Ladd struggled to cope with the looming disaster that was about to engulf her life, Brandon Walker had longed to take the distraught woman in his arms and comfort her, but he hadn’t—not then. Married at the time, Brandon had managed to maintain his professional distance then and six months later, as well, when a profoundly pregnant Diana Ladd had worked determinedly to see to it that her dead husband’s accomplice, Andrew Carlisle, was sent to prison. Six years after that, when Carlisle was released from prison and came stalking Diana, Brandon Walker had once again been thrown into Diana’s orbit. During those intervening years, a divorced Brandon Walker had looked at a few other women and even dated one or two, but none of them had measured up.

  Brandon remembered how someone somewhere had once asked him if he believed in love at first sight. Naturally he had laughed off the question and brushed it aside as if it were too inane to bother answering, but deep down he knew better. He had fallen in love with Diana Ladd the moment he saw her. And he loved her still.

  “What’s up?” he asked as she came toward the pool, holding out a towel.

  “You may want to go in the back way to dress,” she said. “Somebody’s here to see you.”

  Brandon took the proffered towel and scrambled out of the pool. “Who is it?” he asked.

  “An old Indian lady named Emma Orozco,” Diana replied. “She’s using a walker, so I left her in the living room.”

  “She’s on a walker and drove here by herself?”

  “No. Her son-in-law brought her. He’s waiting out front. I offered to invite him in, but she said no, he’d stay in the car.”

  “What does she want?”

  Diana shrugged. “Beats me. Something about her daughter.”

  Once out of the water, Brandon found the morning air far chillier than expected. He hurried to the sliding door and let himself into the bedroom. After dressing he made his way into the spacious living room, where a wizened Indian woman, her face a road map of wrinkles, sat primly erect on the leather sofa, one gnarled hand resting on the crossbar of her walker.

  “Ms. Orozco?” Brandon asked tentatively, taking a seat opposite the old woman. “I’m Brandon Walker.”

  She turned to look at him and nodded. “Your baskets are very nice,” she said.

  Brandon glanced around the living room. Diana’s collection of Native American baskets, many of them finely crafted museum-quality pieces, were arrayed around the room with wild extravagance. They had been part of the household furnishings for so long that Brandon Walker no longer noticed them.

  “Thank you,” he replied. “Some of them were made by Rita Antone, a Tohono O’odham woman who was once my wife’s housekeeper and baby-sitter.”

  Emma Orozco nodded again. “I knew Hejel Wi i’thag,” she said. “Her nephew is the one who sent me to talk to you.”

  Despite years of living around the Tohono O’odham, the Desert People, Brandon was still struck by the lingering influence of old ways and old things. Rita Antone had been dead for fifteen years, yet on the reservation she was still Hejel Wi i’thag—Left Alone. As a little orphaned girl named Dancing Quail, Rita had been given the name Left Alone in the early part of the twentieth century, long before Emma Orozco had been born. No doubt stories about Hejel Wi i’thag and her odd loyalty to an Anglo woman named Diana Ladd were now an enduring part of reservation lore.

  Rita Antone’s nephew, retired Tribal Chairman Gabe Ortiz, and his wife, Wanda, were longtime family friends. In the Walker/Ladd household, Gabe was usually referred to by his familiar name of Fat Crack—Gihg Tahpani. Not wanting to betray what might seem like undue intimacy, Brandon made no reference to that name now.

  “How’s Mr. Ortiz doing?” Brandon asked.

  “Not so good,” Emma Orozco replied.

  This was not news. A few months earlier, Fat Crack had been diagnosed with diabetes. A student of Christian Science, Fat Crack had, in middle age and with some reluctance, answered a summons to become a Tohono O’odham medicine man. Once aware of his diagnosis, Fat Crack had refused to accept the services of the Indian Health Service physicians and “get poked full of holes.” Instead, he was dealing with his ailment—one so prevalent on the reservation that it was known as the Papago Plague—with diet and exercise, along with an unlike
ly regimen of treatments that was as much Mary Baker Eddy as it was Native American.

  “I don’t know why he has to be so damned stubborn,” Brandon’s daughter Lani had railed. Home for Christmas vacation from her pre-med studies in North Dakota, she had heard about the diagnosis while visiting Wanda and Fat Crack in their home at Sells. “He should be under a doctor’s care,” Lani had declared. “But he won’t even consider it.”

