J.A. Jance's Ali Reynolds Mysteries 3-Book Boxed Set, Volume 2: Trial by Fire, Fatal Error, Left for Dead (54 page)

“Chris is determined to have the nursery completely finished before your parents come home tomorrow, so he’s been working like crazy, painting until all hours. Last night he managed to get all the furniture put together too—the changing tables and the chests of drawers and the cribs.”

“That doesn’t sound so bad,” Ali ventured.

Athena nodded and blew her nose. “We managed to get all the clothes washed and dried, but when he started to sort them, it turns out he’s completely hopeless. I ended up dumping everything back out into one of the cribs. I could sort them myself, but I’m not supposed to be on my feet that long.”

“I suspect you both have a bad case of impending parenthood nerves,” Ali said. “And I’m happy to do it. Thrilled, even. Now let me at ’em.”

Athena offered a thin smile and then allowed Ali to help her off the sofa. She led Ali to the nursery that had once been Chris’s room. The room smelled of freshly applied paint. Two walls were
pink; two were blue. The changing tables, dressers, and cribs were white. In one crib was a mountain of baby gear—some of it new and some of it secondhand. With Athena sitting in the rocker supervising the process, Ali commenced folding all the incredibly tiny outfits and separating them first by sort (blankets, shirts, nightgowns, and snuggle outfits) and second by colors (blues and greens, pinks and yellows). The blues and greens were destined for Colin’s drawers while the pinks and yellows would go to Colleen’s.

As Ali did the sorting and folding, she also listened. In the process she couldn’t help but think about and be grateful for how different Chris and Athena’s situation was from what hers had been when Chris was born. His father, Dean, had died of a glioblastoma weeks before Chris appeared on the scene. Ali had been a single mother from day one—from before day one, actually.

Chris and Athena were in this together. They expected that Athena would be going back to work as soon as possible after the babies were born. The school district had accepted Chris’s request to stay home on parental leave. Ali knew he was hoping that he’d be able to look after the twins and still do some metal sculpture work in his basement studio. Ali had sincere doubts about his ability to carry that one off, but she was careful not to mention her motherly case of skepticism. Experience had taught her that looking after two babies would make welding metal artwork pieces an impossible pipe dream.

“You know,” Ali said, casually, “I don’t mind doing this, but even if he doesn’t do it quite the way you want it done, shouldn’t Chris be in on this? Once the babies get here, you’ll be lucky to get the clothes out of the dryer and into the basket, to say nothing of drawers, but if he’s going to be the one staying home, it seems to me he should be in charge of putting all this stuff away.”

Athena shook her head. “You don’t know, do you?”

“Know what?” Ali asked, although something in Athena’s tone suggested that whatever it was, Ali might not want to know about it.

Athena sighed. “I hate to be the one to break this to you, but your son is color-blind. Not completely. Primary colors he can do. Reds and greens at stoplights he can do. Pastels? Not so much. According to him, all these clothes are gray.” She waved her one good hand in the direction of the stacks of clothing, now properly sorted by color.

Ali was thunderstruck. “Are you kidding? You’re telling me my own son is color-blind?”

The news came as a complete surprise. Eventually, though, Ali dissolved in a hopeless case of giggles. Before long Athena was laughing too.

“I never knew,” Ali gasped at last. “I had no idea. From the time he was little he gravitated to blues and reds. I thought he just liked them.”

“No,” Athena said, sobering. “Those are the only colors he could see. So tell me, how long will it be before the twins can choose their own clothes?”

“They probably start doing that when they’re three or four.”

“I hope they hurry,” Athena said. “Between now and then, with their father dressing them, it’s not going to be pretty.”

By the time Ali had the last of the clothing put away, Chris turned up with a bouquet of store-bought flowers and a sweet thinking-of-you card. The guy may have been color-blind, but he knew when it was time to turn up with a fistful of flowers.

Ali left Chris and Athena’s house still feeling bemused. She and Chris had always been close, and she was incredibly proud of him, but as it turned out, Ali Reynolds didn’t know her own son nearly as well as she thought she did.

