Hand of Evil

CHAPTER 7

Having had her whole day blown out of the water, Ali was eager to get back home. She had yet to make any of the cancer treatment calls she’d promised to make on Velma’s behalf, and she had yet to touch Arabella Ashcroft’s diary.

With Crystal safely in her father’s keeping, a relieved Ali turned around and drove back down the mountain. It was early afternoon and almost time for the Sugarloaf to close for the day. Still as she started to drive past the restaurant, she was surprised to see several more vehicles in the parking lot than should have been there at that time of day, including a City of Sedona police car. Knowing that there was little love lost between her father and the local constabulary, Ali made a U-turn and then went back to the parking lot, where she pulled in beside the patrol car.

The CLOSED sign was in the window, but the door was unlocked. Ali let herself inside. Her father was seated in the corner booth along with two uniformed City of Sedona police officers. One of the officers was new to Ali. The other one, Kenny Harmon, she did know. As a rookie patrol officer, Kenny had given Bob Larson his one and only speeding ticket-for doing forty in a thirty-five. Kenny’s presence accounted in large measure for the thunderous look on Ali’s father’s face. The fourth person in the booth was a woman. Her back was turned to Ali, but she seemed to be doing most of the talking.

“We’re closed,” Edie Larson called from the kitchen when the bell over the door announced Ali’s entrance. Edie appeared in the swinging door, wielding a mop. “Oh,” she said. “It’s you.”

“What’s going on?”

Edie jerked her head in the direction of the only occupied booth. “That’s Sandy-Sandy Mitchell. She’s one of the clerks over at Basha’s. She’s also Kip Hogan’s girlfriend. Your dad’s helping her file a missing persons report.”

Ali did know Sandy. She had been a grocery clerk at Basha’s for years. The idea that she was involved with Kip-the idea that anyone was involved with Kip-was news to Ali. No wonder he’d gone to the trouble of having his teeth fixed.

“Kip was supposed to see her last night, only he didn’t show up. She came by here after work today looking for him. That’s when your father finally decided maybe it was time to call the cops. There’s still a little coffee left. Want some?”

“Coffee would be great,” Ali said, accepting her mother’s offer and grabbing a seat at the counter.

“Have you had lunch?”

Ali shook her head. “I thought you were closed.”

“We don’t have to be open for me to make you a sandwich. Tuna? And I’ve got a container of stew for you to take home for dinner.”

Ali nodded. “Thanks,” she said. “A sandwich would be very nice, and Chris adores your stew.”

Edie rolled her eyes. “Why do you think I made it?” she asked.

Seated at the counter in the almost deserted restaurant, it was easy for Ali to hear everything being said at the corner booth.

“So that’s the last time you saw him,” Kenny was saying. “When he came by the store late yesterday morning to give you some flowers.”

Sandy nodded tearfully. “It was our two-month anniversary,” she said.

“Did he mention anything about what his plans for the day might be? Did he mention where he was going or what he was going to do?”

“He said he needed to deliver some furniture. Then he was going up to the Rim, but he didn’t have to say so,” Sandy added. “He always goes up there on Tuesday afternoons. I was upset about what had happened with those kids earlier. He offered to put the trip off until today, but I told him he should go ahead. People were counting on him. I told him I’d be fine. I needed him to go so I could write up the incident report.”

“What incident report?” Ali asked her mother.

“There were some college kids up for the day who came into Basha’s yesterday expecting to buy booze. They came through Sandy’s register and were all bent out of shape when she carded them and wouldn’t let them buy,” Edie explained. “They were still at the store and giving Sandy grief about it when Kip showed up and shut them down. Kip can be pretty intimidating on occasion.”

Ali regarded that as a bit of an understatement. Even with new teeth and carrying a bouquet of flowers, Kip Hogan would have been scary as hell.

“We usually meet up at an AA meeting on Tuesday evenings,” Sandy was saying. “That’s where we met-Alcoholics Anonymous. He wasn’t there, though, and he didn’t come by later, either. I worried about it some overnight, but this morning, at work, when I heard about Mr. Larson’s Bronco being found, that really scared me. Kip knows how much Mr. Larson loves that car. He’d never do anything to jeopardize it, especially not considering the way the Larsons have treated him. He told me once they were more like family than his own family.”

