by J. A. Jance
He didn’t bother undressing Morgan, as he had his other kills. He knew the cops would be examining every aspect of the crime scene. Mixing up the details would make it more difficult for investigating officers to match this incident with any of his others. From a practical standpoint, if he wanted the cops to focus on Morgan’s husband, he needed to downplay any sexual connections. Anger had to be paramount.
Physics had never been Peter’s strong suit. Using the hammer with Morgan already in the swing didn’t work all that well—not as well as he’d wanted. Each blow to her head sent both the swing and his target flying away from him, blunting the killing power. As a consequence, it took longer than he had expected. Once it was over, he did three things. He carefully set the bloodied hammer aside; he wanted to preserve as much blood evidence as possible. He dropped a little blood onto his hanky and put that in a baggy to keep it moist. That was what he hoped would seal Bryan Forester’s fate. Next he removed Morgan’s showy wedding band and the accompanying engagement ring with its three-carat rock. He slipped the wedding set onto his key ring along with all the others. Finally, he took his photo montage.
Once the scene was set, he made his way back to the rental car. Still in the underbrush, he slipped off the booties and then walked up to the rental car, which was sitting undisturbed where he’d left it. He had planned to put the bloodied hammer on some newspapers he’d left in the trunk for that purpose. Hearing a rapidly approaching vehicle, however, he was forced to ditch the hammer in a hurry, putting it down on the passenger-side floorboard before dashing around to the driver’s side. He managed to start the car and drive away before the approaching utility truck caught up with him.
After that, it took a while to track down Bryan Forester’s pickup truck. Peter had the addresses of Forester’s several construction sites, and he found the Dodge Ram pickup at the one on Manzanita Hills Road. The problem was there were several ongoing construction projects in the neighborhood, which resulted in far more street and foot traffic than Peter had anticipated. He made several futile trips past the truck. In the early afternoon, he got a clear shot at the bed of Bryan Forester’s pickup. The hammer needed to be visible but not obvious. He put it in the corner beside the rider’s door, a spot Bryan was unlikely to look at as he got in and out of his truck. And then, for good measure, he left a smear of blood from the hanky there as well.
Peter was hungry by then, but he didn’t dare stop to eat. He didn’t want to do anything that would call attention to his face in the wrong place at the wrong time. Instead, he headed back to Phoenix. To his dismay, he found that there had been a serious rollover semi accident on I-17 on one of the steep downgrades between Cordes Junction and Black Canyon City. DPS had been forced to shut down the highway completely for over an hour while they cleared the roadway of debris, which included several tons of rolled roofing and countless scattered bundles of shingles. By the time he managed to drop off the car and retrieve his own from the short-term lot, he was almost late for his shift at work. He would have been late if he hadn’t called his friend Brad Whitman who had been willing to punch in for him.
Peter had hoped to stop by the house long enough to upload the photos and clear his camera’s memory stick, but he had to stay focused. He was well aware that groggy doctors make mistakes, so he swilled coffee and tried to keep his mind on the job. Tomorrow, after he’d gotten some sleep, he would have plenty of time to treat himself to a victory lap on another job well done. Morgan Forester was dead, and her asshole of a husband would go to prison for it. What could be better than that?
The blue Ford 500 pulled into Bobby Salazar’s lane at the car return facility ten minutes before his shift was due to end. Bobby knew he needed to leave right on time—at four. Otherwise, depending on traffic, he might late for his five P.M. biology class at Phoenix Community College. There was a big exam scheduled for that night. Chasing after an A in the class, he couldn’t afford to be late.
With that in mind and hoping this rental return wouldn’t be a problem, he approached the vehicle, handheld card scanner in hand.
“How’s it going?” Bobby asked.
The driver was a middle-aged Anglo wearing mirrored sunglasses, a Diamondback baseball cap, running shoes, an ASU tracksuit, and a pair of leather driving gloves. Over time Bobby had come to have a very low opinion of people who wore driving gloves. They were usually arrogant and unpleasant, and this one fit that bill to a T. He didn’t bother acknowledging Bobby’s greeting. Wordlessly, he handed over his rental agreement and then got out and opened the back door, where he extracted a briefcase.
