Unfinished Business

by J. A. Jance

  He directed his question at Danny, but Jana was the one who answered. “I’m Detective Davis of the Coconino County Sheriff’s Office. I’m here to talk to you about the death of your wife, Maureen Annette Richards.”

  There was an abrupt change in McCluskey’s demeanor once he realized this was going to be a far different conversation from the one he’d expected. “Oh, that,” he said with a dismissive shrug. “Everybody knows that what happened to Marnie was an accident.”

  “Do we?” Jana asked. “How is it you both ended up on that steep hiking trail that morning?”

  “It was all Marnie’s idea,” McCluskey said at once. “She loved hiking.”

  “Like hell she did,” Dave muttered under his breath. “And the first liar doesn’t stand a chance. You’ve got him, Jana. Now take him down.”

  Clearly McCluskey had forgotten the story he’d told investigators all those years earlier about the hike being a breakfast-time honeymoon surprise, but Detective Davis allowed his remark to go unchallenged.

  “Did she ever mention anything to you about being stuck on a Ferris wheel?”

  There was a pause before he answered. “A Ferris wheel?” Harvey asked with a frown. “Not that I remember.”

  Detective Davis turned her attention from Harvey to Danny. “Did you happen to bring that evidence bag with you?”

  “I certainly did,” he replied, reaching into his pocket and producing the clear evidence bag that contained not only McCluskey’s heavy gold chain but also the three trinkets that had once dangled from it. Morris set the bag on the table and pushed it purposefully in Harvey’s direction.

  “Why don’t you tell us about the items in this bag?” Jana asked. “They obviously hold a good deal of significance for you.”

  There was another long pause as Harvey looked first at the bag and then back into Jana Davis’s intense, inquiring gaze. “I think I want an attorney now,” he said finally. “I don’t want to talk anymore.”

  “I’m sure you don’t, Mr. McCluskey,” Jana agreed with a tight smile. “But you’d better hope to hell that you get a good public defender, because I believe you’re going to need one.”

  |CHAPTER 54|

  SEDONA, ARIZONA

  Ali tackled the voice-mail messages first. Those were all from people who knew her and her parents well enough to have Ali’s cell-phone number, and the messages left behind were more or less of a piece. The earliest ones came from people who’d heard that something bad had happened at Sedona Shadows and that Bob Larson might have been involved. Those callers simply wanted to know what was going on. Callers from later in the day had access to more details. They knew that Bob was gone and wanted to express their condolences. They asked how Edie was doing and wondered what they could do to help.

  Once Ali had responded to the voice messages, she continued working her way through the missed calls, returning them as she went. These folks now knew that Bob was deceased and asked about when and where services would be held. As Ali continued returning those calls, a process interrupted more than once by yet another incoming one, she answered questions to the best of her ability. The truth was, it was impossible to predict when the funeral service could be held.

  Along the way Ali began feeling relieved when someone didn’t answer and she was able to leave a voice mail. That usually cut short the conversation by ten to fifteen minutes.

  When Ali finally turned to her computer, she had over a hundred e-mails and literally dozens of text messages. She quickly formulated a short message that included what most people seemingly wanted to know.

  Thank you so much for your concern about my dad. As you can imagine, both my mother and I are a bit overwhelmed at the moment, but Mom is doing as well as can be expected, considering what’s happened.

  Because of the circumstances surrounding Dad’s death, we’re unable to determine exactly when we’ll be able to schedule a funeral service, but once we can, we’ll do our best to let everyone know about it in a timely manner.

  With that one-size-fits-all message saved and ready to copy and paste, Ali started responding to the well-wishers. As she went along, she was able to slip in personal messages over that standard response. That made the going much faster. And when she encountered messages that were clearly from media outlets following the story and hoping for an interview, she sent two words without any further elucidation: “NO COMMENT!”

  It was hours later and she was close to seeing light at the end of the tunnel when her recharged phone rang again with a call from Dave Holman.

  “How are you doing?” he asked when Ali answered.

