Authors: J.A. Jance
“Could she have?” Larry Marsh asked.
Brooks didn’t answer for some time.
“Well?” Larry pressed.
“Perhaps,” Brooks admitted at last.
“How?”
“There was a problem with the mileage.”
“What kind of problem?” Larry Marsh asked.
“On the Rolls. I keep track of the mileage each time I get gas. On Thursday, when I went to fill up, I noticed there was a two-hundred-plus-mile discrepancy between what I had written down last week and what was showing on the odometer. I thought I’d just forgotten to make the proper notation. It never crossed my mind that she might have taken the car out and driven somewhere herself.”
“What about weapons?” Hank Mendoza put in. “Do you have any handguns in the house?”
Brooks stiffened and seemed to get a grip. “Several,” he said at once. “Mrs. Ashcroft was a very talented markswoman. And Miss Arabella is a fair shot, as well. We’ve done target practice, but only under strict supervision. And you don’t need to worry about the weapons. They’re all locked away in the safe in the library. I can show them to you if you like.”
“Lead the way.”
They followed Brooks through the house, through a dining room and living room and into a spacious library. “The light switch is over there,” he said, nodding. “And I can tell you how to move the panel, but it would be ever so much easier if you’d allow me to do it.”
“Be our guest,” Larry Marsh said. Brooks moved forward, touched a place on the wall, and a whole section of bookcase swung open, revealing a massive safe. Brooks expertly worked the combination lock then pressed the handle. The door swung wide and a light came on inside, revealing an interior as large as a laundry room. One side was hung with wall-to-wall fur coats.
Brooks frowned. “Where’s the mink?” he asked.
Walking over to a tall cabinet, he pulled out one drawer, slammed that one shut, and opened another and another and another. “Damn!” he muttered. “They’re gone—all of them. But how’s that possible? I’m the only one with the combination to the safe.”
“Evidently not,” Larry Marsh said. “So what kinds of guns are we talking about, and how many?”
“Where is she?”
“Who?” Ali asked.
“The girl,” Arabella said. “The one you told me about.”
When Ali had tried to bring up the subject of Crystal earlier, Arabella had shut down so thoroughly, Ali wasn’t even sure she had heard her mention it. Now though, with their Big Macs gone and with the Rolls back under way and driving through the forested night, Ali was surprised when the conversation returned to that topic as though there’d been no interruption.
“She’s back home,” Ali said. “Back with her family. So how would you advise her? If you could talk to her and give her the benefit of your experience, what would you say?”
“Does her mother love her?”
“Of course.”
“Don’t say that like it’s always the case,” Arabella cautioned. “It isn’t always true, you know.”
“Are you trying to say your mother didn’t love you?” Ali asked. “I met her, you know. I saw how she was.”
“There’s a difference between love and duty,” Arabella said. “Mother had a duty to take care of me, especially since, as people like to say, ‘I wasn’t quite right in the head.’ I give her credit. She did that; she’s still doing that. That’s why Mr. Brooks is still looking after me. Mother arranged all that long before she died. But don’t kid yourself. I don’t think Mother ever really loved me.”
“Why wouldn’t she?”
“Because I was the reason she had to get married.”
“But your father…”
“Bill Ashcroft Senior gave me my name, but he was definitely not my father,” Arabella said flatly. “It was like I was dropped into a family of strangers. So what about this girl? What’s her family like, and does her mother love her?”
Ali thought about Roxanne Whitman. “Yes,” she said. “I think she does.”
“And the father?”
“He loves her, too. There’s a stepfather in the picture, though,” Ali said. “I’m worried about him.”
“The girl should tell her mother, then,” Arabella declared. “She should definitely tell her mother.”
“And what if the same thing happens to her that happened to you? What if her mother doesn’t believe her?”
“Well,” Arabella said thoughtfully, after a pause. “In that case, don’t let her have any knives.”
When the three men returned to the spacious kitchen, Brooks offered to make coffee. While Hank hurried outside to notify the other jurisdictions of the changed dynamics in the situation, Larry Marsh sat at the kitchen table and watched while the butler bustled about, starting a pot of coffee and making a platter of sandwiches. By the time Hank came back inside, the coffee was ready. He picked up one of the sandwiches, which had been cut into small pieces and stacked three deep on a delicately flowered china platter.
When Hank bit into the first tiny morsel, a broad smile lit up his face. “Damn,” he muttered. “If this doesn’t beat the roach coach all hollow.”
