J.A. Jance's Ali Reynolds Mysteries 3-Book Boxed Set, Volume 1: Web of Evil, Hand of Evil, Cruel Intent (12 page)

“April called and invited me over. Or rather, she called Ted Grantham’s office and left a message asking me to come over and help her work on making funeral arrangements.”

“For your ex-husband?”

“Yes.”

“You must have a pretty cordial relationship with your husband’s fiancée,” Oliveras observed. “It seems to me she would have asked someone else for help with that kind of thing—her mother, for example.”

This was exactly what Dave had said when he had warned Ali to stay away. And, as he had predicted, things were indeed going to hell.

At that moment April herself came charging through the ER’s automatic doors. Her eyes were wide, her skin deathly pale. Panting, she raced up to the receptionist, who, after only a few murmured words of conversation, immediately summoned the nurse who was still holding Monique’s cell phone. With no more formalities than that, April was handed the phone and then ushered through the curtains and back into the treatment rooms.

Across the crowded waiting room another baby started to cry. An ambulance arrived, sirens blaring, and discharged a new gurney along with a new set of stricken relatives into the mix. But Ali paid almost no attention to any of that. She knew without having to be told that Monique Ragsdale’s condition had to be grave at best. The only thing that rushed anyone past loyal ER gatekeepers was the reality that someone in one of the back rooms was hanging by a thread between life and death.

“I guess,” Ali said vaguely. “She was probably just feeling overwhelmed. That was April, by the way—the woman they just took back into the treatment rooms.”

Officer Oliveras exhibited no interest in April, however. She was still focused on Ali, until there was yet another flurry of activity near the front door. To Ali’s immense relief, Victor Angeleri barged into the room and stopped just inside the door. With a graceful pivot that belied his size, he took in the entire room at a glance and then strode toward the corner where Ali was huddled with the two cops.

“What’s going on here?” Victor Angeleri demanded.

Once again the accidental audience in the ER subsided into a spellbound silence.

“How did you get here?” Ali wanted to know. “Who called you?”

“That’s immaterial. The point is, what’s going on with these officers? What kinds of questions are they asking you, and did they read you your rights?”

“You’re Ms. Reynolds’s attorney, I assume?” Officer Ramsey inquired. The two men were about the same height, but Victor outweighed the younger man by a good third.

“Yes, I’m her attorney,” Victor declared forcefully. “And until I have a chance to confer with my client, this discussion is over.”

Somewhere a flash went off. Ali had no doubt that every word of the conversation was being recorded for posterity—or, more likely, for the evening news.

Edie Larson and Dave Holman rushed through the ER doors and joined the mix. “Sorry it took us so long to get here,” Edie said. “I just couldn’t figure out how to make the GSP thingy work.”

But seeing her mother’s face answered at least one of Ali’s questions. No doubt Edie Larson had been the one who called Victor Angeleri into the fray. Some other time, Ali might have reacted badly to this kind of parental interference. This time she was simply grateful.

April staggered through the curtains and reentered the waiting room. She seemed dazed and uncomprehending. Excusing herself, Ali hurried over to her. “Are you all right?”

“They’re taking her to surgery,” April managed. “The doctor said she hit her head. Her brain’s swelling. If they can’t relieve the pressure, she may die.”

With that, April buried her head in Ali’s shoulder and began to weep. “How can this be happening on top of everything else?” she sobbed. “I can’t believe it!”

“This would be Ms. Gaddis then?” Officer Ramsey asked, sidling over to them.

Ali simply looked at him. “Yes,” she said, “but as you can see, this is not the time to speak to her. What do you want to do, April? Go to the surgical floor waiting room? Go home? What?”

“The surgery will take hours,” April managed. “I think I need to go home.”

“You can’t go home,” Officer Ramsey interjected. “It’s a crime scene.”

“Crime scene?” April repeated. “My home is a crime scene? What are you talking about?”

“One of our forensics teams is going over it right now. We think it’s possible that what happened to your mother is actually a case of attempted homicide.”

