Fatal Error (15 page)

“And now she’s missing,” Ali said. “Since when?”

“Since she left to go to an AA meeting yesterday morning. I tried talking to our local police department. At first the guy was really sympathetic, but then he was off the line for a while. I suppose he was checking her record. When he came back on the line, he pretty much told me to go jump in the lake.”

Ali waited while Camilla took a ragged breath. “You see, I don’t care if Brenda’s drinking again. I just need to know that she’s okay. That she isn’t lying dead in a ditch somewhere.”

“Was she driving?” Ali asked.

“No. She lost her license. I used to let her drive my car, but not anymore. If she had an accident, my insurance wouldn’t cover it.”

“So she left your house on foot?”

“Yes. She walked from here to her meeting. At least I assume she went to her meeting. That’s where she told me she was going.”

“Couldn’t you ask some of the people who were at the meeting?”

“I don’t know their names,” Camilla said. “They’re anonymous. That’s the whole point, you see. I was hoping I could talk you into coming here to help me with this situation. You’ve been a police officer. That guy at Missing Persons would probably listen to you, even if he won’t listen to me.”

“Don’t count on it,” Ali said with a self-deprecating laugh. “Professional courtesy isn’t always offered to visiting cops. I suggest you keep right on calling until you get someone who’s willing to take a report.”

“What if she doesn’t come back?” Camilla asked. “What if we never find her?”

“Don’t think like that,” Ali said. “You’re probably one hundred percent right. She’s off on a toot somewhere. Eventually she’ll sober up and come home.”

“But would it be possible for you to be here?” Camilla insisted. “Just in case?”

Ali seemed to remember there was another daughter. “What about Brenda’s sister?” Ali asked. “Can’t she help out?”

There was a pause before Camilla said, “I’m afraid Valerie and I are estranged at the moment. She’s made it perfectly clear that if it’s something involving Brenda, she won’t lift a finger to help. If she were here, all she’d do is say she told me so.”

“I’m sorry to hear that,” Ali said sincerely. “And I’m also sorry that I can’t come help out right now. I have another obligation that’s taking me to L.A. for the next day or two. If I can clear that up in a timely fashion, I might be able to come by Sacramento while I’m still in California, but I can’t promise.”

Two of Ali’s counter customers had walked over to the cash wrap, where they were waiting patiently for her to deliver their check and take their money as two more customers settled onto the recently vacated stools.

“I’m so sorry, Mrs. Gastellum,” Ali said. “I’m really busy right now. I’ll have to get off the line. Keep this number handy so you can give me a call the moment Brenda shows up.”

“I will,” Camilla said. “I surely will.”

Ali closed her phone, grabbed her order tablet out of her pocket, and added up the checks for the two waiting customers.
By the time she did that, several more people had filtered into the restaurant and the rush was back on in earnest.

Ali glanced up at the clock. Eleven thirty. Three more hours to go, then Edie and Bob would resume command.

If I live that long
, Ali thought.
And if my feet don’t give out completely
.

B
renda’s prison was completely dark and silent. Not so much as a crack of light appeared under either of the doorways she knew to be off toward her right, across the part of the room that wasn’t enclosed in the chain-link fence. Occasionally overhead she heard the sound of what seemed like military aircraft. They were certainly noisy enough to be military aircraft, but that was the only sound she heard. There were no traffic sounds, no sirens, no trucks.

After Mina went away and left Brenda alone, she had tried screaming, but no one responded. Finally, falling silent, she had drifted into despair. For a long time, she simply sat and sobbed until she realized that at least she was sitting in a chair. It could have been worse. She could have been thrown down and left on the cold hard floor. With her hands taped—she assumed they were taped—behind her, they soon fell asleep. She finally managed to shift to a partially sideways position in the chair. That at least allowed circulation to return to her hands.

For the first time she was aware of how thirsty she was and
how hungry. How long had it been since that last meal and her last drink? That had to have been sometime on Friday, but she had no idea what day it was now or what time of day. And she had no idea if anyone would ever come here again. What if Mina Blaylock had simply walked away and left her? Would the next person who walked through one of the doors find only her dead and stinking corpse?

