anything to you, but they do to me. What they’re saying is that it’s over between us, Paul. Totally and completely over. I’ll be consulting a divorce attorney later on today-a lady who’s associated with Marcella’s firm. Her last name is Myerhoff; first name is Helga. You may have heard of her.”
There was a pause. Helga Myerhoff’s name packed some weight in certain circles. Ali knew beyond a doubt that Helga had handled divorce proceedings against more than one of Paul’s philandering pals.
“Ali Bunny…” he began.
“Don’t call me that!” she snapped.
“Ali, be reasonable. We can fix this. Or if we can’t we can do this amicably. There’s no need to…”
“I don’t want to fix it,” she interrupted. “And I’ve no intention of being amicable. The way you work, I’m quite certain that wouldn’t be in my best interests.”
Much to Ali’s surprise, she remained amazingly dispassionate. She should have been in tears. She should have been devastated. But there was part of her that felt nothing but relief.
“Look, Paul,” she said. “It’s clear that our marriage has been on its way out for some time now. Maybe I was too busy to pay attention and figure out what was really going on. But I’m not too busy now, because, as you may have noticed, I’ve recently lost my job. That means I have the luxury of paying attention and I’m not liking what I’m finding-April and Charmaine included.
“And don’t hassle me about not returning phone calls. You didn’t return mine over the weekend until you were damned good and ready. Was April off with you wherever you were? Or was it Charmaine, since she didn’t bother to come to work on Monday? Is that why you didn’t call me back?”
“Be reasonable,” Paul insisted. “I’m sure we can get to the bottom of all this.”
“Get to the bottom of what?” she demanded. “The fact that you’ve been going around with your pants unzipped and screwing everything in sight?”
Paul sighed. The sigh was supposed to mean that she was being unreasonable. And demanding. “Just tell me when you’ll be home,” he said.
“You’re not listening to me,” she returned coldly. “I won’t be coming home. My friend Reenie is dead. I came to Sedona to be with her family and with mine. I plan on staying as long as I want to.”
“But what about…”
“You have April and Charmaine,” she said. “I’m sure you’ll be just fine.”
Chapter 6
Ali had hung up the phone and was about to step back inside, when the blaring headline in a newspaper vending machine for the Flagstaff Daily Sentinel caught her eye: LOCAL WOMAN DIES IN SNOWY CRASH. Searching through her coat pocket she came up with enough change to purchase a copy.
The Coconino County Sheriff’s Department is investigating the death of Misty Irene Bernard, age forty-five, Executive Director of the Flagstaff YWCA, who died over the weekend when her Yukon plunged off Schnebly Hill Road and rolled several hundred feet. Ms. Bernard, who was not wearing a seat belt at the time of the accident, was thrown from the vehicle.
Ms. Bernard was reported missing late Friday, twenty-four hours after she failed to return home from a doctor’s appointment in Scottsdale. Coconino County Sheriff’s Office investigators have been trying to trace her activities from the time she left Flagstaff on Thursday until her body was located near the wreckage of her vehicle on Monday.
Investigators tracing Ms. Bernard’s movements have so far been unable to determine why she would have attempted to drive the little traveled treacherous route between Flagstaff and Sedona during a snowstorm so severe that it forced brief nighttime closures on both I-40 and I-17.
People close to the investigation who spoke on the condition of anonymity suggested that, after receiving a dire medical diagnosis, she may have committed suicide. Evidence of both drug and alcohol use were found at the scene, but toxicology reports won’t be available for several weeks. An autopsy is scheduled for sometime later this week.
Married to NAU history professor, Howard M. Bernard, the dead woman is survived by her two young children and her parents, longtime Cottonwood residents, Mr. and Mrs. Edward Holzer. Bernard, an NAU graduate, had worked for the YWCA for the past ten years and had served as executive director for the past five.
Funeral services are pending.
Ali recognized the cold journalese of the article. It was impartial. It gave the facts. It said both too much and too little. It did nothing to capture the wonderful resilient character Reenie Bernard had been. It did everything to dismiss her-turning her into a statistic by implying that she had died primarily because she had failed to fasten her seat belt-as if a plunge off Schnebly Hill Road were in any way survivable.
Offended, Ali hurried back into the restaurant. She almost ran into Chris who was on his way out, grinning and dangling a set of car keys in one hand.
“What gives?” she asked.
“Since you’re on your way to Flagstaff, Gramps is lending me his SUV so I can run a few errands,” Chris said. “I’ll see you later tonight, after we finish skiing.”
Ali was surprised. Her father had purchased the Bronco new in 1972. He had babied it along for more than thirty years and over 300,000 miles, and he hardly ever relinquished the keys to anyone else. “You must be pretty special,” she said. “Whatever you do don’t wreck it.”
Ali went inside and back to her spot next to Dave Holman. By then he had finished his breakfast and was in the process of pulling several dollar bills from his wallet. She dropped the newspaper in front of him.
“I don’t care what the newspaper says,” Ali told him, “I still don’t think she committed suicide.”
Dave shrugged. “Suit yourself. Just because something’s in the paper doesn’t make it true or false. You of all people should know that.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?” she demanded.
“Look,” he said. “You’re a journalist. I’m a police officer. That means most likely we’ll never be pals. Let’s just leave it at that.”
“Sounds good to me,” she told him.
Leaving both his money and the bill on the counter, Dave got up and walked away. Edie Larson came back over to where her daughter was sitting. “More coffee?” she asked.
“No, thank you,” Ali said. “Are your customers always that obnoxious?”
“Which customers?”
“That one,” Ali said, pointing at Dave, who was getting into his vehicle outside.
“Dave? He’s a little surly on occasion,” Edie said. “His life hasn’t exactly been a bed of roses lately. Don’t take it personally. What about you? Are you all right? You look awfully pale.”
Ali had no desire to discuss the contents of her phone conversation with Paul. And she didn’t want to mention being chewed up and spit out by Dave Holman, either. Instead, Ali shoved the newspaper with its visible headline across the counter to her mother. Edie glanced at it and nodded.
“Oh, that,” she said. “I read it this morning while I was waiting for the rolls to rise.”
Ali stood up. “I’m going to head on up to Flag,” she said. “I want to see if there’s anything I can do to help.”
“You do that,” Edie said. “And be sure to let Howie and the kids know that we’re thinking about them.”
Back outside, Ali slipped off her coat. The sun was warming the chilly air, and the Cayenne’s heated seats-a laughable accessory in southern California-would keep her more than toasty. Standing there, next to the car, she looked at the mountains on the far side of Sedona. First came the layers of red rock formations standing out against the more distant green. But higher up, much closer to the rim, the landscape was still shaded white with snow. And there, snaking down the side of the mountain, as thin as a gossamer thread from a spider web, was the line that Ali knew to be Schnebly Hill Road. The place where Reenie had died.
Shivering, but not from cold, Ali climbed into the Cayenne and turned on the engine-and the heated seat. The she took her MP3 player out of her pocket and scrolled through the playlist.
She searched through the index until she found “Tell Me on a Sunday,” one of Andrew Lloyd Webber’s less
