The A List

by Jance, J. A.

  For all their differences, though, when the two of them were seated side by side in the computer lab with their keyboards at hand and monitors in front of them, they were the ultimate dream team, working in unspoken harmony and anticipating what the other needed without a word having to be exchanged.

  Ali laughed. “All right, then,” she said. “Get going, both of you. I need to check with B. so I can figure out my own travel arrangements.”

  Because he was still in the air, she didn’t bother to call, resorting to texting instead:

  I’ve been invited to speak at a funeral in Sherman Oaks on Sunday afternoon.Do you want to come along for the ride, or do you want to stay home?

  Who died?

  A friend of mine, Alex Munsey.

  The woman whose book you were reading the other day?

  That’s the one.

  What happened?

  She was murdered—shot to death inside her own home.

  That’s awful. So sorry to hear it.

  The ME just released the body, and her son asked if I would do the eulogy. If you want to be there, you can just stay over in L.A. tonight. That way we can meet up tomorrow, go to the memorial service on Sunday, and fly home together on Monday.

  Do you need to have me there? If you do, of course I’ll be there.

  But you’d much rather be home watching over your brand-new GPUs.

  You know me too well.

  Okay. I’m perfectly capable of flying back and forth to California on my own. When will you be home tonight?

  Who knows? By the time the plane took off, I knew I’d already missed my L.A.-to-Phoenix connection. And once I clear customs and catch the next flight, I’ll probably land there too late to catch the shuttle back to Sedona.

  Rent a car, silly. If you drive it home tonight, I can take it back to the airport tomorrow.

  Good idea. Smart girl.

  Isn’t that why you keep me around?

  Ali smiled as she shut down the text app on her phone. Like Stu, B. Simpson was brilliant when it came to sorting out complex cybersecurity issues, but sometimes the simplest problems baffled him. Ali was B.’s real-world Sherpa in the same way Cami was Stu’s.

  Then Ali turned back to her computer, dialed into her travel folder, and went looking for flight reservations. She booked an early-afternoon flight so she wouldn’t have to leave the house at the crack of dawn. Before heading out, she went to the computer lab and found Stu at his workstation.

  “I’m on my way,” she said. “I talked to B. He’d rather be here than attending a funeral, and I don’t blame him. I fly out tomorrow at one, back on Monday afternoon.”

  “Okay,” Stu said. “Travel safe, but what was your friend’s name again—the one who was murdered?”

  “Alexandra Munsey,” Ali said. “Everybody called her Alex.”

  Back in her office to retrieve her purse, she paused long enough to pick up her signed copy of The Changeling and opened it to the inscription, written in blue ink with Alex’s trademark flourish:

  Sometimes it pays to be a late bloomer. Thank you for always being there for me.

  Alex Munsey

  You’re welcome, Ali thought. I always have been, and I guess I still am.

  37

  Cottonwood, Arizona, June 2017

  It was a thoughtful Stuart Ramey who sat at his workstation late that afternoon, once everyone else had left and he finally had the place to himself. As someone who’d had very few friends in his life, he had only recently come to the realization that Ali Reynolds his boss was also Ali Reynolds his friend. And knowing how deeply he’d been affected by losing Roger McGeary, Stu couldn’t stop thinking about Ali’s loss and wondering if there was something he could or should do to help her.

  Who was this Alex Munsey? Hers was a name Stu had never heard before, even though she and Ali had evidently been longtime friends. Who had murdered her and why? And why had Ali been summoned to speak at the funeral? For all those unknowable questions, Stu Ramey had the perfect answer: his new pal and the reason he now had his own place—his AI, Frigg, thirty miles away, in the rack-lined man cave in his not yet fully occupied home in Sedona. Firing up his Bluetooth, he summoned her.

  “Good afternoon, Stuart,” Frigg said, “happy Friday. I hope you’ve had a pleasant day.”

  When Frigg had first come into his possession, he’d had to work hard on toning down the formality with which she addressed him. Having swung too far toward casual for a while, they now seemed to have arrived at a happy medium.

