J.A. Jance's Ali Reynolds Mysteries 3-Book Boxed Set, Volume 1: Web of Evil, Hand of Evil, Cruel Intent (77 page)

“That’s what Maddy Watkins told me,” Velma had said, referring to the retired schoolteacher from Washington State who had been her traveling companion on the trip. “Anyone who’s tough enough to go see Mount Kilimanjaro is tough enough to fight cancer.”

Now that Velma was finishing her second round of chemo, Ali wanted her to come to Sedona for Thanksgiving dinner. She
immediately sent an instant message to that effect and received an almost instantaneous reply:

Velma T:
I couldn’t possibly. I’m bald as a billiard. I look a fright. Ghastly.

Babe:
I’m inviting you to come have dinner. It’s not a beauty pageant.

Velma T:
Who all would be there?

Babe:
My parents. My son and future daughter-in-law. A few friends.

Velma T:
But how would I get there? You know I don’t have a car. Don’t drive.

Babe:
Just say you’ll come. Let me worry about getting you here.

Velma T:
It’s so close. You probably wouldn’t get a very good fare.

Babe:
See reply above. I’ll worry about that.

Velma T:
I already told my daughter-in-law that I was booked. That was a lie. Now it could be true.

Babe:
Is that a yes?

Velma T:
Even if I’m bald?

Babe:
Especially if you’re bald.

Velma T:
Fair enough, then. It’s a yes.

Babe:
Okay. Details to follow.

Ali’s phone rang as she was signing off. Her parent’s number showed on the caller ID screen, but since her father avoided using the telephone as much as possible, there wasn’t much chance Bob Larson would be calling.

“Hello, Mom,” Ali said. “What’s up?”

“Nothing much,” Edie said. “I was just worried about you, that’s all.”

“Why?”

“Because of all this business with Bryan Forester. What’s going to happen to your house? What if he gets thrown into jail and your job doesn’t get finished?”

This was probably not the right time to mention the cabinet order for which, if things fell apart, Ali would be paying 50 percent more for than the original agreed-upon price.

“It’ll be finished,” Ali declared with more confidence than she felt. “I’ve definitely decided to go ahead with Thanksgiving dinner. Please mark it on your calendar.”

“And where do you plan to have it?” Edie wanted to know. “In the driveway? I heard they were just installing wallboard today. You’ve got a long way to go before the place is going to be ready for occupancy.”

“Turkey dinner is at my house,” Ali said. “If not that one, then this one, and that’s final.”

“What do you want us to bring?”

“Nothing,” Ali said. “I’ll handle it.”

The long silence that followed meant that Edie wasn’t entirely convinced. “All right, then,” she said. “But have you ever cooked a turkey before?”

“Don’t worry,” Ali said. “I’ll figure it out. I can read a recipe.”
And so can Leland Brooks,
she thought.

“Is Dave coming to Chris and Athena’s get-together at the gym tonight?” Edie asked, changing the subject. “He loves my pumpkin pies. I’ve made one especially for him.”

When it came to Dave Holman, Edie and Bob Larson were absolutely transparent. Ali’s parents really liked the guy and were
lobbying to the best of their ability for Dave and Ali to land in some kind of permanent arrangement. Ali had attempted to explain the changed dynamics in the relationship, but it made no difference. Bob and Edie’s minds were made up. They weren’t listening.

“He may be coming,” Ali said. “He was here at the house for a while last night. I know Chris invited him tonight, but I don’t know if he’ll be there.”

“Well, then,” Edie said determinedly. “I’ll bring his pumpkin pie to the gym along with everything else, just in case.”

“Everything else?” Ali echoed. “I thought Athena said Hawaiian Punch and storebought cookies.”

“Christopher is my grandson!” Edie said indignantly. “You don’t suppose I’d let him celebrate his engagement with a batch of storebought cookies, do you?”

“No,” Ali agreed with a laugh. “I don’t suppose you would.”

Just then her e-mail announced the arrival of a new message. And there, moments before the five
P.M.
deadline she had given them, was a video-bearing e-mail from Raymond Armado. Once Ali got off the phone with her mother, it took her a while to download the attached file. When she finally opened it, she fast-forwarded through the parts that consisted of Billy Barnes and the other guys dutifully hanging wallboard. Boring. Steady. Absolutely unexciting. Toward the end of the film segment, however, Dave Holman, notebook in hand, appeared on the scene. That sequence began with Billy Barnes glancing at his watch and with Ali exiting the frame.

