by J. A. Jance
At two that afternoon, her heart filled with misgivings, Ali headed for Sedona Shadows. As Edie prepared to leave the unit, she was as skittish as a new mother leaving her child with a babysitter for the first time.
“Bobby usually has a snack of some kind when he first wakes up from his nap,” she told her daughter. “There’s some angel food cake in the fridge and some butterscotch pudding as well. After his snack he generally watches TV. He likes Major League Baseball best, but I don’t know if there are any games on today.”
“Don’t worry, Mom,” Ali said. “Dad and I will figure it out.”
“And if he’s upset or if he doesn’t know who you are…” Edie’s voice faded, and she left the sentence unfinished. She stood in the doorway of the unit, purse in hand, as if reluctant to leave.
“Just go,” Ali urged. “We’ll be fine.”
Betsy appeared in the corridor behind Edie. “Ali’s right, you know,” she said. “They really will be fine. Now, come on. We don’t want to be late.”
“We won’t be long,” Edie said, “not more than an hour or so.”
“Take however long you need,” Ali said, “and be sure to bring back some photos.”
Once Betsy and Edie departed, Ali settled into what was generally considered to be her mother’s chair in the tiny space that passed for the unit’s living room. As she waited for her father to awaken, she hauled the iPad out of her purse and began listening to the latest Daniel Silva novel. She’d given up on her self-imposed force-feeding of classics for the moment in favor of reading straight-out old-fashioned thrillers. She’d been there only fifteen minutes or so when she heard a thumping noise from the bedroom. Moments later her father appeared in the doorway. He stood there for a moment, leaning on a cane—something Ali hadn’t seen him use before—and stared at his daughter.
“Who are you?” he demanded. “And what are you doing in my house?”
Edie had hinted about this, and Ali had tried to prepare herself for the possibility that her father might not recognize her. Still, when it happened, it felt as if a bucket of ice water had splashed across her body. Given the circumstances, Ali decided her best bet would be to sidestep the question rather than provoke some kind of direct confrontation. Since Bob Larson didn’t appear to realize Ali was his daughter, there was no point in her claiming Edie was her mom.
“Edie had to go out for a while,” Ali answered noncommittally. “She asked me to look in on you until she gets back.”
“I’m perfectly capable of looking after myself,” Bob muttered gruffly, dropping into his chair. “I don’t need looking after.”
“Of course you don’t,” Ali agreed, “but can I get you something? I believe there’s angel food cake and maybe some butterscotch pudding in the fridge.”
“I like both,” Bob said.
“Would you like some of each?”
“Please,” he said, giving Ali a wink. “But don’t tell my mother,” he added. “She doesn’t approve of my eating snacks just before dinner.”
Fighting back tears, Ali fled to the small kitchenette on the far side of the room. Her father’s parents had been dead long before Ali arrived on the scene. No doubt Bob was confusing his wife’s disapproval with that of his deceased mother.
Ali took her time cutting the cake and dishing up the pudding, using those few extra moments to pull herself together. She noticed a serving tray on the counter and guessed that was probably there so Bob could eat in his chair rather than having to move to the table.
By the time she delivered the promised snack Ali had a tightly controlled smile glued to her face. “Here you are,” she said.
He looked up at her and frowned. “Who did you say you are again?” he asked. “You look familiar, but I just can’t come up with the name.”
“Ali,” she said. “My name is Ali, short for Alison.”
“Pretty name,” he said thoughtfully, taking a bite of angel food cake. “Very pretty. Do you live around here?”
“In town.”
After that a long silence fell over the room. Ali had no idea what to say. “Where’s Edie again?” Bob asked finally.
“She needed to run some errands. I believe she and her friend Betsy were going to stop by to see Chris and Athena and their new baby.”
“Oh, yes, the baby. What’s his name again?”
Ali had to swallow the lump in her throat before she could answer. “Logan,” she murmured. “I believe his name is Logan James.”
