Clawback (7 page)

With the exception of Enid, who was still nursing the baby, all the other roommates had jobs that made paying the rent feasible. Agnes had been hired as a hotel maid. Patricia worked for a local animal shelter, while Donna and Christina had found employment at nearby daycare centers. The rent was divided four ways, while Enid, the youngest, would earn her share by serving as housemother and handling the cooking and cleaning. It was a communal style of living with which they were all accustomed.

“How are our five ladies doing today?” Ali asked.

“A little of the initial giddiness has worn off,” Sister Anselm observed wryly, “but after lives of utter deprivation, they're still on top of the world. I suggested that they might want to throw a housewarming party as a way of thanking the volunteers. I could just as well have been speaking in a foreign tongue. Not one of the five has ever attended a party, much less given one, so they'll need a bit of direction on that score.”

“No parties?” Ali echoed. “Not ever?”

“Not a one,” Sister Anselm said.

Ali's cell phone rang just then with her mother's name showing in caller ID and with the clock registering 2:05. “Hi, Mom,” she said into her Bluetooth. “How's it going?”

“Where are you, Ali?” her mother demanded.

“I'm still in Flag, why?”

“I need you to come home.”

Ali had seldom if ever heard outright panic in Edie Larson's voice, but there was panic now. She also sounded close to tears.

“What's wrong?”

“It's your dad,” Edie answered.

Ali's heart went to her throat. Her father was in his midseventies. As far as she could tell, he was in good health, but still . . .

“What's happened?”

“That's just it. I don't know what's happened,” Edie replied. “Like I told you earlier, he took off right after breakfast, and I haven't seen or heard from him since.”

“He's still not back?” Ali did a quick calculation. Her mother's earlier call about Bob going AWOL had come in just shy of noon. It was now two hours later. A dozen scary scenarios began playing out in Ali's head. No doubt her mother was imagining the same things.

“No,” Edie answered. “He's still nowhere to be found.”

Ali tried to compose herself before she answered, willing her voice to sound calm and reassuring. “He probably just had car trouble and is having to hike out from wherever he happened to get stranded. B. keeps trying to tell him that he needs a newer SUV, one that's more dependable.”

“You know your father,” Edie grumbled. “He'll never give up that stupid Bronco no matter how old and decrepit it is. He says he has to have a car he can fix himself, not one that operates on some kind of computer chip.”

Ali was relieved to hear a little of the customary impatience come back into her mother's voice. Under the circumstances, impatience was preferable to panic.

“You've tried calling his phone?”

“Do you think I'm stupid? Of course I've tried his phone—every fifteen minutes on the dot. My calls go straight to voice mail.”

“Did you call B.?”

Years earlier, when Ali had been the victim of a kidnapping, B. had managed to ride to the rescue by tracking her cell phone. Since then, Ali's technophile husband had seen to it that the cell phones and devices of all family members were equipped with a tracking app that allowed for following and locating the device—regardless of whether it was turned on or not. In addition, it contained a mapping service that showed where the device had been.

“I thought about it,” Edie admitted, “but I didn't want to bother him with this. If your dad is stuck out in the boonies someplace with a busted transmission or just out of gas, he'll be embarrassed to death if we call in the cavalry.”

“B. isn't the cavalry,” Ali said. “He's my husband and Dad's son-in-law. That means he's family. He'll be glad to help.”

“What should I do in the meantime?”

“Where are you?”

“At home. Betsy's here with me.”

Betsy, a woman in her eighties, was Ali's daughter-in-law's grandmother. She was also eminently sensible.

“I'm glad you're not on your own,” Ali said. “The two of you stick together and stay right there, I'm on my way. I'll also call B. and let him know what's happened. I'll stop by as soon as I get to town.”

“Thank you, Ali,” Edie said in a surprisingly small voice. “I don't know what I'd do without you.”

