J.A. Jance's Ali Reynolds Mysteries 3-Book Boxed Set, Volume 2: Trial by Fire, Fatal Error, Left for Dead (77 page)

“I’ll call El Centro once we land,” he said.

Ali nodded. “Good.”

It was dark by the time they pulled into the terminal driveway. When the pilot saw them unloading several cardboard boxes, he
came out with a rolling luggage cart. “Should these be in front or in back?” he asked, sniffing with distaste when he caught a whiff of the odor.

“In front and belted in,” Ali said. “But in order to maintain the chain of evidence, Gil needs to sign them. Then we’ll need some transparent packing tape to put over his signature and seal the boxes shut. That should help some with the smell.”

After all, that was the whole point—maintaining the chain of evidence.

Once on the plane, they skipped the safety briefing because Ali’s phone was ringing. It was B. “You realize that what Stuart has been doing is right on the edge,” he said. “It’s actually over the edge. In tracking down the Blaylocks’ phone information, we’ve violated a whole bunch of privacy rules.”

“Yes, I know,” she said. “I’m sorry. But we’ve just uncovered another of Ermina Blaylock’s victims. That makes three in all—her father in Missouri, Richard Lowensdale in Grass Valley, and now, if I’m not mistaken, Mark Blaylock too, in Salton City. Not to mention Brenda Riley. Ermina is a maniac, B. We need to catch her before she gets away or has a chance to kill anyone else.”

B. sighed. “Where are you now?”

“On the plane, getting ready to fly to San Diego. I know, it’s a long shot, but that’s the only other address we have for her—the business park at Clairemont Mesa. Even though Rutherford International went out of business months ago, the utilities on two of their three office park units are still current. As broke as they are, there must be a reason those bills are being paid. We’re hoping she’ll show up there. Otherwise, we’ve got nowhere else to look.”

B. was quiet long enough that Ali worried he might have hung up on her. She didn’t blame him for being angry. When she had enlisted Stuart’s help, she had been so preoccupied with her own
concerns that she hadn’t thought about the long-term ramifications for High Noon Enterprises if any of this came to light.

“I’m sorry, B.,” she began, but he cut her off.

“I just had a thought,” he said. “I don’t know if it’ll work or not, but call me again once you land.”

“Who was that?” Gil asked, once she put her phone away.

“My boyfriend,” Ali said. “He’s also the technically savvy genius who’s behind the guy you call my phone meister. He seemed to think that he had come up with an idea that might help us find Ermina.”

“I hope so,” Gil said. “I’ve only been to San Diego a couple of times, one of which was to take the kids to the zoo. It’s a pretty big haystack, and Ermina Blaylock is a mighty small needle.”

The CJ rose precipitously through the cold night air. Soon Palm Springs and the surrounding cities were narrow strings of lights crisscrossing the darkened desert. Leaning back in her seat, Ali was thinking about B. and regretting the untenable position her actions had created for him and for his company.

“I don’t think they’re broke,” Gil said from across the aisle, interrupting her chain of self-recrimination.

“What?”

“I don’t think the Blaylocks were broke,” Gil said again. “At least not as broke as they led everyone to believe. First Ermina killed Richard Lowensdale. Then she went searching for something but didn’t find it.”

“How do you know she didn’t find it?”

“Because I did. There was a stash of empty motor oil bottles out in Richard’s garage. Hidden inside I found fifty thousand dollars in cash and these.”

Gil reached into the pocket of his jeans and pulled out the two thumb drives and handed them over to her. “I don’t have a computer at home, so I didn’t try to look at them, but between
these and the cash, I figure we’re dealing with one of two things. Either Lowensdale had found out about Ermina’s background and was trying to blackmail her, or else he was still working for her. My guess, it’s the latter rather than the former. Once the guy outlived his usefulness, Ermina got rid of him. She got rid of your friend Brenda too, after planting evidence that would make us believe Brenda was responsible for Richard Lowensdale’s death.”

“What evidence?” Ali asked.

“Three of Richard Lowensdale’s fingers were hacked off with kitchen shears before he died,” Gil said quietly. “We found his thumb in Brenda’s purse, which was left at the Scotts Flat Reservoir. I have no doubt that Brenda’s body is there too. It’s just going to take time for it to float to the surface. I know they have underwater equipment that could expedite a search, but I doubt the county can afford it.”

“Brenda was a friend of mine,” Ali said. “I kept hoping we’d find her alive.”

