by J. A. Jance
By the time B. arrived, Leland had discreetly gone to his own digs in the fifth wheel, leaving them to enjoy B.’s homecoming dinner with some welcome privacy. They ate the savory stew, accompanied by slabs of freshly baked bread, in the cozy confines of Ali’s spacious kitchen, which was far and away B.’s second favorite room in her house.
When they finished eating, B. leaned back in his chair and closed his eyes. “This is the best part of being away on business-coming home,” he said. “I love what I do, but perpetually living out of a suitcase and being on no known time zone gets old after a while.” He opened his eyes, looked at her, and grinned. “Don’t worry,” he said. “I’m not going to ask you to marry me again. A guy can only handle so much rejection. The problem is, Leland has always been my benchmark. As long as you kept him around, I figured I was safe, but if he’s on a short leash. .”
Just then Ali’s phone rang. The caller ID said GATE. The security gate at the bottom of the drive closed automatically at sunset. From then on, anyone wanting access to Ali’s home had to dial from the handset on the post.
Ali switched on the kitchen TV and activated the video monitor that allowed a clear view of visitors on the far side of the gate. An older woman stood there, holding the phone to her ear.
“Yes,” Ali said, answering the phone. “May I help you?”
“My name is Beatrice Hart,” the woman said. “My daughter, Lynn, is a friend of yours.”
“Sorry,” Ali said. “Are you sure you have the right person? I’m afraid I don’t know anyone named Lynn Hart.”
“You’re the lady detective who helped catch Brenda Riley’s cyber-stalker, aren’t you?”
“I may have helped, but I’m not a detective-not officially,” Ali responded.
“In that case, you probably know my daughter by her married name, Lynn Martinson. She was one of the women who got mixed up with that same guy years ago. I believe they filmed both you and Lynn at a TV station in Phoenix when Brenda’s book was about to come out last summer and when they were doing that true-crime show for TV.”
That was enough of a hint to trigger a vague memory. Yes, Ali did remember meeting a woman named Lynn in the greenroom for Scene of the Crime at the TV station in Phoenix when they were both there for a scheduled taping. At the time, Ali had been so preoccupied with her own issues-most notably her mother’s election campaign-that she barely remembered anything about it.
“I follow Brenda on Twitter these days,” Beatrice continued. “Did you know she’s about to come out with another true-crime book? This one’s about a serial killer who operated in Northern California and southern Oregon. When all of this came up this afternoon, I sent Brenda a tweet asking for her advice. She suggested I should get in touch with you.”
“When all what came up?” Ali asked.
“Lynn’s gone missing,” Beatrice said, her voice breaking. “She didn’t come home this morning, and with this murder business all over the TV news, I’m terribly worried.”
“This sounds like a police matter,” Ali said. “I’m not sure how I can be of assistance.”
“Please,” Beatrice begged.
Of course, the use of the magic word-as Ali was forever telling the twins-was enough to tip the scales in Beatrice’s favor.
“You’d better come on up,” Ali said, relenting. “I’ll buzz the gate open. It’ll close automatically after you drive through. Drive to the turnaround at the top of the hill. I’ll meet you at the front door.”
“What’s going on?” B. asked as Ali pocketed her cell phone and headed for the entryway. “Who’s here?”
“Her name’s Beatrice,” Ali told him. “She’s the mother of one of the women from Brenda Riley’s book. Something about her daughter going missing. I couldn’t just leave her standing in the cold, so I invited her up.”
“If her daughter is missing,” B. said, “what does she expect you to do about it?”
“Good question,” Ali said. “I guess we’ll find out when she gets here. Brenda Riley evidently suggested that the mother contact me.”
“You go let her in,” B. suggested. “In the meantime, how about if I clean up the kitchen and set out cups and saucers?”
“Good idea,” Ali said. “From the sound of things, a hot beverage is just what the doctor ordered.”
Leaving B. to do his voluntary KP duty, Ali went to the front door, turned on the porch light, and stood waiting while an older-model Chevy Lumina with a single occupant came up the drive and parked in the turnaround.
