please?'
The caller's voice sounded so distant, so impersonal, that Ali knew without hearing another word that the guy wasn't calling with good news.
'Just a moment,' Ali said quickly. 'She's resting, but I'll get her for you.'
With the low-battery alarm still sounding, Ali hurried into April's darkened room. The young woman lay on her side, snoring softly. Ali shook her awake. 'April,' she said. 'There's a call for you.'
April took the phone. 'Yes,' she said. 'What is it? Is my mother all right?
But of course Monique Ragsdale was anything but all right. She had died on the operating table, most likely as a result of the brain injury. With a slight whimper, April dropped the phone. As soon as it fell, Ali Reynolds knew she was now a suspect in two separate homicides.
Sobbing, April buried her face in the pillow. 'Mom's gone,' she wailed. 'So's Paul. I'm all alone now. What's going to happen to me? What's going to happen to the baby?'
Ali reached down and patted April's shoulder. 'I'm so sorry,' she said. 'But you'll be all right. We'll figure it out.'
Then Ali picked up the phone, took it into the other room, plugged it into the charger, and called Victor Angeleri at home. 'You need to know what's happened.'
In the end, Ali stayed behind at the hotel for yet another meeting with Victor. Her mother and Dave were the ones who volunteered to take April back to the hospital to handle whatever paperwork needed signing. After several phone calls, Victor managed to locate Detectives Tim Hubbard and Rosalie Martin, the two L.A. homicide cops who were now in charge of the Monique Ragsdale investigation.
'Look,' Victor said once he had Detective Hubbard on the phone. 'I don't like the circus atmosphere any more than you do, and it's going to get a lot worse before it gets better. My client is willing to cooperate and give you a voluntary statement, but it needs to be on our terms. I'd rather do it here at the hotel, where we have some control over the media. How about if you come to us?'
In the end, that's what happenedthe detectives agreed to come there. For the next two hours, and with a tape recorder running, they went over the whole story again, in great detail. They wanted to know who was at the morning meeting at the house on Robert Lane. Both detectives seemed intrigued by the pre-funeral reading of Paul Grayson's will, and they seemed especially interested in the fact that Paul Grayson's murder had left Ali holding a bagful of monetary goodies.
'What was Ms. Gaddis's reaction to that?' Rosalie Martin wanted to know.
Ali shrugged. 'What you'd expect. She was upset.'
'What about her mother, Ms. Ragsdale?' Detective Hubbard asked. 'Was she upset, too?'
'I'm sure she was worried about her daughterand the baby,' Ali told her.
'Which put the two of you on opposite sides of the fence.'
Ali glanced in Victor's direction. He gave a slight shake of his head, and Ali said nothing more.
With the topic of the will pretty much exhausted, Hubbard moved on to other issues. The two cops seemed to have missed the Sumo Sudoku craze entirely and had to have the concept explained to them. When it came to the names of the players and the film crew, however, Ali wasn't able to offer much detail.
'What about workmen?' Detective Hubbard asked.
'Jesus Sanchez is the gardener,' Ali said.
'What can you tell us about him?'
Ali shrugged. 'Not much. He more or less came with the house. He was working there long before Paul and I bought the place. Most of the time he works alone, but today he had a crew working with him. I didn't know any of them.'
Was this the time Ali should mention her near-encounter with the falling boulder, or would the cops see that as nothing more than a lame attempt on her part to deflect their suspicions away from her? She decided to let it go.
'What about the cook?' Detective Hubbard asked.
'I met her, but she's new. I don't know her name.'
'What about address information or contact numbers for the two of them?'
'Jesus and the cook? I'm sure Paul had the information, probably in his office somewhere, but I don't. We were getting a divorce, remember?'
'We'll see what we can find,' Hubbard said. 'Now about the house. Does it have a security system?'
'Of course,' Ali told him.
'But it wasn't alarming when you got there this afternoon and found Ms. Ragsdale at the bottom of the stairs?'
'No. The front door was half open but the alarm wasn't sounding. I assumed someone must have switched it off.'
'Why would that be?'
'Maybe with so many people coming and going throughout the day, it was easier to turn it off.'
'Isn't that unusual?'
'It would have been for me,' Ali said. 'But I'm not sure about how April runs the house.'
'Your house,' Hubbard added.
Ali didn't like it that Hubbard seemed so eager to come back to the idea that the house on Robert Lane ultimately belonged to Ali.
'April Gaddis is the one who's been living there most recently,' Ali returned. 'Maybe she's not all that worried about security.'
'Maybe not,' Hubbard agreed. 'And no one else was there at the house when you arrived?'
'No one. Not the cook. Not the gardener.'
'What time did you get there?'
'Four or so. I don't remember exactly.'
'The nine-one-one call came in at four-fifteen.'
'So around four.'
'The people who were with you at the time you found Ms. Ragsdale were your mother and this friend, one Dave Holman.'
'Yes,' Ali said. 'That's correct.'
'And he's a police officer?'
Ali nodded. 'Dave's a homicide detective with the Yavapai County Sheriff's Department in Sedona.'
'I've heard about Sedona,' Hubbard said. 'The crystal place. So he drove all the way over here from there?'
'From Lake Havasu, actually,' Ali replied. 'He's divorced. He was there visiting his kids.'
'When did he arrive?'
Ali was a little puzzled by this segue into questions about Dave Holman. 'Early afternoon,' she answered. 'In time to have lunch.'
'And he was with you most of the afternoon?'
'Yes.'
All this time, Detective Rosalie Martin had been sitting back and letting her partner do most of the questioning. Now she leaned forward once more.
'You mentioned that you came and went from the hotel via the service elevator?'
'Yes,' Ali said.
'Why was that?'
'Because the lobby was full of reporters. I wanted to avoid them if at all possible.'
'Couldn't it also be because you didn't want to be observed, period?' Rosalie asked. 'Not just by the reporters but by anyone?'
Her not-too-subtle implication was clear and Victor balked. 'This interview is over,' he announced. 'My client has been more than cooperative. She's answered all your questions. If you want to know whether or not she left the hotel in the course of the afternoon, I suggest you avail yourselves of the hotel's security tapes. I'm sure those cover the service elevator as well as the public ones.'
The cops left shortly thereafter. Victor turned to Ali. 'Has anyone ever told you you're a hell of a lot of