“So Mr. Hogan does have family then?” the cop asked.

“I guess,” Sandy answered.

“Any idea where we might find those family members?”

Sandy shook her head. “He never said.”

Kenny, pen in hand, turned to Ali’s father. “Did Mr. Hogan ever mention to you where he was from?”

“No,” Bob answered. “Not to me, anyway.”

“You think he had something to hide?”

“If we live long enough, we all have something to hide,” Bob Larson said.

Ali could tell from her father’s tone of voice that Bob was fast running out of patience.

“Where was his driver’s license from?” Kenny asked.

Bob glanced guiltily at his wife before he answered. “He told me he had a driver’s license,” Bob said. “I guess I never actually saw it.”

“You just took his word for it?”

Bob looked pained. “I had hurt my leg,” he said. “I needed someone who could drive for me.”

“Good lord!” Edie muttered under her breath, taking a seat next to her daughter. “There’s no fool like an old fool.”

“So you don’t even know what state it would have been from or whether or not it had been suspended.”

Bob shook his head.

The other cop seemed content to let that one go. “Forget it, Kenny. You told us he doesn’t have a cell phone, Mr. Larson. Is there a chance that he might have made any long-distance calls that showed up on your bill-calls that might lead us to some other people who know him or who knew him in the past?”

“I don’t remember that he did,” Bob replied.

“Believe me, if there’d been an unexplained call on the phone bill, your father would have remembered,” Edie told Ali in a pained whisper. “He goes over every line of every bill every month, but he couldn’t be bothered with asking whether or not Kip had a driver’s license? As soon as the cops leave, I think I’m gonna kill the man and be done with it.”

By the time Edie’s rant was over, the cops were ready to leave. “This doesn’t give us a whole lot to go on, but we’ll see what we can do,” Kenny said. “You say your Bronco’s still up at Franco’s Garage?”

“It’s still there,” Bob answered. “Along with the goods Kip was supposed to drop off at the homeless encampment up on the Rim. They evidently weren’t good enough for the creep who took my tools, gas can, and spare tire.”

As the two cops left, Edie followed them to the door and locked it behind them. She went over to the booth where Bob was still sitting with Sandy, who had burst into tears. “Where could Kip be?” Sandy wailed. “Something terrible has happened to him. I’m sure of it.”

Edie slipped into the booth next to her and put her arm around Sandy’s shoulders. “I’m sure the cops will do everything they can to find him,” she said kindly. “Won’t they, Bob?”

“Absolutely,” Bob agreed, but only after Edie nudged his ankle under the table. “Of course they will.”

Sandy turned her tearstained face in his direction. “Do you think so?” she asked. “Really?”

“Definitely,” Bob declared with what sounded like absolute confidence. “No doubt about it.”

A few minutes later, when Bob stood up to walk Sandy out to her vehicle, Edie turned to her daughter. “So, where’s your charge?” she asked.

“Dave’s home now,” Ali said. “I dropped her off with him.”

“Does he know what she’s been up to?” Edie asked.

“Crystal’s supposed to tell him.”

“What if she doesn’t?” Edie asked.

“Then I’ll probably have to,” Ali allowed. “I don’t want to be stuck in the middle of it, but I’ll do it if I have to.”

Edie clicked her tongue. “It’s going to break Dave’s heart when he has to take her to a doctor to have her tested for STDs.”

Ali looked at her mother in surprise. She had always been baffled by her mother’s uncanny ability to see everything and know everything, and the fact that Edie Larson was conversant on the subject of sexually transmitted diseases seemed to be another case in point.

“Crystal told you what she’d been up to?” Ali asked.

“She didn’t have to tell me a thing,” Edie Larson returned. “All I had to do was look at her. I wasn’t born yesterday, you know.”

By four that afternoon, Ali had made several calls to California. Then with Sam curled contentedly on the couch beside her, Ali was ready to reply to Velma Trimble’s e-mail:

Dear Velma,

I’m so sorry it’s taken so long to get back to you. Things have been crazy around here. I’ve spoken to several doctors in your general area. The one that’s getting the highest marks is a concierge medical practice in Costa Mesa called Cancer Resource Specialties. I guess you’d call them a cancer care clearing-house.