J
ulia King escorted a shaken Haley into the house and settled her on a sofa in the living room. Haley was humiliated to be bawling like a baby in front of someone who was not only a client but also a near stranger. Still, she couldn't help herself.

When Julia returned with a box of tissues, Haley took one and used it to mop her face, removing most of her carefully applied makeup in the process. “Sorry to make such a fool of myself,” Haley murmured.

“Don't apologize,” Julia said. “You've had a terrible shock. We all have. The idea that something this awful could happen right here on our street is unbelievable. I saw the piece on the news this morning about the whole bankruptcy thing. Is it possible one of Dan's clients went off the deep end?”

Haley nodded but said nothing. With Bob Larson locked in the back of a patrol car, that wasn't just possible—it was likely.

Across the room from the sofa, a floor-to-ceiling window offered an unobscured view of what was happening up the hill and across the street. Haley and Julia watched in stricken silence as not one but two gurneys bearing what looked like body bags were rolled out of the house. One was placed in the van bearing the medical examiner's logo while the other was loaded into a waiting aid car that had evidently been temporarily commandeered by the ME's office.

“So both of them, then,” Julia said softly as first the van and then the aid car came down the driveway and turned on to the street. There was no need for flashing lights or sirens. It was already far too late for those.

“Yes,” Haley agreed softly. “Both of them.”

Officially Haley had worked directly for Dan, but in actual fact, for years she had worked for both of them, functioning as Dan's and Millie's personal assistant and doing whatever needed to be done, including running errands like picking up dry cleaning and prescriptions.

Haley regarded Dan and Millie as an unstoppable team, both personally and professionally. Dan was easygoing and gregarious—a glad-hander—who was the perfect front man for the business. Millie was more reserved and seemed content to operate in the background, but that didn't mean she wasn't involved. If one of the girls in the office was having a birthday, you could count on Millie to show up with a gaily decorated cake. Or if someone was getting married or ended up pregnant, Millie hadn't organized the showers, but she had always shown up with thoughtful and beautifully wrapped gifts in hand.

“They were such nice people,” Julia said moments later, wiping away tears. “I wasn't that close to Dan, but Millie was someone who brightened every room she entered. I can't believe someone could possibly hate them enough to murder them.”

Haley and Julia sat in stunned silence for a time, grieving together for two people who had suddenly been wiped off the face of the earth. They were startled out of their reverie by a sharp knock on the door. Leaving Haley where she was, Julia hurried to answer.

The man standing outside was a uniformed cop, and Haley was relieved Julia didn't invite him to enter. She didn't want to have to explain to anyone what she was doing there right then, but because she knew someone would be around to question her sooner or later, Haley listened in on the conversation. After introducing himself and noting Julia's name, the officer started by explaining Dan and Millie were dead before he launched off on a series of questions.

“Did you see any unusual activity in the neighborhood this morning?”

“None at all,” Julia said. “I was out in the backyard having breakfast and working on my pots. I didn't notice anything unusual. The first I realized something was wrong was when I heard the sirens as cop cars and ambulances poured into the neighborhood.”

“No strangers hanging around, then?” the cop asked. “No one who looked or acted out of place?”

“No.”

“What about unusual vehicles? Did you see any of those?”

“That red one,” Julia answered, pointing up the hill in the general direction of Bob Larson's vehicle.

“The Bronco parked in the driveway?”

Julia nodded. “I've seen it before now and then, but never this early in the morning, and never on a weekday. That one usually showed up on weekends.”

“How well did you know the Fraziers?” the cop asked.

Haley shivered, noting the officer's deliberate use of the past tense—“
did
you know”—not the present tense—“
do
you know.”

“Fairly well, I suppose,” Julia answered. “We've lived across the street from them for close to ten years.”

“What about their relationship?” he asked. “Any marital difficulties that you know of?”

“None,” Julia answered definitively. “None whatsoever.”

The interview ended soon after that. Haley assumed that this was little more than an initial canvass. An interview with a detective would most likely entail a lot more detail.

