by J. A. Jance
{ CHAPTER 17 }
Larry Marsh was on the phone to the Marin County Sheriff’s Department. Yes, someone would get back to him on the William Cowan Ashcroft situation, but it wasn’t likely to be that day, especially since it would take time to locate the record as well as any remaining evidence of that fatal car wreck. Would tomorrow work, or maybe the next day?
In the background, Hank’s phone rang and soon he was busily taking notes.
“What do you have?” Larry asked.
“My mole in the VA came through with two possibilities,” Hank answered. “Alan Dale Reed of Birmingham, Alabama, got his Silver Star in Vietnam, 1965. The problem is, he died in 2004. Arthur Reed is from Red Bluff, California. His Silver Star came from Korea, circa 1953. As far as I can tell, he’s still alive and kicking and driving.”
“Address?” Larry asked.
“And phone number.”
“Let’s give him a call.”
They used a phone in the conference room and put it on speaker. The way investigations went, Larry expected that they’d run into a nonworking number or that Arthur Reed would also be deceased or unavailable. But he wasn’t. The woman who answered the phone said only, “Just a minute.” Then, “Dad, it’s for you.”
“This is Detective Larry Marsh with the Phoenix Police Department.”
“Wait a minute. You’re not supposed to be calling me. I already told you to take me off your goddamned call list. These police guild and fire department calls are just a ripoff. I’ve got half a mind to report you to the attorney general’s office.”
“Wait, wait, Mr. Reed,” Hank said. “This isn’t a solicitation call.”
“What is it then?”
“It’s a homicide investigation,” Marsh said. “Detective Mendoza and I are homicide detectives with the Phoenix Police Department.”
“You think I killed somebody in Arizona? I’ve never even been to Arizona. You’ve got the wrong guy. I’m hanging up now.”
“No, wait,” Marsh said. “Please, Mr. Reed. Don’t hang up. We’re just looking for information. Maybe you can help us.”
“What kind of information? If this is some kind of trick…”
“It’s no trick. As I said, we’re investigating a homicide…”
“Who died?”
“William Cowan Ashcroft the third.”
“Never heard of him. Wouldn’t know him from a hole in the ground. What does this have to do with me?”
“It’s about your Silver Star, the one you were awarded for service in Korea?”
“What about it?”
“A Silver Star with your name engraved on it was found in the floorwell of Mr. Ashcroft’s vehicle after he was killed. We were wondering if you had any idea how it might have gotten there.”
In the background they could hear a woman’s voice. “Who is it, Dad? What do they want?”
“It’s the cops,” he said. “Somebody else calling about my medals.”
“I thought you got rid of those,” the woman said.
“I did,” he said impatiently. “I told you I would and I did.”
“Somebody else called you about your medal?” Hank asked.
“Yeah, some guy who’s writing a book on Silver Star recipients,” Reed said. “I have no idea how he got my name. Julie here found out I’d talked to him and pitched a fit.”
“Julie?”
“My daughter. If you must know, she and my granddaughter both are certified peace activists. They’re not just against this war; they’re against all wars. So when I had to move in with her a couple of years ago, she wanted me to get rid of all that wartime crap—didn’t want it in her house. Julie’s mother and I had saved them through the years—my medals, uniforms, and all that other stuff—kept them up in the attic. Once a Marine always a Marine, but Connie was gone by then, and since I was moving into Julie’s house, I had to respect her wishes. I got rid of everything.”
“What did you do with them?”
“Took ’em to Goodwill mostly.”
“Even the medals?”
“Except for the Silver Star.”
“What did you do with that one?”
“I gave it away.”
“Who did you give it to?” Larry asked.
“What do you know about the Korean War?” Arthur Reed asked.
“Not much. It was a little before my time.”
“Ever get to Red Bluff? If you do, come by for a beer. If Julie’s not home, I’ll tell you all about it.”
“The Silver Star…” Larry prompted.
“Right. You probably never heard of Hagaru?”
“No.”
“What about Koto-ri?”
“Never heard of that, either.”
