Web of Evil

by J. A. Jance

  “Thank you,” she said. “How is Rosa? How’s Lonso?”

  “Rosa’s fine and Lonso’s great. He even got to play peewee league this year—second base.”

  For a child who had been hovering at death’s door five years earlier, this seemed like nothing short of a miracle.

  “But what about you?” he asked. “I don’t work for the station anymore. I got hired on with another company. If you need me to testify…”

  “We may still need you to do that, but right now, I need something else,” Ali said.

  “Name it,” Eddie said.

  “I’m trying to find my old gardener,” Ali said. “There’s been a misunderstanding. I need to hire him back, but I don’t speak enough Spanish.”

  “You need me to translate?” Eddie asked.

  “Yes,” Ali said. “Please.”

  “Where? When?”

  “Soon,” Ali said. “As soon as possible. But I’m not sure where. He lives somewhere in Pico Gardens, but we’re not there yet, and I don’t have an address.”

  “The only place I know there is that old Linda Vista Hospital, the abandoned hospital they use for movies and TV shows,” Eddie said. “I could meet you there—out front in the parking lot. It’ll take me about forty-five minutes to get there.”

  “Great,” Ali said. “Maybe by then we’ll have found him.”

  “Who’s Eddie?” Dave asked.

  “Long story,” Ali returned. “A very long story.”

  With Ali on the phone and Dave preoccupied with dodging other drivers, they were in the wrong lane and had missed the fork onto I-10 East. Half an hour after leaving the tony environs of Wilshire Boulevard, they were driving around the desolate, graffiti-marred streets of Boyle Heights. It was a neighborhood of houses that had been built in the early part of the twentieth century and were somehow still holding together. Some of them appeared to be in reasonably decent shape. Others were little more than crumbling wrecks.

  They started by locating the Morales household on Sixth and then circled out from there, searching for Jesus Sanchez’s van. As they turned up South Chicago, Ali pointed. “There it is,” she announced. “That’s his van.”

  The aging, much dented Aerostar was parked in the driveway of a decrepit duplex.

  “Now that we know where to find Jesus, let’s go back to the hospital parking lot and wait for my interpreter to show up.”

  “What if he doesn’t?”

  “Don’t worry. Eddie will be here.”

  Once they were parked and waiting, Ali told Dave the Eddie Duarte story from beginning to end. She was just finishing when her phone rang.

  “You’re not going to believe this,” Edie Larson said. “If I weren’t down here in the lobby seeing it with my own eyes, I wouldn’t believe it myself.”

  Ali switched her phone to “speaker” so Dave could hear both sides of the conversation. “Seeing what?” she asked. “What’s going on?”

  “Lights, camera, action,” Edie replied grimly. “April is down here in the lobby in a blue and white maternity outfit with perfect makeup and perfect hair. She’s doing a sit-down interview with some young woman with very long blond hair and an astonishingly short skirt. I saw the logo on one of the cameras. It said Court TV.”

  “The blonde would be Sheila Rosenburg,” Ali said. “So April is doing the interview after all.”

  “And against our advice,” Edie added. “But there’s more. I told you when you left that I was going to go check on her and see if she needed anything. Only when I opened my door, there was a man coming out of her room, so I ducked back inside ours. He was a young man, by the way, a very good-looking young man.”

  “Probably one of her friends,” Ali said.

  “That’s what I thought right up until he kissed her good-bye,” Edie returned. “Believe me, it was a lot more than a ‘just friends’ kiss. But when he turned away from her, I recognized him. I had seen him before.”

  “Where?” Ali asked.

  “On his Web site.”

  Ali felt like she was bumbling around in the dark. “What Web site?” she asked.

  “Ever since you told me about all that Sumo Sudoku nonsense, I’ve been curious about it,” Edie answered. “I mean, why would Paul and April want to have a bunch of supposedly brainy bodybuilders cluttering up their wedding day? In my experience, weddings are stressful enough without having a film crew and extra people mucking around under hand and foot at the same time. So this morning, I looked up some Sumo Sudoku Web sites and that’s where I found him. The guy’s name is Tracy McLaughlin.”

