J.A. Jance's Ali Reynolds Mysteries 3-Book Boxed Set, Volume 1: Web of Evil, Hand of Evil, Cruel Intent (9 page)

Ali’s cheeks flushed. It was galling to have to sit in the room and have your husband’s mistress’s mother come right out and accuse you of murder. Ali was about to open her mouth to defend herself when Victor touched her arm. With a slight warning shake of his head he admonished her to keep quiet.

“We’re all dealing with a good deal of emotional upheaval at the moment, Ms. Ragsdale,” he said soothingly. “For right now, though, I think it would be best if we all refrained from tossing around unfounded allegations.”

Les Jordan nodded in agreement. “Mr. Angeleri is right,” he said. “We need to keep from being drawn into making any kind of accusations. As for the baby, there are laws on the books in the state of California that are specifically designed to deal with cases like this—laws that protect the interests of in utero or omitted offspring. No doubt some funds would be made available from the estate to support the child and monies held in trust until he or she—”

“She,” Monique supplied.

Jordan nodded. “Until she reaches her majority. Most likely a guardian
ad litem
would be appointed to protect the child’s interests in the meantime.”

“That’s fine and good for the baby,” Monique Ragsdale objected. “But what about my daughter? What happens to her? Does that mean she could be evicted and put out on the street?”

“No one here is suggesting any such thing, certainly not at this time,” Les Jordan said. “But the truth is, as I told you earlier, your daughter is merely an intended wife as opposed to a wife in fact. Unless Mr. Grayson has made some kind of specific provisions for her, through the purchase of life insurance or something of that nature, I don’t know of any legal remedies that would come into play that would allow your daughter to go against the will. That’s not to say there aren’t any, but none come readily to mind.”

“What if you went ahead and finalized the divorce?” Monique’s question was addressed to Ted Grantham.

“Excuse me?” he asked.

Monique was undaunted. “Harlan here has found a similar case in New Jersey where the divorce was finalized after the husband’s death. That cleared the way for the property agreement to stand in court and made for simplified estate planning. The divorce also automatically negated the old will. In this case, that might work to Sonia’s benefit.”

“But not to mine,” Ali said sharply.

“This isn’t about you,” Monique said firmly. “It’s all about the baby.”

“And what about me?” April asked. “Divorce or no, it sounds like I’m left with nothing.”

Until April spoke, no one else gathered in the room had noticed her unannounced arrival. How long she had been outside the library door listening was anyone’s guess. She clearly had changed her mind about going upstairs to dress since she stood in the doorway still wearing her nightgown and robe.

Monique leaped to her feet and hurried to her daughter. “You shouldn’t be here,” Monique said. “You should be upstairs resting.”

“I don’t need to rest,” April protested. “I deserve to be part of this discussion. After all, it’s my life, too. I need to know what’s going on instead of the bunch of you talking about it behind my back. Besides, I already heard what he said. According to Paul’s will everything goes to her.” She nodded in Ali’s direction. “It’s so not fair. How can this be happening? It’s like a nightmare or something. And where are all my friends? Who sent them away?”

“I did,” Monique said. “And I’m sure others have called, but I sent them all to the answering service. And I posted a ‘Do Not Disturb’ sign out at the front door. I didn’t want people bothering you at a time like this. And having too many people running around would just get in the way of the filming.”

“But I
need
my friends,” April returned. “I
need
the company more than I need the rest. You had no right to send my friends away.”

All of which answered one of Ali’s earlier questions as to the whereabouts of April’s friends. And Ali noticed something else. Out on the terrace April had been grieving, but she had been a grieving grown-up. Now, with her mother in the room, April seemed to have reverted to some childhood script. She sounded even younger than she was—more like a petulant, demanding teenager than an adult.

Ignoring her mother’s advice, April made her way into the crowded room, where she sank into one of the swivel chairs. Pulling the gaping robe more tightly around her, she stared at Ali. “You were nice to me before,” she said flatly, “but I guess this means things have changed. When do I have to leave, before the baby’s born or after?”

“No one has said a word about your having to leave,” Ali said. “And certainly not right now. With a baby due in a matter of days, you need to stay where you are until the lawyers can help us get things sorted out.”

“How long does sorting-out take?” April asked. “And what’s there to sort?”

Since Les Jordan had been effectively chairing the meeting, Ali looked at him for guidance.

He shrugged. “Uncomplicated estates can be settled in a matter of months,” he said. “Complicated ones can take much longer than that, especially if other matters arise—like needing to liquidate property, for example. And there are always other legal issues that can cause indefinite delays.”

