J.A. Jance's Ali Reynolds Mysteries 3-Book Boxed Set, Volume 1: Web of Evil, Hand of Evil, Cruel Intent

by Jance, J. A.

Arabella nodded. “For years,” she said.

  “And the perpetrator?”

  “Bill, of course,” Arabella answered. “My stepbrother. He was almost ten years older than I was.”

  “Were you his only victim?”

  “Probably not,” Arabella said dispassionately. “I’m the only one I know of for sure, but there may have been others.”

  “You never told your parents?”

  Arabella shook her head. “It was years before I told my mother. I never mentioned it to my father, which was probably a good thing.”

  “Why?”

  “Because he had a sister, too,” Arabella said. “A younger sister. I never knew her because she died long before I was born. She committed suicide when she was only fourteen years old. She hanged herself in a closet. I learned about her for the first time a few years ago when a second cousin sent me a copy of a genealogy study he was doing.”

  “Are you saying that, based on that snippet of information, you suspect that your father victimized his younger sister the same way your stepbrother victimized you?”

  “I know he did,” Arabella said fiercely.

  “Do you have any proof?”

  “Not enough to hold up in a court of law.”

  And not enough proof to put it in a memoir, either, Ali thought. “Better make it fiction, then,” she said.

  “But if you live in a family of monsters like that,” Arabella continued without acknowledging the comment, “you know things. You know them in your soul. If you don’t figure them out on your own, you don’t survive.”

  Just running her fingers across the diary’s cover made Ali wary. “Maybe I shouldn’t read this,” she suggested.

  “Please,” Arabella said. “I really need you to, so we can discuss it.”

  Mr. Brooks returned bearing two cocktail shakers on a tray. He poured Ali’s first martini and Arabella’s third and handed them over. After two martinis, Ali would have been crawling on the floor. Arabella, sipping her third, appeared to be relatively unfazed.

  “What’s the point of all this?” Ali asked after Mr. Brooks left them alone once again. “You said yourself that your brother’s been dead for years. Why not leave the past in the past? Chances are your nephew won’t be stupid enough to bring any of this up. If he does, you can counter it when the time comes. There’s no need to…”

  “Bill was my stepbrother, not my brother,” Arabella reminded Ali. “And yes, he’s been dead for a very long time, but I’m not dead. And as long as I’m alive, what Bill did to me isn’t dead, either. What about all those other little girls who are trapped in similar situations? What about them? I used to read all those Bobbsey Twins books. Do those even still exist anymore?”

  Ali shook her head. “I don’t know.”

  “Well, the Bobbsey Twins lived in a perfect family in a perfect world. When I read those books, I kept hoping I’d find someone in the stories who was more like me, someone whose family wasn’t perfect, but I never did. None of the books I read even hinted that what was happening to me had ever happened to anyone else. As far as I knew, I was the only one.

  “And I believe that’s one of the reasons I’ve been so drawn to cutloose,” Arabella added. “I’ve read it from the very beginning. When you got fired from your job and your husband dumped you, I’ll bet you thought you were the only one who had suffered those kinds of calamities, but you weren’t. I’ve also seen you take the bad things that happened to you and transform them into good for someone else.”

  “But…”

  Arabella waved aside Ali’s objection.

  “I know there are lots of young women out there who are in the same situation right now that I was in at their age. If I can write this book—if I can get it all down and somehow get it published, maybe they’ll realize they aren’t alone. I want them to be able to believe that they can overcome whatever bad stuff is happening to them; that they can go on with their lives and be successful. I also want adults to pay more attention to what’s going on right under their noses.”

  “Writing a book is hard work,” Ali counseled. “The idea of eventually getting it published…”

  “That’s why I want you to read the diary,” Arabella said. “I value your opinion. After you read it, we can talk and you can tell me what you think. Maybe you’ll still say I’m better off letting sleeping dogs lie. But the fact that Billy thinks he can use this as a club over my head really offends me. I was the victim, Ali. If I keep quiet about this—if I let Billy push me around—then I’m a victim again. Or still.”

