J.A. Jance's Ali Reynolds Mysteries 3-Book Boxed Set, Volume 1: Web of Evil, Hand of Evil, Cruel Intent (15 page)

A few minutes later, dressed but with a towel wrapped around her wet hair, Ali hurried down the hall to April’s room and knocked on the door. A young woman Ali had never met before opened the door. The room was strewn with a collection of clothing and garment bags. April stood in front of a mirror wearing a full-length navy blue maternity smock complete with wide pleats, a white Peter Pan collar, and matching white cuffs.

“This is my friend Cindy Durbin,” April explained. “Even though it’s Sunday and she’s supposed to be off work, she brought over some clothes for me to try on. What do you think?” April turned in front of the mirror. “Is this too retro?”

Ali nodded curtly in Cindy’s direction. The outfit was retro, all right. It looked like it could have stepped right out of Lucille Ball’s 1950s costume closet for the old
I Love Lucy
shows that were still in perpetual reruns on TV Land.

“It’s fine,” Ali said.

April turned from the mirror and studied Ali’s face, which must have betrayed some of her roiling feelings. “What’s wrong?” April asked.

“Someone fired Jesus Sanchez, the gardener, yesterday,” Ali said. “Did you do it?”

“No,” April responded. “Mom did. His salary and the cook’s both came out of what Paul kept in petty cash. Other than my credit cards, that’s the only real money I have right now. Mother said I couldn’t afford to keep paying them because I’d run out of money that much sooner. She said she’d take care of getting rid of them for me so I wouldn’t have to do it. Why, did we do something wrong?”

Yes, you did something wrong,
Ali thought, but there didn’t seem much point in discussing it.

“Never mind,” she said. “I’ll fix it. What’s the cook’s name?”

“Henrietta, I think,” April said. “Henrietta Jackson.”

“Where does she live? How long had she worked for you? Do you have a phone number for her?”

“No. Paul probably had that information, but I don’t. It would be in his office.”

And that’s locked up behind a wall of crime scene tape,
Ali thought.
How convenient.

“That’s all right,” she said. “I’ll find her.”

“Why?” April asked. “What are you going to do?”

“I’m going to hire them back,” Ali replied. “Or, if nothing else, I’ll at least offer them severance pay.”

“But who’s going to pay it?” April objected. “I can’t.”

“Then I guess I will,” Ali said.

With that, she stalked out of the room and slammed the door shut behind her.

W
ith her temper flaring, Ali stormed back into the room she was sharing with her mother, where she was surprised to find Edie seated at the desk in front of Ali’s open laptop. Dave Holman had arrived and taken over the easy chair. He was also finishing up the leavings from their breakfast cart.

“No breakfast buffet at Motel 6,” he explained, polishing off the last remaining croissant. “Who lit a fire under you?”

“Monique Ragsdale fired both the cook and the gardener yesterday to keep April from spending some of her precious stash of cash. She sent them packing and blamed it all on me.”

“So?” Dave said.

“We’re going to find them and hire them back.”

“But they can’t go back to the house,” Dave objected. “The place is a crime scene.”

“The fact that it’s a crime scene isn’t their fault,” Ali replied. “If nothing else, I can offer them severance pay. Did anyone call?”

Edie nodded and handed Ali her cell phone. “Andrea Morales,” Edie said. “She wants you to call her back.”

“The gardener’s niece,” Ali explained as she scrolled through her received calls and punched the appropriate number.

“Andrea?” Ali asked.

“Yes.”

“This is all a terrible misunderstanding. Your uncle never should have been fired in the first place. Is it possible for you to put me in touch with him?”

“Why?” Andrea asked bluntly.

“Because I want to offer him severance pay at least and possibly his job back,” Ali answered. “There’s some confusion with my husband’s estate at the moment. The right hand doesn’t necessarily know what the left hand is doing.”

“The woman who fired him knew perfectly well what she was doing,” Andrea countered. “She told him he should get his stuff together and get the hell out. She said you were the boss now, and that you didn’t want to pay him anymore.”

“But I will pay him,” Ali insisted. “Can you put me in touch with him?”

“My uncle’s English isn’t so good,” Andrea said. “He’ll need someone to translate.”

“Would you?”

“I guess,” Andrea agreed.

“So where is he?”

“Here,” she said. “Well, a few blocks away.”

“Where’s here?” Ali asked.

Andrea didn’t answer the question directly. “Let me ask him if he wants to talk to you. I’ll call you back.”

Ali hung up and turned to face Dave. “Now how do I find Henrietta Jackson?”

“Who’s she? The cook?” Dave asked.

Ali nodded.