“I know,” Gil said. “I’m sorry. What do you think about the thumb drives?”

“I left my computer in Laguna Beach,” she said. “When we get to the terminal in San Diego, I’ll handle the car rental. Then while you load the car, I’ll see if I can log on to one of the computers and send B. whatever’s on the thumb drives. Then you can have them back.”

“What’s his name?” Gil asked.

“B.,” Ali said. “B. Simpson. He was born Bartholomew Simpson; people used to call him Bart. He got tired of being teased about that. He changed his name to B. Period.”

“I don’t blame him,” Gil said. “I think I would have done the same thing.”

When the plane parked next to the terminal at Montgomery Field, Phil Canby came to open the door. “Clairemont Mesa’s
just to the right of us,” he said, motioning. “Your car is here on the tarmac.”

“Do you think I could use a computer in the FBO?” Ali asked.

“I don’t see why not,” Phil said. “It doesn’t hurt to ask.”

Ali hurried into the terminal, where the receptionist took her back into a computer-stocked room that was usually reserved for pilot use only. As she plugged the first of the thumb drives into the computer’s USB port, she worried that Richard Lowensdale might have booby-trapped the drive so it would self-destruct if anyone else tried to open it. Rather than opening it, she simply copied the data as an attachment into an e-mail and sent it both to B. and to Stuart. She was in the process of uploading the second drive when her phone rang.

“Since you just sent me an e-mail, I’m assuming you’re on the ground,” B. said.

“Sorry,” Ali told him. “I wanted to send these first.”

“I know. Stuart and I will both take a look at them in a minute, but right now, I have some good news. That phone call Ermina made went to the local Hertz rental line. I went into their computer system. Two minutes after that call, a San Diego car rental reservation record shows up in the Hertz database in the name of Sophia Stanhope. She picked it up an hour later. A silver Cadillac DTS. She’s supposed to drop it off at the rental return at LAX tomorrow.”

“Who’s Sophia Stanhope?”

“She’s supposedly a divorcée from Sarajevo,” B. said. “I’d be willing to bet she’s really Ermina Blaylock, traveling with some kind of forged documents.”

“Do you happen to have the tab number on that rented Caddy?” Ali asked.

B. laughed. “What do you think? Am I a full-service hacker or not?”

“Definitely full-service,” Ali replied.

By the time she finished writing down the license information, Gil was standing looking over her shoulder.

“What’s that?”

She gave him the note. “It’s the plate number for a silver Cadillac DTS someone named Sophia Stanhope rented from a local Hertz agency earlier this evening,” Ali told him. “Sophia and Ermina are most likely one and the same, and you may want to revise that BOLO to have information on both this vehicle and the other one. And you should probably expand it to include both the L.A. and San Diego metropolitan areas.”

After sending the second e-mail, she removed the second thumb drive and handed both drives over to Gil. “Copied only,” she assured him. “Did nothing with the data.”

Nodding, he returned the two drives to his pocket. “Okay,” he said. “You finish signing for the car. I’m going to call El Centro and see if they’ll put me through to the detective.”

Gil had pulled the rental car—a Mercury Marquis—through the airport gate and parked it in front of the terminal. When Ali opened the door, she was grateful that the cardboard boxes had been banished to the trunk. She found a Kevlar vest, size L, hanging on the steering wheel. She put it on.

There was no way to tell if Ermina Blaylock would be armed. If she was planning on traveling by air, she most likely wouldn’t try to carry a weapon on board an international flight, but between then and now, all bets were off.

While Ali waited for Gil to emerge from the terminal, she called Stuart back.

“You’re certainly keeping the phone lines humming today,” he said. “I thought B. was going to hand me my walking papers when he found out what we’d been up to.”

“He didn’t, did he?” Ali asked guiltily.

“No. In fact, I think he’ll be getting back to Hertz very soon
to let them know that their secure rental database isn’t especially secure. So what can I do for you now?”

“I need the addresses of those two locations in San Diego where Mark and Mina Blaylock are still paying the utilities.”

“Easy,” Stuart said. “Here you go.”

By the time Gil got into the car, Ali had already loaded the address on Engineer Road into the rental’s NeverLost GPS system. It turned out the two addresses in question were less than two miles from where they were currently parked.