Brooks handed each of the cops stiff white napkins that had been starched and pressed with military precision. The coffee was excellent, but it was served in tiny white cups with handles much too small for Detective Marsh’s somewhat meaty fingers.
“So tell us about the guns,” Larry Marsh said, munching another piece of sandwich. “How many are missing?”
“Three,” Brooks said. “All of them handguns. Mine was a thirty-eight—an old Chief’s Special. I bought it new in 1955 when Mrs. Ashcroft hired me. She was interested in having both a butler and a bodyguard. Since I was a former commando who had been trained as a cook, she decided I filled her bill. She actually sent me back to England to attend butler school.”
“So this thirty-eight. What was it?” Larry asked. “A Smith and Wesson Airweight?”
Brooks frowned. “Yes, it was, but how would you know that?”
“Because we found one just like that,” Larry said. “At the crime scene.”
“You didn’t mention Mr. Ashcroft was shot,” Brooks said.
“He wasn’t, but that’s still where we found the gun. What were the others?”
“Mrs. Ashcroft had a pair of pearl-handled first model Lady-smiths, both small-frame revolvers chambered for seven twenty-two-caliber long rounds. Those are missing as well, but those are mostly used for target practice. Less dangerous than the thirty-eight.”
“Not at close range,” Marsh returned. “So wherever she is, we have to assume she’s armed and dangerous. Is she a good shot?”
“Unfortunately, yes,” Brooks said. “I suppose she is. I trained her myself.”
“But you said she was nuts,” Marsh objected. “Why would you do such a thing?”
“I didn’t say she was nuts, sir,” Brooks said. “Miss Arabella is prone to moods, and I did it because I was asked to. Besides, we only did target shooting. The rest of the time the guns were safely under lock and key.”
“Right,” Hank Mendoza said. “You mean like they are right now.”
Brooks nodded and said nothing.
“What do you know about the death of Mr. Ashcroft’s father?” Larry asked.
“That would be Bill Junior. That’s how Mrs. Ashcroft always referred to him. But I thought this was all about Billy. Bill Junior died in an automobile accident in 1956. He was a notorious drinker. He went off the side of a mountain and that was the end of him.”
“Was Arabella ever questioned in conjunction with that death?” Larry asked.
“No one was questioned that I know of. But there would have been no reason at all to question Miss Arabella. She was miles away at the time, hospitalized at a facility in Paso Robles.”
“Yes,” Larry Marsh said. “The Mosberg Institute. We know that’s where she was supposed to be. We also know that the charge nurse who was primarily responsible for Arabella’s care at the time died in a tragic fire at the Mosberg a few days after Mr. Ashcroft’s death.”
“I seem to remember that, too,” Leland Brooks said. “And a patient died as well. I believe he was something of a firebug—a serial arsonist. The fire was laid at his door, metaphorically speaking, but Mrs. Ashcroft was of the opinion that there was a good deal of covering up about that incident. It was one of the reasons she took Miss Arabella out of there and moved her to the Bancroft House, a place down in what’s now part of Carefree. It was after Miss Arabella came to Arizona that Mrs. Ashcroft decided to buy this place.”
“You were already working for the Ashcrofts at that time?”
“I worked for Mrs. Ashcroft from 1955 on,” Leland Brooks said stiffly. “I never worked for Mr. Ashcroft Senior, and I never had anything to do with him, either.” The butler shuddered. “He was a perfectly dreadful man. So was his son. Mrs. Ashcroft, on the other hand, was a wonderful human being and very generous. At the time of her death, she saw to it that I’d be taken care of so that her daughter, in turn, would be taken care of. I look after the house and the vehicles, manage the household accounts, make sure Miss Arabella sees her doctors and takes her medications. I also drive her wherever she wants to go.”
“It sounds pretty all-encompassing,” Larry Marsh said.
“Of course it is,” Leland Brooks returned with a smile. “I’m a butler.”
As the Rolls turned off the highway onto a small, single lane road that wound through the West Clear Creek Wilderness, Ali was beginning to wonder if they should have bought gas at the same time they stopped for those Big Macs. But at least here, in the middle of nowhere, if she decided to overpower Arabella and take her down, no one else could possibly be hurt. She was still hoping that, at some point, Arabella would simply fall asleep.
“Punishment,” Arabella announced from the backseat. “That’s what’s important. If your friend’s abuser gets punished, that helps. A little. You see, I took care of what Bill Junior did to me. And I took care of what he did to Miss Ponder. But what about the others?”
