Trial by Fire

by J. A. Jance

  “Ali,” he added. “Would you care to add a few words?”

  There was nothing Ali wanted less. Clearly the people in the room weren’t thrilled to see her, and she doubted they’d care to hear what she had to say, either. But since Sheriff Maxwell was motioning her to join him at the lectern, she did. Other than Sheriff Maxwell and Dave Holman, who was seated in the far back corner, none of the people seated in the conference room seemed familiar to her, but the general air of disapproval seemed to echo the reaction of the growling gatekeeper out in the front lobby. Ali didn’t think there was anything she could say that would bring these folks around, but she had to try.

  “Good morning,” she said cheerily. “As Sheriff Maxwell said, I’m Ali Reynolds. I’m a Yavapai County native. I grew up in Sedona, where my parents still own and operate the Sugarloaf Cafe. I attended high school at Mingus Cottonwood and NAU in Flagstaff before spending several years working in television news both on the East Coast and in California.

  “As you probably know, I have no background whatsoever in law enforcement. That means I’m coming to this job knowing a lot about the news broadcasting side of the street and very little about yours. And so I’m going to need your help. I’ll probably be asking plenty of questions as I learn the ropes, and I hope you’ll be patient with me. As Sheriff Maxwell said, my job will be to help get the word out about everything this department is doing to promote public safety. It’s your responsibility to do a good job, and it’s my responsibility to make sure the people in our various communities know about it.”

  As Ali stepped away from the microphone someone started a halfhearted round of applause that followed her as she took a vacant seat in the front row next to Sheriff Maxwell, who stood up and returned to the lectern. Ali suspected that Dave Holman had started the polite clapping, but she couldn’t be sure. What was clear enough was that it sure as hell wasn’t a standing ovation. Most of the people in the room regarded her as an interloper and didn’t want her there.

  She was forced to sit through the remainder of the interminable meeting, in which a woman from the county human resources department offered a long, tedious discussion about the open-enrollment period for the county’s redesigned health insurance program, as well as a detailed explanation of new benefits. None of that had anything at all to do with Ali; since she was a consultant rather than a permanent employee, she wasn’t a qualified participant.

  When the meeting finally ended, the room emptied quickly. Before leaving, Sheriff Maxwell stopped long enough to introduce Ali to his three sector commanders as well as the sergeant in charge of Technical Services. Ali did her best to catalog the names and faces, but she knew that would take time. A few other people stopped off to introduce themselves before they, too, drifted out of the room. Once they were gone, the last man standing was Dave Holman.

  She looked at him and shook her head. “That was fun,” she said. “Thanks for tossing me into the lions’ den. What’s really going on here?”

  “A bit of a range war, actually,” he said. “Some of the younger guys are trying to decertify the old union, Arizona Peace Officer and Employee Local 76, and put in a new one, International Union of Deputy Sheriffs, which would represent sworn officers only and leave the other employees out in the cold. Devon Ryan, the former public information officer, and Sally Harrison, his gal pal, were both officers in the old union, which claims they were put on leave in order to make it easier to decertification easier.”

  “Which is why no one is willing to take the job,” Ali concluded. “Because anyone who takes it will be considered a union-busting scab by one side or the other. What does that make me, and which side are you on?”

  “Arizona is a right-to-work state,” Dave explained. “I don’t belong to either of the unions because I don’t have to. But Gordy’s a good guy and I could see that the two sides are in the process of tearing him apart, like a pair of dogs worrying a bone.”

  As small business owners, Ali’s parents had never belonged to unions of any kind. Neither had their long-term employees. In her previous career Ali had joined unions because membership had been a prerequisite to taking a job in some places, but she understood Dave’s take on the situation. It was pretty much her own.

  “You could have told me about all this up front,” Ali said.

  “I suppose so,” Dave said, “but if I had, would you have done signed on?”

  “Probably not,” Ali said.

  Dave grinned at her. “See there? It’s a lot harder to back out now that you’ve been introduced to a roomful of people. So how about it? Can I drag you down to Kate’s and buy Yavapai County’s new public information officer a cup of coffee?”