You pay a set fee to join their practice, and none of that fee would be covered by either insurance carriers or by Medicare. Cancer Resource then provides routine medical care. After all, people with cancer still get the flu. On the cancer front, however, they arrange for referrals to appropriate specialists all over the country. They help organize appointments with oncologists, arrange for scans and MRIs, put patients in touch with surgeons, pain management specialists, and whatever else may be needed. In other words, you pay them to know all the stuff you need to find out right now when you don’t have the time or the energy to track it all down on your own.

The woman who started Cancer Resource is an internist named Dr. Nancy Cooper. I met her several years ago at a luncheon and found her to be very impressive. She got involved when she realized how dealing with the ins and outs of a cancer diagnosis can simply overwhelm both the patient and the patient’s family. Her whole focus is trying to coordinate care and smooth out some of those rough spots.

As I said at the beginning, this service is relatively

expensive, but I have no doubt it’s well worth whatever she charges. Her fee scale is listed on her Web site. Check it out. If this is more than you can afford, let me know and I’ll see what other options may be available.

ALI

With that out of the way, it was only natural for Ali to turn to the blog. The cutloose mailbox was brimming over with comments, all of them dealing with her last post, the one she had written just after she had learned of Crystal’s disappearance. Without knowing the girl had been found, Ali’s readers were still hanging in limbo-still waiting to hear. Scanning through the outpouring of commentary, Ali was interested to see that responses often touched on opposite sides of the same story.

Dear Babe,

My father was an abusive drunk. My mother was a doormat who would never say a word when he lit into us kids with a belt or a spoon or whatever else came readily to hand. I thought nothing could be worse than staying where I was, so when I was fifteen I ran away from home. How wrong I was. By the time I was eighteen I’d had three abortions and was strung out on heroin. I’m clean and sober now, but I also have hepatitis C and am HIV positive. My father sobered up years ago. My younger sister says he’s a different person now. She thinks I should come home-that I should forgive him and let bygones be bygones. It’s not fair. He got his life back. Mine is over. I hope your friend finds his daughter before it’s too late. I hope it’s not his fault that she ran away.

DAWN

Ali studied that one for a long time. There was so much hurt in the words, she hardly knew where to begin in crafting a response:

Dear Dawn,

The life you have is the life you have, and it isn’t over until it’s over. Don’t give up too soon. And your sister may be right. Forgiving your father may make it possible for you to forgive the other person in your life who needs forgiveness-yourself.

I think your comment is an important one, and I’d like to post it on the blog, but I won’t do so without your express permission. Please let me know.

BABE

The next one came from the parent of a missing child.

Dear Babe,

I’ll be praying for the girl’s safe return. My daughter Sally disappeared when she was twelve-on January 11, 1966-forty-one years to the day before your friend’s daughter went missing. That’s why, when I read your post, it made the hair stand up on the back of my neck. We still don’t know what happened to our Sally or if she’s dead or alive. Part of me knows that she’s dead-has always known that she’s dead. But another part of me still hopes that someday the front door will slam open and she’ll be standing there saying, “Mama, I’m home.”

Please let us know if your friend’s daughter returns safely.

LOUANN

Ali posted that comment and skimmed the rest. More comments came clicking in while she was reading. In the end, there were so many that it simply wasn’t feasible to respond to them all individually. She replied in her post instead.

CUTLOOSEBLOG.COM

Wednesday, January 11, 2006, supplemental

The response to my last post about my friend’s missing daughter has been absolutely overwhelming. Thank you all for your concern, for your prayers, and for your kind comments.

First and most important I want you all to know that what was lost has been found. My friend’s daughter is home. She’s safe. And, externally at least, she doesn’t seem to have been harmed. However she did run away from home. Why she did that remains to be seen, and I’m sure she and her family will be addressing that and other issues in the course of the next few days-and most likely for sometime after that as well.

