Left for Dead ar-7

by J. A. Jance

  “I took some photos at the house,” Ali said tentatively. “I’m not sure if now is a good time to look at them.”

  “Please,” Jose said. “We need to know how bad it is.”

  Ali opened the photo app and passed her phone to Jose. Grim-faced, he scrolled through them all, then passed the phone to Teresa.

  “But all the things I picked out for Carmine …” Teresa began, bursting into tears once more. “Our good dishes, our bedding, our furniture. It’s all gone.”

  “Those are things,” Jose pointed out. “We’re alive. That’s what’s important, right?”

  Teresa took a deep breath, attempting to pull herself together, then nodded in agreement. “You’re right,” she said. “At least we’re all alive.” She handed the phone back to Ali. “Thank you for handling the police report.”

  “You’re welcome,” Ali said. “It took longer than it should have because of the other homicide in town.”

  “Another homicide?” Jose asked. “Where?”

  “In Patagonia,” Ali answered. “I thought you might have heard about it. Phil Tewksbury was murdered sometime this morning.”

  “Phil Tewksbury-the mailman?”

  “Yes.”

  “Too bad,” Jose said. “I’ve met Phil a couple of times. Hell of a nice guy. Do they have any suspects?”

  “Christine, for one,” Ali said.

  “You mean the Christmas Tree Lady?” Teresa asked.

  Ali nodded. “There might be one more suspect. Someone you know.”

  “Who’s that?”

  “Patty Patton found a packet of letters in one of Phil’s drawers at the post office. It turns out Phil was evidently carrying on quite a correspondence with your former mother-in-law.”

  Teresa looked genuinely shocked. “With Olga? Are you kidding? What about Oscar? He’s always been good as gold to her. How dare she carry on with someone behind his back? And after the things she said about Jose and me getting together after Danny was dead …”

  Just then Julie poked her head in the room. She was carrying the board game box and the teddy bear. “Can I leave these here?” she asked.

  “Where are the girls?” Teresa asked.

  “They went to Baskin-Robbins,” Julie said. “With their grandmother.”

  “Their grandmother? Olga?” Teresa demanded. “You let them go off somewhere with her without even asking me?”

  Julie seemed taken aback. “She said it’s just a few blocks from here. That they’ll be right back.”

  “Did you give her the car seats?” Teresa asked. “They’re in my room.”

  “She said that since they weren’t going far, she didn’t need car seats. I hope I didn’t do anything wrong, but when she offered ice cream, both girls wanted to go. It didn’t seem like that big a deal.”

  It might not have been a big deal to Julie, but it certainly was to Teresa. Ali was already on her feet. “Look,” she said. “It’s not a problem. I’ll take the car seats and go find them. I’ll bring the girls back here as soon as they finish their ice cream.”

  Julie followed her out of the room with her cell phone ringing again. Ali suspected that her interrupted conversations were part of the reason she was happy to hand off the girls and let them be someone else’s problem for a few minutes.

  “If you’ll go get the car seats,” Ali told her, “I’ll go get my car.”

  While she waited for Julie to bring the seats, Ali pulled up to the front door. A quick Internet search showed her that the nearest Baskin-Robbins was under two miles away, on Wrightstown Road.

  “I hope they’re not mad at me,” Julie said as she stuffed the seats into Ali’s Cayenne.

  “No one’s mad at you,” Ali assured her. “We’ll take care of it. What kind of car was she driving?”

  “I don’t know. A white one? And like with four doors or something.”

  “A sedan, then?”

  “I guess.”

  Julie’s vague description wasn’t a big help, especially since, when Ali arrived at the Baskin-Robbins parking lot, there were no white sedans in attendance. A white Toyota Tundra pickup truck, yes, but no four-door sedans of any kind. There was no sign of Olga Sanchez and the girls, either.

  They must have left the hospital several minutes before I did, Ali thought, so they should have already been here.

  Ali got out and went inside. She waited impatiently while a family of four did multiple taste tests before making their final flavor choices. She asked the solo employee, “Did a lady with black hair and two little girls come in a while ago? The lady wears her hair pulled back. There are white streaks in her hair.”

