Fatal Error

by J. A. Jance

As Bob drifted away to inspect the status of his kitchen, Edie sank into one of the booths.

  “How was it?” Ali asked.

  “Glorious,” Edie replied. “I’ve never had so much fun in my life, not even when you and your aunt Evie and I went to England. Your father was like a kid again. You should have seen him on the dance floor.”

  Ali was taken aback at her mother’s effusiveness, and the idea of her father on a dance floor was beyond belief. “Dad can dance?”

  “Yes, he can,” Edie said. “We have the photos to prove it. The fridge at home is empty, of course. I was going to run to the store before dinner, but we called Athena and Chris while we were riding up from Phoenix in the shuttle. They invited us to come to dinner—all of us, you included. Athena said they have the nursery pulled together. They want to show it to us.”

  Suddenly Athena’s urgency to have the nursery completely finished on Friday made a lot more sense. If the sorting and folding was all done before Bob and Edie got home, there would be no need for Edie Larson to do it.

  “You’re sure they won’t mind if I tag along?” Ali asked.

  “Scout’s honor,” Edie said with a smile. “What about B.?”

  “He’s in D.C. this week,” Ali said. “A conference this weekend and meetings next week.”

  “Too bad,” Edie said. “We’ll miss him.”

  I do too, Ali thought.

  Once Ali was in the car, she dialed Chris’s number. “Mom and Dad told me I was invited to dinner,” Ali said. “But I’m checking with you all the same.”

  “It’s fine. Athena wants to show off the nursery,” Chris said. “I’m barbecuing.”

  The thermometer on the Cayenne’s dashboard indicated the outside temperature was in the low forties.

  “Isn’t it a little cold for barbecuing?” Ali asked.

  “Believe me, Mom,” Chris said, “right this minute, freezing my butt off over an outdoor grill is preferable to making any kind of a mess in the kitchen. Athena would have a fit.”

  “She’s into nesting?” Ali asked.

  “I’ll say,” Chris replied. “In a big way.”

  “It’s a good thing you got that nursery situation handled,” Ali said. “I don’t care what Dr. Dixon says about the official due date. If the nesting instinct has come into play, the twins are liable to turn up any day now. What time is dinner?”

  “Grandpa and Grandma are operating on East Coast time. They asked to eat early. I told them to come around five or so.”

  “Great,” Ali said. “I’m catching a plane for L.A. at ten o’clock tonight, but if I leave Sedona by six, that should give me plenty of time to eat and run.”

  “You’re going to California?” Chris asked. “Now? How come?”

  Ali explained about what was going on with Velma, who had actually been among the out-of-town guests at Athena and Chris’s wedding.

  “Don’t worry, though,” Ali said. “If those babies of yours decide to make an early appearance, I’ll be able to get myself home in a hurry.”

  Back at the house, Ali retreated to her room, where she showered and dressed. Then, after packing a single suitcase, she was on her way out the door for dinner when B. called. He was back in his hotel room for a few minutes before a dinner meeting.

  “Your week at the Sugarloaf is over,” he said. “Did you live?”

  “I’m not sure my feet did,” Ali answered with a laugh. “And I’m not sure how my parents do this day after day, week after week, and year after year, but they do. They’re back, though. Had a great time. We’re all meeting up at Chris and Athena’s for dinner. The nursery is twin-ready, and they want to show it off. After that I have a plane to catch.”

  “A plane? Where are you going?”

  Over the next few minutes, she brought B. up to date about her e-mail from Velma and the troubling phone call from Camilla Gastellum. She explained that after seeing Velma, if Brenda still hadn’t turned up, Ali planned to make a quick dash up to Sacramento to see if she could be of help to Camilla.

  “Let me get this straight,” B. said thoughtfully. “Brenda went missing right after she asked you for that background check?”

  “That’s how it seems,” Ali said.

  “So the two things could be connected.”

  “Brenda’s mother seems to think she just fell off the wagon, but it’s possible,” Ali agreed.

  “What time are you heading for the airport?”

  “My L.A.-bound flight leaves Sky Harbor ten p.m. I’ll come back home right after dinner, then Leland will drive me down to Phoenix and drop me off.”

