Hours later and finding herself under arrest, Lynn Martinson wasn’t laughing, and she had yet to call her mother. Beatrice would find out what had happened the same way Lynn had found out about Lucas’s suicide. Someone else-a cop, most likely-would tell her. Having been on the receiving end of that kind of message, Lynn knew how much it hurt.
Sick at heart, Lynn turned over on her side until she was facing away from the barred door and the lit hallway outside her cell. She tried to be quiet about it, but she cried herself to sleep, wondering if any of it was true. Had Chip really crept out of bed without her knowing, murdered Gemma, and then come back to bed as though nothing at all had happened? Had he taken Lynn’s phone with him and left it there in hopes of pinning the blame on her? If so, that made Chip’s betrayal far worse than anything Richard Lowensdale had done.
It would have been easy to give up right then-to fall asleep and, without the aid of her breathing machine, simply not wake up again. But that wasn’t what happened. The next morning, when the lights came on at six-thirty and the jailers rousted her out of bed, Lynn Martinson sat on the edge of her narrow metal cot and realized for the first time in her life that she was mad as hell and she wasn’t going to take it anymore.
Late in the afternoon, when they had finally placed Lynn under arrest, they had told her that Gemma’s blood had been found in Lynn’s Focus. If that was true, if Gemma’s blood had turned up in Lynn’s vehicle, she sure as hell hadn’t put it there. And if anybody thought they were going to get her to plead guilty to something she hadn’t done, then, as her mother would say, they had another think coming.
11
Long after B. was snoring up a storm, Ali lay awake thinking about Beatrice Hart and her daughter. When Dave brought up the possible plea bargain with Lynn Martinson’s mother, he evidently assumed that Beatrice would do what she could to help get Lynn agree to the deal. In fact, she had headed out for Prescott determined to do the opposite.
Unable to sleep, Ali crept out of the bedroom and back to the library, where she relit the gas log and pulled her autographed copy of Brenda Riley’s book,
Thumbing through the pages, Ali found herself reading the chapter that dealt with Lynn Martinson. It was easy to see how Lowensdale’s phony claim of having a daughter with drug issues had given him an opening into Lynn’s life. He had preyed on her vulnerabilities in the same way he played on the other women he had victimized. As the local superintendent of schools, she had been a public person with a troubled son, one who committed suicide while incarcerated on drug charges. Lucas’s death had occurred after Lowensdale had ended his supposedly promising relationship with Lynn. Already brought low by her fiance’s unexplained abandonment, Lynn had fallen apart completely.
In the last passage in the chapter devoted to Lynn, she said that her experience with the cyberstalker had left her so emotionally depleted that she doubted she’d ever risk another romantic entanglement. It struck Ali as sad that she had become involved in yet another seemingly troubled relationship. This time she had a middle-aged boyfriend who lived at home with his mother and might or might not be involved in the murder of his former wife.
With that, Ali tiptoed back into the bedroom and snuggled up next to B. She drifted off to sleep grateful that she, unlike Lynn Martinson, was at home and lying in her own bed rather than locked up in a jail cell, awaiting possible homicide charges.
When Ali awakened hours later, she was alone in bed. B., whose interior time zone was perpetually half a world away, was seated on the bedroom love seat, engrossed in something on his iPad.
“Good morning, sleepyhead,” he said.
“What time is it?”
“After eight. Want some coffee?”
“Please.”
As he headed for the kitchen, Ali scrambled out of bed. She hadn’t made it to the bathroom when her cell phone rang on its bedside charger. The 928 area code on the readout meant the call was coming from a Prescott- area telephone, though the number wasn’t one Ali recognized.
“Is this Ali Reynolds?”
“Yes.”
“My name is Paula Urban. I’m the public defender in Prescott-”
“And Lynn Martinson’s attorney,” Ali supplied.
“Exactly,” Paula said. “Ms. Martinson’s mother, Beatrice Hart, is in my office this morning. She suggested I call you. My client was offered a plea bargain that she has decided not to accept.”
“Which means she may end up being charged with first-degree homicide,” Ali suggested.
“That’s correct. I was explaining that there may be some budget constraints in my office’s ability to launch a full-scale investigation. Ms. Hart suggested that if I needed any investigative work done, you were a detective she would be glad to hire. We just Googled you, Ms. Reynolds. You appear to be extensively involved in a scholarship program of some kind, but I don’t see anything that would lead me to believe you’re a private investigator. Are you?”
“No,” Ali said at once. “I’ve done some investigative work as a journalist on occasion, but I’m not a licensed private investigator. That takes years of law enforcement-based investigation experience that I don’t happen to have.”
“I was afraid that might be the case,” Paula Urban replied, “but Ms. Hart may have come up with a work- around. Hang on for a moment. I’ll let her explain.”
While Ali waited on her end, B. returned to the bedroom with a mug of coffee gripped in each hand. “What’s going on?” he asked. He passed one of the cups to Ali and then returned to the love seat.
“It’s Lynn’s attorney,” Ali explained. Gratefully, she accepted her cup of coffee and perched on the edge of the bed.
A moment later, Paula Urban came back on the line. “Ms. Hart wants to discuss her proposal with you directly. If you don’t mind, I’d like to put you on speaker.”
A moment later, Beatrice’s voice came on the line. “When I got to town last night, I was told I wouldn’t be able to talk to Lynn until this morning, so I called her attorney to see if there was anything I could do to help. When she mentioned being worried about hiring an investigator, I immediately thought of you, but by then I felt it was too late to call. Instead, I called one of my friends in Surprise. She tells me the going rate for a private eye these days is eight hundred dollars a day plus expenses, and I’m fully prepared to pay that. Lynn may need the services of a court-appointed attorney, but she doesn’t have to settle for a court-appointed detective, not if I have anything to do with it.”
Ali more than half expected Paula Urban to take exception to Beatrice’s dismissive remark about court- appointed attorneys, but she didn’t.
“I’m sorry,” Ali said, jumping into the uncomfortable silence. “Even though I’d like to help, I can’t. As I just told Ms. Urban, I’m not a licensed detective.”
“But you’re a journalist, aren’t you?” Beatrice Hart asked.
“Was,” Ali said. “As in used to be. I’m not anymore.”
“I want you to do what Brenda did for Lynn and all those other poor women. I want to hire you to tell the story of what’s going on in Lynn’s life right now, and if you happen to pass along what you learn to Ms. Urban, so be it.”
“Are you hearing this, Ms. Urban?” Ali asked, expecting the attorney to object.
“Works for me,” Paula said.
“As I said before,” Ali insisted, “I’m not a licensed private investigator. It’s very generous for you to offer to
