The A List

by Jance, J. A.

  Wondering about the sizing, Ali examined the tag and noted that medium was probably about right. “It should fit,” she said. “How did you know what size?”

  “We got your height and weight off your driver’s license,” Shay said.

  Somehow it warmed Ali’s heart to know that Frigg wasn’t the only entity in this fight with unauthorized access to governmental databases.

  Their waiter showed up just then. At his recommendation they both ordered eggs Benedict and coffee. When he suggested champagne or mimosas, they both declined.

  Shay nodded approvingly as he walked away. “Under the circumstances it’s best to keep a clear head,” she said. A moment later she reached into her purse and withdrew several pieces of paper. “Take a look at these,” she urged.

  Accepting the papers Ali found herself staring at photocopied photographs of four different people, two of whom she recognized at once—Edward Gilchrist and his mother, Hannah. Clearly prison didn’t agree with him. He looked gaunt and unwell in his orange jumpsuit. At the sentencing hearing, he’d had a head of thinning reddish hair just starting to go gray. Now he was nearly bald, and what little hair he had left had turned white. Hannah, however, looked exactly the same.

  “The other two are Luis Ochoa and Gloria Reece?”

  Shay nodded. “These are the known members of the opposing team. I doubt any of them will show up on the ground in person, but I thought we should have a clear idea about how they all look.”

  Ali studied Gloria’s face the longest. She didn’t look particularly threatening, but Ali knew instinctively that she was in all likelihood the most dangerous. Suppressing a shiver, Ali handed the photocopies back to Shay, who returned them to her purse.

  “So what’s the plan?” Ali asked.

  “I spent the morning reconnoitering the neighborhood around the funeral home in my blend-in clothes, just so I’d know the lay of the land. The funeral home is a block off Ventura on Noble Avenue. There are theaters and lots of restaurants in the neighborhood, so even though it’s Sunday, there’ll be plenty of traffic. I propose that we go in my car and time our arrival so we get there at the last minute. I’ll drop you off at the front door just before the service starts and go park. Once the service is over, I’ll go fetch the car and come back to pick you up.”

  “Drop off and pick up?” Ali asked. “Why do that?”

  “Because a client’s greatest risk of exposure comes when entering or exiting venues. The less time you spend hanging around outside the building, the better off we’ll be. There’s a lobby area just inside the front door. During the service I’ll stay out there to make sure no bad actor tries to slip in or out. The manager told me that another room has been set aside for after the service itself for a reception, where light refreshments will be served. Do you want to stay for that or bug out immediately after the service?”

  “I should make an appearance at the reception and stay for a while at least,” Ali said. “It’ll be the only chance I’ll have to talk one-on-one with some of those people.”

  “All right,” Shay said at length. “I don’t like it, but we’ll do it your way.”

  Their food came then. As they tucked in, Ali attempted to turn the conversation from the day’s stressful issues. “How’d you end up in this line of work?” she asked.

  “I absolutely hated school,” Shay answered. “Once I was through with high school, I had no interest in going to college. My dad was US Marine Corps all the way. So was my grandfather. I signed up thinking I was going to save the world and did two tours of duty in a part of the world that didn’t seem very interested in being saved. When I came home in one piece, I was looking around for work and thinking about going into law enforcement. Then someone referred me to Sonja, and I’ve been with her ever since. The pay’s way better, and so are the uniforms.”

  48

  Sherman Oaks, California, June 2017

  Shortly after noon on Sunday, Hannah, dressed in full funeral regalia, waited for Marco Gregory in the lobby of the Sherman Oaks Hilton Garden Inn. The hotel wasn’t quite the five-star accommodation she would have used in the old days, but it had served her purpose, and it was less than two miles away from the Longmont Funeral Home on Noble Avenue.

  Before wearing hats had gone out of fashion, Hannah had worn them often and had maintained an extensive collection. During her downsizing move from Santa Clarita to Folsom, she had limited herself to a few of her favorites, only as many was would fit in a single hatbox. For the funeral she’d brought out a stylish black felt cloche with a brim that came down almost to her eyebrows. Peering at herself in the mirror in the lobby, she decided that the hat suited her very well. It wasn’t a disguise exactly, but it gave her quite a different look.