  “I need you to look up someone for me,” he told Frigg. “I’d like to see what you can find out about someone named Alexandra Munsey. She’s a friend of Ali’s from California who was murdered recently. I’m just curious, is all. I’d like to know what happened to her.”

  “Of course, Stuart,” Frigg said. “I’ll get right on it. Do you want me to send my findings to your Bluetooth?”

  “No,” he replied. “I’m going to be here most of the night. Send whatever you find to CC2.”

  CC was short for Command Central, the venerable Apple desktop that Owen Hansen had designated to be the AI’s original user interface. Stu had created CC2, a much newer laptop that served as a system image of everything on the desktop and something Stu kept with him at all times these days. As for telling Frigg where “here” was? That wasn’t necessary. Frigg’s device-location capabilities kept the AI apprised of the locations for both CC2 and the Bluetooth at any given moment.

  “Do you require anything else at this time?” Frigg asked.

  It was still weird to find himself conversing with what he knew full well was a computer program. “No,” he said. “That’s all I need. Thanks.”

  “You’re welcome.”

  For a while Stu sat there keeping an eye on the slow progress of the upload, but soon notifications began showing up on the laptop. He hadn’t asked for a deep dive into Alexandra Munsey’s background. He had wanted information on the homicide itself, and that’s what Frigg provided—recent bits and pieces of information culled from public sites on the Internet. News briefs described the initial discovery of the body, the subsequent identification of the victim, and overviews of the progress of the investigation—including the names of the detectives involved. There was an early mention of there being a person of interest in the case, which probably indicated that investigators suspected that either a husband or boyfriend, current or former, might be responsible for the crime.

  The details seemed sketchy. It appeared that someone had paid a visit to the victim’s house and then simply gunned her down just inside the front door without any evidence of a physical confrontation before taking her life. One paragraph in particular caught Stuart’s attention:

  An anonymous source close to the investigation, speaking without authorization, said that Ms. Munsey’s death has the appearance of a hit of some kind rather than a crime of passion or a robbery gone bad. When asked about this, however, the detectives involved would neither confirm or deny.

  “So what do you think about that?” Stu asked Frigg, knowing she would be aware of which file was currently pulled up on his screen. “Is this a hit or not?”

  It was a testimony to Owen Hansen’s computer genius that Stuart could speak to Frigg in a conversational fashion and elicit an equally conversational response. And since Frigg had been extensively schooled in all aspects of criminal behavior, who better to ask?

  “A hit,” Frigg replied at once.

  “So who put out the hit?” Stuart asked. “The ex-husband?”

  “Unlikely,” Frigg answered. “Ms. Munsey’s former husband is Jake Munsey. Since he is listed as cohosting both the memorial service and the subsequent reception, that would suggest an absence of conflict between him and the victim. Most of the time, individuals directly involved in homicides choose to absent themselves from participating in public funeral activities, although occasionally they hover in the background gloating while at the same time appearing to be sympathetic.
”

  Stuart scrolled forward until he located the file containing the text of a paid funeral announcement indicating that a public reception at the funeral home would immediately follow the service. An invitation-only private gathering would be held later at a separate address. Frigg supplied a notation that the second address led back to Jake and Nancy Munsey, Alex’s former husband and someone who was most likely his current wife.

  “Right,” Stu muttered, more to himself than to Frigg. “In order to pull off a reception like that, you’d have to be a really good actor.”

  “Mr. Munsey is a CPA operating his own PLLC,” Frigg said. “Nothing in either his educational background or his work history indicates an interest in the theater arts.”

  “Wait,” Stu said. “That makes it sound as though you’re already analyzing potential suspects?” He was joking. Frigg was not.

  “Examining the possibility of Mr. Munsey’s participation was a logical course of action to take,” she replied primly.