“I thought it was something when I got on the plane in Grass Valley, but this is amazing,” he said, as he picked up his own Kevlar vest and pulled it on over his golf shirt. “You fly up in your sweet little corporate jet and the car is parked right there on the tarmac waiting for you. No security lines. No baggage check. No car rental lines.”

“It’s fast,” she said. “It’s convenient.”

“And expensive,” he put in.

“That too.”

“So what’s your connection to all of this?” he asked.

“To Lowensdale’s case?”

Gil nodded.

“Guilt,” she said. “I’m the one who blew the whistle on Richard Lowensdale in the first place. Until I came up with that first background check, Brenda didn’t even know what the man’s name was, much less anything about the other women . . .”

Gil looked at his watch. “Crap,” he said.

“What’s wrong?”

“Janet Silvie, one of Richard’s many girlfriends, is probably on her way into Grass Valley right this minute. She was flying into Sacramento today, and I’m not there to talk to her.”

“What are you going to do?” Ali asked.

“Call the desk sergeant, Frieda Lawson,” he said. “If anyone can pull my fat out of the fire, she’s the one.”

While Gil dialed a number on his cell phone, Ali added a new waypoint to the GPS and drove to the nearest Carl’s Jr. It had been a very long time since breakfast. If she and Gilbert Morris were going to be stuck in a car on a long stakeout, Ali was determined not to starve in the process.

While Ali pulled the Mercury into the drive-up line at Carl’s Jr., Gil was busy having his ass chewed. Over strongly voiced protests, his call to the desk sergeant had been put through to the chief’s office. Unfortunately Chief Jackman was in.

“Do you realize I have not just one but two hysterical women here in the department, both of them raising hell?” Jackman demanded.

“Two,” Gil echoed.

“Yes, two. Someone named Dawn Carras showed up an hour or so ago with a worthless little dog that seems to want to take a piss on every chair leg in the waiting room. When Sergeant Lawson couldn’t reach you, she called me instead. Thanks a lot. So I was here handling that crisis when Janet Silvie shows up. Now they’re out in the lobby having a screaming match. You need to get your butt in here right now and take care of it.”

“I can’t,” Gil said.

“Why the hell not?”

“Because I’m in San Diego.”

“San Diego?” Jackman roared. “I told you to take the day off. I didn’t say you could go to San Diego.”

“You didn’t say I couldn’t,” Gil said. “And if you’ll look on the roster, you’ll see I won’t be in tomorrow either. It’s a comp day. I worked eight days straight.”

“Detective Morris, that sounds a lot like insubordination.”

“It’s sounds like time to file a grievance to me,” Gil returned, and ended the call.

Pulling out of the drive-up, Ali handed him a bag with a burger, fries, and a soda. “I guess it’s safe to assume that didn’t go too well.”

“Actually, I think it’s fine,” Gil said. “Leaving Randy Jackman to deal with two hysterical women and a pissy little dog is exactly what the man deserves. Now where are we?”

“That’s Engineer Road right up ahead,” she said, driving into a maze of streets lined with similarly constructed office buildings and warehouses. “We’re going to drive around and see if we can see any sign of either the Cadillac or the Lincoln. If she traded that Lincoln of hers for a rented Cadillac, she might have left the Lincoln parked somewhere nearby.”

When Gil’s phone rang again a few minutes later, he expected it would be Jackman again. It wasn’t.

“Detective Manuel Moreno with the Imperial County Sheriff’s Department. I understand you called my department to say you might have some information in regard to my Salton City homicide. So I have two questions. Who are you and what kind of information?”

“I’m Gilbert Morris, a homicide dick with the Grass Valley Police Department. I’m investigating a homicide too, one that happened on Friday of last week. I have reason to believe you and I share a suspect. So let me ask you about Mark Blaylock. You know his death is a homicide rather than a suicide?”

There was a pause. Gil could imagine Detective Moreno staring at the cubicle wall in front of his desk, wondering if he should answer the question or tell Gil to go to hell.

“It could be suicide,” Moreno said. “We found an empty bottle of Ambien in the trash and took it into evidence. What we didn’t
find was any kind of suicide note. At all. The coroner says the victim died sometime overnight last night, probably right around midnight. This morning his wife gets up bright and early, locks up the house, and then takes off for parts unknown without bothering to dial nine-one-one and without mentioning that her beloved husband is dead in their bed. And if it hadn’t been for someone encouraging a nosy neighbor to go check on Mr. Blaylock’s welfare, it could have been days or weeks before anyone found him. So what do you think, homicide or suicide?”