J.A. Jance's Ali Reynolds Mysteries 3-Book Boxed Set, Volume 1: Web of Evil, Hand of Evil, Cruel Intent (35 page)

Ali drove uptown and then on up into what had been one of Sedona’s pioneering subdivisions, dating from the early 1950s. In the intervening years since her last visit, lots of houses had sprouted on the winding streets and cul-de-sacs on the lower part of the hillside. Those various homes, nice though they were, somehow betrayed their dated heydays like so many beads on a retrospective architectural necklace. But the Ashcroft place, situated at the top of the ridge and overlooking them all, was by far the oldest and still the undisputed top of the heap.

Ali saw the first small differences almost at once. The paved surface of the narrow, steep drive had once been a ribbon of pristinely smooth blacktop. Now the pavement was scarred with numerous webs of patched cracks and pockmarked with all sizes of potholes.

She pulled into the circular driveway at the top of the hill and gazed out at Arabella Ashcroft’s unparalleled view. As a high school senior, Ali had been dazzled by the low-slung house with its massive windows set in deep, shady overhangs. She hadn’t been experienced enough back then to recognize the stylish home’s origins. Now she did. Clearly the Ashcroft place was a variation on a Frank Lloyd Wright theme—a Frank Lloyd Wright copycat if not the real thing.

In Ali’s memory the place had loomed large so as to seem almost palatial. Compared to where her parents lived in a humble two-bedroom apartment behind the restaurant, the Ashcroft place was still large and lush. What had really changed was Ali’s own perspective. She had spent almost a decade living in the oversize grandeur of Paul Grayson’s Beverly Hills mansion, in a place where appearances always outgunned substance. It was that experience that accounted for the startling reduction of Anna Lee Ashcroft’s once seemingly massive house.

There was still an undisputed air of quality about the place, but there were also signs of slippage. Some of the paint in the window surrounds was chipped and flaking. A few of the red roof tiles had evidently come to grief. The replacements didn’t quite match the color of the original, giving the roof a somewhat spotty, freckled look.

The aged wisteria Ali remembered still covered the wide front porch, helping to shade it from the afternoon sun. Now, though, it wasn’t blooming. Instead, its gnarled limbs were bare and gray in the high desert’s January chill.

Ali stepped onto the porch, where the front doors could clearly benefit from some of Kip Hogan’s newly acquired refinishing skills. The varnish was faded and peeling. This time, when she rang the bell, no uniformed maid appeared. Instead, the door was opened by the white-jacketed, white-haired man who, in a somewhat different outfit, had also delivered Ali’s invitation earlier that morning. Seeing him this way confirmed Ali’s earlier suspicion that this was the selfsame butler who had served tea on Anna Lee Ashcroft’s screened porch all those years earlier. Back then, as a high school senior, Ali had thought of him as downright ancient. Years later, he didn’t seem to have changed all that much.

“Good afternoon, madam,” he announced with a stiff but polite half bow. “So good of you to come. Miss Arabella is waiting in the living room. Right this way, please.”

The foyer was familiar but surprisingly chilly. The entryway rug was the same one Ali remembered. Back then she hadn’t been all that impressed by it. Now she realized she should have been. It was a fine old Aubusson, thin and threadbare in spots, its intricate designs faded and worn down by decades of use. Ali recalled that a massive crystal vase had stood on the inlaid wood entryway table facing the door, and a similar-size vase stood there now. On Ali’s previous visit, the vase had brimmed with a huge bouquet of fresh-cut flowers. Now it stood empty and forlorn. A thin film of dust fogged the surface.

The butler turned to his left, pushed open a pair of heavy double doors, and led Ali into a living room that, although still spacious, seemed much smaller than Ali remembered. The furniture and rugs, though, were virtually unchanged—at least the fabrics and placement were the same—but again Ali noted subtle differences. Thirty years ago the silk-upholstered couches and chairs and polished wood end tables had been evidence of a stylish elegance. Now, like the well-used rug in the foyer, these things, too, had a dated and somewhat shabby air. For a moment Ali felt as though she had wandered into a time capsule—a museum diorama devoted to some long faded glory—rather than into a house occupied by living, breathing inhabitants.

All those small details, taken together, left Ali thinking that perhaps Arabella Ashcroft had fallen on hard times. Yes, there was a shiny Rolls-Royce stowed in the garage and it might well tool around town driven by a trusted family retainer who filled in as butler and chauffeur and probably chief cook and bottle washer as well, but the look of the place made Ali wonder if there weren’t times when Arabella Ashcroft had difficulty finding the wherewithal to fill the gas tank. Maybe, in the course of all those intervening years, there had been a complete reversal of fortunes between the well-to-do, sophisticated Ashcrofts and the awkward, small-town girl who had benefited from their largesse.