“What others?”
“The ones I don’t know about,” Arabella said. “There must have been others. Those are the ones I think about when I can’t sleep. He was never punished for any of those. But that’s also why he kept his hand, you see. I think that was his way of trying to punish my mother for what I had done to him. That’s why I have it. I did it for her.”
“Did your mother know you had Bill Junior’s hand?”
“I doubt it,” Arabella said.
“When it comes to punishment, what about you?” Ali asked, glancing at Arabella in the rearview mirror. “Should you be punished for what you did?”
“I suppose,” Arabella said. “But I don’t want to be locked up again. Mother promised me that I never would be.”
“Did she know what you had done?”
“Maybe,” Arabella said. “Probably.”
“Your mother wasn’t a judge and jury,” Ali said. “She had no right to make that promise.”
“But she did,” Arabella insisted. “And I believed her. Here we are.”
They entered a small clearing. Ali looked around, expecting to see a small, snug cabin, but she saw nothing. No outline of a building; no flashes of headlights off windowpanes. But then there was something—a gleam in the dark. She pulled closer. What she saw was her headlights reflecting back off what remained of half a wall.
“There’s nothing here,” Ali explained. “There’s no cabin.”
“I know,” Arabella said. “It burned down last summer. Vandals.”
“Then what are we doing here?”
“We’re going to sit here for a while,” Arabella said. “We’re going to sit here and let me think. Then I’m going to say goodbye.”
Good-bye!
Ali thought.
Good-bye? She’s going to kill me. What the hell am I supposed to do now?
I
t was after ten by the time the two detectives left Arabella’s house and headed back to Phoenix.
“Damn,” Larry Marsh complained. “It annoys the hell out of me to think that Arabella snowed us completely.”
“Sounds like she snowed everybody, Mr. Brooks included. And don’t forget Alison Reynolds and Billy Ashcroft. She told Billy she was dead broke. According to Brooks, that’s not the case at all. The money may not be liquid, but it’s there. She told Ali Reynolds all about this mysterious diary of hers, one you’ve even seen, but her butler never saw it. How can that be? My guess is we could hook Arabella up to a lie detector, ask her questions all day long, and have her come up with two or more contradictory answers to every question without ever having any of them register as a lie. If she’s crazy, she probably doesn’t know the difference between fact and fiction, to say nothing of right or wrong.”
“Which will make her damned hard to convict.”
“In my book she’s a person of interest in four different homicides—Billy and Bill Junior as well as the firebug and the nurse at the Mosberg. What’s kept her from knifing poor old Brooks in his sleep all this time?”
“Enlightened self-interest,” Larry said with a mirthless chuckle. “If she did that, who would bring her her morning coffee?”
As Larry drove south on I-17, Hank called Dave Holman to check on the APB. “Still no word?”
“None,” Dave said. “As long ago as they left, they could be anywhere by now—through Phoenix or Flagstaff and halfway to California or New Mexico. If they’re still on the move, we should have found them.”
“How’s Ali’s family holding up?” Hank asked.
“About how you’d expect. I’m here at the house with her son and his girlfriend. Her parents went home to go to bed. After what went on at the hospital last night, everybody’s pretty much strung out,” Dave said. “But she saved my daughter’s life, and now we’ve got to save hers.”
Ali and Arabella sat in the Rolls with the engine running for the better part of the next half hour. Several times, when Ali tried to say something, Arabella insisted on silence. “I told you,” she said. “I need to think.”
Ali was thinking, too. With the sweat trickling down her sides and with her stomach in a knot, she was appalled by their complete isolation. They had seen no lights on the way down the narrow road, no other signs of habitation.
We’re completely alone,
Ali thought.
No one on earth knows we’re here. Arabella will shoot me and then herself and it’ll be weeks before anyone finds us.
Last night, in the hospital, she hadn’t had time to be scared. Jason had been there—a mortal threat to everyone he met—and Ali had simply reacted. This was different. As the minutes crept by, one by one, Ali thought she understood how condemned prisoners must feel on the night they’re due to be executed.
I don’t want to be dead,
Ali told herself.
I’m not ready.
“All right then,” Arabella said finally, emerging from her trancelike silence. “Here.”
Ali turned to look as Arabella held up the jar. “I told you I came to say good-bye. Now get out of the car and take this over there to where the porch used to be.”
