J. Jance - Web of Evil

Officer Ramsey seemed ready to object, but Oliveras silenced him with a single but definitive shake of her head. "All right," she said. "We can talk to her later. Just call and let us know where she ends up."

The cops disappeared shortly thereafter. Their departure removed a lot of the drama from the room. With their attention lagging, the other occupants turned to their own, more pressing physical ailments and bodily concerns.

Ali and company made the return trip to their hotel room in much the same way they had exited hours beforethrough the back door and, with the help of the bell captain, up the service elevator. An hour later April was wrapped in a thick terry-cloth robe and tucked into a bed in the darkened bedroom of a two-room suitethe only room available on that floorjust down the hall from the one Ali was sharing with her mother. Once April was settled in, Ali went out into the living room, closing the bedroom door behind her.

"Is she asleep?" Victor asked.

"Resting," Ali said. "Not asleep. She asked the hospital to call my cell once her mother's in the recovery room. Then we'll take April back to the hospital."

Victor Angeleri was seated at the desk in the corner, staring morosely at the telephone. He nodded absently.

"You were talking to someone on the phone?" Ali asked.

He nodded again.

"Did you find out why those cops are so interested in talking to me?"

"Unfortunately, yes. Somebody's leaked the contents of Grayson's will to the press," Victor replied. "That means that now the whole world knows that despite your marital difficulties, you're still your husband's primary beneficiary. As far as John Q. Public is concerned, that makes you a prime suspect in Paul Grayson's murder. And the cops are going to be operating on that same wavelength. I expect we'll be hearing from Detectives Sims and Taylor again real soon."

"How can information about the will be out in public?" Ali demanded. "The will hasn't been filed in court, so it isn't a matter of public record. Who would have leaked it?"

"Good question. Presumably one of my erstwhile colleagues from this morning's meeting. I think I can make a fairly educated guess as to which one."

"But isn't that illegal?" Ali objected. "Doesn't it violate attorney-client privilege?"

"Of course it does," Victor returned. "And once I figure out who's responsible, you can bet I'll have his cojones, but for right now we have to live with the consequences of those revelations and with the fact that you're now a suspect in two incidents rather than just the one."

"Two?" Ali asked.

"One homicide and one attempted homicide."

"So now I'm supposedly responsible for what happened to Monique Ragsdale, too? How come? I barely know the woman."

"By showing up this morning armed with that cockamamie postmortem divorce attorney, Monique Ragsdale as good as declared war on you. That's certainly how it's going to lookas though the two of you were in some kind of a turf dispute. I can see exactly how it'll play out in court, a David and Goliath routine. Monique will be portrayed as a sympathetic character, selflessly trying to protect the welfare of her daughter and her unborn grandchild. You'll be depicted as the greedy ex-wife defending her territory and her pocketbook by taking the bothersome grandma out of the picture."

"But Monique fell down the stairs," Ali objected. "That's not my fault."

"What if she was pushed?" Victor returned. "I know how cops think. You're already on their radar as a suspect in Paul's death. They're going to operate on the premise that if you're good for one homicide, you're good for another."

"But I have an ironclad alibi," Ali objected. "I left the house at the same time you did. You and Helga brought me back here to the hotel. I was here in my room all afternoon, first with my mother and later with Dave Holman. How could I possibly be responsible?"

Victor shrugged. "The cops have already decided that at least two people were involved in what happened to your husband. If you had an accomplice in that case, you'd be likely to have an accomplice for this one as well."

"But I didn't do it," Ali insisted. "Mom, Dave, and I went to the house together. That's when we found her."

"Do you know how many people who discover' bodies end up being the doers?" Victor asked. "And tell me this. If you went to the house and no one was home, how did you get inside?"

"Through the front door. I rang the bell, but no one answered. Then, since the door was open, we went in."

"Didn't that strike you as unusual, that the door would be left open like that?"

"I didn't think about it at the time because I thought April was home. With all the people involved in the shoot, there had been people coming and going all day long."

"Do you still have keys to the house?"

"Probably," Ali answered. "Back home in Sedona somewhere, but I certainly didn't bring them along, and I doubt they'd work anyway. I expect Paul would have changed the locks as soon as I moved out. I'm sure I would have."

"All right," Victor said. "Now tell me about the telephone."

"What telephone?" Ali asked.

"Come on. Don't play dumb. Monique's cell phonethe one you lifted from the crime scene. That's called evidence tampering. When the cops find out about itif they find out about itthey're going to go nuts."

"The EMTs were busy hauling Monique off to the hospital when I noticed the phone was lying there on the floor," Ali explained. "By then I knew April wasn't home. I needed to reach her so I could let her know what was happening. I was sure her cell phone number would be in her mother's call records, and it was. How else was I supposed to find her number?"

"You could have called Ted Grantham back," Victor pointed out. "But you didn't. For right now the cops haven't noticed the phone issue. If they end up figuring out you took it, then we'll have to decide how to handle it. Now, what's the deal with Dave Holman?"

"What about him?"

"Are you an item or what?"

"Dave's good friends with my parents, and he's a friend of mine, tooa homicide detective for Yavapai County over in Arizona. But we aren't an item.'"

"What's he doing here then?"

"He drove over from Lake Havasu to help out."

"He should go home," Victor said simply. "So should your mother. I have my own team of investigators working on this case. What I don't need is a bunch of peopleamateurs or otherwiseblundering around and muddying the waters. Having your mother and Dave here is going to be more of a hindrance than a help. Anything you say to them is going to be fair game for whatever detectives are doing follow-up on either one of these two cases. They'll ask Dave or your mother what you've said, and they'll end up being required to answer truthfully. So you can't confide in themnot at all. Understand?"

"It's too late," Ali said bleakly. "I already did."

And for the first time in all this, she actually felt afraid.

Victor finally left. For a long time afterward, Ali sat alone in the living room area of April's suite mulling her situation. What if Monique Ragsdale didn't survive? Would Ali really be a suspect in her death as well? Could the cops turn Monique's mere threat of litigation into a motive for murder?

From what Ali had seen, Monique's fall had looked like an accident, but was it really? And speaking of accidents, what about the Sumo Sudoku boulder that had come flying in Ali's own direction? That, too, had appeared to be nothing more than an accident caused by an overloaded wheelbarrow, but what if it wasn't?

Pushing away that worrisome thought, Ali decided to track down how much of the story had surfaced in the media. Rather than switching on the television and possibly waking April, Ali did as she had so often done in the months since she had fled L.A., her former job, and her foundering marriageshe turned to her computer and to her blog and to the cyber support network from cutlooseblog.com that had sustained her through some pretty dark times.