Cruel Intent

by J. A. Jance

  “I’ve got a call in to Mitch,” he said. To Ali, he added, “Mitch Gunn used to be our attorney when we lived here. I left him a message. So far he hasn’t called back.”

  “Is Mitch Gunn a criminal defense attorney?” Ali asked.

  “I’m not sure what his specialty is. Mitch has handled business agreements as well as our wills—that kind of thing,” Harold Forester said. “Up till now, that’s the only legal help we’ve ever needed.”

  “If your son has been arrested for murder,” Ali told the Foresters, “he’s going to need a lot more than that.”

  “If you know someone who would be better, tell us,” Harold said. “Whatever it costs, we’ll find the money. We have to. He’s our son.”

  In the past several years, a series of tough circumstances had forced Ali to retain a whole series of defense attorneys, all of whom had proved reasonably effective. The first one, however, a local named Rick Santos, had been by far the most affordable. Once Harold Forester was on the line with Rick, Ali went back into the girls’ room, where Mindy Farber had somehow convinced Lindsey and Lacy to don pajamas and climb into bed.

  “Are you going to stay with us?” Lindsey asked her teacher.

  Mindy shook her head. “Not overnight. Your grandparents will be here with you. I have to go home so I can get ready for school in the morning.”

  “Can we go back to school, too?” Lindsey asked. “I hate being here. So does Lacy. It’s boring. There’s nothing to do.”

  Bev Forester had followed Ali into the room. “Of course you can’t go back to school,” she announced. “Not right now. Not until after the funeral on Friday. What would people think?”

  Mindy turned to Bev. “These girls are seven,” she said quietly. “It doesn’t matter what people think. Let them come back to school, Mrs. Forester. Their whole lives have been disrupted. Going to school will give their days some structure. It will also give them something familiar to think about besides what’s happened to them.”

  “But—” Bev began.

  “Please, Grandma,” Lindsey interrupted. “Please let us.”

  “She’s right,” Harold told his wife from the doorway. “They’ll be better off at school than stuck here with us all day long, worrying or else watching CNN.”

  “What’s a funeral?”

  At first Ali thought Lindsey was the one who had asked the question, but then she saw Lindsey turn toward her sister in drop-jawed amazement.

  “What?” Lindsey said.

  “What’s a funeral?” Lacy repeated.

  Lacy’s unprecedented excursion into the verbal world may not have surprised her sister, but it had left all the adults in the room dumbstruck. Mindy Farber was the first to recover.

  “A funeral is like a church service,” she explained. “Funerals are held when people die. They give the people who are left behind a chance to say goodbye. This one will be for your mother.”

  “But I don’t want to say goodbye,” Lacy said. With that, she rolled away from them and covered her head with her pillow, signaling with some finality that her brief conversation was over.

  Lindsey was determined. She turned back to her grandmother. “So can we go to school or not?” she asked.

  “We’ll see,” Bev said, but Ali could tell the woman was wavering. So could Mindy.

  “Tomorrow, then,” Mindy said, patting Lindsey’s shoulder as she stood to leave. “See you there.”

  When Mindy and Ali exited the room a few minutes later, Bev Forester followed. “You had no right to say that,” she sputtered. “You had no right to tell the girls that you’d see them tomorrow.”

  “Did you happen to notice a miracle just happened?” Mindy demanded in return, rounding on the older woman. “Your granddaughter, who has never spoken a single word in my hearing, suddenly said something—something important. She’s not ready to say goodbye, and not just to her mother, either. She’s not ready to say goodbye to life as she knew it. Please let the girls come to school tomorrow.”

  “But what if some of the other kids say something to them?” Bev objected. “What if they tease the girls or make fun of them?”

  “No doubt the kids will say something,” Mindy agreed. “Ours is a small school, and what happened on Monday was and is very big news. By tomorrow people will probably know that the girls’ father is in custody. But Lacy and Lindsey will be better off if they start dealing with comments—kind or unkind—earlier rather than later. That’s also part of saying goodbye.”