The white-haired woman who emerged from the vehicle and walked briskly up the drive looked to be somewhere in her late sixties or early seventies. She was wearing a red-and-white tracksuit and tennis shoes.
“Thank you for seeing me like this,” she said, hurrying forward with her hand outstretched. “I can’t tell you how grateful I am that you’ve agreed to help.”
Ali had made no such agreement, but she let that pass. “You must be freezing,” she said. “Come in.” She led Beatrice into the house and through the living room before offering her a chair in front of the glowing gas-log fireplace in the library. “Would you care for something to drink? We can make coffee or tea, or perhaps I should offer you something stronger.”
“Coffee would be welcome,” Beatrice said. “Most welcome indeed. It’s been a difficult day, and I’ll need to drive back home once we’re finished.”
“So, tell me,” Ali urged. “I understood you to say something about a murder. What’s going on?”
Beatrice hesitated before she answered. “My daughter has always had terrible taste in men,” she said. “First there was her ex-husband. Then came Richard Lewis-the guy with all the different last names. I’m sure you know all about him, because you were there when they found him. Now I’m afraid Lynn may be making the same kind of mistake with this new guy, Chip Ralston. On the surface, he looks nice enough, but now I’m not so sure. With all this murder business. .”
“What murder business are you talking about?” Ali insisted.
“Chip’s ex-wife has been murdered,” Beatrice said. “Her name was Gemma Ralston. Someone found her body yesterday afternoon a few miles south of here, off I-17. They didn’t release her name until early this afternoon.”
Ali nodded. She and Leland had watched the noontime news broadcast. She didn’t remember hearing the dead woman’s name, although it wouldn’t have meant anything to her at the time. The same broadcast had mentioned that a second body had been found in approximately the same location, or at least nearby. Given the fact that Camp Verde was inside Yavapai County, there was a good chance that Dave Holman was the lead investigator on both cases.
“Lynn routinely stays overnight at Chip’s place,” Beatrice continued, “but she usually comes home early in the morning. This morning she didn’t. At first I didn’t give it much thought. She’s an adult, after all. It’s not like she has to call me every time she and Chip have a change of plans. Still, it’s not like her not to be in touch. I tried calling Lynn’s cell phone any number of times, but there was no answer. The calls kept going straight to voice mail. I even tried calling Chip’s office to see if his receptionist might know something-Chip’s a doctor-but there was a recording saying the office was closed due to a family emergency. Then late this afternoon, when they mentioned Gemma’s name on the news, I went into a complete panic.
“If Gemma’s dead, maybe Lynn is, too. The killer always turns out to be the ex-husband or the ex-wife. What if Chip turns out to be a serial killer masquerading as a good-guy doctor? It wouldn’t be the first time Lynn got involved with someone who wasn’t what he professed to be. My first thought was that if Chip did it and Lynn found out about it, maybe he took her out, too.”
“I believe the Yavapai County Sheriff’s Department is investigating that homicide,” Ali said. “If you have any pertinent information, you should be in touch with the local investigators. Did you try contacting them?”
Beatrice shook her head. “That’s
what Brenda said I should do, too, but I couldn’t bring myself to do it. That’s when she suggested I contact you. She said that with your connections to the Sheriff’s Department here, maybe you could do that for me.”
That was the moment when B. chose to make his entrance, carrying a tray loaded with coffee, as well as a collection of Ali’s Royal Limoges china-cups and saucers, along with a matching sugar bowl and creamer. “Do what?” he asked.
“This is Beatrice Hart,” Ali said quickly, “and this is B. Simpson, my partner.”
The word “partner” was out of Ali’s mouth before she had a chance to reconsider. In a discussion centering on Lynn Martinson’s less than stellar choice of boyfriends, that word had been devalued enough that Ali was reluctant to use it in reference to B. She could tell by the small smile creasing the corners of his mouth as he set down the tray that her use of the word hadn’t gone unnoticed.
