Web of Evil

by J. A. Jance

  “And probably a dozen more interviews,” Edie said. “I’ve done enough police interviews in the last couple of days that I’m sick and tired of them.” She glanced at her watch. “How about if they did something else for a change instead of just sitting around asking the same questions over and over?”

  That was Ali’s opinion as well. From what she could tell, police work seemed to involve a whole lot more talking than it did anything else.

  When brunch was over, Bob and Edie went up to their room to help Bob get ready to head out. Once they left, Dave stood up as well. “If you don’t need anything from me,” he said, “I may drive over to Havasu and see the kids for a while. They’re off school for the afternoon.”

  “Go ahead,” Ali told him. “I think you’ve earned a little time off.”

  Upstairs, Ali was relieved that she now had a room to herself. Much as she liked her mother, Ali had spent months becoming accustomed to being on her own. And she liked it.

  Opening her computer, she stretched out on the couch and logged on. The first message in her in-box came from a familiar address:

  Dear Babe,

  I guess I’m not as young as I used to be. I just now woke up. Well, a little while ago, I suppose. Long enough that I’ve had a cup of coffee and turned on my computer.

  It was such a thrill to meet you last night—this morning really. Most people would have thought I was some kind of crazed stalker or something. Thank you for being so gracious to an old lady who happens to be a big fan of yours.

  Knowing from you some of what went on yesterday, I wanted to check out what that jerk at socalcopshop had to say. Sure enough. He’s at it again. Go ahead and read it, but it’ll probably make you mad. I don’t know what LMB’s problem is.

  LOVE,

  VELMA T

  Unable to resist, Ali turned to socalcopshop.com, and there it was.

  ALISON REYNOLDS AND HER WEB OF EVIL

  Alison Reynolds, the Black Widow of Robert Lane, continues to spin her evil web from her current base of operations, the posh Westwood Hotel. This time her victim is April Gaddis, the unfortunate young woman who was scheduled to marry Ms. Reynolds’s estranged husband on Saturday afternoon.

  Overwhelmed by grief and run over by Ms. Reynolds’s army of high-powered attorneys, April Gaddis committed suicide in a room on the maternity ward of Cedars-Sinai Hospital early Monday morning. Not only is Ms. Gaddis dead, so is her unborn child. After finding the mother’s lifeless body, doctors attempted to save the baby but were unable to do so.

  Sources close to the investigation say that Ms. Gaddis spent the last several days of her life in the company of Alison Reynolds and her mother. Why would she have turned to her fiancé’s former wife for consolation? Well, let’s see. For one thing, Ms. Gaddis’s mother, Monique Ragsdale, also perished over the weekend as a result of a nasty fall down a stairway in Ms. Reynolds’s Robert Lane mansion. Coincidence? I don’t think so, and neither do LAPD and Riverside County homicide investigators who are working this series of interrelated cases.

  Alison Reynolds is the only common denominator in all of them. Who gave this Black Widow a license to kill and who’s going to see to it that she pays for her crimes?

  Posted 11:05 A.M., September 19, 2005 by LMB

  So Lance-a-lot is at it again, Ali thought. When it came to spinning a web, Ali didn’t hold a candle to April Gaddis, but she resisted the temptation to respond to LMB and tell him so directly. Posting anything on his Web site would only serve to add legitimacy to his claims about her. She sent a note to Velma instead.

  Dear Velma,

  Thanks for passing along the information about socal copshop. The guy who writes it seems to have it in for me, and I don’t know why.

  Thanks, too, for what you did last night. Your loyal support meant more to me than you can possibly know.

  If you have a weekend number for your nephew, you might ask him to give me a call. I believe I have information that might be helpful to his client.

  ALI

  For the next hour or so, Ali sat at the computer sending as many thank-you notes as she could manage to the people who had written to express their concern over the fact that Edie Larson was missing or else their gratitude for her safe return. She posted some of the messages and simply answered the others. Good manners required individual replies wherever possible.

