Hand of Evil

or two words, and always the same words. Pretty Baby is what I chose. A whistle and Pretty Baby.

And I think she’s right. The first time I tried it, Blueboy was just sitting in his cage, but as soon as I whistled at him, he cocked his head to one side like he was really listening to me. Like he was interested. Miss P says that when I whistle first, it lets Blueboy know that I’m really talking to him. It’s like when Mother rings the bell, that means the butler is supposed to come or the maid.

I’ve never had a pet before. Ever. Father has his horses but those are

race

horses so they’re not pets at all, and the only people who get to be around them are the grooms and the jockeys and the trainers. Regular people never get to ride them or even touch them.

The next two entries were full of harmless chatter about Miss Ponder and the parakeet. In the one after that, however, Arabella’s diary took a turn that hinted something was amiss.

Mother told me this afternoon that Bill is coming home for Thanksgiving. This week. I loved it when he went away to school in September and everyone said he wouldn’t be back until Christmas. But Father wants him here, so he’s coming home anyway. He’ll be here in two days. I already know Christmas will be ruined. Now Thanksgiving will be

too. I hate him. HATE HIM. Why couldn’t he just stay where he was?

Maybe it won’t happen again. Maybe I should tell Miss P. I can talk to her about things I can’t tell anybody else, but she probably wouldn’t believe me. She really likes Bill. She told me once that she thinks my brother is very handsome. She wouldn’t think that if she knew what he’s really like.

Maybe I should run away, but I don’t have any money and I don’t know where I’d go. And if I do run away, what will happen to Blueboy? I can’t carry a suitcase and a bird-cage at the same time. I guess I have to stay.

The final entries were short and scribbled so hurriedly that it was hard to decipher them.

Father fired Miss P. I don’t know why. She just left in a taxi.

Followed by:

Blueboy is dead. He killed him.

And that was it. End of story. He who? Ali wondered. Arabella’s faulty pronoun reference left the parakeet’s killer’s identity a mystery, but Ali suspected that she knew who was responsible. Had there been something going on between the now ex-governess and the stepbrother she had previously referred to as “handsome?” That was unmentioned, but it was certainly a possibility.

The diary had contained far less damning information than Ali had expected. And it had stopped almost in mid-entry, coming to an end without coming to a conclusion. Dissatisfied, Ali closed the book and returned it to her purse. Days earlier she hadn’t understood why Arabella wanted her to read it. Now that Ali had read it, she still didn’t know why, but she was reasonably sure why Arabella had changed her mind on that subject and why she wanted the diary back.

It’s because Billy’s dead, Ali told herself. And I’m wondering if Arabella had something to do with it.

CHAPTER 13

Emerging from being caught up in the diary, Ali glanced around the waiting room and realized that things had changed. The once-hourly ICU visitation schedule had evidently ended. Sandy Mitchell was again seated at the table. So was Kip’s mother. She sat with her wheelchair pulled up close to Sandy’s knees, and the two of them seemed lost in a low-toned conversation. Jane Braeton sat off to one side, absently thumbing through a dog-eared magazine. The other woman in the room, the mother of the injured motorcyclist, was back at her station, knitting away with single-minded concentration. Her husband-her ex-husband-continued his stolid vigil in front of the silenced television news. Crystal, with her earphones still attached, was curled up in a chair and appeared to be sound asleep.

The atmosphere in the room was so quiet and subdued that when Ali’s cell phone rang it startled everybody, including the nurse who said nothing but gestured pointedly toward the overhead sign that prohibited the use of cell phones. Leaping to her feet, Ali hurried out of the room and down the corridor. She didn’t answer until she was standing in the elevator lobby and well out of earshot of the charge nurse.

“I just wanted to set your mind at ease,” Dave Holman told her. “I think it’s over.”

“What do you mean?” Ali asked.

“One of the Tempe Fire Department guys just came out of the burned-out house. He’s located three separate sets of scorched human remains of gunshot victims along with one weapon. So we think we’re looking at a double homicide/suicide.”

“You’re sure one of the dead guys is the one who was after Crystal?” Ali asked.

“Reasonably sure,” Dave replied. “Right now it’s all tentative, pending positive ID of the remains, of course, but that’s where we are right now. I thought you’d be relieved to hear it.”

Three people were dead, but if one of them was the guy who had attacked Kip and had tried to lure Crystal out of the hospital, Dave was right. Ali was glad to hear it. She didn’t let herself think about how close she herself had come to tangling with him, and she was glad Dave didn’t mention it.

“Who are they?” she asked.

“Students at ASU. A kid named Jason Gustavson and his two roommates. The house actually belongs to Jason’s father. Daddy is on his way here tonight, flying by private jet from Minneapolis, so I’d say the family’s probably loaded. The thing is, you can have all the money in the world and your kid may still turn out to be a total screw-up.”

“And a killer besides,” Ali added.

“That, too,” Dave agreed.

The elevator door opened. A man in a wheelchair with a canvas computer case perched on his lap rolled out of the elevator and into the corridor where Ali was pacing with the phone to her ear. The man paused to study the signage then turned toward the ICU. In that split second when his face was no longer averted, Ali recognized him. First she noticed his brush-cut blond hair and crooked nose. Then the eyes. For an electric moment their gazes met, and Ali felt herself being scrutinized by that peculiar dead-eyed stare she had found so chilling in Madeline Havens’s hand-drawn likeness. Finally he shrugged, looked away, and continued down the hallway.

Too shocked to speak or move, Ali struggled to suppress an involuntary gasp. Dave had just finished telling her that three people were dead in Jason Gustavson’s home in Tempe, but if this was Jason, he was definitely back among the living and looking far too hale and hearty to have survived a horrendous house fire.

“Ali?” Dave asked into the suddenly silent phone. “Are you there? Did I lose you?”

The man was still well within earshot, and Ali barely trusted herself to speak. “I think he’s here,” she managed to croak.

“What?” Dave asked.

“Which one’s Jason?” she asked. “Which one of the drawings?”

“The one with the crooked nose and the funny eyes…”

“He’s not dead,” Ali whispered. “He’s here.”

“Where?” Dave demanded. “At the hospital?”

“Here on the floor. On the ICU.”

“What?”

“Call the cops,” Ali urged. “I’ve gotta go.”

By then Gustavson was rolling purposefully down the hall, and Ali understood his intentions. If there were weapons in the computer bag, Crystal, Sandy, and Kip himself were all in mortal danger. And no officers Dave could summon now would arrive in time to help-unless Ali could somehow manage to stall him. The only good thing about that was that although she knew who he was, the reverse was not true. At least she hoped so.

Ali shoved the phone in her pocket and started down the hallway. She needed a way to slow him down without sparking a confrontation. “Hey,” she called after him. “Hey, you. Did anyone ever tell you that you look like