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.

  Haley Marsh, along with her maternal grandmother, Nelda Harris, had moved to Cottonwood a little over two years earlier from Tuttle, Oklahoma. Haley had enrolled in Mingus Mountain as a very pregnant fifteen-year-old sophomore. Despite being an unmarried teenage mother, Haley had managed to maintain a solid 3.2 GPA for as long as she’d attended Mingus Mountain. Nelda, who worked as a school janitor in the afternoons and evenings, looked after the baby during the day while Haley was at school, and on weekends while Haley held a part-time job as a cashier at the local Target.

  Faye Gerrard, Haley’s homeroom teacher and her junior-year English teacher, was the one who had brought Haley to Leland Brooks’s attention. “The girl is smarter than she knows,” Faye had told Leland. “What she’s lacking is self-confidence. I don’t think anyone else in her family has ever gone on to college. She’s somehow decided that since they didn’t, she won’t, either.”

  Haley’s file left more questions than it offered answers. Where were Haley’s parents? Why weren’t they in the picture or even mentioned? And what about the baby’s father? Where was he? Who was he?

  Ali Reynolds found it easy to relate to both girls. Like them, she had been a second-tier student. For her, receiving the Askins Scholarship was the one thing that had made going on to school possible. She suspected the same would be true for either Marissa or Haley. One would have to overcome tough physical realities. As for Haley? Ali knew that being a single parent and going to school wasn’t easy, but she also knew it could be done. Ali Reynolds herself was proof positive of that.

  Marissa had a definite career goal in mind. The information on Haley gave no hint as to what her possible career choices might be, but Ali didn’t find that particularly alarming. After all, how many high school seniors already knew exactly what they wanted to be when they grew up?

  Ali abandoned her spot at the picnic table when the workers came wandering outside for lunch. Relieved to leave the construction behind, she grabbed some lunch on the way and then stopped by a Hallmark store and searched until she found just the right card for Chris and Athena. After ordering a bouquet of flowers to be delivered to the high school gym in time for their engagement celebration, she headed for Cottonwood.

  It wasn’t until she was alone in the car that she started thinking about Morgan Forester again—about Morgan and Bryan, about how the love two people once shared for each other could go horribly wrong. After all, when she had first met Paul Grayson, he had showered her with flowers, one arrangement after another, so many that her friends at work had teased her about being able to open her own flower shop. The onslaught of bouquets had started to dwindle shortly after their wedding, and the deliveries had ended completely long before Paul had ended up dead under that speeding freight train.

  Ali was relieved when she arrived at Haley Marsh’s place, a modest duplex on the far-east side of Cottonwood. When Ali knocked, she heard a toddler, crowing and babbling, come racing to answer it.

  “Get out of the way,” Ali heard a woman’s voice order from inside the house. “Let me open it.” Ali recognized the gentle drawl that betrayed the mother’s Oklahoma origins.

  The child must have stepped aside because eventually the door opened. Haley Marsh was a petite blue-eyed blonde. One arm was filled with an overflowing laundry basket, while a wide-eyed child with chocolate-brown skin and a cap of curly black hair peeked shyly out from behind his mother’s leg. Looking at him, Ali estimated that he had to be right around two years old.

  “Haley Marsh?” Ali asked. “My name is Ali Reynolds.”

  Haley nodded, but she didn’t open the door to welcome Ali inside. “Mrs. Gerrard said you’d be dropping by today,” Haley said guardedly. “She mentioned something about your wanting to talk to me about a scholarship, but I haven’t applied for any scholarships.”

  “May I come in?” Ali asked.

  Haley sighed and set down her laundry basket. “I guess,” she said. “But the place is sort of a mess.” She hefted the child onto her hip and motioned Ali into the room. The crammed living room wasn’t really a mess so much as it was lived in. A playpen empty except for a collection of outgrown toys was jammed into one corner of the room along with a changing table. Baby gear and more toys were scattered everywhere. Half the dining room table was covered with stacks of folded laundry. An open schoolbook and a notebook of some kind lay on the other end of the table as though an afternoon study session had been interrupted by Ali’s arrival. A high chair, littered with the remains of the toddler’s afternoon snack, sat nearby.