  Considering Frigg’s extensive background and understanding of criminal behavior, it was hardly surprising that she would be curious about solving the case. That’s what AIs were intended to do—to solve problems, and an open case of homicide was a problem in need of a solution. And since said homicide victim was a friend of Ali’s, wouldn’t helping solve the crime be a help for her as well?

  Stu thought about that for a moment. Since reactivating Frigg, Stu had been at work identifying and removing what he thought to be the bulk of the AI’s sketchier capabilities. Still, even if she used a few of her officially unsanctioned functions, it might be interesting to see what she could bring to bear in this instance.

  “Okay, Frigg,” he said at last. “Let’s see what you can do about all this.”

  “You’re authorizing a deep dive into Alexandra Munsey’s background?”

  “I guess I am,” Stu confirmed with a laugh, “but do me a favor. Try to keep from landing me in jail in the process.”

  A notice showed up on one of Stu’s screens indicating that the front security shutters had been opened by Cami using her key card. Moments later the aroma of hot pizza preceded her down the hallway. Cami was walking into the lab, pizza in hand, when an alarm sounded, and they both knew at once what that meant. The download had crashed. For the next several hours, the pizza sat forgotten and growing cold on the desk while they searched through the new GPUs trying to figure out which one had failed.

  At 5:00 A.M. they finally located the faulty GPU, removed it from the network, and reinitiated the upload. At that point Cami packed it in and went home, while Stu staggered into his soon-to-be-former studio to grab some sleep.

  As for Frigg? Since no one had bothered to tell her to stop working, the AI kept at it, all through the night.

  38

  Folsom, California, June 2017

  It wasn’t until late Friday night that Hannah finally found the funeral notice giving her the details on Alexandra Munsey’s funeral. The fact that it was going to be held on Sunday didn’t give her much time to prepare, especially since it was being held in Sherman Oaks—at least an eight-hour drive from Folsom. It wasn’t a trip Hannah could undertake on her own.

  A few months earlier, when she’d renewed her driver’s license for the first time, she’d passed the tests—written, driving, and vision—with no difficulty at all. Even so, the high-handed bitch at the DMV had said that, due to her advanced age, she was restricting Hannah’s license to daytime driving only with no freeway driving allowed. What Hannah needed more than anything right then was a car and a dependable driver, and when it came to drivers, there was no one she trusted more than Marco Gregory.

  She still stayed in touch with Marco and Bettina, always exchanging Christmas cards and faithfully remembering their birthdays. They were nice to her because that’s the kind of people they were. She had added a codicil to her will with a relatively small bequest to Gloria, with the verbal understanding that in Hannah’s absence those funds were to be held on account and managed by Gloria’s uncle for Eddie’s benefit. Other than that the Gregorys remained her only heirs. By seven the next morning, she was on the phone with Marco.

  “I need to come to a funeral in L.A.,” she said when he came on the line. “If I flew in from Sacramento this afternoon, would you be able to pick me up at the airport and get me to my hotel and then drive me to the funeral tomorrow?”

  “Absolutely, Mrs. Gilchrist,” he told her. “I’ll have to make some adjustments in my schedule, but I’m happy to do that. Do you prefer the Rolls? I usually trot it out only for special events, but if that’s what you’d like . . .”

  “No, no,” Hannah said hurriedly. “For this I think something a little less ostentatious might be in order.”

  “All right, then,” he said. “I have a nice Lincoln MKT that should do the trick. Let me know what airline and what time.”

  “I’ll get back to you on that once I know.”

  She had just hung up when her phone rang again, and she was surprised to see Gloria Reece’s phone number in caller ID.

  “You canceled your appointment for today,” Gloria said accusingly when Hannah picked up.

  “Yes, I did,” Hannah replied. “I have other plans.”

  “What other plans?” Gloria demanded. “You’re not still expecting to attend Alex Munsey’s memorial service, are you? We don’t think that’s a good idea.”

  Obviously Eddie had gone crying to Luis about Hannah’s plans for the funeral, and Luis had dispatched Gloria with orders to get Hannah back in line. Good luck with that!

