Unfinished Business

by J. A. Jance

  When Mateo’s fingers were once again capable of keyboard movement, he googled High Noon Enterprises. Several articles came up. High Noon Enterprises was a closely held corporation operating out of a small Arizona town called Cottonwood. Several articles mentioned that the previous fall, people from High Noon had been involved in saving the life of a man named Francis Gillespie, the archbishop of the Phoenix Diocese. And there, in one of those articles, Mateo saw another familiar name—Stuart Ramey.

  Mateo could barely believe it! Stuart was still working for B.? With his heart beating fast in his chest, Mateo wondered if there was even the remotest chance that Stu would be willing to give him a reference. Probably not, he realized a moment later. They had worked together briefly seventeen years earlier—before Mateo’s homicide conviction, before he’d spent sixteen long years sitting in a cell.

  No, Mateo told himself despairingly. Don’t be stupid. That’s not going to happen. Don’t even ask.

  But later that day on the loading dock, Mateo couldn’t get Stuart Ramey out of his head, and sometime in the afternoon he made up his mind. It couldn’t hurt to ask. What was the worst that could happen to him?

  When he got home, everyone else was out and the house was still quiet. In his room with the door closed behind him, Mateo located the phone number and dialed.

  “High Noon Enterprises,” a woman’s voice answered. “How can I help you?”

  Mateo had to swallow hard before he could answer. “I’d like to speak to Stuart Ramey,” he said.

  “Who may I say is calling?”

  “My name’s Mateo Vega,” he hedged. “I don’t know if he’ll remember me, but a long time ago I used to work for him.”

  “One moment, please, and I’ll put you through,” the woman said.

  She went away, leaving Mateo waiting on the phone. It seemed like a very long time before anyone else came on the line, but that was probably because Mateo was holding his breath.

  |CHAPTER 6|

  COTTONWOOD, ARIZONA

  By the time Harvey finally left the bar, he was three sheets to the wind, but when he drove back to the office, it was late enough that everyone else had left the business park. There was one car parked at the High Noon end of the building, and the van the janitors used to come and go was sitting out front. He waved at one of the custodians as he shambled into his office. He had opted out of using the cleaning service for two reasons: number one, he didn’t want to pay for it, and number two, he didn’t want anyone to know he was spending his nights in the office. It turned out that the manager of the apartment complex where he’d been living had been much less forgiving in terms of back rent than the people at High Noon had been, and when it came time to choose between keeping the apartment or keeping the office, he’d chosen the latter.

  Originally, he’d thought about bringing in a cot of some kind, but it turned out there was no place out of sight to store one. Instead Harvey had opted for a blow-up mattress, one that came complete with a handheld compressor. Once he let the air out of it in the morning, he could roll it up and store it in one of several empty file drawers. Getting up from that every morning wasn’t easy, but that cushion of air underneath was a hell of a lot easier on his back than sleeping on a concrete floor with only the thinnest layer of commercial-grade carpet on top.

  That night, having had far too many of Joe’s special “beverage of the evening,” Harvey was fortunate to have made it from the bar back to the office without getting a DUI. And once inside he had a hell of a time removing the mattress from the drawer and hooking it up to the compressor. When he finally flopped down on the mattress, the room went spinning out of control.

  “Yup, Harvey old man,” he mumbled aloud to himself. “You’re drunk as a skunk this time, so don’t forget to set the alarm.”

  Turning on the alarm on his phone wasn’t any easier than running the compressor, but eventually he got the job done. He had a home inspection to do early the next morning, and he didn’t want to miss it. This was with a real-estate agent who was willing to pay up front and in cash as long as he gave her clients the news they wanted to hear about the house they were trying to buy. Agents who got bad news weren’t nearly as eager to pay up, and if Harvey could manage to find a few more of those this week, he might be able to catch up on his back rent after all.

  Once the alarm was set, he lay there staring at the ceiling above him, hazily lit by the lights in the parking lot outside. Not surprisingly, once again the room began to spin.

  Damn Joe and his goddamned Harvey Wallbangers. From now on he’d be sticking to beer.