Mark Blaylock set off for San Diego that Friday morning tired and hungover but elated. After months of watching their financial situation deteriorate and then more months of worrying about the programming, he had cause to feel happy. It seemed to him that they were about to see some light at the end of the tunnel.

Wednesday’s flawless early morning test flight had put his programming worries to rest once and for all. Both reprogrammed UAVs had flown properly. Both had taken off as expected and had followed their prescribed flight plans. The first one had landed exactly as the flight plan dictated, while an operator-issued command had blown the second drone to smithereens.

That night he and Mina had driven into Palm Springs for a celebratory dinner. The next morning Mina had set off for Grass Valley in her older-model Lincoln. She had flown up to meet with Richard that first time, but since then, not wanting to deal with TSA scrutiny or to leave much of a paper trail, she had driven back and forth. The trip usually took a couple of days. Knowing how much Mina despised living in the cramped cabin in Salton City, Mark tried not to begrudge her her periodic absences.

Mark had especially made it a point not to think about her monthly trips to see Richard Lowensdale, give him his partial payment, and check on his progress. If sex with Mina was part of what was keeping Richard on the job, Mark was prepared to overlook it. After all, he had his own occasional dalliances, and he wasn’t enough of a hypocrite to begrudge Mina hers. Besides, this was the end of it. Once the program fixes had been installed in the rest of the UAVs, they wouldn’t need Richard Lowensdale anymore.

“See you on Sunday,” she said, when he kissed her goodbye.

“Stay safe,” he told her.

Knowing he’d need to spend a couple of days in San Diego, Mina had left him a fistful of welcome cash to cover food and lodging. Much as he tried not to, Mark couldn’t help regarding it as being given an allowance. To regain a little self-respect, he spent most of the day on Thursday drinking and gambling at his favorite hangout, the Red Earth Casino. With some luck and what he liked to regard as skill, he managed to add to that initial sum. On Friday morning, with a smile on his face and money in his pocket, he finally set off for San Diego to fulfill his part of the bargain and install Richard’s programming fix in each of their remaining UAVs.

He didn’t rush. He stopped off for a beer here and there along the way. One thing he really missed on the drive was the Sirius radio he used to have in his Mercedes. That was one of the problems with being kicked downstairs. Now, tooling along in a secondhand Honda, instead of being able to hum along with the country-western tunes he preferred on the Roadhouse or Willie’s Place, he had to search through what was available—mostly Spanish-speaking stations or blabbing news.

So losing the Mercedes was a noticeable blow that was both economic and emotional. When he reached the industrial park complex that had once been home to Rutherford International, he took another hit as he drove past what had once been their official headquarters. There was a new name on the sign above the door, and Mark couldn’t help but take the change personally. Rutherford’s failure was Mark’s failure, and he was grateful that Mina had found a way to breathe some life into the smoldering ashes of their financial catastrophe.

He drove through the familiar maze of light industrial and warehouse streets. When they had been looking for a location,
having their office address on Opportunity Road had seemed exactly right. And having their warehouse/manufacturing facility on Engineer Road had seemed perfect as well, especially considering the proximity of Montgomery Field, where they had expected to do their test flights.

Whether based on hubris or unbounded optimism, their assumption that they would actually win the much sought-after drone contract had been naive. Mark’s contacts had led them to believe that they had an “inside track” and that it was a “done deal.” They had leveraged everything they owned to grab the opportunity, and when the contract went elsewhere, they lost big and were still left holding leases they could no longer afford.

Unfortunately their misfortunes coincided with what was going on in the general economy. As they were taking their financial hits, so was everyone else. California commercial real estate went into a downward spiral right along with the residential market, and that was as true for this office park as it was for similar projects throughout the country. Buildings that had once been fully occupied and busy now stood empty and forlorn, their entrances weedy, their walls covered with gang-related tags. Mark was relieved when he saw that no new tags were in evidence on the part of the one building that still had Rutherford International stenciled on the doors.