“And that’s all the information you have on her—just her name? No address? No phone number?”

“Paul probably had more information than that, but it would be in his office and—”

“And the house is a crime scene,” Dave finished for her.

“Exactly.”

Dave busied himself with making phone calls, but Ali didn’t listen to what he was doing. She was thinking about Paul Grayson. She had always had her own money, but Paul had handled the bill paying for everything, including the household accounts. She had never realized until today that the help had been paid in cash. Despite the fact that they had been in this country for years, it probably meant that either Jesus or his wife, Clemencia Sanchez, or both of them were illegals, living and working beneath the INS radar.

For the first time Ali wondered about Elvira Jimenez, Paul’s former cook. Was the same true for her? Was she, too, working without proper papers? And what had happened to her? After years of working in the household, why had she been let go? And what about Henrietta? The woman’s distinctive accent placed her as being from somewhere in the southern United States. She certainly wasn’t an undocumented immigrant, so was she working in an underground economy simply to avoid paying taxes? And if Ali did manage to find Jesus and Henrietta and offer them their jobs back, what kind of liability would she be incurring?

“Your cook has no driver’s license as far as I can find,” Dave announced a few minutes later. “At least, she doesn’t have a California driver’s license.”

“How did you do that?”

“I know people who know people,” he said.

“What about Jesus Sanchez? Could you find him?”

“I thought his niece was going to put you in touch with him.”

“What if she doesn’t? What if I need to find him on my own?”

A moment later, when Ali’s phone rang, her concern about locating Jesus Sanchez proved entirely accurate. “My uncle doesn’t want to see you,” Andrea Morales announced.

“I just want to talk to him,” Ali began.

“He doesn’t want to talk to you,” Andrea returned forcefully. “He said no, and that means no.” With that, she hung up.

Ali was stunned. Because of Jesus’s limited English skills and because Ali spoke only rudimentary Spanish, communications between the two of them had always been minimal at best. As far as Ali knew, however, there had never been any kind of ill will.

“Andrea Morales,” Dave was saying into his phone as Ali put down hers. “You’ve dozens? Give me the addresses.”

Minutes later, though, armed with a phone book and the list of addresses, Dave was able to match one specific Andrea Morales with the received call number logged into Ali’s cell phone. “There you are,” he said triumphantly. “Andrea and Miguel Morales, two-twenty-four South Sixth, Pico Gardens.”

Ali knew from her days on the news desk that Pico Gardens had a reputation for being a center of gang-related activities. It was also known as a haven for newly arrived illegal aliens.

“Let’s go,” Ali said. She went over to the wall safe, opened it, and removed both her Glock and the small-of-back holster she had purchased to carry it.

“Go where?” Dave asked. He eyed her weapon uneasily. “And is that really necessary?”

“In Pico Gardens?” Ali returned. “Yes. If a couple of gringos are going there, being armed is probably the only sensible idea. Andrea told me that Jesus lives somewhere nearby—within a few blocks of where she and her husband live. Jesus drives an old blue van. If it’s parked on the street, I’ll recognize it.”

“It didn’t sound as though Jesus is eager to talk to you,” Dave pointed out.

“Doesn’t matter,” Ali said. “I want to talk to him.” Ali turned to her mother. “Are you coming along?” she asked.

“I don’t think so,” Edie said. “If you don’t mind, I think I’ll hang around here. I’ll use your computer to surf the Net.”

The idea of her mother, Edie Larson, “surfing the Net” was still strange to Ali. Amazing even. “Be my guest,” she said.

“I’ll also look in on April from time to time,” Edie added. “Just to make sure she’s okay.”

When Dave and Ali left the hotel, they attempted the back door exit that had worked flawlessly for them the day before, but the media folks had wised up. A reporter, one lowly enough to be relegated to hanging around by the reeking kitchen Dumpster, and her equally low-on-the-totem-pole photographer were lying in wait just outside the door.

“Hey, Ms. Reynolds,” the reporter called, holding her microphone aloft and rushing up to the car. “Is it true you’ve been brought in for questioning in two homicide cases? Do you have any comment?”

Of course I don’t have a comment,
Ali thought. She said nothing as Dave opened the door on his Nissan. It was too bad they hadn’t taken her Cayenne on this trip. Now the media would have information on what had previously been their stealth vehicle.

The photographer focused his camera on Dave. “Out of my way,” he said with a snarl, but the photographer didn’t take the hint. He was still snapping away as Dave scrambled into the driver’s seat and slammed the door shut behind him.

“What jackasses!” he exclaimed. “Were you ever that bad?”

“I don’t think so,” Ali said.
I hope not,
she thought.