Ali said to B., “Ms. Hart’s daughter, Lynn, may be involved in some fashion with one of the cases Dave Holman is currently working on. Would you mind looking after her while I try to reach Dave?”
“Of course,” B. said smoothly as Ali made her exit. “Cream and sugar?”
By the time Beatrice answered, Ali was already through the swinging doors into the kitchen and pulling her phone from her pocket. She found Dave Holman’s cell phone number, still in her favorites file, and dialed it.
“Hey, Dave,” she said when the call switched over to voice mail. “Give me a call when you have a minute. I have someone here at the house who would like to speak to you about the Gemma Ralston case.”
Going back through the swinging doors, she crashed into B. coming the other way. “How’d it go?” he asked.
Ali shook her head. “Dave didn’t answer. I left a message. What are you doing?”
“I think our guest needs food more than she needs coffee. Your ‘partner’ offered to heat up a bowl of stew, which she gratefully accepted. Thank you for that, by the way,” he added. “I consider ‘partner’ to be a big step up.”
“We’ll see about your signing bonus later,” Ali said with a smile. “Now I’ll go entertain our guest while we wait to see how long it takes for Dave to call me back.”
9
Back in the library, Ali found Beatrice Hart seated next to the fire, sipping coffee from one of Ali’s delicate Beleme patterned cups. Beatrice glanced up worriedly as Ali resumed her seat.
“Sorry,” Ali said. “My contact didn’t answer. I left a message for him to call me back.” She didn’t mention that the contact was most likely the lead investigator on the Ralston case.
“Mr. Simpson offered me some stew, and I accepted. I hope you don’t mind,” Beatrice said.
“Not at all, but while we’re waiting for that return call, why don’t you tell me what you know about this Chip Ralston. Do you have any reason to make the leap from his being your daughter’s beau to his being a possible murderer?”
“Lynn met him because he was my late husband’s doctor-Horace’s doctor,” Beatrice explained. “Chip’s specialty is Alzheimer’s patients and their families, and I have to say, in that regard, he was a huge help to me and to Lynn. He helped us understand that Alzheimer’s is a process that has a beginning, a middle, and an end, and that all those stages are longer or shorter depending on the individual. When your life is spinning out of control, it’s reassuring to have someone telling you that what you’re experiencing is within the parameters of some kind of normal. Dr. Ralston did that for our family and does it for a lot of other families, too.”
“Sounds like a good guy rather than a bad guy,” Ali suggested.
Beatrice nodded. “Except that where I come from, doctors don’t become romantically involved with their patients or their patients’ families. He waited a while, I’ll give him that. He called me several times in the weeks after we lost Horace, ostensibly checking to see how I was doing, and he always asked about Lynn. Then one day he called when I wasn’t home. Before you knew it, they were going out.”
“I take it you don’t approve?”
“For one thing, it’s too soon. I know from asking around that Chip is still dealing with the aftereffects of divorce-a rancorous divorce-and Lynn is still in recovery mode, too. First there was her divorce, followed by that mess with Richard. Then her son, Lucas, my grandson, committed suicide. She lost her job and her house, and then Horace died. You put all that together, and it adds up to way too much. I told her she needed to give herself some time before she got involved in a serious relationship.”
Before Ali could comment, B. returned with another tray, this one loaded with a bowl of steaming stew and several slices of buttered bread. He set the tray on the coffee table in front of Beatrice and then sat down on the love seat next to Ali. Beatrice gave him a questioning look.
“He knows all about this,” Ali said, nodding in B.’s direction. “It was due to a background check from his computer security company that Brenda Riley found out the truth about Richard Lowensdale.”
“Oh,” Beatrice said, nodding. “I remember. The High Noon guy. So I guess I have both of you to thank that Lynn wasn’t hurt worse than she was.”
The man who had helped Ali in the trenches had been B.’s second in command, Stuart Ramey, but neither Ali nor B. corrected Beatrice’s understandable misapprehension.
Ali waited while Beatrice tasted a tiny spoonful of Leland’s stew, then said, “Delicious. You’re a wonderful cook.”
