Day of the Dead (35 page)

Gayle’s joy knew no bounds. This was nothing short of a miracle—a gift from a god Gayle Stryker hadn’t, until now, believed in. If Erik died, what could be better? When it came to assumptions of guilt, nothing quite compared with committing suicide—or even attempting it. And if he lived? No problem. Gayle Stryker was a master at the art of spin. She knew that the very act of saying something loud enough and long enough could make it true, even if it wasn’t. She had told Bill Forsythe earlier about the unsatisfactory job-performance review looming in Erik’s future. Now she had a chance to turn that job review into a motive for murder.

After looking up KOLD-TV’s phone number in the book, Gayle dialed the “Breaking News” number and asked to speak to the news director. While the weatherman was doing his gig, Gayle Stryker was speaking to a blundering young woman who was obviously out of her league.

“My name is Gayle Stryker,” she said firmly. “I’m the chief operations officer for Medicos for Mexico. I’m concerned about the headline story you ran a few minutes ago. I’d like to make a public statement.”

The assistant news director mumbled and fumbled and tried to put her off. She evidently had no idea who Gayle Stryker was. Or maybe she just didn’t believe that the woman speaking on her phone was actually who she claimed to be, but Gayle refused to be dissuaded.

“Put Gary Fisher on the line,” she ordered, referring to the station’s nighttime news anchor and hunk. “I’ve done lots of charity events with Gary. He knows me personally.”

Which is how, after the end of the sports segment, KOLD’s
Ten O’Clock News
filched a little time out of Monday evening’s David Letterman show. While the camera focused on one of the station’s stock photos of Gayle Stryker, her voice came through loud and clear.

“At Medicos for Mexico it has recently come to our attention that our former director of development, Erik LaGrange, may have been using his position of trust with us in order to entice young women to enter this country illegally. It is suspected that he may have had something to do with the murder of one of those poor girls. My husband and I are both appalled and disheartened that he might be capable of such heinous actions, and we can only express our terrible sorrow and regret that anyone connected to Medicos for Mexico—someone we regarded as a trusted employee—could have used our organization’s good name to camouflage such evil.”

All in all, it was a masterful performance. Afterward she was sorry she hadn’t thought to turn on the VCR. Most of the time when she appeared on a news broadcast, she simply asked the station to send her a copy.

In this instance, that would probably be a bad idea.

***

A little before eleven,
Diana Ladd went looking for her husband, who was outside leaning on Leo’s truck. “Uncle,” she said. “I’m not as young as I used to be. Do you mind taking me home?”

“Are you kidding?” Brandon grinned. “I thought you’d never ask. Where’s Lani?”

“She and Kath are staying on to help clean up.”

Brandon was torn. Should he say something about Larry Stryker or not? Confide his fears in Diana and worry her, too, or count on the presence of other people to protect Lani?

As they headed toward the Suburban, Brandon noticed that Lani had left the Buick’s top down in
Ban Thak
’s dusty parking lot. “Why did she do that?” he grumbled, masking his real concerns. “The interior’s going to be filthy.”

“Don’t hassle her about it,” Diana cautioned. “I’ll have it detailed tomorrow.”

Diana fell asleep before they ever reached the highway. As far as Brandon was concerned, that was just as well. He had been tired while he waited all those hours at the feast house, but now that they were going home, he felt the adrenaline kicking in. He was eager to go to his study and see what the TLC reference librarians had sent him.

He had parked inside the garage and turned off the engine before Diana roused herself. “Sorry to conk out on you,” she said. “I’m wiped out and on my way to bed. What about you?”

“I’ll stop in my office for a few minutes,” he told her. “TLC sent me some faxes earlier. I didn’t have a chance to glance at them.”

Diana shook her head. “I forgot,” she said, climbing out of the car.

“Forgot what?” Brandon asked.

“How you are when you’re on a case. Totally focused. And immune to sleep.”

“I sleep,” he said.

“Not as much as I do,” she told him. “And not as much as you should.” She reached up and kissed him as she went past. “Good night.”

Brandon fed Damsel and used playing ball with her as an excuse to check out the yard and the exterior of the house. Finally, reassured nothing was amiss, he went into his office. Earlier, when his printer had been acting up, Brandon had only taken time to scrape the scattered papers into a pile. Now, sitting down to sort them, he discovered there was a rudimentary order to them. He laid them out like a game of bridge, matching faxes and page numbers rather than suits of cards.

