Текст книги "Cold Betrayal"

Автор книги: J. A. Jance

сообщить о нарушении

Текущая страница: 9 (всего у книги 23 страниц)

12

Princess did not like Joe Friday. At all. She followed him everywhere, going from room to room, barking like crazy. Betsy didn’t attempt to shush her, because, for one thing, Betsy was more than half convinced that the dog’s assessment of the situation was correct.

When that nice young man from Arizona, Stuart, had called her earlier that morning to say that Joe Friday would be stopping by early in the afternoon, Betsy had more or less expected a Jack Webb look-alike to show up on her doorstep. In her mind’s eye, Jack Webb had never aged a day since she had first seen that handsome black-haired man on the black-and-white TV console Alton had installed in the living room. Even with an antenna planted on the roof, the images on the screen were hazy with snow, but she’d been able to see enough of the actor’s features to think he was just the cat’s meow.

The Joe Friday who rang her doorbell and later carted an immense tool kit into her living room did not resemble Jack Webb at all. He had black hair all right, but rather than being trimmed in a conventional manly way, it came all the way to his shoulders in shiny waves that a lot of women would have killed for. Joe had tattoos everywhere Betsy could see—which is to say everything that wasn’t covered by his red plaid flannel shirt and raggedy jeans. She theorized there were probably lots more tattoos in places she couldn’t see.

In other words, as far as Betsy was concerned, Joe Friday already had two strikes against him—long hair and tattoos—to say nothing of the nose ring. Why young people insisted on putting studs in their faces and rings in their noses was more than Betsy could understand. No doubt Alton would have sent Joe packing based on appearance alone. Unfortunately, Alton wasn’t here, and Betsy knew she needed help. As a consequence she did her best to overlook that first bad impression. It helped, of course, that Joe Friday was unfailingly polite.

“Mrs. Peterson?” he inquired, when she opened the door holding Princess in her arms to keep the dog from racing outside and tearing into the hem of his pant legs.

“Yes,” she said. “I’m Mrs. Peterson, and this is Princess.”

“Cute dog,” he said, glancing at the dog, removing his worn baseball cap, and holding out his hand to the dog in greeting. “I’m Joe, the one who called earlier. Stuart Ramey sent me.”

He had indeed called earlier, asking a question that Betsy had considered odd—what color switch plates did she have on her light switches and electrical outlets? Were they black or white?

White was the answer. Decades earlier, when they had been doing a remodeling project, Betsy had lobbied for avocado-colored appliances and beige switch plates and outlet covers. Alton had vetoed both those ideas at once, saying they were just fads. Much as Betsy hated to admit it, Alton had been right on both counts.

Joe had repeated Ali’s suggestion that if anyone asked what he was doing there, she should tell people she had hired him to bring her electrical service into the twenty-first century, and that the work would most likely take a day or two.

When he bent down and started to unlace his boots before entering the house, she told him not to bother. “Having a little melted snow here and there never hurt anybody.”

Leaving his boots on, he picked up the heavy metal toolbox he had carted up onto her porch, lugged it into the living room, and opened the lid. Sitting on the couch and still holding tight to Princess, Betsy was amazed. Joe Friday may have been lacking in the dress-for-success department, but his toolbox would have won Alton over in an instant. It was neat as a pin.

“I have several more boxes to bring in,” he said. “Are you sure you don’t want me to remove my boots?”

“Your boots are fine. Just wipe them off on the mat before you come inside.”

He dragged in several loads of cardboard boxes, setting off a new set of noisy objections from Princess every time he reentered the house. “All right,” he said, setting down the last ones. “Show me where your breaker box is.”

Betsy led him into the laundry room and opened the door to the metal box that hung on the wall above her washer. Next to each breaker switch was a neat label, printed in ink, in Alton’s own hand.

“Are the labels all accurate?” Joe asked.

“Of course,” she said indignantly without bothering to look. “My late husband labeled them, and Alton was a very careful worker.”

“I’m sure he was,” Joe said with a grin, “but I’ll check each outlet as I go, just to be sure.”

“What are you going to do exactly?” Betsy asked. She had expected that the surveillance system would require unsightly cameras placed in full view all over her house.

“I’ll show you,” he said. Back in the living room, he opened two of the boxes. From one he removed what looked for all the world like an ordinary switch plate—a white one—wrapped in clear cellophane. He passed it over to her. After examining it, she shrugged her shoulders.

“It’s a switch plate,” she said. “Just like the ones I already have.”

