J. Jance: Trial By Fire

“Who are you?” Louise demanded. “I don’t know who you are or what you think you’re doing. I’m calling the police!”

“We are the police,” Detective Salazar responded, flashing her badge. Then she turned her attention to Donna Carson. “Is this her?” she asked Ali.

“Yes,” Ali said.

Now it was Donna’s turn to object. “Who are you?” she demanded, looking from Detective Salazar to Ali. Her face revealed no sign of recognition as far as Ali was concerned. “What do you want?

“You’re Donna Elizabeth Carson?” Detective Salazar confirmed.

“Yes, I am, but can’t you see we’re busy here?”

The escrow officer stuffed the two stacks of documents into a file folder. “Just give me a minute, Ms. Carson,” she said. “I’ll get rid of them.”

“No, you won’t,” Detective Salazar said. “We’re not going anywhere.” She pointed at a chair. “Sit,” she ordered. Without further objection, the escrow officer sat.

“What’s this all about?” Donna asked.

“It’s about two attempted homicides that occurred northeast of here yesterday afternoon. You’re a person of interest in those two cases, Ms. Carson, along with another incident that happened earlier this week in Camp Verde. We need you to tell us where you were yesterday afternoon, and what you were doing.”

Donna paled slightly. “This is ridiculous,” she said, rising. “I was at work yesterday afternoon. My employer’s mother was in the hospital, where she died early yesterday evening. I spent most of the afternoon there with them. Serenity Langley will verify I was there, so will her brother.”

“Sit,” Maria said again, this time pointing a finger at Donna Carson. With a put-upon sigh she, too, subsided into her chair.

“That would be at Saint Gregory’s Hospital?” Maria asked.

“Yes,” Donna said. “The burn unit. On the eighth floor.”

“So are you acquainted with Sister Anselm, a Sister of Providence who was working as a patient advocate there?”

Donna shook her head. “I might have seen her. I’m sure I’ve heard the name, but I don’t believe I ever met her.”

There was the tiniest tremor in the corner of her eyes when she gave that answer. Ali suspected that Donna was telling the truth, sort of. Perhaps she and Sister Anselm had never been formally introduced, but Donna Carson knew who Sister Anselm was and what she did.

“I suppose we should read her her rights,” Maria said casually to Ali. “Just in case she turns into a suspect.”

“Right,” Ali said agreeably. “Just in case.”

Maria recited the Miranda warning from memory. Ali waited until the Mirandizing was complete. Ali expected Donna to demand an attorney at that point. When she didn’t, Ali posed another question.

“What did you do with Mimi Cooper’s watercolor?” she asked. “We know what happened to the fake Paul Klee. What happened to the real one?”

“What painting?” Donna demanded in return. “I don’t have any idea what painting you mean.”

“Yes, you do,” Ali insisted. “You stole Mimi’s Klee months ago, when you took it out for reframing. You replaced it with a fake. The two house fires in Camp Verde were supposed to get rid of the evidence. So what’s your connection to Thomas McGregor?” Ali asked. “How did you persuade him to help you?”

Donna had been warned that anything she said could be held against her, but apparently she wasn’t listening.

“I didn’t have to persuade him,” she said dismissively. “He offered to help me. He wanted to help me. He hated those people as much as I do.”

A hint of a smile twitched at the corners of Detective Salazar’s mouth, but she said nothing.

“What people did he hate?” Ali continued. “Sister Anselm? Mimi Cooper? What did they ever do to you, or to him? You still haven’t said what you did with the real Paul Klee. Where is it?”

“It’s on its way somewhere you’ll never find it,” Donna answered. “You’ll never get it back. Neither will Serenity or Win. It’s mine. All mine.”

Donna sounded like a petulant little girl, frustrated because she hadn’t been allowed to have her own way and had been forced to share some beloved toy. She didn’t sound the least bit like someone capable of planning and executing a cold-blooded murder.

But if she’s damaged goods, Ali thought, if her uncle took advantage of her…

Ali decided to tackle that delicate subject head-on.

“Why did you do this?” she asked. “Why are you lashing out at Winston Langley’s family? Is it because your uncle molested you? Was he your lover?”

For a moment Donna stared at Ali in openmouthed amazement. “My lover!” Donna exclaimed. “Are you kidding? That bastard was never my lover.”

Ali and Maria exchanged looks. If Donna Carson and Winston Langley hadn’t been lovers…

“And he wasn’t my damned uncle, either,” Donna declared, trembling as outrage overtook her. “Oh, he played the good uncle, all right, the beneficent uncle. But he was my father-my biological father! He raped his own sister and convinced their parents that she was the wild one! She ran away and found someone who married her and gave me his name. Those are the names on my birth certificate, you know-Leah Lynette Carson and John David Carson.”

Ali was appalled by the whole idea. “You’re saying Winston Langley was your father, and that he raped his own sister?” she repeated.

“Yes.”

“What about your mother’s parents?”

“What about them? I never even met them until after my mother went to prison. That’s when Winston came riding to the rescue, playing the part of the generous uncle. And all this time, that’s what I thought he was.”

“Your mother never told you what happened?”

“Tom McGregor was the only person who ever told me the truth. Winston didn’t, not even when he was dying, and his goody-goody bitch of a wife didn’t tell me, either, although she knew. She claimed she didn’t, but she must have. As far as the world was concerned, Winston Langley was this really good guy-the magnanimous uncle who stepped up to the plate to help out his poor, deprived, and orphaned niece by seeing to it that I got an education and by giving me a job. All I had to do was keep my mouth shut about my mother. She was the bad seed, and the less said about her the better.

“So I went along with the program. I was the charity case. I wore Serenity’s cast-off clothing, but I had a place to live and food to eat. That was the price I was prepared to pay as long as I was an orphan. But it turns out I wasn’t an orphan at all. Once Tom told me the truth, I realized how badly I’ve been cheated-by Winston and Mimi and by Serenity and Win, too.

“What I’ve earned in paychecks over the years is a drop in the bucket compared to what Win and Serenity got when Winston died. I’m expected to bow and scrape and do whatever Serenity says, while she treats me like dirt. But then, she can afford to. She had access to her share of Winston’s estate, and mine, too.”

“That painting belonged to Mimi,” Ali put in. “How does stealing it even the score with her dead husband?”

“It didn’t,” Donna said. “Not nearly. All three of them got way more than I did.”

“Tell us about Tom McGregor,” Detective Salazar suggested. “What brought him into the picture?”

“He reached out to me after he saw Winston Langley’s obituary in one of the Phoenix papers,” Donna answered. “He didn’t think it was fair that the story said Winston had a son and a daughter when Tom knew it should have been a son and two daughters.”

“When did you first hear from him?”

“A little over a year ago. He said his conscience was bothering him and that he owed it to my mother to set the record straight. When he first told me, I didn’t believe it, either, but then I had some DNA testing done. You’re cops. DNA doesn’t lie, does it?”