Authors: J.A. Jance
“What about money?” Ali asked.
“Oh, I’m fine as far as money is concerned,” Brooks said reassuringly. “That won’t be a problem. Before Mrs. Ashcroft died, she set up an annuity for me—a generous annuity. And then there’s my social security. Living here, I’ve had almost no expenses through the years, and I’ve been able to put aside most of what I’ve had coming in. It’s built up into quite a sizable nest egg.”
“And what about this house,” Ali asked. “You’ve lived here a long time. Won’t you mind leaving it?”
Brooks pulled his hands out of the dishwater, dried them on a towel, and looked around the room with its antiquated cabinetry and appliances. “I don’t think so,” he said at last. “I’m getting on in years, and taking care of this house has been a lot of work.”
A man Ali had never seen before came in from the garage. The newcomer came over to the sink, stood beside Brooks, and put a comforting arm around the butler’s shoulder. “Hey, Lee,” he said. “How’s it going?”
“Not too well,” Leland Brooks said, with an audible catch in his throat. “Not well at all.”
Something about the familiarity of the gesture and the way the men stood side by side in front of the sink told Ali more than she would have thought possible. Without another word being exchanged, she understood that they were far more than friends and that they had been together for years.
It was the same way Edie Larson knew things about people. She knew, too, that in his moment of grief, Leland Brooks deserved some privacy.
“I believe I’ll go see what Dave is doing,” Ali said. With that she abandoned the kitchen in favor of the garage, leaving the two men alone in the kitchen, but as she closed the door behind her, it seemed unlikely that either of them would notice.
T
he sun was high in the sky that morning when Ali awakened to the tantalizing smell of coffee and to the guilty knowledge that when Dave had finally brought her home from Arabella’s house, she had told him nothing about the Crystal video. It wasn’t as if there hadn’t been an opportunity. That would have been when he had walked Ali up to her door, but then other considerations had taken precedence.
“Sorry about Roxie,” Dave said. “I talked to Richey earlier. He told me Roxanne had stopped by to give you the third degree.”
“Crystal has her convinced that you and I have something going.”
“Don’t we?” Dave asked with a grin.
That was when Ali could have told him; should have told him, but she was too tired. “You tell me,” Ali returned.
And that was when, to Ali’s utter astonishment, Dave had leaned down and kissed her squarely on the lips. He kissed her as though he really meant it in a way that said Crystal and Roxie and even Edie Larson were absolutely right in their assumptions.
When Dave finally turned Ali loose, she had staggered into the house. She lay in bed for a while, wondering if the kiss had really happened or if, in a delirium of weariness, she had merely imagined it. Finally she fell asleep and slept without dreaming or moving. She knew about the latter because she had slept on one hand, which was now alive with needles and pins. Lying there waiting for the tingling to subside, she once again wondered about that phantom kiss. Was it real or had she made it up? And if she hadn’t made it up, what did it mean?
Once Ali’s hand was capable of movement, she put on her robe and headed into the living room, expecting to find Chris somewhere in the house. Instead, she was surprised to see an unfamiliar young woman seated on her couch with Sam draped contentedly in her lap.
“You must be Athena,” Ali said.
Athena Carlson was a diminutive blonde with blue eyes and a ready smile. Her shoulder-length hair was pulled back and held in place by a clipped comb. She wore a vivid red-and-white tracksuit and a pair of Velcroed tennis shoes. A metal rod peeked out from under the bottom of the right leg of the tracksuit. The end of a complicated plastic-and-metal device that functioned in place of her right hand and arm rested on the couch beside her. If Sam noticed the difference, it apparently didn’t bother her.
“Yes, I am,” Athena said. “And you must be Chris’s mom.” Athena made as if to rise and started to move the sleeping cat off her lap.
“Don’t get up,” Ali told her. “Stay where you are. Sam looks like she died and went to heaven.”
Athena settled back onto the couch. Sam opened her one good eye briefly, glanced around the room, and then closed it again and resumed her nap. Ali was impressed. Sam was notoriously picky—and spooky—when it came to visitors.
“I hope we didn’t wake you, Ms. Reynolds,” Athena continued nervously. “Edie called. She told Chris that she had set aside some sweet rolls for us and that he’d better come down and get them before she threw them out.”
If Ali’s mother was already being called Edie, if she was reserving some precious Saturday morning sweet rolls for them, and if Sam, who didn’t like anybody, had already surrendered unconditionally to Athena Carlson’s charms, then Ali was way behind the times. Not only had she missed dinner, she had missed a whole lot of other stuff, too.
