Opening the top of the brimming evidence box, Brandon put the envelope inside, then closed it again.
“So you’ll do it?” Geet asked.
“I’ll do my best,” Brandon said.
“Don’t take too long,” Geet cautioned. “I don’t have much time, but don’t say anything about that to Sue. She doesn’t know how bad it is.”
Yes, she does, Brandon thought. She knows, and so do you. Maybe it’s time the two of you talked about it.
Tucson, Arizona
Saturday, June 6, 2009, 2:00 p.m.
93? Fahrenheit
“Who was your company?” Lani Dahd asked her mother, as they left the house in Gates Pass and headed into Tucson. Mrs. Ladd was in the passenger seat, while Gabe had moved to the back and was listening to the conversation.
“What company?” Mrs. Ladd returned.
“I don’t know,” Lani said. “Gabe told me there was a man sitting and talking to you when we got to the house.”
Frowning, Mrs. Ladd turned and looked questioningly at Gabe. Her eyes were a startling shade of blue, like the color of the blue jays that sometimes strutted around the yard. Her skin was surprisingly pale. Her silvery hair had been pulled back with a turquoise-studded comb.
“No one was there,” Mrs. Ladd said after a long moment, turning back to Lani. “Just me. Gabe must have been mistaken.”
Gabe was shocked. He wasn’t mistaken. He had seen the man with his own eyes, and he was telling the truth. Lani Dahd and his parents always said it was important to tell the truth, no matter what. And he did. So why was it okay for Mrs. Ladd to lie and say that the man wasn’t there when he had been?
Now that Gabe thought about that man again, the one who wasn’t there, he realized one more thing about him. The man sitting across from Mrs. Ladd at her patio table was blind. He had to be. He had been sitting there staring up into the sky, looking directly at the sun. He couldn’t have done that if he hadn’t been blind already.
Gabe started to voice his objection and to insist once again that the man really had been there, but then Mrs. Ladd suddenly changed the subject.
“I’m going to sell the car,” she announced.
“The Invicta?” Lani asked.
Invicta? What was that? Gabe knew the makes and models of lots of cars because they came through his father’s auto-repair shop every day, but he had never heard of a car by that name. Maybe it was some brand-new car that people on the reservation didn’t have yet. They mostly liked pickups. Invicta didn’t sound like a pickup.
“But you love that car,” Lani objected. “Why on earth would you sell it?”
“Do you want it?” Mrs. Ladd asked.
“No,” Lani said. “On my salary, I could never afford to keep it in gas. Maybe Davy would like it.”
Gabe knew that Davy was Lani’s older brother. Gabe also knew that Davy and his wife were getting a divorce.
“I don’t think so,” Mrs. Ladd said. “He’s already got two cars as it is.”
“You still haven’t said why you’re getting rid of it,” Lani insisted.
“I need the space in the garage,” Mrs. Ladd said. “I want to turn that part of it into a studio. Do you know where I can get a pottery wheel?”
“A studio?” Lani repeated. “And a pottery wheel? Why would you want one of those?”
“Why do you think?” Mrs. Ladd said impatiently. “To make pots.”
Gabe knew lots of old women who made pots. Well, maybe not lots, but several. That’s what the Tohono O’odham said women were supposed to do when they got too old to do anything else-they were supposed to make pots. It seemed to him that Mrs. Ladd, with her white hair and pale skin, was already that old. As a result, Gabe didn’t find the possibility of her making pots nearly as odd as her daughter did.
“Are you kidding?” Lani asked. “You’ve never done that before. Ever. Why would you start making pots now?”
“Yes, I did make pots once,” Mrs. Ladd replied. “Back in Joseph. There were lots of artists there. Some of them even came to the high school and taught classes.”
Gabe had no idea where Joseph was. It sounded far away. Maybe it was up by Phoenix.
“Does Dad know about this?” Lani asked with a frown.
“Yes,” Mrs. Ladd said. “I told him.”
As the two women in the front seat fell silent, Gabe found himself drifting. He wondered if it was hard for Lani to be an Indian with Milgahn parents. It seemed to him that it made sense to have two parents that were the same kind-from the same tribe.
As they headed north on Silver Bell toward Ina, the steady movement of the car and the accompanying silence got to be too much for him. Gabe’s eyes fell shut, his chin dropped to his chest, and he fell asleep.
In his dream the man was there again, just as he had been earlier, sitting beside Mrs. Ladd’s bright blue swimming pool. Only this time, something was different. Gabe wasn’t alone on the patio. Lani Dahd was there with him.
And then the man spoke. “Why, I’ll be,” he said, turning his empty eyes away from the sun and toward the spot on the patio where Gabe and Lani stood side by side. “If it isn’t Lani! Come over here and have a seat. I was hoping you’d drop by.”
Sells, Tohono O’odham Nation, Arizona
Saturday, June 6, 2009, 5:00 p.m.
94? Fahrenheit
Delphina Escalante Enos stood in line at Basha’s while Rosemary Sixkiller ran the cartload of groceries through the register. Delphina’s four-year-old daughter, Angelina, sat in the child seat of the cart clutching an open box of animal crackers. She munched them carefully, always biting off the heads first.
“You sure look happy,” Rosemary observed.
Rosemary and Delphina had been school classmates, first at Indian Oasis Elementary and later at Baboquivari High School. Rosemary had graduated. Delphina had not. Pregnant at age fifteen, she had dropped out of school to have the baby. Then, when Angie was only two months old, Joaquin Enos, the baby’s father, had run off to take up with someone else. For the better part of three years, Delphina and the baby had stayed on with Delphina’s parents in Nolic, but her father was ill now-with diabetes-and having a busy baby underfoot was too hard on everyone.
Realizing she had to do better for her child, Delphina had earned her GED and had managed to get a job doing filing for the tribe. It was at work where she had met Donald Rios, a man who hailed from Komelik Village and who was also on the tribal council. His family had land and cattle.
By reservation standards, the Rios family was well-to-do. Their family compound consisted of four mobile homes set around a central courtyard-a concrete central courtyard. They also had their own well-one that was deep enough to work even in the dead of summer. That was unusual, too. Most of the time a well would belong to an entire village rather than to a single family. But it wasn’t just Donald’s comfortable circumstances that made him so appealing to Delphina.
Donald was everything that Joaquin Enos had never been. Donald was kind and caring. He had a job that he went to every day. He was responsible, and he loved Delphina and her baby to distraction. He never came to see Delphina without bringing something for Angie-a toy or a book or a packet of stickers.
He was someone Delphina was comfortable with. That made far more sense to her than the fact that his family might have money. All his relatives-parents, brothers, and sisters-were reputable, churchgoing people- Presbyterians. As far as Delphina’s own family was concerned, there were plenty of skeletons in those closets- people who had done bad and who were no longer mentioned at family gatherings.
But the other thing the Rios family had going for them was a strong connection to the old ways. Maybe it was