  “I feel like I’ve been run through a wringer. How about you?”

  “The same,” he said. “We were expecting company tonight. I was supposed to be home in Sedona, and I’m not.”

  “Is Priscilla pissed?” Ali wondered.

  “I don’t think so,” Dave replied with a chuckle, “but only because the woman’s a saint. With everything that was going on, I couldn’t very well walk away from the department. In fact, I just this minute got off the phone with Howard Clifton, chief of police in Butte, Montana. Turns out he was new on the job and working patrol when Ida Mae McCluskey went missing, so the case was hardly unfamiliar to him. He remembered it well. Once I told him what we were looking at, he sent one of his investigators looking for Ida Mae’s murder book.

  “There wasn’t a whole lot there. At the time of her disappearance, her husband, Leo, was the prime suspect. Harvey McCluskey, ‘Broomy’ as he was called back then, was interviewed. He claimed he was at a party at a friend’s house and had been there all night. The friend in question—Anthony DeLuca—and several other boys who were also there that night backed him up. When Ida Mae’s remains were discovered years later, her husband was already dead, so Butte PD called it a job and marked the case closed with no further investigation.

  “However, it turns out Anthony DeLuca stayed on in Butte. He still lives there, running a small construction outfit. So Chief Clifton sent someone out to talk to him earlier this afternoon. Guess what? It turns out, back then, he and his buddies weren’t exactly straight with the cops. At the time they admitted there was some underage drinking going on at the party, but they didn’t mention how much—both beer and tequila. Before the night was over, they were all passed out cold.”

  “But maybe not McCluskey?” Ali asked.

  “Maybe not,” Dave agreed. “It’s possible he could have snuck out of the house without anybody knowing he was gone. But here’s the real kicker: Anthony DeLuca claims Harvey McCluskey flat-out hated his mother—absolutely despised the woman.”

  “If he could come and go that night without anyone being the wiser, his alibi for his mother’s disappearance has just been blown to smithereens,” Ali offered.

  “Correct,” Dave replied. “His alibi for that night is out the window.”

  “What about what happened to his father?”

  “That’s suicide for sure,” Dave said, “no doubt about it. But Clifton said he’ll have one of his detectives follow up with some of the other guys from the party. With Ida Mae’s ring as evidence, he’s willing to look into building a circumstantial case.”

  “Amazing,” Ali breathed.

  “And ditto for Maureen Richards,” Dave said. “When Detective Davis from Coconino County brought up Marnie’s name, you could see it left McCluskey stunned. And first rattle out of the box, she nailed him in a lie. At the time Maureen died, he said the hike into the canyon was some kind of honeymoon breakfast surprise. This afternoon he said the whole thing was Maureen’s idea, even though she was well known for being afraid of heights. It’s easy to remember the truth because it’s the truth—that’s what happened. When you’re lying, it’s a lot harder to remember what you said in previous interviews, especially years later. Once a suspect’s story starts shifting, you can be damn sure the guy’s got something to hide, and one way or another we’re going to find out what it is.”

  Once that p
hone call ended, Ali closed her computer, took Bella out one last time, and headed for bed, but as it developed, not for sleep.

  Considering all that had happened that day, it wasn’t so surprising that Ali would end up tossing and turning, but amazingly enough what kept her awake was that last phone call with Dave and what he’d told her about guilty suspects not being able to keep their stories straight. What if someone’s story never changed? Did that mean that person was telling the truth?

  Bella endured Ali’s restlessness for a time, but she finally abandoned Ali’s side of the king-size bed in favor of B.’s. At last Ali switched on the light and bailed on the bed altogether. Earlier she’d scanned through the dossier that Frigg had created on Mateo Vega, but that was all she’d done—scan it. And once the decision had been made to hire him, she hadn’t bothered to go into it in any depth.

  But now something else was going through her head and nagging at her. Harvey McCluskey had walked around as a free man for decades after possibly murdering his own mother. What if Mateo Vega had spent the better part of two decades in prison, locked up for something he hadn’t done?

