J. Jance - Web of Evil

The comment made it clear to Ali that there was a whole lot she didn't know about April Gaddis's family situation.

"April has a stepbrother?" Ali asked.

"Had' is the operative word," Chris corrected. "Jason is a former stepbrother. From what I remember of the story, Jason's dad was a widower, an optometrist with a fairly decent nest egg, when April's mother arrived on the scene with April in tow. When Monique dumped the poor guy a couple of years later, his nest egg was a whole lot smaller."

Ali had no way of knowing if any of this information would prove useful or not. Nonetheless, she used a piece of hotel notepaper to jot down all the relevant names.

"What about April's dad?" Ali asked.

"What about him?" Chris returned. "I'm assuming he was several husbands ago."

The little tidbit of information made April's way of dealing with the world much more understandable. She had been raised by an often-married gold digger of a mother. With that in mind, it was entirely reasonable for her to grow up thinking that someone else's husbandanyone else's husbandwas fair game. If that was how Monique had gotten ahead in the world, why wouldn't her daughter try doing the same thing? Given that context, April's involvement with Paul Grayson must have seemed like business as usual.

"Anything else you can tell me about April?"

"Dropped out of college after only a semester or two," Chris replied. "According to Scott, she's not all that bright. At least he didn't think so."

Even with the door to April's room pulled shut, Ali wasn't prepared to comment on that either way.

"What's going to happen now?" Chris asked. "And should I call in to work and have them get me a substitute teacher so I can drive over to help out?"

"No," Ali said. "Absolutely not. Mom's here. So's Dave Holman."

"He is? What's Dave doing there?"

"Grandma called him and he came."

"She called him, but she didn't call me."

Chris sounded understandably hurt.

"I'm sure she was thinking the same thing I wasthat we didn't want to bother you or take you away from what you're doing."

"Thanks a lot," Chris said. "To both of you. Like mother like daughter, I guess, but I'm a grown-up now. I get to choose, remember?"

Ali would have said more, but call waiting buzzed again. The readout said Cedars-Sinai Medical Center. At the same time, her phone was telling her she was running out of battery power.

"Sorry, Chris," Ali told her son. "There's another call. I have to take it." She switched over.

"April Gaddis?" a male voice asked.

"No. April's in the other room, lying down."

"This is the contact number we were given, and it's about her mother. Can you put her on the line, please?"

The caller's voice sounded so distant, so impersonal, that Ali knew without hearing another word that the guy wasn't calling with good news.

"Just a moment," Ali said quickly. "She's resting, but I'll get her for you."

With the low-battery alarm still sounding, Ali hurried into April's darkened room. The young woman lay on her side, snoring softly. Ali shook her awake. "April," she said. "There's a call for you."

April took the phone. "Yes," she said. "What is it? Is my mother all right?

But of course Monique Ragsdale was anything but all right. She had died on the operating table, most likely as a result of the brain injury. With a slight whimper, April dropped the phone. As soon as it fell, Ali Reynolds knew she was now a suspect in two separate homicides.

Sobbing, April buried her face in the pillow. "Mom's gone," she wailed. "So's Paul. I'm all alone now. What's going to happen to me? What's going to happen to the baby?"

Ali reached down and patted April's shoulder. "I'm so sorry," she said. "But you'll be all right. We'll figure it out."

Then Ali picked up the phone, took it into the other room, plugged it into the charger, and called Victor Angeleri at home. "You need to know what's happened."

In the end, Ali stayed behind at the hotel for yet another meeting with Victor. Her mother and Dave were the ones who volunteered to take April back to the hospital to handle whatever paperwork needed signing. After several phone calls, Victor managed to locate Detectives Tim Hubbard and Rosalie Martin, the two L.A. homicide cops who were now in charge of the Monique Ragsdale investigation.

"Look," Victor said once he had Detective Hubbard on the phone. "I don't like the circus atmosphere any more than you do, and it's going to get a lot worse before it gets better. My client is willing to cooperate and give you a voluntary statement, but it needs to be on our terms. I'd rather do it here at the hotel, where we have some control over the media. How about if you come to us?"

In the end, that's what happenedthe detectives agreed to come there. For the next two hours, and with a tape recorder running, they went over the whole story again, in great detail. They wanted to know who was at the morning meeting at the house on Robert Lane. Both detectives seemed intrigued by the pre-funeral reading of Paul Grayson's will, and they seemed especially interested in the fact that Paul Grayson's murder had left Ali holding a bagful of monetary goodies.

"What was Ms. Gaddis's reaction to that?" Rosalie Martin wanted to know.

Ali shrugged. "What you'd expect. She was upset."

"What about her mother, Ms. Ragsdale?" Detective Hubbard asked. "Was she upset, too?"

"I'm sure she was worried about her daughterand the baby," Ali told her.

"Which put the two of you on opposite sides of the fence."

Ali glanced in Victor's direction. He gave a slight shake of his head, and Ali said nothing more.

With the topic of the will pretty much exhausted, Hubbard moved on to other issues. The two cops seemed to have missed the Sumo Sudoku craze entirely and had to have the concept explained to them. When it came to the names of the players and the film crew, however, Ali wasn't able to offer much detail.

"What about workmen?" Detective Hubbard asked.

"Jesus Sanchez is the gardener," Ali said.

"What can you tell us about him?"

Ali shrugged. "Not much. He more or less came with the house. He was working there long before Paul and I bought the place. Most of the time he works alone, but today he had a crew working with him. I didn't know any of them."

Was this the time Ali should mention her near-encounter with the falling boulder, or would the cops see that as nothing more than a lame attempt on her part to deflect their suspicions away from her? She decided to let it go.

"What about the cook?" Detective Hubbard asked.

"I met her, but she's new. I don't know her name."

"What about address information or contact numbers for the two of them?"

"Jesus and the cook? I'm sure Paul had the information, probably in his office somewhere, but I don't. We were getting a divorce, remember?"

"We'll see what we can find," Hubbard said. "Now about the house. Does it have a security system?"

"Of course," Ali told him.

"But it wasn't alarming when you got there this afternoon and found Ms. Ragsdale at the bottom of the stairs?"

"No. The front door was half open but the alarm wasn't sounding. I assumed someone must have switched it off."

"Why would that be?"

"Maybe with so many people coming and going throughout the day, it was easier to turn it off."

"Isn't that unusual?"

"It would have been for me," Ali said. "But I'm not sure about how April runs the house."

"Your house," Hubbard added.

Ali didn't like it that Hubbard seemed so eager to come back to the idea that the house on Robert Lane ultimately belonged to Ali.

"April Gaddis is the one who's been living there most recently," Ali returned. "Maybe she's not all that worried about security."