by Jance, J. A.
Ali had been planning on taking a look at Bryan Forester’s two thumb drives. Heeding her computer security expert’s warning, however, she left them in her purse. Under normal circumstances, she might have picked up her computer and checked her e-mail account. But now, self-conscious in the knowledge that her every keystroke might be under observation, she left the computer where it was and went into the bedroom to change into sweats.
Late in the afternoon, Matt managed to get his brain focused on work. When his phone rang, he answered it before the second ring. Yes, he was a bureaucrat—and a lowly one—but that was also why Matt always answered his phone so promptly. He regarded himself as a public servant, and he didn’t like to keep the public waiting.
So when he answered, Matt thought it would be someone calling about one of his many accounts. The last thing he expected was a phone call from a detective—a homicide detective!
“My name’s Dave Holman,” the man on the phone announced. “Detective Dave Holman, with the Yavapai County Sheriff’s Department. Is this Matthew Morrison?”
Matt’s first thought was that it had to be some kind of joke. Bill Baxter was one of Matt’s former coworkers at the state auditor’s office. Before transferring over to the Department of Weights and Measures, Bill had established himself as a practical joker of the first water. This sounded like the kind of off-the-wall stunt Bill would pull.
“Bill?” Matt asked uncertainly. “Bill Baxter, is this you?”
“No,” the caller replied. “It’s not Bill Baxter. As I said a moment ago, my name is Dave Holman.”
“Sorry,” Matt said. “My mistake. You sound a lot like another guy I know, a friend of mine.” He glanced guiltily around his cubicle to see if anyone was listening. Bobbie Bacon, his nearest neighbor, was talking on her phone. No one else seemed to be paying the slightest bit of attention. “What can I do for you—Did you say Holman?”
“Yes. Dave Holman. I’m a homicide detective.”
“What’s this all about?” Matt asked. Why on earth is a homicide detective calling me? he wondered.
“I’m working on a case that happened up here in our jurisdiction,” Holman explained. “On Monday morning of this week, a woman named Morgan Forester was bludgeoned to death shortly after her children left for school.”
“Where was this again?” Matt asked.
“Up by Sedona,” Holman answered. “Outside the Village of Oak Creek.”
As soon as the detective said “Monday morning,” Matt felt his heartbeat quicken, and he went into a state of near-panic. He knew he had a problem. Matt hadn’t been anywhere near where he was supposed to be that morning, not even close. In the solitude of his cubicle, he felt his ears turn red. Beads of sweat popped out on what his wife liked to call his “very tall forehead.”
“What does any of this have to do with me?” Matt asked. He did his best to keep his tone conversational and even. It would not do to sound upset or panicked. That was critical.
“The car you were driving was reportedly seen in the area shortly before the crime occurred,” Detective Holman continued. “I was wondering if I could stop by your office and visit with you about that. We’re hoping that perhaps you may have unwittingly witnessed something that could help us in solving our case.”
Matt was utterly mystified. “Wait a minute,” he said. “What car? You say this happened somewhere around Sedona? I wasn’t anywhere near there on Monday morning. What makes you think I was?”
Now it was Detective Holman’s turn to be mystified. “You weren’t?” he asked. “Where were you, then?”
The easy thing for Matt to say was that he had been at work, but that wasn’t true. There was a whole floor of people in his office who would be more than happy to blow a hole in that whopper. Who was this dead woman? And why was the homicide cop calling him? Was he under suspicion somehow? Did he need to have an alibi? The waitress at the truck stop might remember him—he’d left her a nice tip—but if he admitted to having been there, he’d also have to admit why.
Matt’s ears burned anew. The cop was saying something, but Matt hadn’t been paying attention to anything except the damning sound of his own breath coming in short, anxious gasps. “I’m sorry,” he said. “Bad connection. I didn’t get that last part.”
“According to the people at Hertz, you rented a vehicle from their Sky Harbor facility early that morning and brought it back later in the afternoon.”
