That was what had happened this past year over Christmas when Ali had accompanied her father on one of his mercy missions. With the freeway newly plowed and snow lying ten inches deep, Bob had turned off the I-17 a few miles south of Munds Park and then wandered off the beaten track onto a Forest Service road that was just barely passable with Bob’s ’72 Bronco 4[.dotmath]4. Twenty minutes later, as soon as Bob stopped the SUV, fifteen or so people had materialized out of the snowbound, thickly forested wilderness and had quickly divested the 4?4 of its mini-truckload of bounty.
“These people live here year-round?” an astonished Ali had asked as they drove back to Sedona.
“Pretty much,” her father returned.
“You’d think they’d freeze.”
“They’ve got tents and campers hidden in here in the woods. Believe me, some of these guys have plenty of reason for staying out of sight.”
“Is it safe to come here, then?”
Bob grinned. “It is for me,” he said. “They’re all hungry, and I’m the guy with the food.”
“I keep wondering when in the world that man is going to grow up,” Edie was saying. “Put him on a pair of skis and he thinks he’s twenty again. But I didn’t call you up to bend your ear complaining about your father. I’m really calling about Reenie.”
Reenie Bernard was Ali’s best friend from high school. “What about her?” Ali asked at once. “Is she all right?”
“I don’t know, she’s missing,” Edie Larson answered. She sounded worried.
“Missing?” Ali repeated, as though she hadn’t heard properly.
“That’s right,” Edie said. “Hasn’t been seen or heard from since she went to Phoenix on Thursday. I had heard rumors about it yesterday, but you were so upset about your job situation at the time that I didn’t want to bring it up until it was actually confirmed. esides, I was hoping they’d have found her by now, but they haven’t. She’s officially listed as a missing person.”
Ali’s head swam. There were times when she and Misty Irene Bernard had gone for a year or two without any more communication than a hastily scrawled note on a Christmas card. The last time she had seen Ali had been at the Sugarloaf Christmas party back in December. Still, despite the years and distance, Ali considered Reenie to be her best friend.
“What happened?” Ali demanded.
“Nobody knows. One of the detectives from the Yavapai County sheriff’s department came in for lunch. According to him, Reenie was supposed to go to Scottsdale on Thursday morning for a doctor’s appointment. She left the doctor’s office in mid afternoon and hasn’t been seen since.”
In a matter of seconds the fact that Ali had lost her newsroom job seemed ridiculously unimportant-and selfish.
“That’s awful,” she said. “How are Howie and the kids doing?”
Reenie’s husband, Dr. Howard Bernard, was a history professor at Northern Arizona University in Flagstaff. His and Reenie’s marriage was a late-blooming, second-time-around affair for both of them. Their children-Matthew and Julie-were nine and six respectively. Julie had just barely made it in under her mother’s self-imposed child- bearing deadline of age 40.
“I don’t know,” Edie replied. “I haven’t called them. I didn’t want to be a bother, but I thought you might want to.”
“Yes,” Ali agreed. “I will. As soon as we get off the phone.”
And she did. The moment the call to her mother ended, Ali scrolled through the saved numbers in her cell phone and dialed Reenie’s home number. Someone whose voice Ali didn’t recognize answered before the end of the first ring.
“It’s Bree,” Reenie’s sister said, once Ali identified herself.
Bree and Reenie’s parents, Ed and Diane Holzer, were now staunch, Sunday-go-to-meeting-style Missouri Synod Lutherans-a direct contradiction to their wild and misspent youth. Ed had straightened up enough to join and eventually manage his family banking and real estate interests in Cottonwood. Prior to that, however, he and Diane together had sowed plenty of wild oats. They had named their now middle-aged daughters in the spirit of those psychedelic, free-wheeling days. Reenie, formally dubbed Misty Irene, had spent her school years dodging what she considered a name straight out of the sixties by opting for a variation on her middle name. Reenie’s younger sister, Bree-short for Breezy Marie-hadn’t fared much better.
Ali’s friendship with Reenie hadn’t extended as far as Bree, who, as the apple of her father’s eye, had been regarded as spoiled rotten and an obnoxious pest besides. All that was years in the past now, though, and Ali was glad Bree was there to help Howie and the kids with whatever was going on.
“My mother just called,” Ali said. “Until then I had no idea any of this had happened. How are things?”
Someone in the background on the other end of the call asked Bree a question. “It’s Ali Reynolds,” Bree answered. “She’s calling from California.” Then she came back to Ali. “Sorry. Howie can’t come to the phone right now. The house is full of people, cops mostly.”
“What’s going on?”
Bree sighed. “How long since you talked to Reenie?” she asked.
“I saw her briefly over Christmas,” Ali replied. “But there were all kinds of other people there. We didn’t have much of a visit. Why?”
“Reenie had been having trouble with her back before Christmas,” Bree said, “but she didn’t get around to going to the doctor until January. She just got a firm diagnosis last week-ALS. She had an appointment to see the doctor-a neurologist out at the Mayo Clinic-in Scottsdale on Thursday. She went there, but that’s the last anyone’s seen of her. She never came home.”
“ALS?” Ali asked. “As in Lou Gehrig’s disease?”
“That’s right,” Bree said. “It’s a death sentence-a crippling degenerative neurological disease with no cure. Once you’re diagnosed, it’s pretty much all downhill after that, three to ten years max. Reenie was devastated when she got the news. How could she be anything else?”
Ali felt sick to her stomach. It was incomprehensible that Reenie, her beloved Reenie, could be dying of some horrible disease, one that would leave her children motherless within a matter of a few years. Why hadn’t Reenie called? Why hadn’t she let Ali know?
“How awful!” Ali breathed.
“Awful isn’t the half of it,” Bree returned. “I’ve been reading up on it. ALS takes away muscle control. People are left bedridden and helpless, hardly able to swallow or even breathe on their own, but their mental faculties are totally unaffected. I think Reenie looked down the tunnel at what was coming and decided to do something about it.”
“You mean you think she committed suicide?” Ali asked.
“Don’t mention it to Howie,” Bree returned. “But that’s what I’m thinking. She would have hated being helpless and dependent. That isn’t Reenie. Never has been.”
You’re right about that, Ali thought.
Reenie Holzer had always been a doer, a mover and shaker.
“How are the kids doing?” Ali asked.
“Okay, I guess,” Bree replied. “The folks are here right now. They came up from Cottonwood as soon as church was over, so that’s a big help. They took Matt and Julie out for pizza. They just got back a few minutes ago.”
“Should I talk to them, to the kids, I mean?” Ali asked.
Bree hesitated. “I’m not sure,” she said. “Howie’s trying to play this low-key, and if everybody makes a big fuss about it…”
“What’s he told them?”
“That their mom has a disease, that she’s gone off by herself to think things over, and that she’ll be home very soon.”
“I don’t blame him,” Ali said. “It’s bad news either way. And now that you’ve told me what’s up, I think I’ll wait a while to talk to Matt and Julie,” she added. “That way I won’t end up blurting out something Howie would rather I not say.”
“Sounds good,” Bree returned.
