J.A. Jance's Ali Reynolds Mysteries 3-Book Boxed Set, Volume 1: Web of Evil, Hand of Evil, Cruel Intent (36 page)

Ali took a deep breath. It seemed to her sometimes that almost every person she met was writing a book. “What kind of book are we talking about?” she asked.

Arabella shrugged. “One of those family sagas,” she said. “One with all the usual ingredients—madness, mayhem, infidelity, incest.”

“All of it based on your own family’s history,” Ali said.

“Of course.” Arabella beamed. “With a family like mine, I wouldn’t have to make up a thing.”

Ali wasn’t at all sure what was going on between Arabella and her long-lost nephew. There was a good chance that Billy’s unexpected visit was part of some long-simmering family dispute that came complete with potential extortion and other disgruntled would-be heirs as well. It seemed reasonable to think that there were family secrets involved that might be better off left secret.

“Do you think that’s such a good idea?” Ali asked.

“What?”

“Doing this kind of family exposé?”

Arabella stiffened. “Why shouldn’t I?” she demanded. “Who would it hurt? My parents are both dead. My stepbrother is dead. I’m not. If I want to tell the story, it’s my business and my story, not Billy’s.”

“Why?” Ali asked.

“Why do you write cutloose?” Arabella asked in return.

Ali had to think about that for a moment. “Initially it was to stay in touch with my fans and to be able to write about things as I see them,” she answered at last. “But once I started writing about what was going on in my life, I discovered there were a lot of people who had been through the same kinds of things I had. And sharing ideas with them helped me somehow, and I think it helped some of them, too.”

“Exactly,” Arabella said. “Now, what do you know about incest?”

The question took Ali aback. “Not much,” she said.

“I know rather a lot about it,” Arabella said quietly. “Far too much as a matter of fact. From the inside out.”

For a moment Ali was too stunned to speak. Taking advantage of the silence, Arabella reached past her iMAC, picked up the small wooden-handled bell, and gave it a sharp jangle.

“Mr. Brooks,” she said, when the butler appeared noiselessly in the double doorway. “I do believe this calls for another round of martinis. Would you care to join me now, Ali?”

“Yes,” Ali agreed. “I believe you’re right. Martinis are definitely in order.” Then, once the butler left the room, Ali repeated the single word as a question. “Incest?”

Arabella nodded. Reaching across her computer keyboard, she picked up a slim leather-bound volume that had been lying on the far side of the computer table. She handed the book to Ali.

“It’s my diary from back then,” she said. “I’ve kept it through the years. It’s a talisman, you see, a tiny concrete piece of evidence that proves it all happened. It isn’t something I just made up.”

Ali looked down at the book. The word
DIARY
was embossed on the cover in gold letters. “But why are you giving it to me?” Ali asked.

“Because I want you to read it,” Arabella said. “And after you read it, I want you to tell me what you think.”

“You were the victim of incest?” Ali asked.

Arabella nodded. “For years,” she said.

“And the perpetrator?”

“Bill, of course,” Arabella answered. “My stepbrother. He was almost ten years older than I was.”

“Were you his only victim?”

“Probably not,” Arabella said dispassionately. “I’m the only one I know of for sure, but there may have been others.”

“You never told your parents?”

Arabella shook her head. “It was years before I told my mother. I never mentioned it to my father, which was probably a good thing.”

“Why?”

“Because he had a sister, too,” Arabella said. “A younger sister. I never knew her because she died long before I was born. She committed suicide when she was only fourteen years old. She hanged herself in a closet. I learned about her for the first time a few years ago when a second cousin sent me a copy of a genealogy study he was doing.”

“Are you saying that, based on that snippet of information, you suspect that your father victimized his younger sister the same way your stepbrother victimized you?”

“I know he did,” Arabella said fiercely.

“Do you have any proof?”

“Not enough to hold up in a court of law.”

And not enough proof to put it in a memoir, either,
Ali thought. “Better make it fiction, then,” she said.

“But if you live in a family of monsters like that,” Arabella continued without acknowledging the comment, “you know things. You know them in your soul. If you don’t figure them out on your own, you don’t survive.”

Just running her fingers across the diary’s cover made Ali wary. “Maybe I shouldn’t read this,” she suggested.

“Please,” Arabella said. “I really need you to, so we can discuss it.”

Mr. Brooks returned bearing two cocktail shakers on a tray. He poured Ali’s first martini and Arabella’s third and handed them over. After two martinis, Ali would have been crawling on the floor. Arabella, sipping her third, appeared to be relatively unfazed.

“What’s the point of all this?” Ali asked after Mr. Brooks left them alone once again. “You said yourself that your brother’s been dead for years. Why not leave the past in the past? Chances are your nephew won’t be stupid enough to bring any of this up. If he does, you can counter it when the time comes. There’s no need to…”

“Bill was my stepbrother, not my brother,” Arabella reminded Ali. “And yes, he’s been dead for a very long time, but I’m not dead. And as long as I’m alive, what Bill did to me isn’t dead, either. What about all those other little girls who are trapped in similar situations? What about them? I used to read all those Bobbsey Twins books. Do those even still exist anymore?”

Ali shook her head. “I don’t know.”

“Well, the Bobbsey Twins lived in a perfect family in a perfect world. When I read those books, I kept hoping I’d find someone in the stories who was more like me, someone whose family wasn’t perfect, but I never did. None of the books I read even hinted that what was happening to me had ever happened to anyone else. As far as I knew, I was the only one.

“And I believe that’s one of the reasons I’ve been so drawn to cutloose,” Arabella added. “I’ve read it from the very beginning. When you got fired from your job and your husband dumped you, I’ll bet you thought you were the only one who had suffered those kinds of calamities, but you weren’t. I’ve also seen you take the bad things that happened to you and transform them into good for someone else.”