  “I’ll give Stuart a call and see what, if anything, he’s come up with on the background check. I’ll ask him to swing by with whatever he has before then so you’ll be able to take it with you.”

  When Ali reached Chris and Athena’s place, her parents were already there. Chris, wearing a jacket, was out on the deck overseeing the grill. Bob and Edie had come equipped with a stack of cruise photos and were inflicting on their granddaughter-in-law their tandem cruise travelogue.

  “And here’s the girl who made it happen,” Bob said heartily when Ali joined them. “Cruises are great. I can hardly wait to go on another one, maybe an Alaskan cruise next summer, if we can talk you into looking after the Sugarloaf again. Everything is clean as a whistle. You did a great job.”

  “Now look what you’ve done,” Edie said, smiling at Ali. “You’ve turned your father into a cruise-loving monster. Who would have thought it?”

  Certainly not Ali.

  “Now sit,” her father ordered. “Let me show you the pictures. Edie already managed to download and print most of them.”

  There were candid shots as well as a collection of standard cruise ship photos. One showed Bob and Edie coming on board and standing at the top of the gangplank. Another showed them dressed in formal attire. It was only the second time in her life that Ali had seen her father in a tux. A third showed them standing together on a sandy beach.

  From the wide grins on their faces in the various photos, it was clear that Bob and Edie had been having a great time. They had some videos as well. Chris came in long enough to download those onto his iMac for all to see. Ali deemed the one of Bob attempting to dance the limbo and coming to grief in the sand as worthy of either YouTube or America’s Funniest Videos.

  By the time Ali finally left Chris and Athena’s, it was later than it should have been. There was enough time to make the plane, but just barely.

  Back at the house she found Leland pacing in the kitchen and checking his watch. Ali’s packed suitcase sat on the floor next to the door into the garage. “We don’t have much time,” he said, “but don’t forget. Both your Taser and your Glock need to be in your checked luggage.”

  “Thanks,” Ali said. Without his timely reminder, she might well have forgotten.

  When she had finished stowing both of those, Leland handed her a thick manila envelope. “Stuart Ramey from High Noon dropped this off a little while ago. I’m assuming you want to take it along as well.”

  “Thanks,” Ali said, stuffing it in her purse. “Something to read along the way.”

  But reading it along the way didn’t happen. She was beyond tired. The week’s hard work had taken a physical and mental toll. With Leland behind the wheel, she fell asleep almost as soon as she got in the car. She made it to Sky Harbor with just enough time to clear security before boarding her plane. Once the flight was airborne, she fell asleep again.

  What Ali really wanted to do was collapse into her very own bed and sleep for twenty-four hours straight, but that wasn’t in the cards. She had told Velma Trimble and Camilla Gastellum that she was coming to see them, and she was. What kind of condition she’d be in by the time she got there was anybody’s guess.

  Ali had made arrangements for a rental car to be waiting at LAX. Knowing she’d be arriving in the middle of the night, she had made a hotel reservation at the airport Hilton. By the time she collected her luggage an
d her car and staggered up to the hotel registration desk, she was just barely upright.

  Ali fell into her unfamiliar hotel bed. Lying awake for a few short minutes, she was grateful that it was her mother who would be in charge of the Sugarloaf Café in a few short hours. Walking in Edie’s very capable shoes for just one week had left Ali exhausted.

  She fell into a deep sleep. There may have been countless airplanes passing overhead and traffic streaming by outside, but Ali didn’t hear any of it. She was far too tired.

  20

  Salton City, California

  At precisely 3:28 a.m. on Sunday morning, Florence Haywood smelled smoke. Flossie’s maternal grandmother had been a smoker, and she had died a gruesome death when she fell asleep while smoking in bed. Florence had been only six at the time, but that event had a lasting influence on her life. She was scared to death of house fires. Her husband, Jimmy, assured her that their motor home was completely safe, but Flossie remained unconvinced. She insisted that he replace the batteries in their smoke alarm every six months rather than once a year, just to be on the safe side.

