Unfinished Business

by J. A. Jance

  Coming home that day, Harvey had found Marnie struggling to lug her goods up the two flights of stairs that led to her apartment. He’d ridden to her rescue by knocking on doors and organizing a fire brigade of neighbors who finished the job in no time. That single act of kindness—something of a rarity as far as Harvey was concerned—turned him into a knight in shining armor in Marnie’s eyes, and for a while he almost lived up to her vaunted opinion of him. Three months later she’d let her apartment go and moved into his. Three weeks after her divorce was final, they married.

  Harvey had gotten an employee discount on the wedding itself, and they’d spent that first drunken night at Caesars Palace. But for the honeymoon he’d chosen the Grand Canyon, where he’d even sprung for the honeymoon suite at Bright Angel Lodge, and that’s where it had all gone bad. He couldn’t get it up that night—not at all! Marnie tried to be sweet about it—she laughed it off, told him it was no big deal and not to worry about it.

  But Harvey McCluskey wasn’t capable of laughing off humiliation. It wasn’t just a big deal to him—it was a huge deal—and to his way of thinking, his inability to perform was all Marnie’s fault. The next morning at breakfast, he had suggested they hike a ways down into the canyon, hoping they’d be able to get better pictures than the ones on the rim. She had objected at first, but eventually he won her over.

  They were walking along, having a good time, when Marnie’s shoe came untied. She was bent over retying it when he came up behind her and simply knocked into her with his hip. That’s all there was to it. He hadn’t really thought about it in advance. The opportunity presented itself, and he decided that being married was just too damned much trouble.

  Caught completely off balance, Marnie tumbled over the edge. People above and below them on the trail heard her screaming “NO!” as she fell, but no one saw anything. Several people came running to where a dazed and grief-stricken Harvey stood staring over the edge. They joined forces to keep him from trying to follow her and hung around comforting him until the authorities arrived.

  When Marnie’s body was finally recovered, there were no defensive wounds or any sign of foul play. It had taken only a gentle shove on Harvey’s part to send her to her death. He told the detectives that things had seemingly been fine until she had somehow lost her footing and tumbled into the abyss.

  Had the cops dug deeper, they might have discovered there was a group life-insurance policy. Marnie hadn’t gotten around to changing her name, but she had already changed the beneficiary arrangement on her insurance policy at work. Without looking into that, however, the cops had let Harvey go, and Marnie Richards’s death was ruled accidental. When Harvey checked out of the hotel three days later, the man at the front desk expressed his profound sympathy for Harvey’s terrible loss and comped his whole stay. As far as Harvey was concerned, that was a win.

  When the medical examiner released her body, Marnie’s personal effects—including her wedding ring—were turned over to Harvey. Since he was basically a cheap bastard, and since he’d already had his mother’s perfectly good wedding ring readily at hand, he’d given that to Marnie, telling her how much it would mean to him if she would be willing to wear his dear departed mother’s ring. With sparkling eyes, she’d told him she would be honored to do so.

  Back home Harvey discovered that Marnie’s tragic honeymoon death had been big news in Vegas, so people around him—even the witch at work—showered him with sympathy. He went to a jeweler and asked to have Marnie’s name engraved on the wedding ring that already held his mother’s name, and the guy hadn’t batted an eye. When the engraving was done, the jeweler returned it to him with no charge, a shake of his head, and a solemn murmur: “So sorry for your loss.”

  During the time Harvey and Marnie were together, he had deep-sixed his gold chain, but once the engraving was done, he retrieved the chain from its hiding spot and returned the ring to its place of honor, only now it counted as a twofer. Along with the whore’s hoop earring and Dawna’s class ring, he was amassing quite a collection.

  Everything else in the banker’s box was expendable, but not the wedding picture and death certificate. He carefully slipped the file folder into the bottom of the gym bag he planned to take with him when he left Cottonwood in his rearview mirror. He loaded all the remaining bits and pieces of his life back into the box, put a lid on it, and carried it out to the truck. When Harvey disappeared, so would all those mementos he’d carried around with him for far too long. He was done with them now.