  She had left her room wearing her grandmother’s cameo, but while waiting for the elevator to come, she thought better of it. Fearing it might be a telling detail someone might remember seeing earlier, she had unpinned the brooch and slipped it into her pocket.

  Marco pulled up to the front entrance, parked in the driveway, and then came inside to escort her to the car. “Madame is looking very well today,” he said, smiling and offering his arm.

  “Thank you,” she said. “You’re very kind.”

  He opened the back door of an idling black limo and helped her inside. She didn’t know what kind of vehicle it was, and she would have preferred the Rolls, just for old times’ sake, but, like the Hilton, this vehicle served the purpose and wasn’t nearly as flashy. He waited until she was settled and then handed her the cane.

  “I’ve missed you so much,” she said gratefully as they drove away from the hotel.

  “Thank you, ma’am,” he replied. “We’ve missed you, too.”

  They pulled in under the green awning at the funeral home at twelve forty-five, an hour and fifteen minutes before the memorial service was scheduled to start.

  “Are you sure you don’t want me to wait for you here?” Marco asked.

  “I believe waiting somewhere nearby would be better,” she told him. “I’ll call when I’m ready to be picked up.”

  “Yes, ma’am,” Marco agreed. “That will be fine.”

  Exiting the air-conditioned vehicle into a blast of early-summer heat, Hannah made her way to the funeral home’s front doors only to discover they were still locked. Even in the shade of the driveway’s canopy, it was surprisingly hot. After a few imperious knocks with the handle of her cane, an employee inside—someone dressed impeccably in a suit and tie—finally took pity on her and opened the door.

  “May I help you?” he asked.

  “I’m here for the Munsey memorial service,” she told him. “I know I’m early, but it’s dreadfully hot out here. If I could just have a place to sit . . .”

  “Of course,” the man said, speaking in the somber tone suitable to someone in his line of work. “Right this way, please.”

  He led her into a chapel-like room set up with a hundred or so folding chairs. On the way inside, she collected a program from a stack on a small table next to the door and immediately slipped the precious item into her purse. The usher tried to direct Hannah to a chair nearer the front of the room, but she chose a seat in the far corner of the last row, a vantage point that would allow her to observe the other guests as they entered. At the front of the room on a dais stood a table banked with a profusion of flower arrangements. The middle of the table held a decorative bronze urn and an enlarged framed copy of Alexandra Munsey’s cover photo from The Changeling.

  Hannah watched with interest as people began filing into the room. Among the first to arrive was a couple accompanied by a small boy. She recognized the man to be Evan Munsey. She had seen him coming and going from the courtroom every day during the course of the trial. Presumably the woman was Evan’s wife. But the ginger-haired child walking with them was the one who took Hannah’s breath away. The family resemblance was astonishing. When he looked up to say something to his mother, Hannah saw the gap where he was mi
ssing a front tooth. That meant he was probably six or seven years old, and it was like seeing Eddie again, back when he was a sweet little kid, back before arrogance had overtaken him, back when he still loved Hannah for who she was rather than for what she could do for him.

  And that’s when a light went off in Hannah’s head. That little boy, whoever he was, was Eddie’s grandson, which meant he was also Hannah’s great-grandson. By now there might be others, but this was the only one Hannah had ever seen in person—the only one! To her tremendous surprise she felt something that she hadn’t felt in a long time—the first fitful tinges of regret. As the room continued to fill, Hannah’s focus remained glued to that nameless boy.

  She had come to the funeral intent on relishing her victory and retrieving a trophy to remember it by. Digging the program out of her purse, she read through that sought-after prize. “Survivors include son, Evan Munsey, and wife, Kathleen, of Salt Lake City, and grandson Rory Davis Munsey.” For Hannah, knowing the little boy’s name made everything that much worse. Having him sitting there quietly next to his parents cast everything she had done over the course of the past five years in a different light.