The living room was considerably warmer than the foyer had been, and the air in the room was alive with the sharp scent of mesquite wood smoke and the crackle of a roaring fire. Roving wintertime burn bans may have caused most of Sedona’s wood-burning fireplaces to morph into ones fired by gas, but not this one.

At the far end of the room, two overstuffed leather chairs sat in front of the immense river rock fireplace. What appeared to be a tree-size log blazed on the hearth. A gray-haired woman, dwarfed by the huge chairs, sat upright in one of them. In front of her, on a rolling cart of some kind, was the one thing in the room that didn’t quite fit—a sleek white computer monitor. Coming closer, Ali recognized the computer as an iMAC. The computer was almost identical to the one in Chris’s room and included a wireless keyboard and mouse.

“Ms. Reynolds,” the butler announced with all due ceremony.

The woman immediately moved the computer aside. Smiling and looking for all the world like her mother, Arabella Ashcroft stood to meet her arriving guest, pulling a shawl around her shoulders with one hand and offering the other one in greeting. Her dark gray hair was pulled back in a simple French roll. She peered at Ali through thick, eye-distorting horn-rimmed glasses. She wore a pair of slacks and a blue cashmere sweater with a matching cardigan. Her outfit was topped by a single strand of pearls. Ali guessed that the pearls, unlike Aunt Evie’s, were real, and she didn’t doubt for a minute that the sweater set had cost a bundle at one time, too. As they shook hands, however, Ali noticed that the wrist of one sleeve of the cardigan had been carefully mended. Not even Ali’s thrifty mother did that kind of mending anymore.

“My goodness,” Arabella exclaimed, staring at Ali for a long moment. “How extraordinary! I had forgotten how much you resemble your Aunt Evelyn!”

Ali Reynolds was Scandinavian on both branches of her family and had inherited a full complement of tall, blue-eyed blondeness that had served her well in her television news career. And she was accustomed to being told how much she resembled her mother just as Arabella Ashcroft favored hers. Ali wasn’t nearly as used to being told she looked like her Aunt Evelyn.

“Since my mother and Aunt Evie were twins, I don’t suppose that’s too surprising,” Ali observed with a smile.

“No,” Arabella agreed. “I suppose not. Please, sit down.”

Ali sat and so did Arabella. During that previous visit, Arabella had lingered in the background while her mother did the talking. Now it appeared as though Arabella had come into her own and moved out of Anna Lee’s shadow.

“Evie and I were good friends at one time,” Arabella continued wistfully. “We drifted apart the way friends sometimes do. Still, I was terribly saddened to hear of her passing.”

The fact that Aunt Evie and Arabella Ashcroft had once been friends was news to Ali, but surprise was quickly overtaken by a renewed sense of loss. Growing up Ali had felt blessed to have two mothers rather than one. Edie Larson and her never-married sister, Evelyn Hansen, had not only looked alike, they had worked together on a daily basis as partners in the Sugarloaf. In many ways—including their devotion to Ali—they had been very much alike, but they had also been subtly different.

Edie Larson was always the solid, practical one of the pair—quiet and down to earth. Edie never took shortcuts. She cooked everything from scratch, and her recreational reading consisted almost entirely of cookbooks. She liked to see art films—tea-and-cookies films, as Bob called them—and documentaries occasionally, but that was about it.

Aunt Evie had been a vivacious and outgoing Auntie Mame kind of character. She was someone with eclectic tastes, a fondness for practical jokes, and a real sense of fun. She had loved movies and books—all kinds of movies and all kinds of books. She had read voraciously, everything from potboilers to highbrow literary fiction. She had devoured musicals and knew the lyrics to countless Broadway hit songs. Even though Ali had been living in California at the time Aunt Evie had succumbed to a massive stroke, Ali had felt her lively aunt’s loss more than she would have thought possible. To this day Ali’s MP3 player was filled with the songs and music from Aunt Evie’s huge collection of tapes, records, and CDs. Chris had spent most of a previous Christmas vacation loading them into his mother’s player.

Hearing Aunt Evie’s name mentioned in passing brought back afresh the pain of losing her. “I miss her, too,” Ali said.

“I’m sure you do.”

Arabella turned to the waiting butler. “You may bring the tea now, Mr. Brooks.”

“Very well, madam,” he said, nodding his assent. With that, he turned and disappeared the way he had come, silently closing the heavy double doors behind him.

