J.A. Jance's Ali Reynolds Mysteries 3-Book Boxed Set, Volume 2: Trial by Fire, Fatal Error, Left for Dead (57 page)

He let himself into the house. The AC was on. That was the funny thing about this part of the desert. Overnight you’d need to turn on the heat. During the late afternoon, you’d have to turn on the AC.

But if Mina was behind that closed bedroom door, Mark didn’t want to disturb her. There would be questions—a real grilling—
about where he’d been, who he had been with, and what he had been doing. No, better to let sleeping dogs lie.

Mark was still about half drunk. He grabbed one more bottle of beer out of the fridge, kicked off his shoes, and then lay down on the couch. Fortunately it was long enough for him to stretch out full length. In no time at all, he was fast asleep.

W
e did it,
Ali told herself when two thirty finally rolled around that Saturday afternoon and she was able to lock the restaurant’s front door.

She and Jan Howard met in the middle of the dining room to give one another high-fives, then they both turned their attention to the cleaning, sweeping, and mopping necessary for the Sugarloaf to be ready to open the next morning when Bob and Edie Larson returned. There had been some question about their possibly returning on an earlier flight. That wasn’t Ali’s concern. All she wanted to know was that they would be in charge come Sunday morning and that she wouldn’t.

The substitute cook finished cleaning up the kitchen and left for the day. Jan and Ali were within minutes of leaving themselves when the door opened and in walked Bob and Edie.

“We’re home!” Bob announced, beaming proudly. He was as tanned as Ali remembered ever seeing him. “That cruise was just what the doctor ordered and it doesn’t look like you managed to burn the place down while we were gone.”

Ali put down her broom and let herself be engulfed in one of her father’s bear hugs, then she went on to hug her mother.

“I take it you caught the earlier flight,” Ali observed.

“You know your father. Once we got off the boat, he was hot to trot to get home. He wanted to get here in time to make sure everything was shipshape for tomorrow.”

As Bob drifted away to inspect the status of his kitchen, Edie sank into one of the booths.

“How was it?” Ali asked.

“Glorious,” Edie replied. “I’ve never had so much fun in my life, not even when you and your aunt Evie and I went to England. Your father was like a kid again. You should have seen him on the dance floor.”

Ali was taken aback at her mother’s effusiveness, and the idea of her father on a dance floor was beyond belief. “Dad can dance?”

“Yes, he can,” Edie said. “We have the photos to prove it. The fridge at home is empty, of course. I was going to run to the store before dinner, but we called Athena and Chris while we were riding up from Phoenix in the shuttle. They invited us to come to dinner—all of us, you included. Athena said they have the nursery pulled together. They want to show it to us.”

Suddenly Athena’s urgency to have the nursery completely finished on Friday made a lot more sense. If the sorting and folding was all done before Bob and Edie got home, there would be no need for Edie Larson to do it.

“You’re sure they won’t mind if I tag along?” Ali asked.

“Scout’s honor,” Edie said with a smile. “What about B.?”

“He’s in D.C. this week,” Ali said. “A conference this weekend and meetings next week.”

“Too bad,” Edie said. “We’ll miss him.”

I do too
, Ali thought.

Once Ali was in the car, she dialed Chris’s number. “Mom and
Dad told me I was invited to dinner,” Ali said. “But I’m checking with you all the same.”

“It’s fine. Athena wants to show off the nursery,” Chris said. “I’m barbecuing.”

The thermometer on the Cayenne’s dashboard indicated the outside temperature was in the low forties.

“Isn’t it a little cold for barbecuing?” Ali asked.

“Believe me, Mom,” Chris said, “right this minute, freezing my butt off over an outdoor grill is preferable to making any kind of a mess in the kitchen. Athena would have a fit.”

“She’s into nesting?” Ali asked.

“I’ll say,” Chris replied. “In a big way.”

“It’s a good thing you got that nursery situation handled,” Ali said. “I don’t care what Dr. Dixon says about the official due date. If the nesting instinct has come into play, the twins are liable to turn up any day now. What time is dinner?”

“Grandpa and Grandma are operating on East Coast time. They asked to eat early. I told them to come around five or so.”

