J. Jance - Hand of Evil

“Evie and I were good friends at one time,” Arabella continued wistfully. “We drifted apart the way friends sometimes do. Still, I was terribly saddened to hear of her passing.”

The fact that Aunt Evie and Arabella Ashcroft had once been friends was news to Ali, but surprise was quickly overtaken by a renewed sense of loss. Growing up Ali had felt blessed to have two mothers rather than one. Edie Larson and her never-married sister, Evelyn Hansen, had not only looked alike, they had worked together on a daily basis as partners in the Sugarloaf. In many ways-including their devotion to Ali-they had been very much alike, but they had also been subtly different.

Edie Larson was always the solid, practical one of the pair-quiet and down to earth. Edie never took shortcuts. She cooked everything from scratch, and her recreational reading consisted almost entirely of cookbooks. She liked to see art films-tea-and-cookies films, as Bob called them-and documentaries occasionally, but that was about it.

Aunt Evie had been a vivacious and outgoing Auntie Mame kind of character. She was someone with eclectic tastes, a fondness for practical jokes, and a real sense of fun. She had loved movies and books-all kinds of movies and all kinds of books. She had read voraciously, everything from potboilers to highbrow literary fiction. She had devoured musicals and knew the lyrics to countless Broadway hit songs. Even though Ali had been living in California at the time Aunt Evie had succumbed to a massive stroke, Ali had felt her lively aunt’s loss more than she would have thought possible. To this day Ali’s MP3 player was filled with the songs and music from Aunt Evie’s huge collection of tapes, records, and CDs. Chris had spent most of a previous Christmas vacation loading them into his mother’s player.

Hearing Aunt Evie’s name mentioned in passing brought back afresh the pain of losing her. “I miss her, too,” Ali said.

“I’m sure you do.”

Arabella turned to the waiting butler. “You may bring the tea now, Mr. Brooks.”

“Very well, madam,” he said, nodding his assent. With that, he turned and disappeared the way he had come, silently closing the heavy double doors behind him.

“So,” Arabella said.

Ali remembered that other long-ago interview. Anna Lee had begun hers in exactly the same way, but back then, Ali, dressed in her unaccustomed finery, had been ill at ease and unsure of what she should say. This time she was far more confident.

“I’ve been terribly remiss,” Ali said at once. “I should have stopped by years ago to thank both you and your mother for what you did for me when you awarded me that wonderful scholarship. I want you to know that your single act of kindness made a huge difference in my life.”

Arabella waved aside Ali’s gratitude. “It’s not necessary,” she said. “Not at all. You may have been our first scholarship recipient, Ms. Reynolds, but you certainly weren’t the last. My mother derived a lot of enjoyment from the process, and so have I.”

“Ali. Please call me Ali.”

“And you must call me Arabella. I have to say that searching out possible scholarship winners is a bit like having a new treasure hunt every single year,” the woman continued brightly. “We’ve resisted having a formal application process. Mr. Brooks works with me on this, you see. The two of us are a team. We track down deserving students and ferret them out on our own by talking to teachers and students and by asking questions in the community. That way we don’t end up having to ignore a deserving student just because of some hard-and-fast official guideline. In fact, although traditionally most of our recipients have been female, one of our recent winners happens to be a boy who’s majoring in nursing.”

The butler reappeared, bearing a familiar silver tray polished to a gleaming finish. In addition to the tea service and a collection of sandwiches and sweets there was also a silver cocktail shaker and a pair of long-stemmed glasses.

“Care for a pre-tea martini?” Arabella asked.

“No, thanks,” Ali said. “It’s a little early for me.”

“Not for me,” Arabella said, smiling her thanks as Brooks poured her drink from the shaker and handed it over. “One of my little indulgences,” she added.

There was something almost sly in the way Arabella said the words. Then, once the glass was in her hand, she stared into its depths for a long time without saying anything more. The silence went on long enough that it left Ali feeling slightly uncomfortable and made her wonder what, besides the freshly poured martini, Arabella Ashcroft was seeing there.

Once tea had been properly served, Brooks politely retreated once more. Only then did Arabella pick up the threads of their conversation.

“As I was saying, we’ve had many scholarship winners over the years. Two doctors, several teachers, a psychologist. One of our girls just got tapped to do some work for the human genome project-you know, that X-prize thing. I’ve tried to keep up with that DNA stuff, but I just can’t wrap my mind around some of it. Your exploits are a lot more interesting to me and a lot more understandable. I have your blog bookmarked on my iMAC,” Arabella added. “I read cutloose every day. It’s been a real eye-opener for me, an eye-opener and an inspiration.”

Exploits! Arabella’s unexpected use of the word caused a hot flush of embarrassment to bloom at the base of Ali’s neck. It spread from her collar to the roots of her hair. She had never given much thought as to how what was going on in her life-her very public firing and her equally public divorce proceedings-might play back home. Yes, she had realized that her family members-her parents and her son-would be affected by all of that, but she hadn’t considered that it might also reflect badly on people like the Ashcrofts, who had demonstrated such faith in her when they had awarded that very valuable college scholarship.

“Surely people don’t think you and your mother are somehow responsible for the things that have happened in my life.”

Arabella laughed. “Oh, no. Nothing like that. Not at all. But it is why I wanted to speak to you today,” she added. She paused long enough to refill her cocktail glass, emptying the shaker in the process.

Mystified and still more than slightly embarrassed, Ali waited, wondering where the rambling conversation was going.

“I was particularly taken by the way you dodged the bullet last fall,” Arabella continued. “How, when your husband was murdered over in California, the cops were so eager to blame it all on you.”

It turned out there had been more than just metaphorical bullets flying back then. There had been plenty of real bullets, too, and Ali had counted herself very fortunate to have avoided being hit by one or more of them. So, although Ali didn’t much like the turn the interview was taking, she answered politely nonetheless.

“For one thing, I had a whole stable of high-priced lawyers,” she said. “That’s always a necessary ingredient.”

“Yes,” Arabella said thoughtfully. “I suppose that’s true. Don’t get me wrong. I know there are times lawyers are a necessary evil, but I’m not keen on having what you call a ‘stable’ of them lingering in the background and soaking up money. As you no doubt know, they’re usually far too expensive.”

She sipped her drink and then continued. “I got the impression from reading cutloose that you didn’t stand around holding your breath and leaving everything to your attorneys, either. It seems to me you were quite…I think these days the term is called ‘proactive’…about the whole situation. I believe the relationship between you and your husband had been troubled for some time prior to his death. I happen to know from personal experience that when someone is busy making our lives difficult, it’s not so surprising that we might occasionally wish them dead.”