Web of Evil

by J. A. Jance

  “What about him?” Chris returned. “I’m assuming he was several husbands ago.”

  The little tidbit of information made April’s way of dealing with the world much more understandable. She had been raised by an often-married gold digger of a mother. With that in mind, it was entirely reasonable for her to grow up thinking that someone else’s husband—anyone else’s husband—was fair game. If that was how Monique had gotten ahead in the world, why wouldn’t her daughter try doing the same thing? Given that context, April’s involvement with Paul Grayson must have seemed like business as usual.

  “Anything else you can tell me about April?”

  “Dropped out of college after only a semester or two,” Chris replied. “According to Scott, she’s not all that bright. At least he didn’t think so.”

  Even with the door to April’s room pulled shut, Ali wasn’t prepared to comment on that either way.

  “What’s going to happen now?” Chris asked. “And should I call in to work and have them get me a substitute teacher so I can drive over to help out?”

  “No,” Ali said. “Absolutely not. Mom’s here. So’s Dave Holman.”

  “He is? What’s Dave doing there?”

  “Grandma called him and he came.”

  “She called him, but she didn’t call me.”

  Chris sounded understandably hurt.

  “I’m sure she was thinking the same thing I was—that we didn’t want to bother you or take you away from what you’re doing.”

  “Thanks a lot,” Chris said. “To both of you. Like mother like daughter, I guess, but I’m a grown-up now. I get to choose, remember?”

  Ali would have said more, but call waiting buzzed again. The readout said Cedars-Sinai Medical Center. At the same time, her phone was telling her she was running out of battery power.

  “Sorry, Chris,” Ali told her son. “There’s another call. I have to take it.” She switched over.

  “April Gaddis?” a male voice asked.

  “No. April’s in the other room, lying down.”

  “This is the contact number we were given, and it’s about her mother. Can you put her on the line, please?”

  The caller’s voice sounded so distant, so impersonal, that Ali knew without hearing another word that the guy wasn’t calling with good news.

  “Just a moment,” Ali said quickly. “She’s resting, but I’ll get her for you.”

  With the low-battery alarm still sounding, Ali hurried into April’s darkened room. The young woman lay on her side, snoring softly. Ali shook her awake. “April,” she said. “There’s a call for you.”

  April took the phone. “Yes,” she said. “What is it? Is my mother all right?

  But of course Monique Ragsdale was anything but all right. She had died on the operating table, most likely as a result of the brain injury. With a slight whimper, April dropped the phone. As soon as it fell, Ali Reynolds knew she was now a suspect in two separate homicides.

  Sobbing, April buried her face in the pillow. “Mom’s gone,” she wailed. “So’s Paul. I’m all alone now. What’s going to happen to me? What’s going to happen to the baby?”

  Ali reached down and patted April’s shoulder. “I’m so sorry,” she said. “But you’ll be all right. We’ll figure it out.”

  Then Ali picked up the phone, took it into the other room, plugged it into the charger, and called Victor Angeleri at home. “You need to know what’s happened.”

  In the end, Ali stayed behind at the hotel for yet another meeting with Victor. Her mother and Dave were the ones who volunteered to take April back to the hospital to handle whatever paperwork needed signing. After several phone calls, Victor managed to locate Detectives Tim Hubbard and Rosalie Martin, the two L.A. homicide cops who were now in charge of the Monique Ragsdale investigation.

  “Look,” Victor said once he had Detective Hubbard on the phone. “I don’t like the circus atmosphere any more than you do, and it’s going to get a lot worse before it gets better. My client is willing to cooperate and give you a voluntary statement, but it needs to be on our terms. I’d rather do it here at the hotel, where we have some control over the media. How about if you come to us?”

  In the end, that’s what happened—the detectives agreed to come there. For the next two hours, and with a tape recorder running, they went over the whole story again, in great detail. They wanted to know who was at the morning meeting at the house on Robert Lane. Both detectives seemed intrigued by the pre-funeral reading of Paul Grayson’s will, and they seemed especially interested in the fact that Paul Grayson’s murder had left Ali holding a bagful of monetary goodies.