“That’s a strange one. I don’t think I’ve ever met anyone named Logan before. Have you?”
“I don’t believe I have,” Ali said.
Another long silence followed. Ali felt as though her heart would explode. How could she sit here talking with her father who looked at her as though she were a complete stranger? And how could her mother have managed to keep her husband’s downward spiral so completely under wraps? And if this was hard on Ali, how much harder must it be for her mother! Having your husband of sixty-some years confuse you with his mother had to be emotionally devastating.
Desperate for something to fill the silence, Ali picked up the remote. “Would you like to watch TV?” she asked.
“Sure,” Bob said agreeably. “But not the news. I don’t like the news anymore. Most of the time, I don’t know what any of those kids are talking about.”
Wielding the remote, Ali was unable to find a baseball game. They ended up watching a rerun episode of Star Trek: Voyager. Bob watched with seemingly avid interest. Ali didn’t hear a word of it. She was lost in thought.
Betsy and Edie returned about four fifteen. They’d been gone only an hour and a half, but as far as Ali was concerned, it felt like forever.
“How are things?” Edie asked anxiously.
Her question was addressed to Ali, but Bob was the one who answered. “Things are fine,” he said. “Why wouldn’t they be? When’s dinner?”
Betsy insisted on hauling out her phone and showing off a flock of photos. Out of politeness, Ali lingered long enough to look at them, but as soon as she could do so, she fled.
And cried all the way home.
|CHAPTER 10|
BLACK CANYON CITY, ARIZONA
Harvey was elated. The home inspection had gone better than he’d expected. He’d looked around and told the young couple exactly what they wanted to hear: that the roof was probably good for another five years. It wasn’t. Anyone with a brain could see that the shingles were ready to give up the ghost. Harvey had told them the water heater would last a couple more years at least. That wasn’t true either. It was already beyond its expected lifetime. There were cracks in the foundation that hinted there might be problems with the slab, but he told them that was no big deal. When the inspection was over, the buyers were relieved to have heard such good news. As for their real-estate agent? Cynthia Waller was overjoyed. She met up with Harvey on his way back to Sedona and handed him a six-hundred-dollar cash bonus over and above what he’d receive once the sale closed in escrow. In Cynthia’s book a top-grade home inspection called for some extra monetary emoluments.
As he drove north on I-17 with some cash in his pocket, Harvey’s thoughts drifted back to the past. Detective Manning had been nice enough the day he told Harvey that his mother had gone missing. He told Broomy that at five o’clock in the morning his father, Leo, had placed a call to 911 to report that his wife was nowhere to be found. When he discovered she’d never come to bed, he went looking for both her and her dog, who was also among the missing. There was snow on the ground by then, but no sign of footsteps leaving the house. Leo had called for the dog and had eventually located the animal shut up in the shed, but there was no trace of his wife anywhere and no sign of a struggle either. Search and Rescue had been called in, but so far they, too, had been unable to locate the missing woman.
“Mind if I take a look at your arms and hands?” Detective Manning asked.
Broomy dutifully rolled up his sleeves and held both arms out for inspection
. He guessed that the cop was looking to see if he’d been in some kind of physical confrontation. He had, but the brass knuckles meant that his fingers were clear of any signs of bruising, and the fact that he had struck down his mother from behind with no advance warning meant there were zero scratches to be found on his arms and no bloodstains, either.
“So where were you last night?” a seemingly satisfied Manning asked finally.
“A party,” Broomy replied.
“What kind of party?”
“Do I have to say?”
The detective nodded. “You’d better.”
“I don’t want to get anyone in trouble.”
“Why? What was it, a kegger?”
Broomy nodded reluctantly.
“Where?”
“At my friend Tony’s house.”
“Tony who?”
“Tony DeLuca. His folks are out of town this week.”
“And you were there all night?”
Broomy nodded again.
“From when to when?”