  Sometime overnight he dreamed about his mother. Most people would have regarded the dream as a nightmare, but not Harvey. With the scene now lit by a full moon, he saw her body disappear under the surface of the dark water. During the daytime hours the water had an iridescent glow from all the chemicals in it, but at night the water had always been jet-black.

  The dream was enough to awaken him, and he needed to take a piss. Unfortunately, that meant getting up off the floor and trudging down the hallway to the restroom two doors away. Once on his mattress again, he couldn’t go back to sleep, because, as it had for all these years, that night and the days that followed Ida Mae’s death returned to him in minute detail as though they had happened hours ago rather than decades.

  In the dream, as vividly as in real life, he had once again watched Ida Mae’s face slip beneath the surface of the water, and he had awakened then with the memory alive and well inside his brain. He remembered clearly how once he’d cut off a length of wire to refasten the gate, he’d tossed both the bolt cutter and the remaining wire into the water beside her. After closing the gate behind him, he drove back to Tony’s place. Once at the house, he parked the truck in the same spot where he’d found it. He used an outside hose to rinse off the brass knuckles before drying them and returning them to Tony’s glove box. Then he used a stray piece of paper napkin from the floor to wipe down the glove box’s latch, the gearshift, the steering wheel, and the driver’s-side door handles. Next, knowing he still reeked of urine, Broomy stripped off his clothing and sprayed it down with frigid water from the same outside hose. By then snowflakes were falling thick and fast. Freezing cold, he tiptoed into the house, lugging his sodden clothing. He hung his shirt and pants over the showerhead to dry out and returned to the living room.

  By then the beer and tequila had done their work and the party had broken up. Twenty or so people had been on hand to begin with, but in Broomy’s absence most of them had gone home. Only the drunkest of the bunch remained, passed out cold in the living room. Tony himself had retired to the privacy of his own room. With Broomy’s teeth chattering and his body quaking from the cold, he pulled his letterman jacket tightly around himself and took the last remaining spot in the room, a broken-down recliner situated in one corner. Eventually the warmth of the room, combined with mental and physical exhaustion, lulled him to sleep.

  “So what happened to you, Broomy boy?” one of the older boys asked jeeringly as he shook Harvey awake the next morning. “Did you have to go outside and barf your guts out? Are those your wet clothes that were hanging in the shower?”

  “I guess,” Broomy admitted sheepishly as he tried to sit up.

  Tony appeared in the background, looking hungover as hell but carrying a cup of coffee. “You’d better get dressed so I can take you home,” he said. “I just saw something on the news. There’s a lot of police activity over on German Gulch Road. They’re saying a woman has been reported missing. I’m not sure, but it looked to me like where they’re parked is just up the road from your place.”

  Broomy’s heart went to his throat. “Someone’s missing?” he asked shakily, hoping he appeared to be as startled by the news as everyone else.

  Tony nodded. “Get dressed. I put your clothes in the dryer. They should be almost dry by now.”

  Broomy’s pants and shirt were warm but still slightly damp as he put them on. Outside, a good two
inches of snow that hadn’t been there the night before covered the landscape. As they piled into the GMC, Broomy worried that Tony might notice it was parked in a slightly different position from the way he’d left it, but he said nothing, and Broomy didn’t either.

  As they approached the McCluskey place on German Gulch Road, they were stopped by a roadblock made up of a collection of law-enforcement vehicles and media vans. A uniformed deputy from the Silver Bow Sheriff’s Department flagged them down.

  “Sorry,” he said, “there’s been an incident. You can’t go any farther.”

  “What kind of incident?” Broomy asked. He didn’t have to try to make his voice sound frantic. It came out that way of its own accord. “That’s my house over there,” he added, pointing at the double-wide. “What’s going on? What’s happened?”

  “What’s your name, son?” the deputy asked.

  “Harvey, Harvey McCluskey.”

  “Hang tight here for a minute,” the deputy told him. “Let me go check with my sergeant. I’ll be right back.”

