Left for Dead (37 page)

Thank you, Bishop Gillespie,
she thought.

Outside Rose’s door, Abby Summer was finishing her interview. As the second crew came down the hallway, Sister Anselm motioned for them to stop. “Mrs. Fox will be doing interviews one at a time on a first-come, first-served basis,” she announced to the woman leading the charge.

“Not a press conference?” the reporter asked.

“No,” Sister Anselm said. “Individual interviews only.”

And the longer they take, the better.

Sister Anselm nodded encouragingly to Connie Fox on her way past. She hadn’t told Rose’s mother what she was planning, for fear she wouldn’t be able to carry it off. Right now she was better off not knowing.

7:15
P.M
., Monday, April 12
Tucson, Arizona

When Angel Moreno reached the next hallway, he was shocked by what
he saw. Most of the hallways had been relatively deserted. This one was jammed, and not just with people. There were reporters and cameras—way too many cameras.

During his briefing, Humberto had given him a series of photos, and Angel immediately recognized one of the faces in the crowd. The woman being interviewed was Connie Fox, the target’s mother. So this was the right hallway and the right waiting room. No doubt the door to the right of where the mother was sitting was the room where he needed to be.

Pushing his supply cart into the hallway, he parked it as close to the target room as he was able to, then took the polisher to the far end of the hallway and went to work. The people with cameras and microphones gestured that they wanted him to turn off his machine, but he ignored them.

At one point, an elderly nun pushing another nun in a wheelchair appeared at the lobby end of the corridor. She deftly threaded her way through the milling reporters and went into the target room. They went in and came out in under a minute, then went back to the lobby.

Angel was at the wrong end of the hallway. Turning off the polisher, he followed them, but it took time to fight his way through the crowd. He arrived at the front entrance in time to see a wheelchair-accessible van speeding away from the front door so fast that he didn’t catch a glimpse of the license plate. He wasn’t sure exactly what had
happened, but he didn’t think it was worth making a mad dash across the parking lot in hopes of giving chase.

Two nuns had gone into the room; two nuns had come out. The girl’s mother was still there, calmly talking to reporters. On his way back down the crowded corridor, Angel paused by the open doorway to the target room long enough to see that the patient was evidently still in her bed. Relieved, he went back to the polishing. All he had to do now was wait for the damnable reporters to finish what they were doing and get the hell out.

7:30
P.M
., Monday, April 12
Tucson, Arizona

After a solitary but relaxing dinner at McMahon’s and a forty-five-minute
decompressing phone call with B., Ali pulled into the Physicians Medical parking lot at seven-thirty and was surprised to see that the place was full of media vans. Her initial concern was that Jose’s condition had taken a turn for the worse. So she was relieved when she entered the lobby and Lucy came running toward her to give her a quick hug.

“We’re over there with our cousin,” Lucy said, pointing toward a table in the corner of the room. “We’re playing Chutes and Ladders. I’m winning.”

“Great,” Ali said. “I was never any good at Chutes and Ladders.”

A dark-haired teenager, chatting on a cell phone, came after Lucy and caught her up while Carinda stayed at the table, hugging a teddy bear that was almost as big as she was.

“I’m Julie,” the girl explained. She closed the phone and stuffed it into the pocket of her jeans. “Tomás is my grandfather. My mom and I came over from Silver City to help out.”

“I’m Ali Reynolds from Sedona. I’m here to help, too.”

As Julie led Lucy back toward the board game, Ali headed for Jose’s room. Once she was in the corridor, she could see a crush of media people in the waiting room beyond Jose’s room. They were interviewing a woman Ali didn’t recognize. Relieved that the media attention was on someone else, she hurried into Jose’s room. A tearful Teresa, with little Carmine in her arms, sat in the visitor’s chair.

“She’s upset about the mess at the house,” Jose explained. “I told her it’s one of those things. We’ll just have to get through it. Juanita Cisco got on the phone to the insurance company. They’ll have an adjuster out at the house first thing tomorrow morning.”

“Good,” Ali said. “And I talked to Patty Patton, the woman who runs the post office. She says she’ll be happy to help organize cleanup crews when you get to that point.”