  The clerk behind the counter, shook her head. “Not that I remember.”

  The first inklings of real concern leaked into Ali’s consciousness. She went back out to the car and watched up and down the street for several minutes. Maybe Olga had decided to stop off somewhere on the way to the ice cream shop. While Ali watched oncoming traffic, she called Teresa. “I’m at Baskin-Robbins,” she said. “They’re not here.”

  “Where else would she have taken them?” Teresa asked.

  Ali heard the rising panic in Teresa’s voice. She didn’t want to cause the poor woman any additional worry, and so, although Ali herself was feeling genuine alarm, she tried to keep it from showing.

  “Maybe she went to a different branch,” Ali suggested. “Or maybe she decided to go somewhere else first. Is it possible she took them home? She offered to do that earlier, didn’t she? Where is home?”

  “That would be either the ranch, the Lazy S, south of Patagonia, or else to her house here in Tucson.”

  “Where’s that?” Ali asked.

  “On Longfellow Avenue,” Teresa said. “Right around Hawthorne. I don’t remember the exact number.”

  “The streets are named for writers?”

  “Yes,” Teresa said. “It’s an area in the central district called Poet’s Corner, mostly homes from the forties and fifties.”

  “How will I know which one is the right one?”

  “It’s a brick house that’s been painted white,” Teresa said. “Blue trim. If you’re driving southbound between Speedway and Fifth, their house in on the right side of Longfellow.”

  “What kind of car does Olga drive?” Ali asked. She was programming Longfellow Avenue into her GPS as she spoke.

  “She and Oscar may not still have the same car, but they used to keep an older-model Buick at the house in Tucson to use when they were in town.”

  “What color?”

  “White.”

  “Two-door or four-door?”

  “Four.” Teresa added, “They have a Range Rover that they mostly keep on the ranch and a minivan conversion that holds Oscar’s wheelchair.” There was a momentary silence on the phone before she asked, “Do you think I should call the police?”

  “Not yet,” Ali said. “Let me drive by the house on Longfellow. The GPS says it’ll take me just under twenty minutes to get from here to there. If there’s no sign of them at the house, or if Olga hasn’t brought the girls back to the hospital by then, that’ll be the time to bring the cops in.”

  And issue an Amber Alert, Ali thought.

  It occurred to her that while she was checking on the house in Tucson, Patty might be able to find out if Olga had retreated to the ranch. As Ali made her way across Tucson, she tried redialing both of Patty Patton’s landlines, but there was no answer at either one.

  Remembering what had happened on Sunday, Ali dialed Stuart Ramey’s number.

  “Hey, Ali,” he said. “What can I do for you today?”

  “Can you get back into the Physicians Medical’s CCTV system?” she asked.

  “Another evil flower delivery guy?” he asked. “How did all that turn out, by the way?”

  “The flower guy turned out to be a good guy,” Ali said. “I should have let you know. But now we’ve got a grandmother who may have gone off the rails. She came to the hospital sometime within the la
st half hour, loaded two kids-two little girls-into a vehicle, and took off. We need to get the kids back.”

  “She took the kids without permission?”

  “Yes.”

  “So this is urgent?”

  “Very.”

  “Let me get back to you.”

  He hung up. No more than a minute elapsed before he called her back. “Okay,” he said. “I’ve got it. Looks like a Buick Regal from the nineties. Here’s the license.”

  “I’m driving,” Ali said. “Can’t write it down. Can you send it to me?”

  “Will,” Stuart said. “But there’s something else you should know. Those kids, the older one in particular, didn’t look very happy to be getting in that car.”

  By then Ali had turned off Alvernon onto Second Street. Longfellow was two blocks in. She spotted the Range Rover parked on the street as soon as she turned the corner onto Longfellow. Not only was the Range Rover parked out front, there was a white Buick parked under the carport at the end of the driveway. A quick comparison revealed that the license number matched the one Stuart Ramey had sent to her phone minutes before.

  “Bingo,” Ali told herself. “Got her.”

