Cold Betrayal

by J. A. Jance

  “Alton knew I’d never be able to remember all these. He’s the one who had me start keeping this book. As you can see, I write them in pencil in case I need to change one of them.”

  Joe shook the book in her direction as though disciplining a child. “Don’t you understand? Anyone who gains access to your house and to this book would also have access to everything about you? Here’s your Gmail password. Go ahead and put it in. We’ll change it later.”

  “Where are you going?”

  “Out to the van to get my portable scanner,” he said. “We’re going to put all this information in a secure file inside the computer. Another copy will be stored elsewhere—at High Noon Enterprises most likely—and will be automatically updated if this one is updated. In the meantime, I recommend that you spend the next few days changing the passwords on all your accounts. As you’re doing that, is there anyone else you would like to have access to the passwords?”

  “My granddaughter,” Betsy said. “Athena Reynolds. Her mother-in-law, Ali, and her husband own that company—the one you just mentioned, High Noon.”

  “Now I get the connection,” Joe said. “All right, I’ll tell Stuart we’ll need Athena’s thumbprint, too. That way she can be added to both the computer and the account as a secondary user.”

  While Joe headed for his van, Betsy found herself still fuming at his offhand and entirely too dismissive remark—“a woman your age.” Even at what Joe seemed to regard as terribly advanced years, Betsy was determined to show him that she could still do a thing or two on her own.

  Thumbing through the notebook, Betsy used the magnifying glass she kept in her pocket to locate the listing for Athena’s e-mail address. Not knowing if it was still good, she tried it anyway. Before Joe returned, she had typed and sent a message to Athena, letting her know her computer was up and running.

  Another hour and a half sped by before Joe had scanned all the pages of the notebook, shown her how to access them in the cloud, and then deemed Betsy work wise in terms of running the computer. That was when they finally did the photo shoot, even though at that hour of the night, Betsy was sure she didn’t look her best.

  The last thing before Joe left, he went out to the backyard, uncovered Alton’s long-unused Weber grill, tossed Betsy’s password notebook onto it and set the notebook on fire.

  “Remember,” he cautioned. “All your existing passwords need to be reset because we have to assume that any numbers in the notebook are most likely already compromised. From now on, all passwords go in your cyber safety-deposit file and nowhere else. You don’t have to make the changes tonight, but make them soon.”

  “Right.” Betsy nodded. “I’ll be sure to do that right away.”

  For Betsy, though, it wasn’t just about the passwords. There was more at stake here, and she wanted all of it settled and in place long before there was ever any question of Elmer Munson declaring her incompetent.

  Just after ten, Joe loaded his tools and boxes into his van and drove away. As soon as he was gone, Betsy returned to the kitchen. It was late, but not that late. She had been thinking about this all during the password debacle, and she wanted to do it now, before she lost her nerve.

  She had to use the phone book and the magnifying glass to locate the number, but once she had it, she dialed immediately. It took several rings before someone answered at Sundowner’s Assisted Living Center. She almost hung up while she waited to be put through to Howard Hansen’s unit, but she didn’t.

  “Hello.” She heard the wariness in Howard’s voice. Calls in the middle of the night often mean bad news, especially at our age, Betsy thought, then she chided herself for being as bad as Joe Friday.

  “It’s Betsy,” she reassured Howard quickly. “No, there’s nothing wrong. I mean, there’s no emergency. But I do need your help. My son, Jimmy, thinks I’m losing my marbles. He and Sandra have made an evaluation appointment for me with Elmer Munson for Monday afternoon. I was wondering if you’d go with me.”

  It wasn’t such an odd request. For the folks who socialized over bingo and at the VFW, it was often an “us or them” mentality, with members of the older generation duking it out with the younger ones. Howard Hansen may have been Betsy’s boyfriend long ago, but he had also been a GP in Bemidji long before Elmer Munson graduated from high school much less medical school.

  “I’d like to help out,” Howard began, “but I don’t drive anymore.”

