Fatal Error

her after all.

“Richard Lowensdale is dead,” Valerie announced without further preamble.

“He’s dead?” Ali asked. “When?”

“As far as I can tell, the detective didn’t say when exactly. It must have happened sometime over the weekend.”

“How did he die?” Ali asked.

“Somebody, Brenda most likely, put a plastic bag over his head. He suffocated.”

There was a pause on the other end of the line. Ali heard Camilla’s forceful objection to that conclusion rumble through the phone, but Ali was busy trying to sort out what she had just been told.

“Say again,” she said.

Valerie sighed. “Somebody put a plastic bag over his head,” she repeated impatiently. “The cops must think Brenda did it, since a homicide detective came here to the house looking for her. I don’t think it was a social call. Naturally, Mom didn’t get around to calling me until after the detective left. Brenda’s been missing since Friday afternoon, and I didn’t know a thing about it until Mom called me this evening.

“Then tonight, while Les and I were driving over from the Bay Area, some kid from Grass Valley called Mom too. It seems he spent this afternoon up in the mountains with some friends. According to him, he came across Brenda’s shoes and purse abandoned by some lake or other. The kid found Brenda’s cell phone in the purse and called Mom’s number. She told him he should take it to the cops. I’m guessing Brenda knocked off Richard and then committed suicide.”

Ali was trying to pay attention, but her ability to listen was hampered by what Valerie had said earlier about Richard Lowensdale’s manner of death. A plastic bag over the head as a murder weapon? To Ali’s way of thinking, it sounded a lot like Ermina Blaylock’s dead father. In fact, it sounded exactly like Ermina’s dead father. And if Ermina had gotten away with murder once, maybe she had decided to do so again.

Valerie was still talking when Ali started listening again.

“I tried to tell Mom we shouldn’t bother you in the middle of the night this way, but she insisted. She said you were Brenda’s friend-that you’d want to know.”

“Your mother is right,” Ali said. “I do want to know. Now about that detective who came to see your mother. Does he have a name?”

“Just a sec,” Valerie said. She was off the phone for a moment, then she returned. “He left his business card. His name is Gilbert Morris. Detective Gilbert Morris. Do you want his numbers?”

Ali had gone out to the front room, where she hunted through her purse and found a pen. She jotted the name and phone number onto the back of Mina Blaylock’s background check.

“All right,” Ali said when she finished. “Please tell your mother thank you for having you call me. And tell her I’m sorry things are looking so bad for her, and for you too,” she added.

Up to that moment, Valerie Sandoz had been all business-just the facts, ma’am, and nothing more. But those few words of sympathy from Ali were enough to crack the facade.

“Thank you,” she muttered over what sounded like a sob. “Thank you very much.”

Then the line went dead.

There was no question about what Ali needed to do. Checking the numbers Valerie had given her, she called the office number first and then the cell phone. In both cases she ended up reaching voice mail and left the same message. “My name is Ali Reynolds. I’m a friend of Brenda Riley. Her mother gave me this number. I understand you’re investigating Richard Lowensdale’s death. I may have some pertinent information. Please give me a call. Here’s my number.”

After leaving the messages, Ali sat on the sofa for a long time, watching a tiny silver of moon appear in the section of midnight sky that was visible beneath the overhang of the balcony above her unit. The slender sickle of light gradually disappeared into an equally blackened sea.

I shouldn’t have told Morris that I was Brenda’s friend, she thought. He probably won’t even bother to call me back.

Ali should have gone back to bed, but she didn’t. She sat there for a very long time, thinking, turning over one mystifying question after another, and looking for answers. Her “gut instinct,” as her friend Detective Dave Holman liked to call it, told Ali that Ermina Blaylock, not Brenda, had murdered Richard Lowensdale. But why? Had she too been duped by Richard and taken vengeance on him for playing her for a fool? And what about Brenda? Had she somehow put together the connection between Richard and Ermina? Was that what had prompted the background check request she had e-mailed to Ali shortly before her disappearance?

And what about Brenda? Ali wondered. Did Ermina murder her too? Then again, is Brenda really dead, or is that what Ermina wants us to think?

Ali switched on a table lamp and read through the background check one more time. There was nothing there in the written report that was the least bit damning. If it hadn’t been for Stuart Ramey’s going the extra mile, no one would have put two and two together. No one would have connected what happened years earlier in Missouri to what happened to Richard Lowensdale this weekend.

Which means Ermina probably has no idea anyone is on to her.

Ali studied the background check some more and found the address on Heron Ridge Drive in Salton City. That way, if and when Detective Morris called her back, she’d be able to tell him what she had learned and give him an exact physical location to search.

And then Ali remembered something else-a snippet of something Sister Anselm had told her that day when they’d had tea together. Ali couldn’t remember the exact words, but it had something to do with stepping out with faith that you would be in the right place at the right time. Ali had come to California thinking she was being guided to do something for Velma Trimble, but maybe she was wrong. Maybe the real intended purpose was for her to do something about Ermina Blaylock.

If not me, Ali asked herself, then who?

By a quarter to five in the morning, she was dressed and ready to head out. It had been a pain in the neck, going through the process of putting her Glock in the lockbox and having a TSA agent supervise her locking it, just so she could bring it along in her checked luggage. And it had been a pain retrieving it from baggage claim at the end of the flight, but as Ali put on her small-of-back holster, she was glad to have it. Not that she intended to get into any kind of armed confrontation with Ermina Blaylock. Going after a suspect without backup was one of the dumbest things any cop could do. Still, she was glad to be prepared, just in case. As for her pal, the Count of Monte Cristo? He remained untouched in the suitcase and was likely to remain so.

After leaving the apartment, she rode up in the elevator and slid a note under the door of Velma’s unit. In the note, Ali explained that she had been unexpectedly called away and would be returning later in the day. In the lobby she encountered a sleepy doorman who was able to check the schedule of the guest unit. No, it was not booked for tonight, and yes, she could stay in it for the remainder of the week if she wanted. It wasn’t booked again until the following Friday.

Driving north to the ten, she remembered that she had never returned her mother’s previous phone call. By now, Edie would have taken the first batches of sweet rolls out of the Sugarloaf’s ovens and would be getting ready to open the doors.

With her Bluetooth in her ear, Ali speed-dialed her mother’s cell phone.

“Is this about the babies?” Edie asked anxiously. “Is Athena in labor?”

“It’s not about Athena,” Ali said with a laugh. “I’m just now getting around to returning your call.”

“Oh,” Edie said. “It’s about time. I thought you had fallen off the edge of the earth.”

“Close to it,” Ali said. “I’m on my way to Salton City. You’ll never guess what happened. Do you remember Velma Trimble?”

“One of the two old ladies who came to the wedding? Was she the one with the dogs?”

“No,” Ali said. “Velma’s the other one. She’s had a recurrence of cancer, and she’s in hospice care at home. Mom, she gave me a two-hundred-fifty-thousand-dollar donation for the Askins Scholarship Fund.”

“I’m sorry to hear she’s so bad off, but bless her heart,” Edie said. “What a wonderfully generous thing to do. But why are you going to Salton City? I was there once, years ago with your father. Back then it seemed like the end of the earth.”

I’m pretty sure it still is, Ali thought.

“Do you remember last summer when my friend Brenda Riley showed up down in Phoenix?” she asked.