Queen of the Night. J. A. Jance

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      With Abby, however, that hadn’t happened. That was one of the things Jack appreciated about this second-timearound marriage. Abby was flexible where Irene was not. And she actually liked surprises. Irene had hated them. Once Abby learned there was a conflict, she had simply brought Shirley to the plate as her party-supervising pinch hitter. No fuss, no muss.

      Blowing a cloud of smoke in the air, Jack gave himself a silent pat on the back. He felt slightly guilty that Abby had gone to the trouble and expense of having her hair and nails done. In fact, she had hinted that Fleming’s would do very nicely for dinner, but the truth was, where Jack was planning on taking her, no one was likely to notice her hair and nails—no one at all.

      Yes, he thought. This is going to blow her socks right off.

       Chapter 4

      Tucson, Arizona

      Saturday, June 6, 2009, 4:00 P.M.

      93º Fahrenheit

      JONATHAN HAD FOLLOWED Jack Tennant all day long. Early that morning, thinking his mother’s husband was on his way to a golf date, he had been surprised when, rather than stopping off at a nearby golf course, the man had headed out of town. Jonathan was new to Tucson. As the city limits fell behind them, he assumed they were heading for some upscale resort. When they crossed into the reservation, he was even more convinced. There was probably a casino somewhere up ahead—a casino with a golf course.

      Jonathan was careful to stay well back of Tennant’s vehicle. For as long as he and Esther had owned the minivan, he had despised the silver color, but today, driving through the waves of heat on the blacktop, he knew that the vehicle was almost invisible from any distance away. It got hairy when they entered a small community named Sells. Worried that his target might turn off or stop, Jonathan closed the gap for a while, but once Tennant turned onto a secondary road heading south from Sells, it was possible to increase the distance again.

      When Tennant went bouncing off onto a narrow dirt track, Jonathan drove a little farther before he, too, pulled over and stopped. Unsure where the dirt track would lead and worried about getting stuck, he simply waited. Fifteen minutes later, a cloud of dust told him Tennant was once again on the move. He came out of the brush and turned north. The fact that the Lexus had come and gone with no apparent difficulty made it seem likely that Jonathan would be able to do the same.

      And he did, following Jack Tennant’s tracks off into the desert where a small turnaround had been carved out of the brush. Stepping out into the blazing heat, Jonathan followed a series of footprints that beat a faint path into the brush. To his amazement, the trail was lined with a series of unlit luminarias. The pathway led to a small clearing where a table and two chairs had been set up as if in wait for some kind of dining experience. An unlit candelabrum sat in the center of the table, and place settings for two, including napkins, silverware, and glasses, had been carefully laid out on either side of the table.

      Jonathan found this both fascinating and puzzling. He would have stayed longer to explore, but he wanted to get back on the road and follow Jack Tennant wherever else he might be going. Back in the moving Caravan, he disregarded the OPEN RANGE signs and roared down the road at speeds well over eighty miles per hour. Before he reached Sells, Tennant’s Lexus was once again in clear view.

      It took over an hour to make it back to Tucson. Jack stopped off at what appeared to be an upscale shopping center and did some grocery shopping before he returned to the house. By then Jonathan’s arm was on fire. On the way back to the Tennants’ town home, Jonathan spotted an Urgent Care facility.

      Better one of those than an ER, he thought.

      Once he saw Jack Tennant pull into the garage and park next to his wife’s aging green Lincoln, Jonathan went back to Urgent Care to have someone look at his arm.

      They did more than look. With a doc in a box supervising the procedure, a physician’s assistant and a nurse lanced the wound, cleaned it, and then put the arm in a sling. They also gave Jonathan a prescription for a course of antibiotics. He gave the Urgent Care folks Jack Tennant’s name and a phony social security number. When he went to the closest Walgreens to have the prescription filled, he wasn’t at all surprised to find that they had Jack Tennant’s name on file in their pharmacy.

      “Do you want to leave this on express pay?” the clerk asked.

      “Sure,” Jonathan said. Sitting waiting for the prescription to be filled, it pleased him to think that his mother’s husband’s Medicare account would be billed for Jonathan’s medications. He also doubted anyone would catch on to the switch for a very long time, if ever.

      With his prescription in hand, Jonathan headed back to his observation post. On the way, though, he stopped at Sonic and stocked up on fast food. He didn’t know how long he’d have to wait before he found out what was going on, but if Jack and Abby Tennant were planning on an intimate dinner date out in the desert, Jonathan was determined that there would be at least one uninvited guest in attendance.

      Tucson, Arizona

      Saturday, June 6, 2009, 4:30 P.M.

      92º Fahrenheit

      When Jack finished smoking his cigar, he went back inside the house. In the family room he found a tray loaded with drinks laid out on the counter in the wet bar. On it were glasses, a pitcher of premixed Bloody Marys, a bucket of ice, a bottle of Tabasco sauce, and a plate of celery sticks for stirring, as well as a dish of salted peanuts. The peanuts were for Jack. He loved them. The Tabasco sauce allowed them to season each drink to taste. Abby liked her Bloody Marys spicy enough that sweat would pop out on her forehead as she drank them. Jack preferred a somewhat milder recipe.

      Jack found Abby sitting on the couch with her newly polished toes tucked up under her. She appeared to be lost in contemplation. He paused long enough to pour his own drink before joining her on the couch.

      “A penny for your thoughts,” he said, touching her glass with his.

      She smiled at him. “Just remembering,” she said. “Thinking about what my life was like five years ago.”

      “You remember that day, too?” he asked.

      She nodded. “Every detail,” she said. “I woke up that morning up to my eyelids in party problems. It was the first time I was completely in charge of the bloom party, and I was totally focused on that. For a change I was so busy doing other things that I was finally able to forget how much I hated being divorced. I believe it was the first time that ever happened.”

      “And you never saw this coming?” he asked, smiling at her. “You never saw us coming?”

      “Never,” she answered. “If I’d had an inkling of how much my life would change that day, I would have been more petrified about that than I was about the party. I might have been too nervous to get out of bed.”

      “I don’t think so,” Jack said, shaking his head. “You can’t convince me you were scared of anything. The moment I saw you, I was smitten. I remember telling myself, ‘Wow! There’s one put-together lady. She’s ten feet tall and bulletproof.’ ”

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