Web of Evil

by J. A. Jance

  But blaming herself and agonizing about her mother accomplished nothing. She forced herself to turn back to the McLaughlin interview.

  “What about the Pink Swan?” she asked.

  “If it’s a topless place with illegal gambling and they don’t do surveillance tapes, that means they appeal to a clientele with plenty to hide.”

  “It’s also the place where Jake hosted Paul’s bachelor party.”

  “I’ll turn Easy on to that, too. But from the sound of it, the Pink Swan is probably already on the DEA’s radar.”

  “And then there’s Roseanne,” Ali added thoughtfully. “I wonder about her.”

  “Maxwell’s wife?”

  Ali nodded. “If I didn’t know what was going on, I wonder if Roseanne did.”

  “Too bad we don’t know where to find her.”

  “Maybe somebody does,” Ali said determinedly. She passed Dave her phone. “Punch the green button. That’ll give you my list of made calls. Look for Helga Myerhoff.”

  “Your divorce lawyer?” Dave asked. “How come?”

  “She specializes in high-profile divorce cases. If Roseanne and Jake are splitting the sheets, you can figure there’s a lawyer involved—or a whole bevy of them. Helga’s more likely than anyone else to know which ones.”

  Dave found the number, pressed it, and then handed the phone to Ali.

  “I didn’t know they were getting a divorce,” Helga said, once Ali had said her piece. “But I can’t say I’d be surprised.”

  “Because Jake’s involved with another woman?” Ali asked.

  “Because they’re broke,” Helga returned. “Relatively speaking, of course.”

  Jake Maxwell hadn’t looked broke earlier that evening. Anything but.

  “Even in somewhat straitened circumstances, however,” Helga continued, “everyone I know would have been panting after Roseanne Maxwell and hoping to land her as a client.”

  “How can Jake Maxwell be broke?” Ali asked.

  “Lost his job, bad investments, gambling?” Helga said. “Take your pick. There are lots of ways to go broke in this town.”

  “You’re saying Jake lost his job?” Ali asked.

  “You didn’t know that? It happened several months ago now—some kind of corporate job consolidation move. Paul and Jake ended up going head-to-head for the same job. Paul got the job—Jake Maxwell got a golden handshake. That’s why I was a little surprised when he showed up at court on Friday to be in Paul’s corner, but then sometimes people turn out to be better than you think they are.”

  Or worse, Ali thought.

  “Getting back to Roseanne,” Helga finished. “I do have some connections. If she’s holed up somewhere, someone I know will know where to find her.”

  “Thanks.”

  “Victor wanted you to call. Have you talked to him yet?”

  “No.”

  “If you’re driving all over hell and gone, you should probably let him know from you exactly what you’re up to.”

  Ali knew what Victor would say—stay put; don’t talk to anyone; let the cops look for her mother.

  “I’ll call him,” Ali agreed. Eventually.

  Once off the phone, she recounted to Dave everything that had been said. “Makes sense,” he said. “If Jake was needing to make some quick cash, someone may have made him an offer he couldn’t refuse.”

  “But Paul wasn’t broke,” Ali returned. “Why would he be mixed up in it?”

  Dave shook his head. “I have no idea.”

  By then they were pulling into the hotel entrance. “Do you want me to come up?” Dave asked.

  “No,” she said. “Dad and Chris will be here soon. I’m going to take a shower and put my feet up for a few minutes. I may even try closing my eyes.”

  “Good idea,” Dave said. He hopped out of the Cayenne and headed for his own car.

  Ali handed her car keys over to the parking valet and headed straight into the lobby. If there were reporters waiting there, she’d tough her way through them.

  Opening the door to her room Ali hoped, through some miracle, Edie would be there waiting for her, but of course she wasn’t. The room was empty—dark and empty. Ali slipped off her shoes, sank onto the couch, and, as promised, rested her feet on the coffee table. She had spent the last hours busily doing something—playing detective and trying to find her mother. Now, in the quiet stillness, the awful reality began to sink in. Perhaps Edie really was lost to her—lost to all of them. Perhaps there would be no more of Edie’s steaming, soft-centered homemade sweet rolls at Sedona’s Sugar Loaf Café. Perhaps Ali would never again sit over a hot cup of coffee, listening to and often disregarding her mother’s good advice. Perhaps she would never again witness one of her parents’ never-ending rounds of good-natured teasing.