  She had finally succeeded in clearing her mailbox and had closed her eyes for a brief nap when the “You’ve got mail” announcement sounded in her ear. The e-mail address, a series of numbers that were most likely a combination of birthdate and zip code, meant nothing to her, but that wasn’t unusual. Most of the e-mail Ali Reynolds received at cutlooseblog.com came from strangers.

  Dear Ali,

  I’m writing to you through a friend’s e-mail account because I’m afraid my account is being monitored, and as you know, these are very dangerous people. I tried to call your old cell phone but it didn’t work. If you have a new cell phone number please send it to me at this address. I need your help. Please don’t tell anyone that you’ve heard from me, and don’t give anyone this e-mail address, either.

  RM

  Ali read through the message twice. RM? That could only be Roseanne Maxwell. Had to be. And these dangerous people she mentioned? Dave had said much the same thing about the drug traffickers—that they were dangerous. Ali wrote back immediately, giving Roseanne her new Arizona-based cell phone number.

  Then she waited. When her cell phone finally rang, it was after four.

  “Don’t call me by name,” the person said, although Ali recognized Roseanne’s breathy delivery as soon as she spoke. “This is a throwaway phone. Don’t bother trying to trace it.”

  “What do you want then?” Ali asked. “Why are you calling me?”

  “Like I said,” Roseanne told her. “I need your help. I’ve got to disappear.”

  “As far as I can tell, you already have.”

  “This isn’t a game,” Roseanne Maxwell replied. “I mean I need to disappear for the rest of my life—for whatever life I have left.”

  There was a desperate quality in Roseanne’s voice, one that convinced Ali that the woman wasn’t kidding.

  “What do you want me to do?” Ali asked.

  “I’m staying with a friend up in Valencia,” Roseanne said. “Do you know where that is?”

  “Of course,” Ali said.

  “Come to the Claim Jumper here in town,” Roseanne said. “I’ll meet you there at six. Be sure nobody follows you. We need to talk.”

  In the past several days, every time Ali had reached out to help someone, the effort had turned around to bite her in the butt. “Why should I?” she asked.

  “Because you want to know what happened to Paul,” Roseanne said. “You owe it to yourself, and you owe it to Paul.”

  I don’t owe Paul Grayson a thing, Ali wanted to say. Instead she replied reluctantly, “All right. I’ll be there.”

  { CHAPTER 17 }

  Ali picked up the phone and tried her mother’s room, but the call went directly to voice mail. With her father already on his way to Sedona, it was likely Edie was taking a nap. After the previous night’s misadventures, that was hardly surprising. Ali left a message that she was going to meet a friend at the Claim Jumper in Valencia and let it go at that. And she gave Chris a pass as well. She was glad he was off having fun with his friends. That was fine.

  What about calling Dave? Ali wondered. With no strings other than friendship, the man had literally spent days helping Ali and her family at every turn. Now that he was taking some time and several hours to drive back over to Lake Havasu to spend time with his kids, Ali couldn’t, in good conscience, involve him again—either by calling him or leaving a message. In fact, she was determined this was something she would handle on her own.

  Besides, how dangerous could it be to meet up with Roseanne Maxwell in what would no doubt be the middle of a crowded restaurant? Still, remembering Roseanne’s concern ab
out Ali’s possibly being followed, she did check the rearview mirror from time to time as she drove north on I-5 just to make sure there was no one suspicious behind her. In actual fact, Ali was far less worried about bad guys following her than she was about one of the stray reporting teams who were still camped out in and around the hotel.

  As for Roseanne Maxwell herself? She wasn’t what Ali would have considered to be a frightening proposition. For one thing, she was slight of build with the best curve enhancement and facial redefining money could buy. For Roseanne beauty wasn’t skin deep—it was subcutaneous. For as long as Ali had known the woman, Roseanne had existed on a perpetual round of dieting and not dieting. That was why Roseanne’s having set their meeting at an establishment known for its gigantic serving portions was a mystery in and of itself.

  Ali had never been particularly close to Roseanne. Their husbands had been coworkers, competitors for the network job, and partners in the Sumo Sudoku scam. Ali and Roseanne had seen each other socially on occasion, but they definitely didn’t qualify as good friends. Or even semi-friends. And why Roseanne would turn to her in a time of trouble was as much a mystery as where they were meeting.