  For the past ten years, starting in November, she and Jim had driven their aging Pontiac down from Bismarck, North Dakota, so they could spend the worst five months of winter in their motor home near the Salton Sea. Their “affordable” RV lot was part of a mostly failed residential subdivision called Heron Ridge, where they had an electrical hookup, a concrete slab, and nothing else. Once a week they had to drive into town to empty the RV’s holding tanks.

  The beach cabin closest to them belonged to Mark Blaylock. For several years, Mark had been the cabin’s sole sometime occupant. Up until a few months ago, Flossie and Jimmy had assumed he was single. In the past two months, however, his witch of a wife, a woman named Mina, had shown up. She had been living at the cabin more or less on a full-time basis ever since.

  Flossie believed in being neighborly, and she had done her best, but Mina had rebuffed all of Flossie’s best efforts. She had taken over a plateful of freshly baked cookies. She had given cookies to Mark Blaylock on occasion, and she knew chocolate chip cookies were his particular favorite. Mina had accepted the plate but hadn’t bothered to invite Flossie inside.

  Fine, Flossie told herself. Be that way.

  She continued to be on good terms with Mark, but she had nothing further to do with his standoffish wife.

  That Sunday morning, after pulling on her robe and ascertaining that there was no sign of fire inside their RV, Flossie went from window to window. Flossie’s recent cataract surgery had left her with something she had never had before—perfect 20/20 vision. Once she located the source of the flames, she could see quite clearly that Mina Blaylock was standing outside, wrapped in a coat, and tossing items into the already roaring fire burning in her husband’s trusty Weber grill.

  Yes, there was definitely some wood smoke thrown into the mix. Mark Blaylock usually ordered a cord of mesquite each fall that was delivered to the far end of his lot. This year he hadn’t ordered new wood. Last year’s load was dwindling, but there was definitely a hint of mesquite in the smoke Flossie smelled.

  But there was something else too. Flossie was old enough to remember how back in the old days before there were plastic trash containers at the end of every dirt road in America, people had been responsible for their own garbage. Many people, especially people living out of town, had maintained their own personal burning barrels. That’s exactly what this smoke smelled like—burning garbage.

  The whole thing seemed odd. Flossie was tempted to go outside and ask Mina if everything was all right, just to see what she’d say, but then Jimmy woke up.

  “Floss,” he called from the bedroom. “Are you coming back to bed or not?”

  “Coming,” Flossie said. “I’ll be right there.”

  21

  Grass Valley, California

  The call came into the Nevada County Emergency Communications Center at ten past eight on a cold but quiet Sunday morning. It was January in the foothills of the Sierras, but it was also unseasonably warm. It wasn’t snowing or raining, and the roads were relatively clear. The Saturday night drunks had all managed to make it home without killing themselves or anyone else.

  Phyllis Williams was one of only three emergency operators working that shift, and she was the one who took the call. The enhanced caller ID system listed an out-of-state telephone number. There was no way for Phyllis to tell if the call was coming from a cell phone or a landline.

  “Nine-one-one,” she said. “What are you reporting?”

  The caller paused for a moment, as if uncertain what she should say. “It’s about my fiancé,” she said finally. “He lives there in Grass Valley. I’m worried about him. I’m afraid something may have happened to him. He always calls me on Saturday night, but last night he didn’t. I’ve been calling and calling ever since last night. He doesn’t answer. He may be sick or hurt.”

  This was going to end up being a judgment call on Phyllis’s part. If the woman was talking about somebody who was elderly and frail or if it was a kid, it was a different story, but at first blush this sounded like this guy had missed making a phone call by a little over twelve hours. Something that trivial was hardly the end of the world. Twelve hours wasn’t nearly long enough for most police departments to be willing to take a missing persons report, but maybe a routine “welfare check” was in order.

  “What’s his name?” Phyllis asked. “Where does your fiancé live?”

  The woman blurted out the name Richard Lydecker and a street address on Jan Road in Grass Valley.

  “Your name?” Phyllis asked.

  “My name is Janet,” the woman said. “Janet Silvie.”

  “And where are you located?”