  Ali relented. “I guess so,” she agreed with a laugh. “But the operant word here is ‘temporary,’ not ‘new.’ ”

  “Right,” Dave agreed. “I stand corrected.”

  “Don’t you have something better to do?”

  “Actually, I don’t,” Dave said. “Since I’m not a member of either camp, Sheriff Maxwell asked me to take charge of you. You need to be decked out in your own Kevlar vest, one that you can wear under civilian clothes. You also need working ID badges that’ll let you in and out of the department as well as in and out of this end of the building. That way you won’t have to call down and ask for an escort.”

  “Which reminds me,” Ali said. “Who is the sourpuss behind the partition out in the public lobby? She acted like she was ready to bite my head off.”

  “A younger woman, but not all that good-looking?” Dave asked. “She wears glasses and sort of resembles a horned toad?”

  Ali couldn’t quite suppress a giggle. Dave’s incredibly uncomplimentary description was also on the money.

  “Yes,” she said. “That’s the one.”

  “That’s Holly Mesina, Sally Harrison’s best friend. The two of them go way back.”

  “I take it she’s not too happy about any of what’s going on,” Ali said, “and most especially my showing up on the scene?”

  “That’s right,” Dave said. “She thinks it’s all a witch hunt on Gordy’s part.”

  “As in, any friend of my enemy is my enemy,” Ali added.

  “You’ve got it,” Dave agreed. “Now, how about that cup of coffee? Then we’ll take care of the Kevlar vest, not that you’re ever going to need it.”

  CHAPTER 3

  It was a grueling week. On the days Ali had to go all the way to Prescott, the three-hour round-trip made her think she was back to doing a southern California commute, except for the fact that there was a lot less traffic. And far more varied terrain.

  On Friday, to reach the sheriff’s Seligman substation, she’d had to pass through Flagstaff and a vast ponderosa forest. Today, on her way to visit the substation in Congress, she had to drive through Prescott and then down Yarnell Hill, passing from pine to piñon to prickly pear and yucca and finally to saguaro.

  When Ali had worked on the East Coast, she had discovered there were plenty of people there who assumed that Arizona was all saguaros all the time, but that wasn’t true. Saguaros are picky about where they grow, and they like to grow together. No matter how many times Ali drove down to the desert valleys that surrounded Sedona, she always watched for the first sentinel saguaro. In this case, the first one was at the top of a cliff near milepost 274. Soon there were dozens more.

  Shortly after passing that outpost saguaro, she ran into a road-widening project. When a flagger stopped her to wait for the return of a pilot car, Ali leaned back in her seat, closed her eyes, and thought about what she was doing.

  Right, she thought. Something for the home team.

  It was ironic to think that the inspiring words Ali had delivered so cheerfully to the graduating seniors a week earlier were now coming back to haunt her. Other than Dave Holman and Sheriff Maxwell himself, no one else on the sheriff’s office “home team” had been what you could call welcoming of the new arrival.

  The previous Monday, when Gordon
Maxwell had introduced her at the staff meeting, Ali had assumed that the surly greeting she had received from Holly Mesina, the clerk in the outer office, had been an aberration. A week and a day later, Ali understood that Dave’s reaction was the exception, while Holly Mesina’s was the rule.

  During the remainder of the week Ali had followed Sheriff Maxwell on his round of duties around the office as well as out in the community. She had also visited the various substations scattered around the huge county. At each stop along the way, Ali had grown accustomed to the idea that departmental employees would put on their happy faces with her as long as the sheriff was present, but the moment Maxwell’s back was turned and the boss was out of earshot, their skin-deep civility toward Ali vanished.

  Their reactions made her position in the culture of the Yavapai County Sheriff’s Department blatantly clear—Ali Reynolds was the ultimate outsider.

  Sort of like what happened to Haley Marsh when she first showed up at Mingus Union High School, Ali thought ruefully. Of course, there’s a difference. I could quit. Haley couldn’t.