  Ali was stunned. “You’re saying you think April has been messing around with Tracy McLaughlin? Are you kidding?”

  “I’m not kidding,” Edie replied. “Do you know if there’s been a paternity test?”

  Ali remembered how pleased Paul had been when he learned April was pregnant—pleased and excited.

  “I have no idea,” Ali said.

  “If there hasn’t been one, there probably should be,” Edie said. “As Paul’s executor, if you’re going to be forced into setting up a trust fund for Paul’s supposed catch colt, you’d best be sure the baby is really his.”

  Edie Larson had always been a keen observer of human behavior. One of the spooky things about Ali’s mother, something that had always left her daughter more than slightly mystified, was her innate ability to see through things that went over other people’s heads. Aunt Evelyn, Edie’s twin sister, had always claimed that Edie had eyes in the back of her head. As a child, Ali had believed it was true. Maybe it still was, but this seemed like too much.

  “Based on seeing the man in a hotel hallway, you’re convinced Sonia Marie is really Tracy McLaughlin’s baby rather than Paul’s?” Ali asked.

  “I’d bet money on it,” Edie declared. “You should have seen the little love tap and the kiss the man laid on April’s tummy as he was saying good-bye. That was a daddy-style maneuver if I’ve ever seen one.”

  That meant Paul was cheating on Ali with April, and April was cheating on Paul with Tracy McLaughlin. This was, Ali supposed, entirely predictable.

  “What goes around comes around,” she said. “So what do we know about Tracy McLaughlin?”

  “Only what was on his Web site, and I’ve got his bio right here,” Edie replied. “Says he came to Hollywood from Des Moines, Iowa, determined to be a stuntman. He ended up in a stunt that went bad and spent the next six months in a full body cast. When he got out of the cast, he went into bodybuilding to regain his strength. He worked puzzles while he was laid up and invented Sumo Sudoku once he got better as a way of proving to people that he had recovered completely. But that’s not all.”

  “What’s not all?” Ali asked.

  “You’ll never guess who put up a major part of the capital to get Sumo Sudoku off the ground.”

  “Paul?”

  “You’ve got it. He’s one of the original investors in the organization. There are ten people who put up big bucks to get it started. I don’t recognize any of the other names, but you may. I think that’s why they were holding the Sumo Sudoku tournament at the house on the same day as the wedding. I’m sure Paul knew there would be lots of media coverage. That way the tournament would generate lots of interest…”

  “And lots of buzz,” Ali finished. “In this town, buzz is everything. Once something is the current ‘in’ thing, then it’s everybody’s ‘in’ thing. Get one appearance on Jay Leno and you’re on your way.”

  A gray Chevrolet Impala pulled up and stopped beside Dave’s Nissan. “I’ve gotta go, Mom,” Ali said. “My translator is here.”

  Leaving the Chevy idling, Eddie Duarte hurried over to Ali’s door, reached in, and gave her a swift hug.

  “Thank you for coming,” she said.

  “No problem,” Eddie returned. “Now where’s this guy you need me to talk to?”

  With Eddie following in his Chevy, Dave and Ali drove back to South Chicago Street, where Jesus Sanchez’s dist
inctive blue van was still parked in the driveway. Dave drove half a block beyond the Sanchez house and then stopped in a parking spot that was large enough for both his Nissan and Eddie’s Impala. Before they could open their doors, however, a big unmarked Crown Victoria came careening around the corner and grabbed the spot just behind Eddie. Dave watched in his mirror as two people exited the vehicle and hurried past the van and into the fenced yard.

  “Hey,” Dave began. “I think I know them. Aren’t they the two homicide detectives who came to the hospital to talk to April last night?”

  Ali turned and looked. Sure enough, Detectives Tim Hubbard and Rosalie Martin hurried up onto the duplex’s shaded front porch and rang the bell. “They talked to me, too,” Ali said. “What are they doing here?”

  “Same thing we are,” Dave replied. “Looking for answers.”

  “Which means we’re too late then,” Ali said.

  “Looks like,” Dave agreed. “They’ll recognize you. You stay where you are, and I’ll let your friend Eddie know what’s going on.”