  “I’ll take them,” Harold said, cutting short the discussion. “What time does school start?”

  “Eight-thirty.”

  “All right, then,” he said. “The girls will be there. I’ll drive them there myself.” He turned to his wife. “Now, you go on to bed, Bev. The manager’s going to bring down a roll-away bed. I’ll be here with the girls in case they wake up.”

  Shaking her head, Bev disappeared into the other room while Ali and Mindy headed for Ali’s Cayenne.

  “You were really good with the girls,” Ali said. “With both of them.”

  “Thank you,” Mindy said. “But what’s going to happen after tonight? If their father ends up going to prison, what will happen to the girls? The grandfather’s probably okay, but the grandmother? Yikes!”

  “From what Bryan Forester said to me, I doubt his mother is very good with little kids under the best of circumstances, which these definitely are not,” Ali said. “Bev’s daughter-in-law has been murdered, and her son has been placed under arrest. We should both try to cut the woman some slack.”

  “And I’ll do what I can for the girls when they come to school tomorrow,” Mindy added.

  “Exactly,” Ali said.

  When she pulled up in front of Mindy and Athena’s apartment, there were no lights on inside, but Chris’s Prius was parked on the street out front. “It looks like the lovers got over their little spat,” Mindy said with a laugh as she opened the door to step out of the vehicle. “Thanks for the ride.”

  “And thanks for all the help,” Ali said. “I don’t know how Bev and Harold Forester would have managed if you hadn’t been there.”

  Once Mindy had gotten out, as Ali drove on, she found herself thinking about her mother. Ali had always admired and envied Edie’s ability to do the right thing in the face of almost any crisis. Well, almost any crisis. The uproar over the engagement party counted as a major exception to her mother’s otherwise unblemished record.

  Ali had been operating on pure instinct when she’d invited Mindy Farber into the fray to help deal with Lindsey and Lacy Forester. It had turned out to be the right thing to do. Maybe I’m my mother’s daughter after all, she thought.

  It wasn’t until she was back at the house that she remembered the thumb drives. But having just had a serious lesson in computer security, she was no longer willing to insert either one of them into the backup computer B. had lent her. If the virus on her computer had come from Singleatheart, wasn’t there a good chance that Morgan Forester’s files had also been infected? Before doing something potentially damaging to B.’s computer, she would have to bring him into the picture.

  She was in bed and ready to turn off the lights when Chris came home a little after one. He tapped on her door and then entered the bedroom, where he perched on the edge of Ali’s bed. “I went to see Athena,” Chris said.

  Ali nodded without saying that she knew as much.

  “We talked,” Chris added. “And I think we got some things straightened out; we came to an understanding.”

  “That’s good,” Ali said.

  “I’m glad you told Athena about you and my father running away to Vegas to get married. She liked that.”

  “Your grandmother didn’t like it,” Ali replied. “She still doesn’t.”

  “That’s all right,” Chris said. “Just knowing about it made Athena feel better, and that made me feel better. So thanks for the good advice, Mom.”

  “You’re welcome.”

&n
bsp; He glanced at his watch and made a face. “Now I’d better get to bed,” he said. “First period is going to come very early.”

  Ali lay awake for a long time after Chris closed her bedroom door. Athena had told him that she and Ali had discussed the situation with Bob and Edie, but Ali was well aware that in telling the story to Athena, she had neglected to finish mentioning what had gone on with Chris’s other grandparents—with Angus and Jeanette Reynolds of Boston, Massachusetts.

  For years Ali had managed to keep any remembrance of them locked away. She had never forgiven them for turning their backs on their only son. Even now she couldn’t imagine how they could have done such a thing. Angus was an attorney with some big law firm, and he had been offended when Dean had spurned the idea of his going to law school in favor of getting a Ph.D. in oceanography, of all things! That, combined with Dean’s decision to marry Ali, had been enough for them to walk away. For good.