  Ali had told her father that very thing the previous afternoon toward the end of a Memorial Day cookout at Chris and Athena’s house, where the newlyweds had marked the six-month anniversary of their wedding by hosting a shakedown test hamburger fry on Chris’s new gas barbecue.

  “So how are things?” Bob Larson had asked his daughter as the two of them sat on the small patio next to the driveway, enjoying the afternoon sun. “You look glum—not at all your usual self. Is it work?”

  Ali nodded. “Don’t tell Mom,” she said.

  “I don’t have to,” Bob observed cheerfully. “I’m pretty sure she already knows.”

  “Great,” Ali muttered. “I suppose that means I’ll get the third degree from her, too.”

  “Not necessarily,” Bob said. “How about if you tell me and I tell her? What’s going on?”

  “It turns out your daughter is a pawn, caught between two feuding unions. When I walk into a room—it doesn’t matter if it’s the break room, an office, or a lobby—people simply stop talking. When I try to interact with them, they answer direct questions only. The other day somebody left a paper Burger King crown on the seat of my desk down at Village of Oak Creek, and on Friday, when I drove up to Ash Fork and Seligman to introduce myself to the folks up there, someone let the air out of three of my tires.”

  “So the people you have to work with all think you’re stuck-up, and as far as the tires are concerned, no one saw a thing,” Bob said. “Right?”

  “Right,” Ali agreed.

  “So how many more of these introductory substation visits do you have to do?”

  “I have to drive down to Congress tomorrow. That’s it.”

  Just then Athena had emerged from the house carrying a pitcher of iced tea. “Refills, anybody?” she asked.

  Athena, an Iraq war veteran, had returned from her national guard deployment minus two limbs—her right arm below the elbow and her right leg below the knee. She had become amazingly proficient at using her two high-tech prosthetic limbs, but she had also made great progress on becoming a lefty. She wielded the full pitcher without any problems or spills.

  Ali’s father waited until Athena went back inside before he spoke again. “What those guys are doing is hazing you.”

  Ali laughed. “Do you think?”

  “And they’re watching to see how you react.”

  “Correct.”

  “So don’t give them the satisfaction,” Bob said. “Besides, you know what your aunt Evie would say.”

  For years, until her death from a massive stroke, Ali’s aunt Evie, Edie Larson’s twin sister, had been partners with Ali’s parents in the Sugarloaf Cafe, a restaurant started originally by Ali’s grandmother. Aunt Evie had always been considered the wild one in the family. She had also been one of the most positive people Ali knew.

  “I’m sure she’d say, ‘Brighten the corner where you are,’” Ali said with a laugh, remembering some of her aunt Evie’s Auntie Mame antics. That particular line had come from one of Aunt Evie’s favorite hymns, and it had been her personal watchword.

  “Exactly,” Bob said.

  “What do you say?” Ali asked. She liked her parents and was interested in their opinions.

  “If there’s a rattler in your yard, wouldn’t you rather know where he is?”

  Ali nodded.

  “So make friends with your enemies,” Bob advised. “It’ll surprise the hell out of them.”

  When the barbecue ended, Ali went home to her new place on Manzanita Hills Road. She had taken a crumbling jewel of midcentury modern architecture that had never been updated and brought it into the twenty-first century. She had invested money, time, and effort in the process. Leland, who had more or less come with the house, had fought the remodeling war at her side. Now he and Ali were both enjoying the fruits of their labors—a job well done.

  Leland had taken Memorial Day weekend off, and the house seemed impossibly quiet without him. Ali went from room to room, turning on lights and music. She settled into one of the comfy armchairs in the library and picked up the textbook she was still studying. A few minutes later she was joined by Samantha, her sixteen-pound one-eyed, one-eared tabby cat. Sam clambered up into the matching chair, circled three times, then sank down silently to wait for bedtime.

  Ali hadn’t made it through two whole pages when the phone rang. Checking caller ID, she answered with a smile in her voice.

  “Hi, Mom,” she said. “What’s up?”

  Ali already knew that once the barbecue ended, Bob Larson would have immediately reported the gist of his conversation with Ali to his wife.

  “You should have told us about all this the minute it started,” Edie scolded.