  “What was Ms. Gaddis’s reaction to that?” Rosalie Martin wanted to know.

  Ali shrugged. “What you’d expect. She was upset.”

  “What about her mother, Ms. Ragsdale?” Detective Hubbard asked. “Was she upset, too?”

  “I’m sure she was worried about her daughter—and the baby,” Ali told her.

  “Which put the two of you on opposite sides of the fence.”

  Ali glanced in Victor’s direction. He gave a slight shake of his head, and Ali said nothing more.

  With the topic of the will pretty much exhausted, Hubbard moved on to other issues. The two cops seemed to have missed the Sumo Sudoku craze entirely and had to have the concept explained to them. When it came to the names of the players and the film crew, however, Ali wasn’t able to offer much detail.

  “What about workmen?” Detective Hubbard asked.

  “Jesus Sanchez is the gardener,” Ali said.

  “What can you tell us about him?”

  Ali shrugged. “Not much. He more or less came with the house. He was working there long before Paul and I bought the place. Most of the time he works alone, but today he had a crew working with him. I didn’t know any of them.”

  Was this the time Ali should mention her near-encounter with the falling boulder, or would the cops see that as nothing more than a lame attempt on her part to deflect their suspicions away from her? She decided to let it go.

  “What about the cook?” Detective Hubbard asked.

  “I met her, but she’s new. I don’t know her name.”

  “What about address information or contact numbers for the two of them?”

  “Jesus and the cook? I’m sure Paul had the information, probably in his office somewhere, but I don’t. We were getting a divorce, remember?”

  “We’ll see what we can find,” Hubbard said. “Now about the house. Does it have a security system?”

  “Of course,” Ali told him.

  “But it wasn’t alarming when you got there this afternoon and found Ms. Ragsdale at the bottom of the stairs?”

  “No. The front door was half open but the alarm wasn’t sounding. I assumed someone must have switched it off.”

  “Why would that be?”

  “Maybe with so many people coming and going throughout the day, it was easier to turn it off.”

  “Isn’t that unusual?”

  “It would have been for me,” Ali said. “But I’m not sure about how April runs the house.”

  “Your house,” Hubbard added.

  Ali didn’t like it that Hubbard seemed so eager to come back to the idea that the house on Robert Lane ultimately belonged to Ali.

  “April Gaddis is the one who’s been living there most recently,” Ali returned. “Maybe she’s not all that worried about security.”

  “Maybe not,” Hubbard agreed. “And no one else was there at the house when you arrived?”

  “No one. Not the cook. Not the gardener.”

  “What time did you get there?”

  “Four or so. I don’t remember exactly.”

  “The nine-one-one call came in at four-fifteen.”

  “So around four.”

  “The people who were with you at the time you found Ms. Ragsdale were your mother and this friend, one Dave Holman.”

  “Yes,” Ali said. “That’s correct.”r />
  “And he’s a police officer?”

  Ali nodded. “Dave’s a homicide detective with the Yavapai County Sheriff’s Department in Sedona.”

  “I’ve heard about Sedona,” Hubbard said. “The crystal place. So he drove all the way over here from there?”

  “From Lake Havasu, actually,” Ali replied. “He’s divorced. He was there visiting his kids.”

  “When did he arrive?”

  Ali was a little puzzled by this segue into questions about Dave Holman. “Early afternoon,” she answered. “In time to have lunch.”

  “And he was with you most of the afternoon?”

  “Yes.”

  All this time, Detective Rosalie Martin had been sitting back and letting her partner do most of the questioning. Now she leaned forward once more.

  “You mentioned that you came and went from the hotel via the service elevator?”

  “Yes,” Ali said.

  “Why was that?”

  “Because the lobby was full of reporters. I wanted to avoid them if at all possible.”

  “Couldn’t it also be because you didn’t want to be observed, period?” Rosalie asked. “Not just by the reporters but by anyone?”

