Ali’s intention was to head straight home, but a phone call from an escrow officer at the title company detoured her. Left to unload her deceased husband’s real estate holdings, Ali’s first plan had been to empty the house on L.A.’s Robert Lane and then list it. In talking to a real estate agent, however, the suggestion had been made that she consider selling it on a turn-key basis with all the furnishings and artwork intact. Ali had thought finding a buyer on those terms was unlikely, but in that respect she was wrong. Within days she had a full-price offer.
The buyers were people who had just won an amazing Power-ball jackpot and who wanted to move up into newer and classier digs without having to do any of the work on their own. They were ready to buy everything, pots and pans and linens included. In the back of Ali’s mind, the distrustful, snarky part, she wondered if her agent had been straight with her. It seemed likely that the agent must have known that those particularly needy purchasers were out there. It made Ali wonder if maybe the advice from the Realtor had been less impartial than it should have been. Maybe she could have gotten more.
But the truth was, Ali Reynolds was glad to be done with the Los Angeles house and was more than ready to let it go. She had balked at unloading a few items-the Limoges china she had chosen when she and Paul married; the leather couch from the family room; and Paul’s extensive wine collection along with the water-damaged credenza. Other than those, however, Ali had accepted the purchasers’ offer and had let everything else go without a second thought.
“I know our closing appointment is scheduled for tomorrow,” said Linda Highsmith of Highsmith Red Rock Title. “But the papers are here now, ready to be signed. Unfortunately, I have a conflict tomorrow. I know it’s late, but if you could possibly come by this afternoon…”
“Sure,” Ali said. “I’ll be right there.”
It was close to five. Most of the uptown area was a maze of road construction. Once through that, the traffic on Sedona’s main drag to the far side of town was maddeningly slow as well, so Ali wasn’t “right there” nearly as fast as she thought she’d be, but Linda was delighted when she finally did show up.
“I really appreciate this,” Linda said, ushering Ali into a conference room. “It’s only a parent/teacher conference, and I didn’t find out about it until just this afternoon. I suppose I could have handed the closing off to someone else, but…”
“It doesn’t matter,” Ali said. “I’m glad to get it out of the way today.”
The whole process took the better part of an hour. “Once the purchasers sign and the sale is recorded, the funds will be deposited in the account you’ve designated,” Linda explained as they finished up. “This is only our good-faith estimate of the moneys due to you. The actual amount may vary slightly from this.”
Alison Reynolds looked down at the line Linda indicated. The amount written there was more than substantial. It amounted to more money than Ali ever would have imagined accumulating in her lifetime.
And Linda Highsmith, who had also grown up in Sedona, seemed to be thinking much the same thing. “Small-town girl makes good,” she said with an envious smile. “It must feel pretty incredible.”
Ali nodded and smiled back as best she could, but the truth was, it didn’t feel all that terrific. This unexpected real estate windfall was coming to her not because she personally had earned or deserved it, but because she had married well-from a financial point of view, at least, and because Paul had died before their divorce became final. In Ali’s book, neither of those two items really qualified as “making good.”
“I guess that remains to be seen,” she said.
CHAPTER 4
The truth was, Ali left the title company office knowing she had money coming her way, but feeling more burdened by that fact rather than less. Ali briefly considered going by to see her parents, but decided against it. She usually enjoyed being around Bob and Edie Larson, but the last time she had seen them, her mother had been all over her about being “down in the mouth.” Edie had asked several pointed questions about what Ali was doing to “get herself back on track.”
Not wanting to risk being lectured by the parental units, Ali drove back home where she was delighted to see Chris’s Prius already parked in the driveway. Chris’s energy and cheerfulness were usually welcome antidotes for her current bout with unaccustomed torpor.
“Hey, Mom,” he said, looking up from the evening news as she walked in. With his blond hair suitably moussed and spiked, the six-foot-one Christopher could have easily passed for one of the new breed of weather reporters showing up on the tube. Chris had gotten in the habit of watching television news back in the old days when his mother was often on screen. Ali was pretty much over her own TV news addiction. Chris wasn’t. He sat on the couch with Sam stretched out next to his leg.
“My night to cook,” Chris told her. “Pizza’s on the counter in the kitchen.”
Ali had grown up in a household at the back of a restaurant. Her parents were both professional cooks. As a consequence learning to cook had never been a priority-she had never needed to. When she had been married the first time, to Chris’s father, she had cooked enough to get by, but that was all. When she had married Paul, she had moved into a place where yet another professional cook, Elvira Jimenez, had held sway over the kitchen. Besides, Ali’s news anchor duties had precluded her being anywhere near home during meal prep time.
The upshot of all that meant that not only was Ali not a capable cook, neither was her son. Between them, they subsisted on takeout and leftovers sent over from the Sugarloaf.
Ali went over to the counter and scooped up a napkin and a piece of still steaming pepperoni pizza. She stared down at the message book beside the telephone.
“Dave called?” she asked.
Dave was Detective Dave Holman, a fellow alum of Mingus Mountain High, where he had graduated a year before Ali. He had served in the U.S. Marine Corps and, along with his work as a homicide detective for the Yavapai County Sheriff’s Department, he was still a member of the Marine Reserves. During the years Ali had been away from Sedona, Dave had established a firm friendship with her parents. Now he was her friend as well. Months earlier, during that awful time in California after Paul’s murder, Dave had been at Ali’s side every step of the way.
“Yup,” Chris said. “Wanted to know if you’d be home later. Said he’d like to stop by. I told him as far as I knew you’d be here. I also told him if he’s not too good to turn up his nose at pizza he’d be welcome to have dinner. Tuesday is the two-for-one special, so we have plenty.”
Pizza was their usual Tuesday night fare, and Chris usually spent the remainder of the evening playing city league basketball down at the high school gym. Much as Ali enjoyed her son’s company, she was also accustomed to having the house to herself on the evenings he played ball, taking advantage of the solitude to work on her blog entries and go through her readers’ comments. Tonight, if time allowed, she had planned to delve into Arabella’s diary. There was a part of her that resented the fact that Chris had seen fit to invite company over without consulting her first, especially when he had no intention of being at home.
“Oh,” Chris added. “And Gramps called. He wanted to know if you knew where Kip went.”
“Kip?” Ali returned. “I have no idea. He was here earlier this afternoon, but I haven’t seen him since.”
“That’s what I told Gramps-that since the credenza was there in the entryway, Kip must have come by. He said not to worry; something probably came up. I could hear Grandma grousing in the background-that Kip had probably fallen off the wagon and gone out and wrecked Grandpa’s precious Bronco. There’d be hell to pay if that happened.”
Bob Larson’s vintage Bronco was precious all right. Ali reached for the phone. “Did Grandpa want me to call?”
Chris unfolded his long legs from the couch, dislodged Sam, and came over to the counter where he collected another piece of pizza.
“Depends on how brave you are,” he said. “It sounded to me like he and Grandma were going at it pretty hot and heavy. If I were you, I’d wait awhile and give them a chance to cool off.”
Ali found a soda in the fridge and brought it to the counter. She was several bites into her pizza before she spoke again. “I signed the papers on the Robert Lane house,” she said.
“The sale went through then?”