Once he had the material organized, he grabbed a highlighter and started to read, all the while keeping his ear cocked for the sound of the Buick’s big tires crunching the graveled driveway.

Twenty-Five

T
he woman dropped her own cradle blanket and ran to the nuhkuth
from which the baby’s voice had come. She took the cradle in her arms, but her arms held only some dry brown leaves that were swinging from a spider’s thread.

Then the woman heard another baby cry. This cry came from among some low bushes, but when she reached the place, there were only more dry leaves. The leaves were curled into tiny cradles, but the cradles were all empty.

The woman stood, puzzled. From left and right and all around, she heard the cries of little babies, but when she looked she found only more dead leaves. And the leaves were thick under her feet. The noise of the dead leaves was almost as loud as the cries of the babies.

The woman put her hands over her face.

***

The last group
of diners had been herded through the feast house before the cooks and servers finally sat down to eat. There weren’t enough tamales or tortillas to go around, but by then they were all too tired to eat very much anyway. Then they tackled the cleanup.

Once the big pots and pans had been washed and dried, Leo and Baby loaded them into the back of a pickup truck. When they had finished loading, Leo popped his head back in the door and saw Delia sitting with her feet up. “Do you want to ride home with us?” he asked.

Wanda cut him off. “Leave Delia here,” she ordered. “You two have all that stuff to unload. I’ll drop Delia off on the way. She’ll be home sooner if I take her.”

“Is that all right with you, Delia?” Leo asked.

Delia nodded. “Whatever gets me home and in bed the fastest is what I want to do.”

Leo and Baby left a few minutes later as the women began the final wiping down of tables and sinks and sweeping the floor. Delia was half asleep when a sudden gush of water brought her fully awake. She was astounded to find herself sitting in the middle of a growing puddle.

“Your water!” Wanda exclaimed. “It broke. The baby’s coming.”

Delia heard only that much before her body was doubled over by a powerful spasm. It started at her rib cage, front and back, and then rolled down and through her body like a marauding truck, leaving her gasping for breath and clinging to the bench with both hands to keep from falling.

The next face Delia saw was Lani’s, right in front of hers, barely inches away. Lani’s mouth was moving, but at first Delia heard nothing. Finally a few of the words came through. Something about “hospital.” And something about “walk.” And then the contraction ended.

“I’m all right now,” Delia said. “I can walk.” She tried to stand, with her clothes dripping around her. As soon as she did, another contraction hit. She dropped back down on the bench as though her legs had been lopped from under her.

When Delia came around again, Lani’s face was once more in front of hers. “…car…” she was saying urgently. Then, with Lani Walker at one elbow and Christine at the other, Delia felt herself being lifted off the bench and propelled out of the feast house. Just outside the door sat Diana Ladd’s huge convertible with the top down and the engine running. Kath was behind the wheel. She got out to help Lani lever Delia through the passenger-side back door and into the backseat. Delia was lying flat when the next spasm hit.

She saw the worried look on Lani’s face and heard her say “…not make it…” Then she heard nothing more. When the contraction overcame her, Delia no longer cared if she was standing up or lying down.

When she came to herself again, the space above her was filled with stars. Somehow she was moving through or maybe under them.
I must be dead,
she thought.
The baby and I are on our way to heaven.
But then Lani’s face obliterated the stars. This time she held a long, pencil-thin flashlight between her teeth. Her long hair whipped around her face. That was when Delia finally understood that she was in the backseat of an open convertible. As they bounced along over a rough dirt road, she realized Lani was there in the backseat with her. Before Delia could make sense of any of that or say a single word, she was overwhelmed by another powerful spasm.

I’m not dead,
Delia told herself.
I just wish I was.

***

Kneeling between
the Invicta’s front and back seats, Lani tried to keep her face in front of Delia’s. “Breathe,” she urged. “Pant like a dog. It’ll help you deal with the contractions.”

If Delia had ever heard of Lamaze, none of it was accessible. The contractions were coming too hard and fast. By the time Kath slowed for the intersection with Highway 86, Lani knew they’d never make it to the hospital in Sells in time. “We’ll have to stop,” Lani called to Kath. “Soon!”