  Her not-too-subtle implication was clear and Victor balked. “This interview is over,” he announced. “My client has been more than cooperative. She’s answered all your questions. If you want to know whether or not she left the hotel in the course of the afternoon, I suggest you avail yourselves of the hotel’s security tapes. I’m sure those cover the service elevator as well as the public ones.”

  The cops left shortly thereafter. Victor turned to Ali. “Has anyone ever told you you’re a hell of a lot of trouble?”

  “Yes,” she answered. “I’m pretty sure several people have mentioned it.”

  “By the way,” Victor said. “My assistant did a LexisNexis search on you. We need to talk about the man you shot last March.”

  Having already been questioned by the cops for more than an hour, Ali was surprised when Victor began grilling her as well.

  “What about him? Ben Witherspoon was a vicious man who broke into my house and attacked me. I shot him, all right, but since he attacked me in my own home, the shooting was ruled self-defense, and I’d do it again in a minute.”

  “What about the lady who tried to force you off the highway? She’s dead, too, isn’t she?”

  “Yes, but—”

  “Do you happen to see a pattern here?” Victor asked.

  “I do see a pattern,” Ali said, her temper rising. “You seem to be giving me hell about all kinds of things that have nothing whatsoever to do with what’s going on here. Why? Aren’t you supposed to be my attorney?”

  “I am your attorney. It’s my job to look down the road, see what’s coming in our direction, and do what I can to mitigate it. All those reporters down in the lobby—the ones who aren’t getting a chance to interview you—are doing exactly the same thing I did. They’re checking out every available bit of Ali Reynolds’s history they can, including every archived posting on cutlooseblog.com. By the time you wake up tomorrow morning, regardless of whether or not you’ve been officially charged with a crime, you’re going to be on trial in the media for everything you’ve ever said or done. They’re going to turn you into this year’s big story. You’ll be cast as a former media elite who considers herself above the law and is probably getting away with murder.”

  “All I did was defend myself. Bringing up those old cases isn’t fair.”

  “No, it’s not,” Victor agreed. “But that’s how it’s going to play out, especially if charges are brought in either one of these new cases.”

  “What about innocent until proven guilty?”

  “Don’t be naive, Ali,” Victor said. “You know as well as I do, perception is everything, and the media are the ones who control that. Even if we prove you innocent in a court of law, dodging the criminal charge will only be the start of your problems. Next on the agenda will be a wrongful death suit where the burden of proof will be far less stringent. As Paul Grayson’s primary heir, you’ll make a very inviting target. Where’s your gun, by the way?”

  “My Glock? It’s in the safe in Mom’s and my room, but it’s also legal. I have a valid license to carry.”

  “Valid or not, leave your gun in the safe,” Victor advised. “If you end up being questioned again, you’ll be way better off if the cops don’t find a weapon on your person.”

  Before Ali could reply, the door opened and Dave Holman ushered April into the room. She looked ghastly. “I think she needs to lie down,” Dave said.

  As Ali rose to relieve Dave of his charge, Victor gathered his briefcase and stood as well. “I’ll be going then,” he said. “Hopefully for the last time today.”

  Ali led April into the other room, where she flopped down onto the bed without even stripping off her clothes. “Are you all right?” Ali asked.

  “I’m tired,” April said. “My back hurts. I need some sleep.”

  Ali left her there and returned to the other room, closing the door behind her. She found Dave standing by the window. “I don’t think your attorney likes me,” Dave said.

  “That’s fair enough,” Ali said, “since I’m not so sure I like him very much at the moment, either. How was it?”

  “The hospital?” Dave shook his head. “Not a good scene,” he replied. “I felt sorry for April. It’s a lot for someone her age to handle.”

  Ali nodded and looked around the suite, realizing for the first time that Edie hadn’t returned with Dave. “What about Mom?” she asked.

  “Said she was dead on her feet,” Dave replied. “Told me to tell you she was going to bed and not to worry about waking her when you come in. She said she’ll take out her hearing aids and won’t hear a thing.”

  “Why wouldn’t she be tired?” Ali returned. “I’m sure she got up at the usual time this morning and drove all the way here. Now it’s way past her bedtime.”