  Once Dean had been diagnosed with glioblastoma, Ali had tried to get him to contact them, but he’d proved to be his father’s son. He had adamantly refused to take the first step on trying to effect a reconciliation. And after that one abortive phone call, Ali hadn’t tried again either.

  There were several times while Chris was growing up when he had asked about his “other” grandparents. Ali had told him he didn’t have any, and that was the truth. He didn’t. But tonight, pondering Athena’s complicated family situation, Ali couldn’t help thinking about her own. Whatever had become of Dean’s parents? Are they dead or alive? Ali wondered.

  What would Angus and Jeanette Reynolds think if they saw their grandson now, a grown, good-looking man who was almost a mirror image of their long-dead son?

  Do they ever regret what happened back then? Ali wondered as she drifted off to sleep at last. And do I?

  CHAPTER 11

  As usual, Peter had played a round of golf at the Biltmore on Wednesday afternoon with a couple of other docs who also had Wednesday afternoons off. They’d had drinks and dinner afterward. When he’d come home, he had tumbled into bed fairly early—into bed but not into sleep.

  The whole time he’d been out golfing and buddying around, thoughts of Ali Reynolds had lingered in the background. Now he found himself tossing and turning and thinking about her again. He was convinced she was a problem. The question was, how serious a problem—major or minor?

  It would have helped if Peter had known what had brought Ali Reynolds to Singleatheart in the first place. Had she logged on for the same reasons most other people did—because she was lonely and looking for a date? Sedona was a small town. Peter assumed it was possible that Morgan and Ali were good enough friends that Morgan, as a satisfied Singleatheart customer, had referred this Reynolds woman to the website so she could join in the fun and games. Or was that wishful thinking on Peter’s part?

  Several things gave him cause for concern: Ali’s alleged tendency to be a crimefighter; her license to carry; and most of all, her long-term relationship with Morgan Forester’s widower. Since she was one of Bryan Forester’s customers, the far more likely scenario was that she had learned about Morgan’s involvement with Singleatheart through him. If Bryan was under suspicion for his wife’s murder—as Peter most certainly hoped he was—it made sense that Ali had visited Singleatheart while snooping around on his behalf.

  It was well after midnight before Peter drifted off to sleep. He did so only after deciding that he would take another serious look at Ali Reynolds first thing in the morning. By logging on to her computer and seeing what she was up to, he’d be able to ascertain whether or not she posed a threat to him. If she didn’t, fine. If she did? That was another matter. In that case, Peter would find a way to take care of the problem—forever.

  Once Belinda Helwig became Arizona’s auditor general, she was determined that she and everyone on her staff would lead by example. Worried that too many state-funded employee hours were being squandered on personal Internet activity, Ms. Helwig had instituted and enforced a comprehensive workplace ban on personal e-mails.

  Matt Morrison was someone who always strove to be an exemplary employee. Under normal circumstances, he wouldn’t have dreamed of violating that particular rule, but these were desperate times for him. As such, they called for desperate measures.

  In their phone conversation earlier, Detective Holman had mentioned the dead woman’s name. Unfortunately, Matt had been in such a state of shock that he hadn’t been paying close enough attention. It seemed to him now that the name started with an M, but he couldn’t remember exactly. Whatever the name was, he hadn’t recognized it.

  Once he was off the phone, Matt had sat numbly in his cubicle, staring at the shoulder-high walls and mulling his plight. The detective may have called the dead woman by another name, but she had to be Susan Callison.

  As the hours passed, Matt called into question everything he knew or thought he knew about Suzie Q. She had claimed to be separated from her husband and had said she lived in Glendale. Now Matt wondered if any of that had been true. According to Detective Holman, the dead woman had been married and living near Sedona. Where did that leave Matt? Out on the end of a limb, while Detective Holman, armed with a chain saw, was ready to lop it off.

