Queen of the Night

by J. A. Jance

  93º Fahrenheit

  Abby turned the key in the ignition and listened as the powerful V-8 engine roared to life. There was maybe the tiniest squeal, as though a fan belt might be slipping a bit, but the motor settled into a steady hum and the air-conditioning came on full blast—blazingly hot at first, but then cooling. While Abby waited a few moments for the steering wheel to be cool enough to touch, she picked up her cell.

  Still careful with her newly applied polish, she hit the green send button twice and called Tohono Chul for the first time that afternoon but for the seventh time that day. She wasn’t surprised when she was put on hold. Abby, of all people, understood what Shirley Folgum was up against. Trying to ride herd on that evening’s party was a complicated proposition.

  In Tohono Chul’s annual calendar, the celebration of the night-blooming cereus was an enormous undertaking. On that night alone, as many as two thousand people would show up at the park for the festivities, arriving well after dark and not leaving until early the next morning. All of that would have been complicated enough, if it could have been handled in the established way.

  Most big recurring nonprofit-style events come with certain unvarying logistics. Worker bees needed to be organized. Invitations have to be issued. Potential attendees need to be given “Save the date” information. Contracts for entertainment and catering need to be arranged. All of those things held true for the night-blooming cereus party. The big difference—and the big complication—came with the reality that no one ever knew exactly when the party would take place. Not until the very last minute.

  Despite years of patient analysis and study by any number of very talented botanists, despite countless computer models examining weather data—daytime temperatures, nighttime temperatures, dew points, barometric pressures, and all points in between—no one had yet been able to crack the code as to when exactly the Queen of the Night would deign to make her annual appearance. Scientific study suggested it would happen sometime between the end of May and the middle of July. As a result of this uncertainty, all preparations had to be ironed out well in advance and then put in abeyance but ready for immediate last-minute execution.

  It turned out that was how Abby Tennant herself had stumbled into the event for the first time—at the last minute.

  Toward the end of her first June in Tucson, Abby had been dreadfully homesick for her friends and relations back home in Ohio. For one thing, the appalling June heat was nothing short of debilitating. She had almost decided to give up and go back home when a new neighbor, Mildred Harrison, had called.

  “There’s going to be a special party at Tohono Chul tomorrow night,” Mildred had said. “Would you like to come along as my guest?”

  Abby’s new town house in what was billed as an “active adult community” on Tucson’s far northwest side was just down the street from the botanical garden. She had driven past the rock wall entrance numerous times, but she hadn’t ever considered stopping in. Somehow she had never guessed that one of the world’s ten best botanical gardens would be right there, hiding out in the middle of Tucson.

  What interesting plants could possibly grow in the desert? Abby had wondered in all her midwestern arrogance. From what she personally had observed, there seemed to be precious few plants of any kind in this desolate outpost of civilization where, even in May, the heat had been more than Abby could tolerate.

  “I suppose they’re holding it at night because it’s too hot to have a garden party during the day,” Abby had groused sarcastically.

  Mildred had laughed aloud at that. “It’s a party in honor of the night-blooming cereus,” she explained. “It’s the flower on the deer-horn cactus. We call it the Queen of the Night. Tohono Chul has more than eighty plants that are set to bloom this year, and they all blossom at the same time. They open up around sunset and are gone by sunrise the next morning. Someone called just now to let me know that the bloom will be tomorrow night. Are you coming or not?”

  Mildred sometimes reminded Abby of her older sister, Stephanie, who was at times a bit overbearing and more than a little outspoken. On this occasion, Abby had dutifully slipped into full little-sister mode.

  “I suppose,” she had agreed reluctantly.

  The next day she had tried her best to back out of the engagement, but Mildred wouldn’t hear of it. Around nine o’clock that evening, Abby had ridden over to Tohono Chul’s parking lot in Mildred’s aging Pontiac. Arriving in low spirits and with even lower expectations, Abby was surprised to find the parking lot jammed with cars and parking attendants. Along with hordes of other enthusiastic attendees, Abby and Mildred had walked into the park following footpaths that were lit with candles in small paper bags.

  “They’re called luminarias,” Mildred explained. “They’re traditional Mexican.”