  As the deputy walked over to his patrol car, Broomy clambered out of the truck.

  “Do you want me to hang around?” Tony asked.

  “Nah,” Broomy said. “Just go. No telling how long this is going to take, and there’s no sense in your being caught up in it.”

  Tony did as he was told, executing a U-turn and leaving the way he’d come while Broomy stood on the shoulder of the road waiting for the deputy to return. The sun was up now, and the thin layer of snow was already starting to melt. Suddenly, out of nowhere, Rocco appeared. The dog raced straight for Broomy and then, at the last moment, launched himself into the air, landing in Broomy’s arms.

  Fortunately for Broomy, video footage from one of the local television stations happened to capture the dog racing into the frame and making that leap. For a long moment, they stood like that, Broomy holding the dog, his face buried in Rocco’s thick winter coat. As far as television viewers were concerned, that heartbreaking moment spoke volumes about the devastating scene. Here was the missing woman’s bereaved teenage son, caught forever in the act of seeking consolation from his tragic loss in the comfort of his mother’s dog. And no one who saw that touching news clip ever questioned whether or not the boy was as grief-stricken as he appeared, nor did they think it remotely possible he might be responsible for whatever had befallen his mother.

  The viewers were all completely wrong about that, of course, but it didn’t really matter.

  Eventually the deputy returned, accompanied by a guy in a suit who introduced himself as Detective Manning. “You’re Harvey McCluskey?” he asked.

  “Yes, sir,” Broomy replied. “Like I told the deputy, that’s my house over there. What’s going on?”

  “We’re dealing with a missing person,” Detective Manning answered.

  “What missing person?” Broomy insisted. “Is my mother okay?”

  “If you don’t mind, I’d like to take you back to the department and ask you a few questions.”

  “How can I answer questions if I don’t even know what happened?”

  Which is how Broomy McCluskey ended up in a sheriff’s department interview room early in the morning after murdering his mother the previous night. Even now, all these years later, Harvey could remember almost every word uttered in that interview. But right that minute, Joe’s Wallbangers hit home again, and Harvey was out like a light.

  When the alarm went off a few hours later, the dream was still fresh in his mind. Struggling to get up off the floor was hell. Once he’d deflated the mattress and stowed the pillow and bedroll in their proper file drawers, Harvey headed to the gym, to shower rather than work out. Thanks to the smoking-hot deal he’d gotten on a gym membership at the first of the year, he was still able to maintain a modicum of personal hygiene. But the reality was, he wouldn’t be able to afford the gym much longer either.

  Still hungover but presentable now, he grabbed a quick breakfast at a hole-in-the-wall diner and then headed for Black Canyon City. Today’s home inspection couldn’t come at a better time. It probably wouldn’t pay enough to get Harvey out of the hole on his rent, but it would tide him over for a day or two, and that was the best he could hope for.

  |CHAPTER 7|

  SEDONA, ARIZONA

  Ali’s plan to go to sleep early the night before had been a complete fail—not that she hadn’t tried. After the disturbing conversation with her mother, she had gone to bed early, but not to sleep. She’d tossed and turned so much that Bella had eventually been obliged to leave her customary spot on Ali’s side of the bed and retreat to B.’s pillow for the remainder of the night.

  Ali, for her part, had given up. Getting out of bed, she took to her computer and composed a long e-mail to B., telling him about everything that was going on with her folks. He called her at ten past seven the next morning, waking her out of what was finally a sound sleep.

  “What terrible news,” he said when she answered. “How are you doing?”

  “Better now,” she said groggily. “It took me forever to fall asleep.”

  “Sorry I woke you, then,” he apologized. “As late as you sent that e-mail, I should have just let you sleep, but once I go into a meeting I won’t be available for several hours.”

  “It’s okay,” she said. “My alarm would have gone off in a few minutes anyway.”

  “How’s your mother doing?”

  “You know her. She’s all about ‘We’ll handle this on our own, thank you very much.’ ”

  “That’s Edie Larson, all right,” B. agreed, “but it’s going to be tough on everybody. From what you said, it sounds like your dad’s lucid one minute and totally out of it the next. That’s going to create some very rough waters for your mom to navigate.”