  “What about your bedtime?” Dave asked. “And what about dinner? Did you have anything to eat?”

  “Not since lunch.”

  “I’ll take you to dinner then.”

  “What about the reporters?”

  Dave grinned. “Don’t worry. I’m not stupid. I’ve learned the drill. You call the bellman, go up and down in the service elevator, and hand over the tip. How do you think I got April in and out without being seen? And then there’s my secret transportation device.”

  “What’s that?”

  “I’m sure the reporters have spotters keeping an eye on your Cayenne. And I don’t doubt there was a huge flap when Victor took off in that enormous Lincoln of his. But it turns out nobody pays the least bit of attention to a beat-out Nissan Sentra. It’s right up there with one of Harry Potter’s invisibility cloaks.”

  Ali was genuinely surprised. In the months since she’d stopped working, she had returned to her long-neglected habit of reading for pleasure. She had allowed herself the guilty indulgence of reading the entire Harry Potter series and had enjoyed it far more than she had expected.

  “You read Harry Potter?” she asked.

  Dave rolled his eyes. “I’ve got kids, don’t I? Now, are you coming to dinner or not?”

  “Where are you taking me?”

  “Somewhere no one will expect to find you,” he said. “Denny’s. And don’t give me any grief about it. After forking over a fortune in tips this afternoon, it’s the best I can do.”

  “Are you kidding?” Ali asked. “If you’re offering a Grand Slam, I’m there.”

  { CHAPTER 10 }

  In the months Ali had been back home in Sedona, she had become reacquainted with the small-town intimacy of the Sugar Loaf Café. Now she found herself disappearing in the bustling anonymity of a corporate-run restaurant. The colorful, multipage plastic menus were the same everywhere. So was the food. The meal Ali ordered was good, but it didn’t come close to measuring up to one of Bob Larson’s.


  “Victor thinks you should leave,” Ali told Dave over dinner. “You and Mom both. He’s afraid that having you poking around will somehow ‘muddy the waters.’”

  “Tough,” Dave Holman replied. “I don’t like Victor. Victor doesn’t like me. That makes us even. I have three weeks of vacation coming. I called the office this afternoon and told Sheriff Maxwell I’m taking ’em. I’m here for the duration. And if things get settled sooner than that, I’ll camp out over at Lake Havasu and visit with my kids.”

  “How are they doing?” Ali asked.

  While Dave had been off serving in Iraq with his reserve unit, Roxanne, his now former wife, had taken up with a sleazy timeshare salesman. Months earlier, when the new husband had been transferred to Lake Havasu, Roxanne had moved, taking Dave’s kids with her. He had been devastated.

  “Medium,” Dave replied glumly. “Gary, the cretin, lost his job. Got caught in some kind of corporate hanky-panky. Roxie didn’t tell me any of the gory details, and I’m probably better off not knowing. The thing is, Gary is currently unemployed, and they may end up having to move again. I’m not sure where—Vegas, maybe. The kids are sick about it. So am I.”

  “Have you thought about taking Roxie back to court and trying to get custody?” Ali asked.

  Dave shook his head. “Are you kidding? I’m a man. I’ve got about as much chance of winning a custody fight as I do of winning at Powerball. And since I never buy a lotto ticket, that’s not likely to happen. But let’s not talk about that. Let’s talk about you.”

  “What about me?”

  “This is serious, Ali. Really serious.”

  “Victor has already pointed that out,” Ali responded. “Several different times. And it could be serious for you, too. Earlier the LAPD cops were asking a lot of questions about you. So was Victor, for that matter.”

  “Screw Victor,” Dave said. “But it makes sense. If the cops are looking for you to have an accomplice, then I could be a likely subject. Who better than a renegade homicide detective to figure out a way to cover up a murder?”

  “So what do we do?” Ali asked.

  “We fight back.”

  “But you can’t do that, can you? You’re a cop.”

  He smiled grimly. “You’d be surprised at what I can do. What did you tell the two homicide dicks?”