J. Jance - Hand of Evil

Ali drove uptown and then on up into what had been one of Sedona’s pioneering subdivisions, dating from the early 1950s. In the intervening years since her last visit, lots of houses had sprouted on the winding streets and cul-de-sacs on the lower part of the hillside. Those various homes, nice though they were, somehow betrayed their dated heydays like so many beads on a retrospective architectural necklace. But the Ashcroft place, situated at the top of the ridge and overlooking them all, was by far the oldest and still the undisputed top of the heap.

Ali saw the first small differences almost at once. The paved surface of the narrow, steep drive had once been a ribbon of pristinely smooth blacktop. Now the pavement was scarred with numerous webs of patched cracks and pockmarked with all sizes of potholes.

She pulled into the circular driveway at the top of the hill and gazed out at Arabella Ashcroft’s unparalleled view. As a high school senior, Ali had been dazzled by the low-slung house with its massive windows set in deep, shady overhangs. She hadn’t been experienced enough back then to recognize the stylish home’s origins. Now she did. Clearly the Ashcroft place was a variation on a Frank Lloyd Wright theme-a Frank Lloyd Wright copycat if not the real thing.

In Ali’s memory the place had loomed large so as to seem almost palatial. Compared to where her parents lived in a humble two-bedroom apartment behind the restaurant, the Ashcroft place was still large and lush. What had really changed was Ali’s own perspective. She had spent almost a decade living in the oversize grandeur of Paul Grayson’s Beverly Hills mansion, in a place where appearances always outgunned substance. It was that experience that accounted for the startling reduction of Anna Lee Ashcroft’s once seemingly massive house.

There was still an undisputed air of quality about the place, but there were also signs of slippage. Some of the paint in the window surrounds was chipped and flaking. A few of the red roof tiles had evidently come to grief. The replacements didn’t quite match the color of the original, giving the roof a somewhat spotty, freckled look.

The aged wisteria Ali remembered still covered the wide front porch, helping to shade it from the afternoon sun. Now, though, it wasn’t blooming. Instead, its gnarled limbs were bare and gray in the high desert’s January chill.

Ali stepped onto the porch, where the front doors could clearly benefit from some of Kip Hogan’s newly acquired refinishing skills. The varnish was faded and peeling. This time, when she rang the bell, no uniformed maid appeared. Instead, the door was opened by the white-jacketed, white-haired man who, in a somewhat different outfit, had also delivered Ali’s invitation earlier that morning. Seeing him this way confirmed Ali’s earlier suspicion that this was the selfsame butler who had served tea on Anna Lee Ashcroft’s screened porch all those years earlier. Back then, as a high school senior, Ali had thought of him as downright ancient. Years later, he didn’t seem to have changed all that much.

“Good afternoon, madam,” he announced with a stiff but polite half bow. “So good of you to come. Miss Arabella is waiting in the living room. Right this way, please.”

The foyer was familiar but surprisingly chilly. The entryway rug was the same one Ali remembered. Back then she hadn’t been all that impressed by it. Now she realized she should have been. It was a fine old Aubusson, thin and threadbare in spots, its intricate designs faded and worn down by decades of use. Ali recalled that a massive crystal vase had stood on the inlaid wood entryway table facing the door, and a similar-size vase stood there now. On Ali’s previous visit, the vase had brimmed with a huge bouquet of fresh-cut flowers. Now it stood empty and forlorn. A thin film of dust fogged the surface.

The butler turned to his left, pushed open a pair of heavy double doors, and led Ali into a living room that, although still spacious, seemed much smaller than Ali remembered. The furniture and rugs, though, were virtually unchanged-at least the fabrics and placement were the same-but again Ali noted subtle differences. Thirty years ago the silk-upholstered couches and chairs and polished wood end tables had been evidence of a stylish elegance. Now, like the well-used rug in the foyer, these things, too, had a dated and somewhat shabby air. For a moment Ali felt as though she had wandered into a time capsule-a museum diorama devoted to some long faded glory-rather than into a house occupied by living, breathing inhabitants.

All those small details, taken together, left Ali thinking that perhaps Arabella Ashcroft had fallen on hard times. Yes, there was a shiny Rolls-Royce stowed in the garage and it might well tool around town driven by a trusted family retainer who filled in as butler and chauffeur and probably chief cook and bottle washer as well, but the look of the place made Ali wonder if there weren’t times when Arabella Ashcroft had difficulty finding the wherewithal to fill the gas tank. Maybe, in the course of all those intervening years, there had been a complete reversal of fortunes between the well-to-do, sophisticated Ashcrofts and the awkward, small-town girl who had benefited from their largesse.

The living room was considerably warmer than the foyer had been, and the air in the room was alive with the sharp scent of mesquite wood smoke and the crackle of a roaring fire. Roving wintertime burn bans may have caused most of Sedona’s wood-burning fireplaces to morph into ones fired by gas, but not this one.

At the far end of the room, two overstuffed leather chairs sat in front of the immense river rock fireplace. What appeared to be a tree-size log blazed on the hearth. A gray-haired woman, dwarfed by the huge chairs, sat upright in one of them. In front of her, on a rolling cart of some kind, was the one thing in the room that didn’t quite fit-a sleek white computer monitor. Coming closer, Ali recognized the computer as an iMAC. The computer was almost identical to the one in Chris’s room and included a wireless keyboard and mouse.

“Ms. Reynolds,” the butler announced with all due ceremony.

The woman immediately moved the computer aside. Smiling and looking for all the world like her mother, Arabella Ashcroft stood to meet her arriving guest, pulling a shawl around her shoulders with one hand and offering the other one in greeting. Her dark gray hair was pulled back in a simple French roll. She peered at Ali through thick, eye-distorting horn-rimmed glasses. She wore a pair of slacks and a blue cashmere sweater with a matching cardigan. Her outfit was topped by a single strand of pearls. Ali guessed that the pearls, unlike Aunt Evie’s, were real, and she didn’t doubt for a minute that the sweater set had cost a bundle at one time, too. As they shook hands, however, Ali noticed that the wrist of one sleeve of the cardigan had been carefully mended. Not even Ali’s thrifty mother did that kind of mending anymore.

“My goodness,” Arabella exclaimed, staring at Ali for a long moment. “How extraordinary! I had forgotten how much you resemble your Aunt Evelyn!”

Ali Reynolds was Scandinavian on both branches of her family and had inherited a full complement of tall, blue-eyed blondeness that had served her well in her television news career. And she was accustomed to being told how much she resembled her mother just as Arabella Ashcroft favored hers. Ali wasn’t nearly as used to being told she looked like her Aunt Evelyn.

“Since my mother and Aunt Evie were twins, I don’t suppose that’s too surprising,” Ali observed with a smile.

“No,” Arabella agreed. “I suppose not. Please, sit down.”

Ali sat and so did Arabella. During that previous visit, Arabella had lingered in the background while her mother did the talking. Now it appeared as though Arabella had come into her own and moved out of Anna Lee’s shadow.