He didn’t spell out exactly what kind of “legal issues” he meant, but Ali had a pretty clear idea he was thinking about criminal proceedings. She guessed that everyone else in the room, with the possible exception of April herself, was making a similar assumption. Ali might be Paul’s widow and the major beneficiary of his will, but she also knew that she wouldn’t be allowed to inherit a dime as long as she was considered a suspect in his death. Until she was cleared, settling the estate would be stuck in neutral—and accumulating legal fees like crazy.

“What about the funeral?” April asked.

“What about it?”

“I’m twenty-five years old,” April said. “I don’t know anything about planning funerals.”
I didn’t either,
Ali thought,
but I figured it out.

“You don’t need to worry about any of that,” Monique told her daughter. “I’ll handle it all.”

“No, you won’t,” April said. Her reply was forceful enough that it took everyone by surprise, most especially her mother. “Since I wasn’t Paul’s wife and since I’m not his widow, it isn’t my place to handle it. And it isn’t yours, either.”

April looked at Ali as she spoke. Monique, on the other hand, seemed utterly astonished by this small but dry-eyed and very determined rebellion. Monique was so surprised, in fact, that Ali wondered if there had ever been another instance in which April had drawn a line in the sand and told her mother no in such unequivocal terms. Before Monique had a chance to say anything more, Ali stepped into the breach.

“My first husband died of cancer when I was about your age,” she told April. “My son was born two months after his father died, so I do know a little of what you’re going through. Planning Dean’s funeral was hard work, but I needed to do it. And you’ll need to do it, too. Funerals are really for the living, but they’re also a major part of the grieving process. I’ll be glad to help you plan it, if you want me to.”

“Wait a minute,” Monique objected. “April is my daughter. You can’t just come horning in like this—”

“Mother,” April said. “Stop.” And then, to Ali she added, “Yes, I’d like you to help me. How long does planning a funeral take?”

“Not that long. Other than choosing a casket or an urn and deciding on cremation or not, you really can’t do much until after the coroner releases the body. In the case of a homicide, that could take several days. Only after the body is released can you establish a time for the services, arrange for flowers, get the announcements into the paper, and all of that.”

“I’ve never even been to a funeral,” April said. “Where do people hold them? At a church somewhere? Here at the house?”

“Not at the house,” Ali said quickly. “And Paul wasn’t someone I’d call a churchgoing kind of guy. So maybe the funeral home would be best for the service itself with a catered reception here at the house afterward.”

“Do you send out invitations or something?” April asked.

She really is young,
Ali thought.

“No, someone writes an obituary with an announcement at the end telling the time and place of the services and whether or not they’re open to the public. That goes into the
Times.
Then whoever wants to come shows up.”

April nodded. “You said funeral home. Which one?”

Ali remembered the form she had signed, the one the clerk in the coroner’s office had handed her.

“When I went to Indio to do the identification, I signed a form in the Riverside County Coroner’s Office. Once they’re done with the body, it authorizes them to release it to the Three Palms Mortuary here in Beverly Hills,” Ali answered. “I chose them because, years ago, they handled the services for Paul’s mother. They did a good job. The facility is lovely, the chapel is spacious, and I remember the people were nice to deal with. And the funeral chapel is relatively close—only a mile or so away, on Sunset. But if you’d rather use someone else…”

“No,” April said. “I’m sure they’ll be fine.”

“Wait a minute, April,” Monique interjected. “This is ridiculous. You can’t just let her walk in and take over everything. For God’s sake, stand up for yourself, April. Take charge!”

“I am standing up for myself,” April returned. “I’m going to do this my way, and Ali is going to help.” She looked around at the faces of the legal eagles gathered there. “Is there anything else?”

Les Jordan shook his head. “Not that I know of,” he said. “Not at this time.”

“Good. I’m going back upstairs,” April said. “And now I really am going to get dressed. I want to go out and check on the sudoku shoot.”

The arms on the game chair were low. With April’s bulging belly throwing her center of gravity off-kilter, it was a struggle for her to rise to her feet. Victor stood and gave her a hand up. Ali expected Monique to get up and follow her daughter out of the room, but she didn’t. She stayed right where she was.

“April is my daughter,” she said. “I’m not going to stand by and let you walk all over her and control the purse strings.”

“No one is walking all over her,” Les Jordan pointed out. “We’re simply apprising her of the legal ramifications of her situation.”

But Ali understood at once that Monique wasn’t addressing the attorneys. She was talking to Ali directly, telling her to back off.

“Are we done here?” Victor asked.

