J. Jance - Edge of Evil

Offended, Ali hurried back into the restaurant. She almost ran into Chris who was on his way out, grinning and dangling a set of car keys in one hand.

“What gives?” she asked.

“Since you’re on your way to Flagstaff, Gramps is lending me his SUV so I can run a few errands,” Chris said. “I’ll see you later tonight, after we finish skiing.”

Ali was surprised. Her father had purchased the Bronco new in 1972. He had babied it along for more than thirty years and over 300,000 miles, and he hardly ever relinquished the keys to anyone else. “You must be pretty special,” she said. “Whatever you do don’t wreck it.”

Ali went inside and back to her spot next to Dave Holman. By then he had finished his breakfast and was in the process of pulling several dollar bills from his wallet. She dropped the newspaper in front of him.

“I don’t care what the newspaper says,” Ali told him, “I still don’t think she committed suicide.”

Dave shrugged. “Suit yourself. Just because something’s in the paper doesn’t make it true or false. You of all people should know that.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?” she demanded.

“Look,” he said. “You’re a journalist. I’m a police officer. That means most likely we’ll never be pals. Let’s just leave it at that.”

“Sounds good to me,” she told him.

Leaving both his money and the bill on the counter, Dave got up and walked away. Edie Larson came back over to where her daughter was sitting. “More coffee?” she asked.

“No, thank you,” Ali said. “Are your customers always that obnoxious?”

“Which customers?”

“That one,” Ali said, pointing at Dave, who was getting into his vehicle outside.

“Dave? He’s a little surly on occasion,” Edie said. “His life hasn’t exactly been a bed of roses lately. Don’t take it personally. What about you? Are you all right? You look awfully pale.”

Ali had no desire to discuss the contents of her phone conversation with Paul. And she didn’t want to mention being chewed up and spit out by Dave Holman, either. Instead, Ali shoved the newspaper with its visible headline across the counter to her mother. Edie glanced at it and nodded.

“Oh, that,” she said. “I read it this morning while I was waiting for the rolls to rise.”

Ali stood up. “I’m going to head on up to Flag,” she said. “I want to see if there’s anything I can do to help.”

“You do that,” Edie said. “And be sure to let Howie and the kids know that we’re thinking about them.”

Back outside, Ali slipped off her coat. The sun was warming the chilly air, and the Cayenne’s heated seats-a laughable accessory in southern California-would keep her more than toasty. Standing there, next to the car, she looked at the mountains on the far side of Sedona. First came the layers of red rock formations standing out against the more distant green. But higher up, much closer to the rim, the landscape was still shaded white with snow. And there, snaking down the side of the mountain, as thin as a gossamer thread from a spider web, was the line that Ali knew to be Schnebly Hill Road. The place where Reenie had died.

Shivering, but not from cold, Ali climbed into the Cayenne and turned on the engine-and the heated seat. The she took her MP3 player out of her pocket and scrolled through the playlist.

She searched through the index until she found “Tell Me on a Sunday,” one of Andrew Lloyd Webber’s less well-known shows, but one Ali had seen on the trip to London with her mother and Aunt Evie.

It had been a one-woman show-ninety solid minutes of music masterfully sung by a former BBC television news presenter turned actress-the irony of that similarity wasn’t lost on Ali now. Nor was the similarity in content. The play had consisted of a litany of songs, telling the story of one heartbreaking romantic breakup after another.

“And here’s another one,” Ali said aloud as she turned on the music and headed for Flagstaff. There was one song in particular that hit her hard when one of the character’s supposed friends shows up eager to spill the beans about her partner’s latest indiscretion, to which she responds, “I knew before.”

But I didn’t, Ali thought. She had assumed that she and Paul had both been working hard on their careers, building something together. With that erroneous assumption now laid to rest, Ali wondered how much else in her life was little more than a mirage-smoke and mirrors and special effects. Unfortunately, she and the lady singing the songs about dashed hopes and dreams had all too much in common.

To an outsider it might well seem as though she had made up her mind to call a divorce attorney too hastily in the overwrought and emotionally charged atmosphere of having just heard about April and Charmaine. In actual fact, Ali had been thinking about just such an eventuality for a very long time, and well before her trip to London, which was one of the reasons the musical had affected her so much when she first heard it on stage. And now that it was time for Ali, too, to take action, she was surprised to find herself clearheaded, calm, and focused. She would deal with Paul and with the station’s firing her all in good time, but for the moment she would do what she had said she would do-she would be there for Reenie’s family for as long as needed.

The route to Flagstaff up through Oak Creek Canyon was only twenty-nine miles long, but with road crews out in force sanding the icy spots, it took Ali over an hour to arrive at Reenie and Howard Bernard’s unremarkable ranch-style house on Kachina Trail. It was a newer house, with one of those towering front-entry facades that had little to do with the rest of the house and everything to do with needing to use a ladder whenever it was necessary to change the bulb in the porch light.

The last time Ali had been to Reenie’s house had been Christmas two years ago. Back then the entire yard had been covered with a layer of new fallen snow and the whole place had been festooned with strings of red and green chili-shaped Christmas lights. There had been lights and decorations everywhere, including a beautifully decked-out ten-foot-tall tree in the middle of the living room window.

Ali parked behind a bright red Lexus with Arizona plates. There was snow in the yard this time as well, but it was several days old and turning gray. Near the corner of the front porch an armless, featureless snowman had dwindled away to sad, shapeless lumps. His forlorn appearance seemed a harbinger of what Ali could expect once she entered the house.

She was making her way up the icy sidewalk when a snowball flew past her ear and smacked harmlessly into the trunk of a nearby tree. Following the snow-ball’s trajectory, she went around to the side of the house where she found nine-year-old Matt, bare-headed and in his shirt-sleeves, forming another snowball in red, cold-roughened hands.

“Truce,” she called when she saw him. “It’s not fair to hit someone who’s unarmed.”

Matt dropped the snow in his hands and came toward her. In the past, he would have thrown himself enthusiastically into Ali’s arms. This time he approached her cautiously as if unsure of his welcome. He stopped several feet short of where Ali stood and observed her with a silent but penetrating look. “Did you hear about our Mom?” he asked.

Ali nodded. “Yes.” she said. “Yes, I did. Your Aunt Bree called me. That’s why I’m here.”

“What did she tell you?” he asked. Seeing the hurt in Matt’s eyes was almost more than Ali could stand. He was only nine-far too young to be carrying around this kind of heartbreak.

“She told me your mother died in a car wreck,” Ali said. “That the car she was driving went off Schnebly Hill Road in the middle of a snowstorm.”