How long did it take to die of thirst and starvation? It had taken a surprisingly long time—several days—for her grandmother to die, even after the hospital disengaged her feeding tube and stopped giving her IV fluids. But Grammy had been old and ready to die. Brenda wasn’t ready to give up. She still wanted to live.

Finally, she drifted into an uneasy sleep.

Mark Blaylock was astonished when he pulled into the driveway late on Saturday afternoon and found Mina’s Lincoln parked in the carport. She wasn’t supposed to be home until Sunday. Obviously there had been a change of plans. It was possible she had tried to call and let him know, but he had left his phone turned off. He was having fun with Denise, the bartender, and he hadn’t wanted anything or anyone—including his wife—to infringe on that.

He let himself into the house. The AC was on. That was the funny thing about this part of the desert. Overnight you’d need to turn on the heat. During the late afternoon, you’d have to turn on the AC.

But if Mina was behind that closed bedroom door, Mark didn’t want to disturb her. There would be questions—a real grilling—
about where he’d been, who he had been with, and what he had been doing. No, better to let sleeping dogs lie.

Mark was still about half drunk. He grabbed one more bottle of beer out of the fridge, kicked off his shoes, and then lay down on the couch. Fortunately it was long enough for him to stretch out full length. In no time at all, he was fast asleep.

W
e did it,
Ali told herself when two thirty finally rolled around that Saturday afternoon and she was able to lock the restaurant’s front door.

She and Jan Howard met in the middle of the dining room to give one another high-fives, then they both turned their attention to the cleaning, sweeping, and mopping necessary for the Sugarloaf to be ready to open the next morning when Bob and Edie Larson returned. There had been some question about their possibly returning on an earlier flight. That wasn’t Ali’s concern. All she wanted to know was that they would be in charge come Sunday morning and that she wouldn’t.

The substitute cook finished cleaning up the kitchen and left for the day. Jan and Ali were within minutes of leaving themselves when the door opened and in walked Bob and Edie.

“We’re home!” Bob announced, beaming proudly. He was as tanned as Ali remembered ever seeing him. “That cruise was just what the doctor ordered and it doesn’t look like you managed to burn the place down while we were gone.”

Ali put down her broom and let herself be engulfed in one of her father’s bear hugs, then she went on to hug her mother.

“I take it you caught the earlier flight,” Ali observed.

“You know your father. Once we got off the boat, he was hot to trot to get home. He wanted to get here in time to make sure everything was shipshape for tomorrow.”

As Bob drifted away to inspect the status of his kitchen, Edie sank into one of the booths.

“How was it?” Ali asked.

“Glorious,” Edie replied. “I’ve never had so much fun in my life, not even when you and your aunt Evie and I went to England. Your father was like a kid again. You should have seen him on the dance floor.”

Ali was taken aback at her mother’s effusiveness, and the idea of her father on a dance floor was beyond belief. “Dad can dance?”

“Yes, he can,” Edie said. “We have the photos to prove it. The fridge at home is empty, of course. I was going to run to the store before dinner, but we called Athena and Chris while we were riding up from Phoenix in the shuttle. They invited us to come to dinner—all of us, you included. Athena said they have the nursery pulled together. They want to show it to us.”

Suddenly Athena’s urgency to have the nursery completely finished on Friday made a lot more sense. If the sorting and folding was all done before Bob and Edie got home, there would be no need for Edie Larson to do it.

“You’re sure they won’t mind if I tag along?” Ali asked.

“Scout’s honor,” Edie said with a smile. “What about B.?”

“He’s in D.C. this week,” Ali said. “A conference this weekend and meetings next week.”

“Too bad,” Edie said. “We’ll miss him.”

I do too
, Ali thought.

Once Ali was in the car, she dialed Chris’s number. “Mom and
Dad told me I was invited to dinner,” Ali said. “But I’m checking with you all the same.”

“It’s fine. Athena wants to show off the nursery,” Chris said. “I’m barbecuing.”

The thermometer on the Cayenne’s dashboard indicated the outside temperature was in the low forties.