“Not quite,” Joe said. “The base of the hole for the switch has been slightly enlarged. Once I get the Wi-Fi up and running, I’ll wire pinhole cameras inside each switch plate with the lens aimed through that bit of extra space. Because the cameras will be wired directly into your electrical system, they won’t require any batteries, making the actual devices that much smaller. Whatever the camera records will go through your new computer by way of an invisible file, but it won’t be stored there. Instead, the material will be uploaded to High Noon’s servers. An alarm will sound on our end and the cameras will start recording whenever an unidentified image shows up.”

“But what Princess and I do won’t be visible?” Betsy asked.

“Not at all,” Joe assured her. “Once I do your 3-D photo shoot and have your images uploaded into the system, the two of you will be exempt. More people can be added to the exempt status at a later date, but we don’t recommend that immediately, especially not now while we’re still trying to ascertain who may have been here the other night and turned on the gas.”

Betsy had longed for someone who would believe her version of the other night’s disturbing events. Clearly Joe Friday did. You had to watch out what you asked for.

“What if I have company?” Betsy asked. “What if someone stops by for coffee?”

“Whatever they do inside your house will be recorded.”

“That seems like a terrible invasion of privacy,” Betsy objected. “I mean, what if one of my guests needs to use the powder room?”

“I understand your concerns about invading your legitimate guests’ privacy,” Joe said. “And I’m willing to go so far as to make the powder room a camera-free zone, but everywhere else is fair game because murder is the ultimate invasion of privacy, wouldn’t you say?”

He had her there. Betsy nodded. “I suppose so,” she agreed.

“Now,” he said. “First things first. Where do you want me to set up your new computer?”

“There’s a desk in my bedroom,” she said. “As long as I have to have the dratted thing, I don’t want it here in the middle of the living room.”

“All right, then,” Joe agreed. “That’s where I’ll start—the bedroom.”

Just then the doorbell rang. When Betsy opened the front door, she was dismayed to see her daughter-in-law standing on the front porch. “What’s going on?” Sandra asked, glancing over her shoulder at Joe Friday’s work van parked prominently in the driveway.

Betsy’s first instinct was to say what she really felt—It’s none of your business. But with Joe in the house installing his hidden cameras and with his toolbox and boxes spread out all over the living room, she couldn’t afford to get into a tiff with Sandra.

Biting back a sharp response and sticking to the story they’d agreed on, Betsy said, “I’m having some electrical work done, and I’m also getting a new computer.”

“A computer?” Sandra asked. “You hardly ever used the one you used to have. The sign on the van says your contractor is from Minneapolis. Couldn’t you find someone local? I’m sure Jimmy could have found someone to do the work at half the price.”

“Yes,” Betsy agreed. “I’m sure he could, but he’s so busy these days. I didn’t want to bother him with my concerns.”

“Well,” Sandra asked in her usual pushy fashion, “are you going to ask me in or not?”

“Not,” Betsy said. “This isn’t a good time, not with the power going on and off all over the house. I was about to call Marcia to see if she could pick me up and take me into town to pick up a few items from the store. Since you’re here now, maybe you wouldn’t mind. I could even treat you to an early dinner at the diner.”

Unaccustomed to being told no, Sandra was momentarily taken aback. Then she glanced at her watch. “I could take you into town, I suppose, and wait while you have something to eat,” she agreed reluctantly. “But no dinner for me. We have plans.”

“All right, then,” Betsy said. “You go wait in the car. I’ll put Princess in the laundry room and get my purse.” With that, Betsy closed the door in Sandra’s face, leaving her standing on the porch, thunderstruck and sputtering.

Harold, Betsy’s neighbor, had come by late in the afternoon the day before, apologizing for his tardiness in getting her driveway plowed and her walkway and wheelchair ramp shoveled and deiced. With her coat on and her purse on her arm, Betsy was happy to use the cleaned-up ramp to walk out to Sandra’s Volvo. Cataracts or not, once in the passenger seat, Betsy had no difficulty in seeing the tight-lipped expression on her daughter-in-law’s face as she jammed on the gas and shot past Joe’s van.

“I can’t believe you’d go off like this and leave a complete stranger working in your house.”

“He’s not a complete stranger,” Betsy said. “He’s a friend of Athena’s.” That was close enough to the truth to sound plausible.

“Oh,” Sandra fumed. “I suppose that explains it.”

