by J. A. Jance
All morning long, enticing aromas had leaked out of the kitchen and blown across the patio, setting Ali’s mouth watering.
Looking up, she smiled. “The cassoulet smells delicious, even out here,” she told him. “And coffee would be great.”
Leland Brooks and Ali's newly remodeled house on Sedona’s Manzanita Hills Road had come into her life as a package deal. Leland, a displaced Brit and a Korean War veteran, had managed the place for decades for its former owner, Arabella Ashcroft, and for Arabella’s mother, Anne Marie Ashcroft, before that. When Ali purchased the property with the intention of restoring it, she had kept Leland on, supposedly for the duration of the restoration process.
The remodeling project was long since over. The house, a gem of midcentury-modern architecture, had been returned to its original glory but updated to twenty-first-century building codes and fully stocked with modern-day appliances and computer-driven convenience. In the meantime, what Ali and Leland had both envisioned as a temporary employment situation had become more or less permanent.
During the Ashcroft years, Leland had occupied the servants’ quarters just off the kitchen. Now he lived in his own place, a fifth-wheel trailer parked on the far side of the garage, while Ali had the remodeled house to herself. Leland did the cooking and oversaw the cleaning. He had finally admitted that, at his stage of life, he could perhaps use a little help with the more rigorous chores. Nonetheless, he demanded perfection of all visiting crews of cleaners, window washers, and yard people, and having them available had allowed him to dive headfirst into a long-postponed project of creating a lush English garden in Ali’s front yard.
When Ali had mentioned Leland’s proposal to her parents, Bob and Edie Larson, her father immediately voiced his adamant disapproval. As far as he was concerned, putting a garden like that in the high desert of Arizona would be a colossal waste of time, effort, money, and water, but Ali was determined, and so was Leland; Ali because she’d always dreamed of having her very own “Enchanted Garden,” and Leland because he’d promised the house’s original owner that he’d complete her beloved project. During the “Arabella years,” when Anne Marie’s daughter had inherited the house and the butler, plans for the garden had been scrapped due to Arabella’s lack of interest. Now, with Ali in charge, Leland was determined to bring Anne Marie’s ambitious vision to fruition.
As far as gardening was concerned, Ali was well aware of her own personal limitations, one of which was having a perpetually black thumb. She had killed more indoor ficus plants than she cared to count. Initially, she’d been wary of such an undertaking, but it soon became clear that Leland was prepared to take the entire project in hand.
Leland had looked after Anne Marie’s troubled daughter for years after Anne Marie’s death, though his primary loyalty had always been to the family matriarch. When Leland first showed Ali the original garden plans, hand-sketched by Anne Marie on what was now wrinkled, yellowed sketch-pad paper, Ali knew what they needed to do.
She agreed to the project but on the condition that Leland’s role would be strictly supervisory. That was why, for the better part of the past week, a crew of strapping young men had been busily digging trenches and turning the soil, first to install the irrigation system and then to prepare the garden plot for planting. After that would come the pouring of the foundation for the garden’s centerpiece, a statue of a bighorn sheep created by Ali’s son, Christopher. Only when the statue was in place would it be time to plant the colorful array of growing things that Ali and Leland had selected while trudging through what had seemed like miles of aisles at Gardeners World in Phoenix.
Once Leland disappeared into the house, Ali turned her attention back to the folders on the table in front of her. The materials included both printed and handwritten (often barely decipherable) letters of recommendation from various teachers, employers, and friends stating why one particular girl or another should be the recipient of this year’s Amelia Dougherty Askins Scholarship.
Almost thirty years earlier, when Ali had received her own invitation from Anne Marie Ashcroft to come to tea at this very house, she’d had no idea that the scholarship program even existed, much less that she was a candidate. She had been quietly nominated by her high school English teacher, and receiving that unexpected scholarship had enabled Ali to attend college when she couldn’t have done so otherwise. Now, through a twist of fate, she was in charge of doling out those same scholarships to a new generation of deserving girls, and although it was a job she loved, it was hardly enough to keep her busy full-time.