“From about eight or so until just a little while ago. Tony saw something about this on TV and gave me a ride home.”
“I’ll need the names of the guys at the party.”
“Like I said, I don’t want to get anybody in trouble.”
“Look,” Manning said, “I’m not planning to bust anyone for underage drinking. I need some way to verify your whereabouts at the time your mother went missing.”
“You mean like I need an alibi or something?”
Manning nodded. “Exactly like an alibi. Our K-9 unit was able to track your mother’s steps from the house to the shed. After that she simply vanishes. That means there’s a good chance we’re dealing with foul play here, rather than just a simple disappearance. That’s why we need to know where everyone associated with the household was and what they were doing at the time she disappeared. Do you know where your father was?”
“No, sir,” he said.
Broomy knew exactly where his father would have been—drunk as a skunk in the bedroom. He’d already been a long way down that road when Tony came by to pick Broomy up earlier in the evening. Knowing that Tony’s dad was friends with several city cops, Broomy worried about throwing him and the other guys at the party under the bus, but he needed an alibi in the worst way, and giving out their names was his only option. After another bit of hemming and hawing, Broomy reeled off several names, including those of the guys who’d been fast asleep in the living room once he returned to Tony’s house.
“Is that all?” Broomy asked as the detective finished jotting down the information.
Manning shook his head. “Not exactly,” he said. “Tell me about your folks.”
“What about them?”
“Do they get along?”
Broomy shrugged his shoulders. “I guess,” he said. “I mean, they argue sometimes like people do, but they get along most of the time.”
As long as Dad gave the bitch everything she wanted, Broomy thought, but he didn’t say that aloud.
“Was there any kind of disagreement yesterday?” Manning asked. “Anything that stands out?”
When Tony had come by to pick Broomy up, Ida Mae had been screeching at Dad and calling him a drunken bum, but that wasn’t anything unusual—more like a daily occurrence. His dad went to work every day, brought home his paycheck and a few bottles of booze here and there, and what did he get for his trouble? A bitching-out more often than not. And that was something Broomy simply couldn’t understand. Why the hell did his father put up with Ida Mae? Why didn’t he just tell her to go to hell?
“Nothing that stands out,” Broomy answered.
“What about the marriage?” Manning asked. “Any hints that it might have been in trouble?”
“You mean like a divorce or something?”
Manning nodded.
“Never!” Broomy declared. “My parents are Catholic.”
And that was the truth. No matter how bad things got between them, neither Leo nor Ida Mae would ever have considered filing for a divorce. With any kind of luck and with his mother gone, maybe now Broomy’s father would be able to find someone who actually gave a damn about him.
“What about money problems?” Manning asked.
Broomy shook his head. “Not that I know of,” he said. “I mean, they always seemed to have enough.”
That was an outright lie. According to his mother, there was never enough money to go around. However much there was, she always wanted more.
“All right, then,” Manning said, shutting down the recorder. “I guess that’s it.”
“So I can go now?” Broomy asked. “I can go home?”
“Probably not,” Manning said. “Your house is currently designated as a crime scene. Is there somewhere else you could stay?”
“Where’s my dad?”
“He’s currently a person of interest in your mother’s disappearance. Detectives are speaking to him at the moment, and I have no idea when that process will come to an end. When that happens, however, I doubt he’ll be allowed to go back to your home either.”
“Where’s Rocco?”
“With no one at the residence to take care of him, we’ve handed him over to Animal Control for the time being. He’ll be looked after. You don’t need to worry about him. They won’t put him down or anything. When you’re able to return home, he’ll be able to go with you.”
Broomy considered his very short list of options. “I guess I could stay with Tony,” he suggested.
“Fair enough,” Manning said, pushing back in his chair. “I’ll have one of our deputies give you a lift.”