“But…”

Arabella waved aside Ali’s objection.

“I know there are lots of young women out there who are in the same situation right now that I was in at their age. If I can write this book—if I can get it all down and somehow get it published, maybe they’ll realize they aren’t alone. I want them to be able to believe that they can overcome whatever bad stuff is happening to them; that they can go on with their lives and be successful. I also want adults to pay more attention to what’s going on right under their noses.”

“Writing a book is hard work,” Ali counseled. “The idea of eventually getting it published…”

“That’s why I want you to read the diary,” Arabella said. “I value your opinion. After you read it, we can talk and you can tell me what you think. Maybe you’ll still say I’m better off letting sleeping dogs lie. But the fact that Billy thinks he can use this as a club over my head really offends me. I was the victim, Ali. If I keep quiet about this—if I let Billy push me around—then I’m a victim again. Or still.”

Ali opened the diary and fanned through the pages. A few of them had been written on. Most of them were blank.

“As you can see, reading it won’t take long,” Arabella added. “I was given the diary on the occasion of my ninth birthday, and I wasn’t very good about keeping it up. You’re far more faithful at writing cutloose than I ever was at keeping the diary.”

Ali didn’t want to accept this assignment. She didn’t want to have anything to do with Arabella Ashcroft’s benighted book project. On the other hand, considering what Arabella and her mother had done for Ali all those years earlier, she didn’t feel as though she had a choice.

“All right,” she agreed at last, reluctantly slipping the diary into her purse. “But I’m not making any promises that I’ll be able to help.”

“Wonderful,” Arabella said with a brilliant smile. “I can’t ask for more than that.”

Just then the double doors swung open and the butler entered the room once more. “Would you like me to clear now, madam?” he asked. He had evidently decided on his own that three martinis amounted to Arabella’s limit. He was cutting her off.

“Yes, Mr. Brooks,” Arabella said. “Thank you. That would be very nice. And after that, feel free to take the rest of the evening off. I don’t think I’ll be needing anything more. I’ll just toddle off to bed.”

Ali noticed that Arabella’s tongue seemed slightly thick—that she was stumbling over the words.

After that many martinis, I wouldn’t be needing anything more, either,
Ali thought.
I’d be comatose.

Mr. Brooks led Ali back through the front hallway and out into the front driveway where he opened the door to Ali’s Porsche Cayenne SUV. “Do come again,” he said graciously.

Ali smiled and nodded. “I will,” she said.

Still she drove away feeling uneasy.
What have I gotten myself into now?
she wondered.
And how much of Arabella’s story was the truth and how much was drunken rambling?

Ali’s intention was to head straight home, but a phone call from an escrow officer at the title company detoured her. Left to unload her deceased husband’s real estate holdings, Ali’s first plan had been to empty the house on L.A.’s Robert Lane and then list it. In talking to a real estate agent, however, the suggestion had been made that she consider selling it on a turn-key basis with all the furnishings and artwork intact. Ali had thought finding a buyer on those terms was unlikely, but in that respect she was wrong. Within days she had a full-price offer.

The buyers were people who had just won an amazing Power-ball jackpot and who wanted to move up into newer and classier digs without having to do any of the work on their own. They were ready to buy everything, pots and pans and linens included. In the back of Ali’s mind, the distrustful, snarky part, she wondered if her agent had been straight with her. It seemed likely that the agent must have known that those particularly needy purchasers were out there. It made Ali wonder if maybe the advice from the Realtor had been less impartial than it should have been. Maybe she could have gotten more.

But the truth was, Ali Reynolds was glad to be done with the Los Angeles house and was more than ready to let it go. She had balked at unloading a few items—the Limoges china she had chosen when she and Paul married; the leather couch from the family room; and Paul’s extensive wine collection along with the water-damaged credenza. Other than those, however, Ali had accepted the purchasers’ offer and had let everything else go without a second thought.

“I know our closing appointment is scheduled for tomorrow,” said Linda Highsmith of Highsmith Red Rock Title. “But the papers are here now, ready to be signed. Unfortunately, I have a conflict tomorrow. I know it’s late, but if you could possibly come by this afternoon…”

“Sure,” Ali said. “I’ll be right there.”

It was close to five. Most of the uptown area was a maze of road construction. Once through that, the traffic on Sedona’s main drag to the far side of town was maddeningly slow as well, so Ali wasn’t “right there” nearly as fast as she thought she’d be, but Linda was delighted when she finally did show up.

“I really appreciate this,” Linda said, ushering Ali into a conference room. “It’s only a parent/teacher conference, and I didn’t find out about it until just this afternoon. I suppose I could have handed the closing off to someone else, but…”

“It doesn’t matter,” Ali said. “I’m glad to get it out of the way today.”

The whole process took the better part of an hour. “Once the purchasers sign and the sale is recorded, the funds will be deposited in the account you’ve designated,” Linda explained as they finished up. “This is only our good-faith estimate of the moneys due to you. The actual amount may vary slightly from this.”

Alison Reynolds looked down at the line Linda indicated. The amount written there was more than substantial. It amounted to more money than Ali ever would have imagined accumulating in her lifetime.

And Linda Highsmith, who had also grown up in Sedona, seemed to be thinking much the same thing. “Small-town girl makes good,” she said with an envious smile. “It must feel pretty incredible.”

Ali nodded and smiled back as best she could, but the truth was, it didn’t feel all that terrific. This unexpected real estate windfall was coming to her not because she personally had earned or deserved it, but because she had married well—from a financial point of view, at least, and because Paul had died before their divorce became final. In Ali’s book, neither of those two items really qualified as “making good.”