  While Ali watched, the two detectives tried ringing a doorbell. Then they knocked—and knocked some more. Finally a woman Ali recognized to be Jesus’s wife, Clemencia, came to the door and slipped out onto the porch. She stood there talking to the two detectives for several long minutes, alternately shaking her head and gesturing. A little later, an LAPD patrol car pulled up as well. A young Hispanic officer exited the vehicle and hurried up onto the porch, where he joined in the conversation.

  By then Dave had returned. “The new guy is probably here to translate,” Dave muttered. “That means they have the same language problem we do.”

  They waited and watched for another fifteen minutes. Finally, the clearly frustrated detectives and the patrolman stepped off the porch and returned to their two separate vehicles. As they drove away, Dave let out a sigh of relief.

  “If Jesus is there, he refused to come out and talk to them, and they didn’t go in after him. That means Hubbard and Martin were only here on a fishing expedition, and they went away empty-handed. If they’d had enough for a search warrant, it would have been a different story.”

  “Let’s go then,” Ali said, opening her door. “I know Clemencia. At least I’ve met her. Maybe she’ll talk to me.”

  Dave Holman didn’t budge. “Are you coming or not?” Ali asked.

  “You and Eddie go on ahead,” Dave said. “And you’d better make it quick. If Hubbard and Martin come back with a warrant, this may be your only chance.”

  “And what are you going to do?” Ali asked.

  “I’ll let you know if it works,” Dave replied.

  Ali scrambled out of the Nissan and motioned for Eddie Duarte to join her. A moment later, they were standing on the porch in front of a sun-bleached mahogany door. Ali pressed the doorbell, but there was no answering ring from inside. While she waited, Ali edged over to one of the windows. The curtains had been pulled shut, but there was enough of a space left between them that Ali was able to see into the living room, where a stack of taped cardboard boxes and a collection of mismatched luggage gave evidence of hurried packing. Apparently Jesus and Clemencia Sanchez were headed out of Dodge.

  Convinced the doorbell wasn’t in working order, Ali tried knocking instead. Nothing happened then, either.

  “Her name is Clemencia,” Ali told Eddie. “Call out to her. Tell her we know she’s inside. Tell her I’m here. Say I need to talk to her and that we aren’t going away until I do—that we’ll stay here all afternoon if necessary. Tell her that the neighbors already saw the cops come and go, and they’re watching us now.”

  It was several long minutes before Clemencia Sanchez finally came to the door. She pulled it open slightly and then slipped outside. The look she leveled in Ali’s direction was nothing short of venomous.

  “What do you want?” she demanded.

  “Where’s Jesus?” Ali returned. “I need to talk to him.”

  Ali knew for sure that Clemencia understood that much English, but the woman deliberately turned away from her, looking instead to Eddie as though she expected understanding from him rather than a translation, which he nonetheless provided.

  “He’s gone,” Clemencia answered. “He went away.”

  “Gone where?” Ali asked.

  Clemencia shrugged. “It doesn’t matter. He isn’t coming back.”

  “But I want to give him his job back,” Ali said. “He should never have been fired in the first place. It was a mistake.”

  Unimpressed, Clemencia shrugged again. Ali tried another tack.

  “The cops that were here before. What did they want?”

  Clemencia’s dark eyes sparked with sudden fury. Her nostrils flared. “Jesus knew they would come for him, and they did. That’s why he left, thank God. He went away before they got here.”

  “But why would they come for him?” Ali asked.

  “Because that awful woman fired him,” Clemencia said in a barrage of angry Spanish. “You wanted him gone, but she was the one who did the dirty work for you. And when he was ready to leave and went to turn in his keys, there she was—at the bottom of the stairs.”

  “Monique had already fallen before Jesus left? Why didn’t he call for help?”

  “Because he thought she was already dead,” Clemencia answered. “It looked to him like she was dead. And Jesus knew what the cops would think—that since she fired him, he killed her. He dropped his key ring, and he’s sure they found it. They’ll find his fingerprints there, too, and they’ll blame him.” For the first time, Clemencia’s fury seemed to dissolve into something closer to despair. She stopped speaking and blinked back tears.

