by J. A. Jance
Had Peter carried a big insurance policy on Rita, things might have been different. That would have given him a motive. As it was, after a fairly cursory investigation, Rita’s death was declared an accident. That was done over the objections of Rita’s mother, who insisted Peter had killed her daughter. The mother-in-law couldn’t prove it, however, and neither could anyone else.
Rita had been gone for ten years now. Peter’s friends at work kept telling him that he needed to get over her and move on. They kept trying to fix him up with someone else, but Peter wasn’t interested in another wife. In fact, he was hung up on something else entirely.
Peter had liked how he felt as he watched Rita go tumbling helplessly down the steep hillside, flopping like a limp rag doll as she flew from one boulder to the next. He had exulted in hearing her fading screams as they melted into the far distance, and he had known right then that he would kill again when the first opportunity presented itself—even if he didn’t know exactly how or when.
In contemplating this new compulsion, and before taking any action, Peter had become a student of murders. He searched out as many cases as he could find and sorted out who got away with it, who didn’t, and all the hows and whys in between. As he researched his newly chosen field, Peter was struck by one recurring theme: how many stupid killers, mostly men lacking in imagination, killed first one wife or girlfriend and then another in exactly the same way. Later, once the hapless killers were caught, they were always astonished that some detective or other happened to pick up on the obvious similarities between cases.
Peter Winter was a doctor. That meant he was smarter than the average bear to begin with. Determined not to make the same kinds of fatal errors, he realized there was no need to kill his own cheating wife when he could always murder someone else’s.
Peter had earned his way through school by being a geek. Putting his well-honed technical skills to work, he set about creating Singleatheart. In doing so, he discovered that the world was full of women just like Rita, all of them admitted cheaters and all available for the taking. Their numbers alone had been an amazing wake-up call. It turned out they were everywhere. As Peter scanned through the various profiles each week, that was what he went looking for—geographically diverse women who looked like carbon copies of Rita and deserved what was about to happen to them. By murdering women who bore an amazing resemblance to Rita Winter, Peter was able to do away with his wife over and over without ever getting caught.
Peter had covered his tracks by working through websites based in Russia. When it became apparent that he’d need a U.S.-based server farm, he had chosen one in Deadwood, South Dakota, for three reasons. For starters, the name appealed to him. Deadwood had a certain ring to it, and that was how he liked to think of cheating women in general—as so much deadwood. He also liked the fact that Deadwood was a hell of a long way from his home and respectable lifestyle in Phoenix, or from Manny Wilkins’s phony condo office just off the Strip in Vegas. As long as Peter was careful to avoid attracting the attention of the feds, crossing multiple jurisdictional lines made things far tougher on the cops and easier for him.
Third, the server’s South Dakota location was attractive for economic, moneygrubbing reasons. With gold mining not exactly booming at the moment, local city and state officials had enacted a series of changes designed to attract and keep new businesses. The resulting tax savings meant that the IP server Manny had chosen was able to do the same job for a lot less money than vendors in other locations.
Securing Singleatheart’s business had been carried out by one of Manny Wilkins’s minions—Peter Winter in yet another cyber guise. Once the site was up and running, all Peter had to do was sit back and rake in the dough and the occasional victim.
On that particular Wednesday morning, Peter turned to his computer with no inkling that something was amiss, not until he went scrolling through the credit-card information from that week’s server-farm data dump. What jumped out at him from the very first listing of the day wasn’t the person’s name, Alison Reynolds, but part of her address—Sedona. The place where Peter had driven on Monday morning. Where he’d used a hammer to beat Morgan Forester’s pretty little face to a bloodied pulp. Where he’d managed to leave the murder weapon in the back of the victim’s husband’s pickup truck.
Was it merely a coincidence that someone else from Sedona was venturing through the Singleatheart website barely two days later?
No, Peter Winter told himself. There are no coincidences.
But there was something about the name Alison Reynolds that was spookily familiar. Just for argument’s sake, Peter went ahead and Googled the name to see what might come up. There was far more material than he’d expected, and none of it was good news for Peter Winter. A former TV anchor, Alison Reynolds now claimed to be a different kind of journalist—a blogger with an extensive following of fans. Over the course of the past two years, she had been involved in several high-profile homicide cases in Arizona and California. She had a concealed-weapon permit, and she was evidently well acquainted with a Yavapai County homicide detective named Dave Holman. And she was remodeling a house with Build It construction—the company owned by Bryan Forester.
The light came on in Peter’s head. That was why Ali Reynolds’s name was familiar: He had seen it mentioned somewhere in Morgan Forester’s computer files.
That’s not good, either, Peter told himself. Not good at all.
Was she nosing around because Morgan had confided in her, or was she doing her snooping on behalf of Morgan’s husband? Either way, Alison Reynolds was a woman who would bear careful watching.
From past experience, Peter knew that often the best way to watch someone like that was through her computer. A less adept man might have unleashed the dogs of war. Peter Winter didn’t need to. Ali Reynolds had unwittingly wandered into the world of Singleatheart, so she had also opened her computer files to the Trojan horse he kept hidden there. The next time Ali Reynolds opened her computer, he’d be there, too, able to follow her every keystroke.