Julia closed the door and returned to the living room. Julia gave Haley a sad smile. “I think I could use a cup of coffee,” she said. “How about you?”

“Please,” Haley said.

There was something infinitely comforting about that small gesture of hospitality—a tiny piece of normal in the midst of chaos. Somehow it helped Haley pull herself together.

B
ob Larson sat in his orange jail jumpsuit and concentrated with every fiber of his being on not looking at the clock on the wall. He could hear it ticking, but he did his best to keep from watching it.

He knew from all the true-crime shows on TV exactly how guilty suspects behaved when they were left cooling their heels in interview rooms for an indeterminate period of time. They fidgeted; they looked at their watches; they studied the ceiling tiles; they cracked their knuckles. Bob tried his best to do none of those. If anyone was watching him through the two-way mirror on one side of the room or on screens fed by the video cameras mounted on the walls and ceiling, they would see a man sitting quietly in a corner and doing absolutely nothing.

He'd gulped down the bottle of water right after Carlotta had brought it to him. Now he was starting to regret that. Once again he was building up to needing to take another piss. If someone didn't come open the door soon and let him use the restroom, he'd end up peeing his pants for the second time that day.

He glanced down at his hands. He'd scrubbed them as well as he could in the bathroom. There was nothing lingering under his nails because Carlotta had taken scrapings of all of those. Nonetheless, there were still traces of blood here and there—Dan's or Millie's or maybe both—lingering in the nail beds on both hands.

Bob remembered that old Shakespearian play they'd studied long ago in Mrs. Fitzsimmons's high school English class. He wasn't sure if it was
Hamlet
or
Macbeth.
It had to be one of those, but he recalled with chilling clarity how the old woman, whoever she was—the murderer—went nuts because she couldn't wash the guilty blood from her hands. Now, even though he'd committed no crime, he understood how she felt, minus the guilt, of course.

He considered holding up his still-bloodied hand, waving at the mounted video camera, and asking for a restroom pass, but he didn't. He held off. He was too damned old to have to ask someone for permission to go relieve himself.

The whole while he'd been sitting there, Bob had done his best to tamp down the anger he now felt toward those two young officers, the first ones who had arrived. He understood that their initial focus had been to take control of the crime scene, but once they had, why hadn't they listened to any of what he had to say? As to why he was sitting here waiting hours later? That probably had something to do with their initial assessment of the situation.

On the other hand, Sedona PD probably didn't have much of a history when it came to double homicides. Bob didn't know the exact statistics on the Sedona Police Department. He estimated it had maybe a total of thirty sworn officers, about that many support staff, and probably no more than a couple detectives. No doubt all hands had to be on deck at the crime scene and were probably still there—securing the scene and gathering evidence. All of that meant that, like it or not, Bob had to wait his turn until someone finally got around to talking to him and letting him go.

What was stressing him right now, more than anything, even the critical need to take a leak, was thinking about Edie. He'd left the house just before nine without leaving her so much as a note saying where he was going or what he was going to do. It was two o'clock now. Bob had been AWOL for five whole hours. He knew that by now she was no doubt worried sick—worried enough that she might even forgive him for messing up on Wanda's birthday cake, but probably not enough to forgive him for losing all their money. Without thinking, he reached for his cell phone to call, but of course it wasn't there.

Somehow, not having the phone available when Bob needed it most was the final straw to an already unbelievably bad day. That was when despair and helplessness finally overwhelmed him. He leaned over the table, buried his face in his hands, and wept while the unblinking eyes of the camera continued to watch his every move.

He had barely managed to pull himself back together when the door to the interview room clicked open. Detective Hank Sotomeyer entered the confined space wearing a blue sport jacket and tan pants along with a white shirt and tie. Bob recognized the detective at once. In his mind's eye, however, the Hank Sotomeyer Bob remembered was an eleven-year-old kid in a freshly pressed brown uniform, standing at attention to receive his Tenderfoot badge.