  Dolores Lanita Walker was a Tohono O’odham child who, as a toddler, had been adopted by Diana Ladd and Brandon Walker. She had been reared by them and, for the first several years, by Rita Antone as well. Fat Crack and Wanda Ortiz were Lani’s godparents, and Fat Crack and Lani had always been especially close.

  “You can’t take this personally,” Brandon had counseled his daughter. “Fat Crack has to deal with his illness in his own way, not your way.”

  “But he’s going to die,” a suddenly tearful Lani had objected. “He’s going to die and leave us, and he doesn’t have to.”

  “You’re wrong there, sweetie,” Brandon had told her. “We all have to die.”

  Brandon refocused his attention on the present and on Emma Orozco, sitting stolid and still on the living room couch. At first Brandon thought she was still staring at the baskets, but then he realized she wasn’t. She was looking beyond them—through them—in a way that took him back to his days in ’Nam and to the thousand-yard stare.

  “But Mr. Ortiz suggested you should see me,” Brandon suggested gently. “My wife said it was something concerning your daughter.”

  Emma sighed and nodded. “She’s dead.”

  Brandon gave himself points. He had recognized the look on her face, and the hurt, too. “I’m sorry,” Brandon said.

  “It’s all right,” Emma returned. “Roseanne’s been dead for a long time.” She paused then, searching for words.

  Years in law enforcement had taught Brandon Walker the difficult art of silence. There were times when it was appropriate to ask questions and probe for answers. But there were other times, like this one, when keeping silent was the only thing to do. Emptying a room of sound left behind a vacuum that could only be filled by a torrent of words. Or, as in this case, by a trickle.

  “She was murdered,” Emma Orozco whispered hoarsely. “In 1970.”

  Suddenly Brandon Walker knew exactly why Emma Orozco was sitting there and why Fat Crack had sent her. “Let me guess,” he offered quietly. “Her killer was never caught.”

  Emma nodded again. Brandon could see that, more than thirty years after her daughter’s death, Emma Orozco still found the subject painful to discuss. As the old woman struggled to keep from shedding shameful tears in front of a relative stranger—something firmly frowned upon by her people—Brandon opted to give her privacy.

  “I’ll get some iced tea,” he said, rising from the couch. “We’ll drink first, then we’ll talk.”

  “Thank you,” Emma whispered. “Thank you very much.”

  Three

  While bustling around in the kitchen, gathering glasses and ice, pouring tea, Brandon Walker remembered every word of the unexpected phone call six months earlier that had rescued him from wallowing in a sea of despair and drowning in a pot of self-imposed pity. He had been cranky and bored, tired of being seen by the world as nothing but Mr. Diana Ladd, and disgusted with himself for not being grateful now that Diana’s burgeoning success had made their financial lives more secure than either one of them had ever dreamed possible.

  Diana had been somewhere on the East Coast, off on another book tour. Alone with Damsel, Brandon was finishing his second cup of coffee and reading the Wall Street Journal in the shade of the patio when the call came in just after 8 A.M. The caller ID readout said “Private Call,” which probably meant it was some telephone solicitor, but on the off chance that it was Diana calling from a new hotel and a new room, Brandon answered it anyway.

  “Hello.”

  “Mr. Walker?” an unfamiliar male voice asked.

  “Yes,” Brandon growled, adopting his most off-putting, crotchety voice. The last thing he wanted to do was have to convince some slimy salesman that, as owner of a house constructed primarily of river rock, he had no need of vinyl siding.

  “My name is Ralph Ames,” the man said. “I hope it’s not too early to call.”

  “That depends on what you’re selling,” Brandon grunted in return. He had no intention of making this easy.

  “I’m not selling anything,” Ames returned.

  Oh, yeah, Brandon thought. That’s what they all say.

  “Does the name Geet Farrell ring a bell?” Ralph continued.

  Detective G. T. Farrell had been a homicide detective for neighboring Pinal County at the same time Brandon Walker had been in a similar position for the Pima County Sheriff’s Department. Geet Farrell was part of the cavalry who had ridden to the rescue when Andrew Philip Carlisle, newly released from prison, had staged his brazen and nearly successful attempt to silence Diana Ladd permanently. Brandon and Geet had stayed in touch occasionally since then, although they weren’t necessarily close.

  “I know Geet Farrell. Don’t tell me he’s gone off the rails and started selling Amway.”

