up the flag to B. Simpson. Stuart may have been doing a freebie for Ali Reynolds, but B. was the one who signed his check. If Ali was in trouble, B. needed to know about it.
“Hey, Stu,” B. said easily when he heard Stuart’s voice. “What gives?”
“We may have a problem,” Stuart said.
“What kind of problem?”
“I sent Ali an important message two hours ago, more than that now. I wanted to warn her that the husband of the woman she was interviewing was a player-a possibly dangerous drug dealer from Minnesota who may be involved in whatever’s going on. I expected her to get back to me right away. So far she hasn’t, and I’m worried. Has she been in touch with you?”
“The last I heard from her was this morning before I left the hotel,” B. said, “but I agree. Her not getting back to you is worrisome. That’s not the Ali Reynolds I know. Maybe she’s been in a traffic accident of some kind. Maybe she’s had some kind of medical emergency. Have you called the cops?”
“I was afraid that if I did that and it turned out that there’s nothing wrong-”
“-there’d be hell to pay,” B. said with a chuckle, finishing Stu’s sentence for him. “Have you tried tracking her phone or her iPad?”
“Not yet. I’m about to, but before I sign in to her iCloud account, I wanted you to know.”
“You’re not fooling me,” B. said. “You want someone to share the blame.”
“That, too,” Stuart admitted, “but I was really hoping you could give me her current password. I can get in without one, but it’ll go a lot faster if I have it.”
For years B. had teased Ali about her obdurate resistance to changing her password. Now he was glad she hadn’t. “Sugarloaf#1 should do it.”
“She’s still using that?” Stuart asked.
“Still,” B. said.
“All right. Where are you?”
“I got out of my meeting an hour ago, and I’m heading back to Sedona on I-17, but if Ali is in Phoenix and in some kind of difficulty, I’ll turn around at the next exit and head back south. You do what you need to do. Call me when you have her current location.”
Other people might have considered summoning some kind of police presence at that point, but Stuart Ramey wasn’t surprised that he and B. were on the same page. From his office perch in Cottonwood, Stu logged in to Ali’s iCloud and activated her Find My iPhone app. Within seconds he had a location. As soon as he had done a little further research into the location, Stuart called B. back.
“Her phone’s in the parking lot at a place called the Franciscan Renewal Center on East Lincoln Drive in Phoenix. I’m looking at some info on the center. It’s a place that specializes in family counseling. Maybe there’s a legitimate reason for her being there and not mentioning it to me. I don’t want to step on any toes here, boss, but is there a chance she’s having some kind of emotional difficulty? Are you?”
“Nobody’s having a ‘difficulty’ of any kind,” B. declared forcefully. “If Ali’s there, it has to be for some good reason. I’m on my way now. Give me the address so I can program it into my GPS.”
“While you’re in a moving vehicle?” Stuart replied with a disapproving click of his tongue. “Perish the thought.”
“It says I’m fifty-seven minutes out,” B. said a moment later. “I’ll see if I can shave some off that.”
“I can hear the radar detector coming online as we speak.”
27
At three minutes past five, almost three hours after Stuart sent the warning message to Ali, B. Simpson pulled into the parking lot at the Franciscan Renewal Center. He was on the phone with Stuart seconds later.
“I found the car,” B. said hurriedly. “It’s parked in a far corner of the lot, well away from the other cars here. It’s unlocked, with the key in the ignition.”
“I’m surprised somebody didn’t steal it,” Stuart observed. “What about her purse?”
“No sign of it, but her phone is here. The screen is a mess-looks like it’s been run over by a Mack truck. The miracle is, the phone stayed on. That’s why you were able to find it.”
“What about the iPad?” Stuart asked. He waited, listening to the rustling of B.’s cursory search of the car.
“Not here,” B. said at last. “What next?”
Stuart turned to the computer he had dedicated to accessing Ali’s iCloud account and stared at the screen for Find My Device. “There’s no sign of her iPad anywhere, boss,” he said. “It looks like the damned thing’s off.”
“Have you tried calling the Ralston house?”
“I have. Several times. No answer.”
“That’s my next stop,” B. said. “Give me the address.”
Stuart wasn’t one to sit on his hands in the meantime. He went to Ali’s mail app and began to scroll through the individual messages and notes synced from her iPad, which was like following a trail of virtual bread crumbs recounting Ali’s travels over the past two days. He found names, numbers, and addresses for Sylvia Sanders, Molly Handraker, Valerie Stone, and Gemma Ralston. Among them he found Molly’s listing along with a series of phone numbers.
Stuart paused long enough to try all of them, including another attempt at Doris Ralston’s landline. No one answered any of them. Going through the saved notes, Stu found a listing for Manning, Jack and Gloria. The notation for them said only Palm Springs. There was no accompanying address or phone number.
Still waiting for B. to call back, Stuart scratched his head. Then he realized that, in processing messages from Gemma’s e-mail account, he might have passed over Molly Handraker’s e-mail address. Within seconds, he was working on accessing her account when a shaken B. Simpson called him back ten minutes later.
“Bad news,” he said, his voice breaking. “There’s been a fire.”
“What kind of fire? Where?”
“At the Ralston house. They’ve put up a police perimeter, and I’m on the wrong side of it. People are telling me the house is a complete loss.”
“What house?” Stu asked, not quite believing what he was hearing.
“Doris Ralston’s house!” B. said, his voice thick with despair. “What if Ali’s dead, Stu? What if I’ve lost her?”
“That can’t be,” Stuart said. “How did it start?”
“I have no idea. Firefighters are still actively involved in fighting it. According to the one guy I did talk to, the roof collapsed. That’s only hearsay, because I can’t get close enough to see for myself.”
“I’m sure she’s okay,” Stuart said hurriedly. “Just because the house burned down doesn’t mean she was inside.”
That last bit of reassurance was as much for his own benefit as it was for B.’s. Stuart couldn’t handle the idea that Ali Reynolds might have been in mortal danger while he had done nothing but focus on his growing annoyance about her not returning his message.
“Thanks for saying that,” B. replied, taking a ragged breath, “but it doesn’t look good, does it? If Ali was okay, she would have been in touch with one of us by now.” He paused and then added, “What the hell am I going to tell her parents?” There was uncharacteristic panic in B.’s voice.
“Let’s not jump to conclusions,” Stuart advised, trying to sound calm. “When did the fire start?”
“A neighbor reported seeing smoke and called in the alarm sometime shortly after three. By the time the first engines arrived, the place was fully engulfed. What do we do now, Stu? I’m at a loss. If Ali is dead and this turns out to be arson, whoever set it is guilty of murder.”
“When will they know if it’s arson or not?” Stuart asked.
“It’ll be a while,” B. said. “The fire’s still too hot and the structure too unstable to send investigators inside, and until they do, we won’t know about possible victims. In the meantime, I’m going to call Dave Holman. He may be able to pull some strings to get me inside the perimeter.”
“You do that,” Stuart said. “I’ll see what I can do on this end.”
