Web of Evil

by J. A. Jance

  LESLIE IN IOWA

  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.

  Oh, great. Another Southern California celebrity murder by another “abused” media wife. The gossip columnists will go nuts. No doubt you’ll hire yourself some high-priced attorney and get off scot-free. You people all make me sick. I hope you rot in hell.

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

  Dear Babe,

  When I read the part about the homicide detectives interviewing you, I couldn’t believe it, but then the cops always suspect the spouse, although usually the killer is the husband instead of the wife. Does that mean they think you did it? Are they going to arrest you or are you just a person of interest? If they do arrest you, my nephew, Richard Dahlgood, is an attorney in L.A. I don’t know what he charges, but if you want to get in touch with him, let me know and I’ll give you his numbers.

  VELMA T IN LAGUNA

  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.

  Dear Velma,

  Thank you for your concern. Please don’t worry about me. I have the situation well in hand.

  BABE

  The next e-mail stunned her.

  Dear Ms. Reynolds,

  Please forgive me for contacting you through your blog. I tried calling your home number in Arizona. I left a message there, but it seems likely you’re here in California at the moment. My name is Sheila Rosenburg. I’m a local (L.A.-area) producer for Court TV. We would like to be in touch with you whenever it might be convenient for you regarding a possible interview. My contact information is listed below.

  SHEILA ROSENBURG

  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.

  Dear Ms. Rosenburg,

  Thank you for your interest. I’m not granting any interviews at this time. Should that change, I’ll let you know.

  REGARDS,

  ALI REYNOLDS

  The next one was a stunner.

  Hey, Ali,

  How’s it going. Long time no see. I have a line on a possible job offer for you that’ll put you back where you belong—on live TV. If you’re going to be in L.A. anytime soon, let me know and I’ll see what I can do to set up an interview.

  JACKY

  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.

  Screw you, Ali thought. No vultures allowed. With that she deleted Jacky’s message.

  The phone rang a few seconds later—the room phone. “There’s someone down in the lobby who would like to see you, Ms. Reynolds,” the smooth voice of the concierge said. “She says she’s your mother. Would you like me to send her up?”

  “Yes,” Ali said. “Please do.”

  Ali stood in the open doorway of her room to greet Edie Larson when she arrived a few minutes later, dragging an immense roll-aboard bag behind her.

  “I hope it’s okay if I bunk with you,” Edie said uncertainly.

  “It’s fine,” Ali said, gesturing toward the king-sized bed.

  “Did you know Dave Holman was coming?” Edie asked. “I ran into him down in the lobby. He was going to rent a room here, but then he found out how much they cost and almost had a heart attack, so he’s gone to find someplace else to stay.” Edie stopped in the middle of the room and turned around, slowly examining the plush surroundings. “Are you sure you can afford this?”

  “Yes,” Ali said, thinking back to her lawyer-filled morning and the news that over time she was bound to inherit a good deal of Paul Grayson’s considerable fortune. In fact, she could afford to stay here now far more easily than she could have before. She closed the hallway door and turned to face her mother.

  “So how are things?” Edie Larson asked. “And how are you?”

  For some reason, those two questions, coming from Edie, were enough to cause Ali’s emotional dam to break. All the tears she hadn’t shed in the coroner’s office—all the tears she had put on hold and hadn’t shed during her visit to the house on Robert Lane—burst through now. Sobbing, she let herself be pulled into her mother’s arms—held and comforted—while Edie patted her shoulder and crooned soothing words.

  “Shush now,” Edie murmured. “It’s going to be all right. You’ll see. Now then, have you had any lunch?”

  This was so typically Edie Larson that Ali had to smile through her tears. Edie’s daughter might be a crazed killer on her way to the slammer, but Edie would move heaven and earth to be sure Ali was properly fed beforehand.

  “Not yet,” Ali said.

  Edie heaved her oversized suitcase up onto the bed and unzipped it. “Now then,” she said. “Let me hang up my clothes and put things away. I’ll be able to think better once I get organized.”

  “When you finish, maybe we can go downstairs and have something to eat.”

  “Bad idea,” Edie said. “We’d probably be better off ordering from room service.”

  “How come?” Ali asked.

  “Because there are a lot of people milling around down in the lobby who looked like news people to me. I asked one of the helper guys, a doorman, I think, what they were doing. He said they were looking for you.”

  “For me?” echoed Ali.

  “Not by name,” Edie answered. “He said they were here because there’s a ‘murder suspect’ reportedly staying at the hotel right now. He said they’re trying to get a glimpse of her. This may be California,” Edie added, “but I’m assuming that even in L.A. there’s not more than one murder suspect at a time staying in a place like this.”

