and maybe his mother’s as well. It was an old shovel, but if they somehow traced it back to him, his fingerprints on that and on the telephone would place him at the scene of the crime. Suddenly, he’d be more than a person of interest-he’d be a prime suspect.
Panic rose in A.J.’s throat, fear mixed with shame. His mother knew nothing about the letter he had received from his father. He had kept quiet about the earlier meeting, too, the one that had led to the Camry. If he went to the cops and told them about his father’s letter, everything would come out, and his mother would know that he had betrayed her not just once, not just twice, but several times. His mother had always been in A.J.’s corner. She had been the one person in his life he knew he could count on, no matter what, and he had let her down.
There was a tap on his bedroom door. Startled, A.J. jumped as if he’d been shot. A moment later, Sylvia poked her head into his room.
“What’s going on?” she asked. “You never watch Jay Leno.”
Jay Leno was already on? When had that happened? A.J. grabbed the remote from his bedside table and switched off the TV. “Sorry, Mom,” he said quickly. “I must have dozed off.”
“Glad I checked on you, then,” she said. “Good night.”
That night was not a good night for A. J. Sanders. After tossing and turning for what seemed like hours, he finally fell asleep. Instead of being lost in a waking nightmare, he found himself in the regular kind, with the same dream cycling endlessly through his fitful slumber. In each one, the light went out of those haunting green eyes as they stared emptily back at him. Each time they did, he jarred himself awake only to find his body drenched in sweat. When A.J. staggered out of bed the next morning, he felt as though he’d barely slept at all. He wondered if he’d ever be able to sleep again.
8
Ali slept late on Wednesday morning. For the first time in months, she had no schedule to keep. Yes, she was sorry her mother had lost, but she was glad to step off the campaign merry-go-round. B. would be home later in the day, and she was looking forward to a relatively uncomplicated week. Glad to be free to lounge around in her PJs, Ali spent all of Wednesday morning working on Edie’s campaign financial reports. By the time she had paid most of the bills, there was a little over five hundred dollars in debt remaining, including a three-hundred-dollar bill for the sweet rolls from the party.
When she called her mother to discuss the situation, her father answered the phone. “Don’t worry about that one,” he said when she explained the reason for the call. “Your mother and I were just about to head over there to return their cookie sheets. We’ll pay that one off ourselves while we’re there. What else is there?”
“We still owe two hundred dollars for the last batch of yard signs.”
“After that, we’re square?” Bob Larson asked.
“Those are the only two bills that are outstanding. I paid everything else.”
“If that’s all, we’re damned lucky,” her father said. “I was afraid it would be a lot worse. Give me the amount of the sign bill, and tell me who’s the vendor. I’ll get that one paid today as well.”
“I’ll need to have the receipts so I can put them in the report.”
“You’ll have them either later today or tomorrow at the latest.”
“I guess Mom was right about you, then,” Ali said.
“Why?” Bob asked. “What did she say?”
“That you’ve been a brick, and you still are a brick.”
“That’s a compliment?”
Ali knew that the most recent usage of the word “brick”-Hardware Inoperable (thus turning a formerly useful electronics device into a brick)-was completely outside her mother’s vocabulary, and the terminology wasn’t part of her father’s way of thinking, either.
“Definitely,” Ali told him with a laugh. “Let me know when you have the receipts. I’ll come by and pick them up.”
By then the enticing aroma of baking bread was summoning Ali to the kitchen, where she knew she would find Leland Brooks, her eightysomething man of all work, in his element and bustling around an upscale kitchen that had been remodeled to his exact specifications.
When it came to the house on Manzanita Hills Road, Leland was the old-timer, and Ali was the relatively new arrival. He had served with the British Marines during the Korean War and immigrated to the U.S. shortly thereafter. He had gone to work for Anne Marie Ashcroft, the original owner of the house. After Anne Marie’s death, he continued to care for her troubled daughter, Arabella, until her eventual incarceration at a facility for the criminally insane.
By then, after years of deferred maintenance and willful neglect on Arabella’s part, the house was a shadow of its former self. Even as a derelict, Leland knew that the place had good bones. When a developer threatened to buy it and bulldoze it, Leland had gone to Ali and convinced her to take on the project of buying the place and returning it to its former glory. They had assumed that he would hang around only long enough to see Ali through the renovation process, but by the time the first phase of construction was completed, Leland was perfectly content to stay on in the fifth-wheel mobile home that Ali had set up for him on the far side of the garage. By then he had set his sights on finishing the English garden that Anne Marie had envisioned for the front yard.
Leland hadn’t participated in the digging and raking-Ali had made sure there were younger bodies to handle the heavy lifting-but he had personally overseen the entire project. Out of deference for his age, Ali encouraged him to hire people to come in and do the routine housecleaning, which was also done to his stringent standards, but there was no way she could boot him out of his kitchen. Cooking was something he loved to do, and they had agreed that he would continue to be in charge of it until he was ready to call it quits and not a moment before.
“What’s on the menu for tonight?” Ali asked, seeing the mound of chopped vegetables that had accumulated on the island counter next to the stovetop.
“Beef stew,” Leland answered. “When Mr. Simpson comes home from galavanting all around the world, he does like his comfort food. For that, freshly baked bread and steaming-hot stew are right at the top of the list.”
That was true. B. Simpson’s travels took him to plenty of exotic places with equally exotic food choices. It was no accident that when he was at home in Sedona, he gravitated to Ali’s house and Leland Brooks’s very capable cooking.
Ali helped herself to a new cup of coffee.
“Can I fix you something for lunch?” Leland asked.
Ali eyed the four loaves of freshly baked bread cooling on the counter. “What about a slice of one of those?” she asked. “Or is the bread still too warm to cut?”
“It’s just right,” Leland assured her. Moments later, he handed her a plate with a thick piece of crusty bread. Taking a seat at the kitchen table, Ali slathered butter on the warm bread, then found her eyes drawn to the television over the microwave, where the noontime edition of the local news was just starting.
“The Yavapai County Sheriff’s Department just confirmed that a second body has been found south of Camp Verde, near where another homicide victim was found yesterday. That victim has been identified as a Phoenix-area woman. Her name has not been released while the authorities attempt to contact her next of kin. Reporter Christy Lawler is live on the scene. What can you tell us, Christy? Is there a serial killer stalking motorists driving the I-17 corridor?”
“So far the Sheriff’s Department has made no mention of a serial killer, although that’s on the minds of people traveling this roadway today,” the reporter answered. “The second victim was found early this morning by investigators doing an extensive crime scene examination of the area. What we know so far is that the second victim is an unidentified male found with no identification.
“All authorities would say was that the victim died as the result of homicidal violence. Questions asked about the manner of death, and if it was similar to what happened to the previous victim, were met with an official reply of ‘No comment.’ However, authorities are cautioning motorists to beware of giving rides to strangers, and they are asking anyone who has seen anything unusual along this stretch of freeway to please come forward.”
“Are motorists taking that bit of advice to heart?” the anchor asked.
