J. Jance - Web of Evil

Overwhelmed by grief and run over by Ms. Reynolds's army of high-powered attorneys, April Gaddis committed suicide in a room on the maternity ward of Cedars-Sinai Hospital early Monday morning. Not only is Ms. Gaddis dead, so is her unborn child. After finding the mother's lifeless body, doctors attempted to save the baby but were unable to do so.

Sources close to the investigation say that Ms. Gaddis spent the last several days of her life in the company of Alison Reynolds and her mother. Why would she have turned to her fiance's former wife for consolation? Well, let's see. For one thing, Ms. Gaddis's mother, Monique Ragsdale, also perished over the weekend as a result of a nasty fall down a stairway in Ms. Reynolds's Robert Lane mansion. Coincidence? I don't think so, and neither do LAPD and Riverside County homicide investigators who are working this series of interrelated cases.

Alison Reynolds is the only common denominator in all of them. Who gave this Black Widow a license to kill and who's going to see to it that she pays for her crimes?

Posted 11:05 A .M., September 19, 2005 by LMB

So Lance-a-lot is at it again, Ali thought. When it came to spinning a web, Ali didn't hold a candle to April Gaddis, but she resisted the temptation to respond to LMB and tell him so directly. Posting anything on his Web site would only serve to add legitimacy to his claims about her. She sent a note to Velma instead.

Dear Velma,

Thanks for passing along the information about socal copshop. The guy who writes it seems to have it in for me, and I don't know why.

Thanks, too, for what you did last night. Your loyal support meant more to me than you can possibly know.

If you have a weekend number for your nephew, you might ask him to give me a call. I believe I have information that might be helpful to his client.

ALI

For the next hour or so, Ali sat at the computer sending as many thank-you notes as she could manage to the people who had written to express their concern over the fact that Edie Larson was missing or else their gratitude for her safe return. She posted some of the messages and simply answered the others. Good manners required individual replies wherever possible.

She had finally succeeded in clearing her mailbox and had closed her eyes for a brief nap when the "You've got mail" announcement sounded in her ear. The e-mail address, a series of numbers that were most likely a combination of birthdate and zip code, meant nothing to her, but that wasn't unusual. Most of the e-mail Ali Reynolds received at cutlooseblog.com came from strangers.

Dear Ali,

I'm writing to you through a friend's e-mail account because I'm afraid my account is being monitored, and as you know, these are very dangerous people. I tried to call your old cell phone but it didn't work. If you have a new cell phone number please send it to me at this address. I need your help. Please don't tell anyone that you've heard from me, and don't give anyone this e-mail address, either.

RM

Ali read through the message twice. RM? That could only be Roseanne Maxwell. Had to be. And these dangerous people she mentioned? Dave had said much the same thing about the drug traffickersthat they were dangerous. Ali wrote back immediately, giving Roseanne her new Arizona-based cell phone number.

Then she waited. When her cell phone finally rang, it was after four.

"Don't call me by name," the person said, although Ali recognized Roseanne's breathy delivery as soon as she spoke. "This is a throwaway phone. Don't bother trying to trace it."

"What do you want then?" Ali asked. "Why are you calling me?"

"Like I said," Roseanne told her. "I need your help. I've got to disappear."

"As far as I can tell, you already have."

"This isn't a game," Roseanne Maxwell replied. "I mean I need to disappear for the rest of my lifefor whatever life I have left."

There was a desperate quality in Roseanne's voice, one that convinced Ali that the woman wasn't kidding.

"What do you want me to do?" Ali asked.

"I'm staying with a friend up in Valencia," Roseanne said. "Do you know where that is?"

"Of course," Ali said.

"Come to the Claim Jumper here in town," Roseanne said. "I'll meet you there at six. Be sure nobody follows you. We need to talk."

In the past several days, every time Ali had reached out to help someone, the effort had turned around to bite her in the butt. "Why should I?" she asked.

"Because you want to know what happened to Paul," Roseanne said. "You owe it to yourself, and you owe it to Paul."

I don't owe Paul Grayson a thing, Ali wanted to say. Instead she replied reluctantly, "All right. I'll be there."

Ali picked up the phone and tried her mother's room, but the call went directly to voice mail. With her father already on his way to Sedona, it was likely Edie was taking a nap. After the previous night's misadventures, that was hardly surprising. Ali left a message that she was going to meet a friend at the Claim Jumper in Valencia and let it go at that. And she gave Chris a pass as well. She was glad he was off having fun with his friends. That was fine.

What about calling Dave? Ali wondered. With no strings other than friendship, the man had literally spent days helping Ali and her family at every turn. Now that he was taking some time and several hours to drive back over to Lake Havasu to spend time with his kids, Ali couldn't, in good conscience, involve him againeither by calling him or leaving a message. In fact, she was determined this was something she would handle on her own.

Besides, how dangerous could it be to meet up with Roseanne Maxwell in what would no doubt be the middle of a crowded restaurant? Still, remembering Roseanne's concern about Ali's possibly being followed, she did check the rearview mirror from time to time as she drove north on I-5 just to make sure there was no one suspicious behind her. In actual fact, Ali was far less worried about bad guys following her than she was about one of the stray reporting teams who were still camped out in and around the hotel.

As for Roseanne Maxwell herself? She wasn't what Ali would have considered to be a frightening proposition. For one thing, she was slight of build with the best curve enhancement and facial redefining money could buy. For Roseanne beauty wasn't skin deepit was subcutaneous. For as long as Ali had known the woman, Roseanne had existed on a perpetual round of dieting and not dieting. That was why Roseanne's having set their meeting at an establishment known for its gigantic serving portions was a mystery in and of itself.

Ali had never been particularly close to Roseanne. Their husbands had been coworkers, competitors for the network job, and partners in the Sumo Sudoku scam. Ali and Roseanne had seen each other socially on occasion, but they definitely didn't qualify as good friends. Or even semi-friends. And why Roseanne would turn to her in a time of trouble was as much a mystery as where they were meeting.

It was six on the dot when Ali arrived at the Claim Jumper parking lot. The restaurant was jammed, and there was a crowd of people milling about outside, waiting for tables. Ali was about to walk inside and put her name on the list when a woman appeared at her side. Roseanne Maxwell was so changed that Ali barely recognized her.

The last time Ali had seen Roseanne had been at Paul's annual Christmas party the preceding year. She had been dressed to the nines with her hair piled on top of her head in a sophisticated platinum blond do, but the months since then had been anything but kind to Roseanne Maxwell. Her hair was brown now and cut short as well, shorn off in something that resembled chemo-patient chic. Ali barely recognized her.