Betsy took her own sweet time in the grocery store and the pharmacy both, using her magnifying glass to examine labels and making a show of having trouble making up her mind. She couldn’t resist. Having Sandra pacing in the background and checking her watch was just too much fun. With a little thought she was able to stretch her errands until well into the afternoon.

When Betsy finished shopping, she insisted they stop by the café. Betsy ordered a roast beef sandwich and Sandra her cup of black coffee. Only then did Sandra finally get down to business and broach the conversation Betsy had been expecting.

“Donald came by and talked to James last night,” Sandra said. “They’re both very concerned about you, you know. We all are.”

Betsy knew exactly where all this was going, but she played dumb. “Concerned?” she asked innocently.

“Of course we’re concerned,” Sandra said. “It’s one thing for you to lose your hearing aids or misplace your glasses, but it’s quite another to have the kind of episode that ends up involving law enforcement.”

“Ah,” Betsy said, as if only now realizing what this was all about. “The situation the other night where Donald Olson thinks the burners on my stove came on either by magic or else all by themselves. Which is wrong, of course. I think someone tried to murder me.”

Sandra didn’t actually say that she doubted Betsy’s version of the story, but the message came through nonetheless. “That’s what has us so worried—that you’ll have a moment of forgetfulness or confusion and come to some kind of harm. James wants you to go see Dr. Munson and have a complete evaluation.”

Betsy considered that last comment in silence. Elmer Munson was another one of Jimmy’s good pals. He had earned a certain reputation among some of her fellow bingo players down at the VFW as the go-to guy in town when recalcitrant parents needed to be brought to heel by their baby-boomer offspring. In fact, some of the more outspoken retirees suspected that Munson had been the driving force behind having his own mother declared incompetent.

Betsy’s food came. She tried a taste of it before she replied. The sandwich was just the way she liked it, thinly sliced beef on a piece of plain white Wonder bread instead of on a slab of whole-wheat cardboard some restaurants tried to pass off as “healthy eating.” And the rich brown gravy slathered over the top was thick and tasty.

“When exactly would you and Jimmy like me to schedule this checkup?” Betsy asked at last.

The whole time they had been together that day, Betsy had noted a kind of nervousness in Sandra that she had never exhibited before. Jimmy didn’t like rocking boats, and Betsy wasn’t surprised that her son had sent Sandra to do the dirty work rather than facing the music himself. No doubt Sandra had expected Betsy would object to the very idea, but Betsy’s apparent willingness to consider it sent a look of relief flashing across Sandra’s face. Betsy found that look more disturbing than the whole Dr. Munson scheme.

Sandra reached into her pocket and pulled out a business card. “James already called Dr. Munson’s office and booked an appointment for you,” she said, sliding the card across the table. “Monday afternoon—two-thirty. I’ll be glad to pick you up and bring you into town for the appointment if you like.”

Which was no doubt Sandra’s way of making sure Betsy didn’t ditch the appointment.

“Oh, no,” Betsy said casually, pretenting to examine the handwritten time on the back of the card and then slipping it into her own pocket. “That’s not necessary. I don’t like causing you any inconvenience, especially since you were kind enough to bring me into town today. I’ll call Marcia. She’s always happy to earn a little extra cash by driving me around. With this much notice, she’ll have no difficulty working me in.”

Sandra took the rejection in stride. “If you want to have Marcia pick you up, that’ll be fine,” she said with a smile. “All the same, I’ll plan on being at the appointment, too. For moral support, you know.”

“Of course,” Betsy agreed with a nod. “For moral support.”

13

Ali was still shaken when she left the hospital a few minutes later. She had no doubt that Sister Anselm’s critically injured patient had been on her way to Flagstaff hoping for help from Ali’s good friend Irene Bernard when she ran away from home. But Reenie had been dead for years. How was it possible that the injured girl hadn’t known that Irene Bernard was no longer available to help her?

Hoping for answers, Ali got in the Cayenne and drove straight to the YWCA. She parked in a visitor’s space near Irene’s Place, the domestic violence shelter that Reenie had founded and championed and that was now named in her honor. Ali was always struck by the irony in that because Irene had died as a result of an act of senseless domestic violence, too, albeit from an unexpected source.

Ali rang the security bell and identified herself before being allowed inside. She went straight to the office of Andrea Rogers. At the time of Reenie’s death, Andrea had been Irene Bernard’s assistant. Now she was in charge. In the intervening years, Andrea had honed both her public-speaking and management skills. Like Reenie, Andrea spent a good deal of her time out in public raising both awareness and needed funds. Like her predecessor, Andrea took an active and personal interest in every traumatized family that showed up on the shelter’s doorstep.