Used to being treated as a nonentity, Bobby leaned into the driver’s seat to verify both the odometer reading and amount of gas left in the tank. By the time Bobby popped the trunk, the driver was already moving away, walking briskly toward the shuttle buses that would return him to the terminal.
“Don’t you want a receipt?” Bobby called after him.
Shaking his head, the man didn’t reply. He just kept on walking. The scanner printed out the unwanted receipt automatically, and Bobby stuffed it into his pocket.
“Have a nice day, Mr. Morrison,” Bobby called. No matter how rude the customers might be, company training dictated that they should always be addressed by name. If Morrison heard him, there was no response.
“Screw you, too,” Bobby muttered under his breath. He turned back to the car and checked the trunk, certain that Mr. Morrison had forgotten to collect his luggage. Except for an array of day-old newspapers, the trunk was completely empty. That struck Bobby as odd. Briefcase-only guys usually wore the other kind of suits. Most of the time guys in sweats or running suits came complete with mountains of luggage and mounds of golf clubs, to say nothing of short-tempered wives and screaming kids.
Shrugging, Bobby returned to open first the driver’s door and then the passenger door, continuing the routine check to be sure nothing had been inadvertently left behind. He found sand and gravel on the driver’s-side floorboard. On the passenger-side floorboard carpet, he found a small rust-colored stain, smudged in a fashion that made it look as though some attempt had been made to clean it up.
Of all the attendants on the lot that afternoon, Bobby Salazar was uniquely qualified to recognize the ill-concealed stain for what it was—blood. He had seen bloody carpet before, and he had tried to clean it up with a similar lack of success.
One of his ex-roommates, Kiki Rodriguez, had been home alone when he had gotten bombed out of his gourd on Ever-clear. Nobody ever knew, because Kiki couldn’t remember and couldn’t tell them exactly how he had broken the glass that cut his hand so badly. What was clear was that he had wandered aimlessly around the apartment, bleeding like a stuck pig and leaving a trail of blood everywhere, before he finally passed out on the couch. Bobby had been the one who came home and found him there. He had called 911. The EMTs had taken Kiki off to the ER, leaving Bobby to deal with both the cops and the bloody carpet. He wasn’t sure which had taken longer, answering the cops’ questions or trying to get the damned blood out of the carpet. He had tried everything, including calling in a professional carpet cleaner, but when he had moved out of the apartment two months later, the stains had still been visible enough that Bobby had lost his security deposit.
Concerned, Bobby got out of the car and gave the rest of the front seat a thorough examination. There was no visible blood anywhere else—not on the seat or the steering wheel or the door handle. The stains were on the floorboard and nowhere else. The guy had obviously walked in it. What if he hit something? Bobby wondered. A deer, maybe. Or a dog. Please, God, not a person!
Bobby walked to the front of the vehicle and studied the bumper, looking for damage. He was relieved when he found nothing—no dents, no dings, no sign of a collision with anything, living or dead.
Two more renters had pulled into Bobby’s lane. Their luggage was already unloaded, and they were waiting impatiently for him to come check them in as well. He knew if he mentioned the pr
esence of blood in the vehicle to one of his supervisors, there would be hell to pay. Questions would be asked. Forms would need to be filled out and filed. More than likely, Bobby would be late for class. Not only that, if he took that long with one vehicle, the guys who tracked productivity would no doubt give Bobby a black mark for slowing down the return process. You were supposed to check in so many customers per hour—or else.
Waving to one of the drivers, Bobby sent the Ford off to be washed, then turned and approached the next waiting customer. “How’s it going?” he said. “Hope you had a good trip.”
Late in the afternoon, Ali drove back to the Andante Drive mobile home, which had been left to her by her mother’s twin sister, Evie. Permanently set on a concrete footing that had been carved into the steep hillside, the place boasted a very un–mobile-homelike basement that included Christopher’s studio and Ali’s late second husband’s extensive wine collection.
