J. Jance - Trial By Fire

With a sigh, Ali launched into the story of Sister Anselm’s scheme to turn her into an undercover agent, Cecelia McCann. Sheriff Maxwell’s initial reaction was exactly what Ali had expected-not just no, but hell no! Until she mentioned Agent Robson and Sister Anselm’s intention to cut the ATF agent out of the picture. Just as Sister Anselm had predicted, Sheriff Maxwell grabbed the ball and ran with it.

“Hell of a good idea,” he said. “Sounds like you and Sister Anselm are a good duo. You two do what you can. I, for one, am all for it. Dave probably will be, too, as long as you’re not out mixing it up with any bad guys. And just in case Dave drops by the hospital, what’s the name you’ll be going by again?”

“Cecelia. Cecelia McCann. Tell him to act like he doesn’t know me.”

“Will do,” Sheriff Maxwell said. “It wouldn’t do for him to blow your cover.”

Knowing there was a tentative identification on the horizon, Ali reasoned that things might start happening sooner than later. She sent a text message to that effect to Sister Anselm.

The nun’s text response showed up almost immediately: “Get here when you can. Once you’re in the waiting room, if you need me, remember to text, don’t talk.”

Ali had never imagined that she’d be texting a seventy-something nun toting the latest in phone gadgetry, but then she had never imagined that her mother would be routinely packing a weapon, either. Edie carried her pink and black Taser C2 in her purse at all times, right along with her compact and lipstick.

Thinking of those two remarkable women, Sister Anselm and Edie Larson, made Ali smile. Edie was a generation younger than the nun, but they were certainly of a piece-women of a certain age who had found ways to live and thrive by embracing modern technology rather than dodging it.

Ali went up to her room and checked her suitcase. Fortunately, Leland had included a selection of outfits, one of which was a bright pink jogging suit, and some of her favorite workout shorts. The jogging suit wasn’t exactly designer wear, but she figured that, along with some running shoes, it would allow her to blend into the waiting room crowd a little better than the knit skirt, blazer, and heels she’d worn when she had left home for Prescott much earlier that morning.

Ali drove her car as far as the hospital, left it with the valet, and then walked across the street to the newly redeveloped shopping mall, Biltmore Commons. The sun had dropped behind the western skyline, but it was still incredibly hot-well over a hundred degrees. In the time it took her to cross Camelback and find the store, the tracksuit became drenched with sweat.

How does Sister Anselm hike back and forth in this heat? Ali wondered.

When she finally located the wig shop, Ali was relieved to slip into Hair Again’s frigidly cool interior. Sister Anselm had told her that the ladies who worked there specialized in dealing with the beauty needs of cancer patients, but they were more than happy to help Ali find a reasonably attractive wig. Within minutes, she was staring at a reflection in the mirror that didn’t look anything at all like the Ali Reynolds she knew. The carrot-topped wig was a long way from Ali’s own blond hair.

The bright pink suit clashed with her new hair color. After all, the idea of Ali undergoing a sudden hair color change wasn’t something even the seemingly all-knowing Leland could have anticipated.

At least it fits, Ali thought as she made her way back across Camelback to the hospital entrance. And the less it looks like me the better.

She walked into the hospital through the main entrance. As Ali headed for the bank of elevators, she caught sight of a few media folks still lingering in the lobby. Some of them were people she had spoken to much earlier, but none of them recognized her or gave her so much as a second glance. Obviously the tracksuit and her bright red tresses were doing their job.

Ali was in the elevator, trying to get her head around who she was supposed to be, when her phone rang. “Ali?” Athena said.

Calls to Ali from Chris were far more commonplace than calls from her daughter-in-law, but Ali was delighted to hear from her.

“Yes,” Ali said. “How are you? Where are you?”

“I’m on my way to Tempe,” Athena said. “I’m bringing down a load of stuff for the apartment.”

Athena and Chris were working on master’s degrees to keep their teaching credentials up-to-date. They had sublet an apartment in Tempe so they could attend both sessions of summer school, but the first session wasn’t set to start for a week.

“Wait,” Ali said. “I thought you and Chris were going to fly to Minnesota this week to see your grandmother and your folks.”

Having just heard about Sister Anselm’s troubled early life, Ali couldn’t help comparing Athena’s situation with that. When Athena’s first husband divorced her, her parents-for reasons known only to themselves-had stuck with their former son-in-law, his new wife, and their new baby. It had saddened Ali to realize that Athena’s folks had turned away from their own daughter. Only one member of Athena’s family had deigned to attend her wedding to Chris. Ali had been glad to hear they planned to make a brief visit to Minnesota prior to the start of summer school. She was hoping that breach, like the one that had long existed between Ali and Chris’s paternal grandparents, could also be repaired.

“We’re not going,” Athena said. “I changed my mind.”

Ali was smart enough not to ask why. “I’m sure you had your reasons,” she said.

“Yes,” Athena said. “I do, and I’d like to talk to you about it.”

Heading into the waiting room as a supposedly undercover operative, Ali was in no position to play hostess to Athena, but she didn’t want to turn her down, either.

“I’m working right now,” she said. “Could I meet up with you later this evening? Are you staying over in Tempe tonight, or going back to Sedona?”

“I’m staying,” Athena said. “Give me a call when you’re available.”

Closing her phone and exiting the elevator, Ali saw that the waiting room was even more crowded than it had been earlier. As far as Ali could tell, all the visitors in attendance were there for James rather than for the woman in room 814.

In Ali’s absence, James’s two sets of still-feuding relatives seemed to have taken possession of most of the furniture in the room, leaving a chair-free no-man’s-land between them. A group of teenagers, presumably James’s friends, had invaded that space. Using a collection of backpacks to mark their territory and to provide backrests, they sat on the highly polished tile floor and talked quietly among themselves.

Ali pulled one of the few unoccupied chairs into what appeared to be neutral territory. Settling into it, she opened her computer. While she waited for her AirCard to connect, she listened to the talk buzzing around her. Sister Anselm was right. It was as though the presence of the computer rendered her invisible.

The kids may have been there because of James, but they weren’t talking about him. They were more concerned with other issues-who had flunked which class and was having to go to summer school; who had dropped out and was going to get a GED; who had gotten tossed out of a local movie theater for fighting; and whose parents had kicked someone out of the house when they had figured out at the last minute that he wasn’t going to graduate.

Listening to that, Ali reminded herself to be grateful that Chris had been such an easy kid to raise. She was also thankful that Chris and Athena were the ones dealing with teaching high school-aged kids like these on a daily basis. After enduring a solid nine months of doing that, a vacation should have been in order. Ali couldn’t help wondering why Athena and Chris had abruptly canceled their plans to visit Athena’s family.