by Jance, J. A.
“I’m baking one of my tuna casseroles right now. Your dad will deliver it to their house a little later. I understand Bryan’s folks moved down to Sun City a few years ago. His dad has arthritis, and the winters up here were too cold, but I’m sure they’re on their way. I don’t know about Morgan’s folks. It seems to me they’re not from around here.”
Ali didn’t know anything about Morgan Forester’s family. Wherever her parents lived, once they learned the news, their hearts, too, would be broken, but Ali suspected that no one from either side of the family would be very interested in Edie Larson’s excellent tuna casserole.
“If the house is a crime scene, it’ll be empty,” Ali said quietly. “No one will be allowed to be there.”
“You’re right, of course,” Edie said after a pause. “Well, then, I’ll talk to one of the neighbors and find out where your father should deliver the food once I have it ready. Now, what about Thanksgiving?”
Her seamless segue from tuna casserole to turkey and dressing left Ali momentarily confounded.
“I know you had your heart set on having everyone over to your new place,” Edie continued. “But we have to be realistic. That just isn’t going to happen. We need a new plan.”
If Edie Larson had a sentimental bone in her body, her daughter had never seen it. After spending her entire lifetime either working in or running a restaurant and being in the day-to-day business of food, Edie looked at life’s ups and downs through a framework of what needed to be cooked, where, and when. Yes, Morgan Forester’s murder was a terrible thing, but after taking care of that required tuna casserole, Edie was ready to move on to the next piece of critical culinary business—Thanksgiving dinner. Meanwhile, Ali had been so shocked by what had happened that she had yet to consider how the terrible disruptions in Bryan Forester’s life might also impact her own situation.
“Don’t worry about it, Mom,” Ali said. “I’m sure we’ll be fine.”
Ali was hanging up when Leland emerged from the house and began gathering up the tea things. She passed him her cup, cold now but still half full.
“You told them?” she asked.
Leland nodded somberly. “I talked to Billy, Mr. Forester’s second in command. He said that if it’s all the same to you, they’d like to come on the job tomorrow anyway. If he can get the building inspector to come out and sign off on the permits, he said they’ll be able to go ahead with the wallboarding with or without Mr. Forester. But only if you don’t mind.”
The fact that Bryan’s crew was ready and willing to move forward without him seemed commendable. “It’s fine with me,” Ali said.
Leland nodded. “Very good, madam,” he said. “I told them I’d let them know if you had any objections.”
As if on cue, the workmen emerged from the building. Carrying tool belts, tool cases, and lunch boxes, they headed first to the Mini-Mobile, the metal storage unit where they stowed tools and supplies. Leland locked it each evening after the workmen left the job site and opened it every morning before they arrived. Minutes after the workmen left, the camera crew decamped as well, but they took their load of expensive equipment along with them. Leland picked up the tray, but before he could head back to his cozy fifth wheel, Ali stopped him.
“Detective Holman asked me if Mr. Forester had been here all day,” she said casually.
Dave had come to notify Bryan Forester of his wife’s death, but Ali had no doubt the man had been in Dave’s sights as a possible perpetrator from the moment Morgan’s homicide had been reported, and Dave had already started the process of tracing Bryan’s movements.
Leland returned the heavy tray to the table. “I seem to recall he did arrive a little later than usual,” he said thoughtfully. “Most of the time he’s here early enough to park at the top of the driveway. Today I noticed that his truck was down near the bottom of the hill.”
Ali nodded. “Did he seem upset to you?” she asked.
Leland frowned. “Now that you mention it,” he said, “I believe Mr. Forester did appear to be slightly out of sorts. He spent a good part of the day talking on his phone.”
“Did he happen to mention any kind of difficulty at home?” Ali asked.
Leland gave her a wry smile. “That’s not the kind of thing one would mention to the hired help,” he said quietly. “It’s just not done. It’s getting quite cool out here,” he added. “Would you like me to light the heater?”