“Why would I need to rent a car?” Matt asked. His insides lurched. The car! That was another problem. Using his fictional early appointment in Tucson as an excuse, he had checked out a motor-pool vehicle on Friday night. He had driven home in it and kept it over the weekend. It was also the vehicle he had driven to his appointment with Susan at the model home in Red Rock. How many traffic cameras along the way might have picked up on that?
He took a deep breath. Obviously, this wasn’t a joke. The cop was real. Someone was dead, murdered, and the cops believed that Matt was involved. Then his heart skipped a beat. He hadn’t heard from Susan since then—not since the day she had stood him up—though he had written to her time and again, told her he understood completely if she’d had second thoughts. What if Susan Callison was the person who had been murdered? What if that was why she had stood him up and why she hadn’t been back online?
“It was rented under your Hertz gold-card number,” Holman told him.
“I’m sorry,” Matt declared. “There must be some mistake. I don’t have a Hertz gold card.”
How would he? Why would he? He never went anywhere that he didn’t drive himself. Jenny didn’t like flying, which meant they didn’t fly.
“I see,” the detective said.
And Matt was afraid that he did—that Holman saw everything. So Matt didn’t demand to know who was dead. That would have counted as making a fuss. And he didn’t say again that he hadn’t been in Sedona, couldn’t possibly have been in Sedona, because he was a third of the state away from there, hoping to get lucky. He just kept quiet.
“So could I come talk to you about this in the morning?” Dave Holman asked. “I could probably be at your office by ten or so, if that would be all right.”
“Of course,” Matt said. “Ten is fine. You know where we are? We’re here in Phoenix, on the capital campus downtown.”
“I’m a detective,” Dave said with a laugh. “I’m sure I can find it.”
Matt wondered if that comment had been intended as a joke, but his first thought was that it sounded more like a threat, and maybe it was.
For a long time after Matt put down the phone, he sat there and considered his options. He could go home and spill the beans to Jenny. He could tell her the whole story, throw himself on her mercy, and hope she would forgive him. Or not.
Around him, other people in the department started leaving the office. A glance at the clock told him that Jenny was still at work. Even if she heard her phone ringing, she wouldn’t be able to answer it on the floor. Glad to avoid having to speak to her directly, Matt dialed her number and left a message.
“Something’s come up at work,” he said. “It’s a project that has to be finished in time for a meeting first thing tomorrow morning. So you’re on your own for dinner. Sorry about that. And don’t bother waiting up for me,” he added. “I’ll probably be very late.”
When Ali returned to the living room, Chris reappeared long enough to say he was leaving. Like his grandfather, Chris had warned her of the dangers of computer worms and viruses. Right that moment didn’t seem like the time to tell him that her computer might have been compromised by an identity thief.
“Where to?” she asked.
“Just out for a burger with the guys.” His response seemed a trifle too casual.
“Not with Athena?” Ali asked.
Chris shook his head. “She has papers to grade.”
The answer was so quick that Ali wondered if it was true. Was the fact that Chris was on his own for the evening some kind of ca
rryover from the previous night’s engagement-party fiasco?
“Want me to bring you something?” Chris added. “I think Mr. Brooks pretty much emptied all the leftovers out of the fridge.”
“And probably saved us both from dying of food poisoning,” Ali said with a laugh. “Don’t worry about me. I’ll be fine.”
And she was. She turned on her music and fixed herself a container of microwave soup. As she cleared the kitchen, she was careful to dispose of the plastic container in a fashion that would be invisible to her mother, if not to Leland Brooks. As far as Edie Larson was concerned, soup that came in plastic containers wasn’t fit to eat.
Ali had just started the dishwasher when the doorbell rang. She went to answer it, expecting to find B. Simpson outside, bringing her a substitute computer. Instead, Athena stood waiting on her doorstep.
“Chris isn’t here,” Ali said, letting her visitor inside.
“I know,” Athena said. “I came to talk to you.”
“About last night, I assume,” Ali said without enthusiasm.