She was found and brought home last night, but things were so hectic today that I didn’t get around to picking up my computer until just now. When I did so, I was utterly stunned by the huge number of messages I found there. As always, the thing that astonishes me is the number of people I’ve heard from who wrote to express their concerns, people who have dealt with similar problems in their own lives. Of the messages I’ve skimmed I’ve posted only the one from LouAnn.

The sheer volume of mail on this topic precludes me from answering each of them on an individual basis. I’ll be posting more and responding individually when appropriate and as time allows.

Babe, posted 4:55

P.M

.

By then it was late afternoon. When Chris came home after school, he went directly to the kitchen to dish up and zap a bowl of his grandmother’s beef stew. “The last I knew you were heading out to find Dave Holman’s missing daughter,” Chris said while he waited for the microwave. “How did that work out?”

“Not all that well,” Ali said. “I brought her home here, and while I was sleeping this morning, she tried to sneak off in one of your ski jackets.”

“As in steal?” he asked.

“Exactly,” Ali replied.

“So she wasn’t particularly grateful.”

“You could say that,” Ali agreed. “Not particularly.”

“How old is she again?”

“Thirteen.”

“And you did get my jacket back?” Chris asked.

“Yes.”

“So where is she now?”

“I dropped her off at her dad’s.”

Chris grinned. “So, now she’s his problem.” He pulled his bowl out of the microwave. “I don’t remember ever being quite that difficult.”

“I don’t remember it either,” Ali said. “Because I don’t think you ever were that difficult-not even when you were sixteen, which, as I remember, wasn’t a banner year.”

“Does that mean the next time I leave the kitchen a mess, I’ve got some slack coming?” he wanted to know.

“Get out of here,” Ali said. She plucked a small pillow off the couch and threw it at him. Sam, who disapproved of pillow fights, disappeared into the bedroom while Chris, bowl in hand, headed for the basement studio they had carved for him out of what had once been Aunt Evie’s two-car garage. Later, Ali heard him head out for the evening. She didn’t ask him where he was going, and he didn’t offer to tell her.

In the deepening twilight, Ali helped herself to her own bowl of stew. Only after dinner had been eaten and cleared away and with the house quiet once more, did she realize that she no longer had any viable excuse for avoiding Arabella Ashcroft’s diary. By agreeing to take the volume with her, she had tacitly agreed to read it-whether or not she wanted to-and it was time to start.

Ali adjusted the living room lights and turned on the gas log in the fireplace. Then, after retrieving the diary from her purse, she settled onto the leather sofa. She had no more than sat down when Sam joined her there, snuggling up against her leg and purring noisily. Comforted by the big cat’s solid presence, Ali opened the gold-embossed book. Shuffling through the book, she found that the vast majority of the pages were blank, but the pages that had been used were covered in a blocky, immature cursive. Ali turned to the first one.

Happy birthday to Me,

Happy birthday to Me,

Happy birthday dear Bella.

Happy birthday to me.

Because it is my birthday and I’m nine whole years old today. And I got just what I wanted for my birthday-a

bright blue parakeet. I think I’m going to call him Blueboy, and I’m going to teach him to talk. Parakeets can talk, you know, almost as well as parrots, you just have to know how to teach them. I would have taken a parrot, but mother says they’re a lot bigger and a lot more trouble.

I didn’t really want a diary, but Miss Ponder gave it to me anyway. Miss Ponder hasn’t been here very long, but she’s the nicest governess I’ve ever had. The others were all stiff or mean or old, and they never gave me any presents. Miss Ponder isn’t mean at all and the way she listens when I talk makes me want to tell her stuff I wouldn’t tell anyone else. Like the fact that I want to be a writer when I grow up. That’s why she gave me this diary. She says writers need lots of practice before they can actually write books and that lots of famous writers started out by keeping a journal. Or a diary. So that’s what I’m doing. Starting out.

That initial diary entry wasn’t at all what Ali had expected. She had thought she’d encounter something terribly graphic or terribly grim or both, and she hadn’t wanted to inflict those gory details on herself. She didn’t really want to know exactly how little Arabella Ashcroft, incest survivor, had been victimized by her older brother. What Ali had discovered instead, was a profound and completely unexpected connection between herself and the nine-year-old child who had penned those innocently bittersweet words some six decades earlier.