They had stationed a propane-fueled outdoor heater near the picnic table so the guys could have their morning coffee without freezing their butts off.
“That’s all right,” Ali said. “I think I’ll head home.”
“By the way,” he reminded her, “it is Monday. Your evening to cook, I believe. Would you like me to come by and throw something together for you?”
Ali looked at this remarkably caring man.
“Thanks for keeping me on track,” Ali said. “You’ve done more than enough for today. I’ll handle dinner.”
“Very well,” Leland said. “Will we see you in the morning?”
“If the work crew is coming, I’m coming,” Ali told him.
But as Ali pulled out of the driveway, she wasn’t thinking about getting her job done. She was thinking about two little girls, Morgan Forester’s daughters, who would have to grow up without their mother.
Poor babies, Ali said to herself. Those poor babies.
CHAPTER 2
Peter Winter left the car parked along the road half a mile away from the house and walked the rest of the way, knowing that his surgical booties would leave behind no discernible prints. Concealed behind Bryan Forester’s workshop, he watched as Morgan loaded the girls into the car to take them to catch the bus. There was a chance that she might not come straight back, but he knew that Monday mornings were when she usually caught up on paperwork.
Walking up onto the porch, he settled into the swing to wait for Morgan to return. He didn’t have to wait long. Ten minutes later, she was back. She caught sight of him sitting there as soon as she got out of the car and greeted him with a radiant smile.
“James!” she exclaimed. “What a wonderful surprise. I didn’t expect to see you until Wednesday. Why didn’t you tell me you were stopping by today?”
It astonished Peter to think that Morgan was actually glad to see him. Naturally, he hadn’t said a word to her about what she’d done wrong—that she’d crossed some invisible line and signed her own death warrant in the process. She came toward him with a pathetically happy smile, seemingly without noticing his out-of-place scrubs. Or the fully loaded syringe he had slipped into his pocket. Smiling back, he stepped off the porch and went to meet her.
James O’Conner was the name Morgan Forester knew Peter Winter by, and that was the name she had asked for when she had called in to the “work” number she had managed to lift from his cell phone. Of course, no one in the ER knew anyone named James O’Conner. In actual fact, James O’Conner didn’t exist. Had never existed.
“Somebody wanted to trade at the last minute,” Peter told her. “So here I am.”
She fell into his arms willingly, happily, and was still kissing him when he retrieved the syringe from his pocket and plunged the needle into the flesh at the base of her neck.
“What was that?” she demanded, struggling and trying to push away from him as the painful needle point pierced her skin. “What are you doing? What’s going on?”
Once the syringe was empty, he dropped it. She was still trying to escape him, but he grabbed her with both arms and held her fast. “Don’t worry,” he said. “It’s okay.”
But it wasn’t okay at all. The Versed did its work well. When she sagged helpless in his arms, he half carried and half dragged her limp body up onto the porch and settled it in the swing. Then he went back and retrieved his syringe. He couldn’t afford to leave that behind. Syringes came with identifiable serial numbers that could all too easily lead back to him.
He didn’t bother undressing
Morgan, as he had his other kills. He knew the cops would be examining every aspect of the crime scene. Mixing up the details would make it more difficult for investigating officers to match this incident with any of his others. From a practical standpoint, if he wanted the cops to focus on Morgan’s husband, he needed to downplay any sexual connections. Anger had to be paramount.
Physics had never been Peter’s strong suit. Using the hammer with Morgan already in the swing didn’t work all that well—not as well as he’d wanted. Each blow to her head sent both the swing and his target flying away from him, blunting the killing power. As a consequence, it took longer than he had expected. Once it was over, he did three things. He carefully set the bloodied hammer aside; he wanted to preserve as much blood evidence as possible. He dropped a little blood onto his hanky and put that in a baggy to keep it moist. That was what he hoped would seal Bryan Forester’s fate. Next he removed Morgan’s showy wedding band and the accompanying engagement ring with its three-carat rock. He slipped the wedding set onto his key ring along with all the others. Finally, he took his photo montage.