“Korean hellholes both of them, ten miles apart. Early December. Cold as hell. Took thirty-eight hours to move that ten miles. They called it ‘advance to the south’ in those days, but that was all bullshit. Nobody wanted to say the word retreat, but that’s what we were doing. Getting the hell out of Dodge because those Chinese were coming at us like crazy. We were all freezing our butts off, but that morning, before we set off, those crazy Brits did a full unit inspection—polished, shaved, everything. We thought they were nuts.”
“What crazy Brits?” Larry asked.
“From the Forty-first Commando. Royal Marine Corps. There weren’t very many of ’em, not more than a hundred or so, but we were glad as hell to have ’em. Especially that day. I was with the Marine Five and we, along with Forty-one Commando, were supposed to bring up the rear. We were, too. Our truck got hit. It went off the road and crashed into an icy river. Ice on top—water cold as hell underneath. Would have drowned for sure, but these two Brits showed up and dragged us out of the drink. Cooks. Not munitions guys. Not signalmen. A pair of dumb-ass cooks. Put us in the back of their truck, dried us out, and saved our sorry lives. And then, when we made it to Koto-ri, they saved us again. Invited us to their damned Christmas party. They had booze. We didn’t. Hell of a party, too.”
Reed’s story seemed to have traveled very far afield. “The Silver Star,” Larry Marsh reminded him again.
“Oh, right. I won that, later. In a firefight in January, but I wouldn’t have been alive to do it if it hadn’t been for those two Brits. So I tracked the one guy down and sent it to him. I sent my Silver Star to him as a thank-you. I figured he’d earned it, too. If it hadn’t been for him, I never would have lived long enough for someone to pin it on my chest.
“In December 2001, we had this reunion—a fiftieth. It was supposed to be a big deal but it got downsized by 9/11. The reunion was held down in Bakersfield. Didn’t even have to go all the way into L.A., and I was able to drive instead of fly. Told Julie I was going to meet an old girlfriend whose husband had just died. That she didn’t mind. So I went. A few of the Forty-one Commando guys made it, and I kept asking everybody who showed whatever became of those two cooks. I finally ran into somebody who knew. He said one of them went back home and opened a restaurant in a place called Brighton. The other one—who turned out to be queer as a three-dollar bill—had immigrated to this country right after the war and had gone to work as a butler for some rich old lady. I kept hoping he’d turn up, but he never did.”
“A butler? Did this butler have a name?”
“Sure,” Arthur Reed said. “It was Brooks—Leland Brooks. Funny little guy, no bigger ’an a minute. He’s not the one who’s dead, is he?”
“No, that man’s name is Ashcroft.”
“Oh, good,” Reed said. “Glad to hear it.”
Larry Marsh, trying to hang up, was already on his feet and headed for the door. “Thank you, Mr. Reed. Thank you so much.”
“You don’t need anything else? I’ve got lots of stories.”
“Appreciate your help,” Hank said. “But I believe we’ve got everything we need.” He slammed the phone down and turned to face his partner. “There you go. Aunt Arabella decides to off her troublesome nephew? Conveniently enough, she ju
st happens to have a trained ex-commando on staff to help her do it.”
“Amazing,” Larry agreed as they headed for the elevator. “I’ve been in homicide for a dozen years. For the first time ever, it looks like the butler did it. Where’s Agatha Christie when you need her?”
By ten after six, Ali was standing in the bathroom fully dressed. Her hair was dry and she was applying the last of her makeup, when the doorbell sounded.
Who is it this time? she wondered. The quiet, recuperative day she had wanted to spend at home had turned out to be anything but quiet or restful.
Ali checked the peephole and was amazed to find that, for the second time that day, Arabella Ashcroft had arrived on her doorstep. She stood on Ali’s front porch wrapped in an old-fashioned but still lush fur coat that appeared to be two sizes too large for her. She was holding a battered briefcase that seemed to have long outlived its expected life span.
Ali opened the door. “Hello, Arabella. What are you doing here?”