  It was six on the dot when Ali arrived at the Claim Jumper parking lot. The restaurant was jammed, and there was a crowd of people milling about outside, waiting for tables. Ali was about to walk inside and put her name on the list when a woman appeared at her side. Roseanne Maxwell was so changed that Ali barely recognized her.

  The last time Ali had seen Roseanne had been at Paul’s annual Christmas party the preceding year. She had been dressed to the nines with her hair piled on top of her head in a sophisticated platinum blond do, but the months since then had been anything but kind to Roseanne Maxwell. Her hair was brown now and cut short as well, shorn off in something that resembled chemo-patient chic. Ali barely recognized her.

  The old Roseanne wouldn’t have ventured out of the house without a complete assortment of high-end jewelry adorning her fingers, neck, and ears and a layer of full-armor-of-God makeup on her face. This new Roseanne wore no jewelry whatsoever, and her makeup consisted of a little lipstick and nothing else. Roseanne had stopped smoking years earlier. Without the ongoing attention of her cosmetic surgeon and artfully applied Botox, the telltale lines had reasserted themselves. In less than a year she had aged a good decade’s worth.

  Roseanne grabbed Ali’s arm and hugged her close. “I know. I know,” she whispered. “I look like hell. You don’t have to tell me. Come on,” she added. “I came early. I already have a table.”

  Ali allowed herself to be led through the crowded restaurant to a secluded table in the far back of the room.

  “Nobody followed you, did they?” Roseanne asked nervously.

  Taking her phone out of her pocket and turning the ringer to “silent,” Ali shook her head. “I don’t think so,” she said. “I checked.”

  “I hope you don’t mind meeting me here. Carrie, the hostess, is a friend of mine. I met her in NA. I needed a place to stay, and she happened to have a spare bedroom in her house. So that’s where I’m staying at the moment. And because I can’t risk driving my own car right now, she gave me a lift when she came to work.”

  “NA?” Ali asked.

  “Narcotics Anonymous,” Roseanne returned. “I’m trying to get straight, if I can live long enough, that is.” She patted her badly cut hair. “Good disguise, don’t you think?”

  “Very,” Ali agreed. “Now what’s going on?”

  For an answer, Roseanne opened her purse and pushed a ziplock bag across the table. Ali picked it up and studied it. A collection of jewels and gold—diamond-studded rings, necklaces, earrings, and bracelets—winked back at her through the clear plastic.

  “What’s this?” Ali asked, handing the bag back across the table.

  “My jewelry,” Roseanne said. “I need to sell it—all of it. If I go to a pawnshop, I’ll only get a fraction of what they’re worth. Besides, I’m sure word of it would get back to Jake. Please buy them from me, Ali. I know you’ve got the money to do it, and it’s my only chance to get away. Just give it to me in cash, and then I’ll disappear. No one will ever find me. If they do, I’m dead anyway.”

  “Get away?” Ali asked. “From whom?”

  “The people who ruined our lives,” Roseanne replied, lowering her voice to a strained whisper. “The people who killed Paul.”

  “What people?” Ali demanded. “The drug dealers?”

  “You know about them then?” Roseanne asked with a stricken look on her face.

  Ali nodded. “A little,” she said. “But not enough. You probably know way more. You should go to the cops and tell them what you know.”

  “I can’t,” Roseanne said in a hoarse whisper.

  “Why not?”

  “Because some of the cops are in on it. I’ve seen them.”

  Ali’s first reaction was one of total disbelief. Obviously Roseanne was suffering some kind of paranoid delusion. If she was involved in drugs enough that she had turned to NA for help, maybe that wasn’t too surprising.

  “Look,” Ali said placatingly. “I’m sure you have some reason to think so, but—”

  “I’m afraid somebody tapped my phone,” Roseanne said. “My old phone. I’m sure they were listening in on everything I said. Who else would have done that but the cops? That’s why I got this new one—a disposable. They’re much harder to trace than the other ones are.”