For a time their company had occupied office space in a building on one street and in two adjacent sections in one of the nearby buildings that had been designated for light industry. One space, equipped with rolling garage-type doors, had been used primarily for shipping and receiving. In the other, and at great expense in tenant improvements, Rutherford had constructed a clean room, which they planned on using as an assembly facility.

When it was clear Rutherford was going down the drain, the
landlord had been lucky enough to find someone who was willing to take over the office part of their lease. Because the property manager wanted to maintain a minimum level of occupancy, he had offered Mark and Mina a huge break on the lease for warehouse space. In other words, Mark was glad they still had a place to store their stock of illegal UAVs, even though he sometimes worried about how Mina was managing to pay the rent, even with the steep discount.

Mark used a clicker to let himself into the shipping/receiving bay, then he used a connecting door between the two to gain access to the assembly area. After turning off the alarm and switching on the lights, he set to work.

The UAVs were stored in the cage—a locked interior chain-link structure that had been been constructed in the assembly area. Originally it had been intended to hold their inventory of needed parts. Now there was no assembly operation and no need for parts either.

One by one he removed the UAVs from the cage and deposited them on the remaining assembly tables. Installation of the programming upgrade took approximately fifteen minutes per drone. Once each one was finished, Mark loaded it into a specially designed cardboard shipping box. After cushioning the UAV with a collection of air-filled plastic bags, he then closed the box, taped it shut, and slapped on a suitable collection of labels. If anyone asked, these were model airplanes. Large model airplanes. Specially ordered model airplanes, manufactured in China and shipped to dealers in the United States.

As each box was loaded, closed, taped, and labeled, Mark carried them back to the cage and stacked them one on top of another. There was no particular hurry. The timetable Mina had given him said that she would return to the cabin sometime on Sunday and that they would deliver the finished UAVs to
Enrique on Tuesday. By Wednesday morning, Mark and Mina would be new people. Armed with new names and matching IDs, they would head off into their new lives.

Mark was excited by the prospect. He was ready for new faces and new places. He was still hurt and disappointed by the number of people he had thought of as friends who had simply turned their backs on Mark and Mina once they fell on hard times. Mark was ready to be someone else entirely. He wanted to go live on a tropical island somewhere with no worries except maybe what kind of fish to catch for dinner. He had tried running the show with Rutherford, and that hadn’t worked out very well for either of them. Now Mark was content to step back and let Mina do the running.

That wasn’t to say he wasn’t grateful, because he was. It was Mina’s wheeling and dealing that had made this deal possible. Mark’s part of the bargain was to be the on-site tech guy and have the UAVs properly reprogrammed, packed up, and ready for delivery. Ten hours later, right around midnight, Mark stacked the last box in the cage. After locking the door behind him, he put his tools away, turned off the lights, and set the alarm.

Leaving the warehouse, Mark decided he would reward a job well done by having some fun before leaving for home. Retracing his route back through the office park and back out onto Clairemont Mesa Boulevard, he pulled into the familiar parking lot of the Demon Sports Bar. When he had worked in the neighborhood, Mark had been a regular here. When he walked into the place just prior to last call, he was shocked by how much it had changed.

In the time Mark had been away, the Demon had apparently undergone a remarkable transformation. There was a redesigned menu. Flat-screen TVs had replaced the old rear-projection models. Settling onto a barstool, Mark looked around in search of a
familiar face, but a whole new crop of female bartenders and cocktail waitresses had replaced the ones he had known previously.

“What’ll you have?” the bartender asked. She was red-haired, good-looking, and maybe five years younger than Mina, which made her much younger than Mark.

“A draft beer and a burger,” he said with a wink, “with maybe a little salsa on the side.”

She gave him a look that said she got the message. “Coming right up,” she said.

So there’s been some turnover since I was here last,
Mark thought as he sipped that first beer.
No problem. If you’re a good enough tipper, it’s easy to win friends and influence people.

W
hen Ali let herself into the house well after four on Friday afternoon, the aroma of baking scones reminded her that this was Friday, and Sister Anselm was expected around five for what Leland liked to call his Cornish cream tea.