“But they told me she fell,” April objected.

“She may have been pushed. Until we complete our investigation, that house is off-limits and no one goes there.”

“What am I going to do then?” April wailed. “Where do I go?”

“Call your hotel, Ali,” Victor ordered, taking charge. “See if they have a room available where she can stay.” Then he rounded on Officer Ramsey. “As far as asking questions of Ms. Gaddis? Right now that’s off the table. She’s in no condition to be interviewed by anyone. She’s pregnant, her fiancé has been murdered, and her mother is undergoing emergency surgery. If you ask her even one question, buddy-boy, I’ll have you and your partner up on charges of police brutality so fast it’ll make your head swim.”

Officer Ramsey seemed ready to object, but Oliveras silenced him with a single but definitive shake of her head. “All right,” she said. “We can talk to her later. Just call and let us know where she ends up.”

The cops disappeared shortly thereafter. Their departure removed a lot of the drama from the room. With their attention lagging, the other occupants turned to their own, more pressing physical ailments and bodily concerns.

Ali and company made the return trip to their hotel room in much the same way they had exited hours before—through the back door and, with the help of the bell captain, up the service elevator. An hour later April was wrapped in a thick terry-cloth robe and tucked into a bed in the darkened bedroom of a two-room suite—the only room available on that floor—just down the hall from the one Ali was sharing with her mother. Once April was settled in, Ali went out into the living room, closing the bedroom door behind her.

“Is she asleep?” Victor asked.

“Resting,” Ali said. “Not asleep. She asked the hospital to call my cell once her mother’s in the recovery room. Then we’ll take April back to the hospital.”

Victor Angeleri was seated at the desk in the corner, staring morosely at the telephone. He nodded absently.

“You were talking to someone on the phone?” Ali asked.

He nodded again.

“Did you find out why those cops are so interested in talking to me?”

“Unfortunately, yes. Somebody’s leaked the contents of Grayson’s will to the press,” Victor replied. “That means that now the whole world knows that despite your marital difficulties, you’re still your husband’s primary beneficiary. As far as John Q. Public is concerned, that makes you a prime suspect in Paul Grayson’s murder. And the cops are going to be operating on that same wavelength. I expect we’ll be hearing from Detectives Sims and Taylor again real soon.”

“How can information about the will be out in public?” Ali demanded. “The will hasn’t been filed in court, so it isn’t a matter of public record. Who would have leaked it?”

“Good question. Presumably one of my erstwhile colleagues from this morning’s meeting. I think I can make a fairly educated guess as to which one.”

“But isn’t that illegal?” Ali objected. “Doesn’t it violate attorney-client privilege?”

“Of course it does,” Victor returned. “And once I figure out who’s responsible, you can bet I’ll have his
cojones,
but for right now we have to live with the consequences of those revelations and with the fact that you’re now a suspect in two incidents rather than just the one.”

“Two?” Ali asked.

“One homicide and one attempted homicide.”

“So now I’m supposedly responsible for what happened to Monique Ragsdale, too? How come? I barely know the woman.”

“By showing up this morning armed with that cockamamie postmortem divorce attorney, Monique Ragsdale as good as declared war on you. That’s certainly how it’s going to look—as though the two of you were in some kind of a turf dispute. I can see exactly how it’ll play out in court, a David and Goliath routine. Monique will be portrayed as a sympathetic character, selflessly trying to protect the welfare of her daughter and her unborn grandchild. You’ll be depicted as the greedy ex-wife defending her territory and her pocketbook by taking the bothersome grandma out of the picture.”

“But Monique fell down the stairs,” Ali objected. “That’s not my fault.”

“What if she was pushed?” Victor returned. “I know how cops think. You’re already on their radar as a suspect in Paul’s death. They’re going to operate on the premise that if you’re good for one homicide, you’re good for another.”

“But I have an ironclad alibi,” Ali objected. “I left the house at the same time you did. You and Helga brought me back here to the hotel. I was here in my room all afternoon, first with my mother and later with Dave Holman. How could I possibly be responsible?”