“What can you tell me about Bryan Forester’s situation yesterday?” Dave asked on the video without preamble.

“He was here from around ten
A.M.
on,” Bryan answered. “We had a problem with a building inspector. Once he got here, he was here for the rest of the day.”

“He didn’t come and go?”

“Nope,” Billy said impatiently. “I already told you. He was here all day long.”

“Did he seem upset to you?”

Billy made a face and shrugged, but Ali knew the answer to that was yes. When she’d had dealings with Bryan herself on Monday, he had appeared to be distracted and off his game. She had assumed it had something to do with the building inspector or with the slow progress of construction or even the missing cabinets. Now it seemed possible that something else had been bothering him.

“Were you aware of any difficulties he and his wife might have been having?” Dave asked.

“What husband and wife doesn’t have difficulties?” Billy returned. “Of course they were having difficulties.”

“Do you know what kind?”

“I’d rather not say,” Billy said.

“Look,” Dave said. “This is a homicide investigation. I need you to answer.”

“Bryan Forester is a nice guy—a regular straight arrow. You’d think a woman would appreciate having a guy like that around, someone who goes to work every day in all kinds of weather, brings home the bacon, and turns the money over to her so she can spend it however she likes, and spend it Morgan did. I never heard the woman say a kind thing about him. All she ever did was gripe, gripe, gripe. Nothing was ever good enough for her, but still, finding out that she’d signed up for an Internet dating site. That just about corked it.”

Dave consulted his notebook. “This Internet dating site. I believe Bryan mentioned something about that. That would be Singleatheart.com, right?”

“I guess,” Billy conceded with a shrug. “Something like that.”

“And Bryan told you about it?”

“Yes.”

“When?”

“Yesterday morning,” Billy said. “We were out at the picnic table having a smoke. He was fit to be tied. It was his first cigarette in three years, at least.”

“You’re sure it was yesterday that he mentioned it to you? He talked about it on Tuesday, not Monday.”

“I’m sure,” Billy said.

“Did Bryan mention to you how he found out about it or when?”

“The kind of woman she was, I wouldn’t be surprised if she came right out and told him about it herself. Probably wanted to rub his nose in it. Morgan was like that. He did say that they’d fought like cats and dogs all weekend.”

“About?”

“He didn’t say.”

“So they fought like crazy all weekend, and Morgan ended up dead on Monday morning,” Dave muttered, more to himself than to anyone else. “How very convenient.”

“He didn’t kill her,” Billy insisted. “Even if she deserved it, he wouldn’t.”

“Did he say that—that she deserved to die?”

“Bryan never said any such thing,” Billy replied. “I’m the one who said it. As far as I’m concerned, Morgan Forester was bad news. Her family used to be dirt poor, and all she ever wanted was a meal ticket. I don’t think she even liked the guy.”

“You seem to know quite a bit about it,” Dave said.

“You think so?” Billy answered. “Bryan and me go way back. We’ve been friends since high school. Once Morgan turned
up on the scene, you could see she thought she was really hot stuff—like she was something special—but she wasn’t. You don’t have to take my word for it. There are plenty of guys around who can tell you Morgan Forester was a good-for-nothing tramp and that Bryan was way too good for her.”

“Sounds like you didn’t care for her much.”

Billy simply shrugged.

“So where were you yesterday morning?” Dave asked.

Billy bristled. “So now you’re accusing me of having something to do with what happened? For your information, I was right here on the job. Had to go out for supplies for a while early in the morning. We were running short on wallboard screws. Other than that, I got here at seven-forty-five and left at four. You can ask anybody. Try Leland Brooks, for starters. He’s usually right outside.”

Someone spoke to Billy from off screen. He nodded, then turned back to Dave. “Look, they need me. I’ve got to get back to work. You’ve got a job to do, and so do I. I’ve wasted enough time answering your damned questions. Now get the hell out of here.”

Dave studied his notebook for a moment before pocketing it and walking away. The camera continued to roll, following him through the house and out the front door. Moments later, he seemed to notice the trailing film crew for the first time and ordered them to stop filming. Seconds later, Ali’s voice said the same thing. Only then did the film fade to black.