  Ali opened the diary and fanned through the pages. A few of them had been written on. Most of them were blank.

  “As you can see, reading it won’t take long,” Arabella added. “I was given the diary on the occasion of my ninth birthday, and I wasn’t very good about keeping it up. You’re far more faithful at writing cutloose than I ever was at keeping the diary.”

  Ali didn’t want to accept this assignment. She didn’t want to have anything to do with Arabella Ashcroft’s benighted book project. On the other hand, considering what Arabella and her mother had done for Ali all those years earlier, she didn’t feel as though she had a choice.

  “All right,” she agreed at last, reluctantly slipping the diary into her purse. “But I’m not making any promises that I’ll be able to help.”

  “Wonderful,” Arabella said with a brilliant smile. “I can’t ask for more than that.”

  Just then the double doors swung open and the butler entered the room once more. “Would you like me to clear now, madam?” he asked. He had evidently decided on his own that three martinis amounted to Arabella’s limit. He was cutting her off.

  “Yes, Mr. Brooks,” Arabella said. “Thank you. That would be very nice. And after that, feel free to take the rest of the evening off. I don’t think I’ll be needing anything more. I’ll just toddle off to bed.”

  Ali noticed that Arabella’s tongue seemed slightly thick—that she was stumbling over the words.

  After that many martinis, I wouldn’t be needing anything more, either, Ali thought. I’d be comatose.

  Mr. Brooks led Ali back through the front hallway and out into the front driveway where he opened the door to Ali’s Porsche Cayenne SUV. “Do come again,” he said graciously.

  Ali smiled and nodded. “I will,” she said.

  Still she drove away feeling uneasy. What have I gotten myself into now? she wondered. And how much of Arabella’s story was the truth and how much was drunken rambling?

  Ali’s intention was to head straight home, but a phone call from an escrow officer at the title company detoured her. Left to unload her deceased husband’s real estate holdings, Ali’s first plan had been to empty the house on L.A.’s Robert Lane and then list it. In talking to a real estate agent, however, the suggestion had been made that she consider selling it on a turn-key basis with all the furnishings and artwork intact. Ali had thought finding a buyer on those terms was unlikely, but in that respect she was wrong. Within days she had a full-price offer.

  The buyers were people who had just won an amazing Power-ball jackpot and who wanted to move up into newer and classier digs without having to do any of the work on their own. They were ready to buy everything, pots and pans and linens included. In the back of Ali’s mind, the distrustful, snarky part, she wondered if her agent had been straight with her. It seemed likely that the agent must have known that those particularly needy purchasers were out there. It made Ali wonder if maybe the advice from the Realtor had been less impartial than it should have been. Maybe she could have gotten more.

  But the truth was, Ali Reynolds was glad to be done with the Los Angeles house and was more than ready to let it go. She had balked at unloading a few items—the Limoges china she had chosen when she and Paul married; the leather couch from the family room; and Paul’s extensive wine collection along with the water-damaged credenza. Other than those, however, Ali had accepted the purchasers’ offer and had let everything els
e go without a second thought.

  “I know our closing appointment is scheduled for tomorrow,” said Linda Highsmith of Highsmith Red Rock Title. “But the papers are here now, ready to be signed. Unfortunately, I have a conflict tomorrow. I know it’s late, but if you could possibly come by this afternoon…”

  “Sure,” Ali said. “I’ll be right there.”

  It was close to five. Most of the uptown area was a maze of road construction. Once through that, the traffic on Sedona’s main drag to the far side of town was maddeningly slow as well, so Ali wasn’t “right there” nearly as fast as she thought she’d be, but Linda was delighted when she finally did show up.

  “I really appreciate this,” Linda said, ushering Ali into a conference room. “It’s only a parent/teacher conference, and I didn’t find out about it until just this afternoon. I suppose I could have handed the closing off to someone else, but…”

  “It doesn’t matter,” Ali said. “I’m glad to get it out of the way today.”