  Abby was astonished when she saw the throngs of people who were there that night. She kept wondering what all the fuss was about—but only until she saw a night-blooming cereus in the flesh. Once she caught sight of that first lush white blossom, Abby Tennant fell in love.

  She couldn’t fathom how such a magnificent white flower could burst forth from what appeared to be a skimpy stick of thorny cactus. She was astonished to find that many of the gorgeous blossoms were as big across as one of Abby’s eight-inch pie plates. They reminded her of her next-door neighbor’s prizewinning dahlias back home in Ohio, but these weren’t dahlias, and the heady perfume that drifted away from each flower on the hot summer air was subtle but elegantly sweet, reminiscent of orange blossoms, but not quite the same.

  Abby was dumbstruck. “They’re so beautiful!” she had exclaimed.

  “Aren’t they,” Mildred said, nodding in agreement. “And now you know why it’s called the Queen of the Night. By the time the sun comes up tomorrow, the blossoms will be gone.”

  Abby Tennant’s first encounter with the night-blooming cereus marked the real beginning of her new life, although her name was still Abby Southard back then. She had been so enchanted by seeing the flowers that she had insisted on taking Mildred to lunch at the Tohono Chul Tea Room the very next week. In the confines of the small cool rooms of what had once been a ranch house, Abby began to see the things about Tucson that she had been missing before—the friendliness of the people, Mildred included, for one thing, and the many subtle beauties of the desert for another.

  Abby had taken out her own membership at Tohono Chul only a week or so later. Walking the park’s many manicured paths, she gradually acclimated herself to the heat of her new home. She learned to mark the changing seasons by something other than changing leaves. In spring she saw the profusion of yellow flowers on the prickly pear and the fuchsia-colored blossoms of the barrel cactus. In early summer she came to love the bright yellow blooms standing out against the green branches of the springtime paloverde and the dusky pinks and lavenders on the brooding ironwood. She loved watching the birds, especially the brightly colored hummingbirds that hovered around the equally brightly colored flowers.

  Somehow, in the process of exploring this desert oasis, Abby Tennant found peace and came to terms with her new home and her new life. By the time of the first snowfall in Columbus that first year, she was no longer homesick. When Christmas rolled around and her friends were complaining about the weather, Abby took herself back to the park and volunteered her services.

  At first she knew so little that all she could do was work as a stocker and a cashier in the museum shop. Later, once she was better adjusted to the climate, she went through docent training so she could lead tours and speak knowledgeably about the native plants of her newly adopted home. Because of her enduring fascination with the night-blooming cereus, it was a natural progression of her volunteerism that she went from leading daytime tours to working on the annual Queen of the Night party.

  Initially she served on the Queen of the Night Committee, but when the complexity of the event outstripped the committee’s groupthink capability, Abby had finally given up and taken
charge. When she came on board, there had been a complicated phone-tree system for notifying workers and guests of the impending bloom. Under her direction, phone trees had given way to a more streamlined form of e-mail notices. But after five years of running the show, it was time to pass the reins to someone else, and Shirley Folgum was her handpicked successor.

  “So how are things?” Abby asked when Shirley finally came on the line. “Did you hear back from the band?”

  “I was talking to the manager when you called. They’ll be here for a sound check no later than five. I told them to come in by way of the loading dock.”

  “And the caterer?”

  “She’s having trouble locating servers.”

  “Don’t worry. She’ll find them. This party is a big deal for her, and we pay her a bundle of money during the summer when there’s not much else going on. She’ll come through. She always does.

  “What about the storyteller?” Abby asked.

  Abby had come to love the enduring Tohono O’odham legend about the wise old grandmother whose bravery had given rise to the Queen of the Night. Including that story in the annual festivities was one of the ways Abby had put her own distinctive stamp on the party. She insisted that each year some guest of honor would come to the event and recount the story that had struck a chord in her heart. It seemed to Abby that in saving her grandson, Wise Old Grandmother had saved Abby Tennant as well.

  “That’s handled,” Shirley reported. “Dr. Walker and her mother are planning to have lunch in the Tea Room this afternoon before the party starts. Unfortunately, she’s due back at work in the ER at the hospital in Sells by midnight. That means the last scheduled storytelling event can’t be any later than nine.”