  By noontime Harvey had hauled everything he intended to keep out of the office. The trash could stay where it was. Let someone else clean up his mess. Once the truck was loaded, however, he didn’t take off right away. Instead he spent most of the afternoon keeping an eye on what was happening at High Noon’s end of the complex. He noticed that for a Saturday afternoon things seemed to be quite busy. Several people came and went in the course of the day, but there was still no sign of the Prius—and the Princess in the Prius was now both his target and his primary concern.

  Harvey had had no known connection to two of the women he’d killed, and that had made it easy for him to get away without being caught. In both his mother’s murder and in Marnie’s, he’d done an excellent job of covering his tracks, but Princess was a special problem because he did have a connection to her. She’d been there when Ali Reynolds had walked in on him in his office. Unfortunately, slashing her tires and serving notice that someone might be after her had probably been a bad idea on Harvey’s part, but that didn’t mean he’d changed his mind about going after her. He wanted her in the worst possible way, and for the same reason he’d murdered his mother. That was the price the little bitch would have to pay for witnessing Harvey’s humiliation.

  * * *

  By late Saturday afternoon, he was parked just south of the post office in Cornville, armed with his binoculars and a newly purchased copy of Birds of the American Southwest. Had anyone asked, he was in full bird-watching mode, but rather than scanning the skies, he kept his binoculars trained on Princess’s yard, where a trio of people—probably her coworkers from High Noon—were engaged in installing what looked like a network of yard lights. Increasing the illumination around her place was probably a direct reaction to the damaged-tire incident from the night before, but Harvey knew that increased lighting wasn’t a magic wand that would protect Princess from what he had in mind.

  The men had nearly finished their installation job by then and were in the process of loading tools back into a big Dodge Ram pickup when the Prius appeared, turned off into Princess’s driveway, and parked in the carport. Princess herself got out of the vehicle, greeted the three men, and welcomed them into her home. As they all trooped into the house, Harvey had seen enough. The moment was at hand for him to go to work on his exit plan, because by the time the world realized Princess was gone, Harvey McCluskey would have disappeared as well.

  Any number of sketchy people hung out at the Cowpoke. One of those happened to be a guy named Leonardo Bianchi, who referred to himself as “Big Dude” and claimed to be a retired mafioso out of Chicago. Leonardo was a braggart and a royal pain in the ass, especially when he’d had one too many. He liked to talk about the people he’d “rubbed out” on his way to the top and claimed he still had the connections to make things happen as needed. Most of his listeners simply regarded him as a blowhard, but Harvey suspected there was at least some truth buried underneath all the braggadocio. Not only that, on several occasions the Big Dude had expressed a more-than-passing interest in Harvey’s treasured Rolex.

  That night Harvey used the last of his home-inspection advance to ply Leonardo with drinks and a convoluted sob story. Harvey claimed he’d knocked up some girl—the daughter of a Prescott bigwig—who had told him she was eighteen. Unfortunately, she was only sixteen. Harvey said the father was after him, determined to get him charged with statutory rape. Not wanting to end up “back in the joint,” Harvey told Bianchi he was in desperate
need of a new identity and a way to disappear.

  “Where you gonna go?” Leonardo asked.

  “Baja, I think,” Harvey told him. “I figure living like a bum on the beach in Mexico is better than being locked up in prison here in the States.”

  “That means you need papers,” Leonardo guessed. “New name, new ID, new passport, and some running money.”

  Harvey nodded.

  “That’s going to cost you, you know.”

  Harvey nodded again.

  “How much you got?”

  Harvey raised the cuff on his shirtsleeve and pointed to the watch, then studied Leonardo’s face as he thought about it and wavered for a moment before succumbing to temptation.

  “Sounds doable,” he said finally. “How soon do you need all this to happen?”

  “ASAP.”