“I hope you’ll forgive me for dropping by unannounced again,” Arabella said with a bright smile. “It’s actually rather fun. I may start making a habit of it.”
Ali looked around, expecting to see Mr. Brooks and the Rolls lingering in the background. The yellow Rolls was exactly where she expected it to be. Mr. Brooks was nowhere in evidence.
“I’m sorry,” Ali said. “I’m on my way out. I’ve been invited to dinner.”
“This won’t take long,” Arabella returned. “I wanted to show you something.”
Good manners trumped good sense. Ali stepped back and motioned Arabella into the house. As she wafted in, so did a cloud of gin.
“Where’s Mr. Brooks?” Ali asked.
“I’m afraid he’s otherwise engaged at the moment,” Arabella said.
“You drove here yourself?”
When Arabella set the briefcase down on the coffee table, there was a distinct rattle as though loose contents were rolling around inside. Apparently unconcerned by possible breakage, Arabella smiled conspiratorially in Ali’s direction. “Oh, yes,” she said. “I do drive occasionally. It’s a lot like riding a bicycle. I’m sure I could still do that, too.”
She’s drunk, Ali thought, but there was a singular glitter in Arabella’s eyes that made Ali wonder if Arabella was operating on something more powerful than booze.
“Are you going to offer me a drink?” Arabella asked. “I know you had a martini with me the other day. I find teetotalers very annoying, don’t you?”
The same goes for drunks, Ali thought. It seemed to her that Arabella had already had plenty. “Sorry,” Ali said. “I believe you’ve had enough.”
Arabella sighed and shook her head. “You sound just like Mr. Brooks, but that’s all right. Not to worry.” Popping open the lid of the briefcase, she pulled out an old-fashioned silver flask, unscrewed the lid, and took a drink. “BYOB,” she added. “A premixed martini. Not chilled, but definitely shaken, and better than doing without. I believe in being prepared.”
Ali was losing patience. “Arabella, I don’t want to be inhospitable but as I told you, I was just leaving. What is it you wanted to show me?”
“Evie always said you were smart,” Arabella said. “And, of course, the only way to help you without giving away the game was to help others, too. So all those other scholarship winners have you to thank, but you’re not being smart now. You have no idea who you’re dealing with. Neither did Billy.”
“What are you talking about?”
“Come on, Ali. Didn’t you just finish telling me to go to the cops and confess all my sins or you’d do it for me?”
“I tried,” Ali said. “They didn’t seem particularly interested.”
“But they will be,” Arabella said.
Once again she lifted the lid on the briefcase. When she pulled out a bag with a Crown Royale insignia on it, Ali thought she was about to help herself to another drink. But the bag didn’t hold a bottle of booze. Instead, Ali found herself staring at a lidded jar—a wide-mouthed canning jar filled with a not quite clear liquid. In the dusky light of the living room it took a moment or two for Ali to make sense of the pallid shape suspended inside the glass.
“My God!” she exclaimed. “Your brother’s hand!”
“Right you are,” Arabella agreed. “Give the girl a gold star. So you know all about that then?”
Ali wasn’t sure she knew “all” about anything. But she knew enough. And she remembered Deb Springer saying that Bill Junior had kept his amputated hand with him—at all times.
“How did you get it?” Ali asked.
“Maybe he gave it to me,” Arabella said. “Or maybe I took it. But does it really matter? Come on, Ali. If that worthless nephew of mine was bright enough to figure it out, surely you can, too.”
“Are you saying you were there when Bill Junior died? When he went off the cliff?”
“Was I?” Arabella laughed. “Maybe I was. Maybe I wasn’t.” Clearly she regarded this as some kind of game, and she appeared to be enjoying herself immensely.
“But you told me the other day you had nothing to do with his death; that you were out of the country at the time he died.”
“I’ve said a lot of things over the years,” Arabella admitted. “The older I get the harder it is to keep all those stories straight.”
“Like passing off your years of treatment at the Mosberg Institute by saying you were going to finishing school?”
