Cold Betrayal (41 page)

“Hush,” Betsy said, giving him a playful shove with her arm.

A nurse stepped into the room from a corridor that led to the examining rooms. “Betsy Peterson,” she announced. “This way, please.” She stopped short when everyone in the waiting room, with the exception of Ali, rose as if to follow.

“Wait,” the nurse said. “You can’t all come in here.”

“I’m Howard Hansen,” Howard said. “Doctor Howard Hansen. It’s probably a little before your time, but I was a G.P. here in town for many years. I came along today as Betsy’s friend and to offer my services as a disinterested bystander in terms of this competency situation.”

“You can’t go into the examination room with her,” the nurse objected.

“Exactly,” Sandra agreed, trying to push her way past Howard.

“If Betsy here wants me in the examination room, I most certainly can be,” Howard replied with a smile. “In fact, it might be best if you consulted Elmer himself on that particular issue.”

The nurse’s eyes narrowed. “I’ll see what the doctor has to say.”

The nurse had obviously taken offense at the idea that anyone would have the temerity to call her boss by his given name. She stalked off, returning a moment later with a man Ali easily recognized as a face in the rogues’ gallery of photos Stuart Ramey had collected from various surveillance photos. Dr. Munson was wearing a lab coat and a stethoscope.

“What seems to be the difficulty here?” he asked, frowning.

“Hello, Dr. Munson,” Athena said.

“Do I know you?”

“Probably not,” Athena said. “I’m Betsy’s granddaughter, Athena Reynolds. I know who you are, though. I recognize you from your photos. Several of them, in fact.”

Swiping her iPad to on, she then held it out for him to see while she scrolled through several of the damning photographs. When Elmer Munson realized what he was seeing, his eyes widened, and he glared at Sandra.

“What’s going on?” he asked.

“I don’t know . . .” Sandra began, but then she caught sight of one of the photos, too. Her eyes bulged, too. “What’s the meaning of this?”

The nurse, arms folded across her chest, stood behind the doctor and watched the unfolding drama with rising interest.

“I have no idea what you think you’re doing, young woman,” Munson said to Athena. “It would be a good idea if you left now.”

“We’ll do just that,” Athena said agreeably. “I can’t imagine that any of your findings about Gram’s ability to manage her own affairs will pass muster once the judge sees a sampling of these photos.”

With that, Athena turned on her mother. “As for you? My independent investigators have established that a minimum of sixty thousand dollars has gone missing from Gram’s savings accounts in the past year. It was withdrawn by way of fraudulent ATM transactions. That money is to be returned, with interest, as are Betsy’s cameo pin and the diamond earrings that were removed from her jewelry box
by you
on Friday night while she was at the fish fry.”

Sandra’s mouth fell open. “How can you say such a thing?”

“Easy,” Athena said. “Because I happen to have the video. Care to see it? This isn’t a court of law, Mother, and I’m not a journalist, either. I’m not using the word ‘alleged.’ I don’t have to. I’m your daughter. Right now this is still a family matter, but if you don’t return every dime of what you’ve taken, it will become all too public. As for telling Daddy about your friend here? You probably don’t need to.” She glanced meaningfully in the direction of the mesmerized nurse and the openmouthed receptionist. “I’m sure people will be lining up all over town to give him the news.”

Grim faced, Munson pushed past his nurse and disappeared down the hall, slamming an invisible office door behind him. The receptionist was still slack-jawed while Sandra stared at Athena in tight-lipped fury.

Unconcerned by her mother’s reaction, Athena took Betsy’s arm and led her grandmother out of the room. Howard followed, with Ali tailing along behind. Before the door had time enough to close entirely, it opened again and Sandra marched out, leaving a storm of conversation behind her in the waiting room.

“By God!” Howard said out on the sidewalk with a chuckle that was more a cackle than it was a burst of laughter. “That’s more fun than I’ve had in years! You certainly put that mother of yours in her place!” he declared. “Good on you, Athena, girl. Good on you.”

Betsy was smiling, too, but a moment later the smile disappeared and her expression turned serious. “We’ll need to find a bench somewhere. I told Marcia to come back in an hour,” she said. “We’ll need a place to wait.”