“As far as I know,” Les said.

“Good. We’ll be going then. Come on, Ali. Helga.”

Ali rose to her feet, aware of Monique’s glare fastened on her. She walked past Monique toward the doorway, then turned and came back. “Your daughter’s going through a terrible time right now,” Ali said. “I have no intention of walking all over her. I’m trying to help.”

“She doesn’t need your help,” Monique insisted. “Why would she? She has me.”

Exactly,
Ali thought as she followed Victor and Helga out the door.
Poor baby. Why would April need anyone else?

W
hen Victor, Ali, and Helga emerged from the house, they discovered that Victor’s Lincoln was blocked by a second huge RV, this one with the logo
SUMO SUDOKU DRAGONSLAYER TEAM.
In the process of shoe horning the second RV into the circular drive, the driver had taken out one of the gateposts and one side of the RV as well. Jesus, the gardener, and the guy who was apparently the driver were involved in a heated conversation about the incident with the entire discussion taking place in high-volume Spanish.

As the newly reinstalled mistress of Robert Lane, Ali supposed she should take a hand in the discussion, but since Jesus appeared to have the situation under control, she didn’t. Ali had concerns that were far more compelling than fixing a broken gate.

She and Helga got into the Lincoln, and Victor waited outside until the damaged RV had been moved out of the way. Off to one side of the house, in the yard outside the pool house, Ali caught a glimpse of people looking on as a film crew followed the action of a bare-chested man who bent over, reached down, picked up one of the sudoku rocks, and then lugged it off. So the Sumo Sudoku contest was under way.

“Have you ever heard of a postmortem divorce?” Ali asked.

“It’ll never happen,” Helga replied. “For one thing, we’d be stupid to sign off on it. Just losing the marital deduction would cost a fortune in estate taxes. Besides, April’s smarter than that—smarter than I gave her credit for, anyway.”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean she looked around that room full of lawyers, figured out you were the softest touch in the place, and snuggled right up to you, driving her mother crazy in the process.”

“Aren’t you being a little cynical?” Ali asked. “April’s in a tough position. I happen to know from firsthand experience what she’s going through about now.”

“Don’t fall for it,” Helga insisted. “She’s just buttering you up because she figures you’re the one who’ll be doling out the money for her baby.”

“What’s wrong with that?” Ali asked. “Wasn’t Ted Grantham trying to do the same thing—buttering me up—in order to be sure that his bill gets paid?”

“That’s different,” Helga returned. “April has a way better hand than Ted Grantham does. He isn’t eight and a half months pregnant, and she is. Believe me, April is going to use that as a club. She’ll play on your sympathy for all she’s worth. She’s got you pegged as being too nice to throw her out in the cold. Besides, she won the first round fair and square.”

“What first round?” Ali asked.

“When you said you’d let her stay on in the house until after the baby is born. When it comes time for her to actually leave, I predict you’ll have to evict her. And I agree with Ted, by the way. While settling the estate is in limbo, you need to request an inventory and appraisal of everything in the house. I’ve known plenty of women like April Gaddis in my time. She’ll figure out what’s worth stealing and what isn’t and she’ll make off with anything that isn’t nailed down. And requiring a paternity test wouldn’t be out of line, either.”

It was ironic for Ali to find herself in the position of having to defend her dead husband’s pregnant girlfriend to Helga Myerhoff, Ali’s own divorce attorney. She was relieved and glad to change the subject when Victor opened the door and clambered into his seat.

He looked over at Ali and shook his head in seeming disgust. “What part of ‘whatever you say may be held against you’ don’t you understand?”

“Excuse me?” Ali asked.

“Your blog,” Victor said. “My assistant just called. She’s been reading your blog on the Web—reading all about it, as they say. You have to understand it’s not just what you say to the cops that can be held against you, Ali. It’s what you say anywhere to anyone. Fang? You really called Paul Grayson Fang?”

“He’s been Fang in my blog for a long time,” Ali protested. “Since long before somebody killed him.”

“Believe me, Detectives Sims and Taylor are going to love that. For right now, you’re to say nothing more in your blog about this case, understood? For as long as this is an active investigation, commentary from you is off the table.”

“Yes,” Ali said. She felt stupid and chagrined. “And about Sims and Taylor…”

“What about them?” Victor asked sharply.

“They’ve evidently been in touch with April,” Ali said. “She told me about it earlier, when we were out on the terrace.”

“What did she say?”

“That they think Paul’s killer escaped by leaving the car on the railroad tracks and then walking down the ties far enough so he was able to exit the tracks without being detected. They’re speculating that he met up with an accomplice somewhere in the vicinity and they took off from there,” Ali said.