Arabella gave Ali an appraising look and then took another hit from her flask. “So you know about the Mosberg?” she said. “Yes, I was there. As for treatment? There wasn’t a lot of that going on in those days. My father sent me there because he thought I was psychotic. He was probably right about that, by the way. I was psychotic, but just because someone’s crazy doesn’t mean she’s stupid, too. It didn’t take long for me to figure out how the system worked.”
“What system?” Ali asked.
“Sex was the coin of the realm at the Mosberg. Thanks to my big brother, sex was something I knew a whole lot about. All I had to do was spread my legs and I could have whatever I wanted. ‘You don’t want electroshock therapy today, little lady. What would you like instead?’ Or how about, ‘You want a weekend pass? What have you got to trade?’ And it turned out, I had plenty to trade. There were guys lining up to take the crazy girl into town. I was a hot date. Of course, that was long before the arrival of birth control pills. Much to the director’s chagrin, I’d had to have three abortions by the time I was eighteen. That’s when they finally fixed me.”
“Fixed you?” Ali asked.
“With a hysterectomy,” Arabella replied.
Ali was aghast. “At age eighteen?”
Arabella shrugged. “They did me a favor. After that I could do whatever I wanted. It was a lot easier not to get caught.”
The story was appalling; so was Arabella’s nonchalant delivery. The problem was, Ali couldn’t figure out if Arabella was telling the truth this time or if she was simply spinning yet another web of lies.
“Where was this place?” Ali asked. “When was it?”
Arabella shrugged. “In California,” she said. “Outside a town called Paso Robles. After the fire, Mother brought me here to Arizona—to a facility near where Carefree is now. That one was a lot nicer, but it closed. The people who owned it sold it to someone who turned the place into a resort—very posh, I understand.”
Ali had already learned a good deal about the fatal fire at the Mosberg Institute, but she wanted to hear the story in Arabella’s words. “There was a fire?” Ali asked.
“Oh, yes,” Arabella said. “At the Mosberg. A terrible fire. A nurse died in it and one of the patients. I knew the nurse. I never met the patient.”
Something about the way Arabella said the words sent a chill of recognition through Ali’s body. “Did you have anything to do with the fire?” Ali asked.
“Me?” Arabella responded. “Why would you ask such a thing?”
“Did you?” Ali pressed.
“I suppose it’s possible. I might have had something to do with it.”
“And what about Billy?” Ali asked. “Did you have anything to do with what happened to him?”
Arabella sighed. “If only he hadn’t looked so much like his father. That was a real shock to the system.”
“He looked like Bill Junior?”
“Amazingly so. When Mr. Brooks brought the man into the living room, seeing him took my breath away. For a moment I thought Bill Junior had come back to life and that his hand had grown back, too.” She unscrewed the lid on her flask, took another sip, and giggled. “That would have been something, wouldn’t it? If his hand had grown back, but of course it hadn’t—it was still safe and sound and put away right where I’ve kept it all these years.” She patted the briefcase affectionately.
For the first time Ali understood that in addition to being drunk, Arabella Ashcroft was also nuts—totally, completely, and certifiably crackers.
Ali had been standing in the middle of the living room. Now she took a tentative step toward the kitchen counter—and the telephone.
“Where are you going?” Arabella asked.
“I need to call someone,” Ali said. “You need help, Arabella. Maybe Mr. Brooks could come get you.”
“No, no calls. Mr. Brooks has helped me quite enough through the years. That’s why my mother hired him, of course—to look after me and to keep me out of trouble. I have to say, he’s done a splendid job of it most of the time, but he’s always been at a bit of a disadvantage since he never knew the full story.”
Ali glanced at her watch. It was twenty past six. If she was late to dinner, someone was bound to notice. Dinner was scheduled for six-thirty, and Edie Larson expected people to be present and accounted for when food was served. All Ali had to do was stall for time. Eventually her mother would call. Edie might even dispatch a search party.
“What is the full story?” Ali asked.
“About Bill Junior? No one would believe what he was doing to me,” Arabella said. “Even my mother didn’t believe it. The one person who did was Miss Ponder.”