  It was that realization—that losing her mother would be harder on Bob Larson than on anyone else—which finally goaded Ali to action. She picked up her computer and logged on.

  CUTLOOSEBLOG.COM

  Sunday, September 18, 2005

  My mother is missing. Edie Darlene Larson, age 61, of Sedona, Arizona, disappeared from a hotel lobby in L.A. early this afternoon. She was last seen driving away from the Westwood Hotel on Wilshire in her white 2003 Oldsmobile Alero. Edie is five foot seven, has medium-length gray hair, fair skin, and weighs approximately 140 pounds. She also wears two hearing aids. (She’ll kill me for printing that.) Anyone with information about Edie should contact LAPD’s Missing Persons Unit—and me!

  Posted 10:23 P.M., September 18, 2005 by Babe

  There was far more she wanted to say, would have said, but this was a case where less was more. She deliberately made no mention of Edie’s encounter with Tracy McLaughlin. If, as Dave suspected, this whole thing was tied to a drug-smuggling ring, it was better to leave that out. Ali stripped off her clothes and was about to step into the shower when her cell phone rang. Grabbing it off the counter, she was amazed to see her mother’s name in the caller ID readout.

  Sick with relief, Ali shouted into the phone, “Mom! Is that you? Are you all right? Where are you?”

  Except there was no answer. Ali could hear a rustling sound and distant voices, but no one was talking directly to her. Maybe it was just a bad connection. Frustrated, Ali punched the volume button on the side of her phone. “Mom. Can you hear me?” she called again.

  There was more rustling and then she heard her mother’s voice. “What in the world do you think you’re doing?”

  “I’m trying to talk to you,” Ali answered. “Where are you? What’s going on?”

  Someone else—another woman—was speaking in the background. Alice could hear the voice but not clear enough to make out any of the individual words.

  “You need to let me go,” Edie said clearly and firmly. “This is stupid. It makes no sense.”

  That’s when Ali realized she was listening in on what people at the Sugar Loaf called Edie’s infamous “bra calls.” Because that’s where Edie Larson always carried her phone—in her bra. At work her apron pockets usually overflowed with order pads and pencils. When she had added a cell phone into the mix, it hadn’t worked, so she had opted for stowing her phone in the only other available spot—tucked inside her bra. Because Edie didn’t always remember to activate her key guard, she occasionally made accidental calls, burning up minutes and inadvertently revealing all kinds of mundane details of life in a restaurant to several different hapless recipients.

  Ali knew at once, however, that this call was no accident. Whoever was with Edie had no idea she was in possession of a cell phone. They also had no idea she had figured out a way to signal for help. And instead of dialing 911, Edie had simply punched “send.”

  There was a murmured answer in response to her mother’s comment, but nothing Ali could make out.

  “Why are you doing this?” Edie demanded, sounding more agitated. “Where are we? In a basement somewhere?”

  So her mother had been blindfolded or maybe even uncon
scious. She had no idea where she was, and she was being held there against her will.

  Ali strained to hear the other woman’s response, but it was totally inaudible.

  Then Ali heard her mother’s voice again. “Untie me,” she said. “Let me go. I’m sure we can sort all this out.”

  There was a momentary pause followed by a burst of outrage. “We’re not going to sort it out. We’re not sorting anything. Stop telling me what to do, damn it! Just stop it!”

  And now that she heard the voice clearly, Ali knew whose it was—April’s. The voice belonged to April Gaddis. How could that be?

  “Please, April,” Edie said aloud. “Be reasonable.”

  But April had evidently moved beyond reason. “Shut up!” she screamed. “Shut the hell up!”

  April’s shout was followed by the sounds of a brief struggle complete with lots more rustling and a sharp clatter. In her mind’s eye, Ali imagined the phone falling out of Edie’s bra and skittering across some hard surface. In her ears, the noise was deafening, but Edie’s attacker didn’t seem to notice. There were other sounds, too—the horrifying thumps of something heavy landing on human flesh. Knowing her mother was most likely bound and helpless, Ali cringed at each one. At last the struggle ended in a terrible groan and a spate of ragged breathing.