Ali was shocked to see Arabella was handing her the jar.
“No,” Ali said. “I won’t touch it.”
“Yes, you will,” Arabella insisted. “Have you forgotten I have a gun?”
Ali hadn’t forgotten about the gun, not for a single moment.
“All right.”
Leaving the headlights on and the engine still running, Ali took the jar and got out of the car. Her legs seemed ready to collapse under her and the jar was surprisingly heavy, but she held it to her breast. She didn’t want to drop it; didn’t want to be splattered by the awfulness inside.
Picking her way across uneven ground, she made her way toward the nonexistent cabin. On either side of the clearing she could make out patches of snow. Ahead of her the denuded concrete pad of the house glowed against the surrounding blackness. Shivering with cold and revulsion both, Ali walked as far as what looked like the footprint of a porch.
“Set it down,” Arabella ordered. “Set it down right there and step away.”
Ali did as she was told. As she moved toward the Rolls, she saw Arabella assume a military stance, holding the tiny pistol in a two-handed grip. Petrified, Ali plunged to the ground. She was already facedown in the dirt when the sound of the gunfire pierced the silence of the bitterly cold night.
Behind her, the glass jar exploded into a million pieces. For a long moment, Ali huddled on the ground while the sound of that single gunshot reverberated in her ears. She lay there holding her breath, wondering if she’d been hurt by any of the flying glass and waiting for the next shot—which didn’t come. Finally she looked up to find Arabella still standing calmly beside the Rolls and holding the gun at her side as if nothing out of the ordinary had happened.
“There,” she said, casually waving the gun in Ali’s direction. “I’ve said my good-byes. Come on now,” she added. “I’m done here. Get in and let’s go home.”
Ali’s knees were quaking and her hands shook as she resumed her place behind the wheel. She knew something about firearms. It was clear to her that Arabella Ashcroft was one hell of a shot. Ali knew, too, that if Arabella had really intended to kill her there was no question that she would be dead.
Thank God I didn’t try to run earlier,
Ali thought.
She would have plugged me full of holes.
“What kind of gun is that?” Ali asked, trying to normalize the tension in the car with conversation.
“A Smith and Wesson Ladysmith,” Arabella said. “It’s a genuine antique. Belonged to my mother. Fires seven rounds.”
Which means there are probably six shots left.
“Where did you learn to shoot?” Ali asked.
“I was trained by a former Royal Marine commando,” Arabella answered.
In the darkness, Ali rolled her eyes.
Sure you were,
she thought.
And I’m a monkey’s uncle.
“He tells me I’m a very good shot,” Arabella added.
Arabella Ashcroft may have been a liar, but that last statement was indisputably true. She was an excellent shot. She was also a cold-blooded killer.
As they headed away from the burned-out cabin, Ali tried to come to grips with how to deal with someone who was clearly a pathological liar. The same had been true for Arabella’s mother, Anna Lee. Their checks had been good when they had offered Ali her scholarship, but was anything else she knew about them true?
Arabella claimed to be broke, and the mending on that old cardigan—Brooks’s workmanship most likely—was real enough, but the coat Arabella was wearing right that minute was probably worth several thousand dollars. Arabella had implied that she’d had something to do with several murders. She had coyly refrained from coming right out and admitting to any of them, but the jar had been real enough.
“Where did you keep it?” Ali asked.
“Keep what?”
“The jar. With your brother’s hand. You said you got it from Bill Junior. If you were locked up at the time, surely you weren’t allowed to keep it in your room.”
“You’d be surprised,” Arabella said. “You’ve never been locked up anywhere, have you?”
“No.”
“I had both the jar and the briefcase,” Arabella said. “The briefcase with the jar inside it. Someone I was nice to there took it home and kept it for me, kept it until I was ready to have it again.”
“How long?”
“Eight years. From 1956 until 1964, when they shut down Bancroft House.”
“What’s Bancroft House?” Ali asked. “I thought you were at the Mosberg Institute.”
“Bancroft came later,” Arabella said. “After the Mosberg.”
“And somebody was willing to keep it for you for that long, with no questions asked?”
“That all depends,” Arabella answered coyly.
“On what?”
“On what you have to trade.”
On the drive back to Sedona, Ali kept hoping eventually Arabella would fall asleep, but she didn’t. Ali prayed that somewhere along the way they’d see a patrol car of some kind. That didn’t happen, either. By midnight, as they made their way up the hill to Arabella’s house, there was almost no traffic of any kind. But when they pulled into the yard at Arabella’s house, the garage door was wide open and a stack of suitcases stood barring the spot where Arabella expected Ali to park the Rolls.