That morning Ali had started with a field of twelve semifinalists. She stacked ten of the folders on one side of the table and put those of the two finalists on the other.
Rubbing her eyes and stretching her shoulders, Ali looked off across a valley punctuated with Sedona’s striking red-rock cliffs as Leland emerged from the house carrying a tray laden with coffee and a plate of freshly baked shortbread cookies.
“How’s the selection process coming along?” he asked, unloading the tray and depressing the plunger in the French press. Leland came from a class-conscious English background. It had taken more than a little persuading on Ali’s part to convince him to join her for an occasional cup of morning coffee. Leland was of the opinion that “familiarity” constituted a serious breach of employee/employer etiquette, but as Ali had pointed out, he wasn’t in Kansas anymore, and he wasn’t in Kensington Gardens, either.
Ali pushed the two finalists’ folders over toward the spot where Leland had deposited his cup and saucer.
“I’ve narrowed it down to these two,” Ali said. “Olivia McFarland and Autumn Rusk.”
Leland nodded. “Excellent choices,” he said. “They would have been mine, too.”
During the previous months, as the nominations arrived, Ali had deputized Leland to be her “feet on the ground” and to discreetly gather “intel” on the nominees. Leland had been an unobtrusive presence in Verde Valley communities for many years, and his sleuthing had unearthed quite a few things about the various girls’ backgrounds and family situations that were absent from the official school records.
For instance, Olivia’s 3.5 GPA at Mingus Mountain High School was solid enough, but it might have been much higher if Olivia hadn’t been charged with caring for her three younger siblings-two brothers and a baby sister-while their widowed mother worked two jobs to keep a roof over their heads and food on the table.
Ali also couldn’t help but wonder what would happen to the younger children if Olivia were given a scholarship that took her away from home. Would receiving the award, a positive for Olivia, turn into a negative in the lives of her younger siblings? For that matter, would she even accept it?
Autumn Rusk also came from a single-parent home. In the economic downturn, her once prosperous family life had disappeared right along with her father’s job. After the job was gone, the house went next, and after the house, the marriage. Autumn and her mother had moved from their upscale home in Sedona to a modest rental in Cornville, where Autumn’s mother had resumed her long-abandoned career as a hairdresser.
The chaos in their lives had impacted Autumn’s schoolwork, especially during her junior year, when she moved from Sedona High to Mingus. As a senior, she was back hitting the books and making headway in raising her GPA to its former level, but it was a tough road.
Three years before, faced with two equally deserving girls, Ali had opted to choose them both. Those two girls, Marissa Dvorak and Haley Marsh, were now juniors, attending the University of Arizona in Tucson and doing well academically and personally. In Ali’s wallet, right along with photos of her own twin grandkids, she carried a school picture of Haley’s bright-eyed son, Liam, grinning a five-year-old grin that was already minus one front tooth.
Giving someone an Askins scholarship meant a multiyear commitment from the endowment. The economic downturn that had cost Anthony Rusk his job had adversely affected the scholarship fund as well. And though
it had received two recent generous donations that made up some of the investment shortfall, Ali wasn’t sure she could justify giving two scholarships this year.
Leland poured the coffee and took a seat. “I don’t envy your having to make the decision,” he said, as though reading her mind. “But if you’re thinking of awarding two scholarships, perhaps it’s time to consider doing some kind of fund-raising effort.”
“Long-term, you’re probably right,” Ali agreed, “but for right now I need to settle this so the girls and their families can make plans of their own.”
When coffee was over, Ali returned to the file folders. By lunchtime she had made up her mind. She would invite both girls to the traditional tea but would meet with them separately. The scholarship for Autumn, who was interested in nursing, would be to any four-year institution of higher learning within the state of Arizona, renewable annually provided she maintained an acceptable GPA.