  The whole process took the better part of an hour. “Once the purchasers sign and the sale is recorded, the funds will be deposited in the account you’ve designated,” Linda explained as they finished up. “This is only our good-faith estimate of the moneys due to you. The actual amount may vary slightly from this.”

  Alison Reynolds looked down at the line Linda indicated. The amount written there was more than substantial. It amounted to more money than Ali ever would have imagined accumulating in her lifetime.

  And Linda Highsmith, who had also grown up in Sedona, seemed to be thinking much the same thing. “Small-town girl makes good,” she said with an envious smile. “It must feel pretty incredible.”

  Ali nodded and smiled back as best she could, but the truth was, it didn’t feel all that terrific. This unexpected real estate windfall was coming to her not because she personally had earned or deserved it, but because she had married well—from a financial point of view, at least, and because Paul had died before their divorce became final. In Ali’s book, neither of those two items really qualified as “making good.”

  “I guess that remains to be seen,” she said.

  { CHAPTER 4 }

  The truth was, Ali left the title company office knowing she had money coming her way, but feeling more burdened by that fact rather than less. Ali briefly considered going by to see her parents, but decided against it. She usually enjoyed being around Bob and Edie Larson, but the last time she had seen them, her mother had been all over her about being “down in the mouth.” Edie had asked several pointed questions about what Ali was doing to “get herself back on track.”

  Not wanting to risk being lectured by the parental units, Ali drove back home where she was delighted to see Chris’s Prius already parked in the driveway. Chris’s energy and cheerfulness were usually welcome antidotes for her current bout with unaccustomed torpor.

  “Hey, Mom,” he said, looking up from the evening news as she walked in. With his blond hair suitably moussed and spiked, the six-foot-one Christopher could have easily passed for one of the new breed of weather reporters showing up on the tube. Chris had gotten in the habit of watching television news back in the old days when his mother was often on screen. Ali was pretty much over her own TV news addiction. Chris wasn’t. He sat on the couch with Sam stretched out next to his leg.

  “My night to cook,” Chris told her. “Pizza’s on the counter in the kitchen.”

  Ali had grown up in a household at the back of a restaurant. Her parents were both professional cooks. As a consequence learning to cook had never been a priority—she had never needed to. When she had been married the first time, to Chris’s father, she had cooked enough to get by, but that was all. When she had married Paul, she had moved into a place where yet another professional cook, Elvira Jimenez, had held sway over the kitchen. Besides, Ali’s news anchor duties had precluded her being anywhere near home during meal prep time.

  The upshot of all that meant that not only was Ali not a capable cook, neither was her son. Between them, they subsisted on takeout and leftovers sent over from the Sugarloaf.

  Ali went over to the counter and scooped up a napkin and a piece of still steaming pepperoni pizza. She stared down at the message book beside the telephone.

  “Dave called?” she asked.

  Dave was Detective Dave Holman, a fellow alum of Mingus Mountain High, where he had graduated a year before Ali. He had served in the U.S. Marine Corps and, along with his work as a homicide detective for the Yavapai County Sheriff’s Department, he was still a member of the Marine Reserves. During the years Ali had been away from Sedona, Dave had established a firm friendship with her parents. Now he was her friend as well. Months earlier, during that awful time in California after Paul’s murder, Dave had been at Ali’s side every step of the way.

  “Yup,” Chris said. “Wanted to know if you’d be home later. Said he’d like to stop by. I told him as far as I knew you’d be here. I also told him if he’s not too good to turn up his nose at pizza he’d be welcome to have dinner. Tuesday is the two-for-one special, so we have plenty.”

  Pizza was their usual Tuesday night fare, and Chris usually spent the remainder of the evening playing city league basketball down at the high school gym. Much as Ali enjoyed her son’s company, she was also accustomed to having the house to herself on the evenings he played ball, taking advantage of the solitude to work on her blog entries and go through her readers’ comments. Tonight, if time allowed, she had planned to delve into Arabella’s diary. There was a part of her that resented the fact that Chris had seen fit to invite company over without consulting her first, especially when he had no intention of being at home.