The reporter and photographer were legging it for the front of the building and, presumably, some vehicle, when Dave peeled out of the back driveway and bounced over the edge of the curb into the street.

“Are they going to catch us?” Ali asked.

“Not if I can help it,” Dave returned. “Now which way?”

Without her GPS or a detailed map to rely on, Ali had to think for a moment before she was able to get her bearings and direct him onto the southbound ramp of the 405 and from there onto the 10.

“How’s your Spanish?” Ali asked as they sped down the freeway.

“I speak menu Spanish fairly well. Why?”

“Because Jesus speaks almost no English and I speak almost no Spanish.”

“Maybe his niece, Andrea Whatever, would translate for us.”

“I doubt that,” Ali said. She picked up her cell phone and scrolled through her phone book until she located the name Duarte.

During her time as a newscaster in L.A., one of Ali’s PR roles had been serving as the station’s goodwill ambassador to the cancer community. Because of her own tragic history with Dean’s death from cancer, she had been a likely and willing candidate. She had served on boards and walked in Races for the Cure and Relays for Life. But she had also done a lot of hands-on caregiving, work that had nothing to do with public relations and never made it into the news. One such case had been a three-year-old leukemia patient named Alonso Duarte.

Lonso’s father, Eduardo, had worked at Ali’s television station in the capacity of janitor. His wife, Rosa, had worked as a maid for a series of hotels. Once Lonso was diagnosed, the station had broadcast a series of stories about his battle and about his family’s plight as well. They had helped raise money to fill in the gap between the bills and what medical insurance actually paid. The station’s official involvement had eventually ended, but Ali had remained a part of the family’s support system during Lonso’s many hospitalizations and chemo treatments. The last Ali had heard, the boy had been in remission for four years.

Eddie Duarte had been working at the station the night Ali had been let go. He, of all people, had been drafted to carry her box of personal possessions out to her car. At the time he had offered to testify on her behalf in any wrongful dismissal suit. Since negotiations on that score were still pending, Eddie’s testimony in the matter had so far been unnecessary. As far as Ali knew he was still on the station’s payroll, but since he was a nighttime janitor, she worried about calling during the morning hours and waking him. But she did it anyway—called him and woke him.

“Ali,” he said, when he finally realized who she was. “So good to hear from you. How are you? I heard about your husband. I’m so sorry.”

Sorry for what?
Ali wondered.
Sorry because Paul’s dead or sorry because he was such a jerk?

“Thank you,” she said. “How is Rosa? How’s Lonso?”

“Rosa’s fine and Lonso’s great. He even got to play peewee league this year—second base.”

For a child who had been hovering at death’s door five years earlier, this seemed like nothing short of a miracle.

“But what about you?” he asked. “I don’t work for the station anymore. I got hired on with another company. If you need me to testify…”

“We may still need you to do that, but right now, I need something else,” Ali said.

“Name it,” Eddie said.

“I’m trying to find my old gardener,” Ali said. “There’s been a misunderstanding. I need to hire him back, but I don’t speak enough Spanish.”

“You need me to translate?” Eddie asked.

“Yes,” Ali said. “Please.”

“Where? When?”

“Soon,” Ali said. “As soon as possible. But I’m not sure where. He lives somewhere in Pico Gardens, but we’re not there yet, and I don’t have an address.”

“The only place I know there is that old Linda Vista Hospital, the abandoned hospital they use for movies and TV shows,” Eddie said. “I could meet you there—out front in the parking lot. It’ll take me about forty-five minutes to get there.”

“Great,” Ali said. “Maybe by then we’ll have found him.”

“Who’s Eddie?” Dave asked.

“Long story,” Ali returned. “A very long story.”

With Ali on the phone and Dave preoccupied with dodging other drivers, they were in the wrong lane and had missed the fork onto I-10 East. Half an hour after leaving the tony environs of Wilshire Boulevard, they were driving around the desolate, graffiti-marred streets of Boyle Heights. It was a neighborhood of houses that had been built in the early part of the twentieth century and were somehow still holding together. Some of them appeared to be in reasonably decent shape. Others were little more than crumbling wrecks.

They started by locating the Morales household on Sixth and then circled out from there, searching for Jesus Sanchez’s van. As they turned up South Chicago, Ali pointed. “There it is,” she announced. “That’s his van.”

The aging, much dented Aerostar was parked in the driveway of a decrepit duplex.

“Now that we know where to find Jesus, let’s go back to the hospital parking lot and wait for my interpreter to show up.”

“What if he doesn’t?”

“Don’t worry. Eddie will be here.”

Once they were parked and waiting, Ali told Dave the Eddie Duarte story from beginning to end. She was just finishing when her phone rang.