Ali had lived there for the better part of a year and a half, most of that time with her son as her roommate. She hoped that by the time she finished the remodel and moved on to Arabella’s house, Chris would have married his steady girlfriend, Athena, and Ali would be able to pass the mobile home along to them. Both Chris and Athena were public high school teachers whose low salaries wouldn’t stretch very far in Sedona’s stratospheric real estate market. Not having to buy a home of their own would give them a big leg up in starting married life together. Ali liked the idea that Aunt Evie’s legacy to her would stay in the family.
Ali had never been a particularly capable cook, and she knew that what she brought home from Basha’s deli section wouldn’t be nearly as delectable as whatever Leland Brooks might have “thrown together.” She had suggested hosting the Thanksgiving festivities primarily because she knew she would have him there to backstop her. For this Monday-evening dinner, she had raided Basha’s deli counter for some enchilada casserole and a selection of salads and veggies.
When Ali walked in the door, Sam, her impossibly ugly sixteen-pound, one-eared, one-eyed tabby cat, trotted to the door to greet her, complaining at the top of her lungs that she was starving. Since Chris’s Prius was already parked outside, Ali knew the cat was lying. For a time, her adopted kitty’s weight had mysteriously edged up. It was only when the vet complained about the weight gain that Ali discovered that Sam had routinely cadged two evening meals by pretending she hadn’t been fed. Once Ali and Chris had realized they were being suckered, they hatched the plan that whoever came home first fed Sam, no matter what the cat said to the contrary.
“Liar, liar, pants on fire,” Ali told the noisy animal. Knowing full well the kitchen counter wasn’t Sam-proof, she stowed the casserole in the microwave and deposited the evening’s salads in the fridge. Then she headed into her room to shower and change clothes.
When she came out half an hour later, she was surprised to see that Chris had set the table—for three rather than two. The table was decked out in his mother’s good china, complete with crystal wineglasses. He had also heated the casserole and opened a bottle of Paul Grayson’s high-end wine—a Corton-Charlemagne from Côte d’Beaune.
“What’s the occasion?” Ali asked.
Chris shrugged. “I invited Athena to come to dinner,” he said. “Hope you don’t mind.”
When Ali had first heard about Athena Carlson, she had been a little dismayed. Athena was several years older than Chris and divorced. She was also a double amputee, having lost part of her right arm and most of her right leg, compliments of an exploding IED during a Minnesota National Guard deployment to Iraq.
Ali had always hoped her son would find the “perfect” girl. Initially Athena hadn’t quite squared with Ali’s idea of perfection. Over the months, though, Ali had come to see Athena really was perfect. Her midwestern small-town roots and rock-solid values provided just the right counterpoint to Chris’s artistic temperament and occasionally unrealistic enthusiasm. And Ali had nothing but respect for the way Athena focused on what she could do rather than on what she couldn’t. One of the things that fell in the “could” column was her ability to play a mean game of one-handed basketball.
“You should have called me,” Ali said. “If I had known we were having company, I would have picked up something a little nicer than enchilada casserole.”
“That’s all right,” Chris said. “Athena’s not picky.”
Ali knew that to be true, and as far as she was concerned, it was another mark in Athena’s favor.
The doorbell rang, and Chris hurried to answer it. Athena stepped into the house. Underneath a pair of slacks, her high-tech prosthetic leg was all but invisible. The complicated device on her right hand was more apparent. Smiling and laughing, she entered the room and kissed Chris hello. When the two of them turned to face Ali, Athena’s face was awash in happiness. Without a word, she held up her left hand, showing off a respectably sized diamond ring.
“He gave it to me last night,” Athena said as Ali stepped forward to admire it. “I didn’t wear it to school today. We wanted you to be the first to know.”
“Congratulations!” Ali exclaimed, giving first Athena and then her son a hug.