  The xeriscaped front yard wasn’t fenced. A concrete walkway led through a collection of prickly pear, yucca, barrel cactus, and palo verde. Growing along both sides of the house was a foolproof burglar deterrent-a thicket of seven-foot-high cholla. Backlit by the setting sun, the five-inch-long needles resembled an evil halo. Blinds on all the street-facing windows had been pulled tightly shut. Had it not been for the car in the driveway, the house might have been deserted.

  Ali pulled in behind the Buick, effectively blocking it. If Olga planned to leave in the Ranger Rover, there wasn’t much Ali could do, but if she planned to drive the Buick out of there, she would have to go through Ali’s Cayenne to do it.

  Ali rang the bell. When nothing happened, she rang the bell again. Eventually, despite the fact that there was no sound from inside, the light in the peephole went out.

  “What do you want?” a woman’s voice asked.

  “I’m Teresa and Jose’s friend, Ali Reynolds. I’ve come to pick up the girls.”

  “Whatever would make you think they’re with me?”

  “Come on, Mrs. Sanchez,” Ali said. “Julie, the girl who was looking after Lucy and Carinda, told us you had taken them for ice cream. We have the security tape that shows you leaving the hospital with the two girls in your car.”

  Olga Sanchez gave an audible sigh. “Oh well, then,” she said. “I suppose you should come inside.”

  When the door opened, the first thing Ali saw was the weapon, a.38, aimed directly at her midsection. What she missed more than anything in that moment was her Kevlar vest. She had her Glock; her Taser was in her pocket. Olga would have no way of knowing Ali was armed, but at that point, carrying the weapons did Ali no good at all. She knew she’d be dead before she had a chance to use either one.

  “Come in and shut the door,” Olga ordered.

  Ali did as she was told. She stepped into a room that looked as though it hadn’t changed in decades. With the blinds closed, the only light in the room came from what were most likely genuine Tiffany lamps on the tables at either end of an immense old-fashioned leather couch. A blanket that Ali took to be an antique Navajo rug-reminding her of B.’s-was draped casually over the matching leather chair.

  On the surface, the room seemed comfortable and comforting, completely at odds with the disturbed woman standing there holding a weapon. There was no sign of the girls anywhere-none.

  After surveying the room, Ali turned back to Olga. That was when she noticed the collection of luggage sitting next to the door. There were three suitcases altogether, two large ones and a smaller roll-aboard, all of them on wheels. That could mean only one thing-Olga was definitely on her way out of town. But was she planning on leaving with the girls or without them?

  At that point, Ali’s police academy training kicked in. When faced with an armed assailant, try to initiate a conversation and defuse the situation.

  “Please, Mrs. Sanchez,” Ali said. “You don’t want to do this. Right now we can still fix it. If it goes on longer, or if the police have to be involved, it will be a far more serious situation. You could be charged with custodial interference or even kidnapping. I’m sure you don’t want that.”

  “You have no idea of what I want,” Olga said. “And this is none of your business. You shouldn’t have come.”

  “Where are the girls?”

  “They’re not here,” Olga said. “By the time you find them, it’ll be too late.”

  Ali’s heart gave a lurch. “What do you mean too late?”

  “I gave them a little something in their ice cream,” Olga said. “They’re sleeping.”

  Ali was aghast. “You poisoned them?” she demanded.

  “Not poison. Just a little something to help them sleep. I didn’t want to frighten them.”

  “You gave them a sedative?” Ali asked. “What if you gave them too much? What if they die?”

  “Then Teresa and I would be even, wouldn’t we?” Olga said. “I lost my child. It’s only fair that Teresa should lose hers. If I could have taken her new baby, too, I would have.”

  Ali’s heartbeat ramped up. If the girls had been given an overdose of some medication, they might already be dead. She had to do something, and she had to do it fast, but for right now she needed to stay calm and keep the conversation going.

  “You hate Teresa that much?” Ali asked.

  Olga shrugged. “Danny’s dead. Jose is alive. What’s fair about that?”