  She had forked over the money to pay for the hit on Alexandra Munsey without so much as a second thought and strictly on Eddie’s say-so. But what about the little boy sitting in the front row? The room was filling up, and now too many people separated them for Hannah to have a clear view of Rory. She knew that his mother had handed him something—a coloring book, maybe—to keep him occupied. Did he know his grandmother well enough to have any memories of her to carry forward with him for the rest of his life? That thought gave Hannah another jarring attack of conscience.

  No longer able to see Rory, Hannah studied the other people gathered there. Several of the men looked spookily like Edward. Given Alex Munsey’s history, that in itself wasn’t so startling. Hannah supposed she had seen several of these same men before, during the course of Eddie’s trial. But then a woman wearing an LAPD dress uniform slipped into the row of seats directly in front of Hannah. A glimpse of the new arrival’s face caused Hannah’s heart to pound in her chest. It was as though her mother, Isobel, had been reincarnated. A small gasp of surprise escaped Hannah’s lips, enough so that the woman glanced curiously in her direction, but then she looked away and sat down. For several tense moments after that, Hannah worried that she’d been recognized, but nothing was said, and she was finally able to breathe a sigh of relief.

  Her prediction about going unnoticed was entirely accurate. In a roomful of strangers, many of whom were directly related to her, no one paid the least bit of attention to the old woman dressed all in black, sitting next to the wall in the last row of chairs. When the memorial service started, Hannah Gilchrist began to weep, dabbing away her tears with a dainty lace-edged handkerchief. No one noticed that either, because people shedding tears at funerals was hardly out of the ordinary.

  Soon other people joined in, but the tears they shed were for Alexandra Munsey and her grieving family. Hannah’s tears, laden with guilt and remorse, were strictly for Hannah.

  Alex Munsey was dead—Rory Davis Munsey’s grandmother was dead—and it was all Hannah’s fault.

  49

  Sherman Oaks, California, June 2017

  As they drove to the Longmont Funeral Home in Shay’s Acura, Ali felt cranky, and Shay picked up on her sudden change of mood. “What’s wrong?” she asked.

  “Let’s see,” Ali says. “The extra padding from the body armor makes me look fat—as though I’ve gained twenty pounds and outgrown my clothing.”

  “You look fine,” Shay said.

  “And I hate having to wear an earbud,” Ali added. “I’ve never liked having anything in my ears.”

  “You’ll get used to it, because in this case it’s necessary. If something goes wrong, communication is the name of the game. I need to hear everything you say and hear, and vice versa.”

  “And I hate being driven around,” Ali grumbled. “I’d be better off driving myself.”

  “You do realize that none of those things are what’s really bothering you, don’t you?” Shay asked.

  “What do you mean?”

  “You’re in limbo right now,” Shay explained. “Is the threat real or not? If an attack comes, what’s the best move, fight or flight? If the attack doesn’t come, how do you move beyond it? And because you can’t control any of it, you’re stressed about all of it.”

  “Sounds about right,” Ali conceded.

  “By the way,” Shay added, “welcome to my world. That’s what bodyguards do day in and day out. Every morning we get up and prepare for the worst, and whenever nothing bad happens, that’s a good day.”

  “What if nothing bad happens today?” Ali asked. “What if all of this turns out to be a false alarm and totally unnecessary?”

  Shay grinned at her. “Then I get paid, and you get to go home safe and sound—win/win.”

  Eventually the pep talk worked its magic, and by the time they pulled up under the green awning of the Longmont Funeral Home, Ali was feeling marginally better.

  “Okay,” Shay said, stopping mere steps from the front door. “You go on in. I spotted a couple of parking places in the back corner of the lot. I’ll grab one of those and then stand guard in the lobby during both the service and the reception.”

  “Got it,” Ali said.

  When she opened the car door, it was a surprisingly short distance from there to the entrance. Only after she’d entered the building and the door closed behind her did Ali realize that she’d been holding her breath from the moment she stepped out of the car.

  A moment later a man in a dark suit approached her. “You wouldn’t happen to be Ms. Reynolds, would you?”