Olivia’s, on the other hand, would pay in-state tuition, books, and some living expenses for her to attend Yavapai College in Sedona and in Prescott. It would also include a small stipend for child care for her siblings during study or school hours. Upon graduation, assuming she had maintained a suitable GPA, her scholarship could be extended for two more years if she transferred to a BA program at a school inside Arizona. That meant that Olivia’s family would benefit from having her at home with them during those first two years of college, but she’d also be getting a start on her education.
Having made her decision, Ali set about writing the required notes with a happy heart. She was confident that those seemingly trivial invitations to tea would change the course of at least two young lives, just as Anne Marie Ashcroft’s much earlier invitation had transformed the future for Alison Larson Reynolds.
As she sat there on her sunlit patio, Ali took pleasure in a life that seemed placid and orderly, and she relished every moment of it.
2
3:00 P.M., Friday, April 9
Fountain Hills, Arizona
Breeze Domingo awakened alone in a windowless room where the walls and ceiling looked as though they had been covered with egg cartons. The black dress was gone. So were the silky black underwear and the high heels. She was naked and cold and lying on a hard metal table with thick leather bands restraining her arms and legs.
Fighting her way through the fog, she tried to remember where she was or what had happened. She remembered Chico dropping her off at the gate and riding up the hill in the golf cart. She remembered walking into the book-lined room where the ugly old man had been waiting for her. And then she seemed to remember being given something to drink. After that the world became fuzzy. She recalled the sensation of being thrown over someone’s shoulder and carried, fireman-style, down a seemingly endless staircase, but that was all. She had no idea how much time had passed or even if she was still in the house in Fountain Hills. Where was Chico? He had said he would come back for her, but he hadn’t. Why not? And what was going to happen to her? The possible answers to that question filled her with dread. Whatever it was she knew, it wouldn’t be good.
An invisible door-also covered with what looked like egg cartons-opened, and the ugly man walked into the room. He was wearing a bathrobe. He looked at her and smiled. “It’s about time you woke up,” he said. “Nap’s over. The two of us will have some fun.”
“Where’s Chico?” she asked.
“Don’t hold your breath waiting for him to come back,” the man said. “I guess he didn’t tell you. Chico owed me money. Quite a bit of money, and I agreed to take it out in trade. I tore up his IOU, and now you belong to me.”
He paused long enough to light a cigarette and then stood over her, studying her naked body. “That’s quite a tattoo you have there. Very pretty.”
That was the one part of her fifteenth-birthday present that Jimmy Fox hadn’t been able to cancel, because he hadn’t known about it. Some girls begged to have their ears pierced. Rose Ventana had begged her mother for a tattoo from the time she understood what Connie did for a living. Her mother had always told her that, if she still wanted one, she could have one for her fifteenth birthday. That promise had been made long before Jimmy Fox appeared on the scene, and both Rose and her mother understood how much he would disapprove.
One day while Jimmy was at work, her mother picked Rose up early from school and took her downtown to the tattoo parlor to do the job. The pattern Rose chose was one to match her name, a bright red rose that was tucked out of sight on the inside of her right breast. Connie had positioned it in such a way that it wouldn’t show, even under the low-cut neckline of Rose’s formal-the one she had never worn; the one Jimmy had returned.
The rose was the only thing Breeze Domingo still had from her childhood; it was her only abiding gift from her mother. But she didn’t tell the man with the cigarette any of that. She didn’t want to give him that kind of power over her. Instead, she said nothing.
He shook his head sadly. “Chico told me that you were a good girl, that you would do what you’re told. When I talk to you or ask a question, it’s not good manners if you don’t respond. Understand?”
With that, after taking one last drag on the cigarette, he deftly pressed the burning stub into the middle of the rose tattoo. Breeze howled in agony at the searing pain, and her anguish made the man smile.
“See there?” he said. “That’s more like it.”