“So,” Arabella said.

Ali remembered that other long-ago interview. Anna Lee had begun hers in exactly the same way, but back then, Ali, dressed in her unaccustomed finery, had been ill at ease and unsure of what she should say. This time she was far more confident.

“I’ve been terribly remiss,” Ali said at once. “I should have stopped by years ago to thank both you and your mother for what you did for me when you awarded me that wonderful scholarship. I want you to know that your single act of kindness made a huge difference in my life.”

Arabella waved aside Ali’s gratitude. “It’s not necessary,” she said. “Not at all. You may have been our first scholarship recipient, Ms. Reynolds, but you certainly weren’t the last. My mother derived a lot of enjoyment from the process, and so have I.”

“Ali. Please call me Ali.”

“And you must call me Arabella. I have to say that searching out possible scholarship winners is a bit like having a new treasure hunt every single year,” the woman continued brightly. “We’ve resisted having a formal application process. Mr. Brooks works with me on this, you see. The two of us are a team. We track down deserving students and ferret them out on our own by talking to teachers and students and by asking questions in the community. That way we don’t end up having to ignore a deserving student just because of some hard-and-fast official guideline. In fact, although traditionally most of our recipients have been female, one of our recent winners happens to be a boy who’s majoring in nursing.”

The butler reappeared, bearing a familiar silver tray polished to a gleaming finish. In addition to the tea service and a collection of sandwiches and sweets there was also a silver cocktail shaker and a pair of long-stemmed glasses.

“Care for a pre-tea martini?” Arabella asked.

“No, thanks,” Ali said. “It’s a little early for me.”

“Not for me,” Arabella said, smiling her thanks as Brooks poured her drink from the shaker and handed it over. “One of my little indulgences,” she added.

There was something almost sly in the way Arabella said the words. Then, once the glass was in her hand, she stared into its depths for a long time without saying anything more. The silence went on long enough that it left Ali feeling slightly uncomfortable and made her wonder what, besides the freshly poured martini, Arabella Ashcroft was seeing there.

O
nce tea had been properly served, Brooks politely retreated once more. Only then did Arabella pick up the threads of their conversation.

“As I was saying, we’ve had many scholarship winners over the years. Two doctors, several teachers, a psychologist. One of our girls just got tapped to do some work for the human genome project—you know, that X-prize thing. I’ve tried to keep up with that DNA stuff, but I just can’t wrap my mind around some of it. Your exploits are a lot more interesting to me and a lot more understandable. I have your blog bookmarked on my iMAC,” Arabella added. “I read cutloose every day. It’s been a real eye-opener for me, an eye-opener and an inspiration.”

Exploits!
Arabella’s unexpected use of the word caused a hot flush of embarrassment to bloom at the base of Ali’s neck. It spread from her collar to the roots of her hair. She had never given much thought as to how what was going on in her life—her very public firing and her equally public divorce proceedings—might play back home. Yes, she had realized that her family members—her parents and her son—would be affected by all of that, but she hadn’t considered that it might also reflect badly on people like the Ashcrofts, who had demonstrated such faith in her when they had awarded that very valuable college scholarship.

“Surely people don’t think you and your mother are somehow responsible for the things that have happened in my life.”

Arabella laughed. “Oh, no. Nothing like that. Not at all. But it is why I wanted to speak to you today,” she added. She paused long enough to refill her cocktail glass, emptying the shaker in the process.

Mystified and still more than slightly embarrassed, Ali waited, wondering where the rambling conversation was going.

“I was particularly taken by the way you dodged the bullet last fall,” Arabella continued. “How, when your husband was murdered over in California, the cops were so eager to blame it all on you.”

It turned out there had been more than just metaphorical bullets flying back then. There had been plenty of real bullets, too, and Ali had counted herself very fortunate to have avoided being hit by one or more of them. So, although Ali didn’t much like the turn the interview was taking, she answered politely nonetheless.

“For one thing, I had a whole stable of high-priced lawyers,” she said. “That’s always a necessary ingredient.”

“Yes,” Arabella said thoughtfully. “I suppose that’s true. Don’t get me wrong. I know there are times lawyers are a necessary evil, but I’m not keen on having what you call a ‘stable’ of them lingering in the background and soaking up money. As you no doubt know, they’re usually far too expensive.”