When Ali tapped on the doorframe of Andrea’s office, she looked up as if annoyed with the interruption. Recognizing her visitor, annoyance changed to beaming welcome.

“Well, if it isn’t Ali Reynolds,” Andrea said, hurrying from her cluttered desk to envelop Ali in a welcoming hug. “To what do we owe the pleasure?”

Intent on her errand, Ali didn’t let herself get sucked into a long exchange of pleasantries. “I need your help,” she said. “I’ve just come from St. Jerome’s. We’ve got a critically injured but so far unidentified young woman there along with her injured newborn baby. When I was going through the victim’s effects, I found a scrap of paper with the name Irene on it along with a telephone number. When I tried calling, the phone was answered here.”

“Here at the shelter?”

“I didn’t realize it at first,” Ali explained. “When the call was answered, all the operator said was ‘May I help you?’ It wasn’t until after I asked for Irene specifically that she offered to put me through to the shelter. That’s when I realized I had reached the YWCA.”

“Sharing the switchboard with the YWCA during daytime hours saves us a bunch of money,” Andrea answered. “And we teach the operators who pick up on our line to answer with a simple ‘May I help you?’ Sometimes after domestic violence victims call us, someone else—often an angry husband—will call, too, because he’s busy going through his wife’s phone records, trying to find out what she’s been up to. A simple ‘May I help you?’ allows us to hide the fact that the wife—and most often it is a wife—is someone who’s come to us looking for help.”

Andrea paused and sighed. “As for using Irene’s old number as our hotline number? We did that as a tribute to her—to honor what she stood for. When Irene was running the show, she often took those calls herself. This way she’s still taking them.”

It was clear from the sadness in Andrea’s voice that Ali Reynolds wasn’t the only one who still grieved Reenie Bernard’s passing.

Andrea straightened her shoulders. “This young woman you told me about, the one in the hospital. Is she a victim of domestic violence?”

“From what we know of the investigation, she was injured in a traffic accident. She ran into traffic and was hit by a passing vehicle while in the process of running away from a difficult home situation. So the answer to that is a possible yes.”

“What about the driver or the car who hit her?” Andrea asked. “Sometimes so-called accidents aren’t accidental.”

“Indications are the driver is a complete stranger.”

“What makes you think she might have called here?” Andrea asked.

“We don’t know that for sure,” Ali admitted. “What we do know is that she had a slip of paper with Irene’s name and phone number on it hidden in her pocket.”

“Come with me, then,” Andrea said. “Let’s go check.”

Talking as she walked, Andrea led Ali into the corridor. “We log in the numbers of all incoming calls placed to our hotline. That way, occasionally in crisis situations, we know where to send law enforcement assistance. Having that information is also helpful when we need to track down an offender who is trying to reach one of our residents in violation of a protection order.”

Ali and Andrea left the shelter and entered the YWCA part of the building through a locking door that clicked shut behind them. In a side office just off the main entrance, a young woman sat at a desk laden with old-fashioned PBX telephone equipment.

“Hey, Debbie, this is Ali Reynolds, a friend of mine and a good friend of Irene Bernard’s as well,” Andrea announced. “Mind if I take a look at the logbook?”

Debbie handed over a simple spiral notebook, which was anything but high tech. The day of the month was written on the top of the page. The current page had only one listing—Ali’s. It included the time, her cell-phone number, and the word “Irene” followed by a question mark. That was all the information the operator had gleaned before Ali had ended the call.

She turned back to the previous page. That one listed five calls. As soon as she saw the last one on the page, Ali felt her heart skip a beat. A call from a 928 area code had come in at 4:56. The 928 designation meant it had originated from a phone purchased and activated somewhere in northern Arizona. But the telling detail, the one that took Ali’s breath away was the final notation on the line: “Irene?”

“It’s here,” Ali murmured to Andrea. “She did call yesterday; at least she tried to.”

“Is there a problem?” Debbie asked with a frown of concern. “Which call are you talking about—the one for Irene?”

Ali nodded.

“That’s so weird,” Debbie said. “I’ve had two calls like that in the past two days—someone who asked for a person named Irene rather than the shelter.”

“The second call was from me this morning,” Ali said. “What happened the first time?”

“I started to explain that was the name of the shelter rather than a person, but the caller, a young woman from the sound of it, hung up before I had a chance. I passed the information on to Mrs. Young, the resident assistant in the shelter, in case she called back overnight. According to this, she never did.”