The last of the hot water sizzled out of the reserve tank on the Krups coffeemaker, announcing that the brewing cycle was over.
“Coffee?” Ali asked.
“Please.”
“How do you take it?”
“Black.”
Good answers,
Ali thought.
She brought the coffee and set one cup down on the end table next to Athena. “Call me Ali,” she said. “Everyone else does.”
“I’m glad to finally get a chance to meet you,” Athena said. “I was afraid Chris was going to keep me hidden under a rock forever.”
Ali would have preferred for Chris to be there running interference at this initial meeting, but he wasn’t, so they would have to make do on their own. “I’m glad to meet you, too,” she said. “I suppose after all this time you were expecting some kind of dragon lady?”
“No, not at all,” Athena said with a smile. “Chris kept telling me that you were a wonderful person and that he was sure we’d get along like gangbusters. And if you’re anything like your mother—who reminds me of my grandmother back in Bemidji, Minnesota, by the way—I’m sure that’s true. I had a great time with your parents last night.”
“I’m sorry I wasn’t there,” Ali said. “I planned to be there.”
“Well,” Athena said, “there’s nothing like having somebody hold a gun on you to change your mind.”
So the word is out,
Ali thought.
Chris’s Prius pulled up outside and he bounded into the living room carrying a plate of sweet rolls in one hand. He stopped short when he saw his mother and then looked anxiously back and forth between the two women. “You two have already met?”
“Yes, we have,” Athena said. “And nothing bad happened. Worlds did not collide. Everything’s fine.”
Chris put the rolls on the counter, then came back to the couch, where he sat down next to Athena. Ali thought he still looked anxious, more so than introducing his mother to his girlfriend should have warranted.
“Did you tell her?” he asked Athena.
Athena shook her head. “Not yet. I didn’t think it was my place.”
Ali’s motherly antennae were already up and operating. Now they went on high alert.
Tell me what?
she wondered.
What’s going on here? Are they pregnant? Is that what this is all about? Am I about to be the mother of the groom at a shotgun wedding?
“It’s about your computer,” Chris said.
Ali was so relieved, she almost laughed aloud. “My computer,” she repeated. “What about it?”
“When you didn’t show up at Grandma’s and Grandpa’s for dinner last night, we came back here looking for you. Later on in the evening when you still weren’t back, I started thinking about that stalker who came after you last year. I wondered if maybe there was something on your computer that would let us know what had happened or where you had gone. So I logged on to your computer and read your files.”
“Chris,” Ali said. “That’s no big deal. I don’t know why you’re so upset. It’s not like what I do on my computer is top secret or anything.”
“We saw the video,” Athena said. “The video with Dave Holman’s daughter.”
“Oh,” Ali said. “Oh, that.”
Maybe there are some secrets on my computer after all.
“Did you tell Dave?”
“That’s the thing, Ms. Reynolds,” Athena said. “From what Mr. Holman had said at dinner, it was clear he had no idea about any of this. Unless you told him. Did you?”
“Please call me Ali,” she reminded Athena. “But no, I didn’t tell him either. I didn’t want to show it to him until I could figure out what to say.”
“We know who it is,” Chris said.
Ali was stunned. “You do?” she asked. “How’s that possible?”
“His name is on the video,” Athena answered. “We saw it.”
“I saw the video,” Ali said. “There wasn’t any name.”
“Show her,” Athena said.
“I’ll go get my computer,” Chris said. He brought it from the bedroom, set it up on the dining room table, and turned it on. Once it booted up, he logged on and then clicked on a link as Ali and Athena gathered around the table to watch. Moments later the disgusting video began playing on the screen. “Look behind them,” Chris said. “On the wall.”
It was difficult to ignore what was going on with Crystal and the man, but Ali did as she was told. “It looks like a piece of artwork,” Ali said. “Something in a frame.”
“Right,” Chris said. “Now look at this.” He clicked over to another file that showed a single frame from the video and then clicked on that image several times in rapid succession. With each click, what was happening in the foreground slipped further out of focus while the background became clearer and clearer. It reminded Ali of an optometrist doing a vision test.
“It’s a diploma of some kind,” Ali said at last.
“Exactly!” Athena said. “From a seminary in Weed, California, awarded to someone named Richard Masters.”