  At the time the EMTs had been moving Monique to the gurney, Ali had been too busy to pay any attention to the key ring. She had been focused instead on the phone. But she remembered it now. And she knew, just as the detectives had, that the keys had belonged to Jesus Sanchez because his name had been on the ring as well. Paul Grayson had been a great one for wielding his P-Touch labeler. Everyone who had access to the house or the grounds, Ali included, had been issued appropriate sets of keys with their names clearly visible.

  She also understood why Jesus had chosen to disappear. She knew full well that the U.S. Constitution aside, all men are not created equal. Hispanics or blacks accused of crimes often found themselves on an entirely different legal track than Anglos did—one with an automatic presumption of guilt rather than innocence. In fact, she thought wryly, the same thing held true when media babes ended up accused of crimes they may not have committed.

  “I’d like to help,” Ali said quietly.

  Without needing or waiting for Eddie to translate, Clemencia replied, “Why?”

  “Because I know what it feels like to be suspected of doing something you haven’t done,” Ali said. She scrounged in her purse until she found one of Victor’s cards. She handed it over. “If Jesus wants an attorney, have him call this man.”

  Clemencia studied the gold-embossed card then handed it back. “We could not afford someone like this,” she said.

  Just then Ali remembered Velma T’s nephew. Maybe Jesus and Clemencia wouldn’t find him quite as daunting. “There’s another man I could recommend then,” Ali said. “I’ll forward his information to your niece, Andrea.”

  “But still…” Clemencia objected. “We can’t afford to pay for any attorney.”

  “I can afford it,” Ali said. “And I will. Be sure to tell Jesus that when you talk to him. And be sure he knows that if he wants it, he still has a job.”

  With that, she turned and walked away.

  { CHAPTER 12 }

  Eddie Duarte stayed on the porch for several minutes after Ali returned to the car and while she was giving Dave a brief summary of what had transpired.

  “You gave Jesus Sanchez Victor Angeleri’s card?” he asked incredulously. “Who’s going to pay the bill? I’d hate to think what his hourly billable rate is.”

  “She didn’t tak
e it,” Ali said. “But I’ll pay for whatever attorney they do hire.”

  “So now you’re setting out to save the world?”

  “Only the parts of it I’ve screwed up,” Ali responded.

  “Excuse me,” Dave returned. “As far as I can tell, you had nothing at all to do with the fact that Monique Ragsdale took a header down those stairs.”

  “No, but if it turns out she was pushed—”

  “She was,” Dave interjected.

  “You know that for sure?” Ali asked.

  Dave nodded. “I have a source who confirmed it as a suspected homicide while you were busy with Clemencia.”

  “Then whoever’s responsible is probably connected to me as well,” Ali asserted. “And if Jesus is being wrongly blamed for what happened to her? Well, I’m connected to him, too.”

  “I hope your husband left you a ton of money then,” Dave said. “It sounds like you’re going to need it.”

  Eddie Duarte approached Ali’s side of the car and tapped on the window. She rolled it down.

  “What did Clemencia say after I left?” Ali asked.

  Eddie frowned. “She told me that you’re as evil as your husband.”

  That revelation hurt Ali’s feelings. Personally, she had to agree about Paul—he was evil—but Ali didn’t like being tarred with the same brush.

  “I told her I knew you were a good person,” Eddie continued. “And that if you said you would do something, you would do it. I’m not sure she believed me, though.”

  Why would she? Ali thought. “Thank you for saying that, Eddie, and thank you for coming,” she added. “I really appreciate your help.”

  “Not that it did much good,” Eddie said dejectedly and, offering a good-bye, returned to his car.

  “Where to now?” Dave asked. “Back to the hotel?”

  Ali nodded.

  “How did you find out Monique’s death is now classified as a homicide?” Ali asked. “Who told you?”

  “Ken Nickerson is one of my good old buddies from the Marines. We served together in Iraq. Now he works for LAPD.”

  “Ken’s the one who got you Andrea Morales’s address information?” Ali asked.