  “Really,” Hannah bristled. “Who exactly is ‘we’?”

  “Your son, my uncle, and me—all three of us,” Gloria answered. “Right now the investigation into the ‘event’ seems to be focused in another direction, and we’d like to keep it that way. Your sticking your nose in at tomorrow’s funeral might raise suspicions and cause someone to come looking at us. You could end up jeopardizing everything.”

  Hannah didn’t know the full extent of the criminal enterprise Luis Ochoa operated from his locked cell inside the razor-wire-topped walls of Folsom Prison, but she suspected that she and Eddie weren’t Luis’s only cash customers. As for his niece? Gloria counted as little more than a glorified courier—and probably one of many. Hannah Gilchrist wasn’t accustomed to taking orders from people she regarded as hired help, and she was in no mood to let Gloria’s latest reprimand go unchallenged.

  “You’re all entitled to your opinions,” Hannah replied, “and I’m entitled to mine. I have no intention of taking orders from you or anyone else, my son included. I’m entirely capable of making up my own mind about what I will and will not do. I’ve devoted the last five years of my life to doing Eddie’s bidding, and I’ve done so in a way that has no doubt contributed to the well-being of you and your entire family. Going to that memorial service is something I’m doing for my own well-being, and I have no intention of depriving myself of that simply on your say-so.”

  With that she ended the call. After making her flight and hotel reservations, Hannah called Marco back to give him her ETA. All of that handled, she turned off her phone. She’d made up her mind to go to the funeral. She wasn’t about to change her plans, and she had no desire to listen to any further comments from the peanut gallery.

  39

  Folsom, California, June 2017

  Inmates inside Folsom Prison were not allowed access to cell phones—at least most of them weren’t. They weren’t supposed to have designated tables in the mess hall either, but Luis Ochoa was an exception to both those rules. Gloria purchased burner phones. Whenever a replacement was required, she handed the item off to one of Luis’s pet guards, who was happy to make the delivery. The phones gave Luis access to the Internet and unfiltered news from the outside world. He surfed the Net usually under cover of darkness, and when he needed to consult with Gloria, texting worked better than talking. In the wee hours of Saturday morning, as soon as he saw the funeral noti
ce for Alex Munsey, Luis sent out an SOS to Gloria.

  Party is Sunday in L.A. E. thinks H. is going. Do you know?

  Don’t know, but I’ll check. What should I do if she is?

  Since she’s no longer taking instructions from E. I’m worried she’s about to go off the rails. Could be real bad for business. See if you can talk some sense into her. Otherwise you’ll have to fix it.

  Will do.

  Gloria knew that when Uncle Luis wanted her to fix something, he didn’t mean patching it together with duct tape or Gorilla Glue. By seven thirty the next morning, having just finished that very testy phone conversation with Hannah, Gloria sent Luis another text.

  H. is not just going off the rails. She IS off the rails.

  You talked to her?

  Tried to, but she wasn’t listening. She’s going, come hell or high water. She went all up in my face. Told me where to go. If she decides to get too chatty, we’re in trouble, because she knows way too much.

  Like I said before, fix it, the sooner the better.

  While she’s down in L.A.?

  Nothing noisy in Sherman Oaks. Give my old buddy Tank a call. He’s better at staging believable scenarios than anybody I know.

  Whatever we do will probably have to happen at the funeral home, either before or after the service.

  You’re a big girl. Figure it out and do what you have to do.

  H. is E.’s meal ticket. What if he ends up turning on us, too?

  It may be time to cut him out of the herd. You take care of H. I’ll handle E.

  When the text session ended, Gloria erased the thread, and no doubt Luis did the same. Luis had tried to be vague, but he probably was not vague enough. They’d both said more than they should have. Gloria knew that erasing their conversation meant nothing, since it probably still lingered somewhere out there in the cloud. If law enforcement really went digging, they’d be able to retrieve every word. That’s why Luis was absolutely right about taking care of Hannah Gilchrist sooner rather than later.