The xeriscaped front yard wasn’t fenced. A concrete walkway led through a collection of prickly pear, yucca, barrel cactus, and palo verde. Growing along both sides of the house was a foolproof burglar deterrent—a thicket of seven-foot-high cholla. Backlit by the setting sun, the five-inch-long needles resembled an evil halo. Blinds on all the street-facing windows had been pulled tightly shut. Had it not been for the car in the driveway, the house might have been deserted.
Ali pulled in behind the Buick, effectively blocking it. If Olga planned to leave in the Ranger Rover, there wasn’t much Ali could do, but if she planned to drive the Buick out of there, she would have to go through Ali’s Cayenne to do it.
Ali rang the bell. When nothing happened, she rang the bell again. Eventually, despite the fact that there was no sound from inside, the light in the peephole went out.
“What do you want?” a woman’s voice asked.
“I’m Teresa and Jose’s friend, Ali Reynolds. I’ve come to pick up the girls.”
“Whatever would make you think they’re with me?”
“Come on, Mrs. Sanchez,” Ali said. “Julie, the girl who was looking after Lucy and Carinda, told us you had taken them for ice cream. We have the security tape that shows you leaving the hospital with the two girls in your car.”
Olga Sanchez gave an audible sigh. “Oh well, then,” she said. “I suppose you should come inside.”
When the door opened, the first thing Ali saw was the weapon, a .38, aimed directly at her midsection. What she missed more than anything in that moment was her Kevlar vest. She had her Glock; her Taser was in her pocket. Olga would have no way of knowing Ali was armed, but at that point, carrying the weapons did Ali no good at all. She knew she’d be dead before she had a chance to use either one.
“Come in and shut the door,” Olga ordered.
Ali did as she was told. She stepped into a room that looked as though it hadn’t changed in decades. With the blinds closed, the only light in the room came from what were most likely genuine Tiffany lamps on the tables at either end of an immense old-fashioned leather couch. A blanket that Ali took to be an antique Navajo rug— reminding her of B.’s—was draped casually over the matching leather chair.
On the surface, the room seemed comfortable and comforting, completely at odds with the disturbed woman standing there holding a weapon. There was no sign of the girls anywhere—none.
After surveying the room, Ali turned back to Olga. That was when she noticed the collection of luggage sitting next to the door. There were three suitcases altogether, two large ones and a smaller roll-aboard, all of them on wheels. That could mean only one thing—Olga was definitely on her way out of town. But was she planning on leaving with the girls or without them?
At that point, Ali’s police academy training kicked in. When faced with an armed assailant, try to initiate a conversation and defuse the situation.
“Please, Mrs. Sanchez,” Ali said. “You don’t want to do this. Right now we can still fix it. If it goes on longer, or if the police have to be involved, it will be a far more serious situation. You could be charged with custodial interference or even kidnapping. I’m sure you don’t want that.”
“You have no idea of what I want,” Olga said. “And this is none of your business. You shouldn’t have come.”
“Where are the girls?”
“They’re not here,” Olga said. “By the time you find them, it’ll be too late.”
Ali’s heart gave a lurch. “What do you mean too late?”
“I gave them a little something in their ice cream,” Olga said. “They’re sleeping.”
Ali was aghast. “You poisoned them?” she demanded.
“Not poison. Just a little something to help them sleep. I didn’t want to frighten them.”
“You gave them a sedative?” Ali asked. “What if you gave them too much? What if they die?”
“Then Teresa and I would be even, wouldn’t we?” Olga said. “I lost my child. It’s only fair that Teresa should lose hers. If I could have taken her new baby, too, I would have.”
Ali’s heartbeat ramped up. If the girls had been given an overdose of some medication, they might already be dead. She had to do something, and she had to do it fast, but for right now she needed to stay calm and keep the conversation going.
“You hate Teresa that much?” Ali asked.
Olga shrugged. “Danny’s dead. Jose is alive. What’s fair about that?”
That was when it all shifted into focus. Wasn’t that what Jose had told Ali when she asked him about the shooting—that the woman who had shot him had been driving a Buick? But she remembered clearly that he had said she wasn’t anyone he recognized.
“Have you even met Jose Reyes?” Ali asked.
Olga smiled. “I don’t have to meet the man to know all about him or to hate his guts. He stepped into Danny’s place and took over. He claimed to be everything Danny wasn’t—a real goody-goody, but his squeaky-clean reputation should be crap about now. He may be alive, but I’ll bet he won’t be a cop much longer.”
As far as Ali was concerned, those words explained everything, including the vandalism at Teresa and Jose’s house, where the least amount of damage had been done to the room shared by Lucy and Carinda. Now the very lives of those two little girls hung by a thread, and Ali Reynolds was it. Everyone had been only too ready to assume that Christine Tewksbury was the crazy one, but standing in that dimly lit living room, Ali came face-to-face with the idea that Olga Sanchez was beyond deranged.
Ali’s cell phone chirped in her pocket. Though she hoped the caller was Teresa, she made no attempt to answer. Teresa had known where she was going. Maybe, if there was no answer, she would figure out there was a problem and summon help.
“You’re taking a trip?” Ali asked, changing the subject.
Olga nodded. “One of Danny’s friends keep a plane at Ryan Field. I’m supposed to meet him there in a little over an hour. He’s going to fly me over the border into Mexico. Maybe you’d like to give me a ride there.”
“To the airport?”
Olga nodded again.
Ali feared that an hour would be too long. Would the girls survive if they didn’t receive medical attention? Her cell phone buzzed, letting her know someone had left a message. Again she ignored it.
“You’ve been planning this for a long time, haven’t you?” Ali said.
Olga nodded again. “Yes. It’s taken almost a year to put it together, and the only thing that went wrong is that Jose didn’t die.”
Ali had noticed the hint of perfume wafting out of the house when Olga first opened the door. Another set of dots clicked together. The perfume Christine had mentioned in the Tewksbury house that morning.
“Jose didn’t die, but Phil did,” Ali said.
Olga’s eyes glittered in the lamplight. “Phil who?” she asked.
The eyes had given it away. “You know,” Ali said. “Your good pal Phil Tewksbury—aka Popeye—the guy who had his head smashed in with a baseball bat early this morning. Patty Patton found some of the letters you wrote to him. He had them stashed in his desk at work.”
“How did she find out about it? Did Oscar tell her? Did Phil?”
“Christine Tewksbury is the one who told us about you, Ollie,” Ali said. “But if your husband knows, too, it’s pretty much all over for you, isn’t it?”
This time Olga changed the subject abruptly. “We need to go,” she said. She stepped over to the window and lifted the blind outside. “It’s dark enough that the neighbors won’t notice. We’ll take your car. You can carry the luggage. We’ll have to make two trips.”
“Three, I think,” Ali corrected. “I don’t think I can handle more than one of those at a time.”
All through this conversation, Olga had kept the .38 trained on Ali. By now, Ali guessed, Olga’s wrist and grip were probably tiring. Once they were in the Cayenne, Ali thought she might risk a slow-speed crash into a fire hydrant. The explosive deployment of the airbags would most likely be enough to knock the weapon out of Olga’s hand. But would Ali be unaffected enough to take advantage of it? She had to be. Since Olga had just confessed to two murders, she wasn’t going to let Ali walk away once they reached Ryan Field, wherever that was. No, Ali would have to do something about it before they reached what could otherwise be her final destination.
Ali’s phone rang again. “I should answer that,” she said.