“Yes,” Athena agreed. “It is about last night.”
By the time Athena made her way to the couch, Sam was there waiting. As soon as Athena settled down, Sam snuggled up beside her. There was something touching in the way the normally unsociable cat had taken to Athena—as though there was some special connection between these two disfigured beings.
“Look,” Ali said. “I’m really sorry about what happened at the party. My mother adores Chris, and she thinks you’re terrific. I’m sure she let her natural enthusiasm get a little out of hand, but—”
“I know Chris already bitched Edie out about that,” Athena interrupted. “The last thing I want to do is to cause hard feelings between Chris and his grandparents. As far as I was concerned, it wasn’t that big a deal—well, maybe it was a little bit of a big deal, but I didn’t want him to go to Bob and Edie and make it that much worse.”
Time to fess up, Ali thought. “He spoke to my mother at my suggestion,” she said. “He told me you were upset, and I thought he needed to get my parents to back off. He may have been less diplomatic than he could have been, but I had said that the two of you should get to do things your way, with nobody else interfering. That goes double for me.”
Suddenly, with no warning, Athena burst into tears. “You don’t understand,” she managed. “Nobody does, not even Chris.”
In order to sit next down next to Athena, Ali had to pry Sam loose and shoo her out of the way. “What is it?” Ali asked, wrapping a comforting arm around the young woman’s heaving shoulder. “What’s wrong?”
“How can I explain it to you when I don’t really understand it myself?”
“Try me,” Ali said.
“You know about Kenny?”
Ali knew a little about Kenneth Carlson, the man who had been Athena’s husband. He was also the jerk who had dumped her, filing for a divorce while she had been recuperating from her injuries.
“Some,” Ali said, keeping her voice noncommital.
“We started dating in high school,” Athena said. “From our sophomore year on. Our senior year, we were voted most likely to become Ken and Barbie. My folks loved him and still do. As far as they were concerned, Ken was the son they’d never had. His folks loved me the same way, like a daughter. But as we got older, things changed. Or maybe I changed. Ken’s a farmer, like his dad. I wanted more than that. I was interested in other stuff, but by then things were already in motion. Both our families—both sides—got all caught up in planning this huge wedding. It was like a moving freight train—the dress, the invitations, the flowers, the whole bit. I knew I was getting cold feet. I wanted to get off the train, to stop it somehow, but I didn’t have the nerve. So I went through with the wedding, even though I knew it was wrong. Even though I knew, walking down the aisle, that I didn’t really love him the same way he loved me.”
Athena paused. Ali, sitting beside her, said nothing. This story was one she recognized all too well. She had allowed herself to be talked into marrying Paul Grayson in much the same way—allowed herself to be persuaded, even though she’d known at the time she was settling for something less than what she’d had with her first husband. Paul had money, position, looks, everything she should have wanted, except for one critical deficit—Paul Grayson wasn’t Dean Reynolds. Ali worried that Athena was feeling the same kind of reluctance about her engagement to Chris.
“So I can’t really blame Kenny for dumping me,” Athena continued finally. “The timing sucked. But he found someone who worships him, someone who’s thrilled to be living the farm life the way her mother and grandmother did. I heard a couple of weeks ago that they’re expecting a baby. The real problem is, my parents still blame me for everything that happened, including the divorce. They were both dead set against my joining the National Guard, even though that’s what paid most of my way through school. My father’s old-fashioned. He doesn’t think girls should go to war. As far as he’s concerned, what happened to me in Iraq is all my own fault. Mom and Dad are both convinced that if I hadn’t lost my arm and my leg, Kenny never would have left me for a ‘whole woman.’”
“None of us has a problem seeing you as a whole woman,” Ali said quietly.
Athena nodded. “I know. Thank you.”
“So the only member of your family who’s still in your corner is your grandmother?” Ali asked. “The one who flew to D.C. to visit you when you were in the hospital?”