Jose turned to his wife. “See there? We won’t have to do it all ourselves. That’s why we’re living in a small town—neighbors helping neighbors.”

“I took some photos at the house,” Ali said tentatively. “I’m not sure if now is a good time to look at them.”

“Please,” Jose said. “We need to know how bad it is.”

Ali opened the photo app and passed her phone to Jose. Grim-faced, he scrolled through them all, then passed the phone to Teresa.

“But all the things I picked out for Carmine …” Teresa began, bursting into tears once more. “Our good dishes, our bedding, our furniture. It’s all gone.”

“Those are things,” Jose pointed out. “We’re alive. That’s what’s important, right?”

Teresa took a deep breath, attempting to pull herself together, then nodded in agreement. “You’re right,” she said. “At least we’re all alive.” She handed the phone back to Ali. “Thank you for handling the police report.”

“You’re welcome,” Ali said. “It took longer than it should have because of the other homicide in town.”

“Another homicide?” Jose asked. “Where?”

“In Patagonia,” Ali answered. “I thought you might have heard about it. Phil Tewksbury was murdered sometime this morning.”

“Phil Tewksbury—the mailman?”

“Yes.”

“Too bad,” Jose said. “I’ve met Phil a couple of times. Hell of a nice guy. Do they have any suspects?”

“Christine, for one,” Ali said.

“You mean the Christmas Tree Lady?” Teresa asked.

Ali nodded. “There might be one more suspect. Someone you know.”

“Who’s that?”

“Patty Patton found a packet of letters in one of Phil’s drawers at the post office. It turns out Phil was evidently carrying on quite a correspondence with your former mother-in-law.”

Teresa looked genuinely shocked. “With Olga? Are you kidding? What about Oscar? He’s always been good as gold to her. How dare she carry on with someone behind his back? And after the things she said about Jose and me getting together after Danny was dead …”

Just then Julie poked her head in the room. She was carrying the board game box and the teddy bear. “Can I leave these here?” she asked.

“Where are the girls?” Teresa asked.

“They went to Baskin-Robbins,” Julie said. “With their grandmother.”

“Their grandmother? Olga?” Teresa demanded. “You let them go off somewhere with her without even asking me?”

Julie seemed taken aback. “She said it’s just a few blocks from here. That they’ll be right back.”

“Did you give her the car seats?” Teresa asked. “They’re in my room.”

“She said that since they weren’t going far, she didn’t need car seats. I hope I didn’t do anything wrong, but when she offered ice cream, both girls wanted to go. It didn’t seem like that big a deal.”

It might not have been a big deal to Julie, but it certainly was to Teresa. Ali was already on her feet. “Look,” she said. “It’s not a problem. I’ll take the car seats and go find them. I’ll bring the girls back here as soon as they finish their ice cream.”

Julie followed her out of the room with her cell phone ringing again. Ali suspected that her interrupted conversations were part of the reason she was happy to hand off the girls and let them be someone else’s problem for a few minutes.

“If you’ll go get the car seats,” Ali told her, “I’ll go get my car.”

While she waited for Julie to bring the seats, Ali pulled up to the front door. A quick Internet search showed her that the nearest Baskin-Robbins was under two miles away, on Wrightstown Road.

“I hope they’re not mad at me,” Julie said as she stuffed the seats into Ali’s Cayenne.

“No one’s mad at you,” Ali assured her. “We’ll take care of it. What kind of car was she driving?”

“I don’t know. A white one? And like with four doors or something.”

“A sedan, then?”

“I guess.”

Julie’s vague description wasn’t a big help, especially since, when Ali arrived at the Baskin-Robbins parking lot, there were no white sedans in attendance. A white Toyota Tundra pickup truck, yes, but no four-door sedans of any kind. There was no sign of Olga Sanchez and the girls, either.

They must have left the hospital several minutes before I did,
Ali thought,
so they should have already been here.

Ali got out and went inside. She waited impatiently while a family of four did multiple taste tests before making their final flavor choices. She asked the solo employee, “Did a lady with black hair and two little girls come in a while ago? The lady wears her hair pulled back. There are white streaks in her hair.”

The clerk behind the counter, shook her head. “Not that I remember.”