When the clip ended, Ali sat staring at the screen. Morgan’s neighbors had thought of her as the perfect stay-at-home wife and mother. But her husband suspected her of embezzling funds, and now it turned out that she’d been prowling the Internet looking for greener pastures while her husband was hard at work.

What kind of perfect wife does that?
Ali wondered.
And what kind of place is Singleatheart?
The name implied that it was a hookup tool for people who were married but who wanted to carry on as though they weren’t. The way Bryan had told the story to Ali, he hadn’t looked at Morgan’s computer files and learned about Singleatheart until after his wife was already dead. But what if that wasn’t true?

What if he learned about it earlier?
Ali wondered.
What if that was what Bryan and Morgan fought about over the weekend?
If that were the case, it made sense that Dave Holman would have settled on Bryan as the prime suspect in his wife’s murder. And maybe the item Ali had witnessed Dave removing from Bryan’s pickup would further implicate Morgan’s widower. From the way Dave had rushed away after finding it, Ali suspected that to be the case.

Still, there was something about the interview she’d just witnessed that gave Ali pause, something that bothered her. Why was it Billy Barnes happened to know so much about everything that was going on with Bryan and Morgan? Were Bryan and Billy really close enough friends that Bryan would have confided in Billy about Morgan’s infidelity and her involvement in Singleatheart? That struck Ali as odd. Most betrayed husbands wouldn’t have admitted such things to anyone, not even their best pals.

And what about Morgan? Ali recognized that she must have been dreadfully unhappy to have risked everything—including life itself—to go shopping for romance on a dating website.

Without really thinking about it, Ali typed “Singleatheart” into her computer’s search engine. Just then Chris came trotting upstairs from his basement studio. “It’s my night to cook. I thought I’d fix some grilled-cheese sandwiches before we go.”

Guiltily, Ali closed her computer before Singleatheart’s home
page appeared on the screen. On the night they were due to celebrate her son’s engagement, she didn’t want to spoil his happiness with tales of other marriages that had foundered and come to grief.

“Don’t bother,” she replied. “I’m sure there’s going to be plenty of food at the gym.”

“What kind of food?” Chris asked. “I thought we were just doing cookies and punch.”

Ali laughed. “Guess again,” she told him. “You invited your grandmother, remember? Just plain cookies and punch won’t cut it. They aren’t in Edie Larson’s vocabulary.”

In terms of the abundance of food, Ali’s prediction proved absolutely on the money. Out of deference for the hardwood floor, the engagement party wasn’t in the gym proper but in the tiled lobby right outside. A cloth-covered table inside the door sagged under a load of goodies. The centerpiece was a decorated white sheet cake. Bright red frosting roses were stationed on each corner, while in the middle, resting on a red frosting heart, were a pair of entwined frosting wedding rings.

That eye-stopping cake was only part of Edie Larson’s caloric overkill. There was a tall German chocolate layer cake and a seven-layer straight chocolate cake along with six homemade pies—two each of lemon meringue, pumpkin, and pecan—without a single “storebought” cookie in sight. Those showed up a few minutes later, when Athena arrived followed by a young woman Ali didn’t know. The newcomers came into the room carrying several brimming grocery bags. Ali caught the look of momentary shock on Athena’s face as she took stock of the overloaded table. After some quietly exchanged words, Athena and
her friend removed plates, napkins, and plastic forks from the bags and then tactfully stowed everything else under the table.

Once the storebought foodstuffs had disappeared, Athena went over to Edie Larson and gave her a hug. “You shouldn’t have,” she said.

“I couldn’t help it.” Edie was beaming. “I wanted it to be a real party.”

Athena turned questioningly to Ali. “Don’t look at me,” Ali said. “It’s not my fault. I’m responsible for the flowers, and that’s it.”

As the festivities got under way, they soon turned into a real party, starting with a series of Hawaiian Punch toasts. After that, by mutual consent, community-league basketball was canceled for the evening while the erstwhile players swilled punch or coffee and filled up on Edie’s scrumptious collection of sweets. Someone found folding chairs in a closet and set those around the room so people had somewhere to sit while they juggled plates and paper cups. Toward the end of the evening, Ali wandered into a conversation where the young woman who had helped Athena bring in the groceries was speaking with her and two other high school teachers, Lois Mead and Gail Nelson.