  When Ali had worked the news desk, one of the rules had been that suspects weren’t mentioned by name until they’d actually been charged with a crime. But that wouldn’t help her. Her face had already turned up on camera the night before as she and Victor were leaving the coroner’s office. And people had noticed. People had recognized her. She didn’t know how they had managed to trace her to the hotel. Most likely someone had followed Victor’s Lincoln when they left Robert Lane. Now, knowing they were here, Ali felt besieged.

  “Room service sounds good to me,” she said.

  Half an hour later, Ali’s cell phone rang. “How do people stand this traffic day in and day out?” Dave Holman wanted to know. “And it’s not just during rush hour, either.
It lasts all day long.”

  “Where are you?” Ali asked.

  “Motel 6. That’s a little more my speed than the place you’re staying.”

  “Where?”

  “Highway 101 and some other freeway, I-210, I think. The good thing is, I should be able to make my way back there from here on surface streets. The people driving on the freeways are nuts.”

  Ali had come to L.A. from New York. The metro area had seemed different to her but not entirely alien. Dave hailed from Sedona. She could see how foreign the city must seem to someone accustomed to living in small-town Arizona.

  “Our room number is 703,” she told him. “When you get back here to the hotel, come directly up to the room. Whatever you do, don’t ask for me by name. Mom says there are reporters down in the lobby. One of them might be listening.”

  “No kidding,” Dave returned. “I may be a hick, but when I met up with Edie a while ago down in the lobby, I did notice one or two reporters had been added to the mix.”

  “So we’ll have lunch up here,” Ali said. “From room service. What do you want?”

  “A burger. Medium rare. No tofu!”

  Ali laughed at that. “No tofu it is.”

  She called room service and ordered a burger for Dave and tortilla soup for Edie and herself. When she put down the phone, she found Edie studying her daughter’s reflection in the mirror.

  “Have you met her?” Edie asked.

  “Met who?”

  “April Gaddis,” Edie replied. “Paul’s fiancée.”

  “How do you know her name?” Ali asked.

  Edie reached into a capacious purse and pulled out a handful of newspapers. “I stopped for coffee at that truck stop on the far side of Palm Springs and picked up a couple of newspapers,” she replied. “I wanted to know what we were up against before I got here.”

  Edie laid the papers on the desk and then pulled out a brand-new spiral notebook. She opened the notebook to the first page, which was blank. “When Dave Holman is working a homicide, I know he always keeps a casebook,” Edie added, picking up a pen. “I think we should do the same thing. I’m going to write down everything so we don’t forget details. So tell me. What’s April like?”

  Under any other circumstance, Ali might have found her mother’s businesslike approach amusing, but this wasn’t funny. As Edie sat with her pen poised over paper, it was clear she wanted answers.

  “Very young, very pretty, very pregnant,” Ali said finally.

  “And she was supposed to get married today,” Edie said.

  Ali nodded.

  “Is she considered a suspect in Paul’s murder?” Edie wanted to know.

  “Probably not,” Ali said. “No motive. Had the divorce been finalized and the wedding ceremony performed, it might be a different story, but when the will was read this morning, I was still Paul’s legal wife and primary beneficiary. If April was going to knock him off, surely she would have been smart enough to wait until they were actually married.”

  “Is she that smart?” Edie asked.

  Ali thought about what Helga had said—about April being smart enough to throw herself on Ali’s mercy. “I think so,” Ali responded.

  “Who else would have a motive then?” Edie asked. She was approaching the problem in her accustomed manner—with no nonsense and plenty of common sense. “Is there a chance there’s another man in the picture?” she added. “If money isn’t the motivating factor, maybe something else is—like jealousy, for example. From what I see on TV, jealousy works.”

  Ali had thought about April Gaddis and Paul Grayson primarily in terms of the two of them cheating on her. The idea that they might have been cheating on each other had never crossed her mind.

  “It’s possible, I suppose,” Ali said dubiously. She wasn’t entirely convinced.

  “Of course it is,” Edie declared. “If Paul would cheat on you, he’d cheat on her, too. That’s what your father says: Once a cheat, always a cheat. So the first thing we have to do is find out everything there is to know about April Gaddis.”

  “We should ask Christopher about that,” Ali said. “He knew about April long before I did. She’s related to some friend of his. April was working for Paul as his administrative assistant, but I don’t know which came first, the chicken or the egg—the job or the affair. I think it’s likely that he got her the job so she could earn enough money to support herself. That way there wouldn’t be a paper trail linking money from him to her.”

  “Right, a little prenuptial nepotism never hurt anybody,” Edie observed. “So I’ll ask Christopher about April.”

  “I met her mother,” Ali supplied.

