J.A. Jance's Ali Reynolds Mysteries 3-Book Boxed Set, Volume 1: Web of Evil, Hand of Evil, Cruel Intent (99 page)

True to his word, Dave arrived under ten minutes later.

“What were you hoping to find here?” Ali asked as Dave struggled to liberate the padlock from its childproof plastic container.

“Syringes,” he said. “But as you know, the ones we were looking for turned up somewhere else.”

“And in someone else’s possession,” Ali added.

Dave nodded. “I’m sorry about that,” he said. “Most of the time the culprit turns out to be the husband.”

“Or the boyfriend,” Ali said.

“You’re not going to give me a break on this one, are you?”

“No,” she said. “Since I was right and you were wrong, I see no reason not to rub it in.”

He laughed at that. They both did.

Dave freed the padlock, threaded it through the hasp, locked it, and handed Ali the key. “We found photos,” he said, turning serious and changing the subject.

“What kind of photos?”

“Souvenirs,” he said. “Pictures of five dead women, one of whom happens to be Morgan Forester. We’re pretty sure one of them is Rita Winter. We don’t know who the others are yet, but as of now it’s pretty clear that Bryan Forester wasn’t involved in any of it.”

“What about Singleatheart?” Ali asked.

Dave shrugged. “I asked Winter about that,” he said. “He sneered at me and said, ‘Figure it out.’ So that’s what we’re doing—figuring it out. I think you and B. Simpson were on the right track. Identity theft probably played a big part in it. It made money for Winter, but I think he used Singleatheart as a way to mess around with people’s lives. People signed up with them looking for romance, but he ran it with cruel—rather than romantic—intent. I’ve already got one suicide I can lay at Winter’s door, and there may be more. I most likely can’t bring him up on criminal charges for that, but the widow might be able to file a civil suit against him—assuming Winter has any actual assets.”

“Won’t having his files help you with all that?” Ali asked.

“That depends,” Dave said.

“On what?”

“On whether or not a judge rules our having them constitutes an illegal wiretap.”

I
t took until Monday for things to get back to seminormal. Complaining about the cost, Edie and Bob Larson bailed out of the hotel first and were back home by Saturday evening. Ali convinced Leland that he needed to take it easy for a few days, but by Monday morning he insisted that he was well enough to go home to his fifth wheel. By Monday afternoon Ali and Sam were back home, too, in the house on Andante Drive in Skyview.

As soon as Ali let Sam out of her crate, the cat made a beeline for her safe-haven hidey-hole in the laundry room while Ali wandered through the house. She’d had a locksmith come through and change all the locks, for safety’s sake, but knowing that the house had been invaded—that she and Leland had both been attacked there—left her feeling nervous and uncomfortable.

Chris, Athena, and some of their friends had spent the weekend cleaning up the mess left behind by the water and the investigation; they’d also reshampooed the carpets. Even though none of the damage was visible, Ali still felt Peter Winter’s ominous presence in her home and in her life.

Athena’s phone rang. Ali had been too busy in the intervening days to go to the store to replace the one that had died in her bathtub.

“Hello?” Ali said.

“Hello,” a woman’s voice returned. “Is Athena Carlson there?”

“I’m sorry,” Ali said. “I’m Athena’s fiancé’s mother. My phone was damaged last week, and she’s letting me use hers temporarily. I can give you Chris’s number, if you like. You can call her on that line.”

There was a momentary hesitation on the other end of the phone. “Alison?” the woman asked warily. “Is this Alison Larson, then?”

No one had called Ali Reynolds by that name in years—decades, even. “Yes,” Ali said. “Who is this?”

“It’s Jeanette. Jeanette Reynolds, Dean’s mother. I can’t believe I’m actually hearing your voice. Athena tracked Angus down over the Internet. She sent him an e-mail at work, introducing herself and asking if we’d like to be in touch. We were overjoyed to hear from her. This is the phone number she left in the e-mail in case we wanted to call. I know it’s a bit awkward for us to come horning back into your lives like this after so many years, but yes, we’d be so honored to have a chance to finally meet our grandson, and we’ll be thrilled to come to the wedding. He’s the only grandson we have, you know. We wouldn’t want to miss it.”

As soon as Jeanette Reynolds hung up, Ali called Chris’s number. “What wedding?” she demanded.

“Oops,” Chris said. “I think you need to talk to Athena.”

“What wedding?” Ali asked when her future daughter-in-law came on the phone. “Are we having a wedding?”

“Well, yes,” Athena said. “We are.”

“When?”

“Over Thanksgiving weekend, if that’s all right with you,” Athena said. “On Saturday afternoon. You said that we should do it our way, and I told Chris that if we can pull off a wedding with two weeks’ notice, it’ll be just about right. Not too big and not too small. The people who want to be here will be, and the people who don’t won’t.”

“Who all knows about this?” Ali asked.

“You and Chris and me,” Athena said.

“To say nothing of Angus and Jeanette Reynolds.”

“Chris’s grandparents?” Athena asked. “You mean they called?”