  “I’m at home,” Janet said. “In Buffalo. Buffalo, New York. I don’t know what I’ll do if something has happened to him. What if Richard’s dead? I know he has an ex-girlfriend who’s been stalking him. She’s evidently dangerous and very unstable. What if she did something to him?”

  Janet Silvie’s voice was rising in volume. Phyllis could tell the woman was close to losing it. A lot of callers did that. They worked themselves into such a frenzy before making the first call that they fell apart on the phone. Often it was virtually impossible to retrieve any usable information from someone who was hysterical. Still, the idea that a threat had been made upped the ante and Phyllis needed to learn what she could.

  “Please calm down,” Phyllis said. “You’ll be better able to help us help Mr. Lydecker if you stay calm. Does this woman who threatened him have a name?”

  “Brenda something,” Janet said. “Something Irish, maybe. O’Reilly or maybe just plain Riley. I don’t remember her name. She even called me once, trying to feed me some line about Richard cheating on me. When I told Richard about it, that’s when he warned me that she’s some kind of nut, like on drugs or something. I don’t blame him for being scared of her.”

  “You actually spoke to this woman?”

  “There was no speaking. It was more like she was talking—yelling really—and all I could do was listen.”

  “Does she live at the address you gave me?”

  “No. They’re not married. I already told you Richard is my fiancé. We’re going to get married next summer. Sometime in June. We haven’t set an exact date.”

  Phyllis tried not to roll her eyes. TMI—too much information—and none of it was the information she actually needed. In the meantime, Phyllis did a quick check of the records available to her. According to the county assessor’s office, the property on Jan Road belonged to Richard Stephen Lowensdale. There was no Grass Valley listing of any kind for someone named Richard Lydecker.

  “Tell me about Brenda. Do you know if she’s armed?” Phyllis asked her questions calmly. That was the secret to working as a 911 operator. You had to remain calm no matter what. “Is she dangerous?”

  “Maybe she is or maybe she isn’t,” Janet replied. “How would I know? I’v
e never met the woman. I’ve never even seen her. After all, I’m a whole continent away. You’re right there in Grass Valley. Isn’t there something you can do?”

  Phyllis’s desk in the Nevada County Communications Center was actually located in Nevada City rather than Grass Valley, but she didn’t quibble.

  “Yes, ma’am,” Phyllis told her caller. “I’m dispatching officers right now to do a welfare check.”

  “And you’ll get back to me if you find out that something’s wrong?” Janet Silvie asked.

  “I’m only an emergency operator,” Phyllis told her. “I won’t be the one getting back to you. The address you gave me is inside the Grass Valley city limits. Once I pass this information on to them, the Grass Valley Police Department will be handling the response. Maybe one of their uniformed officers will call you back. Or else Mr. Lydecker himself. I’m sure the officers on the scene will let him know that you’re concerned.”

  “Thank you,” Janet Silvie said gratefully, then she blew her nose loudly into the mouthpiece.

  Phyllis Williams wasn’t offended. She was used to it. In her line of work, nose blowing was actually a good sign. It beat hyperventilating. Or screaming. Or the devastating sound of gunshots when a simple domestic violence call suddenly spiraled out of control and into a homicide situation.

  That had happened to Phyllis on more than one occasion. Once she heard the sound of gunfire, she knew there was nothing to be done. Nothing at all. It was over. People were already dead or dying. All Phyllis could do then was send officers to the scene even though she knew their arrival would be too little, too late.

  Nose blowing, on the other hand, meant that the people on the other side of the telephone conversation were still alive. They were trying to pull themselves together and regain control. Their grip on self-control might be tenuous but it counted big in Phyllis’s book.

  “Try not to worry,” Phyllis said reassuringly. “As I said, officers are currently on their way to that address.”

  That was a small white lie because the officers weren’t on their way right that very minute. They wouldn’t get word until Phyllis notified Dispatch at the Grass Valley Police Department. Phyllis did that immediately, but she still felt that there was no real urgency to the matter. After all, it was a simple welfare check. No big hurry. No need for lights or sirens. The officers would get there when they got there, probably after taking their morning coffee break rather than before.