  “April’s mother?” Edie asked. “You have?”

  “Her name’s Monique Ragsdale. She came to the house this morning to meet with the attorneys. She claims she’s looking out for the interests of the baby. I suspect she’s mostly looking out for herself. She came hoping we’d agree to a postmortem divorce decree.”

  “You can’t divorce someone after they’re dead, can you?”

  “Helga doesn’t think so,” Ali said.

  There was a knock on the door. When Ali opened it, the room service trolley was waiting out in the hallway, and so was Dave Holman. His broad-shouldered, military bearing was something Ali really needed about then—something she welcomed. Reaching past the waiter, she gave Dave a brief but heartfelt hug.

  “Thanks for coming,” she said.

  “Wouldn’t have missed it,” he said.

  While the waiter set up a table out on the deck, Dave prowled the room. “This one’s a little nicer than mine,” he said. “There’s no room service at Motel 6, but there’s a Denny’s up the block, so I’ll live.” He peered over Edie’s shoulder at the notebook.

  “Just trying to get an idea of who all’s involved,” she explained.

  “Good work,” he said.

  All through lunch, Edie and Dave continued to pepper Ali with questions while Edie took copious notes. Once again Ali recalled what Victor had told her: “Anything you say…” But surely what she told her own mother and her good friend Dave couldn’t hurt her, could it? Especially since everything she said was the truth.

  They were just finishing lunch when the phone rang. “Ted Grantham here,” he said. “This is a bit awkward, but…”

  “What is it?”

  “April called while Les and I were having lunch,” he said. “I didn’t get the message until I came back to the office. She said she was having a problem with her mother about planning the funeral. She wanted to talk to you about it if you wouldn’t mind coming back up to the house to see her.”

  “Of course,” Ali said. “I’ll be glad to.”

  “Glad to what?” Edie asked when Ali got off the phone.

  “April wants me to come back up to the house and talk about funeral arrangements.”

  “With you?” Dave demanded.

  “Yes. With me.” Ali was already searching the room for her purse and her keys.

  “How come?” Dave wanted to know.

  “Because she’s twenty-five years old and doesn’t know how to go about handling all those details.”

  “Shouldn’t her mother help her with that?” Dave asked.

  “April doesn’t want her mother involved.”

  “Wait a minute,” Dave said. “Your dead ex-husband’s girlfriend is arguing with her own mother about Paul Grayson’s funeral arrangements, and she expects you to walk right into the middle of it? What’s wrong with this picture?”

  “You don’t understand,” Ali said. “You haven’t met Monique Ragsdale. I have.”

  “I do understand,” Dave said. “All too well. Stay out of it, Ali. Run, do not walk, in the opposite direction.”

  Ali looked at Dave. He was a nice enough man, but he had no idea what it was like to be pregnant with someone’s baby and to have that person snatched out of your life. No matter who April Gaddis was or whose baby she was carrying, at this point it was impossible
for Ali to feel anything but compassion for her.

  “April asked for my help. I’m going to give it to her,” Ali said.

  “Well then,” Edie declared. “If you’re going, so are we.”

  “All right,” Dave said glumly. “But when it all goes to hell, just remember—I told you so.”

  Ali called down to the desk for her car. “This is Ali Reynolds,” she added after relaying her valet parking ticket number to the bell captain. “Are there still reporters down there looking for me?”

  “Yes,” he replied. “I’m afraid there are.”

  “Is there a chance you could smuggle me out of the building without my being seen?”

  “Sure. I could come up and get you in the service elevator and take you out the back way, through the kitchen.”

  “Would you?”

  “Of course.”

  Dave shook his head the whole way down in the service elevator and raised a disapproving eyebrow at the size of the tip Ali handed over to the bellman, but the ploy worked. Ali was relieved that in the paparazzi bidding wars, her tip was large enough to allow them to exit the hotel without meeting up with even one of the waiting reporters.

  With Edie in the backseat of the Cayenne, Ali drove back up the hill to Robert Lane. The broken front gate was still open, but filming had ended for the day. The Sumo Sudoku RVs were nowhere in evidence. The film crews had pulled up stakes and gone home, too. Leading the way to the front door, Ali was surprised to find it ajar. The DO NOT DISTURB sign had been removed. She paused long enough to ring the bell, but no one answered.

  The entire entryway was awash in banks of floral bouquets, even more than had been there earlier.

  “Hello?” Ali called. “April? Anybody home?”

  There was no answer.

  With Dave and Edie trailing behind, Ali ventured farther into the house. They found Monique Ragsdale lying sprawled at the bottom of the stairway. While Dave bent over the stricken woman and checked for a pulse, Ali dialed 911.

  “Is she still breathing?” Ali demanded.