  “Not just Mom,” Ali said. “What about Colin? He thinks the world of his papa. The first time Dad blows up at him, it’ll break the boy’s heart.”

  “Let Edie know we’ll do whatever needs doing,” B. assured her. “All she has to do is ask.”

  Ali had to laugh. “That’s going to be the first major stumbling block,” she pointed out. “Knowing my mother, getting her to ask for help will be like pulling teeth. In order to know what’s really going on, we’ll need to become first-rate mind readers.”

  “The only way to know what’s what will be to spend more time with both of them,” B. suggested.

  “Right,” Ali allowed, “but if Mom figures out we’re hovering, that’ll blow up in our faces, too. In other words, heads we lose, tails we lose.”

  “Exactly,” B. said. “So for the time being, we all practice tightrope walking. But you still haven’t given me a straight answer about how you’re doing.”

  Ali had to think about that for a moment before she could reply. “Not so hot, I guess,” she admitted at last. “How could all this have been going on and gotten so serious without my having the slightest idea it was happening? How could I not notice? When it comes to being a good daughter, this counts as a massive fail for me.”

  “My guess is your mom has been going to great lengths to make sure nobody noticed. In that regard, the driver’s license blowup that resulted in Bob throwing her out of the house did us a real favor, because it’s a wake-up call for everyone,” B. said. “As this unfolds, we’re all going to start encountering different kinds of new normals. After each succeeding crisis, Bob and Edie will eventually be on a different plateau, and so will we. The problem is, each of those will be a little worse than the one before—not only for them but for the rest of us, too. All we can do at the moment is be more present in their lives—and in our grandkids’ lives, too, for that matter,” he added bleakly. “What this has brought home to me is the reality that time is precious for all of us, and we need to make every moment count.”

  “You’re right about that,” Ali murmured after a moment. “You’re a good man, B. Simpson—a very good man.”

  “Thanks,” B. said. “I’ll have to go soon because my
meeting starts in ten, but what’s on your agenda today?”

  “I have to tackle that pile of job applications,” Ali said. “Stu has done a first sort on them, and Frigg has compiled dossiers on each remaining applicant. You know Frigg. She doesn’t do anything halfway, so she’s accumulated massive amounts of material on each one. I’ll scan through all of it and see if anything jumps out at me. By the time you get home on Friday, we should have the remaining applicants winnowed down to the top four or five. We’ll schedule each of them to come in for a face-to-face interview with you and Stu, but you’re the one who’ll be making the final call.”

  “Fair enough,” B. agreed. “I’d best get going now. I’m out in the parking lot, but for a meeting like this I’m better off turning up slightly early than slightly late.”

  “Good luck,” she told him, “and keep me posted.”

  Once off the phone, Ali pulled on her robe and went to the kitchen in search of coffee.

  “I noticed your mom didn’t stay over after all,” Alonzo said as Ali slipped into her accustomed place at the breakfast nook.

  Alonzo, a retired submariner, was in charge of running the Simpson/Reynolds household, but he also functioned in a very real way as Ali’s personal assistant. Since whatever was happening with her folks was going to affect Ali’s life, it would no doubt affect Alonzo’s as well, so she took the time to bring him up to date on exactly what the deal was with Bob and Edie Larson.

  When she finished, Alonzo nodded knowingly. “My grandparents went through something like this when I was a kid,” he said. “Nobody ever diagnosed my grandfather’s condition as Alzheimer’s, dementia, or whatever. Or if they did, no one ever told me about it, but it was tough, especially on my nana. I remember coming home from school one day and finding her sitting on the couch crying. I asked her what was wrong. ‘Sometimes life is hard, dulce nieto,’ she told me. ‘Sometimes life is very hard.’ That’s all she ever said to me about it. My grandfather was sick for years. I never heard her complain about the situation, but I saw how taking care of him wore her down. She died only a few months after he did. So if there’s anything you need me to do to help out, just let me know.”