  Ali restrained herself from making a wry comment about conspiracy theories and people wearing tinfoil hats. Roseanne Maxwell was absolutely serious. Painfully so.

  “It takes a lot of effort to tap telephones,” Ali pointed out. “Cops can’t do it just for the hell of it. They’d need judges, warrants, and everything.”

  “They already have those,” Roseanne said.

  “Who’s doing this then?” Ali asked. “And why?”

  At that precise moment, Ali’s phone vibrated silently in her pocket. With Roseanne already off the charts about people tapping telephones, Ali thought it best to ignore the call.

  Roseanne sighed. “You know about the Pink Swan?”

  “Some,” Ali replied. “I know there’s a lot more happening there than meets the eye.”

  Roseanne nodded. “When we first started going there, it seemed like it was all fun all the time. Jake always liked to gamble. It was a place where I could go along and do my thing while he was doing his. But eventually he got in over his head, and it got worse after the network cut him loose—a lot worse.”

  Ali managed to keep a straight face when Roseanne used the term “cut loose.” It turned out there was a lot of that going around.

  “That’s how those people work,” Roseanne continued. “They suck you in a little at a time. Like I said, at first it was just Jake’s gambling and a few recreational drugs for me. It felt like a nice place, a safe place, because we had no idea what else was going on. By the time we figured out the rest of it, we were in way too deep. Jake said we either did what they said or else.”

  “So you moved from using drugs to transporting them?” Ali asked.

  Roseanne looked at her sharply, then she nodded. “Yes,” she admitted. “That’s where Sumo Sudoku came in. It gave them a whole collection of RVs that they can use to run up and down the West Coast. That way, their loads come and go in plain sight with no questions asked. So far no one has ever suspected they’re hauling anything but those damn rocks.”

  No one but Dave and me, Ali thought. “Paul was in on all of this?” she asked.

  “No,” Roseanne answered. “Even though April and Tracy McLaughlin were friends, Jake was the one who actually pitched the Sumo Sudoku idea to Paul. When it came time to put the deal together, Paul put up his money. I’m sure he thought we were putting up ours, too. But the money we used didn’t really belong to us because we were broke by then, or we would have been.”

  “So the whole Sumo Sudoku thing is really nothing but a cover for moving drugs?�
� Ali asked.

  “It’s actually more than that,” Roseanne admitted. “By involving Paul in the project, they ended up with what looks like a legitimate entity, and there was enough money in the deal for Jake that we were able to hang on to our house. They promised Jake even more—lots more—if he could get Sumo Sudoku some network exposure and have it go national.”

  No wonder they needed Paul, Ali thought. “What about the players?” she asked.

  “The guys who drive the RVs?” Roseanne returned. “They all have their own particular vices, and the Pink Swan is a one-stop shop when it comes to that kind of thing. Tracy McLaughlin doesn’t do any drugs other than cigarettes and beer. His big thing is gambling. That’s how they hooked him in—gambling debts and forgiveness of same.”

  Ali realized this was more or less the same story Jake had told but with a few key differences.

  “With so many illegal activities going on, how does the Pink Swan stay in business?” Ali asked.

  “They pay off the right people,” Roseanne responded. “I know for sure that several top dogs from LAPD are regulars at the gambling tables upstairs. I know them because I’ve seen them. The Pink Swan’s management makes sure the club and its customers don’t annoy the neighbors. The place is clean, it’s quiet, and the club does a lot of strategic charitable giving. I hear they’re big on putting playground equipment in local parks.”

  “What about the DEA?” Ali asked.

  “What about them?” Roseanne asked with a shrug. “I don’t know any people from the DEA personally, if that’s what you mean, but they could be there. After all, if people from LAPD can be bought off, why couldn’t people from the DEA? We’re talking about astonishing amounts of money, Ali. Cops who play ball with them can make more money in a year than they’d make in a lifetime of pounding a beat somewhere.”

  A harried waitress veered in their direction, but Roseanne waved her away with a shake of her head while Ali thought about what Dave had said about the possibility of an ongoing undercover DEA investigation being conducted at the Pink Swan. Maybe there was something to what Roseanne was saying after all.