Victor shrugged. “The cops have already decided that at least two people were involved in what happened to your husband. If you had an accomplice in that case, you’d be likely to have an accomplice for this one as well.”

“But I didn’t
do
it,” Ali insisted. “Mom, Dave, and I went to the house together. That’s when we found her.”

“Do you know how many people who ‘discover’ bodies end up being the doers?” Victor asked. “And tell me this. If you went to the house and no one was home, how did you get inside?”

“Through the front door. I rang the bell, but no one answered. Then, since the door was open, we went in.”

“Didn’t that strike you as unusual, that the door would be left open like that?”

“I didn’t think about it at the time because I thought April was home. With all the people involved in the shoot, there had been people coming and going all day long.”

“Do you still have keys to the house?”

“Probably,” Ali answered. “Back home in Sedona somewhere, but I certainly didn’t bring them along, and I doubt they’d work anyway. I expect Paul would have changed the locks as soon as I moved out. I’m sure I would have.”

“All right,” Victor said. “Now tell me about the telephone.”

“What telephone?” Ali asked.

“Come on. Don’t play dumb. Monique’s cell phone—the one you lifted from the crime scene. That’s called evidence tampering. When the cops find out about it—if they find out about it—they’re going to go nuts.”

“The EMTs were busy hauling Monique off to the hospital when I noticed the phone was lying there on the floor,” Ali explained. “By then I knew April wasn’t home. I needed to reach her so I could let her know what was happening. I was sure her cell phone number would be in her mother’s call records, and it was. How else was I supposed to find her number?”

“You could have called Ted Grantham back,” Victor pointed out. “But you didn’t. For right now the cops haven’t noticed the phone issue. If they end up figuring out you took it, then we’ll have to decide how to handle it. Now, what’s the deal with Dave Holman?”

“What about him?”

“Are you an item or what?”

“Dave’s good friends with my parents, and he’s a friend of mine, too—a homicide detective for Yavapai County over in Arizona. But we aren’t an ‘item.’”

“What’s he doing here then?”

“He drove over from Lake Havasu to help out.”

“He should go home,” Victor said simply. “So should your mother. I have my own team of investigators working on this case. What I don’t need is a bunch of people—amateurs or otherwise—blundering around and muddying the waters. Having your mother and Dave here is going to be more of a hindrance than a help. Anything you say to them is going to be fair game for whatever detectives are doing follow-up on either one of these two cases. They’ll ask Dave or your mother what you’ve said, and they’ll end up being required to answer truthfully. So you can’t confide in them—not at all. Understand?”

“It’s too late,” Ali said bleakly. “I already did.”

And for the first time in all this, she actually felt afraid.

V
ictor finally left. For a long time afterward, Ali sat alone in the living room area of April’s suite mulling her situation. What if Monique Ragsdale didn’t survive? Would Ali really be a suspect in her death as well? Could the cops turn Monique’s mere threat of litigation into a motive for murder?

From what Ali had seen, Monique’s fall had looked like an accident, but was it really? And speaking of accidents, what about the Sumo Sudoku boulder that had come flying in Ali’s own direction? That, too, had appeared to be nothing more than an accident caused by an overloaded wheelbarrow, but what if it wasn’t?

Pushing away that worrisome thought, Ali decided to track down how much of the story had surfaced in the media. Rather than switching on the television and possibly waking April, Ali did as she had so often done in the months since she had fled L.A., her former job, and her foundering marriage—she turned to her computer and to her blog and to the cyber support network from cutlooseblog.com that had sustained her through some pretty dark times.

She didn’t post Crystal’s note, but wanting to say something in reply—something that wouldn’t get her in trouble with Victor Angeleri—Ali penned a simple response that said nothing yet covered all the bases.

Yes,
Ali thought.
Things are getting more complicated. No, I haven’t called your nephew, and I probably won’t.