  “I’ll get us a ride,” Betsy said. “I want you with me during the appointment.”

  “In the examining room? Are you sure?”

  “Yes.”

  “That’s rather irregular.”

  “Look,” she said. “Sandra and Jimmy are trying to sell me down the river, and they’re bringing in Elmer Munson as a hired gun to pull it off. I’m sure you remember what happened to Elmer’s mother.”

  Howard sighed. “Well, yes,” he agreed. “There is that. But if I go to the appointment with you, people are going to talk, especially if I accompany you into that exam room. We won’t even be out of Munson’s office before word will spread all over town.”

  “So?” Betsy returned. “In the past few days, any number of people have gone out of their way to remind me about how old I am. And they’re right. I’m so old right now that I don’t give a tinker’s damn about what they say. Now, are you in or out?”

  Howard didn’t hesitate. “In,” he said. “Definitely in.”

  “Okay. I’ll let you know later when Marcia and I will pick you up. We might even have some supper after the appointment.”

  “Sounds good,” Howard said.

  Betsy was smiling when she returned the phone to its hook. “Come on, Princess,” she said. “Let’s go for one last walk before we go to bed. When Sandra and Jimmy find out what I’ve done today, they are going to be fit to be tied.”

  15

  Returning to St. Jerome’s after her visit with Andrea, Ali paused in the parking lot long enough to take a call from Stuart Ramey.

  “Things are moving,” he said. “Joe Friday is on the job, and his state-of-the-art monitoring system is being installed as we speak.”

  “Good,” Ali said. “Athena will be relieved to hear that.” Stuart went on to say something else, but Ali had stopped listening. Instead, she was watching a man and woman walk past her SUV, heading for the hospital’s main entrance. The man, dressed in a sheepskin jacket, jeans, and boots, strode ahead of a pregnant woman who followed him at a distance of several paces. She wore an ankle-length checked print skirt over a pair of worn oxfords as well as a light cloth jacket. Her purse was a cloth drawstring pouch. But what Ali noticed most was her fading blond hair. Shot with gray, it was braided and then fastened into a crown that encircled the top of her head.

  Ali’s first thought was that these were Jane Doe’s parents, come to check on their daughter.

  “Sorry, Stu,” Ali said quickly. “I’ve gotta run.”

  By the time she made it into the lobby, the couple stood in front of the reception desk.

  “My name’s Gordon Tower,” the man announced in a booming voice that echoed off the polished granite floor. “I understand you’ve got my wife and my baby in here—Enid and baby Sarah. We’ve come to take them home.”

  His voice was loud and his manner brusque enough that there wasn’t a person in the lobby who didn’t turn to look in his direction. Ali looked, too. The man’s gray hair and weathered face hinted that he was probably somewhere in his sixties. The woman’s age was more difficult to pin down. Her graying hair and sunken cheeks, the product of many missing teeth, hinted that she was the same age as the man, although her pregnancy suggested that she couldn’t be more than forty. In truth, Ali realized, she might even be far younger than that.

  Seeming to sense the weight of Ali’s gaze, the man spun around and glared at her. “What the hell are you staring at, woman
?” he demanded. Before Ali could frame a suitable response, he had already turned his fury back on the hapless clerk.

  “I’m sorry,” she was saying, “we have no patients listed under those names.”

  He slammed the palm of his hand down onto the counter with such force that the clerk flinched from him.

  “The hell you don’t!” he growled. “They were brought here by ambulance late last night, and they shouldn’t have been. The Family doesn’t condone the kinds of black magic medicine that goes on in places like this. I’m here to take them both home. If you don’t tell me where they are right now, I’ll take this place apart brick by brick.”

  A uniformed but unarmed security guard materialized out of nowhere, most likely summoned by a panic button located somewhere on the receptionist’s desk.

  “What seems to be the problem here?” he asked.

  “The problem is you people have my wife and baby,” Tower growled. “I want them back.”