  Ali froze. Here was a stranger asking for her by name. Was this it? Was the attack going to happen now, while Shay was still outside parking the car? When fight or flight kicked in, Ali landed on the former.

  “Yes, I am,” she said firmly, squaring her shoulders and looking the man in the eye. “What can I do for you?”

  “I’m on usher duty today. Mr. Munsey asked me to be on the lookout for you. If you don’t mind, he’d like you to be seated in the front row with members of the family. If you’d care to come this way, I’ll be happy to escort you there,” he added, offering his arm.

  “Thank you,” a relieved Ali said, accepting the proffered arm.

  When they entered the chapel, the room was almost full and somber organ music was playing in the background. The usher dutifully led Ali down the right-hand outside aisle to the front of the room, then directed her to a spot at the end of the first row of folding chairs. She was seated next to a red-haired boy armed with colored pencils who was busily working away on a Spider-Man coloring book. Nodding to Evan Munsey and the woman who was presumably his wife, Ali took her own seat.

  “You must be Rory,” Ali said, speaking quietly in his ear. “I’m Ali Reynolds.”

  “Did you know my Grandma Alex?” Rory asked without looking up.

  “I did,” Ali said. “She and I were friends.”

  “She gave me this coloring book for my birthday,” he said. “Mommy said I could bring it today and show it to people.”

  “You’re doing a great job of coloring,” Ali said. “And it sounds like you have a smart mommy.”

  At that moment the man who’d be officiating—the Reverend Justin Nugent, according to the program—stepped up to the lectern, and the service got under way. After a few words of welcome and an invocation, he introduced two young women—high school girls from a nearby charter school—who had been asked to perform a duet of what Reverend Nugent said was Alex’s favorite hymn, “Whispering Hope.”

  It was a song Ali knew and loved, too. The words scrolled through her head as she listened:

  If, in the dusk of the twilight,

  Dim be the region afar,

  Will not the deepening darkness

  Brighten the glittering star?


  Then when the night is upon us,

  Why should the heart sink away?

  When the dark midnight is over,

  Watch for the breaking of day.

  That’s what this is all about, Ali thought. Without the darkness, there would be no light. You have to live through the night in order to see the morning.

  When the song finished, Reverend Nugent invited Evan Munsey to step forward. As Evan stood, so did Rory Davis. Although the two nearly identical men came forward together, Rory was the first to speak.

  “Most of the people in this room know that I’m the guy with two mothers, but that’s not quite true, because Alexandra Munsey was, is, and always will be mother number three. She was the moving force that brought Evan and me together years ago, and she brought many of the rest of you together as well. With her help many of us have been able to unravel the mysteries of our mutual births. Alex’s determined search for a donated kidney to save her own son’s life is what started the ball rolling. When I donated a kidney to someone who was essentially a stranger to me back then, I hoped I was saving his life, but I had no idea that I was also gaining a best friend. And now, because that replacement kidney is still working, I’d like to introduce my friend and brother, Evan Munsey, to say a few words about his mom and mine.”

  As the two men hugged, a round of applause erupted throughout the room. It took a moment after that for Evan to regain his composure.

  “My mom,” he said at last. “As Rory said, Alexandra Munsey was a force to be reckoned with. She was a woman who never took no for an answer. She was someone who went to the mat for whatever she believed in. If she thought something was wrong, she would go the extra mile to put it right. Now that I’m a parent, I have a better understanding of how hard she fought to keep me alive when the odds and the people around her were all telling her that I was a lost cause.

  “That’s my dad, Jake Munsey, on the end of the aisle, and my stepmom, Nancy, is seated next to him. Although my parents raised me together, some of you may never have met my dad before today. When I was so ill, it was Mom who took up the cudgels and fought for me tooth and nail while Dad worked, paid the bills, and kept food on the table. That kind of family dynamic—one where there is an extremely ill or dying child—is a recipe for tearing people apart. My parents divorced shortly after the transplant surgery, but all of them—Dad, Mom, and Nancy—were and are decent, loving people who made peace with themselves and with one another. For years we’ve all celebrated holidays together, either at Dad and Nancy’s house or at Mom’s.