  “There now,” April said very clearly. “Maybe now you’ll finally shut the hell up and stay where I put you.”

  Ali heard a door slam shut followed by an awful silence on the other end of the line. By some miracle the call was still connected.

  “Mother?” Ali called. “Are you there? Can you hear me?”

  But of course there was no reply. If Edie Larson was even still conscious, she couldn’t hear her daughter’s voice.

  For a moment longer Ali stared at the phone in an agony of indecision. The phone in her hand was her only connection to her mother, but where was she? If Ali dialed 911 on her room phone, what would she say to them? “My mother’s been attacked somewhere in L.A. I have no idea where.” Or, was it possible there was an emergency operator somewhere who could trace the call between Ali’s cell phone and wherever it was her mother was being held, injured, perhaps, or maybe even unconscious? But how long would that take? And even if Ali managed to maintain the connection for a while, could she keep it going long enough? What would happen when Edie’s phone ran out of battery power and turned itself off?

  Closing her eyes, Ali tried to decide what to do. Wherever April had taken Edie, it had to be a place to which April had ready access. And Edie had mentioned something about a basement. This was California, an area where basements weren’t all that common, but Ali knew where there was at least one basement—a huge one—in the bottom of the house on Robert Lane.

  More than half of the space had been and still was devoted to Paul’s extensive wine collection, but there had been several other rooms as well, including a decommissioned redwood-lined sauna that Paul had considered turning into a safe room. Thinking about the way the heavy door had slammed shut behind April as she’d left, Ali had the sudden sense that she knew the answer. She wasn’t confident enough in her idea that she was willing to place an emergency call based on it, but she did know for sure that there wasn’t a moment to lose.

  With the call still connected and on speaker, Ali dressed and strapped on her Glock. She paused only long enough to call for her car before grabbing for her purse.

  Riding down in the elevator, Ali realized that taking on someone as seemingly deranged as April all by herself was nothing short of stupid. Once more she considered ending the one call and dialing 911. But again, what would she tell them? Let’s see. How about: “My mother’s been attacked by my dead husband’s pregnant fiancée who may or may not be holding her prisoner somewhere in my house on Robert Lane”? Did that sound like a call emergency operators were likely to take seriously? And even if they did, if April had come unhinged, what would she do if a bunch of cop cars came screaming into the yard? With Edie possibly injured and alone in the house with April, that was a risk Ali wasn’t prepared to take.

  While she was riding down in the elevator, the call ended on its own. Either her mother’s phone had run out of power, or Ali’s had simply lost the signal. Frustrated, Ali tried calling Dave. He didn’t answer, so she left a terse message.

  “On my way to the house. I think April’s there, but I’m not sure. I also think she’s lost it. Wherever she is, I believe she’s holding Mom prisoner. Call me as soon as you get this message. Please.”

  Scrambling into the Cayenne, Ali rammed it into gear. Heading for the house, she was reasonably confident that in a fair fight—a one-on-one altercation—she would be able to take April.

  And I have no intention of fighting fair, Ali told herself grimly. None whatsoever!

  { CHAPTER 15 }

  Ali should have been pulled over a dozen times between the hotel and the house. She drove at breakneck speeds, passing like a maniac, going through lights that were already turning red. She almost hoped she could provoke an observant traffic cop into following her. Maybe having cops there was a good idea after all, and that was one way to summon some police presence without having to explain her soap opera existence to some emergency operator. But it didn’t happen. When Ali finally sped through the broken gate and pulled to a stop in the paved driveway, she was still on her own. Dave hadn’t called her back, and she couldn’t take the time to call him again.

  It’s now or never, she told herself.

  Before Ali ever stepped out of the car, she considered drawing her Glock but decided against it. Her plan was to try talking first. The Glock would come into play only as a last resort.