  “Okey-dokey,” Leonardo said. “If you’re going any distance south of the border, you’ll need a visa. Where do you plan to cross over?”

  “Calexico,” Harvey replied after a moment’s thought. He figured crossing there would have him off the beaten path. He had often gone four-wheeling in the dunes west of Yuma, and the All-American Canal nearby would be the perfect place to stage his fake suicide.

  “You got a driver’s license on you right now?” Leonardo asked.

  Harvey nodded.

  “Hand it over, then, and I’ll see what I can do.”

  Harvey passed his license to Leonardo. “I’ll probably need transportation from Mexicali down into Baja.”

  “That’s going to cost ya, too.”

  “Whatever,” Harvey replied with a casual shrug. “The watch should cover it.”

  When he left the bar later that night, he wasn’t as drunk as usual. He drove to Walmart, found a parking place, went inside to use the facilities, then climbed into the back of his truck to go to sleep under the canopy. He was grateful for the presence of his mattress. He was also glad that by sleeping there, he wasn’t risking having the cops roust him out of a good night’s sleep like they would have had he tried sleeping in his former office.

  Ali Reynolds might have won the battle, but she sure as hell hadn’t won the war, Harvey thought as he drifted off to sleep. In a way his mother had gotten off easy. Ida Mae had died, and that was the end of it. She hadn’t had time to think about what she’d done to deserve what happened to her. That arrogant Reynolds bitch wouldn’t get off nearly that lightly. She’d have to spend the remainder of her life living with and regretting the fact that she was the one ultimately responsible for the death of Princess Prius.

  What could be better than that?

  |CHAPTER 24|

  SEDONA, ARIZONA

  When Ali and B. arrived at Chris and Athena’s house for dinner that evening, they didn’t come empty-handed. Thanks to Alonzo’s talented efforts, they came with a dinner-to-go care package of meat loaf, the twins’ all-time favorite mac and cheese, and a mixed salad, along with a freshly baked rhubarb pie, the whole spread happily received and happily consumed. They had visited for a time after dinner, careful not to overstay their welcome. Athena seemed to be recovering well from her C-section. Logan’s big sister, Colleen, couldn’t get enough of her newborn brother, holding him and cooing over him much of the time. Colin, on the other hand, was far more interested in his latest video game.

  “Did I ever mention I really like being a grandpa?” B. asked as they headed back home.

  “You might have said that a time or two before,” Ali replied, “but it’s one of those things that bears repeating.”

  Back at home, in the library, they poured glasses of wine and settled in to discuss their day. By mutual agreement there was no further discussion of the situation with Ali’s parents. Instead they turned their attention to High Noon, where the vandalism at Cami’s house had been uppermost on the list as a topic of concern.

  “Who do you suppose has it in for Cami?” B. asked. “Wrecking all four tires at once and doing it the way it was done took time and effort. Is there maybe a love triangle of some kind going on?”

  Ali shook her head. “Not that I know of,” she said. “As far as I can tell, she has no romantic entanglements of any kind. Cami comes to work, she goes to Krav Maga workouts, she hangs out at the shooting range, and then she goes home. I’ve never heard a hint about any boyfriend. Believe me, if she had one, Lance and Stu would tease her unmercifully.”

  “Which might be a good reason for keeping it quiet,” B. offered.

  “Maybe,” Ali agreed, but she wasn’t entirely sold on the idea.

  “And what do you think of Mateo?”

  “I think he’ll be a good team player,” Ali suggested. “The fact that he was willing to go out to Cami’s place this afternoon along with everybody else to help install her new surveillance system really impressed me. He didn’t have to do that, especially considering he’d only just met her.”

  The whole crew had been able to pitch in on that and make quick work of it because B. had been in the office to cover the bases in their absence.

  Ali paused and took a thoughtful sip of her wine before she spoke again. “What if he really didn’t do it?” she asked finally. “What if Mateo didn’t kill that girl and just spent seventeen years of his life in prison for no reason?”

  “What makes you say that?” B. asked.

  “Something you mentioned earlier,” Ali answered.