  Still holding the squirming child, Haley ushered Ali over to a sagging couch, then she took a seat on a nearby straight-backed chair. As soon as she was seated, the barefoot baby scrambled out of her lap and scooped up a tiny plastic truck from the floor. With a face-wide grin, he brought the toy to Ali and offered it to her. Ali accepted the proffered gift with a thank-you. The child clapped his hands in glee, said something that sounded very much like “truck,” and then dashed off in search of another one.

  “Good sharing,” Haley told her son. To Ali, she added, “He likes having company.”

  “He’s adorable,” Ali said. “What’s his name.”

  “Liam,” Haley answered. “After my grandfather.”

  Not after his father, Ali thought. She couldn’t help wondering how this clearly African-American child would go about explaining his very Irish first name as he grew up. And was the fact that Haley had been expecting a mixed-race child part of why she and her grandmother had pulled up stakes and moved to Arizona?

  “I’m here on behalf of the Amelia Dougherty Askins Scholarship fund,” Ali explained. “The first Askins Scholarship was given to me years ago, when I was a senior in high school, and it made all the difference. My parents own the Sugarloaf Café in Sedona. At that point they had a viable business but not much money. Without the scholarship, I wouldn’t have been able to go on to college; with it, I could and did. They say what goes around comes around. Now I’ve been put in charge of distributing the scholarship that was so helpful to me.

  “You’ve been brought to our attention as an especially deserving student. I wanted to have an opportunity to talk to you about it. I wanted to see if your receiving a scholarship from us would help you go on to college.”

  “With him here and getting into everything, it’s hard enough just going to high school,” Haley said. “How could I possibly go on to college?”

  “But you’d like to?” Ali pressed.

  “I suppose so,” Haley admitted a little wistfully. “But I hadn’t really thought about it.”

  “What were you planning to do instead?” Ali asked.

  “Work,” Haley answered. “My manager at Target promised me a full-time position once I graduate. All I want to do is earn enough so Liam and I can rent a place of our own. Give Grandma a little peace and quiet for a change. She already raised me. It’s not fair that she’s having to raise him, too.”

  “If you could do anything you wanted, what kind of work would you choose?” Ali asked.

  “I suppose I’d be a nurse,” Haley said without hesitation. “I’d also like to be Santa Claus or the Easter Bunny. The chances of that happening aren’t very good, either. For now all I want is to graduate from high school and for Liam and me to be on our own.”

  “But if someone would help you,” Ali began. “If someone offered to help pay your way—”

  Liam came back over to his mother, scrambled up into her lap, and cuddled up against her breast. Ali knew that, as a general rule, it was a bad idea for babies to have babies, but clearly, Haley Marsh was a good mother—an exceptionally good mother.

  “If you had a better education, there’d be more opportunities for Liam,” Ali said. “And more opportunities for you, too.”

  Suddenly, Haley’s bright blue eyes sparked in anger. “You don’t know that,” she declared hotly. “You don’t know anything about us. You don’t get to come in here with your fancy checkbook and think that gives
you the right to judge us or tell us what we should do or shouldn’t do.”

  “I didn’t mean—”

  “Yes, you did,” Haley interrupted. “But this is my baby. I had him on my own, and I’m raising him on my own. Grandma’s been wonderful to us. I don’t know how we would have made it without her. But I’ll be eighteen in May. It’s not fair to ask her to do any more. It’s time for us to move out and be on our own. I can’t do that and go to school, too. So thanks for the scholarship offer, but no thanks.”

  It wasn’t quite the response Ali had expected. She had thought Haley would be as thrilled as Ali herself had been to learn she was even under consideration for a possible scholarship. She never expected that her offer would be turned down cold.