“No waiting,” Athena said. “We’ll give you a ride. We’ll call Marcia and let her know that she won’t need to come back to pick you up. How about an early dinner before we catch our plane home?”

“By all means,” Howard said. “We’re just in time for the blue-plate special at the diner. My treat.”

It turned out that the blue-plate special—served on honest-to-God blue plates—consisted of passable meat loaf accompanied by lumpy mashed potatoes with parsnips lurking inside them. The rest of the plate was covered with a pile of pale green beans. By color alone, Ali determined the beans had come straight from a can. Canned or fresh didn’t seem to make any difference to Howard. He cleaned his plate with obvious relish while Betsy barely nibbled on hers.

“Jimmy must have known what was going on the whole time,” she said at last. “How could my own son betray me like this?”

“Trust me,” Athena said. “My guess is he didn’t know. In fact, I doubt he had any idea. This is all Mom’s doing, Gram—all of it. We don’t have tapes of her coming into your house and turning on the gas, but I’m sure she did that, too. She may not have been trying to kill you, but her intent was to do you harm. She drove you out of your house and into the snow in the middle of the night with no care at all about what might happen. It’s a wonder you didn’t catch pneumonia.”

Betsy still looked pensive and lost. “What’s going to happen when Jimmy finds out your mother has been stepping out on him?”

“He won’t unless somebody tells him,” Athena said. “In fact, I doubt he’ll ever figure it out on his own. Mom has betrayal down cold. As far as Dad is concerned, what she says goes. She’ll convince him that no matter what anyone says, you included, nothing happened between her and Elmer Munson. She’ll claim people are telling lies about her, and Dad will believe every word that comes out of her mouth. And you know what? It doesn’t matter because I don’t care anymore. As long as she pays back every cent of the money she stole from you, what she does is none of my concern. And if she doesn’t pay you back? Then we go to the cops, plain and simple, and she goes to jail.”

“What about turning the other cheek?”

“No,” Athena said decisively. “Not with her.” She paused, then asked, “But what about from here on out, Gram? It makes me sick to think that anyone, especially my own mother, would take advantage of you this way, but what if someone else tries to do the same thing? You need someone looking out for you, someone closer. I’d like to see you out of that house—a place where you live all alone in the middle of nowhere. I’d like to see you in a spot where you’ll have people around who can help you in case you’re in trouble or having issues of some kind.”

“I’ve invited her to come live with me at my assisted-living place,” Howard interjected, “but she always turns me down.”

To Ali’s amazement, Betsy blushed at that remark. “They don’t take dogs,” she said, primly. “I won’t leave my Princess behind.”

“I’m glad you mentioned that,” Athena said. “I did some checking before we came here. Sedona Shadows, the place where Ali’s folks live, doesn’t take dogs either, but I’ve found another facility that does, and they happen to have a two-bedroom unit that just became available.”

“Why would I need a two-bedroom?” Betsy asked. “Besides, Sedona is too far away from home.”

“Having a guest room is always a good idea, because you just might have company,” Howard said, with a smile that was one short step from conniving. “I wouldn’t mind checking out of this joint and coming south in the middle of the winter for a visit. Just for a day or two, of course, nothing more.”

“Of course,” Betsy said, but the way she said it sounded as though she was warming to the idea.

“When school’s out, the kids and I can come north, help you sort things, and get your place listed,” Athena continued. “Then we’d hire movers to pack your stuff into a van to move it to Arizona. Meanwhile, you and Princess would drive back to Sedona with us. Easy-peasy.”

Betsy looked across the table at Athena. “I’ll think about it,” she said finally. “I really will.”

41

F
or the next six weeks Sister Anselm and Ali spent most of their waking hours working hand in hand with Andrea Rogers and the other Irene’s Place volunteers, shuttling The Family’s displaced women and children to new homes. The Encampment was now mostly deserted. Inspections of The Family’s housing facilities had revealed that they’d been built without permits and with little or no effort to meet building codes. Now all of them had been condemned. Rather than being sold, the structures were due to be demolished.