  “What?”

  “The fact that for all those years of parole hearings he kept right on telling the same story,” Ali said. “I wasn’t a cop for long, but I learned a thing or two while I was. Liars screw up. They tell lies, and then they can’t remember what they said earlier. That’s why it’s so easy to trip up the bad guys—they can’t keep their stories straight from one interview to the next. In contrast, Mateo’s story never wavered, even though sticking to his original story precluded an early release.”

  “You really think he might have been wrongly convicted?”

  “Maybe,” Ali answered. “It sounds to me as though his original defense attorney might have sold him down the river by getting him to accept that plea deal. Those aren’t appealable. Once you take a plea, you have to live with it no matter what, and that’s what he did. He didn’t get sentenced to life in prison. He got out after sixteen years, plus the one spent awaiting trial, but those are seventeen years taken from his life that he’ll never get back. If Mateo didn’t kill that girl, he should have been pardoned rather than being let out on parole.”

  “Are you suggesting we go to something like the Innocence Project?” B. asked.

  Ali shook her head. “They tend to concentrate on death-penalty cases or instances where people have received life without parole. Maybe I should ask Dave and see what he suggests.”

  Dave Holman was a longtime Yavapai County homicide cop. For a while, before B. had come along, Ali and Dave had carried on a brief fling that ended amicably on both sides. They remained on good terms even now, not only with each other but with each other’s current spouse as well. The previous fall Gordon Maxwell, who’d been the Yavapai County sheriff for decades, had retired. To no one’s great surprise, Dave had been elected to the office of sheriff.

  “It can’t hurt to ask,” B. said. “Now, what’s the deal with this McCluskey character? I want the whole story.”

  So she told him the story again, in more detail this time than she’d been able to include in their long-distance discussions.

  “You really thought he was going to take a swing at you in the bar?”

  “I did, and so did Shirley,” Ali answered.

  “Does he have any record of violent behavior?”

  Ali shook her head. “Not that I know of, but I suppose that’s a possibility. I doubt we need to worry about him all that much, though,” she added. “According to our newly installed video-surveillance system, he spent most of the day moving his goods out of the office. My guess is now that he’s no longer able to sleep there overnight, he’s just going to walk rather tha
n wait around for us to launch eviction proceedings. And that’s fine with me. Throwing him out that way would take time and effort, and I don’t want to be bothered. The amount of back rent he owes us isn’t worth it. Besides, based on what Chris had to say about him earlier, I’m happy to be shuck of him.”

  “What did Chris say?” B. asked.

  “Earlier this week he asked me about work, and I mentioned Harvey McCluskey’s name. A few months ago Chris told me that friends of theirs bought a house where McCluskey did the home inspection. After they moved in, they discovered there were termite issues that he never mentioned in his inspection. The problem was serious enough that had they known about it in advance, they never would have gone through with the transaction.”

  “So the guy’s both a bully and a cheat,” B. observed, “and I can’t help but wonder what else. Maybe we should have Frigg do a deep dive on him just for the hell of it. He may not be our problem any longer, but if someone comes asking for a reference, I’d like to know the full story, wouldn’t you?”

  “It can’t hurt,” Ali said. “I’ll ask Stu to have Frigg do one in the morning, but isn’t it about time we called it a night?”

  With that she gathered up the wineglasses and took them to the kitchen. Then, after letting Bella out for one last walk, they all hit the hay.

  |CHAPTER 25|

  OAK CREEK VILLAGE, ARIZONA

  Mateo Vega awakened on Sunday morning to a splash of blue sky and bright sunlight outside his window and to the surprising reality that he was in someone’s guest room—not as a prisoner in a cell, not as a roomer with drunken housemates snoring in bedrooms nearby, but as a guest. Not only that, he was a guest with a job where he would be using his brain and his tech skills rather than duking it out on a loading dock in summer’s humid heat and winter’s chilling rains. No, he’d be working in a computer lab again after what was close to a twenty-year absence.