Ali nodded her thanks and asked the next question without bothering to correct Beatrice’s erroneous assumption about the stew. Sometimes it was simply better to let people be.
“You mentioned that Dr. Ralston was going through a rancorous divorce,” Ali said. “How did you know about that?”
“Because Lynn told me,” Beatrice answered. “The woman and her lawyers have taken the man to the cleaners. He ended up having to unload several properties in a disastrous real estate market. He also had to buy out her interest in his medical practice. That put him far enough behind financially that he had to go back home and live with his aging mother-not a good sign, if you ask me. According to Lynn, Chip’s pet name for his ex is ‘the green-eyed monster.’”
Ali managed to keep from smiling, and so did B. After B.’s own ego-damaging divorce, “green-eyed monster” was how he sometimes referred to his ex-wife, too.
“Did Lynn ever mention what caused the divorce? Was there any indication of domestic violence issues? For instance, did Chip ever voice any threats toward his ex?”
“Not as far as I know,” Beatrice answered. “Still, it strikes me as a strange kind of divorce. According to Lynn, Gemma treated Chip like dirt, and yet she stayed in close contact with Chip’s mother and his sister, Molly. I know a couple of times, when Lynn was staying over with Chip, Gemma dropped by to visit with either the former mother-in-law or the former sister-in-law. I don’t know how most divorces work or even how they’re supposed to work-Horace and I were married to each other for fifty-eight years-but you can bet that if I’d divorced him, I would have written his mother out of my life immediately. That’s what Lynn did with her former mother-in-law, too.”
“As far as you know, there was nothing unusual going on this week between Chip and his ex? No new crisis of any kind?”
“No new crisis,” Beatrice allowed, “just the ongoing one. From what Lynn has told me, I’m sure Chip resents the neverending financial difficulties from the divorce settlement. He’s a middle-aged man, and having to start over at that age is tough. Of course, there will be some money coming to him when his mother dies. I understand that his parents were very well-to-do. His father died relatively recently and suddenly. A stroke, I believe. Chip and his sister are their only kids. Not kids, of course. Their only heirs.”
Ali noticed that all the while Beatrice Hart was answering questions, she was stowing away the bowl of stew. She finished it off by sopping up the last of the gravy with the remains of a thick slice of Leland’s bread. She may
have been worried about her daughter, but that hadn’t affected her appetite. B. was offering her a second helping when Ali’s phone rang. She excused herself and went as far as the dining room so she could answer with some assurance of privacy.
“Hey,” Dave Holman said. “I saw that you called, but I’ve been knee-deep in two different homicide investigations all day long. It turns out the county attorney has put a deal on the table for one of them, so it’s up to the lawyers to do their stuff. That means I’m on my way home and returning calls as I go. I trust you’ll forgive me for calling back without listening to your message. What’s up?”
Ali was sure she knew which investigations had kept him occupied all day, but she wasn’t at all sure how he would react to hearing the identity of the visitor sitting in her library and savoring Leland’s beef stew. “I was actually calling on behalf of someone, a woman named Beatrice Hart.”
“Lynn Martinson’s mother?” Dave demanded after a moment of stark silence. “How the hell did that happen?”
Although the name was one Dave clearly recognized, Ali thought it best to recount the whole story.
“Wait, wait, wait,” Dave said when Ali finished. “Who’s this Brenda Riley?”
“A friend of mine from back in my old news-broadcasting days. She’s originally from Sacramento. Now she and her new husband live in Ashland. She’s the one who got mixed up with the cyberstalker in California a couple of years ago. The guy’s name was Richard Lowensdale/Lattimore/Loomis/Lewis. He had any number of aliases, and Mrs. Hart’s daughter, Lynn, was one of his many victims. Given what Mrs. Hart describes as Lynn’s unfortunate track record with men, Beatrice seems to think her daughter might be in danger right along with the new boyfriend’s ex-wife. For some reason, she was reluctant to call you directly.”