“What is all that stuff?” Arabella demanded. “Honk the horn. Get Mr. Brooks out here to move it.”
“Arabella, it’s the middle of the night. People are asleep. I can’t be honking the horn.”
Just then the whole discussion became moot when Leland Brooks, lugging another pair of suitcases, entered the garage through the kitchen door. He set them down with the rest of the luggage then straightened slowly and started toward the Rolls.
Ali didn’t know what to do. Should she warn him away? Let him come ahead on and hope that, between the two of them, they could somehow wrestle the loaded weapon from Arabella’s hand? Before Ali could respond one way or the other, Brooks made straight for the back door and opened it. “Good evening, madam,” he said to Arabella. “I’m glad you’re home.”
He reached in and took the briefcase. Without objection, Arabella allowed herself to be helped from the car. “Get all that junk out of the way so she can pull into the garage,” Arabella ordered. “And what on earth are you doing in that god-awful outfit?”
That was the first Ali actually noticed how Brooks was dressed—in a bright blue sequined cowboy shirt, narrow-legged jeans, and cowboy boots.
“Don’t you like it?” he asked.
“Of course I don’t like it,” Arabella said irritably. “You look like you’re about to go out trick-or-treating. And what is all this mess?”
“It’s my luggage,” Brooks replied. “My ride should be here in a while.”
“Ride?” Arabella repeated. “You’re going someplace? You’re taking a trip?”
“Yes, madam,” Brooks said. “I’m afraid I’m leaving.”
“Leaving! You can’t do that. You can’t be serious.”
“I’m entirely serious,” Brooks returned. “I know I promised your mother that I’d look after you, but I’m afraid I can’t do that anymore. You’re far too dangerous—to yourself and others—including Madam Reynolds here. You are all right, aren’t you Ms. Reynolds?”
His manner was as calm and unruffled as if he were inquiring about whether she wanted one lump or two in her tea.
“Yes,” Ali managed with some difficulty. “I’m fine.”
“Good,” he said. “Very good.” Then he turned back to Arabella. “I have reason to believe you’ve somehow managed to get into the safe and remove the guns. I’m sure that must be how you convinced Madam Reynolds to accompany you on this little jaunt tonight. Is that true?”
Arabella stared at him as if he were speaking some incomprehensible foreign language.
“Well?” he prompted. She said nothing and he held out his hand. “Give it to me,” he said. “Give me the gun.”
And to Ali’s utter astonishment, Arabella complied.
“Where’s the other one?” he asked.
“In the briefcase.”
“Very well, then. Let’s go inside. It’s cold out here. I took the liberty of starting a fire in the living room in hopes you’d come to your senses and come home. We can talk there. You’re welcome, too, Ms. Reynolds, if you wish. You might want to phone your family and let them know you’re safe, but if you don’t mind, I’d like to make a call or two first.”
With Arabella leaning on his arm, Leland led her into the house. With him in his cowboy duds and her in her fur-coated finery, the two of them made an incongruous but somehow dignified pair. Seeing them together reminded Ali of pictures of the queen mum being escorted in some royal processional. They went in through the laundry room and kitchen—through parts of the house Ali had never seen before—where appliances that looked as though they should have been genuine antiques consigned to museums seemed to be still functional. They walked through the chilly dining room with its massive polished wood table and matching sideboard.
As promised, a cheerful fire was burning in the living room. Brooks deftly relieved Arabella of her coat and then deposited her in one of the chairs facing the fire.
“I notice your computer is missing,” he said. “I’m assuming it hasn’t been stolen.”
“It’s in the trunk of the Rolls,” she said. “I was going to get rid of it, but then I forgot.”
“Very well, madam,” Brooks said. “I’ll bring it back inside later. Now would you care for something to drink?”
“Oh my, yes. I’d love one of your martinis about now, Mr. Brooks. Wouldn’t you, Ali? As cold as you can make them, of course, but do change out of those ridiculous clothes before you serve us.”
Ali’s head was spinning. By force of sheer willpower Leland Brooks had somehow managed to create a sense of normalcy out of chaos. His steadfast calm in the face of Arabella’s erratic frenzy seemed to have dragged Arabella back into the real world as well. Was this how he had handled her all these years?