Peter didn’t have a doubt in the world that observing what she said and did there would tell him everything he needed to know. And though he was tracking her activities online, he knew that if he needed to, he’d be able to take her out the old-fashioned way—just like he had Morgan Forester.
After dealing with her mother’s meltdown, Ali had no intention of going back to see Jacky Jackson. When she left the Sugarloaf, she headed for Andante Drive. She had just parked and walked inside when her phone rang. Glancing at caller ID, Ali saw a Cottonwood number in the window. “Hello?”
“Is this Alison Reynolds?” a strange woman’s voice asked.
“Yes. Who’s this?”
“Nelda Harris, Haley Marsh’s grandmother. I found your business card on a table in the living room last night. I believe you must have stopped by to see her sometime yesterday afternoon.”
Great, Ali thought. Now I’ll probably be caught in the cross fire on this as well. “Yes,” she admitted. “I did stop by.”
“May I ask why?” Nelda asked.
“Haley didn’t tell you?”
“No, she didn’t, and that’s why I’m calling—to find out. As her guardian, I need to know what’s going on with her.”
“I came to offer her the chance of a scholarship, Mrs. Harris. A scholarship she could have used to attend any college of her choice. She turned it down. She says she wants to go to work for Target.”
“An Askins scholarship?” Nelda Harris asked.
“That’s right. It would have paid her way to virtually any school in the country. I suggested she might want to talk this over with you. She seems to be under the impression that she’s a burden to you somehow. She wants to make her own way in the world, and she’s afraid that going to school will mean you’ll be stuck with her and her little boy for that much longer.”
“Whatever would give her that idea?” Nelda demanded. “I never said she was a burden to me, or little
Liam, either. I wouldn’t.”
“And I’m sure you didn’t,” Ali agreed.
“Liam,” Nelda said, “stop that. Come away from there.” Speaking into the phone once more, she added, “Do you believe in good and evil?”
For a moment Ali thought the woman might be referring to her granddaughter’s cute little toddler. “I’m not sure—” Ali began.
“Not just good and bad,” Nelda interrupted. “I mean real good and evil.”
Earlier in her life, Ali might have been able to answer that question clearly in the negative—at least so far as evil was concerned. But now that she had met and unmasked Arabella Ashcroft, now that she had seen beyond the skin-deep physical beauty of April Gaddis, the young woman who had come within hours of marrying Ali’s former husband, real evil did have a presence in her life, and often a very human face.
“Yes,” Ali replied at last. “I suppose I do. Why?”
“Liam, please. Grandma’s on the phone. Come here and be still for a moment.” Nelda sounded exasperated, as though the toddler was taking advantage of her being on the phone to get into all kinds of mischief.
“Let me ask you another question, Ms. Reynolds…”
“Please call me Ali.”
“All right, Ali. I know you said Haley turned down your offer, but if I could convince her to change her mind—if we could convince her—would the scholarship still be available?”
“She doesn’t actually have the scholarship at the moment,” Ali corrected. “When she said she wasn’t interested, I took her at her word. It’ll most likely be awarded to someone else.”
“Please,” Nelda said as though she hadn’t heard. “I’d really like to discuss this with you, but not right now, when Liam’s driving me crazy. I need to put him down for a nap, but once he wakes up, we could drive up to Sedona to see you.”
Ali looked around her house. Aunt Evie’s very breakable knickknacks were still scattered here and there, well within reach of a toddler. And then there was Sam. A temperamental cat who didn’t do well with most adult strangers would probably have a complete meltdown if faced with a busy-bee little boy. And if this house wasn’t kid-proof, the construction site at Manzanita Hills Road was even less so.
“I’ll tell you what,” Ali said. “Do you know where the Sugarloaf Café is?”
“Of course,” Nelda said.
“Great,” Ali said. “Call me at this number when you head out. I’ll meet you there. We can have lunch. My treat.”
“You don’t have to do that,” Nelda said. “Liam and I can eat before we leave home.”
“Don’t be silly,” Ali told her. “You said we need to talk. Eating lunch will give Liam something to do in the meantime.”
“You must know something about little boys.”
Ali smiled into the phone. “I had one of those once myself,” she said, laughing. “It’s like riding a bicycle. Some things you never forget.”
Ali had fixed her hair and makeup and was in the process of changing into something more suitable for lunch when her cell phone rang.
“Mr. Forester just called,” Leland Brooks reported. “He’s on his way here and says he needs to speak with you. He says it’s urgent.”
“All right,” Ali said. “I’m on my way. Is Jacky still there?”
“Mr. Jackson evidently had another engagement,” Leland said.
“Good news,” Ali said. Relieved, she headed back to Manzanita Hills Road. She stepped out of her Cayenne and was delighted when she heard the familiar whine of drills working inside the house. That meant that no matter what else was going on, wallboard installation was still moving forward.
Bryan Forester arrived bare seconds later. When he stepped out of his pickup, she was startled by his gray pallor. “Come on,” he said grimly, gesturing toward the picnic table. “We need to talk.”