It was three whole weeks before Broomy, his dad, and Rocco were allowed to return home. By then his father had lost twenty pounds and looked like a dead man walking. Surprisingly enough, he’d quit drinking. For Leo McCluskey booze was a thing of the past. Instead he sat at the chipped Formica kitchen table drinking endless cups of coffee and wondering aloud how in the world the cops could suspect that he’d done something to his Ida Mae.
Somehow Broomy hadn’t tumbled to the idea that his father would be the prime suspect in his mother’s disappearance. He’d just assumed that Leo would be as relieved as he was to have her gone, but that wasn’t the case. Leo was utterly devastated. Three weeks later Broomy came home from school to find the house empty. When he discovered that the door to his father’s gun cabinet had been left unlocked and open, on a hunch he went looking in the shed.
There, at the foot of the workbench stool, Broomy McCluskey found his father’s body. Leo had used his shotgun to blow his brains out. The weapon lay on the floor beside him, mere inches from his hand. Broomy was so shocked by the blood and gore that he almost threw up on the spot. Close to fainting, he staggered over to lean on the workbench to keep from falling. And that’s when he saw it. On the workbench was a note scrawled in Leo McCluskey’s distinctive hand.
I loved my wife. Whatever happened to her, I didn’t do it.
Leo Ray McCluskey
Understanding the significance of what was essentially a deathbed denial, Broomy had the presence of mind to pocket the note. He took it into the house, placed it in one of his father’s ashtrays, and set it on fire. Only when he had flushed the ashes down the toilet did he pick up the phone and call 911.
“You’ve got to send someone!” he shouted into the phone. “I think my dad just committed suicide!”
And that was pretty much the end of the investigation into whatever had happened to Ida Mae McCluskey. Her case remained on the books as an open missing-persons case rather than a homicide, but in reality it was essentially closed. After his father’s funeral, Broomy’s situation in town was forever changed. He was now the poor kid whose father had murdered his mother. Tony DeLuca’s folks, Candace and Oscar, were good people. When it became clear that Broomy had nowhere to go, they stepped up and offered to take in not only Broomy but also Rocco. They looked after him all through high school, treating him as if he we
re a second son as opposed to a foster child. They helped oversee the sale of the place on German Gulch Road and made sure the paltry proceeds were held in trust for Broomy until he came of age. They were the ones who attended his high school graduation, saw him off when he joined the army, and welcomed him home with a party when he returned to Butte on leave after finishing basic training. Broomy was struck by the stark differences between Ida Mae McCluskey and Mrs. DeLuca. If Ida Mae had been half the woman Candace DeLuca was, she wouldn’t have died to begin with.
Eight years later all of what had happened back then was mostly forgotten. The name Broomy had disappeared from the conscious memories of everyone except for a few high school classmates. Thanks to the United States government, the boy once known as Broomy was referred to by his birth name, Harvey. Having attained the rank of staff sergeant, he was still in the army and stationed in Wiesbaden, Germany, when he was summoned to his commanding officer’s presence and told he should wait for a phone call.
When it came in, the man on the line identified himself as none other than that long-ago detective Ray Manning, only now he was Sheriff Ray Manning.
“I’m calling with some difficult news,” he told Harvey. “After all these years, we’ve found and identified your mother’s remains.”
“You have?” Harvey stammered. This was news he had never expected or wanted to hear. “Where?”
“With Anaconda mostly shut down, the EPA has come in to clean up the hazardous waste the company left behind,” Sheriff Manning explained. “When they drained one of the standing mine-water ponds near where you used to live, we found human remains. We identified your mother’s body through dental records.”
For a time Harvey was too overcome to speak. “What happened to her?” he managed finally.
“The medical examiner determined that she died from a blow to the back of the neck. A vertebra at the top of her spine had been broken in several places,” Manning told him. “We’re now treating her death as a homicide, but given there’s only ever been one suspect…”
Harvey’s hand went to his chest and to his mother’s wedding ring, which he wore every day, hidden under his uniform and dangling from the gold chain he’d given himself as a high school graduation present.