  That was when it all shifted into focus. Wasn’t that what Jose had told Ali when she asked him about the shooting-that the woman who had shot him had been driving a Buick? But she remembered clearly that he had said she wasn’t anyone he recognized.

  “Have you even met Jose Reyes?” Ali asked.

  Olga smiled. “I don’t have to meet the man to know all about him or to hate his guts. He stepped into Danny’s place and took over. He claimed to be everything Danny wasn’t-a real goody-goody, but his squeaky-clean reputation should be crap about now. He may be alive, but I’ll bet he won’t be a cop much longer.”

  As far as Ali was concerned, those words explained everything, including the vandalism at Teresa and Jose’s house, where the least amount of damage had been done to the room shared by Lucy and Carinda. Now the very lives of those two little girls hung by a thread, and Ali Reynolds was it. Everyone had been only too ready to assume that Christine Tewksbury was the crazy one, but standing in that dimly lit living room, Ali came face-to-face with the idea that Olga Sanchez was beyond deranged.

  Ali’s cell phone chirped in her pocket. Though she hoped the caller was Teresa, she made no attempt to answer. Teresa had known where she was going. Maybe, if there was no answer, she would figure out there was a problem and summon help.

  “You’re taking a trip?” Ali asked, changing the subject.

  Olga nodded. “One of Danny’s friends keep a plane at Ryan Field. I’m supposed to meet him there in a little over an hour. He’s going to fly me over the border into Mexico. Maybe you’d like to give me a ride there.”

  “To the airport?”

  Olga nodded again.

  Ali feared that an hour would be too long. Would the girls survive if they didn’t receive medical attention? Her cell phone buzzed, letting her know someone had left a message. Again she ignored it.

  “You’ve been planning this for a long time, haven’t you?” Ali said.

  Olga nodded again. “Yes. It’s taken almost a year to put it together, and the only thing that went wrong is that Jose didn’t die.”

  Ali had noticed the hint of perfume wafting out of the house when Olga first opened the door. Another set of dots clicked together. The perfume Christine had mentioned in the Tewksbury house that morning.

  “Jose didn’t die, but Phil did,” Ali said.

  Olga’s eyes
glittered in the lamplight. “Phil who?” she asked.

  The eyes had given it away. “You know,” Ali said. “Your good pal Phil Tewksbury-aka Popeye-the guy who had his head smashed in with a baseball bat early this morning. Patty Patton found some of the letters you wrote to him. He had them stashed in his desk at work.”

  “How did she find out about it? Did Oscar tell her? Did Phil?”

  “Christine Tewksbury is the one who told us about you, Ollie,” Ali said. “But if your husband knows, too, it’s pretty much all over for you, isn’t it?”

  This time Olga changed the subject abruptly. “We need to go,” she said. She stepped over to the window and lifted the blind outside. “It’s dark enough that the neighbors won’t notice. We’ll take your car. You can carry the luggage. We’ll have to make two trips.”

  “Three, I think,” Ali corrected. “I don’t think I can handle more than one of those at a time.”

  All through this conversation, Olga had kept the.38 trained on Ali. By now, Ali guessed, Olga’s wrist and grip were probably tiring. Once they were in the Cayenne, Ali thought she might risk a slow-speed crash into a fire hydrant. The explosive deployment of the airbags would most likely be enough to knock the weapon out of Olga’s hand. But would Ali be unaffected enough to take advantage of it? She had to be. Since Olga had just confessed to two murders, she wasn’t going to let Ali walk away once they reached Ryan Field, wherever that was. No, Ali would have to do something about it before they reached what could otherwise be her final destination.

  Ali’s phone rang again. “I should answer that,” she said.

  “No,” Olga said. “Leave it alone. Better yet, shut it off. I’m tired of the damned thing ringing every two minutes.”

  Ali reached into her pocket, pulled out her phone, and made a show of turning it off. When she returned the phone to her jacket pocket, she thumbed open the trigger guard on her Taser. Her best bet would be to take Olga down with that before they ever got in the car. To that end, she decided to feign complete compliance.

  “Which bag goes first?” Ali asked.