  “I didn’t want to worry you,” Ali said.

  “Worry? Of course we’re worried,” Edie said. “One of those practical jokes could go way too far. Your father is right. You need to make friends of your enemies. Who’s the worst one of the bunch?”

  Not a hard question to answer, Ali thought.

  “That would be Holly Mesina,” she said. “She’s a clerk in the public office over in Prescott. She’s also best friends with the evidence clerk who’s out on administrative leave.”

  “With Sally Harrison?” Edie Larson asked.

  It came as no surprise to Ali that her mother would be tuned in to all the sheriff’s department’s goings-on. Ali sometimes wondered if running the Sugarloaf Cafe wasn’t merely a cover for Edie Larson’s real job of keeping track of everyone else’s business. She had an impressive network of unnamed sources, and her up-to-the-minute intelligence was often uncannily accurate.

  “Didn’t Sally go to school with you?” Edie asked now. “I thought she graduated a year or so after you did.”

  “I don’t remember anyone named Sally Harrison,” Ali replied.

  Edie sighed. “Don’t be silly. Harrison is her married name. I believe her maiden name was Laird. That’s right. Sally Laird. Her father drove a dairy truck, for Shamrock. He was just as proud of his little girl as he could be. Never stopped talking about her, especially when she got elected homecoming queen.”

  Given her mother’s hint, Ali did remember. The name Sally Laird made more sense than Sally Harrison did.

  A cute little blond, Ali thought. Right about now, her father’s probably not nearly so proud of his darling daughter.

  “Dad says you have to drive down to Congress tomorrow,” Edie continued. “What time are you planning to leave?”

  Ali was somewhat taken aback by the seemingly abrupt change of subject.

  “I’ll probably head out a little after eight,” Ali said. “I expect to drive down through Prescott. There’s road construction on Yarnell Hill, so I may come back home the long way around, through Wickenburg and over to I-17.”

  “All right, then,” Edie said. “Stop by the restaurant on your way out of town. I’m going to make a couple of extra trays of sweet ro
lls for you to drop off at the sheriff’s office in Prescott on your way through.”

  Working together day after day, Edie and Bob Larson squabbled a lot, but they were definitely of a mind on most things, especially anything concerning their daughter. Clearly the two of them had decided that helping fix Ali’s difficulties at work was a project worthy of a team effort. Sugarloaf Cafe sweet rolls were legendary throughout the Verde Valley, where they routinely placed first when it came time to tally the votes in annual Best of Sedona contests. Ali knew that passing some of her mother’s rolls around the office would be a very effective tactic for keeping her departmental enemies close.

  “I’ll also put my ear to the ground,” Edie Larson promised. “I may be able to learn something useful. But right now I’d better hit the hay. Since I’m doing extra batches of sweet rolls in the morning, I’ll need to get an early start.”

  Ali knew Edie was usually in the restaurant baking rolls by four o’clock in the morning. “Thanks, Mom,” she said. “I’ll stop by and pick them up.”

  “Kill ’em with kindness,” Edie added. “That’s what I always say.”

  Ali put down the phone. Leaving the book she had been reading facedown on the side table, she walked over to the shelf that held her yearbooks. Family finances had been so tough her senior year in high school that Ali hadn’t been able to buy one of her own, and she never expected to have one. Two years earlier, however, her best childhood friend, Reenie Bernard, had died tragically. In the aftermath of her death, Reenie’s less-than-grieving husband and his girlfriend had packed up all of Reenie’s worldly possessions and shipped them off to Goodwill. Fortunately, one of Ali’s friends had intervened and intercepted the castoffs before they could be unpacked and sold.

  Reenie’s kids, eleven-year-old Matthew and eight-year-old Julie, had been sent to live with Reenie’s parents in Cottonwood. Since the kids’ grandfather was allergic to cats, their overweight kitty, the incredibly ugly Samantha, who had been mauled by a raccoon long before she came to live with Reenie’s kids, had been pawned off on Ali, supposedly on a temporary basis. Two years after the fact, that temporary arrangement was pretty much permanent. Sam had adjusted. So had Ali.