Athena nodded again and wiped her eyes. “Grandma Betsy is my dad’s mother, and she’s a hoot. You’d really like her.”
“What about last night?” Ali prodded gently.
Athena sighed. “That’s the thing. I felt like I was back on that same train, the speeding wedding train. Like they say in that old joke, ‘Déjà vu all over again.’ Chris is great. Your folks are great. So are you, for that matter, but when I saw the food, all I could think about was that huge wedding. My parents were so excited to do it, and they spent money they couldn’t afford, because they wanted to do it right. And that’s why I wanted the party to be small—why I needed it to be small.”
“In case you needed to pull the emergency brake and stop the train, you could,” Ali said.
Athena sniffed, blew her nose, and nodded again. “But I didn’t mean to make it Chris’s problem, and I certainly didn’t mean for him to have a big falling-out with his grandparents over it. I mean, the party was more than I wanted, but I know Bob and Edie were only trying to help.”
“Don’t worry about them,” Ali said, patting the back of Athena’s hand. “They’ve had some dealings with temperamental brides in their time. When Chris’s father and I were getting married, I was a lot like you. The last thing I wanted was a big wedding. At the time, my mother was determined to ‘do the whole thing up brown,’ as my father would say. Dean and I responded to all the parental pressure by eloping to Vegas. It wasn’t one of those drive-through ceremonies, but close.
“So all these years later, my mother’s still walking around singing those ‘I missed the big wedding’ blues. As soon as Chris admitted popping the question to you, she went off the deep end. She figured this was her last chance at a big production-number wedding. But that’s her problem, Athena, not yours. If Edie Larson wants a big wedding, maybe she and Dad should plan a whole formal renewal-of-vows hoopla for their fiftieth—which isn’t all that far off, by the way. But for right now, as I told Mom this afternoon, we all need to back off. We’re doing things your way. Period.”
“You told her that?”
“Yes, I did.”
“Is she upset?”
“She was upset,” Ali replied. “Maybe still is, but she’ll get over it.”
“What about your dad?”
“What about him? If Mom is over it, Dad is over it,” Ali answered. “That’s how they work.”
For a moment Athena said nothing. “What about Chris’s other grandparents?” she asked. “He never mentions them. What happe
ned to them?”
That was the other problem with our wedding, Ali thought. My parents wanted a huge wedding. Dean’s didn’t want any wedding at all—at least not to me.
“Dean’s parents disowned him,” she said. “They wanted him to come into the family business. He wasn’t interested. My family didn’t have any money. His did, and they thought that’s what I was after—his money—so they opted out of their son’s life completely. That’s the other reason we eloped.”
“And they never came back?” Athena asked.
Ali shook her head. “Even though Dean asked me not to, I tried getting in touch with them once after he got sick. They never returned my call. I’ve never forgiven them for it.”
“They don’t know Chris?”
“No,” Ali said. “Not at all.”
Athena gave her a wry and still slightly tearful smile. “So at least I’m not the only one with a screwy family.”
The doorbell rang again. Athena leaped off the couch. “Sorry,” she said. “How rude. You were expecting company, and here I am, messing things up. I need to go.”
“Believe me, you’re not messing anything up,” Ali began, but Athena wasn’t listening. She hurried to the front door and flung it open. With a mumbled apology, she hustled past the visitor waiting outside on Ali’s front porch.
“That was Athena, my son’s fiancée,” Ali explained to B. Simpson, who stood there with a roll-aboard computer case stationed behind him. “They had a bit of a disagreement.”
“Nothing too serious, I hope,” he said.
“No,” Ali said. “I think Athena and Chris both have a case of new-engagement jitters.”
“If this is a bad time and I’m interrupting, I could always come back later.”
This whole encounter was one Ali dreaded, but it had to be done. “No,” she said. “Come on in. Let’s get this over with.”
One by one, the last few stragglers left the building. Finally, there was no one left but Matt, who sat there agonizing about Detective Holman’s phone call and struggling to understand how this unforeseen disaster had come to pass.