She sipped her drink and then continued. “I got the impression from reading cutloose that you didn’t stand around holding your breath and leaving everything to your attorneys, either. It seems to me you were quite…I think these days the term is called ‘proactive’…about the whole situation. I believe the relationship between you and your husband had been troubled for some time prior to his death. I happen to know from personal experience that when someone is busy making our lives difficult, it’s not so surprising that we might occasionally wish them dead.”

Ali nodded but said nothing.

“So when someone like that does die—someone like your good-for-nothing husband, for example—I trust you don’t go around carrying a load of guilt over it. That would be completely unnecessary—and, under the circumstances, entirely counterproductive.”

Arabella looked at Ali sharply, as though waiting for an answer or a denial or something. In fact Ali was too struck by Arabella’s comment to respond at all. It seemed to her that Arabella had read cutloose, looked beyond the words, and glimpsed the darkest part of Ali’s soul, a blemish no amount of soap could wash away.

Ali had indeed wished Paul Grayson dead on more than one occasion, thinking that having him dead would somehow make things easier for her. Now that he was dead, Ali was stuck with all the accompanying consequences. Not only was Paul dead, as were his fiancée and their unborn baby, but there was also another mother and another young baby fathered by Paul to consider. And even though none of that was actually Ali’s fault, still…

“Yes,” Ali admitted finally. “I guess I do feel somewhat guilty.”

“You shouldn’t,” Arabella told her cheerfully, “but I suppose that’s all to your credit. In fact, I’m actually glad to hear it. I’ve suspected all along that’s the kind of person you were and are—which is to say—relatively nice. After Bill died, I never felt a moment’s worth of guilt—not a single one.”

The log in the fireplace burned through and tumbled between the andirons with a resounding crash, sending a shower of sparks spiraling upward.

Ali wasn’t sure where the conversation had gone. She seemed to have missed something. “Who’s Bill?” Ali asked. “Did you have a husband who died, too?”

“Good heavens no,” Arabella said with a laugh. “Not a husband. Thankfully I’ve never had one of those. In my case it was a brother who died—a stepbrother, actually, an older stepbrother. And I didn’t kill him,” she added hastily. “Not that I didn’t want to, but in the end he took matters into his own hands and saved everyone else the trouble. He got himself all drunked up and drove off the side of a mountain. I understand in your case that someone else got rid of Fang for you without your having to lift a finger, either. I loved that you called him Fang, by the way. I thought that was inspired, and I always loved Phyllis Diller. You must have, too.”

At a loss and not quite able to make the connections, Ali reverted to her old journalism training and asked questions. “When did your stepbrother die?” she asked. “Recently?”

“Oh, no,” Arabella replied. “It’s years ago now—right around fifty. I was actually out of the country when it happened, and I didn’t hear about it until much later, so I’ve managed to blot out the exact date. After all, at my age I’m entitled to a few senior moments. Still, I’m sure I’ll be able to track down all those gory details should I need them. Mother kept a file I’ll be able to use for research, but that’s one of the things I wanted to ask you about—changing names and details. When you’re writing about an ugly situation—a real-life situation—is it preferable to write it as it happened, or are you better off changing names and such to keep the legal beagles from coming after you?”

“I’m sorry,” Ali said. “I’m not sure what you mean.”

“I’m thinking about writing a book, you see,” Arabella said. “And I’m wondering if I should fictionalize some of it or all of it—you know, change names to protect the innocent and all that?”

That depends on whether or not what you’re writing is the truth,
Ali thought.

She said, “Look, we’re getting into some pretty murky territory here. What you’re talking about could have legal ramifications—adverse legal ramifications. You should probably consult an attorney, one who specializes in libel.”

“I’ve already told you, hiring attorneys isn’t an option at this time,” Arabella replied. “But I will say that the idea that I might decide to write a book is the very last thing Billy thought would happen when he came barging in here asking for a handout.”

Now Ali was really confused. “Billy?” she interjected. “I thought you just told me he was dead.”

“Bill Junior is dead,” Arabella replied. “Billy is his son, my nephew, and a chip off the old block if ever there was one. Every bit as contemptible as his father and his grandfather. DNA is spooky that way, don’t you think? I wonder if the human genome project is looking into that? Billy’s my nephew, but until he showed up Sunday afternoon, I hadn’t ever laid eyes on him. Looks just like his father. That gave me a bit of a shock.”

“How old is he?” Ali asked.

“Billy? Late fifties.”

“And you’d never met him before?”

“Never.”

“So why did he look you up after all this time?”

“Money,” Arabella answered. “He’s gone through what my father left him. He came here under the mistaken impression that I still had loads of Mother’s money, and that I’d be happy to give him some of that, too. It turns out, of course, that Mother’s money is pretty much gone, and I wouldn’t give him any of it even if it wasn’t. When I told him he wasn’t getting a dime’s worth of what I had left, things went from bad to worse.”

