“I have another call coming in and I need to take it,” she said. “Thanks for being in touch. If I think of anything else, I’ll be sure to let you know.”
“Hi, Ali,” Bree Cowan said when Ali clicked over to the other call. “I just talked to my mother. She and Dad are having a few people over tonight, but there’s so much food at the house that they’d like more people to stop by and eat it. It’ll mostly be friends and relatives from out of town, and you certainly qualify on that score. They could use the company, and so could the kids. I thought maybe…”
Going to visit the Holzers made a lot more sense than sitting around at home wondering what Watching might or might not be doing. “What time?” Ali asked at once.
“Sixish.”
“I’ll be there.”
Once off the phone with Bree Cowan, Ali sat there holding Reenie’s friendship card and letting the anger she felt toward Detective Farris wash over her. He had dismissed her concerns out of hand. He had given her the same kind of brush-off he had given Andrea Rogers.
His mind’s made up, Ali thought bitterly. Don’t confuse the issue by asking him questions that don’t necessarily agree with his pet theory.
Still looking at the card she realized that, for the rest of her life, whenever she saw one of those particular cards, she’d think of Reenie. And then she realized something else. Just because Detective Farris wasn’t interested in her questions didn’t mean she should stop asking them. Alison Reynolds was a journalist after all, someone trained to ask questions, and ask she would.
With that in mind, and with a whole new sense of purpose, Ali reached for her computer.
Chapter 13
It took hardly any time for Ali’s search engine to track down Jasmine Wright-Jasmine and Timothy Wright, to be exact-with an address on N. Verde Street in Flagstaff. In other words, Howard’s prize pupil and key-carrying side-dish was married-or had been-a short enough time ago that the phone company database had yet to catch up with any possible changes in address or marital status. Opening a new file on her computer, in a document she labeled simply REENIE, Ali pasted in both the address and the telephone number.
She did a public records search and found no references to either Jasmine or Timothy that included anything concerning divorce proceedings. Finally, she picked up the phone and dialed their number. Her heart skipped a beat when a male voice answered the phone on the third ring.
“Mr. Wright?” Ali asked that much but she had no concept whatsoever of what she would say next.
“Yes.”
Ali’s mind raced. “My name is Larson,” she said, reverting to her maiden name. “Ali Larson. I hate to bother you. I’m sure you remember that terrible snowstorm we had a week ago. My car was parked on a street near campus. Someone skidded in the snow and creamed my poor Camry-took out all three panels on the passenger side. The problem is, it was a hit and run. I’ve been told that your wife sometimes parks in that same area, and I was wondering if she might have seen-”
“Jasmine’s not here,” Timothy interrupted. “She moved out months ago.”
“Do you have any idea where I could reach her?”
“No,” he answered. “None at all. Sorry.” And he hung up.
Ali thought about Alan, the poor guy who had written to cutloose to express his devastation after learning that his wife was screwing around with her professor. Poor Timothy, Ali thought and meant it. The Wrights’ divorce might not be final, but it was definitely in the works. And if Jasmine was clearing the marital decks to make way for Howie, was it possible Howie had been doing the same thing?
It would have taken a year or two, or maybe even longer, for Reenie to die of ALS. A divorce took six months to a year, depending. Murder was a whole lot quicker. So where had Jasmine and Howie been on Thursday night? Did they have an alibi for the time when Reenie was flying off the cliff? Detective Farris probably knew the answers to those questions, but he wasn’t going to tell. Ali would have to find out about that on her own.
So who would be her allies in this project? Andrea Rogers, for sure. Bree and Jack Cowan. The Holzers. As for the cops? Not a chance. Knowing the Cowans and the Holzers would be otherwise occupied, Ali picked up the phone and called Andrea.
“Can you do me a favor?” Ali asked.
“Sure,” Andrea said. “What?”
“Jasmine Wright has split with her husband. Could you try to find out where she’s living?”
“How come?”
“I talked to Detective Farris,” Ali said. “He gave me the same treatment he gave you. As far as he’s concerned, the typed suicide note stands. Case closed.”
“You don’t agree?”
“No,” Ali said. “I don’t.”
“And it’s not an accident?”
“No.”
Andrea sighed. “Murder then,” she said. “Who?”
“Since the cops don’t suspect anybody, my position is to suspect everybody,” Ali answered. “Starting with Howie and Jasmine Wright.”
“I see,” Andrea said. “In that case, I could just as well tell you that I’ve been doing some nosing around on my own.”
“What do you mean?”
“You know Reenie,” Andrea said. “She wasn’t one for scrimping when it came to spending money on services or programs, but as far as the office was concerned…Six years ago, somebody donated a dozen or so computers. We used two of them, and Reenie put the rest of them away to use later. They’re all dinosaurs now and not worth fixing, but they’re perfectly reliable, right up until one of them quits.”
“So?”
“The first one I used was the first one that croaked, and I didn’t have all my files backed up the way they should have been. We installed flash cards so we could back up on a daily basis, but when we moved into the new office and set up a network, our IT guy fixed it so that Reenie’s computer backed up to mine each day and mine backed up to hers as well. Sort of a fail-safe system.”
“You’re saying you have her files?”
“Yes,” Andrea said. “All of them.”
“Does Detective Farris know about that?”
“He didn’t ask so I didn’t tell him,” Andrea answered. “And I know it’s snooping and probably none of my business, but I’ve been going through her files anyway. I’m sure the police have been doing the same thing.”
“And?”
“The last file Reenie worked on was a spreadsheet,” Andrea said. “The file was saved on Wednesday night at eight o’clock. So she came back into the office after I left for the day.”
“What kind of spreadsheet?”
“It lays out all her death benefits,” Andrea said. “It lists all the insurance policies-group and individual.”
“How much?” Ali asked.
“Almost five hundred thousand,” Andrea answered. “There’s twenty-five thousand of group insurance from here, an additional hundred in group insurance through Howie’s work, a hundred from an individual policy. The rest is from their bank-one that will pay off the outstanding mortgage on their house. Then there’s an additional twelve hundred a month from Social Security until Matt and Julie each reach their eighteenth birthdays.”
Ali did some mental calculations. On the one hand, $500,000 sounded like a lot of money, but if you subtracted out $80,000 for the protocol and then whatever hospital expenses Reenie’s final illness might have entailed, that money could have been eaten up in no time.
“So she was definitely putting her financial house in order,” Andrea was saying. “I’m sure Detective Farris sees that as something else pointing to suicide, but I think she was trying to get a clear idea of how things would