She sent Velma the same note she had sent to Crystal. That was Ali’s best bet for the moment—respond but do not engage. Keep a low profile.

Ali studied that one for a very long time. She had no idea who Andrea Morales was, much less who the woman’s uncle might be or what Ali could possibly have done to him. In the end, she felt she had to defend herself by sending a response.

The next one, unsigned, was even more disturbing.

Black widow,
Ali thought.
Thanks-a-lot. Let’s hope this one doesn’t hit the blogosphere. If it does, it’ll go like wildfire.

She didn’t reply to that one.

Ali’s cell phone rang just then. She hurried to answer it, thinking it would be the hospital. It wasn’t.

“Aunt Ali?”

She recognized the voice of ten-year-old Matt Bernard. Months earlier, Matt’s mother, Ali’s childhood friend Reenie Bernard, had been murdered. In the messy aftermath of Reenie’s death, her husband, a professor at Northern Arizona University, had taken off on sabbatical with a new wife in tow and had left his two children, Matt and his younger sister, Julie, in the care of their maternal grandparents in Cottonwood. Ali had stayed in touch with Reenie’s two kids as much as possible. Thanks to their grandfather’s pet allergies, Ali was also looking after their cat, the plug-ugly, one-eared, sixteen-pound wonder, Samantha.

“Hi, Matt.”

“How’s Sam?”

“Sam’s fine,” Ali said. She didn’t know that with absolute certainty, but she felt confident in saying so.

“Grandpa and Grandma are driving to Sedona tomorrow afternoon after church,” Matt went on. “I was wondering if Julie and I could come by your house for a while to visit and play with Sam.”

That was the weird thing about cell phones. Callers dial numbers with a complete mental image of where the other person is and what he or she is doing. No doubt Matt was envisioning Ali in her spacious mobile home in Sedona, curled up on her living room sofa with Sam right there beside her. Instead, Ali was several hundred miles away, sitting in a hotel room, and embroiled in a set of circumstances that might well keep her from returning to Sedona for some time. Ali didn’t want to go into any of those messy details with Matthew Bernard right then. Or ever.

“Oh, Matt,” she said. “I’m so sorry. I’ve been called out of town. I won’t be there tomorrow.”

“Who’s taking care of Sam then?” he asked.

“My dad,” Ali said. “He loves cats, and they love him. If you’re coming up in the afternoon, after the Sugar Loaf is closed for the day, maybe you could visit with Sam at my parents’ house.”

Matt sounded dubious. “Wouldn’t your father mind?”

Ali thought about Bob Larson, a man who adored animals and little kids. “As long as it’s after hours, I’m sure he’d be thrilled to have you, but why don’t you call him and ask?”

“I think that would be weird.” Suddenly Matt seemed stricken with an uncharacteristic case of shyness. “I mean, I don’t really know him.”

“By the time you and Julie spend Sunday afternoon with him, you will know him,” Ali countered. “He may be my father, but he’s also a really nice guy.”

The call waiting signal beeped in Ali’s ear. She glanced at the readout—Chris’s cell phone. As soon as she saw the number, she felt guilty. She hadn’t called her son—deliberately hadn’t called him—when things started going bad. She had considered the mess to be her problem. With Chris starting a new job and a new life, she hadn’t wanted to embroil him in her difficulties. But then, she hadn’t much wanted Edie Larson and Dave Holman to be dragged into the situation, either.

Ali ended the call with Matt as soon as possible, but by then, Chris had left an irate voice-mail message: “Mom. What the hell is going on out there? Call me.”

“I knew you were busy,” she said, once she had Chris on the phone. “I didn’t want you to worry. How much have you heard?”

“I just got off the phone with Gramps, who had talked to Grandma. I know Paul is dead. I know April’s mother fell down a flight of stairs and could very well die, and that the cops think you’re a suspect in both cases.”

“That just about covers it then,” Ali said as lightly as she could manage. “Sounds like you’re completely up to date.”

“Mother!” Chris exclaimed accusingly.