  “Oh,” Chris added. “And Gramps called. He wanted to know if you knew where Kip went.”

  “Kip?” Ali returned. “I have no idea. He was here earlier this afternoon, but I haven’t seen him since.”

  “That’s what I told Gramps—that since the credenza was there in the entryway, Kip must have come by. He said not to worry; something probably came up. I could hear Grandma grousing in the background—that Kip had probably fallen off the wagon and gone out and wrecked Grandpa’s precious Bronco. There’d be hell to pay if that happened.”

  Bob Larson’s vintage Bronco was precious all right. Ali reached for the phone. “Did Grandpa want me to call?”

  Chris unfolded his long legs from the couch, dislodged Sam, and came over to the counter where he collected another piece of pizza.

  “Depends on how brave you are,” he said. “It sounded to me like he and Grandma were going at it pretty hot and heavy. If I were you, I’d wait awhile and give them a chance to cool off.”

  Ali found a soda in the fridge and brought it to the counter. She was several bites into her pizza before she spoke again. “I signed the papers on the Robert Lane house,” she said.

  “The sale went through then?”

  “As long as the buyers sign, too.”

  “Good,” Chris said. “I’m glad that’s all behind you.”

  Except it wasn’t all behind Ali. Selling the house would go a long way toward allowing Ali to finally straighten out Paul Grayson’s financial obligation to his daughter—an out-of-wedlock child whose mother had refused, on religious grounds, Paul’s offer to pay for an abortion. That whole issue was still an unsettling obstacle to Ali as she attempted to move forward and consign her deceased husband to where he belonged—as a fading image in her rearview mirror.

  Something in Ali’s facial expression must have betrayed what she was thinking. “Are you okay?” Chris asked.

  “Of course, I’m okay,” Ali answered abruptly. “Why wouldn’t I be?”

  “Don’t bite my head off,” Chris replied. “And I asked because you don’t look okay. You look upset. You’ve been upset for weeks now.”

  You’re almost as bad as my parents, Ali thought.

  “I’m okay,” she repeated, but just because she said it didn’t necessarily make it so. She go
t up from the table, tossed the rest of her pizza into the disposal, and made a show of loading the few dirty dishes into the dishwasher. Once that was done, she went into the bedroom to get out of the tea-drinking attire she’d worn to Arabella Ashcroft’s house and into something a little more comfortable—a pair of well-worn sweats. When she emerged, Chris had disappeared.

  Without knowing when Dave would show up, Ali was reluctant to start reading Arabella’s diary. Instead, she reached for her laptop, but before she had time to log on, the doorbell rang. Peering outside, she found Dave Holman standing on her front porch. With his hands stuffed in his pockets, he had turned away from the door and seemed to be staring off at the last of the sunlight on the distant red rock formations.

  Determined not to let him gripe at her about her current emotional state, Ali opened the door with a flourish and was going to make some smart-mouthed comment. When she glimpsed the grim set of Dave’s lean, square-jawed face, she stifled.

  “Come in,” she said. “What’s wrong?”

  Stepping inside, Dave grimaced. “It’s that apparent?”

  “Evidently,” Ali responded. “What’s up?”

  “It’s Crystal,” he said. “She ran away.”

  Crystal was Dave’s twelve-year-old daughter. Dave’s three kids—sixteen-year-old Rich and two daughters, including eight-year-old Cassie, lived with their mother, Roxanne, and her second husband, a time-share salesman with a none-too-sparkly reputation.

  “From Lake Havasu?” Ali asked.

  Dave gave Ali a look and then dropped heavily onto the sofa. “From Vegas,” he said. “They moved to Vegas the first of October, remember? Cassie and Rich seem to have adjusted all right, but not Crystal. Roxie called me about it just a little while ago.”

  Listening to the news, Ali took a hit in the guilt department. She had been so caught up in her own miseries that she hadn’t been paying any attention to her friend’s difficulties. The last Ali remembered Dave’s kids had still been living in Lake Havasu with their mother and her new husband. She had no recollection about them having moved to Vegas.