  “This is important. Before you decide, shouldn’t you at least discuss it with your grandmother?” Ali asked. “Yes, if you go on to school, it may take a few years longer for you and Liam to be out on your own, but obviously, your grandmother loves you very much. Surely she wouldn’t mind—”

  “No,” Haley insisted. “I don’t want it. We’ll be fine. Give it to someone else.”

  “But—”

  “I’m not going to ask her,” Haley said. “My grandmother looks after Liam while I’m at school, and then she works from four o’clock in the afternoon until midnight. She can’t go on working that hard forever. It’s bad enough that she’s doing it while I’m in high school. I couldn’t ask her to do the same thing so I can go to college. I can’t and I won’t. She’s done enough for us already. Now go, please. I’ve got homework to do.”

  “Won’t you please reconsider?” Ali asked.

  Haley was having none of it. “Thank you but no thanks,” she said. “I appreciate the offer.”

  Rebuffed, Ali stood up and held out the toy truck. Liam scrambled out of his mother’s lap and dashed over to collect it. As Ali made her way to the door, she opened her purse and pulled out a business card, which she handed over to Haley. “Given the cost of tuition, books, and room and board, the scholarship could turn out to be a substantial amount of money over the next several years,” she said. “If you happen to change your mind…”

  Haley took the card and then dropped it on a nearby end table. “Right,” she said. “I’ll let you know.”

  Moments later, feeling as though she’d been given the bum’s rush, Ali found herself in the yard outside.

  What kind of a salesman does that make me? she wondered. I can’t even give money away.

  CHAPTER 5

  With both Ricky Farraday and Haley Marsh officially out of the running, Marissa Dvorak was the only remaining candidate for that year’s scholarship. Ali’s appointment with Marissa was scheduled for tomorrow. In the meantime, awash in a sense of failure, she headed back to Sedona. She couldn’t help but contrast the ecstatic, grateful way she had felt when Anna Lee Ashcroft had told Ali about her scholarship with the way Haley Marsh had received similar news.

  Ali picked up the phone and dialed Leland’s number. “How’d it go?” he asked.

  “Not well,” Ali told him. “Haley Marsh told me to take my scholarship and shove it, then she threw me out of the house.”

  “She wasn’t interested?”

  “You could say so. She was vehemently not interested. Not interested in going on to school and not interested in receiving a scholarship.”

  “That wasn’t the impression I got from speaking with her grandmother,” Leland replied. “It sounded as though she was interested in Haley continuing on to university.”

  “You talked to Nelda Harris about the scholarship?” Ali asked.

  “Only in the most general terms,” Leland replied. “I led her to believe Haley was being considered for some kind of academic award, but I didn’t mention the scholarship per se.”

  “Then grandmother and granddaughter need to get on the same page,” Ali told him. “At this rate, we’ll be lucky if we award an Askins Scholarship this year.”

  “Don’t be discouraged,” Leland counseled. “There’s always Marissa Dvorak.”

  “She’ll probably throw me out, too,” Ali said despairingly. “What’s happening on your end?”

  “Bryan Forester came by and dropped off another load of wallboard,” Leland said. “Dropped it off and unloaded it, too. The crew had run out of materials and gone home.”

  “He unloaded it by himself?” Ali asked. “That stuff is heavy.”

  “By himself,” Leland confirmed. “And I can understand where he’s coming from. Mr. Forester strikes me as a man of action. Doing some hard physical labor probably did him a world of good. Maybe he’ll be tired enough to sleep. I doubt he did last night.”

  Ali doubted that, too.

  “Oh,” Leland added, “he wanted me to let you know that he heard from the cabinet company, verifying that the funds had been received and that your order was in process. They told him they have enough material in stock to do your entire order, and they’re getting started on it right away. They’re hoping to ship in two weeks, but that may be pushing it.”

  “So much for Thanksgiving,” Ali said.

  “What do you mean?” Leland asked.

  Now that she had opened her mouth, Ali regretted it. Considering the fact that Bryan’s whole family was coming apart, it seemed incredibly selfish for her to have brought it up. Now that she had started, however, she charged on.