Chris hardly ever called her “Mother.” It usually meant that the two of them were on the outs. And the reverse was true when Ali called him Christopher. This time she was the one who had crossed their invisible line.

“Tell me now,” Chris ordered. “I want to hear it from you.”

And so Ali did—she told him everything.

“I’m guessing April’s mom is the one who came up with the idea of pushing for a postmortem divorce,” Chris said when she finished.

“Either she did or her lawyer did,” Ali said. “I’m not sure which.”

“If anybody would know the ins and outs of divorce, Monique Ragsdale would probably be it,” Chris said.

“What do you mean?”

“Monique’s had several,” Chris replied. “Divorces, that is. Scott Dumphey, one of the guys I used to play basketball with in college, is good friends with Jason Ragsdale, April’s stepbrother. That’s how I found out about Paul and April in the first place—through Scott.”

The comment made it clear to Ali that there was a whole lot she didn’t know about April Gaddis’s family situation.

“April has a stepbrother?” Ali asked.

“‘Had’ is the operative word,” Chris corrected. “Jason is a former stepbrother. From what I remember of the story, Jason’s dad was a widower, an optometrist with a fairly decent nest egg, when April’s mother arrived on the scene with April in tow. When Monique dumped the poor guy a couple of years later, his nest egg was a whole lot smaller.”

Ali had no way of knowing if any of this information would prove useful or not. Nonetheless, she used a piece of hotel notepaper to jot down all the relevant names.

“What about April’s dad?” Ali asked.

“What about him?” Chris returned. “I’m assuming he was several husbands ago.”

The little tidbit of information made April’s way of dealing with the world much more understandable. She had been raised by an often-married gold digger of a mother. With that in mind, it was entirely reasonable for her to grow up thinking that someone else’s husband—anyone else’s husband—was fair game. If that was how Monique had gotten ahead in the world, why wouldn’t her daughter try doing the same thing? Given that context, April’s involvement with Paul Grayson must have seemed like business as usual.

“Anything else you can tell me about April?”

“Dropped out of college after only a semester or two,” Chris replied. “According to Scott, she’s not all that bright. At least he didn’t think so.”

Even with the door to April’s room pulled shut, Ali wasn’t prepared to comment on that either way.

“What’s going to happen now?” Chris asked. “And should I call in to work and have them get me a substitute teacher so I can drive over to help out?”

“No,” Ali said. “Absolutely not. Mom’s here. So’s Dave Holman.”

“He is? What’s Dave doing there?”

“Grandma called him and he came.”

“She called him, but she didn’t call me.”

Chris sounded understandably hurt.

“I’m sure she was thinking the same thing I was—that we didn’t want to bother you or take you away from what you’re doing.”

“Thanks a lot,” Chris said. “To both of you. Like mother like daughter, I guess, but I’m a grown-up now. I get to choose, remember?”

Ali would have said more, but call waiting buzzed again. The readout said Cedars-Sinai Medical Center. At the same time, her phone was telling her she was running out of battery power.

“Sorry, Chris,” Ali told her son. “There’s another call. I have to take it.” She switched over.

“April Gaddis?” a male voice asked.

“No. April’s in the other room, lying down.”

“This is the contact number we were given, and it’s about her mother. Can you put her on the line, please?”

The caller’s voice sounded so distant, so impersonal, that Ali knew without hearing another word that the guy wasn’t calling with good news.

“Just a moment,” Ali said quickly. “She’s resting, but I’ll get her for you.”

With the low-battery alarm still sounding, Ali hurried into April’s darkened room. The young woman lay on her side, snoring softly. Ali shook her awake. “April,” she said. “There’s a call for you.”

April took the phone. “Yes,” she said. “What is it? Is my mother all right?

But of course Monique Ragsdale was anything but all right. She had died on the operating table, most likely as a result of the brain injury. With a slight whimper, April dropped the phone. As soon as it fell, Ali Reynolds knew she was now a suspect in two separate homicides.