place by a collection of antique combs. She had worn her hair that way for as long as Ali could remember. So had Aunt Evie.
“I can’t believe Reenie’s gone,” Ali said.
“I wasn’t talking about Reenie,” Edie said. “What about Paul? Were you ever going to tell us about that?”
Edie had her there. Ali had done her best to avoid the issue of her broken marriage. Now she was stuck. “I just wasn’t ready to talk about it, but I guess Chris spilled the beans.”
“He didn’t have to,” Edie said.
“What do you mean?”
“I mean Evie and I had Paul Grayson figured out a long time ago-before we went to London even. It was clear to everyone early on that it wasn’t working-everyone but you, that is.”
“I wanted it to work,” Ali said.
“Of course you did,” Edie agreed. “And why not? You’re not the first mother who spent years making the best of a bad bargain in hopes of maintaining some kind of financial security for her kids. And, if you weren’t your father’s daughter, you would have been out of it years ago.”
“What does Daddy have to do with this?” Ali asked.
Edie smiled. “Have you ever heard the man say he was wrong? And you’re exactly like him, Ali. Spitting image. First you let Paul Grayson sweep you off your feet, and then, because you didn’t want to admit you’d made a mistake, you tried to make the best of it-for years, and a great cost to yourself, I might add.”
Edie eased Sam out of her lap. Once on the floor, the cat shook her paws-as though the carpet somehow didn’t measure up to her expectations-then she stalked off to the far corner of the room and curled up in a corner next to the drapes.
Ali gave a rueful laugh. “So is that what you’ve been doing down at the Sugarloaf ever since I left this morning-you and Dad and Jan and Chris and anyone else who happened to come in the door-discussing me and my marital difficulties?”
“No,” Edie returned. “We didn’t, but I’m here to discuss it now. I think it’s about time you and I had a heart- to-heart chat. It sounds like you could use one.”
Considering the circumstances, it turned out to be a very nice dinner. Ali cracked open a bottle of Aunt Evie’s Seven Deadly Zins to accompany Edie’s pot roast. And they talked. Or rather, Ali talked and her mother listened all the while passing tiny tidbits of roast to Sam who had positioned herself next to Edie’s feet under the table.
In the presence of her mother’s unconditional acceptance, Ali felt her own emotional wall crumbling. Tears she had somehow held in abeyance for days, came on with a vengeance as she spilled out the whole tawdry story. Between Monday and now she had shed plenty of tears for Reenie Bernard. The tears she shed that evening were for Alison Reynolds.
When eight o’clock rolled around, Edie stood up. “I’ve got a four A.M. wake-up call, so I’d best head home.”
After Edie left, Ali sat on the couch thinking. Her parents were absolutely grounded. They clearly loved one another and they also loved Ali. So how was it that, coming from such a stable background, Ali had managed to make such a mess of her own life? How could she possibly have mistaken Paul Grayson’s phony promises for the real thing, and how could she have convinced herself to settle for whatever crumbs he was offering? Maybe I only think I’m from Sedona, she told herself. Maybe I’m really from Stepford.
Ali was half asleep when a ringing telephone startled her awake. “Mom?” Chris asked.
She could tell from the quake in his voice that something was wrong. “What is it?”
“It’s Grandpa.”
“What’s happened? Is he hurt?”
“Yes, he’s hurt. Some hotshot snowboarder crashed into him from behind and sent him flying. The ski patrol just got him down off the slopes. They’re loading him into an ambulance right this minute to take him to Flagstaff.”
“How bad is it?” Ali asked.
“Pretty bad,” Chris said. “At least one broken leg, maybe two. And a broken arm as well. I just got off the phone with Grandma. She’s on her way.”
“So am I,” Ali said. “Where are they taking him?”
“Flagstaff Community.”
“I’ll be there as soon as I can.”
Chapter 9
All the way from Sedona back to Flag, Ali should have been worrying about her father. Instead, she thought about Howie Bernard. Had he murdered his wife? The idea of a mild-mannered history professor suddenly turned killer seemed unlikely. Still, Ali knew that extramarital affairs and the possibility of collecting sizeable sums of life insurance proceeds had turned more than one otherwise law-abiding citizen into a murderer. And in a town where university professors carried a fair amount of social clout, would the cops charged with solving the case give Howie Bernard any more than a cursory glance?
Somehow Ali doubted that would be the case. The detective who had collected the computer from Reenie’s office had taken the machine, but Ali had seen no evidence that they had dusted for prints. They were still focused entirely on the suicide angle. The fact that it might be something worse than that seemed not to have occurred to them. But it had to Ali, and the more she thought about it, the more she wanted to talk to Howie. Alone. And preferably unannounced. She wanted to catch him off guard and see if he might say something to her that would tip his hand.
Speeding all the way, Ali arrived at Flagstaff Community Hospital far sooner than she should have. Even so, Edie beat her there. By the time Ali walked into the waiting room, Bob Larson already had been rolled away to surgery. A subdued Chris sat quietly off to one side while Edie Larson fumed and paced.
“That man doesn’t have a lick of sense,” she raged. “If I’ve told your father once, I’ve told him a hundred times, he’s too old for snowboarding!”
“Snowboarding!” Ali exclaimed. “I thought they were going skiing.”
“That’s what he said they were going to do,” Edie replied. “But Bob’s a great one for telling me what he thinks I want to hear rather than what’s really going on. And if he got hit by a snowboarder, I’m guessing that’s what he was doing, too, snowboarding, the bird-brained dim-bulb.”
Ali looked at her son who shrugged his shoulders in silent confirmation of his grandmother’s worst suspicions. He and his grandfather had indeed been snowboarding.
“And of all the weeks for him to pull a stunt like this!” Edie railed on. “Why didn’t he just haul out a gun and shoot himself?”
“Calm down, Mom,” Ali said. “What’s so different about this week?”
“With everything else that’s been going on, we haven’t had a chance to tell you, but your father and I are thinking of retiring. We’ve got a potential buyer who’s supposed to come look at the restaurant sometime this week. We’ll be able to hold out for a lot more money if we’re selling the place as a going concern. If Dad’s laid up and the buyer thinks your father’s on his last legs-or on no legs at all, from the sound of it-it’ll be a lot tougher to make the kind of deal we want to make.”
“In other words, you can’t shut the place down just because Dad’s in the hospital.”
“Of course I can’t shut the place down,” Edie snapped. “I can’t even afford to open up late. It needs to be business as usual. In fact, I should be home in bed right this minute so I can be up at four to start baking sweet rolls. When the restaurant’s actually open, I can cook every bit as well as Bob can, but where on God’s green earth does he expect me to find someone to fill in for me out front? I’ll never be able to find someone dependable on such short notice, and Jan’s too old to manage the whole place on her own. It’ll be a disaster.”
“I could do it,” Ali suggested. The words were out of her mouth without her necessarily thinking about them, just as they had been when she had offered to look after Samantha.
Edie stopped in mid rant. “You?” she asked in disbelief. “Come on, Ali. It must be twenty years since you last
