Cruel Intent

by J. A. Jance

  “So Dave has let it be known that Bryan’s no longer under suspicion?”

  “Pretty much,” Edie said.

  By the time Ali got back to Yavapai Medical Center, an unmarked Sedona cop car was parked out front. When she arrived at the door to Leland’s room, she found Detective Hill conducting an interview about everything that had happened the day before.

  “So you didn’t notice the silver Mercedes parked at the bottom of Ms. Reynolds’s driveway?” Marjorie Hill asked.

  “No,” Leland said. “I was looking for a truck bringing a load of tile. I wasn’t looking for a Mercedes. I got out of the car, and there he was. He had the element of surprise in his favor. I tried to fend him off, but I couldn’t. I seem to remember being stuck by something—something sharp. Then it was all over. The fight went out of me. I couldn’t do a thing.”

  “He drugged you?”

  “I believe so.”

  “What’s the next thing you remember?”

  “Waking up in Ms. Reynolds’s bathroom. There was duct tape around my legs and around my arms and chest. He was holding my head underwater. He kept asking me about some files, and I kept telling him I didn’t know anything about them. When I woke up again, I was here. That’s pretty much it. I don’t know anything else.”

  Ali heard the note of weariness in his voice and came into the room. “Breakfast is here,” she announced. “The rest of the questions will have to wait until after that, Detective Hill.”

  “But—” began the detective.

  “But nothing,” Ali told her. “What Mr. Brooks needs right now is to eat and rest.”

  She set the food out on the rolling table next to Leland’s bed and hustled the detective out the door. Once she had escorted Marjorie Hill to the lobby, Ali went in search of a nurse. “He’s to have no more visitors,” Ali ordered. “Got that?”

  “Got it,” the nurse said.

  When Ali went back to Leland’s room, he was sound asleep again, with his food sitting untouched on the rolling cart. She sat with him for the next hour or so while he continued to sleep. Finally, at about nine, she drove to the drugstore and put together an emergency set of makeup. At ten, having done what she could to fix her bedraggled face, she presented herself at Thomas and Sons Mortuary. She could tell from the way cars spilled down the street that the chapel was jammed to capacity. Searching for a place to park, she was surprised to see Bryan Forester standing out behind the building, smoking a cigarette.

  Leaving her Cayenne idling, Ali got out and walked over to him. “Where are the girls?” she asked.

  “Inside,” he said, “with my folks and with all those damn hypocrites. What did they all come here hoping for? Are they thinking I’ll be beside myself with grief and throw myself on her coffin, or are they hoping I’ll stand up and tell them Morgan was a tramp and deserved what she got? What the hell do they expect of me?”

  “They’re here to pay their respects,” Ali said. “And they’re here to say they’re sorry for your loss, even though they have no way of comprehending the real loss you’ve suffered.”

  Bryan sought Ali’s eyes. “But you know, don’t you,” he said.

  She nodded. The fact that Paul Grayson had betrayed her so thoroughly was still part of who she was, how she functioned in the world, and how she saw herself.

  “But I also know that it doesn’t matter,” she said aloud. “What went wrong between you and Morgan doesn’t matter as much as what went right—which is to say your two girls. You have to be here for them, Bryan. You have to be strong for them.”

  “But I don’t want to be around these people,” Bryan fumed. “The way they turned on me…When I finish your job, I’ll go somewhere else. Maybe I can find work down in Phoenix. Or maybe over in Albuquerque, somewhere people won’t know me and know all about what happened.”

  “Don’t,” Ali said. “Geographic cures don’t work.”

  “You tried one,” Bryan said. “You came home.”

  “That doesn’t change the fact that my husband screwed around on me,” Ali said. “Coming home didn’t fix it for me, and leaving home won’t fix it for you, either. And uprooting your girls from everything that’s familiar is the last thing they need right now. It’ll make things that much worse for them. Stay here, Bryan. Look your demons in the eye.”

  “Including Billy Barnes?” he asked.

  “Especially Billy Barnes,” Ali told him. “Especially him.”

  “I’ll think about it,” Bryan said. With that, he ground out his cigarette and strode inside.

  Ali parked in a no-parking zone in front of a Dumpster. She went inside the mortuary and found a spot to sit on one of the extra folding chairs that had been set up around the perimeter of the chapel to accommodate the standing-room-only crowd. Ali could see why Bryan might have a problem with some of those folks. Cindy Martin, the manicurist who had been only to happy to blame him, was sitting there as big as life on the end of the fourth row. Ali suspected that many of the other people in attendance were ones who had been quick to think Bryan was responsible for his wife’s death and to dish out rumors and innuendo.

  Others, however, were clearly there in a show of support. Ali wasn’t surprised to see that Mindy Farber, Lacy and Lindsey’s teacher, had taken time off to be there for them.

  The service, conducted by the Reverend C. W. Stowell, was a low-key affair, dignified but distant, as though the minister had been asked to officiate without knowing too many details about either the deceased or her family. From Ali’s point of view, that was a good thing. It gave the two little girls sitting quietly in the front row something to remember about the loss of their mother. As Mindy Farber had told them, it was a way of saying goodbye.

  Ali ducked out during the final benediction and went back to the hospital, where she found Leland, fully dressed except for shoes, waiting for her in the lobby.

  “The doctor came around and told me I could go, but he said that with this arm, I’m in no condition to drive. He said I needed to have someone come pick me up. I’ve been trying to call you, but your cell phone isn’t working.”

  And won’t ever work again, Ali thought.

  The nurse came forward to wheel Leland’s chair out to the Cayenne. “Just drop me off at the house,” he said once he was loaded into the passenger seat. “I’ll be fine.”

  “No,” Ali said. “We can go by your place and pick up some clothing, but for right now Sam and I are staying at the Majestic Mountain Inn, and so are you.”

  “That’s ridiculous,” Leland said. “I’m perfectly capable of staying on my own.”

  “You may be capable of it,” Ali said, “but you’re not doing it. End of discussion.”

  After checking Leland in to a room three doors down from hers, Ali went up to the house and collected clothing for him from his fifth wheel. At her house there was clear evidence that a search had been conducted the day before. The locked front door had been battered open and was closed now with a piece of plywood that had been screwed into the casing with wallboard screws. The padlock on Bryan’s storage unit dangled unlocked on the hasp. A quick look inside told Ali all was in order, but she picked up her phone—Athena’s phone—and called Dave Holman.

  “It’s bad enough that your guys had to break my door down,” she said, “but they also left Bryan’s toolshed unlocked. What if someone had come by during the funeral to steal his stuff?”

  “I’ll go by the hardware store and pick up a new padlock,” Dave said. “Then I’ll be right there.”

  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.”

  CHAPTER 18

  It 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.”

  { EPILOGUE }

  On 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 c
ould 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 menfolk, 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.