Dance of the Bones

In the ER, when it came time for the doctor to put twelve stitches in her son’s head, Diana had been forced to bail. Brandon was the one who had stayed at the boy’s side. And that night, Brandon had stayed on at Diana’s house to help keep the boy awake overnight. That was how he had spent that first night in the house that he and Diana had now shared for years—-sleeping on her living room couch.

Yes, Andrew Carlisle had been beyond evil, but without him and his murderous ways, Brandon knew that he and Diana would never have met. In the years since, the two of them had married and raised two amazing kids together—-Diana’s son, Davy, and an adopted Indian child named Lani. The less said about Brandon’s own kids the better, but Davy was now a successful Tucson--based attorney, and Lani was the first ever Tohono O’odham M.D. to practice on the reservation.

As for Diana? In his eyes, although her blond hair had long since turned silver—-she preferred the word “platinum”—-she was still as beautiful as ever. And even if he had to spend a thousand nights like this, making small talk and enduring the rigors of being “Mr. Diana Ladd,” Brandon still counted himself as incredibly lucky to be there with her.

When the after--dinner speeches ended and they headed home toward Gates Pass, Diana nailed Brandon for suckering Ollie Glassman.

“You told the poor man you’re writing a book?” Diana asked. “Really?”

“I couldn’t help myself,” Brandon said, grinning at the very thought of it. “The guy’s a jerk.”

“That’s true,” Diana agreed. “I saw him tracking you down during the reception. What did he want?”

That surprised Brandon. He knew he had been keeping an eye on Diana from across the room, but he hadn’t realized that she’d also been keeping an eye on him.

“He wanted to talk to me about John Lassiter.”

“Big Bad John? Whoa, that’s a name out of the dim, dark past.”

“Indeed,” Brandon agreed.

“So why talk to you about it? I heard they were trying to work out a plea deal of some kind. Evidently two trials weren’t enough.”

“Wait,” Brandon said. “You knew about that—-about the plea offer?”

“I read about it in the paper,” Diana said with a shrug. “I seem to remember Lassiter’s daughter was responsible for bringing in the -people from Justice for All.”

“John Lassiter has a daughter?” Brandon asked. “What daughter? I didn’t know Lassiter had a child.”

“He does.”

Brandon thought about that. He and Diana read the same papers each day over their morning cups of coffee. Even so, they often came away with totally different sets of information.

“Since you and Michael Farraday were the officers who arrested Lassiter back in the day,” Diana continued, “I figured it was just as well to let sleeping dogs lie.”

“This particular dog is no longer sleeping,” Brandon said.

“What did Ollie Glassman want?”

“He says Lassiter asked to see me. He wants TLC to find Amos Warren’s real killer.”

“Sounds like O. J. Simpson,” Diana said.

Brandon laughed aloud at that. “We’ve been married so long it’s no wonder that you and I are on the same wavelength. That’s exactly what I told Glassman—-just like O.J.”





CHAPTER 3




FOR A LONG TIME AFTER Tash returned, things went well. Because of the clouds, it wasn’t too hot. Rain, Juk, returned. The Tohono O’odham planted their fields and the crops grew, and every morning and evening, Sun’s niece and nephew kicked the dust balls. In a village near the Coyote Mountains lived a woman who braided the grass mats upon which the Desert -People sleep. This Braiding Woman, Hihgtpag O’oks, was a fast worker. She could weave as many as four large mats in a single day.