Breeze Domingo was accustomed to giving men what they wanted, and what this monster wanted was to see her suffer, to hear her scream. For a time he would carry on a seemingly reasonable conversation, asking her inane questions: Where had she gone to school? What was her favorite subject? What was her favorite food? There was no way to tell in advance if he would find her answers satisfactory, but whenever he didn’t, he burned her again, relishing her futile attempts to writhe out of reach. When he tired of the burning game, he pulled out a knife and played a bloody game of tic-tac-toe on the flat planes of her belly. Only then did he peel off the robe.
Breeze was relieved. After all, sex was what she had expected. He was an old man. How bad could it be? It turned out to be very bad indeed. Frustrated that he couldn’t deliver with his own aged equipment, he railed at her for being an emasculating bitch. Then he pulled a billy club out of the pocket of his robe and came after her with it.
That was about that time when she passed out. He slapped her awake and kept the game going for what seemed like hours, pausing now and then for another cigarette and to lift a bottle to his lips and sip on something that smelled like straight tequila. Finally, with a satisfied sigh, he picked up the robe and put it on. Pulling out a phone, he snapped it open and dialed.
“Okay,” he said when someone finally answered. “I’m done. Get rid of her.”
That was the last she remembered until she awakened again much later. She had no idea how much time had passed. It could have been hours or days. She was bound and gagged, wrapped in what felt like a rolled rug, and lying in the dark on the floor of a moving vehicle that seemed like a panel truck, hurtling forward toward some unknown destination. When the truck went around a curve or a corner, Breeze rolled helplessly one way or the other, unable to stop until she slammed into the wall.
Her whole body hurt from the burns and the cuts. The inside of her body felt bruised and battered, and she needed to pee. She held back as long as she could. When at last she let go, urine ran down the back of her leg and across some of the cuts or burns, she couldn’t tell which. All she knew was that it stung like hell.
She lay there, crying quietly. If the van had stopped, she might have tried banging against the side of the van with her legs, but the rug made that impossible, and they didn’t stop, anyway.
For a time it seemed clear that they were on a freeway. She could hear the sounds of other traffic and the grumbling roar of traveling semis. Then they turned off onto a much quieter road-a slower road with a lot less traffic, though it was still paved. Much later, they pulled onto what f
elt like a rutted dirt track. As they bounced across the hard washboard surface, the van filled up with a cloud of dust. Breeze needed to cough and sneeze. All she could do was choke. Finally, the van stopped. The back door opened. The man who was standing there was the same one who had driven her up the hill in the golf cart.
“Okay,” he said. “Come to Daddy. Humberto Laos may be the big boss, but he doesn’t get to have all the fun.”
3
5:00 P.M., Friday, April 9
Three Points, Arizona
Officer Alonzo Gutierrez slapped his Border Patrol SUV into park and then stepped outside to survey the nearby portion of mesquite-dotted desert landscape through a pair of high-powered binoculars as the sun drifted down behind the rockbound Baboquivari Peak in the Coyote Mountains to the west.
It was close to the end of Al’s shift, and he was hoping to come up empty. So far his patrol of the sector from Sasabe north to Three Points hadn’t yielded any illegals. If he picked up someone now, he’d be stuck doing paperwork on his own time because, according to his supervisor, overtime was currently off the table no matter what.
Al had grown up in Washington State, the son of migrant workers who had managed to put down roots in Wenatchee. The youngest as well as the tallest of three brothers, he had won a basketball scholarship to WSU. He was the first member of his family to graduate from college, and he should have been living the American dream with a good job and thinking about starting a family of his own. Except things hadn’t worked out quite the way he had expected or wanted.
For one thing, his mother hadn’t lived long enough to see her son graduate in his cap and gown. Once he was out of school with a business degree, the jobs he had hoped for hadn’t materialized. He knew that in the current job market, his less than stellar GPA had hurt him. Jobs for new graduates were scarce to begin with, and even when he managed to get an interview, he never got a callback.