“Isn’t it a little cold for barbecuing?” Ali asked.

“Believe me, Mom,” Chris said, “right this minute, freezing my butt off over an outdoor grill is preferable to making any kind of a mess in the kitchen. Athena would have a fit.”

“She’s into nesting?” Ali asked.

“I’ll say,” Chris replied. “In a big way.”

“It’s a good thing you got that nursery situation handled,” Ali said. “I don’t care what Dr. Dixon says about the official due date. If the nesting instinct has come into play, the twins are liable to turn up any day now. What time is dinner?”

“Grandpa and Grandma are operating on East Coast time. They asked to eat early. I told them to come around five or so.”

“Great,” Ali said. “I’m catching a plane for L.A. at ten o’clock tonight, but if I leave Sedona by six, that should give me plenty of time to eat and run.”

“You’re going to California?” Chris asked. “Now? How come?”

Ali explained about what was going on with Velma, who had actually been among the out-of-town guests at Athena and Chris’s wedding.

“Don’t worry, though,” Ali said. “If those babies of yours decide to make an early appearance, I’ll be able to get myself home in a hurry.”

Back at the house, Ali retreated to her room, where she showered and dressed. Then, after packing a single suitcase, she was on her way out the door for dinner when B. called. He was back in his hotel room for a few minutes before a dinner meeting.

“Your week at the Sugarloaf is over,” he said. “Did you live?”

“I’m not sure my feet did,” Ali answered with a laugh. “And I’m not sure how my parents do this day after day, week after week, and year after year, but they do. They’re back, though. Had a great time. We’re all meeting up at Chris and Athena’s for dinner. The nursery is twin-ready, and they want to show it off. After that I have a plane to catch.”

“A plane? Where are you going?”

Over the next few minutes, she brought B. up to date about her e-mail from Velma and the troubling phone call from Camilla Gastellum. She explained that after seeing Velma, if Brenda still hadn’t turned up, Ali planned to make a quick dash up to Sacramento to see if she could be of help to Camilla.

“Let me get this straight,” B. said thoughtfully. “Brenda went missing right after she asked you for that background check?”

“That’s how it seems,” Ali said.

“So the two things could be connected.”

“Brenda’s mother seems to think she just fell off the wagon, but it’s possible,” Ali agreed.

“What time are you heading for the airport?”

“My L.A.-bound flight leaves Sky Harbor ten p.m. I’ll come back home right after dinner, then Leland will drive me down to Phoenix and drop me off.”

“I’ll give Stuart a call and see what, if anything, he’s come up with on the background check. I’ll ask him to swing by with whatever he has before then so you’ll be able to take it with you.”

When Ali reached Chris and Athena’s place, her parents were already there. Chris, wearing a jacket, was out on the deck overseeing the grill. Bob and Edie had come equipped with a stack of cruise photos and were inflicting on their granddaughter-in-law their tandem cruise travelogue.

“And here’s the girl who made it happen,” Bob said heartily
when Ali joined them. “Cruises are great. I can hardly wait to go on another one, maybe an Alaskan cruise next summer, if we can talk you into looking after the Sugarloaf again. Everything is clean as a whistle. You did a great job.”

“Now look what you’ve done,” Edie said, smiling at Ali. “You’ve turned your father into a cruise-loving monster. Who would have thought it?”

Certainly not Ali.

“Now sit,” her father ordered. “Let me show you the pictures. Edie already managed to download and print most of them.”

There were candid shots as well as a collection of standard cruise ship photos. One showed Bob and Edie coming on board and standing at the top of the gangplank. Another showed them dressed in formal attire. It was only the second time in her life that Ali had seen her father in a tux. A third showed them standing together on a sandy beach.

From the wide grins on their faces in the various photos, it was clear that Bob and Edie had been having a great time. They had some videos as well. Chris came in long enough to download those onto his iMac for all to see. Ali deemed the one of Bob attempting to dance the limbo and coming to grief in the sand as worthy of either YouTube or America’s Funniest Videos.

By the time Ali finally left Chris and Athena’s, it was later than it should have been. There was enough time to make the plane, but just barely.