J. Jance - Hand of Evil

When the interview had ended, Mrs. Springer had given Ali her direct telephone number and invited her to call if she ever wanted to chat. But at least three years had passed since then, and Ali had been away from California and out of the loop for part of that time. As she dialed the number, she worried that she’d hear a recorded message saying that the number had been disconnected. She did not.

“Hello. Hello,” Deb Springer’s cracked voice announced. “Just a minute. Hold on until I get my hearing aid out. There now. Who’s calling, please?”

“Alison Reynolds,” Ali answered. “I used to be on TV in L.A. I did an interview with you.”

“Oh, yes. For my ninetieth. Ali, how good of you to call. I understand they put you out to pasture, too. When is the world going to figure out that women don’t wear out nearly as soon as the old boys think we do? Of course, a lot of very smart men are turned out before their time as well. It’s all very shortsighted, if you ask me, so don’t get me started.”

At the time of the Springer taping, Ali had just passed forty. It hadn’t remotely occurred to her that she was already on the slippery slope of ageism. No doubt Deb Springer had known that even then.

“What can I do for you?” Deb asked.

“I’m working on a research project,” Ali answered. “I was hoping you could help me out.”

“What kind of research?”

“William Cowan Ashcroft,” Ali returned.

“Which William Cowan Ashcroft?” Deb wanted to know. “Number one, two, or three? I know more about Senior than I do two and three.”

Not only was Mrs. Deborah Springer not dead, she was still as bright as she had ever been.

“All of the above,” Ali said. “For argument’s sake let’s start with number one.”

Just then call waiting buzzed. Ali checked and saw the number of the Sugarloaf Cafe. That meant it was her mother calling. Edie Larson would have to wait.

“I’ve seen pictures of him from back in the early days. You probably would have called him a hunk,” Deb Springer said. “He was good-looking. In fact, he was movie-star handsome-a widowed father with a young son, a single struggling car dealership in San Diego, and a reputation for being something of a bounder when Amelia Askins tapped him to marry her daughter, Anna Lee.”

“Tapped him?” Ali asked. “As in picked him out for an arranged marriage?”

“Exactly,” Deb answered. “A necessary marriage. A hurry-up marriage. Anna Lee was in a family way, you see, and a suitable husband was needed in short order. Bill Ashcroft was a very eligible bachelor who was about to go bust and needed an infusion of cash in order to keep going. Amelia Askins came from old East Coast shipping money, and Anna Lee was her only heir. I’m not at all sure the match was a very good deal for Anna Lee, but for her husband, it was a whale of a bargain. As the Depression deepened and car dealerships were going belly up left and right, Ashcroft was able to buy like crazy. And when World War Two came along, he had diversified enough that he was able to weather that storm as well.”

“And the baby?”

“Her name was Arabella.”

“So Arabella Ashcroft is an Ashcroft in name only?” Ali asked.

“Pretty much. Rumor had it that she was never quite right somehow, and neither was her parents’ marriage. Anna Lee moved to Arizona sometime in the fifties. She and Bill Senior never divorced, but they didn’t live together most of the time they were married, either. I assumed he didn’t divorce her because she might have taken her fortune with her and that would have left him high and dry. As for why Anna Lee didn’t divorce him? I can’t imagine. I certainly would have. She was an attractive woman who deserved better.”

“So it was a marriage of convenience then?” Ali asked.

“On both sides,” Deb said. “Come to think of it, she may have had a few outside interests as well. Sauce for the goose and all that, but right this minute I can’t dredge up any details. Everyone knew what was going on but nobody reported on that back then. It wasn’t considered proper in a family newspaper.”

Bearing in mind what had happened with Ali’s own philandering husband, it seemed as though nothing had changed in the intervening years. Lots of people had known about Paul’s carrying on. No one had mentioned his numerous affairs to Ali.

“Do you know if Bill Ashcroft number one had a sister?” Ali asked.

Deb paused. “I seem to remember he did, a younger sister maybe. I believe she died tragically and at a very young age. I don’t remember if it was an illness, an accident, or what.”

Suicide is tragic, all right, Ali thought. It’s definitely not an accident.

“Tell me about Bill Ashcroft number two,” she prompted.

“People called him The Hand.” Deb Springer returned. “I never met him, but everybody who knew him said he was a piece of work. Nowadays they’d call him an arrogant asshole who was conveniently 4-F and didn’t have to go off to fight in World War Two. Everyone pretty well figured Bill Senior had paid off the doctor.”

“They called him The Hand?” Ali repeated. “Where did that come from?”

“Mostly because he didn’t have one,” Deb replied. “A hand that is. He lost it early on in some kind of accident. Injured it badly enough that the doctors had to amputate. After the operation, he insisted on keeping it. Pickled it in formaldehyde and took it with him when he left the hospital.

“The name came along a few years later. He was running several of his father’s car dealerships, and it came time to fire one of the managers. Bill Junior called the poor guy into his office and told him, ‘You may have been expecting a gold watch, but here’s what you’re getting instead-a wave.’ Then he opened his briefcase, pulled out the jar with his hand in it, and set it on the desk. I was told the poor guy who got fired puked the whole way out the door.”

“Nice,” Ali said.

“Not,” Deb returned. “There was nothing nice about him. He was a wart. From then on, Bill Junior always kept the jar with him, just in case he needed to fire somebody. But he was also a show-off and a drinker. Even with only one hand, he bought himself a Corvette when he shouldn’t have. He had it specially equipped with some kind of leather cuff so he could steer with his left wrist, but nobody was really surprised when he drove himself off a cliff just north of the Golden Gate Bridge. As I recall, nobody was particularly sorry about it, either, including his relatively new wife of less than a year who was already separated from him at the time he died.”

“Less than a year? That was quick,” Ali said.

Deb Springer laughed. “I’ll say. There were rumors at the time that he had a thing for little girls, but as far as I know that’s all they ever were-just rumors.”

Not to hear Arabella tell it, Ali thought.

“Which brings us to number three.”

“After Junior died, Grandpa held his daughter-in-law’s feet to the fire. There was an ugly custody battle. When the legal maneuvering was over, Senior got custody of the baby and raised him himself. After the old man died in the mid-eighties, number three wasn’t much interested in cars. He sold off the car dealership empire his grandfather and father had built and set about squandering the money-something he was evidently very good at. What’s he doing these days? I heard he was caught up in some shady real estate dealings.”

“He’s dead,” Ali said. “Someone murdered him.”

Call waiting buzzed again. Again Ali ignored it.

“There you go,” Deb Springer said. “Good riddance.”

“What about Arabella?” Ali asked. “Do you know anything about her?”