As The Family’s collection of livestock was sold off, the proceeds from those sales were placed in escrow to pay for some of the former residents’ care and keeping. Everyone knew that considerable funds were still squirreled away in Richard Lowell’s banking accounts in the Grand Caymans. The problem was, authorities were still trying to decide how much of that money was a result of a criminal enterprise and how much was legitimate. Once all that was sorted out, some legal determination would have to be made about who inherited the money. As one of Richard Lowell’s direct descendants, Enid Tower might one day be in a position to inherit some of it, but decisions about that were most likely years of legal wrangling away.

Six weeks after what the media continued to refer to as the Encampment Massacre, Andrea Rogers from Irene’s Place took the shelter’s passenger van and drove Patricia and Agnes to Phoenix’s Sky Harbor International Airport in Phoenix. Enid Tower, fully recovered and with Baby Ann properly strapped into a car seat, came along for the ride.

Ali and Sister Anselm made the same trip, driving down from Sedona in Ali’s Cayenne. Their reason for going was a joyous one, but memories of the lives lost on that cold February night made for a heavy burden and robbed them both of the easy camaraderie they usually shared on car trips. It was the Monday after the scholarship tea, and chatting about that gave them some much-needed neutral conversational ground.

Arriving at Sky Harbor twenty minutes or so after everyone else, Ali and Sister Anselm joined the others in the arrivals lounge just outside customs as the transatlantic flight from Amsterdam landed and deplaned.

The family Bibles, confiscated in Governor Dunham’s raid, had worked their magic. Two of the Not Chosens, both listed in the late Donald Gray’s family Bible, were Agnes’s half sisters, Christina and Donna Marie.

Sean Fergus, fast-tracking The Family’s DNA testing, had learned early on that the two half sisters—one who spoke and one who now wore thick glasses—were two of the very few human trafficking survivors. Shipped off to Nigeria, they had somehow managed to stay together. They had been bought by someone in Lagos. What happened next was unclear, but they had been rescued and taken to a local orphanage. With no way to explain who they were or where they were from, the two girls had lived in the orphanage as children, cared for by the attendants. When they were too old to be orphans anymore and without papers that would allow them to go elsewhere, they had stayed on, becoming caretakers for the younger children.

Now, through the intervention of Sean Fergus and Interpol, Donna Marie and Christina had been issued U.S. passports. They were coming home to the place from which they’d been spirited away at the age of six—a place they barely remembered.

As passengers from the flight made their slow way into the customs area and sorted themselves into lines, Agnes stood with her face pressed against the plate glass, looking down at the process.

“Will they recognize me?” Agnes asked anxiously. “Will they know who I am?”

“I’m sure they’ll remember you,” Ali said reassuringly.

Sister Anselm nodded. “The face of kindness is something a child never forgets.”

A minute later, Agnes spotted them. “There they are! It’s them. They just got into the far line on the left.”

The two women in question wore loose-fitting, brightly colored dresses that flowed when they walked. Their feet were clad in flip-flops, but their dark blond hair was braided and pinned in a crown around their heads.

Ali’s first thought was that Christina and Donna Marie were far better dressed than Enid had been when she had shown up at the hospital.

Ten minutes later, the new arrivals stepped warily onto an escalator that carried them upstairs. As they rode up, Agnes hurried to station herself just outside the sliding glass doors at the top of the escalator.

They stepped through and then stopped abruptly, staring at the soaring but unfamiliar room around them. Only when Agnes stepped forward to greet them did the one wearing glasses notice her. A moment later, the three of them were gathered into one another’s arms, weeping and laughing in a warm embrace.

Ali was struck by how much younger the two newcomers looked. Difficult as their lives might have been at the orphanage, they’d received better care there than The Family’s Brought Back girls had received at home.

Finally, Agnes said something. As they broke free, Agnes led them to meet the other people in the welcome party. “These are my friends,” she said. “Patricia, Enid and her baby, Ann, Ali, and Sister Anselm. And these”—she smiled at the young women—“are my sisters, Christina and Donna Marie.”

The new arrivals shook hands with Ali and Patricia and bowed formally to Sister Anselm. Ali realized that somewhere along the way, a Catholic sister of some kind must have impacted their lives.

“Agnes says she’s my sister,” the one called Christina said, nodding in Agnes’s direction. “I remembered her all this time. I always thought she was my guardian angel.”