  “I was trying to explain to Mr. Tower here that we don’t have any patients answering to the names he gave me,” the clerk said. “Even if we did, we’re not authorized to give out information . . .”

  “Did you hear what I said?” Tower demanded. “You’ve got my wife and my daughter imprisoned somewhere in this hospital. Now, are you going to turn them over to me, or am I going to go away and come back with an attorney and sue the socks off this place?”

  “Please calm down,” the guard said, attempting to defuse the situation. “I’m sure this is all just some kind of misunderstanding. If you and the missus here would just have a seat . . .”

  “I won’t have a seat and I won’t calm down. I want to talk to whoever’s in charge, not some self-important pretend cop.”

  With Tower’s attention focused entirely on the security guard, Ali took advantage of his momentary distraction to make for the elevator, dialing Sister Anselm’s phone as she went. Naturally her call went to voice mail. When the elevator doors swished open, Ali bounded out into the waiting room. Several people were gathered there, but Sister Anselm wasn’t one of them. A moment later, however, Ali caught sight of the nun emerging from a room down the hall. Sister Anselm looked at Ali in alarm.

  “Is something wrong?” she asked.

  “There’s a guy downstairs hassling the front desk. He says his name is Gordon Tower, and he’s come to take his wife and baby home, by force if necessary.”

  “Put the floor on lockdown, Nurse Mandy,” Sister Anselm called to a woman seated at the nurses’ station. Ali was surprised to see a metal shutter glide silently down over the inside of the nursery window. At the same time Ali heard the distinctive click of a door lock.

  “Hey,” one of the new fathers in the room said. “I’m here trying to look at my baby. What’s going on?”

  “Is the elevator disabled?” Sister Anselm asked.

  Nurse Mandy nodded. “Done.”

  “All right, then,” Sister Anselm said, taking Ali by the arm and guiding her toward the stairwell. “If there’s going to be some kind of confrontation, it won’t happen here on the maternity floor.”

  Sister Anselm sprinted down four flights of stairs in a way that left Ali far behind. When Ali opened the door at the bottom of the last flight, she heard raised voices coming from the lobby. Hurrying out of the stairwell on Sister Anselm’s heels, Ali saw that the crowd in the lobby had grown. Several new innocent bystanders had shown up and were gawping. Five people stood outside the elevator door, pushing impatiently on the Up button and waiting for an elevator car Ali knew wasn’t going to come.

  Sister Anselm made it to the clamoring group in front of the reception desk at the same time two uniformed Flagstaff PD officers rushed in through the front entrance. The cops were there; the security guard was there; a man in a suit who, Ali discovered later, turned out to be the hospital’s chief administrator was there; but it was Sister Anselm who waded into the melee and took charge.

  “What seems to be the problem?” she demanded, her voice cutting through the uproar.

  Gordon Tower rounded on her. “Who the hell are you?”

  “My name is Sister Anselm,” she replied calmly. “I may be able to be of some assistance, but first I expect you to stop shouting.”

  A look of consternation crossed the belligerent man’s face. He was not someone who was used to being spoken to in that fashion, and certainly not, Ali surmised, by a woman. The other men in the room were more than happy to step back and let the nun take over.

  “My name is Gordon Tower,” he snapped at her.

  Sister Anselm turned to the woman cowering behind the man. “And you are?”

  The woman seemed perplexed at being expected to join in the conversation. She glanced at the man and waited for his nod of assent before she answered.

  “Edith,” she said. “Edith Tower.”

  “And your relationship to the woman you claim we’re concealing here?”

  “I already told these people,” Gordon interjected. “I’m Enid’s husband.”

  Again, Sister Anselm focused her sharp blue eyes on the woman. “I asked about your relationship to Enid?” the nun insisted.

  Again Tower answered for her. “Edith’s relationship to Enid is of no consequence in the matter at hand. Now, are you going to give me back my wife and baby or not?”

  “Enid was brought in by ambulance and wasn’t carrying any identification at the time she was admitted to the hospital,” Sister Anselm said calmly, withdrawing her iPad from the pocket of her smock. “We need to have a few details, starting with her date of birth and her full name.”

