The last one was from Jessica once again. "It's intermission and you're not here. Are you mad at me or sick, or what? I'll try calling again when I get home."
Brandon came back into the kitchen just as Diana was putting down the phone. "Still taking messages?" he said.
"Lani didn't go to work," Diana said. "And she didn't go to the concert, either."
"Didn't go to the concert?" Brandon echoed. "Where is she then? I've gone through the whole house looking for her."
"Hang on," Diana told him. "I'll call the Carpenters and see if she ever showed up there."
The phone rang several times and then the answering machine came on. Diana left a message for them to call her as soon as possible. "Nobody's home," she told Brandon. "Maybe they're all still at the concert."
"But Lani's bike is here. Where would she be if her bike's here?"
Brandon looked grim. "Something's wrong. I'll go back through the house and check again. Maybe I missed something. Do you have any idea what she wore when she left the house this morning?"
Diana shook her head. "I heard the gate shut, but I didn't see her leave."
This time they got as far as Brandon's study. Before, Brandon had simply reached into the room and switched off the light without bothering to look into the room itself. Barely a step inside the door, he stopped so abruptly that Diana almost collided with him. "What the hell!"
Sidestepping him, Diana was able to see into the room herself. A fine spray of shattered glass covered most of the floor. In the center of the glass lay several broken picture frames. Looking beyond that, Diana saw that the wall behind Brandon's desk-his Wall of Honor as he had called it-was empty. All his service plaques, his civic honors-including his Tucson Citizen of the Year and the Detective of the Year award-the one he'd received from Parade Magazine for cracking a dead illegal alien case years before-were all on the floor, smashed beyond recognition.
"Oh, Brandon!" Diana wailed. "What a mess. I'll go get the broom-"
"Don't touch anything and don't come into the room any farther until we get a handle on exactly what's happened here. It looks to me as though whoever it was broke into my gun case, too."
Diana's stomach sank to her knees. She had to fight off the sudden urge to vomit. "What about Lani…"
Brandon turned toward her, the muscles working across his tightened jaw. "Let's don't hit panic buttons," he advised. "The first thing we should do is call the department and have them send somebody out to investigate." Walking back to the kitchen, he picked up the phone. "Did you notice anything else out of place?" he asked as he dialed. After all those years with the department, the number of the direct line into Dispatch was still embedded in his brain as well as his dialing finger.
Diana thought for a minute. "Only that set of tongs over there in the sink. It looks as though somebody used it to cook meat or something, but I can't tell what."
Alicia Duarte was fairly new to Dispatch, but she had been around the department long enough that Brandon Walker's name still carried a good deal of weight. Her initial response was to offer to send out a deputy.
"A deputy will be fine," Brandon told her. "But I think we're going to need a detective too. There's a good chance that our daughter has disappeared as well, and the two incidents are most likely related."
"Sure thing, Sheriff Walker," Alicia said, honoring him with the title even though it was no longer his. "I'll get right on it."
Brandon put down the phone and then walked over to wrap his arms around Diana. "You heard what I said. Someone is on the way, although it'll take time for them to get here."
"What if we've lost her?" Diana asked in a small voice. "What if Lani's gone for good?"
"She isn't," Brandon returned fiercely. It wasn't so much that he believed she wasn't lost. It was just that when it came to his precious Lani, believing anything else was unthinkable.
Brandon's initial reluctance about adopting Clemencia Escalante disappeared within days of the child's noisy entry into the Walker household. He was captivated by her in every way, and the reverse was also true. It wasn't long before his daily return from work was cause for an ecstatic greeting on Clemencia's part. When he was home, she padded around at his heels, following him everywhere, always underfoot no matter where he was or what he was doing.
When it came time to work on turning their temporary appointment as foster parents into permanent adoptive ones, Brandon had forged through the reams of paperwork with cheerful determination. Later, during caseworker interviews, he was charming and enthusiastic. But when the time came to drive out to Sells to appear before the tribal court for a hearing on finalizing the adoption, he was as nervous as he had been on the day he and Diana Ladd married.
"What if they turn us down after all this?" he asked, standing in front of the mirror and reknotting his tie for a third time. "What if we have to give her back? I couldn't stand to lose her now, not after all this."
"Wanda seems to think it'll go through as long as we have Rita in our corner."
The four of them rode out to Sells together. Rita and the baby sat in the backseat-Clemencia sleeping in her car seat and Rita sitting stolidly with her arms folded across her lap. She said very little, but everything about her exuded serene confidence. They found Fat Crack waiting for them in the small gravel parking lot outside the tribal courtroom. While Brandon and Diana unloaded the baby and her gear, Rita turned to her nephew.
"Did you do it?" she asked Fat Crack, speaking to him in the language of the Tohono O'othham. "Did you look at her picture through the divining crystals?"
" Heu'u-yes," Fat Crack said.
"And what did you see?"
"I saw this child, the one you call Forever Spinning, wearing a white coat and carrying a feather, a seagull feather."
"See there?" Rita said, her face dissolving into a smile. "I told you, didn't I? She will be both."
"But-"
"No more," Rita said. "It's time to go in."
Molly Juan, the tribal judge, was a pug-faced, no-nonsense woman who spent several long minutes shuffling through the paperwork Wanda Ortiz handed her before raising her eyes to gaze at the people gathered in the courtroom.
"Both parents are willing to give up the child?" she asked at last.
Wanda Ortiz nodded. "Both have signed terminations of parental rights."
"And there are no blood relatives interested in taking her?"
"Not at this time. If the Walkers' petition to adopt her is denied, my office has made arrangements to place Clemencia in a facility in Phoenix."
"Who is this then?" Molly Juan asked, nodding toward Rita.
"This is Mrs. Antone-Rita Antone-a widow and my husband's aunt," Wanda replied.
"And she has some interest in this matter?"
Ponderously, Rita Antone wheeled her chair until she sat facing the judge. "That is true," Rita said. "I am Hejel Wi i'thag — Left Alone. My grandmother, my father's mother, was Oks Amichuda, Understanding Woman. She was not a medicine woman, although she could have been. But she told me once, years ago, that I would find one, and that when I did, I should give her my medicine basket.
"Do you know the story of Mualig Siakam?"
Molly Juan nodded. "Of course, the woman who was saved by the Little People during the great famine."
Brandon Walker leaned over to his wife. "What the hell does all this have to do with the price of tea in China?"
"Shhhh," Diana returned.
"Clemencia has been kissed by the ants in the same way the first Mualig Siakam was kissed by the bees," Rita continued. "Clemencia was starving and might have died if the ants had not bitten her and brought her to my attention. Some of her relatives are afraid to take her because they fear Ant Sickness. The Walkers are Mil-gahn, so Ant Sickness cannot hurt them. And I am old. I will die long before Ant Sickness can find me.