“You’re sort of the first to know,” Chris admitted. “It’s actually Aunt Evie’s diamond. Grandma gave it to me so I could have it reset. But Grandma and Grandpa haven’t seen it this way yet, and they don’t know I’ve given it to her. You really are the first.”
Ali couldn’t help feeling slightly provoked that her parents knew more about her son than she did. Some of the irritation must have shown on her face.
“You’re not upset about that, are you, Ali?” Athena asked warily.
Ali pulled herself together and laughed it off. “Not at all,” she managed. “My mother always seems to know exactly what’s going to happen long before anyone else does. I’m thrilled for you both.”
Chris and Athena exchanged relieved looks. Obviously, they had been concerned about how Ali might react.
Ali moved over to the table, picked up the wine bottle, and began to pour. “How about a toast to the newly engaged couple?” she said enthusiastically. “I think you both deserve it.”
Dinner was a lighthearted, fun affair. Athena, more radiant than Ali had ever seen her, was full of plans for the future. No, they hadn’t set a date yet. Most likely, they’d get married after school got out at the end of May, possibly early in June.
“A small wedding,” Athena said. “Maybe outside, with red rocks in the background and just family and a few friends in attendance. I already had the whole full-meal-deal church wedding with a white dress, half a dozen attendants, and a reception that cost my dad a bundle. Unfortunately, we all know how that one turned out.”
For the first time that evening, a shadow crossed Athena’s smiling face. Her husband had ditched her while she was in Walter Reed, recovering from her injuries. And since he and his second wife were now living in what had once been Athena’s hometown, Ali understood completely why Athena had no desire to go “back home” for a second wedding.
Ali thought about the gnarled wisteria that shaded the patio at the house on Manzanita Hills Road. In May the venerable old plant would most likely be dripping with clusters of lush lavender blossoms, something that would make a perfect backdrop for a wedding. But she had the good sense to keep her mouth shut. After all, this was Athena and Chris’s wedding. As mother of the groom, Ali needed to keep her opinions to herself.
“Your folks won’t mind coming out?” she asked.
“My grandmother had never been on an airplane until she flew to D.C. to stay with me at Walter Reed.” Athena grinned. “If she could fly for that, she can certainly fly for this.”
“What about your parents?” Ali asked.
“My grandmother’s the only one I really care about,” Athena said.
Ali decided she was better off not asking anything more.
“We’re going to have a little get-together at the gym tomorrow night before the game, and we�
�d like you to come,” Chris put in quickly, diverting them from what was evidently dodgy territory. “About seven-thirty. We plan to go public with our engagement then. I’ll invite Grandpa and Grandma. Athena’s roommates will be there, along with the people in our basketball league.”
“I wouldn’t miss it,” Ali assured them.
“It won’t be much of a party,” Athena said. “No champagne in the high school gym. We’ll be drinking Hawaiian Punch and eating storebought cookies.”
“I still wouldn’t miss it,” Ali said.
After dinner, when Athena left, Chris went out with her, ostensibly to walk her to the car. Ali knew that was bogus, of course. The process was likely to involve far more necking than it did walking and would last an hour or more. In the meantime, Ali cleared the table, put away the leftovers, and then hand-washed the china and crystal.
Standing with her hands and forearms plunged deep in soapy water, Ali recalled how she had chosen the Royal Limoges Beleme pattern at Paul Grayson’s behest right after the two of them had become engaged. She had loved the creamy color of the delicate bone china and the subtle, understated designs around the borders. Ali had imagined using those gorgeous dishes as she presided over a lifetime’s worth of joyous meals, complete with family and friends.
But the reality had been far different, more hell than heaven. The meals she had hosted with Paul, the ones where the dishes had been used, hadn’t turned out to be what Ali had hoped for or expected. Yes, Paul Grayson had loved entertaining and had done so lavishly, but there had been an element of one-upmanship in everything he did. Dinner guests were invited because of who they knew or what they had to offer in terms of deal making. Places at his table were generally assigned based on who could provide the best political advantage at work. For him love had counted far less than leverage.