  Tower sighed and ground his teeth. “Enid Ann Tower. No E on Ann.”

  “Her date of birth?”

  Sister Anselm stood with her finger poised above the keyboard, while an exasperated Gordon turned to Edith. “Well?” he demanded impatiently. “When’s her birthday?”

  “July,” Edith offered timidly. “It’s sometime in July.”

  Ali was astonished. She remembered the month, day, year, and hour when Christopher was born. How could a mother not know that?

  Sister Anselm exhibited no surprise whatsoever. “How old will Enid be this coming July?”

  “Seventeen,” Edith answered.

  “Which means she’s sixteen now. And where was she born? Perhaps we can ascertain her exact birth date through hospital records.”

  “Don’t you understand anything?” Tower grumbled. “That’s what I’ve been trying to tell you people all along. We believe in God. We do not believe in doctors and hospitals. Enid wasn’t born in a hospital. She was born at home—in the birthing room.”

  “You’re raising your voice again, Mr. Tower,” Sister Anselm ­admonished. “Now tell me, where exactly is this”—she hesitated—“ . . . birthing room?”

  “Colorado City,” Tower growled. “On The Family’s private property outside Colorado City, a place we call The Encampment.”

  “Mother’s maiden name?”

  “Why on earth do you need to know that?”

  “It’s part of the identification process,” Sister Anselm said, aiming a questioning look at Edith. “It’s part of the information we need to have.”

  “Her mother’s name was Anne,” Edith said softly. “Anne Lowell. With an E.”

  One of the people from the growing crowd by the elevator came over to raise an objection. “Is someone going to call about the elevator? People are stuck in it. I can hear them pounding.”

  “One moment, sir,” Sister Anselm said. “There’s a problem here.”

  “You’re damned right there’s a problem,” Tower agreed.

  “Now then,” Sister Anselm said, turning to him with a beaming smile. “I’ll need your full name.”

  “Why?’

  “Assuming our patient turns out to be Enid, then I expect you’ll be the one res
ponsible for all her charges. To that end, I need your name, your Social Security number, and the name and number of your insurance carrier.”

  “Who said I’d be responsible? Who said I had insurance?”

  “Don’t you?”

  “Why would I need insurance? We don’t use hospitals.”

  “You’re using one now,” Sister Anselm countered. “And if the patient upstairs turns out to be your wife, she’s already had two rounds of lifesaving surgery with more in the offing. Surgery costs money, Mr. Tower. Surgeons cost money.”

  “And you expect me to pay for all of it? Why should I? I didn’t ask to have her brought here. I don’t want her to be here. You can’t make me pay for treatment I don’t believe in and never wanted.”

  “Just because someone is brought here by ambulance doesn’t mean their family is allowed to skate on their obligation to pay the bill. Once we determine who the responsible party is, we expect him or her to do just that—to take responsibility and pay the expenses.”

  “I am not paying!” Tower declared. Anger distorted his face as he shook his finger in Sister Anselm’s face. “What I am going to do is go upstairs, one damned stairwell at a time if I have to. I’m going to find my wife and my daughter, bring them back downstairs with me, and take them home. Is that clear?”

  Instead of backing off, Sister Anselm stepped into his space. “What is clear, Mr. Tower,” she said quietly, “is that you are a bully and an ass!”

  Goaded into unreasoning fury, Gordon Tower’s reaction was as instinctive as it was predictable. The powerful slap that landed on Sister Anselm’s cheek crackled through the room. She swayed briefly and then stepped away from her attacker. Ali was about to weigh into the fray when she realized that Sister Anselm was smiling.

  “Officers,” she said, “I believe that constitutes an assault. Considering the circumstances, I’m under no obligation to turn the other cheek.”

  The two uniformed cops stepped up as if shot out of cannons. Within a matter of seconds, Tower’s arms were handcuffed behind his back and he was being led away while someone read him his rights.