“I had to hit him,” he said with a shrug. “With you out there hiding in the dark, I couldn’t risk taking a shot.”
“I saw you sneak up on him. It was impressive,” Ali said wonderingly. “He never saw you coming.”
“I should think not,” Leland said. “They may have used me as a cook, but I was trained to be a Royal Marine. You know what they say. Once a Marine, always a Marine.”
On the ground beside them, Barry Handraker groaned.
“Oh, dear,” Leland said. “He seems to be coming around. Fortunately, I happen to have just the thing.”
Reaching into his pocket, he pulled out a roll of duct tape. “This is almost empty,” he said, “but I believe there’s enough there to do the trick. If you don’t mind, I’ll keep the gun on him while you do the honors.”
Before Barry managed to come all the way around, Ali knelt down and secured his hands behind his back. Intent on her task, she was aware that a helicopter was circling overhead, blowing clouds of dust everywhere. She was relieved when it rose up and flew off in another direction, heading back toward the road, where it landed on the far side of the crippled Mercedes.
Seconds later, B. was running toward her, a phone pressed to his ear as he ran. “Yes, yes, Stuart!” he was saying into the phone. “I can see her now. We’ve got her. She’s alive. She’s okay, and so is Leland!”
The next thing Ali knew, she was in B.’s arms, and they were both crying like babies. “They gave me something,” she sobbed, “some drug that knocked me out completely. Then they locked me in the trunk.”
“Sounds like the same thing that happened to Gemma.”
Ali nodded. “It was the same thing, done by the same people, and in the same way, and I believe I know why. Doris noticed that one of her necklaces went missing. Gemma was supposed to go to the house on Tuesday morning to help look for it. Since she was murdered before she had a chance, I’m guessing that necklace isn’t the only thing missing from Doris Ralston’s house.”
“It’s far worse than that,” B. said quietly. “The whole house is missing. It burned to the ground earlier this afternoon.”
Ali’s jaw dropped. “No!” she said in horror. “It’s completely gone?”
“Completely.”
“What about Doris?”
B. bit his lip before he answered. “I’m afraid she’s missing, too,” he said. “Given what we’ve seen here tonight, I’d say missing and presumed dead.”
33
When the first Mohave County deputy showed up at the crime scene, it was immediately clear to everyone that they were in for a very long night. An ambulance was summoned to take Barry Handraker to the hospital in Bullhead City to be checked out for a possible concussion; he went in handcuffs and under a police guard.
While homicide detectives were being summoned to the scene from Kingman, some forty miles away, yet another ambulance was sent on Ali’s behalf. The EMT who examined the cuts and scratches on her bloody feet urged a trip to the ER for her, too. Ali tried to object, but she was overruled by B. and Leland acting in accord.
“You’re going, and I’m going,” B. said in a tone that brooked no objection. “Leland can stay here and talk to the cops. I’ve already talked to the helicopter pilot. I’m sending him back to pick up Dave Holman. It would take him three hours to drive. This is his case. We need him here sooner than three hours.”
Once they reached the ER, they were in for an almost two-hour wait before they could see the doctor. Ali used the time to call home. First she told the story-as much of it as she could remember-to Chris and Athena. Then she had to turn around and repeat the whole thing to her parents. Chris and Athena generally told her, “Way to go!” Her parents fussed and fumed and said they wished she wouldn’t keep putting herself in danger.
When the ER doctor finally showed up, she examined and disinfected the cuts on Ali’s feet and arms. X-rays revealed several slivers of glass that had to be removed before the wounds could be covered with a liquid bandage and then wrapped with gauze. Once Ali’s feet were swathed in an outside layer of elastic bandage, it was time for the obligatory tetanus shot.
“I want a blood draw,” Ali insisted. “They gave me something-blew a powder of some kind into my face-and I want to know what it was. I’ll bet if they send a CSI team back to Gemma’s house, they’ll find traces of the same thing.”
The doctor looked askance at the request but nodded. “Okay,” she said. “You’re the boss.”
While Ali was hanging around in the ER, B. had arranged to rent a car, which was waiting outside when Ali, barefoot except for the bandages, was wheeled out of the building. She was grateful when B., seemingly effortlessly, picked her up and deposited her in the passenger seat.
“I also rented a hotel room at the Lake Mohave Resort,” he explained. “I tried Laughlin, but they didn’t have any rooms available. We can’t go to the hotel just yet. First we need to visit the sheriff substation so you can talk to the detectives and answer some questions. By the way, about the phone Leland gave you, the one we supposedly used to find you?”
“You mean the phone that’s currently in my bra?” Ali asked with a smile. “I’m pretty sure Barry and Molly Handraker thought I was only a one-phone girl. They missed that one completely.”
“Thanks,” B. said. “Stuart pulled out all the stops to find you, most of which could land all of us in very hot water. We’re saying we found you using your device location from iCloud. If the phone’s in your pocket when the detective asks about it, they probably won’t give it a second thought. They’ll assume it was with you the whole time.”
“This sounds like a variation on ‘Don’t ask, don’t tell,’” Ali observed.
B. nodded. “With the added advantage that none of us gets caught lying to a police officer.”
34
As far as Lucy was concerned, it felt like a date. With the prospect of a whole free evening, she was carefree and lighthearted. Nana had the kids. She and Tommy were on their own with her new friend Doris safely stowed in the backseat of Tommy’s Ford Explorer. The old woman sat dozing, her head resting against the closed window and her treasured photo album clutched tightly to her breast.
Tommy’s friend in the state patrol had given him Doris’s home phone number, but when they tried calling, no one answered. The original plan had been for Tommy and Lucy to retrieve Doris’s car from the impound lot and tag-team it back to the house. The hitch in that program came along when the towing company required full payment and an impound fee before releasing the vehicle. Yes, a purse had been found in the abandoned Jaguar; yes, the photo ID clearly belonged to Doris Ralston. Unfortunately, of the several credit cards stashed in the old woman’s wallet, there wasn’t one that was valid. They had all been canceled.
“Okay, then,” Tommy said. “We’re not paying it. Somebody who’s driving around in a Jaguar can cough up towing charges a lot easier than we can. We’ll just take her home and drop her off. After that, I’ll take you to Applebee’s for dinner.”
Seemingly worn out by her adventure at Burger King, Doris slept the whole way home.
“I still don’t understand how she wound up on I-8,” Tommy said. “If she was going to Palm Springs, like she said, why wasn’t she on I-10?”
“She probably got confused at one of the freeway interchanges,” Lucy said. “When they stack one road over another, it’s easy to get mixed up.”
The guy at the towing company had been kind enough to give them printed MapQuest directions to follow back to Doris’s house. As they were going up the hill from Lincoln Drive, Doris sat up in the backseat. “Almost home,” she said, looking around. “It’s just a few more blocks.”
Except when Tommy tried to turn off Upper Glen Road, they found the driveway blocked by a fire truck and an