Once the scene was set, he made his way back to the rental car. Still in the underbrush, he slipped off the booties and then walked up to the rental car, which was sitting undisturbed where he’d left it. He had planned to put the bloodied hammer on some newspapers he’d left in the trunk for that purpose. Hearing a rapidly approaching vehicle, however, he was forced to ditch the hammer in a hurry, putting it down on the passenger-side floorboard before dashing around to the driver’s side. He managed to start the car and drive away before the approaching utility truck caught up with him.
After that, it took a while to track down Bryan Forester’s pickup truck. Peter had the addresses of Forester’s several construction sites, and he found the Dodge Ram pickup at the one on Manzanita Hills Road. The problem was there were several ongoing construction projects in the neighborhood, which resulted in far more street and foot traffic than Peter had anticipated. He made several futile trips past the truck. In the early afternoon, he got a clear shot at the bed of Bryan Forester’s pickup. The hammer needed to be visible but not obvious. He put it in the corner beside the rider’s door, a spot Bryan was unlikely to look at as he got in and out of his truck. And then, for good measure, he left a smear of blood from the hanky there as well.
Peter was hungry by then, but he didn’t dare stop to eat. He didn’t want to do anything that would call attention to his face in the wrong place at the wrong time. Instead, he headed back to Phoenix. To his dismay, he found that there had been a serious rollover semi accident on I-17 on one of the steep downgrades between Cordes Junction and Black Canyon City. DPS had been forced to shut down the highway completely for over an hour while they cleared the roadway of debris, which included several tons of rolled roofing and countless scattered bundles of shingles. By the time he managed to drop off the car and retrieve his own from the short-term lot, he was almost late for his shift at work. He would have been late if he hadn’t called his friend Brad Whitman who had been willing to punch in for him.
Peter had hoped to stop by the house long enough to upload the photos and clear his camera’s memory stick, but he had to stay focused. He was well aware that groggy doctors make mistakes, so he swilled coffee and tried to keep his mind on the job. Tomorrow, after he’d gotten some sleep, he would have plenty of time to treat himself to a victory lap on another job well done. Morgan Forester was dead, and her asshole of a husband would go to prison for it. What could be better than that?
The blue Ford 500 pulled into Bobby Salazar’s lane at the car return facility ten minutes before his shift was due to end. Bobby knew he needed to leave right on time—at four. Otherwise, depending on traffic, he might late for his five P.M. biology class at Phoenix Community College. There was a big exam scheduled for that night. Chasing after an A in the class, he couldn’t afford to be late.
With that in mind and hoping this rental return wouldn’t be a problem, he approached the vehicle, handheld card scanner in hand.
“How’s it going?” Bobby asked.
The driver was a middle-aged Anglo wearing mirrored sunglasses, a Diamondback baseball cap, running shoes, an ASU tracksuit, and a pair of leather driving gloves. Over time Bobby had come to have a very low opinion of people who wore driving gloves. They were usually arrogant and unpleasant, and this one fit that bill to a T. He didn’t bother acknowledging Bobby’s greeting. Wordlessly, he handed over his rental agreement and then got out and opened the back door, where he extracted a briefcase.
Used to being treated as a nonentity, Bobby leaned into the driver’s seat to verify both the odometer reading and amount of gas left in the tank. By the time Bobby popped the trunk, the driver was already moving away, walking briskly toward the shuttle buses that would return him to the terminal.
“Don’t you want a receipt?” Bobby called after him.
Shaking his head, the man didn’t reply. He just kept on walking. The scanner printed out the unwanted receipt automatically, and Bobby stuffed it into his pocket.
“Have a nice day, Mr. Morrison,” Bobby called. No matter how rude the customers might be, company training dictated that they should always be addressed by name. If Morrison heard him, there was no response.
