“Lead the way.”
They followed Brooks through the house, through a dining room and living room and into a spacious library. “The light switch is over there,” he said, nodding. “And I can tell you how to move the panel, but it would be ever so much easier if you’d allow me to do it.”
“Be our guest,” Larry Marsh said. Brooks moved forward, touched a place on the wall, and a whole section of bookcase swung open, revealing a massive safe. Brooks expertly worked the combination lock then pressed the handle. The door swung wide and a light came on inside, revealing an interior as large as a laundry room. One side was hung with wall-to-wall fur coats.
Brooks frowned. “Where’s the mink?” he asked.
Walking over to a tall cabinet, he pulled out one drawer, slammed that one shut, and opened another and another and another. “Damn!” he muttered. “They’re gone-all of them. But how’s that possible? I’m the only one with the combination to the safe.”
“Evidently not,” Larry Marsh said. “So what kinds of guns are we talking about, and how many?”
“Where is she?”
“Who?” Ali asked.
“The girl,” Arabella said. “The one you told me about.”
When Ali had tried to bring up the subject of Crystal earlier, Arabella had shut down so thoroughly, Ali wasn’t even sure she had heard her mention it. Now though, with their Big Macs gone and with the Rolls back under way and driving through the forested night, Ali was surprised when the conversation returned to that topic as though there’d been no interruption.
“She’s back home,” Ali said. “Back with her family. So how would you advise her? If you could talk to her and give her the benefit of your experience, what would you say?”
“Does her mother love her?”
“Of course.”
“Don’t say that like it’s always the case,” Arabella cautioned. “It isn’t always true, you know.”
“Are you trying to say your mother didn’t love you?” Ali asked. “I met her, you know. I saw how she was.”
“There’s a difference between love and duty,” Arabella said. “Mother had a duty to take care of me, especially since, as people like to say, ‘I wasn’t quite right in the head.’ I give her credit. She did that; she’s still doing that. That’s why Mr. Brooks is still looking after me. Mother arranged all that long before she died. But don’t kid yourself. I don’t think Mother ever really loved me.”
“Why wouldn’t she?”
“Because I was the reason she had to get married.”
“But your father…”
“Bill Ashcroft Senior gave me my name, but he was definitely not my father,” Arabella said flatly. “It was like I was dropped into a family of strangers. So what about this girl? What’s her family like, and does her mother love her?”
Ali thought about Roxanne Whitman. “Yes,” she said. “I think she does.”
“And the father?”
“He loves her, too. There’s a stepfather in the picture, though,” Ali said. “I’m worried about him.”
“The girl should tell her mother, then,” Arabella declared. “She should definitely tell her mother.”
“And what if the same thing happens to her that happened to you? What if her mother doesn’t believe her?”
“Well,” Arabella said thoughtfully, after a pause. “In that case, don’t let her have any knives.”
When the three men returned to the spacious kitchen, Brooks offered to make coffee. While Hank hurried outside to notify the other jurisdictions of the changed dynamics in the situation, Larry Marsh sat at the kitchen table and watched while the butler bustled about, starting a pot of coffee and making a platter of sandwiches. By the time Hank came back inside, the coffee was ready. He picked up one of the sandwiches, which had been cut into small pieces and stacked three deep on a delicately flowered china platter.
When Hank bit into the first tiny morsel, a broad smile lit up his face. “Damn,” he muttered. “If this doesn’t beat the roach coach all hollow.”
Brooks handed each of the cops stiff white napkins that had been starched and pressed with military precision. The coffee was excellent, but it was served in tiny white cups with handles much too small for Detective Marsh’s somewhat meaty fingers.
“So tell us about the guns,” Larry Marsh said, munching another piece of sandwich. “How many are missing?”
“Three,” Brooks said. “All of them handguns. Mine was a thirty-eight-an old Chief’s Special. I bought it new in 1955 when Mrs. Ashcroft hired me. She was interested in having both a butler and a bodyguard. Since I was a former commando who had been trained as a cook, she decided I filled her bill. She actually sent me back to England to attend butler school.”
“So this thirty-eight. What was it?” Larry asked. “A Smith and Wesson Airweight?”
Brooks frowned. “Yes, it was, but how would you know that?”
“Because we found one just like that,” Larry said. “At the crime scene.”
“You didn’t mention Mr. Ashcroft was shot,” Brooks said.
“He wasn’t, but that’s still where we found the gun. What were the others?”
“Mrs. Ashcroft had a pair of pearl-handled first model Lady-smiths, both small-frame revolvers chambered for seven twenty-two-caliber long rounds. Those are missing as well, but those are mostly used for target practice. Less dangerous than the thirty-eight.”
“Not at close range,” Marsh returned. “So wherever she is, we have to assume she’s armed and dangerous. Is she a good shot?”
“Unfortunately, yes,” Brooks said. “I suppose she is. I trained her myself.”
“But you said she was nuts,” Marsh objected. “Why would you do such a thing?”
“I didn’t say she was nuts, sir,” Brooks said. “Miss Arabella is prone to moods, and I did it because I was asked to. Besides, we only did target shooting. The rest of the time the guns were safely under lock and key.”
“Right,” Hank Mendoza said. “You mean like they are right now.”
Brooks nodded and said nothing.
“What do you know about the death of Mr. Ashcroft’s father?” Larry asked.
“That would be Bill Junior. That’s how Mrs. Ashcroft always referred to him. But I thought this was all about Billy. Bill Junior died in an automobile accident in 1956. He was a notorious drinker. He went off the side of a mountain and that was the end of him.”
“Was Arabella ever questioned in conjunction with that death?” Larry asked.
“No one was questioned that I know of. But there would have been no reason at all to question Miss Arabella. She was miles away at the time, hospitalized at a facility in Paso Robles.”
“Yes,” Larry Marsh said. “The Mosberg Institute. We know that’s where she was supposed to be. We also know that the charge nurse who was primarily responsible for Arabella’s care at the time died in a tragic fire at the Mosberg a few days after Mr. Ashcroft’s death.”
“I seem to remember that, too,” Leland Brooks said. “And a patient died as well. I believe he was something of a firebug-a serial arsonist. The fire was laid at his door, metaphorically speaking, but Mrs. Ashcroft was of the opinion that there was a good deal of covering up about that incident. It was one of the reasons she took Miss Arabella out of there and moved her to the Bancroft House, a place down in what’s now part of Carefree. It was after Miss Arabella came to Arizona that Mrs. Ashcroft decided to buy this place.”
“You were already working for the Ashcrofts at that time?”
“I worked for Mrs. Ashcroft from 1955 on,” Leland Brooks said stiffly. “I never worked for Mr. Ashcroft Senior, and I never had anything to do with him, either.” The butler shuddered. “He was a perfectly dreadful man. So was his son. Mrs. Ashcroft, on the other hand, was a wonderful human being and very generous. At the time of her death, she saw to it that I’d be taken care of so that her daughter, in turn, would be taken care of. I look after the house and the vehicles, manage the household accounts, make sure Miss Arabella sees her doctors and takes her
