J. Jance - Edge of Evil

Ali was half asleep when a ringing telephone startled her awake. “Mom?” Chris asked.

She could tell from the quake in his voice that something was wrong. “What is it?”

“It’s Grandpa.”

“What’s happened? Is he hurt?”

“Yes, he’s hurt. Some hotshot snowboarder crashed into him from behind and sent him flying. The ski patrol just got him down off the slopes. They’re loading him into an ambulance right this minute to take him to Flagstaff.”

“How bad is it?” Ali asked.

“Pretty bad,” Chris said. “At least one broken leg, maybe two. And a broken arm as well. I just got off the phone with Grandma. She’s on her way.”

“So am I,” Ali said. “Where are they taking him?”

“Flagstaff Community.”

“I’ll be there as soon as I can.”

All the way from Sedona back to Flag, Ali should have been worrying about her father. Instead, she thought about Howie Bernard. Had he murdered his wife? The idea of a mild-mannered history professor suddenly turned killer seemed unlikely. Still, Ali knew that extramarital affairs and the possibility of collecting sizeable sums of life insurance proceeds had turned more than one otherwise law-abiding citizen into a murderer. And in a town where university professors carried a fair amount of social clout, would the cops charged with solving the case give Howie Bernard any more than a cursory glance?

Somehow Ali doubted that would be the case. The detective who had collected the computer from Reenie’s office had taken the machine, but Ali had seen no evidence that they had dusted for prints. They were still focused entirely on the suicide angle. The fact that it might be something worse than that seemed not to have occurred to them. But it had to Ali, and the more she thought about it, the more she wanted to talk to Howie. Alone. And preferably unannounced. She wanted to catch him off guard and see if he might say something to her that would tip his hand.

Speeding all the way, Ali arrived at Flagstaff Community Hospital far sooner than she should have. Even so, Edie beat her there. By the time Ali walked into the waiting room, Bob Larson already had been rolled away to surgery. A subdued Chris sat quietly off to one side while Edie Larson fumed and paced.

“That man doesn’t have a lick of sense,” she raged. “If I’ve told your father once, I’ve told him a hundred times, he’s too old for snowboarding!”

“Snowboarding!” Ali exclaimed. “I thought they were going skiing.”

“That’s what he said they were going to do,” Edie replied. “But Bob’s a great one for telling me what he thinks I want to hear rather than what’s really going on. And if he got hit by a snowboarder, I’m guessing that’s what he was doing, too, snowboarding, the bird-brained dim-bulb.”

Ali looked at her son who shrugged his shoulders in silent confirmation of his grandmother’s worst suspicions. He and his grandfather had indeed been snowboarding.

“And of all the weeks for him to pull a stunt like this!” Edie railed on. “Why didn’t he just haul out a gun and shoot himself?”

“Calm down, Mom,” Ali said. “What’s so different about this week?”

“With everything else that’s been going on, we haven’t had a chance to tell you, but your father and I are thinking of retiring. We’ve got a potential buyer who’s supposed to come look at the restaurant sometime this week. We’ll be able to hold out for a lot more money if we’re selling the place as a going concern. If Dad’s laid up and the buyer thinks your father’s on his last legs-or on no legs at all, from the sound of it-it’ll be a lot tougher to make the kind of deal we want to make.”

“In other words, you can’t shut the place down just because Dad’s in the hospital.”

“Of course I can’t shut the place down,” Edie snapped. “I can’t even afford to open up late. It needs to be business as usual. In fact, I should be home in bed right this minute so I can be up at four to start baking sweet rolls. When the restaurant’s actually open, I can cook every bit as well as Bob can, but where on God’s green earth does he expect me to find someone to fill in for me out front? I’ll never be able to find someone dependable on such short notice, and Jan’s too old to manage the whole place on her own. It’ll be a disaster.”

“I could do it,” Ali suggested. The words were out of her mouth without her necessarily thinking about them, just as they had been when she had offered to look after Samantha.

Edie stopped in mid rant. “You?” she asked in disbelief. “Come on, Ali. It must be twenty years since you last waited tables.”

“It’s probably a lot like riding a bicycle, isn’t it?” Ali returned. “Once you learn, you never forget how. Besides, as far as I can tell, you haven’t changed the menu. Looks like the same old same old to me.”

“But-” Edie began.

Ali cut off her mother’s objection. “Look, Mom, if I can look after Matt and Julie’s kitty, I can certainly help you out. At least until you find someone better.”

“I just thought…”

“You think I’m too good to wait tables?” Ali asked.

“Well, yes,” Edie admitted.

“I’m not. Your owning and running the Sugarloaf was good enough to keep a roof over our heads when I was growing up and when I was going to NAU. Helping you and Daddy out now that you’re in a pinch is the least I can do. Besides, the station’s still sending me a paycheck until the end of my contract. That’ll make me the highest-priced waitress the Sugarloaf has ever seen.”

“But shouldn’t you be out looking for another job?”

“You mean shouldn’t I be looking out for me instead of looking out for you?”

“Well, yes,” Edie agreed reluctantly. “I suppose that is what I mean.”

Ali went over to her mother and gathered her into her arms. “You and Dad raised me better than that, Mom. This is payback.”

When Edie emerged from her daughter’s embrace, her eyes were bright with tears. “All right, then,” she said. “You’re hired. But only for the short term and only until I can find someone else. Assuming I manage to open the restaurant tomorrow morning, you can start then.”

They settled in to wait for Bob to return from surgery. Being back in a hospital setting made Ali uncomfortable. It brought back too many bad memories of the days and weeks she’d spent with Dean, and her waiting skills were shaky at best. She tried to sit still, but couldn’t. She kept looking at her watch, twitching, and willing the surgery to be over so she could leave. Finally Edie lost patience.

“Look, Ali,” she said. “There’s no sense in both of us sitting here fidgeting. Go for a walk or for a ride or else bring Chris something to eat. Doing what you’re doing is driving me nuts.”

“I could do with some Kentucky Fried Chicken,” Chris said. “I saw one not too far from here.”

They drove through the cold, clear night to a steamy and almost deserted KFC. After the man behind the counter took their order for one bucket of Original, Ali changed her mind and ordered a second.

“Mom,” Chris objected. “I’m hungry, but I’m not that hungry.”

“I want to stop by Reenie’s place to check on Howie,” she said. “There’ll most likely be a crowd of people there who’ll be as happy to see some KFC as you are.”

She dropped Chris back at the hospital and then headed for Kachina Trail. Once outside the Bernard place she was surprised to find that the expected gathering of friends and neighbors hadn’t materialized. There were no other vehicles parked anywhere nearby-not in front of the garage and not out on the street, either. The windows were uniformly dark. The only sign of occupancy was a single porch light burning on the front porch.