  “I can assure you this has nothing to do with Amway,” Ralph Ames said, sounding somewhat offended. “But he’s part of a project I’m in the process of getting up and running. He thought you might be interested in joining us.”

  This guy’s a smooth operator, Brandon thought. One who won’t take no for an answer.

  “For how much?” he demanded. “What kind of an investment are you looking for?”

  “I’d like you to invest as much time as it’ll take for me to buy you lunch,” Ames answered. “I’m driving down to Tucson later this morning. Is there a chance you’re free?”

  “I suppose it’s possible,” Brandon allowed.

  “Good,” Ames told him. “Meet me at the dining room at the Arizona Inn about eleven-thirty. The table will be under my name.”

  So at least the dog-and-pony show is going to be done in style, Brandon thought. And then, because he was bored and lonely and because he was sick and tired of his own cooking, he found himself, against his own better judgment, saying yes instead of no.

  “Sure,” he blurted into the phone. “Why not? Eleven-thirty it is. See you there.”

  The rest of the morning Brandon berated himself for being such a damned fool. He was so disgusted with himself that when Diana called him from the airport in Atlanta, he didn’t even mention what he’d done. Instead, he poured himself into a starched white shirt, fumbled a once-favored but now slightly spotted tie into an uncomfortable knot around his neck, and then put on a sports coat that was far more snug than it should have been—and than it had been—the last time he’d worn it.

  Hoping to beat Ralph Ames to the punch, Brandon Walker arrived at the Arizona Inn annoyingly early—at eleven-fifteen. When he peered into the spacious dining room with its linen-dressed tables, he saw no one and assumed the place was empty. Then, in the far corner of the room, partially hidden behind a huge vase holding an enormous spray of flowers, he noticed a single occupied table. It was set for two, but only one diner was seated there—an impeccably dressed man wearing a smooth gray suit and a blazingly pink tie. Even across the room, Brandon recognized the tie for what it was—expensive as hell.

  Damn! Brandon thought. With my luck, that’s got to be him. Maybe if I leave my jacket buttoned, the spot on my own tie won’t show.

  “May I help you?” the young hostess asked.

  “I’m looking for Ralph Ames,” he told her.

  “Yes, of course,” she said with a smile. “Mr. Ames is already here. If you’d be good enough to come right this way…”

  Feeling outclassed and out of place, Brandon followed the hostess’s swaying hips through the room. As they neared the table, Ralph Ames rose to his feet and held out a hand, smiling in welcome. Ames wasn’t quite as tall as Brandon, and he was definitely a year or two
younger. His razor-cut light brown hair was combed back with only the slightest hint of gray at the temples, making Brandon aware that his own hair probably resembled an unmowed wheat field. Ames was good-looking and seemed to be in disgustingly good shape. The suit fit him well enough that Brandon was forced to conclude it was probably custom-made. Ames exuded the air and self-confidence of someone who had never failed at anything he attempted.

  All right, not Amway, then, Brandon concluded irritably. More likely a televangelist.

  “Mr. Walker, I presume?” Ames asked. As Brandon had expected, the outrageous pink tie was absolutely blemish-free, but the man’s handshake was firm. Tennis or handball, more than running a television remote for exercise, Brandon decided. Ames’s straight-toothed smile seemed genuine enough and his gaze refreshingly direct.

  Still Brandon wasn’t ready to drop his guard. “Yes,” he allowed. “That’s me.”

  “Have a seat. Would you care for a drink?”

  A glass containing a half-consumed cocktail sat in front of Ralph Ames, along with a leather-bound menu and a thin file folder that he had closed as the hostess approached the table.

  When in Rome… Brandon thought. “Sure,” he said, taking the indicated chair. “Campari and soda will be fine.”

  Brandon wasted no time. He waited only as long as it took the hostess to go confer with a member of the wait-staff. If this was something he wanted no part of, it would be easier to leave after accepting a single drink than it would be after an entire lunch.

  “What’s this all about, Mr. Ames?” he demanded.

  The man handed over a business card that said “Ralph Ames, Attorney at Law.” The card listed two separate office addresses, one in Seattle and one in Scottsdale. So not a televangelist then but an attorney, which in Brandon Walker’s opinion, was probably worse.

  “Do you ever play Powerball?” Ralph Ames asked.

  “You mean as in the multistate lottery?”

  “Yes, that’s correct.”