purse last night during that whole mess at St. Francis Hospital. I’m sure it was picked up in the evidence sweep along with my purse and cell phone. It’s probably locked away in an evidence locker somewhere at your department.”
“And you’re asking me to read it?”
“Yes,” Ali said.
“Is there anything else?”
Ali, too, was losing patience. It sounded as though Marsh’s ears were closed and his mind was made up.
“No,” she said. “I can’t think of anything else.”
“Good then,” he told her. “I want to thank you for coming forward, Ms. Reynolds, but I also feel obliged to give you a word of caution. While we appreciate your interest in the case, it’s usually not a good idea for civilians to insert themselves into one police investigation after another…”
“Wait a minute,” Ali interrupted. “If you’re talking about last night, let me remind you that that particular ‘investigation,’ as you call it, came to me.”
“Be that as it may, Ms. Reynolds. My advice is the same. You might want to take a step back from all this and leave it to the professionals. Of course, just in case you happen to come across any additional information, let me give you my numbers….”
“Don’t bother,” Ali said. “I believe I’ve already got your number. That came through loud and clear.”
CHAPTER 15
In their office cubicle at Phoenix PD, Larry Marsh sat staring at his telephone receiver.
“She hung up on you?” Hank asked.
“Pretty much,” Larry said. “So, where are we?”
“I’m working on tracing the Silver Star that was found under the floor mat in Mr. Ashcroft’s vehicle. The name A. Reed is engraved on the back, but so far no luck tracing Mr. Reed. While Ms. Reynolds was hanging up on you, I was being bitched out by some battle-ax at the VA who read me the riot act and let me know in no uncertain terms that we’re breaking the law.”
“Breaking what law?”
“It turns out that found military medals are supposed to be returned directly to the Defense Department. We’re to make no effort to locate either the serviceman in question or his surviving family.”
“But this is a homicide investigation,” Marsh objected.
“Wouldn’t you think,” Hank agreed. “Which is why I plan on working my way up the chain of command. What about you?”
Marsh stood up. “I think I’m going to take a walk down to the evidence room.”
“How come?”
“Evidently we have Arabella Ashcroft’s diary down there under lock and key. Something weird about a dead parakeet. Ali Reynolds seems to be of the opinion that we should take a look at it, and I guess I will.”
Ali was still fuming long after she put down the phone. She had done her civic duty by reporting her concerns and had felt like a traitor for doing so. Detective Marsh had mocked her suggestion that Arabella’s dead parakeet might somehow be connected to everything that had happened, even though Ali had no idea what that connection might be. Marsh’s attitude had been nothing short of galling. Ali Reynolds wasn’t accustomed to being dismissed as some kind of meddling wacko.
“Leave it to the professionals,” she groused aloud, mimicking Detective Marsh’s snide delivery. “Don’t insert yourself into the investigation.”
But she had already been inserted-by none other than Arabella Ashcroft herself. All her life Ali Reynolds had responded poorly to being told to sit down and shut up, and this time was no exception. Her immediate response to Detective Marsh’s back-off suggestion was to want more information.
To track down the general history of the Ashcroft clan, Ali knew she could spend the next several hours combing through computerized searches. With those, she would come away with the bare-bones outline of what had gone on through the years. Over the weekend and with Chris’s help, she could probably flesh out those reports into something reasonably comprehensive, but what she was looking for right then was a way to jump-start her investigation. To do that, she turned to her computer, all right, but to her address book rather than Google. A few minutes later she was dialing the number for Deborah Springer.
In the realm of female journalists, Mrs. Deborah Springer was legendary. A World War Two widow who never allowed anyone to refer to her as Ms., Deb Springer had gone to work in the L.A.
Ali had done an interview with the woman on the occasion of Mrs. Springer’s ninetieth birthday. The filming had been done in the lobby area of the assisted living facility in LaJolla where Deb and her now deceased third husband had taken up residence. Ali and Deb Springer had liked each other instantly, and Ali had come away from the interview with a deep respect for this sharp-witted woman who, years after leaving the newspaper business, had lost none of her encyclopedic knowledge of the California business community.
When the interview had ended, Mrs. Springer had given Ali her direct telephone number and invited her to call if she ever wanted to chat. But at least three years had passed since then, and Ali had been away from California and out of the loop for part of that time. As she dialed the number, she worried that she’d hear a recorded message saying that the number had been disconnected. She did not.
“Hello. Hello,” Deb Springer’s cracked voice announced. “Just a minute. Hold on until I get my hearing aid out. There now. Who’s calling, please?”
“Alison Reynolds,” Ali answered. “I used to be on TV in L.A. I did an interview with you.”
“Oh, yes. For my ninetieth. Ali, how good of you to call. I understand they put you out to pasture, too. When is the world going to figure out that women don’t wear out nearly as soon as the old boys think we do? Of course, a lot of very smart men are turned out before their time as well. It’s all very shortsighted, if you ask me, so don’t get me started.”
At the time of the Springer taping, Ali had just passed forty. It hadn’t remotely occurred to her that she was already on the slippery slope of ageism. No doubt Deb Springer had known that even then.
“What can I do for you?” Deb asked.
“I’m working on a research project,” Ali answered. “I was hoping you could help me out.”
“What kind of research?”
“William Cowan Ashcroft,” Ali returned.
“Which William Cowan Ashcroft?” Deb wanted to know. “Number one, two, or three? I know more about Senior than I do two and three.”
Not only was Mrs. Deborah Springer not dead, she was still as bright as she had ever been.
“All of the above,” Ali said. “For argument’s sake let’s start with number one.”
Just then call waiting buzzed. Ali checked and saw the number of the Sugarloaf Cafe. That meant it was her mother calling. Edie Larson would have to wait.
“I’ve seen pictures of him from back in the early days. You probably would have called him a hunk,” Deb Springer said. “He was good-looking. In fact, he was movie-star handsome-a widowed father with a young son, a single struggling car dealership in San Diego, and a reputation for being something of a bounder when Amelia Askins tapped him to marry her daughter, Anna Lee.”
“Tapped him?” Ali asked. “As in picked him out for an arranged marriage?”
“Exactly,” Deb answered. “A necessary marriage. A hurry-up marriage. Anna Lee was in a family way, you
