Web of Evil

'I understand from Detective Little that you and your husband are in the process of getting a divorce?'

Are getting a divorce? Ali wondered. The use of the present tense was telling. Until the detectives had a positive identification of their victim, they were going to hold firm to the fiction that Paul Grayson was still alive.

'Yes,' Ali answered. 'It was supposed to be finalized today. That was probably the first time anyone besides April noticed Paul was missingwhen he didn't show up for the hearing.'

'Friendly?' Sims asked.

At first Ali wasn't sure what Sims meant. 'I beg your pardon?'

'You know,' he responded. 'Your divorce. Is it amicable and all that?'

'As amicable as can be expected considering my husband's girlfriendhis fianceeis eight and a half months pregnant.'

'With his baby?' Sims asked.

'So I've been told,' Ali said. 'They were supposed to get married tomorrow. Speaking of which, why am I doing the identification? Why not April?'

'You're still married to him,' Sims said. 'From our point of view, you're a surviving relative. She's not.'

Ali thought about that for a few moments. It was rush hour. Traffic was painfully slow. As they inched along, Ali realized that she and the two detectives were in the same situation. They wanted information from her; she wanted the same from them.

'This man who's dead,' she said, 'this man who may be Paul. What was he doing on the railroad tracks? Did he go there on purpose? Was he trying to commit suicide or something? Maybe he and April had a fight and it pushed Paul over the edge.'

'It wasn't suicide,' Sims replied.

'An accident then?'

Sims said nothing.

Ali thought about what Jake had reportedly said about Paul bailing on his own bachelor party without bothering to tell his host or anyone else that he was leaving. Unless amp;Paul Grayson had never had a good track record where women were concerned. Ali could well imagine him picking up one of the strippers or the pole dancers or whatever brand of feminine charm the Pink Swan had available and taking her somewhere for a little private tete-a-tete.

'Was he alone or was he with someone?' Ali asked.

'We're not sure,' Sims said. 'We have people doing a grid search, but so far no other victims have been found.'

There was a short pause before Detective Taylor piped up. 'When exactly did you get to town, Ms. Reynolds? And did you drive over or fly?'

Taylor's questions activated a blinking caution light in Ali's head. She considered her words carefully before she answered. The very fact that she'd been close enough to see the flashing lights on the emergency vehicles might give the cops reason to think she was somehow involved. If she told them about driving past Palm Springs at midnight and seeing the lights, Sims and Taylor could well turn Ali's coincidental proximity into criminal opportunity. Still, she'd already given the same information to Detective Little. It seemed foolhardy to withhold it a second time, and there was even less point to not being truthful.

'I drove over yesterday,' Ali said. 'Last night. I left Phoenix late in the afternoon. Got to the hotel around two in the morning.'

'Which means you were driving through the Palm Springs area around amp;?'

'Midnight,' Ali answered without waiting for Detective Taylor to finish posing his question. 'And you're right. I did see the cop cars and ambulances and other emergency vehicles showing up at the scene of the wreck. It's dark in the desert. You could see those lights for miles. Later on, I heard on the radio that a train had crashed into a car.'

Ali's cell phone rang just then. The phone number wasn't one she recognized. 'Hello?'

'Ali Reynolds?'

'Yes.'

'My name is Victor, Victor Angeleri. My colleague Helga Myerhoff asked me to call you. Sorry I couldn't get back to you earlier. I've been tied up in a meeting. I thought maybe it would be a good idea for us to get together so I have a little better feel for what's happening. Helga gave me a brief overview, but I'd like a few more details from you. Since the office is just down the street from your hotel, I thought maybe I could drop by in a little while before I head home.'

'Sorry,' Ali said. 'That won't be possible.' She was aware that the cops in the front seat were listening avidly to everything she said and to every nuance of her side of the conversation. Their interest gave Ali a hint about how badly she had screwed up by not heeding Helga's advice.

'Why not?' Angeleri wanted to know. 'What's more important than meeting with me?'

'It's just that I'm not at the hotel right now,' she said. 'I'm actually on my way to Indio. Two detectives from the Riverside Sheriff's Department picked me up and asked me to come with them. They need someone to identify a dead manthe man they think is my husband.'

Angeleri uttered a string of very unlawyerlike words, ones Edie Larson would have deemed unprintable. 'Are you nuts or what? You mean you just got in the car with them?' he demanded. 'And now they're taking you all the way to Indio?'

Ali didn't know Victor Angeleri, but he sounded upsetfurious, evenas though he couldn't quite believe he'd been stuck with such a numbskull for a client. Ali couldn't believe it, either.

'That's where the body is,' Ali said.

'You're going to the coroner's office there?' Victor wanted to know.

'Evidently,' Ali answered meekly.

'All right,' Victor shouted into her ear. 'Where are you now?'

'Merging onto the ten.'

'I'm leaving the office right now. I'll meet you there. In the meantime, keep your mouth shut.'

'Where did you say we're going?' Ali asked, directing her question at Sims.

'The Riverside County Morgue,' he answered. 'The address is'

'I know the address,' Angeleri interrupted, bellowing the words loud enough to break Ali's eardrum. 'I'll be there as soon as I can. Until you and I have a chance to talk in private, you're to say nothing more. Nothing! You can talk about the weather. You can talk about the World Series, but that's it. Understand?'

'Got it,' Ali answered. 'I hear you loud and clear.'

That was actually something of an understatement since Sims and Taylor must have heard him, too. The two detectives exchanged a raised-eyebrow look, and Sims heaved a resigned sigh. Clearly they had been having their way with her. Now the game was up. Ali's only hope was that Victor Angeleri would be smart enough to dig her out of the hole she had dug herself into before she made it any deeper.

Ali glanced at her watch. At the rate traffic was moving, it would be another two hours before they made it to Indio. And with Victor leaving the office on Wilshire that much behind them, Ali calculated that it would be hours before the attorney could catch up with them. That meant she was in for several uncomfortable hours of keeping her mouth shut.

Gradually traffic began to thin. The car sped up, but clearly Taylor and Sims had gotten the message. They made no further attempt to ask her questions about anythingincluding the run-up to the World Series. Left to her own devices, Ali spent the time trying to figure out how, in the course of one short day, she had gone from being an almost divorced woman to being a homicide suspect.

Ali checked her watch when they pulled up outside the coroner's office in Indio. She expected they'd have to wait another hour at least before Victor could possibly catch up with them. Then, after however long it took to do the identification and conduct any additional interviews, there would be another three-hour car ride back to the hotel.

Resigned to the idea that it was going to be a very long night, Ali was astonished when an immense man rose from a small waiting room sofa and hurried toward them.

'Ali Reynolds?' he asked.

Assuming this was yet another cop of some kind, Ali nodded.