“Great,” Ali said. “I’m catching a plane for L.A. at ten o’clock tonight, but if I leave Sedona by six, that should give me plenty of time to eat and run.”

“You’re going to California?” Chris asked. “Now? How come?”

Ali explained about what was going on with Velma, who had actually been among the out-of-town guests at Athena and Chris’s wedding.

“Don’t worry, though,” Ali said. “If those babies of yours decide to make an early appearance, I’ll be able to get myself home in a hurry.”

Back at the house, Ali retreated to her room, where she showered and dressed. Then, after packing a single suitcase, she was on her way out the door for dinner when B. called. He was back in his hotel room for a few minutes before a dinner meeting.

“Your week at the Sugarloaf is over,” he said. “Did you live?”

“I’m not sure my feet did,” Ali answered with a laugh. “And I’m not sure how my parents do this day after day, week after week, and year after year, but they do. They’re back, though. Had a great time. We’re all meeting up at Chris and Athena’s for dinner. The nursery is twin-ready, and they want to show it off. After that I have a plane to catch.”

“A plane? Where are you going?”

Over the next few minutes, she brought B. up to date about her e-mail from Velma and the troubling phone call from Camilla Gastellum. She explained that after seeing Velma, if Brenda still hadn’t turned up, Ali planned to make a quick dash up to Sacramento to see if she could be of help to Camilla.

“Let me get this straight,” B. said thoughtfully. “Brenda went missing right after she asked you for that background check?”

“That’s how it seems,” Ali said.

“So the two things could be connected.”

“Brenda’s mother seems to think she just fell off the wagon, but it’s possible,” Ali agreed.

“What time are you heading for the airport?”

“My L.A.-bound flight leaves Sky Harbor ten p.m. I’ll come back home right after dinner, then Leland will drive me down to Phoenix and drop me off.”

“I’ll give Stuart a call and see what, if anything, he’s come up with on the background check. I’ll ask him to swing by with whatever he has before then so you’ll be able to take it with you.”

When Ali reached Chris and Athena’s place, her parents were already there. Chris, wearing a jacket, was out on the deck overseeing the grill. Bob and Edie had come equipped with a stack of cruise photos and were inflicting on their granddaughter-in-law their tandem cruise travelogue.

“And here’s the girl who made it happen,” Bob said heartily
when Ali joined them. “Cruises are great. I can hardly wait to go on another one, maybe an Alaskan cruise next summer, if we can talk you into looking after the Sugarloaf again. Everything is clean as a whistle. You did a great job.”

“Now look what you’ve done,” Edie said, smiling at Ali. “You’ve turned your father into a cruise-loving monster. Who would have thought it?”

Certainly not Ali.

“Now sit,” her father ordered. “Let me show you the pictures. Edie already managed to download and print most of them.”

There were candid shots as well as a collection of standard cruise ship photos. One showed Bob and Edie coming on board and standing at the top of the gangplank. Another showed them dressed in formal attire. It was only the second time in her life that Ali had seen her father in a tux. A third showed them standing together on a sandy beach.

From the wide grins on their faces in the various photos, it was clear that Bob and Edie had been having a great time. They had some videos as well. Chris came in long enough to download those onto his iMac for all to see. Ali deemed the one of Bob attempting to dance the limbo and coming to grief in the sand as worthy of either YouTube or America’s Funniest Videos.

By the time Ali finally left Chris and Athena’s, it was later than it should have been. There was enough time to make the plane, but just barely.

Back at the house she found Leland pacing in the kitchen and checking his watch. Ali’s packed suitcase sat on the floor next to the door into the garage. “We don’t have much time,” he said, “but don’t forget. Both your Taser and your Glock need to be in your checked luggage.”

“Thanks,” Ali said. Without his timely reminder, she might well have forgotten.

When she had finished stowing both of those, Leland handed her a thick manila envelope. “Stuart Ramey from High Noon dropped this off a little while ago. I’m assuming you want to take it along as well.”

“Thanks,” Ali said, stuffing it in her purse. “Something to read along the way.”

But reading it along the way didn’t happen. She was beyond tired. The week’s hard work had taken a physical and mental toll. With Leland behind the wheel, she fell asleep almost as soon as she got in the car. She made it to Sky Harbor with just enough time to clear security before boarding her plane. Once the flight was airborne, she fell asleep again.