“How so?” Ali asked.

“He threatened me.”

“With bodily harm?”

“It sounded like bodily harm to me. He said that someone in my condition, whatever that is, shouldn’t be left living on my own with only an aging butler to look after me. I told him Mr. Brooks is quite capable—he’s only seventy-six by the way—and we’re managing quite nicely. Have been for years. At which point Billy ran his finger across the table and said the place could use some dusting—the arrogant twit. Who cares about dusting anyway?”

Ali immediately regretted her own critical thoughts about how things were slipping a bit in the housekeeping department. She said nothing.

Arabella continued. “He went on to tell me that if I was going to insist on staying in this big, drafty old house, I should let him do a reverse mortgage on the place so I could hire some adequate help and do some fix-up kinds of repairs. That was when I told him I wasn’t interested and he could put his reverse mortgage scheme where the sun don’t shine.”

Ali managed to suppress a smile. “What happened then?”

Arabella sighed. “That’s when the nicey-nice long-lost nephew act ended. The gloves came off, and he went downright ballistic. I’m afraid having a dreadful temper is DNA-related, too. His father was the same way. Billy came right out and told me that if I refused to listen to reason and do what he said, he’d go to court to have me declared incompetent. He said that once that happened he’d see to it that I was locked away in one of those dreadful assisted living places.”

She shivered slightly and rubbed the tops of her arms as though a chill draft had blown across her shoulders. “I wouldn’t last a week in one of those,” she added.

“Wait a minute,” Ali objected. “You’re anything but incompetent.”

Arabella smiled a little sadly. “Thank you for saying that,” she said.

“I didn’t just say it; I mean it!” Ali declared. “It sounds to me as though Billy was trying to blackmail you, and blackmail happens to be illegal. Did you call the cops?”

“No,” Arabella answered.

“Why not?”

“Because, if I did, I’m sure he’d convince them that, as my last living blood relative, he was just watching out for my best interests, that he was looking after his dotty old auntie.”

“People who know you would never believe that,” Ali said.

“They might,” Arabella allowed. “Billy came off as a really slick operator. Probably a good salesman as well. If he takes me to court, he seems entirely capable of convincing some unsuspecting family court judge that I’m a complete nutcase—which I am on occasion, I’m told. And it would be that much easier if he brought up my past, which, of course, he’s threatening to do.”

“Your past?” Ali repeated. “What about your past?”

Arabella sighed. “I was institutionalized for a number of years when I was much younger,” she said. “It was a very dark period of my life. Once it was over, Mother and I never spoke of it. Mother liked to tell people I’d gone to finishing school.” Arabella gave a short, brittle chuckle. “I suppose that was close to true. That place almost finished me, all right, and I’ve spent years trying to put it behind me. Billy’s showing up here and threatening to put all that unpleasantness out in public…” She shook her head and drifted into silence.

Ali was outraged. “Your nephew has no right to bring all that up.”

“But he did,” Arabella said, sipping her drink. “He has. And now I have to figure out what to do about it.”

“You could just ignore it,” Ali said. “Of course, I’d beef up security around here. Billy sounds like a bully. If you don’t engage, maybe he’ll just go back under his rock.”

“And maybe he won’t,” Arabella returned. “I ordered him out of the house. I rang the bell and asked Mr. Brooks to show him out. The last thing he said to me before I sent him packing was that he’d be back.”

“When was that?” Ali asked.

“Sunday afternoon, late.”

“And have you heard from him since?”

“No, thank heaven. I thought I would have by now, but I’ve been thinking about him this whole time and thinking about what happened. There are times when not remembering takes a lot more effort than people think, and I’ve been doing that for years. But here, in less than an hour, that spiteful little worm brought it all back up. He’s such a little know-it-all, but that’s the thing. He only
thinks
he knows it all. He doesn’t, and I do.”

She took another sip of her drink, emptying the glass in the process. “I’ve barely slept the last two nights,” Arabella said. “And when I have managed to sleep, the nightmares are back. And so, sometime in the middle of the night, I made a decision, and that’s why I wanted to see you today.”

“What decision?” Ali asked.

“I’m not going to sit around waiting for the other shoe to drop. Instead of letting Billy tell the story, I’m going to tell it myself. Who knows, if I manage to sell it to a publisher, I might even make some money on it. There’s not much of that left, and a little infusion of cash wouldn’t hurt the bottom line. What do you think?”