“They called,” Ali returned dryly. “So tell me, where are we having this little event?”

“I’m not sure about that yet,” Athena said. “Do you have any ideas?”

“Only one,” Ali said. “Call Leland Brooks first, but after that, your next call had better be to my mother.”

O
n Tuesday Ali managed to purchase a replacement cell phone. As soon as she turned it on, it let her know there were messages. Several of those were from Jacky Jackson, but before she could call him back, he rang through again.

“It’s over,” he said dolefully.

“What’s over?”

“Mid-Century-Modern Renovations,”
he said. “They’ve dropped it completely.”

As far as Ali was concerned, that seemed like good news.

“That’s not all,” Jacky continued. “The other deal is off, too. You never should have left us standing out there on the porch like that. He’s a very important man. It made me look like a complete fool, Ali. Really, it did.”

Obviously, Jacky and the very important man hadn’t stuck around town long enough to hear what had happened or to learn how narrowly they had escaped because Ali hadn’t opened the door. She could have told him about it right then, but she didn’t. Jacky was on a tear, and she let him continue.

“Having two deals blow up like that isn’t a good thing,” he added. “Not if you expect to be considered bankable.”

“What are you saying?” Ali asked. “Are you telling me it’s over?”

Jacky paused as if he’d been taken by surprise, as if he hadn’t expected Ali to beat him to the punch. “I suppose so,” he said. “I mean, it sounds as though you’re not that interested in working, as though you’re not that hungry…”

“Fax me the paperwork,” Ali said. “We’ll go our separate ways.”

“No hard feelings?”

“None,” Ali said.

The Saturday after Thanksgiving dawned clear and crisp. Early in the afternoon, Ali found herself standing in bright sunlight in the doorway of a flower-bedecked party tent that had been pitched in the driveway of her unfinished house on Manzanita Hills Road. Watching the arriving guests, she reflected that pulling all this off in a mere two weeks had been just about right.

And what a two weeks it had been. Edie had gone nuts over flowers and dresses and food, but she hadn’t had enough advance warning to do any real damage. Athena absolutely put her foot down when Edie tried to convince her that having a storebought wedding cake or hiring caterers wouldn’t do.

“You’re coming to this wedding as an honored guest,” Athena insisted. “You’re not doing the cooking, and that’s final.”

Edie had been aghast at the idea that Angus and Jeanette Reynolds, the very people who had disowned their own son, Chris’s father, would be coming to the event as honored guests,
too. Since there wasn’t a thing either Edie and Ali could do about that situation, Ali advised her mother to accept it with good grace. By the day of the wedding, however, she realized the advice was far easier to give than it was to take.

Leland Brooks’s arm was still in a sling, but that hadn’t kept him from organizing the wedding in jig time. He had also supervised Ali’s great adventure in cooking her first ever Thanksgiving dinner, an experience enjoyed by a whole selection of guests. To everyone’s amazement—a universal reaction she found quite annoying—she managed to pull off the full-meal deal: turkey and dressing, bourbon-drizzled yams, mashed potatoes, green-bean casserole, yeast rolls, and orange-cranberry relish.

Ali’s folks were there, of course, as were Chris and Athena and Athena’s grandmother, Betsy Peterson, who had flown in from Minnesota. Predictably, Athena’s parents had decided not to come for either Thanksgiving or the wedding.

Their loss,
Ali thought.

Maddy Watkins and her two golden retrievers had driven from Seattle to L.A., where they picked up Velma T in Laguna Niguel. Then the four of them had driven over to Sedona, where they had taken up residence in the pet friendly Majestic Mountain Inn. Over everyone’s objections, and most especially over Edie Larson’s, Maddy Watkins had insisted on baking pumpkin pies as the finishing touch for Ali’s otherwise solo performance. By the time Thanksgiving dinner was over, the visitors had been invited to stay on for the wedding, which they were thrilled to do, thus adding two more geriatric attendees to the guest list.

Dave Holman and B. Simpson both showed up for the Thanksgiving Day extravaganza. They appeared upstairs only long enough to eat, however. They and most of the other men
folk, spooked by nonstop wedding planning, chose to spend their time both before and after dinner hiding out down in Chris’s studio and watching college football games.

With the men downstairs, Edie had recovered from being miffed about the pie situation by wowing everyone with her newly arrived replacement Taser. Ali suspected she would be carrying it at the wedding, too, “just in case.” Thankfully, Chris and Athena were getting married because they wanted to be married. Edie might show up armed, but it wouldn’t be either a shotgun or a Taser wedding.

Several late-breaking additions to the Thanksgiving guest list turned out to be Haley and Liam Marsh; Haley’s grandmother, Nelda Harris; and Marissa Dvorak, who would be having a second Thanksgiving dinner with her own family later in the evening. When Haley had called on Monday of that week, Ali had been up to her eyeballs in wedding planning.

“Can we talk?” Haley said.

“Sure,” Ali said. “What about?”

“You really don’t think I’d be all that weird in college?” Haley asked. “I mean if I went. People wouldn’t make fun of me or think I was odd?”