  From the time Matt’s mother had first put a red Crayola in his hand, he had done his best to color inside the lines. Fearing disgrace, he had always played it safe and had never taken chances. Not until Monday. But now disgrace was coming anyway. Matt knew he wasn’t guilty of murdering anybody. Surely, with the help of someone, somewhere, he’d be able to prove that, no matter what phony evidence the cop had manufactured about him. But in order to prove his innocence, Matt knew he would end up losing everything else. Jenny would know he had been unfaithful—at least he had tried to be. Their friends at church would know all about it, and so would everyone at work.

  That was particularly galling. Work had always been Matt Morrison’s safe haven. No matter how tough things were at home, he’d always been able to escape by going to work. Once word about this got out, though, he knew what would happen. Everyone in the office would recognize Matthew Morrison for the loser he was. They’d laugh about him behind his back and whisper about him before and after he left the break room. It would be like the checkout line at Lowe’s—only worse.

  So Matt set out on a course of action that he hoped would spare him some of that humiliation. It might spare Jenny some ugliness as well. He did it the way Matt Morrison did everything—in a thorough and organized fashion.

  First he brought up his folder of Suzie Q correspondence. One at a time, he went through all the e-mails that had come and gone between them, reading each message as he went. The ones that hurt the most weren’t the ones at the beginning, when they’d been testing the waters, or the plaintive ones he’d written to her this week after she hadn’t written back. No, the ones that made his heart ache were the ones in the middle of their not-quite-affair, the sweet-nothing silly notes from when they had both believed—well, both had claimed to believe—in a future that had included the tantalizing promise that somehow, someday, the two of them would be together, living a happily-ever-after existence.

  Matt read through the messages and remembered how he had felt when he read those miraculous words the first time—remembered how they had buoyed him and given him hope. Now, once the words had been committed to memory, he deleted each and every one of them. When the messages were gone, Matt went to his buddy list and deleted Suzie Q’s name. He didn’t doubt that cops, armed with a search warrant, would be able to obtain the deleted messages from the server, but he was hoping they wouldn’t bother.

  With a sigh, Matt turned off his computer. He put away the files he’d been working on earlier. He straightened his desk. He returned the stapler he’d borrowed from Bobbie Bacon. Once his cubicle was in order, Matt was ready to head home. He knew it was time, but he also knew there was no hurry.

  On his way out of the building, he stopped off in the men’s room. There,
standing behind the closed door of a stall, he removed the condoms and the packet of little blue pills from their hiding place in the back of his wallet. He was dismayed that it took a series of several flushes before the plastic-wrapped containers disappeared down the toilet.

  He spoke pleasantly to the security guard at the desk in the downstairs lobby. Out in the parking lot, Matt retrieved his ’96 Corolla from the employee lot and then meandered east toward home. Traveling on surface streets rather than hitting the freeways, he stopped at a 7-Eleven on Indian School long enough to fill the gas tank and buy two pint bottles of Baileys.

  He opened one of the bottles while he was still parked at the gas pumps. Swallowed straight, the stuff was so cloyingly sweet that he almost gagged, but he managed to keep it down. He hadn’t had anything to eat since lunch, so the booze hit him hard. Not wanting to be picked up on a DUI, he waited until he was at Scottsdale Road and North Chaparral before he took his next big swig. It was important that there be enough booze in his system to blur the lines between deliberate and accidental. The trick was being able to show an intent to get drunk without an intent to do anything else.

  When Matt pulled up in front of his house, he was relieved to see that all the interior lights had been turned off. Jenny wasn’t the kind of person who would leave a porch light burning on those rare occasions when he came home later than she did. The darkness inside meant she was fast asleep. Considering her snoring problem, he doubted that his opening and closing the garage door would disturb her in the slightest.

  He drove into the painstakingly neat two-car garage and parked the faded blue Corolla next to Jenny’s much shinier ’05 Acura. Once the garage door had closed behind him, he put the car in park and engaged the emergency brake. Leaving the engine running, he reached for the bottle again and took several more quick swallows, one after the other. As the stuff slid down his throat, he started to feel the buzz. That was good. So was having a full tank of gas.