  Back on the love seat, Ali opened her computer and summoned Frigg.

  “Good evening, Ms. Reynolds,” the AI said. “You’re up rather late. Can I be of any assistance?”

  “Yes, you can,” Ali said. “I’d like you to send me the transcripts for each of Mateo Vega’s parole hearings.”

  “All of them?”

  “Yes, please.”

  “Will there be anything else?”

  “No, that’s all I need.”

  Within a surprisingly short time, the transcripts started arriving. Ali scrolled through the proceedings one by one until she located each of Mateo’s statements. Year after year what he said was the same, almost word for word: that he’d taken the plea deal at the urging of his defense counsel in hopes of receiving a lesser sentence; that he and Emily Tarrant had had sex before going to the party; that during the party he had interrupted her getting it on with someone else; that they had quarreled and left the party together but that on the way home she’d gotten out of the car. He claimed that was the last time he saw her. And each time his statement concluded the same way: “Even though we fought, I cared about Emily. I’m very sorry she’s dead, but I didn’t kill her.”

  By the time Ali finished reading the last of the transcripts, she was reasonably sure of one thing: Mateo Vega was innocent and had spent sixteen years of his life locked up for a homicide he hadn’t committed.

  |CHAPTER 55|

  BELLINGHAM, WASHINGTON

  As J.P. Beaumont, a homicide cop, I was seldom bored. As a retired homicide cop, I’m frequently bored to tears, and that was certainly the case on a blustery April morning in Bellingham, Washington. With a chill wind blowing in off the bay, I should probably have been out walking and might well have been if I still had a dog, but Lucy, the rescued Irish wolfhound that my wife, Mel Soames, and I had fostered for a time, had gone off to live in her forever home in Jasper, Texas, with my newly discovered granddaughter. But that’s a whole other story.

  So what was I doing that morning? I was halfheartedly scrolling through Irish wolfhound rescue sites looking for a Lucy replacement, but I wasn’t having much luck. And that’s when my cell phone rang. Had it been the landline, I for sure wouldn’t have answered. But this was on my cell, and caller ID told me the call was coming from a place called Prescott, Arizona. I was intrigued, but with more and more junk callers spoofing different locations these days, I almost didn’t answer. On ring number three, I gave in.

  “Beaumont here,” I said.

  “Jonas Beaumont?” an unfamiliar male voice asked.

  That was not a good sign. I had abandoned both my given names—Jonas Piedmont—at the first possible opportunity. People I know call me Beau, J.P., or Asshole, take your pick. The people who call me Jonas are usually selling something.

  “Who’s calling?” I demanded icily.

  “My name’s Gordon Maxwell,” the man replied. “I’m the former sheriff of Yavapai County, Arizona. I retired last year. You’re with TLC now, right?”

  TLC—aka The Last Chance. Now the call started to make sense. TLC is an all-volunteer cold-case outfit made up of retired law-enforcement officers, forensic folks, CSIs, and prosecutors. We’re the kind of driven people who might have been put out to pasture but who find it impossible to stay that way. If people won’t pay us to do the job we love, then guess what? We’ll do it for free.

  A couple of years ago, a good friend of mine, Ralph Ames, saw how miserable I was in retirement and put me in touch with TLC. At my first TLC gathering, I sat in a room with twenty-five other people. Adding up all our years of service, we discovered we had a combined total of eight hundred and sixty-one years of law-enforcement experience. If you ask me, that’s a hell of a lot of talent to leave withering on the vine.

  “You’ve got me,” I said in a less confrontational tone. “Most people call me Beau. What do people call you?”

  “Gordy,” he replied. “At any rate, TLC may be where I got your name and number, but this isn’t necessarily a TLC case—I mean, not officially anyway. But the original crime occurred in your neck of the woods, and I thought you might be able to do some digging on it.”

  “What do you mean by ‘isn’t necessarily’?” I asked.