  “I was hoping I’d be able to invite people over to the new place for Thanksgiving dinner,” she said. “Even if everything wasn’t quite finished, I figured we’d be able to make do.”

  “Does Mr. Forester know about your dinner plans?” Leland asked.

  “Not really,” Ali admitted. “I never mentioned it to him. I didn’t want to add any more deadline pressure than there already was. Besides, it’s not that big a deal. I can always invite everyone over to my old house in Skyview. It’s the principle of the thing—and a matter of changing my mind. That’s all.”

  “Finished or not, if you’d rather have your guests come here, we’ll have them here,” Leland Brooks declared. “In case you haven’t noticed, I’m a very capable cook. If I could cook food for the officers’ mess in Korea in the cold and the mud, I’m sure I can manage this. How many people are we talking about?”

  “Not that many. My parents, Christopher and Athena, Dave and his three kids, one of my friends from California. Mom probably wouldn’t mind doing the turkey. She usually does, but she and Dad cook every single day of their lives. I wanted to give them a break.”

  “Not to worry,” Leland said. “We’ll work it out. You come up with the guest list, and I’ll manage the rest. We’ll make it a memorable occasion. And speaking of occasions, the florist called. They said they tried to deliver your flowers to the gym, but the place was locked up tight. I’m having them deliver them to me here instead. I’ll drop them off a little later myself. That will give me an opportunity to give the lucky couple my own good wishes as well.”

  Ali tried to remember if she had mentioned the engagement news to Leland. With everything else that had been happening throughout the day, it didn’t seem likely.

  “So you know about that?” she asked.

  “Oh, yes,” Leland Brooks replied. “Mr. Reynolds came to me a couple of weeks ago with some concerns about where to take the ring to have it redesigned and resized. I sent him to see the man who used to handle all of Miss Arabella’s work. I hope he was pleased with the results.”

  “I’m sure he was,” Ali said. “And I’m sure Chris appreciated having the benefit of your advice.”

  Ali couldn’t help feeling slightly left out. Yes, she knew that Chris and Athena had wanted to surprise her, but her folks had both known about Chris’s engagement well in advance of last night’s ring unveiling. Obviously, the same was true for Leland Brooks.

  I always tried to raise him to be independent, Ali thought ruefully. I may have succeeded too well.

  When Peter woke up, he needed to pee like a racehorse and was astonished
to see that he had slept for the better part of ten hours. When he was younger, he had been able to manage on far less sleep than that. It was, he supposed, part of getting older rather than better. He fixed coffee and some toast. Then he uploaded the memory stick from his camera and, after deleting some of the less-well-thought-out shots, added the remainder to his DVD.

  Scrolling through them, he congratulated himself on the fact that the crimes were all different. Morgan, still dressed, lay half in and out of the swing with her face battered and bloodied beyond recognition. He had arranged Candace so she lay on the ground with her various pieces put back together in all the wrong places—like a macabre human picture puzzle gone horribly wrong. He had heard that a novice FBI profiler had claimed this indicated a highly disorganized killer. Peter had laughed outright when he heard that; he was anything but disorganized. Melanie Tyler had been shot to death with her husband’s .38, while Debra Longworth had been stabbed to death before being the victim of a vicious postmortem sexual assault. And that was another part of being smart. Never do it the same way twice.

  The pictures were fine, but Peter was feeling vaguely displeased with himself as he stowed the DVD in his safe. He spent some time examining the diamond he had removed from Morgan’s finger. It was large and showy, though Peter understood enough about diamonds to know that it wasn’t as flawless as it should have been. But then Morgan hadn’t been flawless, either. With a sigh, he returned the precious diamond-loaded key ring to its customary hiding place.

  After one of his exploits, Peter usually spent the next day patting himself on the back. After all, who else was going to tell him “good job”? This time he couldn’t quite manage it. Yes, by trying to track him down, Morgan Forester had posed a threat to him. As a result, she had gotten exactly what she deserved. But had it been worth it? Usually, he came back from a kill with a euphoric sense of accomplishment. Today he was left with a lingering sense of forboding.