He settled down at the table, pulled out a cigarette, and lit it. Sitting opposite him, Ali was surprised. She remembered that Billy had mentioned something about Bryan taking up smoking again, but in all the months they’d worked together, she had never seen him with a cigarette.
“They fired me,” he said at last, blowing a cloud of smoke into the air.
“Who fired you?”
“The people at the other two remodel jobs I was doing,” Bryan said. “They’re using the missing cabinet order as cover. They’re claiming I was trying to defraud them by charging for materials that were never ordered.”
“What does that mean?” Ali asked.
“It means both those jobs are shut down. My workers have been ordered off the two properties. Immediately. That’s just an excuse, though. The real reason is what happened to Morgan. As far as the people in this town are concerned, she’s dead, and I’m the abusive murdering husband who did it.”
He sounded so beaten and discouraged, Ali had no idea what to say. “I’m sorry,” she began, but he plowed on.
“You know, I put up with Morgan’s crap for years because I didn’t have a choice,” Bryan continued. “The world may have changed in a lot of ways, but not when it comes to divorce. If there are kids involved, fathers don’t get custody. Period, not unless the mother happens to be a drug-dealing crackhead, and sometimes not even then. So I put up with Morgan’s stunts, with all her whoring around and game playing, because I wasn’t willing to lose Lindsay and Lacy. I kept my mouth shut and lived with it. But now that she’s dead, all of a sudden people have decided I’m the one who’s at fault—I’m the one who must have killed her. That I, someone who’s never killed anything—who’s never even shot a bird with a BB gun—would murder the mother of my children.”
“I’m sure they’re shocked by what happened to Morgan,” Ali interjected. “We all are. They’re looking for someone to blame.”
“They’re blaming me!” Bryan insisted, his voice trembling with outrage. “People I’ve known all my life are saying awful things about me. They don’t say them to my face, of course. No one has guts enough to do that, but I’m not stupid. I’m getting the message loud and clear.”
“What do you mean?” Ali asked.
“I went to the bank just now, and the teller there treated me like crap. The same thing happened to me at the hardware store with a clerk I’ve done business with for years. It seemed to me that with my wife dead, people would be nice to me and might even offer a little sympathy. What a laugh. Instead, they treat me like a leper. Why? What happened to that bit about innocent until proven guilty? And what about the deputy who’s been following me around all morning? I’d be willing to bet he’s parked at the bottom of your driveway right this minute. What do they think I’m going to do, try to take off somewhere? Take my girls and go live in another country?”
Spent, Bryan subsided into a bleak silence. At that point, the man seemed so far beyond any consolation mere words could offer that Ali wondered if she should even try. But she did anyway. “As I told you, the same thing happened to me when my second husband died.”
Bryan looked at her blankly and shook his head. Bogged down in his own troubles, he clearly didn’t remember their earlier conversation. So she told him again.
“My ex-husband was murdered just before our divorce was due to become final,” she said. “People found it easy to blame me, too. So did the cops.”
“Even though you hadn’t done it?”
Ali nodded. “Even though.”
“And what did you say to those people—to the people who thought you were guilty?”
“They were entitled to their own opinions,” Ali said. “I wouldn’t be surprised to learn that some of them still think I was somehow involved in Paul Grayson’s murder. The point is, what they think of me is none of my business. It doesn’t matter.”
“Do you believe me?” Bryan asked suddenly. “Do you think I did it?”
“I saw Morgan’s profile on the Singleatheart website,” Ali said quietly. “I know she was cheating on you. Or at least I know she was trying to cheat on you.”
“More than trying,” Bryan corrected. “Did.” He didn’t bother asking how Ali knew about Singleatheart. Obviously, he had known about it, too.
“You told me yourself that you thought she had misappropriated the cabinet deposits,” Ali said. “I can see how you’d have reason to be angry.”
“Not angry enough to kill her,” Bryan said.
“No,” Ali agreed, “but in the eyes of the world, the fact that you were angry, even justifiably angry, also makes you a suspect.”
Bryan looked at Ali closely. “What about you? Do you think I did it?” he repeated.
It was an honest question that deserved an honest answer. Ali met Bryan’s questioning gaze without wavering. “No,” she said. “No, I don’t. If I had thought you were guilty of murder, do you think I would have gone ahead and reordered the cabinets?”
“But you’re the only one,” Bryan said. “My other so-called clients sure as hell didn’t reorder.”
“Maybe I have more faith in the justice system than they do,” Ali said. “Maybe I believe in what you called ‘the innocent until proven guilty’ bit.”
“Does that mean you’ll help me?” Bryan asked.
“Wait a minute,” Ali countered. “As I said, I’ve already reordered the cabinets. Your guys are still working here. I haven’t ordered them off the premises. Isn’t that enough?”
“I need more than that,” Bryan said, lowering his voice. “I’m convinced someone is trying to frame me—someone who wants me to go to prison for murdering my wife. Gary, one of the wallboard guys, told me he saw Dave Holman take something out of the back of my truck yesterday afternoon. Gary didn’t know what it was, and neither do I. But whatever it was, I sure as hell didn’t put it there.