Wanda had offered to let them use her pickup, but Lani had nixed that idea. Putting a woman in labor in the bed of a pickup seemed like a bad idea, but the backseat of Diana’s Invicta was only marginally better.

“Should we put the top up?” Kath had asked once Delia was lying in the backseat.

Lani shook her head. “No time,” she said. “Let’s go.”

Now, as Kath put the Buick in park along the shoulder of the road, she asked, “Have you ever delivered a baby before?”

“No,” Lani returned. “But it’s probably pretty self-explanatory.”

Seconds after they parked, Wanda pulled her Dodge Ram pickup up beside them. She jockeyed it around until her headlights blazed in through the Buick’s back door, lighting the scene. In the brilliant glare of Wanda’s high beams, Lani saw the unmistakably wet and shiny glow of a baby’s emerging head.

Steeling herself for the task, she reached out and grabbed the baby’s head, easing it forward. “Do you have anything sharp?” she asked. “We’re going to need to cut the cord, and we’ll need a string to tie it with.”

“There’s a Leatherman in my purse,” Kath replied.

“Bring it.”

Moments later Lani Walker held a squalling, slippery infant in her arms. Wanda Ortiz was there, too, holding a handful of clean towels—extras she’d brought along just in case they needed them at the feast house. While Wanda wiped off the baby boy, Lani’s fumbling fingers tied the rubbery umbilical cord with a piece of hem snipped from one of Wanda’s towels. Then she cut it with Kath’s Leatherman. Lani had just finished that when Wanda handed the baby back to her. Quiet now, he lay in her arms wrapped in the soft folds of an immense flannel shirt.

Lani looked down at him. In that moment she understood why Fat Crack and Nana
Dahd
had so patiently answered all her questions. It was so she—Lani—would have those same answers to pass along to someone else.

***

Did you ever teach
Baby or Leo the things you teach me?” she had asked Fat Crack once as he showed her how to collect and dry
wiw
—the wild tobacco used in the Peace Smoke.

He shook his head. “No,” he said after a while. “They’re not interested.”

“Why not?”

“I don’t know. Maybe if I had been a medicine man the whole time they were growing up, it might have been different. By the time Looks at Nothing showed up and started teaching me, Baby and Leo were already too old and didn’t want to learn.”

“Weren’t you too old then, too?”

“That’s what I thought,” Fat Crack chuckled. “But not according to Looks at Nothing. I guess he was right.”

“What about me? Am I too old?”

“No,
Kulani O’oks,
” Fat Crack said softly. “You’re just right. Aunt Rita knew the moment she saw you that you were special—that she could pass along whatever she knew to you for safekeeping. I’ve learned the same thing, but the gifts we’ve given you aren’t yours alone, Little One. They are treasures for you to know and keep and then pass along when you find someone who’s worthy.”

Looking down at that tiny baby—his fists clenched, his eyes pinched shut against the glaring headlights—Lani Walker knew who this child was. Leo and Baby hadn’t been interested in learning the lore and traditions their father had wanted to teach his sons, but this child—this baby boy—would be, and Lani would be there to pass it along.

“Is he all right?” Delia asked.

In reply, Lani turned to her and smiled. “He’s perfect,” she said, handing the baby to his mother. “Beautiful and perfect. What are you going to name him?”

“Gabriel Manuel,” Delia Ortiz said. “After his two grandfathers.”

Lani heard a strange whirring sound. “Get out of the way,” Kath ordered. “I’m raising the top. We’ll need to turn up the heat long enough to take this mother and baby to the hospital, where they belong.”

***

Time dragged by
moment by moment as a worried Brandon Walker tried to concentrate on the pages of faxed material.

Ralph Ames’s researchers had been incredibly thorough in finding out all there was to know about Lawrence Stryker and his wife as well. The material detailed their respective childhoods—Larry’s growing up in impoverished circumstances in L.A. to Gayle’s high-society, old-money background both in Tucson and on her father’s family ranch northeast of Marana. There were old articles detailing Lawrence’s fourth-place standing in his graduating class at Emory University Medical School and newer ones about him and Gayle being named Tucson’s Man and Woman of the Year. There were literally dozens of articles that told about the founding of Medicos for Mexico and about Larry’s and Gayle’s unstinting and heroic efforts to make life better for those less fortunate. There was even a copy of Bill Forsythe’s public disclosure forms—the same forms Brandon had seen years earlier—with their names front and center on the campaign donor list.