  “Good,” Abby said. “Earlier is better than later.”

  “Are you going to stop by for a last-minute checklist?” Shirley asked.

  “No,” Abby said with a laugh. “I don’t think that’s necessary. It sounds as though you have everything under control.”

  Tucson, Arizona

  Saturday, June 6, 2009, 1:30 p.m.

  93º Fahrenheit

  Lani Dahd used her key to unlock the front door of her parents’ house. She stepped inside, with Gabe following close on her heel. He had been here before and was always astonished by the place.

  For one thing, the house, built of river rock, was bigger than any of the houses he knew on the reservation. Although the people who lived here were Milgahn, Anglos, the place was full of a rich profusion of baskets—Tohono O’odham baskets. There were yucca and bear-grass baskets on every available surface—on walls and tables and the mantelpiece. Gabe had been told that many of them had been made by his great-aunt Rita.

  “How did your parents get so many baskets?” Gabe had asked. “Are they rich?”

  Lani Dahd thought about that for a moment before she answered. By reservation standards, the Anglo couple who had adopted her when she was little more than a toddler were rich beyond measure.

  “Yes,” she said finally. “I suppose they are.”

  “But why?” Gabe asked.

  “Because my mother writes books,” Lani answered.

  “What about your father?”

  “He was a police officer.”

  “Why are they so old?” Gabe asked.

  Lani’s father was almost seventy. Her mother was in her mid-sixties. In the Anglo world that wasn’t so very old, but on the reservation, where people were often cut down by alcoholism and diabetes in their forties and fifties, that seemed like a very advanced age.

  “They just are,” she said.

  “Why do they have different names?” Gabe asked. “Mr. Walker and Mrs. Ladd. Aren’t they married?”

  “Yes, they’re married,” Lani explained, “but my mother was already writing books by then. It made sense for her to keep her own name instead of changing it to someone else’s.”

  This time Gabe was without questions as he followed Lani through the house. While she stopped off in a bathroom, Gabe walked on alone to the sliding door that he knew led to the patio.

  Damsel, the household dog, stood outside the sliding door. Gabe opened the 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, an
d waited patiently until it was time to leave.

  Tucson, Arizona

  Saturday, June 6, 2009, 1:00 p.m.

  93º Fahrenheit

  While the coffeepot burbled and burped, Dan dished up Bozo’s food—dry dog food along with a dollop of canned food for flavor. Dan couldn’t help but notice that the tinned dog food—beef with gravy—smelled more appetizing than some of the MREs he had encountered during his tour of duty in Iraq.

  Our tour of duty, Dan corrected himself mentally as he placed the dish of food in front of the salivating dog. He still remembered his first one-sided conversation with the dog no one had wanted.

  “Look,” he had said while Bozo listened to his voice with rapt, prick-eared attention. “Let’s get one thing straight. When we work, we work; when we play, we play, but you’ve got to know the difference.”

  “Hey,” one of the guys had said, pointing and laughing. “Looks like Chief here is turning into one of those dog whisperers. Is it possible old Bozo actually understands Apache?”

  From the time he was four, Dan had been raised by his grandparents on the San Carlos Reservation in Arizona, where Dan had been ridiculed for being half Anglo and half Apache. Back then he had coped with his tormentors by playing class clown, so maybe Bozo had a point. And maybe that’s one of the reasons Dan and Bozo had bonded. Daniel Pardee was in Iraq wearing his country’s uniform and doing his country’s job, but he was sick and tired of the constant jokes about his Apache background. Maybe Bozo was tired of the jokes, too.

  “I was just telling him that some of the people around here are jerks,” Dan replied. “I told him he needs to know who his friends are.”

  By the time Dan’s deployment neared its end, he had pretty much resigned himself to leaving Bozo behind. By then Bozo’s reputation was such that the other guys were clamoring to take him on. That was when Ruthie’s “Dear John” letter arrived. He and Ruthie Longoria had been childhood sweethearts and had dated exclusively all through high school. The idea that they would marry eventually had been a foregone conclusion, but the ending had been all too typical. Somehow Dan had known what was up before he even opened the envelope. For one thing, she had sent it via snail mail rather than over the Net.