Ali was disappointed to find no sign of April's bright red Volvo there in the driveway, and no sign of Edie Larson's Olds, either. It was possible both cars were parked in the spacious five-car garage. Maybe that was where they had been parked when Ali and Dave had come to the house earlier and decided no one was there. It was also possible, Ali realized, that she was wrong and there was no one at the house now, either.
Hurrying up onto the porch, Ali reached past a tangle of crime scene tape and tried the front door. It was locked. Ali headed for the back of the house, wondering as she went if the alarm system had ever been reengaged. She tried the slider from the pool patio into the family room. No luck. That was locked, too. Finally she tried the door into the kitchen. The knob turned easily in her hand.
'I wondered how long it would take you to get here,' April said.
Ali stopped just inside the door. April was across the room, seated on a chair at the kitchen table. A pistol Ali recognized as one of Paul's lay nearby on the tabletop, well within April's reach. Ali knew that had she come into the house with her own weapon drawn, they both might have died in a hail of gunfire.
'What's going on?' Ali demanded. 'What have you done to my mother?'
'She kept trying to tell me what to do. I got sick of it. So I decided to show her a thing or two.'
'My mother told you what to do so you're holding her prisoner in the basement? Are you nuts?'
'Maybe,' April conceded. 'Maybe a little.'
Ali took a step into the room. As soon as she did, April picked up the gun and pointed it in Ali's direction. 'Don't come any closer,' she said. 'Put your hands behind your head and stay where you are.'
'Is my mother hurt?' Ali asked.
'I didn't hit her that hard,' April said. 'I was tired of listening to her. I just wanted her to shut up.'
'I asked you if my mother's all right.'
'She's still breathing, if that's what you want to know,' April allowed. 'I came upstairs to get more duct tape. When I went back down, I found her phone. I heard it ringing. Someone named Bobby calledwhoever that is.'
Bobby was Robert Larson, Ali's father, although Edie hardly ever called her husband by that pet name to his face.
'And that's when I saw Edie had called you,' April continued.
'You're right,' Ali agreed. 'She did call me, and I heard everything that was said between you, April. All of it. And when she mentioned being in a basement, I knew you had to be holding her here at the house. But why? What do you think you're doing? What's this all about? Whatever it is, we've got to put a stop to it.'
'We?' April returned bitterly. 'There you go doing the same thing your mother didordering me around, telling me what to do. Why does everyone think they can get away with that? It's been that way all my life. It's like people think that just because someone is pretty they're also stupid. I'm not, you know.'
'What exactly did my mother tell you to do?' Ali asked.
'She told me to stop smokinglike I was in junior high. She sounded just like my mother. Exactly like my mother. It was like a flashback or something.'
'So your mother was always ordering you around, too?' Ali asked the question more to sustain the conversation than anything else. She knew she needed to keep April talking while she figured out what to do next.
'Are you kidding?' April demanded. 'Don't try to tell me you didn't notice. She was the worst one of alltalking to the lawyers, firing the cook and the gardener, acting like it was her house and her life instead of mine.'
For the first time it occurred to Ali that April herself might have been responsible for her mother's fatal plunge down the stairs.
'Your mother was trying to look out for you,' Ali said reasonably. 'For you and your baby both.'
'Screw the baby,' April said. 'I never even wanted a damned baby. I never should have told Paul about it in the first place. He's the one who talked me into keeping it. If it had been up to me, I would have had an abortion just like I did those other times. But as soon as Paul knew about it, he was wild to get married, have the baby and everything.'
April's words hit Ali hard. She remembered that she and Paul had talked some about having kids shortly after they married, but Chris was already a teenager by then. Ali had been happy with the way her career was going. She hadn't wanted to start the motherhood program over again, especially knowing full well that no matter how much paid help she'd have had, most of the responsibility for the new arrival would fall to her. She had already raised one only child. She hadn't wanted to do that again, but she certainly hadn't wanted to have two more children, either. So she hadn't exactly said no to Paul, but she hadn't ever stopped taking her birth control pills, either. The upshot of that had been that Paul had resented Chrisresented everything about Chrisand had never really accepted him.
Once Ali had learned about April, she had moved out of the house. In the months since then, she had blamed Paul for everything that had been wrong with their marriage. Now, though, standing with her fingers locked around the back of her neck, facing her husband's armed mistress across an expanse of kitchen, Ali Reynolds came face- to-face with her own culpability. For the first time she had to admit that it had taken two people to destroy her marriagethree, counting April.
But that wasn't the real issue here. The real bottom line had to do with April and her gun. If she had gone totally off her rocker, was anyone going to come out of this confrontation alive?
'You killed your mother?' Ali asked.
'What if I did?' April replied. 'It was an accident. We were arguing in the upstairs hallway. It got physical. I pushed her and down she went.'
April's dispassionate confession was calm, conversational, and utterly chilling.
'But she was still alive when she landed,' Ali argued. 'She was still alive hours later when we found her. Why didn't you try to help her? Why didn't you call for an ambulance?'
'Because I didn't want to help her,' April returned. 'Because I was tired of having her scream at me. I just left her where she was and went shopping. I figured someone else would find her eventually, and I was right.'
'My mother never screamed at you,' Ali said.
'No,' April agreed. 'But every time I was around her, she kept telling me what I should and shouldn't be doing for the baby. Smoking is bad for the baby. Drinking is bad. Eating spicy food is bad. Coffee is bad. I'm sick and tired of the damned baby. She's not even born yet, and even Sonia Marie gets to tell me what to do.'
'How did my mother get here to the house?' Ali asked.
'She figured it out,' April said.
'Figured what out?'
'About my mother. She came to my room after the interview while I was changing clothes. She saw the scratches on my arms and asked me about them, so I decided to get rid of her, too. And since she liked the baby so much, I used the baby against her. I came here to the house and then I called Edie. I told her where I was and that I needed her to come quick and pick me up because my contractions had started. Worked like a charm. She couldn't get here fast enough. She was surprised when I pulled the gun on her, though. I think she thought I was kidding. I wasn't.'
So Edie's ability to see through people was what had gotten her in trouble.
'My arms are getting tired,' Ali said. 'My hands are going to sleep. Can I put them down now?'
'Stay on that side of the room then,' April ordered. 'Over against the sink. Don't come any closer.'
'What about Paul?' Ali asked, changing the subject ever so slightly. 'Did he ever tell you what to do?'
'Sort of,' April admitted. 'I didn't mind that much because he was nice about it, at least at first. It got worse after I moved in here. That's when I really noticed it. He started sounding more and more like my mother. He was closer to her age, you knowcloser to hers than he was to mine.'
'You killed him, too, then?' Ali asked.
'Of course I didn't kill him,' April said indignantly. 'I keep telling you, I'm not stupid. Why would I kill Paul when we weren't married and he hadn't even signed his new will yet? That makes no sense.'
'I thought you didn't know whether or not he had signed it.'
'There are a lot of things I know that people don't think I know,' April returned with a grim smile. 'That's the one nice thing about people thinking I'm stupid. They always underestimate me.'
April had already nonchalantly admitted to one murder, and Ali knew she had most likely attempted another. Given that, when she denied having been involved in Paul Grayson's death, Ali had to concede there was a possibility April was telling the truth.