Victor expelled a long sigh. “Which explains why they didn’t find any footprints at the scene.”

Ali nodded. “Yes,” she said.

“That would also mean that the killer or killers were still in the general area at the time Paul died. Which, according to the receipts from the gas station and the restaurant in Blythe, would have placed you in the area as well.”

Ali nodded again. She liked the way Victor immediately connected the dots even if she didn’t like the dots he was connecting. “Yes,” she said.

“My guess is they’re already going after your phone records then,” Victor mused. “Trying to see who all you’ve contacted recently, to see if they can get a handle on who you might have enlisted as an accomplice.”

“My phone records?” Ali demanded. “Isn’t that illegal?”

“It’s illegal to listen in on your phone calls without a warrant, but it’s perfectly legal to look at your billing information to see who you called and who called you, as well as where you were and what cell phone towers were in use when those calls occurred.”

“They can look at my phone records until they’re blue in the face,” Ali said. “They’re not going to find anything. They’re going to have to look elsewhere.”

“If they look elsewhere,” Victor responded.

“What do you mean, if?”

“Sims and Taylor have a high-profile case on their hands, one their bosses are going to want cleared in a hell of a hurry. They also have a likely suspect—you. I think there’s a good chance that they’ll work like crazy to make whatever evidence they have fit what they think happened, rather than looking very hard for what else might have happened or who else might have been involved.”

“What other suspects are there?” Ali asked.

“You tell me,” Victor returned. “April would have to be dumb as a stump to knock Paul Grayson off without knowing in advance that she was going to inherit.”

“What about April’s mother?” Ali asked.

“Ms. Ragsdale may bear looking into,” Victor conceded.

“I think so, too,” Helga agreed. “That woman is a piece of work. The very idea of our agreeing to a postmortem divorce is ridiculous.”

A few minutes later, Victor dropped Ali off at her hotel. A glance at her watch told her that, depending on traffic, her mother would probably be arriving within the next hour or so. She went upstairs to await Edie’s arrival. While Ali waited, she logged on and found her in-box once again brimming with messages. Before she read any of them, however, she wrote a post of her own.

CUTLOOSEBLOG.COM
Saturday, September 17, 2005

Ali’s first instinct was to begin her post with the words “On the advice of my attorney…” but then she remembered what Victor had said: “Anything you say can and will be held against you.” So she went for something much less descriptive and also, to her way of thinking, much less real.

When she began reading through the e-mails, most of them had to do with the posting from Phyllis in Knoxville. Some correspondents seemed to agree that Phyllis had the right idea.

Surprised by the number of people offering their condolences, Ali replied to all of them without necessarily posting them. Not all of the notes were kind, however.

That one wasn’t signed and didn’t merit a response.

Ali wanted to tell Velma that she had all the legal assistance she could handle about then. She had no doubt that Velma’s nephew was probably far more affordable than the hulking Victor Angeleri. But she was paying the man too much to disregard his advice. She replied to Velma with a carefully noncommittal thank-you.

The next e-mail stunned her.

The very idea that Paul’s death had now become fodder for the “true crime” network was nothing short of chilling. If Court TV was on the job, could Fox’s Greta Van Susteren be far behind? And in that fanatical crowd, Ali knew producers and commentators could make as much of a story about what wasn’t said as they did about what was.

The next one was a stunner.

Jacky was short for Jack Jackson, Ali’s agent—at least he had been her agent. The words that came to mind now were: more nerve than a bad tooth. In actual fact, Jacky had been Ali’s agent for a long time—from her first on-air job out of college in Milwaukee to her move from Fox News in New York to the L.A. anchor desk. Ali had gotten the L.A. job on her own and without any help from Jacky, but he had been glad to take his cut of the action. Then. But once she’d been let go—once she’d been booted off the air and once she’d made it clear that she wasn’t going to take her age-based firing lying down—Jacky had disappeared off the face of the planet. He had stopped taking Ali’s calls, hadn’t returned her e-mails, either.

She had understood what was going on well enough. In television circles, network executives counted for something. Paul Grayson had been the eight-hundred-pound gorilla, and no one had wanted to piss him off. No doubt Jacky had read about what was going on and had decided to distance himself, leaving Ali and her stymied career to her own devices. Now, with Paul gone, Jacky must have reached the sudden conclusion that Ali Reynolds was bankable again. No doubt he expected to be welcomed back with open arms. And his assumption that she’d want to have him back rankled worse than anything.