“When I first saw the video, I thought Crystal’s stepfather might be responsible for this awful stuff, but his name is Whitman, Gary Whitman. So, who is this guy, and how did you do this?”
“Sonja, my geeky best friend from college,” Athena explained. “She’s spent years working on an image-enhancement project. That program is now being used by law enforcement agencies all over the country to help decipher video-recorded images of license plates.”
“When we first turned this on, Athena noticed there was something on the wall in the background,” Chris continued. “We e-mailed this frame to Sonja. You’re seeing what she sent back.”
“Amazing,” Ali said.
“And through the magic of the Internet,” Athena added, “we can now tell you that Pastor Richard Masters is the youth minister for a small congregation of disaffected ex-Baptists called Back Door Apostles who operate out of a very modest strip mall in North Las Vegas. That’s where Crystal’s family lives, isn’t it?”
“Yes,” Ali said. “In a trailer park somewhere in North Las Vegas.”
“And if Crystal was having difficulty adjusting to her new school situation,” Athena said, “what are the chances that her family sent her to this jerk for counseling? My family moved twice when I was in junior high,” she added. “It was hell. My mother sent me to a counselor, too. A good one though, not a creep like this.”
“So, what do we do?” Chris asked. “Call Dave? Have him come take a look at this?”
Ali turned away from the computer screen, walked over to the counter, and poured herself a cup of coffee while she searched for an answer to those questions.
Dave had already admitted to Ali that he didn’t necessarily have good sense when it came to dealing with Roxanne and her second husband. She seemed to remember his even making a threat of some kind toward Gary Whitman. That was one of the reasons Richey hadn’t wanted him to come to Vegas when Crystal first disappeared. Now Ali worried that if Dave saw what she had seen on the video it would send the man completely around the bend.
“I’m going to go shower,” she said. “That’s where I do some of my best thinking. When I come out, we’ll figure out what to do.”
With hot water cascading over her tired body, Ali tried to imagine the best way to proceed. She knew without question that if they showed the images to Dave, he’d be on his way to Vegas in a matter of minutes—pissed as hell and armed to the teeth. If he charged into the good pastor’s office and raised Cain about it, ordinary people would see him as a justifiably outraged father doing what fathers do. A defense attorney, on the other hand, would see him as an out-of-control police officer and would claim that any evidence resulting from Dave’s actions, damning though it might be, would nonetheless be ruled inadmissable.
Ali knew someone needed to beard Richard Masters in his den, but Dave Holman was exactly the wrong person for the job.
Ali emerged from the shower and dressed. She returned to the kitchen, where Chris was just finishing frying bacon and eggs and Athena was setting the table. “You said you wanted to do some thinking, so we’re having protein with our sweet rolls.”
“Well?” Athena asked.
“How would the two of you like to take a day trip up to Vegas?”
“Cool,” Athena said. “Sounds like fun.”
“Great,” Chris said. “Athena’s never ridden in a Porsche.”
“There’s one problem,” Ali said. “Since I don’t have my driver’s license back, one of you will have to drive.”
Chris burst out laughing. “We’ll manage,” he said.
As they prepared to leave for Vegas, Ali was waylaid for twenty minutes while she searched for the scrap of paper—the back of a gas station receipt actually—on which she had jotted Crystal’s cell phone number all those nights earlier. If she’d had her cell phone, it would have been simple to look up the information in her call history. And she could, she supposed, call Detective Marsh and have him look it up for her, but doing that would put her at risk of having to endure another “insert” lecture. Since she was obviously doing it again—not minding her own business—she didn’t want to hear it. She was thrilled when she finally found the missing note in the bottom of her bathroom trash can.
But even though she had the number, she didn’t want to call it. She didn’t want to talk to Crystal until she was good and ready—until she and Chris and Athena had all their ducks in a row.
While Ali searched for the missing phone number, Chris downloaded the video and the file of photo enhancements onto a CD. Well after noon when they finally set out, Chris was at the wheel of the Cayenne and Athena rode shotgun. Ali, sitting in the backseat, mostly wanted to close her eyes and doze, but Chris had other ideas.
“Okay, Mom,” he said. “It’s a long drive from here to there. I want you to tell us about last night. All of it.”
“It’s not just last night,” Ali said. Over the course of the next hour or so, Ali told Chris and Athena about her dealings with Arabella Ashcroft and how what had happened to her as a child led inevitably to what was going on with Crystal Holman. Athena got it with no problem.