  Ali was disappointed to find no sign of April’s bright red Volvo there in the driveway, and no sign of Edie Larson’s Olds, either. It was possible both cars were parked in the spacious five-car garage. Maybe that was where they had been parked when Ali and Dave had come to the house earlier and decided no one was there. It was also possible, Ali realized, that she was wrong and there was no one at the house now, either.

  Hurrying up onto the porch, Ali reached past a tangle of crime scene tape and tried the front door. It was locked. Ali headed for the back of the house, wondering as she went if the alarm system had ever been reengaged. She tried the slider from the pool patio into the family room. No luck. That was locked, too. Finally she tried the door into the kitchen. The knob turned easily in her hand.

  “I wondered how long it would take you to get here,” April said.

  Ali stopped just inside the door. April was across the room, seated on a chair at the kitchen table. A pistol Ali recognized as one of Paul’s lay nearby on the tabletop, well within April’s reach. Ali knew that had she come into the house with her own weapon drawn, they both might have died in a hail of gunfire.

  “What’s going on?” Ali demanded. “What have you done to my mother?”

  “She kept trying to tell me what to do. I got sick of it. So I decided to show her a thing or two.”

  “My mother told you what to do so you’re holding her prisoner in the basement? Are you nuts?”

  “Maybe,” April conceded. “Maybe a little.”

  Ali took a step into the room. As soon as she did, April picked up the gun and pointed it in Ali’s direction. “Don’t come any closer,” she said. “Put your hands behind your head and stay where you are.”

  “Is my mother hurt?” Ali asked.

  “I didn’t hit her that hard,” April said. “I was tired of listening to her. I just wanted her to shut up.”

  “I asked you if my mother’s all right.”

  “She’s still breathing, if that’s what you want to know,” April allowed. “I came upstairs to get more duct tape. When I went back down, I found her phone. I heard it ringing. Someone named Bobby called—whoever that is.”

  Bobby was Robert Larson, Ali’s father, although Edie hardly ever called her husband by that pet name to his face.

  “And that’s when I saw Edie
had called you,” April continued.

  “You’re right,” Ali agreed. “She did call me, and I heard everything that was said between you, April. All of it. And when she mentioned being in a basement, I knew you had to be holding her here at the house. But why? What do you think you’re doing? What’s this all about? Whatever it is, we’ve got to put a stop to it.”

  “We?” April returned bitterly. “There you go doing the same thing your mother did—ordering me around, telling me what to do. Why does everyone think they can get away with that? It’s been that way all my life. It’s like people think that just because someone is pretty they’re also stupid. I’m not, you know.”

  “What exactly did my mother tell you to do?” Ali asked.

  “She told me to stop smoking—like I was in junior high. She sounded just like my mother. Exactly like my mother. It was like a flashback or something.”

  “So your mother was always ordering you around, too?” Ali asked the question more to sustain the conversation than anything else. She knew she needed to keep April talking while she figured out what to do next.

  “Are you kidding?” April demanded. “Don’t try to tell me you didn’t notice. She was the worst one of all—talking to the lawyers, firing the cook and the gardener, acting like it was her house and her life instead of mine.”

  For the first time it occurred to Ali that April herself might have been responsible for her mother’s fatal plunge down the stairs.

  “Your mother was trying to look out for you,” Ali said reasonably. “For you and your baby both.”

  “Screw the baby,” April said. “I never even wanted a damned baby. I never should have told Paul about it in the first place. He’s the one who talked me into keeping it. If it had been up to me, I would have had an abortion just like I did those other times. But as soon as Paul knew about it, he was wild to get married, have the baby and everything.”

  April’s words hit Ali hard. She remembered that she and Paul had talked some about having kids shortly after they married, but Chris was already a teenager by then. Ali had been happy with the way her career was going. She hadn’t wanted to start the motherhood program over again, especially knowing full well that no matter how much paid help she’d have had, most of the responsibility for the new arrival would fall to her. She had already raised one only child. She hadn’t wanted to do that again, but she certainly hadn’t wanted to have two more children, either. So she hadn’t exactly said no to Paul, but she hadn’t ever stopped taking her birth control pills, either. The upshot of that had been that Paul had resented Chris—resented everything about Chris—and had never really accepted him.