“Screw you, too,” Bobby muttered under his breath. He turned back to the car and checked the trunk, certain that Mr. Morrison had forgotten to collect his luggage. Except for an array of day-old newspapers, the trunk was completely empty. That struck Bobby as odd. Briefcase-only guys usually wore the other kind of suits. Most of the time guys in sweats or running suits came complete with mountains of luggage and mounds of golf clubs, to say nothing of short-tempered wives and screaming kids.
Shrugging, Bobby returned to open first the driver’s door and then the passenger door, continuing the routine check to be sure nothing had been inadvertently left behind. He found sand and gravel on the driver’s-side floorboard. On the passenger-side floorboard carpet, he found a small rust-colored stain, smudged in a fashion that made it look as though some attempt had been made to clean it up.
Of all the attendants on the lot that afternoon, Bobby Salazar was uniquely qualified to recognize the ill-concealed stain for what it was—blood. He had seen bloody carpet before, and he had tried to clean it up with a similar lack of success.
One of his ex-roommates, Kiki Rodriguez, had been home alone when he had gotten bombed out of his gourd on Ever-clear. Nobody ever knew, because Kiki couldn’t remember and couldn’t tell them exactly how he had broken the glass that cut his hand so badly. What was clear was that he had wandered aimlessly around the apartment, bleeding like a stuck pig and leaving a trail of blood everywhere, before he finally passed out on the couch. Bobby had been the one who came home and found him there. He had called 911. The EMTs had taken Kiki off to the ER, leaving Bobby to deal with both the cops and the bloody carpet. He wasn’t sure which had taken longer, answering the cops’ questions or trying to get the damned blood out of the carpet. He had tried everything, including calling in a professional carpet cleaner, but when he had moved out of the apartment two months later, the stains had still been visible enough that Bobby had lost his security deposit.
Concerned, Bobby got out of the car and gave the rest of the front seat a thorough examination. There was no visible blood anywhere else—not on the seat or the steering wheel or the door handle. The stains were on the floorboard and nowhere else. The guy had obviously walked in it. What if he hit something? Bobby wondered. A deer, maybe. Or a dog. Please, God, not a person!
Bobby walked to the front of the vehicle and studied the bumper, looking for damage. He was relieved when he found nothing—no dents, no dings, no sign of a collision with anything, living or dead.
Two more renters had pulled into Bobby’s lane. Their luggage was already unloaded, and they were waiting impatiently for him to come check them in as well. He knew if he mentioned the presence of blood in the vehicle to one of his super
visors, there would be hell to pay. Questions would be asked. Forms would need to be filled out and filed. More than likely, Bobby would be late for class. Not only that, if he took that long with one vehicle, the guys who tracked productivity would no doubt give Bobby a black mark for slowing down the return process. You were supposed to check in so many customers per hour—or else.
Waving to one of the drivers, Bobby sent the Ford off to be washed, then turned and approached the next waiting customer. “How’s it going?” he said. “Hope you had a good trip.”
Late in the afternoon, Ali drove back to the Andante Drive mobile home, which had been left to her by her mother’s twin sister, Evie. Permanently set on a concrete footing that had been carved into the steep hillside, the place boasted a very un–mobile-homelike basement that included Christopher’s studio and Ali’s late second husband’s extensive wine collection.
Ali had lived there for the better part of a year and a half, most of that time with her son as her roommate. She hoped that by the time she finished the remodel and moved on to Arabella’s house, Chris would have married his steady girlfriend, Athena, and Ali would be able to pass the mobile home along to them. Both Chris and Athena were public high school teachers whose low salaries wouldn’t stretch very far in Sedona’s stratospheric real estate market. Not having to buy a home of their own would give them a big leg up in starting married life together. Ali liked the idea that Aunt Evie’s legacy to her would stay in the family.
Ali had never been a particularly capable cook, and she knew that what she brought home from Basha’s deli section wouldn’t be nearly as delectable as whatever Leland Brooks might have “thrown together.” She had suggested hosting the Thanksgiving festivities primarily because she knew she would have him there to backstop her. For this Monday-evening dinner, she had raided Basha’s deli counter for some enchilada casserole and a selection of salads and veggies.