  “This isn’t really a cold case. It was closed years ago but maybe not solved, if you get my drift. A friend of mine named Ali Reynolds brought it to my attention. Would you mind if I passed along your number and had her give you a call? She’s good people,” he added. “I think you’ll like her.”

  “All right, then,” I said agreeably. “The least I can do is talk to her.”

  “Thanks,” Gordy said. “I appreciate it.”

  He hung up then, leaving me sitting there with a phone in my hand, waiting to see if it would ring.

  |CHAPTER 56|

  SEDONA, ARIZONA

  Having slept so little the night before, Ali awakened late, but since she and B. had already decided she wouldn’t be going to work that day, it hardly mattered. Once she had her first cup of coffee in hand, she’d called Gordon Maxwell. After giving him a brief overview of the situation with Mateo Vega, she asked if he thought this was something that might interest TLC. He promised he’d look into it.

  Shortly after getting off the phone with him, she heard from her mother, calling to say that the medical examiner had notified her that Bob Larson’s body would be released to the funeral home later that morning and would Ali mind driving her to Smithson’s to drop off some of her father’s clothing and then take Edie to the beauty shop for a cut and perm? Naturally Ali said yes on both counts.

  After the meeting at Smithson’s, where they finalized plans for the funeral, now scheduled for Friday afternoon at two, Ali had been in the car waiting for the end of her mother’s beauty-shop appointment when Gordon called her back.

  “I’ve located an investigator in Washington State who might be willing to look into the Mateo Vega situation,” Gordon said. “His name’s J.P. Beaumont, but he calls himself Beau. He lives in a town called Bellingham up near the Canadian border. Here’s his number.”

  Ali hadn’t mentioned a word to B. or anyone else about contacting TLC. If it all came to nothing, that would be the end of it, and no one other than Ali herself would be disappointed. By five to twelve, after dropping Edie at Sedona Shadows, Ali was back home and sitting in the library when she finally picked up her phone. “Here goes nothing,” she told herself as she dialed the number Gordon had given her.

  The phone was answered almost immediately. “J.P. Beaumont here,” a male voice said.

  “I’m Ali Reynolds from down in Sedona. I believe Gordon Maxwell might have told you about me.”

  “As a matter of fact, he did,” came the reply. “According to what he said, you believe there may have been a miscarriage of justice somewhere along the way. Why don’t you tell me about it?”


  For the next little while, Ali related everything she knew about Mateo Vega and his connection to Emily Tarrant’s homicide back in 2001, stressing the idea that in all the years Mateo had been in prison, his story about the homicide had never changed, nor did he accept any responsibility.

  “What’s your interest in all this?” Beau asked when Ali finished.

  Ali thought for a moment before she answered. “Mateo was fresh out of college and working for my husband’s previous company at the time of his arrest. After being released from prison almost a year ago, he’s been working at a minimum-wage job. Despite the fact that he’s a very smart guy as far as computer science is concerned, with his record no one would give him a job doing anything other than working on a loading dock. Once my husband learned what was going on, we reached out, and we’ve now hired Mateo to work for us at our company here in Cottonwood, Arizona. He strikes me as a nice man. Not a young man any longer, but a nice one, and I can’t help but think something has gone haywire here.”

  “JDLR,” Beau said, and Ali laughed aloud at that bit of law-enforcement jargon.

  “Yes,” she agreed, “it just doesn’t look right.”

  Ali expected Beau to tell her that he’d think it over and get back to her with an answer. Instead he surprised her.

  “Okay,” he said. “I was jotting down details as you went along. Let me see what I can find out on this end. Is it all right to call you back on this number?”

  “Yes, that’s fine.”

  “Talk to you soon, then,” Beau finished, and then he hung up.

  Ali sat holding the phone for a long moment after the call ended. Whether or not anything came of this, she had at least taken a stab at it. Now it was time for her to face up to her next task. With an aching heart, she opened her laptop determined to set about doing one of the toughest writing assignments she’d ever undertaken—composing her father’s obituary.