“You wouldn’t be odd,” Ali said. “A lot of single mothers go on to school these days.”

“What if I went to the University of Arizona down in Tucson?” Haley asked. “Would I be able to find a place to live? How would I make arrangements for someone to look after Liam?”

Leland Brooks had already been on the phone looking for wheelchair-accessible accommodations for Marissa Dvorak. There were some dorm rooms available, but he had also found a terrific three-bedroom house not far from the university. He and
Ali had dismissed it as being more than Marissa needed. Now, though, Ali had an inspiration.

“What are you and your grandmother doing for Thanksgiving dinner?” she asked.

“I don’t know. Why?”

“There’s someone I’d like you to meet.”

So while Nelda Harris joined Edie’s Taser admiration program, Haley Marsh and Marissa Dvorak had sat in one corner of the living room, playing with Liam and the collection of toys Haley had brought along to keep him occupied. The two girls seemed to be having fun together, but Ali spent a lot of the evening worried about whether the meeting—not exactly a blind date but close—would do its magic. When it was time for Marissa to leave, Ali was pleased as Liam clambered up into the wheelchair and gave Marissa a droolly smack of a kiss.

Nelda Harris saw the kiss, too. She caught Ali’s eye and gave a slight nod.

She’s thinking the same thing I am,
Ali thought.
Only time will tell, but I’m betting that kiss seals the deal.

As for Dean’s parents—the other grandparents, as everyone called them—Ali was relieved when they decided not to come for Thanksgiving. Instead, they flew into Phoenix on Friday night and drove up to Sedona on Saturday morning.

You’re a grown-up,
Ali told herself that morning as she put the finishing touches on a face that still showed traces of bruising.
You can be civil. You don’t have to be their friend.

And that became her watchwords for the day: Be civil.

The simple outdoor ceremony went off without any complications. It was ably conducted by Judge Ruben Dreyfuss, justice of the peace, who also happened to play in the same
community-league basketball team as Chris and Athena. Chris wore a tux, and Athena wore a simple winter-white silk brocade pantsuit. Athena, looking absolutely radiant, walked down the aisle on her own. She didn’t need anyone to give her away.

Now, with the reception getting under way and the DJ tuning up the sound system, Ali wandered outside only to run smack into Angus Reynolds. He was standing beside the construction-crew break-room picnic table, taking in the view and smoking an enormous cigar.

“Nice place you have here,” he observed. “Hope you don’t mind. Jeannie won’t allow me to smoke these in the house.”

For good reason,
Ali thought.

“Chris is a fine young man,” Angus went on. “You must be very proud of him.”

It was odd to be having a conversation with this stranger, a man who had once been her father-in-law but whom she hadn’t actually met until only a few hours earlier. In a way, he seemed to be talking to her, but he also seemed to be talking to himself.

“Yes, I am proud,” she said.

“If he had lived to see it, Dean would have been proud, too,” Angus said quietly.

Ali felt her eyes filling with tears. She willed them to stop. When they didn’t, she turned away and looked off in the other direction.

“Is the smoke bothering you?” Angus asked.

“No,” she said. “It’s fine.”

“I was wrong, you know,” Angus continued. “I wanted Dean to be a lawyer. I told him that if he insisted on getting a doctorate in oceanography, he’d never amount to anything and he’d
never be able to do anything but teach. I didn’t mean it as a compliment, either.”

Ali remembered that conversation, not because she’d heard it but because Dean had told her about it in excruciating detail.

“And do you know what he told me?” Angus asked. “That no matter how little money he made, he’d rather be a dirt-poor teacher any day instead of being a rich lawyer and selling his soul to the devil.”

Dean never mentioned that part,
Ali thought.
He seemed to have left that out.

Angus blew another puff of foul-smelling smoke into the air before he continued. “So I told him that if he was going to be that pigheaded, he was no son of mine, and I was writing him out of my life. If he wanted to go off and screw up his life and be poor until his dying day, he was on his own. And that’s what I did, too. I wrote him out of our lives, and I wrote you and your wonderful son out of our lives, too. Pretty stupid, wouldn’t you say?”

Again Ali said nothing.

“And now Chris is a teacher,” Angus said thoughtfully. “Where do you suppose that shows up on the DNA, the propensity for being a teacher instead of being a lawyer?”

“It may have more to do with being stubborn than it does with DNA,” Ali said. “Chris’s stepfather was adamantly opposed to his being a teacher, too.”

“I see,” Angus said. “But thank you for letting us come, Alison. Considering how we treated you and Chris, it’s far more than we deserve, and it means more to my Jeannie than you can possibly know.”

“You’re welcome,” Ali said. “I’m glad you’re here.” And when she said that, she really meant it; she wasn’t just being civil.

Edie Larson stuck her head out the door to the tent. “There you are,” she said. “Everybody’s looking for you, Ali. They’re getting ready to cut the cake.”

Without a word, Angus Reynolds crushed the end of his cigar out in the ashtray on the table. Then he offered Ali his arm.

“Shall we?” he asked.

“Yes,” Ali said quietly. “Let’s.”