The first inklings of real concern leaked into Ali’s consciousness. She went back out to the car and watched up and down the street for several minutes. Maybe Olga had decided to stop off somewhere on the way to the ice cream shop. While Ali watched oncoming traffic, she called Teresa. “I’m at Baskin-Robbins,” she said. “They’re not here.”

“Where else would she have taken them?” Teresa asked.

Ali heard the rising panic in Teresa’s voice. She didn’t want to cause the poor woman any additional worry, and so, although Ali herself was feeling genuine alarm, she tried to keep it from showing.

“Maybe she went to a different branch,” Ali suggested. “Or maybe she decided to go somewhere else first. Is it possible she took them home? She offered to do that earlier, didn’t she? Where is home?”

“That would be either the ranch, the Lazy S, south of Patagonia, or else to her house here in Tucson.”

“Where’s that?” Ali asked.

“On Longfellow Avenue,” Teresa said. “Right around Hawthorne. I don’t remember the exact number.”

“The streets are named for writers?”

“Yes,” Teresa said. “It’s an area in the central district called Poet’s Corner, mostly homes from the forties and fifties.”

“How will I know which one is the right one?”

“It’s a brick house that’s been painted white,” Teresa said. “Blue trim. If you’re driving southbound between Speedway and Fifth, their house in on the right side of Longfellow.”

“What kind of car does Olga drive?” Ali asked. She was programming Longfellow Avenue into her GPS as she spoke.

“She and Oscar may not still have the same car, but they used to keep an older-model Buick at the house in Tucson to use when they were in town.”

“What color?”

“White.”

“Two-door or four-door?”

“Four.” Teresa added, “They have a Range Rover that they mostly keep on the ranch and a minivan conversion that holds Oscar’s wheelchair.” There was a momentary silence on the phone before she asked, “Do you think I should call the police?”

“Not yet,” Ali said. “Let me drive by the house on Longfellow. The GPS says it’ll take me just under twenty minutes to get from here to there. If there’s no sign of them at the house, or if Olga hasn’t brought the girls back to the hospital by then, that’ll be the time to bring the cops in.”

And issue an Amber Alert,
Ali thought.

It occurred to her that while she was checking on the house in Tucson, Patty might be able to find out if Olga had retreated to the ranch. As Ali made her way across Tucson, she tried redialing both of Patty Patton’s landlines, but there was no answer at either one.

Remembering what had happened on Sunday, Ali dialed Stuart Ramey’s number.

“Hey, Ali,” he said. “What can I do for you today?”

“Can you get back into the Physicians Medical’s CCTV system?” she asked.

“Another evil flower delivery guy?” he asked. “How did all that turn out, by the way?”

“The flower guy turned out to be a good guy,” Ali said. “I should have let you know. But now we’ve got a grandmother who may have
gone off the rails. She came to the hospital sometime within the last half hour, loaded two kids—two little girls—into a vehicle, and took off. We need to get the kids back.”

“She took the kids without permission?”

“Yes.”

“So this is urgent?”

“Very.”

“Let me get back to you.”

He hung up. No more than a minute elapsed before he called her back. “Okay,” he said. “I’ve got it. Looks like a Buick Regal from the nineties. Here’s the license.”

“I’m driving,” Ali said. “Can’t write it down. Can you send it to me?”

“Will,” Stuart said. “But there’s something else you should know. Those kids, the older one in particular, didn’t look very happy to be getting in that car.”

By then Ali had turned off Alvernon onto Second Street. Longfellow was two blocks in. She spotted the Range Rover parked on the street as soon as she turned the corner onto Longfellow. Not only was the Range Rover parked out front, there was a white Buick parked under the carport at the end of the driveway. A quick comparison revealed that the license number matched the one Stuart Ramey had sent to her phone minutes before.

“Bingo,” Ali told herself. “Got her.”

The xeriscaped front yard wasn’t fenced. A concrete walkway led through a collection of prickly pear, yucca, barrel cactus, and palo verde. Growing along both sides of the house was a foolproof burglar deterrent—a thicket of seven-foot-high cholla. Backlit by the setting sun, the five-inch-long needles resembled an evil halo. Blinds on all the street-facing windows had been pulled tightly shut. Had it not been for the car in the driveway, the house might have been deserted.