“Beverly Young is our overnight housemother,” Andrea explained. “Calls are transferred over to her office in the shelter once the switchboard closes for the night. That way we have someone on-site for people needing assistance during nonbusiness hours.”

Ali thanked Debbie for her help and then keyed the phone number into the message section of the phone.

“I don’t recommend your calling,” Andrea cautioned as they walked back toward her office. “In a volatile situation, a call from an outsider could make things that much worse.”

“I’ll bear that in mind, but since Jane Doe is already in the hospital in critical condition, I’m not sure how it could get any worse.”

“You’d be surprised,” Andrea answered.

Good to her word, once Ali was back in the Cayenne, she didn’t call. Instead she e-mailed the number to Stuart Ramey with a simple request:

Can you give me a name and address to go with this number?

Her e-mail announcement chimed before Ali made it back to the parking lot at St. Jerome’s. The message was from Cami, Stuart’s assistant, rather than from the man himself:

Mr. Ramey is busy right now. He asked me to handle this. The phone leads back to someone named Tsosie Begay. The address listed is a post office box in Chinle, AZ. If you need anything else, let me know.

Cami

Ali sat in her idling car for a full minute after reading Cami’s e-mail. Begay was a well-known Navajo name, and the phone number was more likely to lead back to the source of the blanket rather than to one of Jane Doe’s family members. After giving it some thought, Ali went ahead and dialed. The phone was answered by a soft-spoken woman. “Begay residence.”

“Hello,” Ali responded. “My name is Ali Reynolds. I’m calling for a Mr. or Mrs. Begay.”

“I’m Evangeline Begay,” the woman said in a voice that gave nothing away.

Ali took a deep breath before launching off. “I’m looking into a phone call that was placed from your number to a phone located in Flagstaff late yesterday afternoon. It may be connected to a young woman who was injured in a traffic accident last night. We’re trying to identify her.”

“You said the girl was injured?” Evangeline asked. “How?”

“She was hit by a vehicle north of Flagstaff. I’m attempting to locate her family.”

“She was running away,” Evangeline said.

“We’ve surmised as much, but we’re trying to locate her relatives. At the time she was injured, she was wrapped in a blanket—a Navajo blanket.”

“One of mine,” Evangeline answered. “All she had on was a jacket. It was snowing and cold, so I gave her my blanket to keep her warm, help keep her safe. Is she all right? What about her baby?”

“As far as I know at this moment, they’re both still alive,” Ali said. “But can you give me any idea of where she’s from?”

“I know she came from a bad place,” Evangeline replied after a pause. “I don’t think she wants to be found.”

“What bad place?” Ali pressed.

“It used to be called Short Creek,” Evangeline answered. “That’s what the People called it long ago. Now it’s called Colorado City. Do you know it? Do you know about the people there?”

Ali did, because with those two words—Short Creek—everything about the Jane Doe puzzle seemed to click into place. Colorado City was the center of commerce for an isolated part of Arizona just to the north of the Grand Canyon. Although officially part of Mohave County, the area was hours away from even the most rudimentary law enforcement oversight. As a consequence, Colorado City and its environs had become a geographical magnet for any number of oddball communes and religious groups, many of which were suspected of practicing polygamy.

“Where exactly did you find her?” Ali asked.

“My husband and I were coming back from a selling trip, dropping off my blankets and his silver and turquoise jewelry at trading posts and gift shops before the summer tourist season starts. The man who owns the gas station in Colorado City is one of our customers. While Tsosie was talking to him, I went into the restroom. That’s where I found the girl, hiding in one of the stalls. She said she was going to Flagstaff and asked if we’d give her a ride.

“It was while we were driving south that she asked to use my phone. When I gave it to her, though, she didn’t know how to use it, so I dialed the number for her. It was to a friend of hers, someone named Irene. When Irene didn’t answer the call, the girl seemed very upset, but I didn’t ask what was wrong.”

“Where did you let her out?”

“At a junction north of Flagstaff where we turned off to go visit our daughter. The girl said she was hoping to catch a ride into Flag to see her mother, who was in the hospital.”

“Thank you,” Ali said. “You’ve been a big help.”

“Where is the girl?” Evangeline asked. “I mean, what hospital?”

“St. Jerome’s.”

“If you talk to her, please let her know that Tsosie and I will be praying for her.”

“I will,” Ali said. “Thank you.”