What Ali really wanted to do was collapse into her very own bed and sleep for twenty-four hours straight, but that wasn’t in the cards. She had told Velma Trimble and Camilla Gastellum that she was coming to see them, and she was. What kind of condition she’d be in by the time she got there was anybody’s guess.

Ali had made arrangements for a rental car to be waiting at LAX. Knowing she’d be arriving in the middle of the night, she had made a hotel reservation at the airport Hilton. By the time she collected her luggage and her car and staggered up to the hotel registration desk, she was just barely upright.

Ali fell into her unfamiliar hotel bed. Lying awake for a few short minutes, she was grateful that it was her mother who would be in charge of the Sugarloaf Café in a few short hours. Walking in Edie’s very capable shoes for just one week had left Ali exhausted.

She fell into a deep sleep. There may have been countless airplanes passing overhead and traffic streaming by outside, but Ali didn’t hear any of it. She was far too tired.

A
t precisely 3:28 a.m. on Sunday morning, Florence Haywood smelled smoke. Flossie’s maternal grandmother had been a smoker, and she had died a gruesome death when she fell asleep while smoking in bed. Florence had been only six at the time, but that event had a lasting influence on her life. She was scared to death of house fires. Her husband, Jimmy, assured her that their motor home was completely safe, but Flossie remained unconvinced. She insisted that he replace the batteries in their smoke alarm every six months rather than once a year, just to be on the safe side.

For the past ten years, starting in November, she and Jim had driven their aging Pontiac down from Bismarck, North Dakota, so they could spend the worst five months of winter in their motor home near the Salton Sea. Their “affordable” RV lot was part of a mostly failed residential subdivision called Heron Ridge, where they had an electrical hookup, a concrete slab, and nothing else. Once a week they had to drive into town to empty the RV’s holding tanks.

The beach cabin closest to them belonged to Mark Blaylock. For several years, Mark had been the cabin’s sole sometime occupant. Up until a few months ago, Flossie and Jimmy had assumed he was single. In the past two months, however, his witch of a wife, a woman named Mina, had shown up. She had been living at the cabin more or less on a full-time basis ever since.

Flossie believed in being neighborly, and she had done her best, but Mina had rebuffed all of Flossie’s best efforts. She had taken over a plateful of freshly baked cookies. She had given cookies to Mark Blaylock on occasion, and she knew chocolate chip cookies were his particular favorite. Mina had accepted the plate but hadn’t bothered to invite Flossie inside.

Fine,
Flossie told herself.
Be that way.

She continued to be on good terms with Mark, but she had nothing further to do with his standoffish wife.

That Sunday morning, after pulling on her robe and ascertaining that there was no sign of fire inside their RV, Flossie went from window to window. Flossie’s recent cataract surgery had left her with something she had never had before—perfect 20/20 vision. Once she located the source of the flames, she could see quite clearly that Mina Blaylock was standing outside, wrapped in a coat, and tossing items into the already roaring fire burning in her husband’s trusty Weber grill.

Yes, there was definitely some wood smoke thrown into the mix. Mark Blaylock usually ordered a cord of mesquite each fall that was delivered to the far end of his lot. This year he hadn’t ordered new wood. Last year’s load was dwindling, but there was definitely a hint of mesquite in the smoke Flossie smelled.

But there was something else too. Flossie was old enough to remember how back in the old days before there were plastic trash containers at the end of every dirt road in America, people had been responsible for their own garbage. Many people, especially
people living out of town, had maintained their own personal burning barrels. That’s exactly what this smoke smelled like—burning garbage.

The whole thing seemed odd. Flossie was tempted to go outside and ask Mina if everything was all right, just to see what she’d say, but then Jimmy woke up.

“Floss,” he called from the bedroom. “Are you coming back to bed or not?”

“Coming,” Flossie said. “I’ll be right there.”

T
he call came into the Nevada County Emergency Communications Center at ten past eight on a cold but quiet Sunday morning. It was January in the foothills of the Sierras, but it was also unseasonably warm. It wasn’t snowing or raining, and the roads were relatively clear. The Saturday night drunks had all managed to make it home without killing themselves or anyone else.