Ali Larson had been around nine years old when she, like Arabella, had been bitten by a similar ambition. Ali Larson had decided in fourth grade that she wanted to be a writer. And through some combination of luck and determination, and with the timely help of Arabella’s mother, Ali had done just exactly that-she had become a journalist. And now she was writing every day in her blog with people reading what she had written and, more important, responding to it in very personal ways

For whatever reason, Arabella’s ambitions had never come to fruition. And maybe that’s what this was all about. Maybe that was one of the reasons Ali had been put in touch with Arabella at this juncture in their lives. Maybe, even at this late date, Ali Reynolds could somehow help Arabella Ashcroft realize her long-buried dream. Or perhaps Ali was involved with Arabella, just as she was with Velma T, in order to sort things out between these two aging women and their interfering younger relatives-Velma’s son and Arabella’s nephew.

Before Ali managed to turn to the next entry in the diary, her phone rang. “What am I going to do with her?” Dave Holman asked.

He sounded exasperated beyond bearing. Having spent several long hours with Crystal Holman, Ali knew the girl came complete with a tangle of complications, none of them with easy answers. Before Ali tried to reply, though, she needed to know which one of Crystal’s many thorny issues Dave’s question addressed. Was it primarily due to Crystal’s being a runaway? Was it about her precocious and generally blase attitude toward sexual activity and the need to have her checked out for possible STDs? Maybe the real answer was all of the above.

“It’s like I don’t even know her anymore,” Dave went on. “She’s not the same kid she used to be. She won’t look me in the eye. When I ask her questions, she won’t give me a straight answer about anything.”

“Did you ask her why she ran away?”

“Of course.”

“What did she tell you?”

“All the usual BS,” Dave replied. “She hates her new school. She doesn’t have any friends. Her teachers are stupid. Gary Whitman is a jerk. Her mother likes Richey better than she likes her. It’s all pretty typical teenage angst. My God, Ali. I know I wasn’t the easiest kid to deal with when I was her age, but I never pulled anything like this.”

Listening to Dave’s recitation of what Crystal had told him, Ali couldn’t help thinking about Arabella Ashcroft. She had been molested and had never told anyone, most especially her parents. Would things have been better for Arabella if she had told? And did anyone else have the right to tell Dave about what was going on with his daughter if Crystal couldn’t bring herself to do it? Yes, Crystal was a child, but even children had a right to some privacy.

As for Dave? He was an experienced homicide cop, used to interrogating crooks and getting them to answer tough questions. Evidently his tried-and-true questioning techniques weren’t working very well on his own daughter.

“Did you talk to her about hitchhiking?” Ali asked. “About how dangerous it is?”

“Are you kidding? I talked about that until I was blue in the face,” Dave returned. “But I don’t think she was listening. I tried to explain to her how lucky she was that something terrible hadn’t happened to her on the way here.”

Something terrible did happen, Ali thought. She lost her innocence. She sold her body for a ride, and the damage to her self-respect will probably last a lifetime.

“Did she tell you about the guy who hit her?” Ali asked.

“She said it was a boyfriend, and that she’s broken up with him now,” Dave continued. “But she’s still threatening to run away, especially if I’m going to take her back to Vegas. So what happens when I have to go to work in the morning, Ali? I’m due to testify in court tomorrow or the next day. The county courthouse is in Prescott. That means I have to be in Prescott as well. What do I do with Crystal while I’m gone? Lock her up in the house? And if she were to let herself out, all she’d have to do is walk down to the bottom of the hill and stick out her thumb. She’ll be long gone in a matter of minutes.”

“You’re right to be worried,” Ali said. “But since you have to work, and since Roxie is the one with custody, couldn’t she or Gary drive down from Vegas to pick Crystal up?”

“They have jobs, too,” Dave replied. “Besides, Roxie has taken the position that this whole thing is somehow my fault, that I must have encouraged Crystal to run away. Now that Crystal’s here, Roxie says it’s my responsibility to get her back home. While I was talking to Roxie on the phone, I could hear Gary talking in the background, muttering something about ‘custodial interference.’”

“You think they’ll try to make some kind of official issue out of this?”

“I’d bet money on it,” Dave said. “The sooner I can get it handled, the sooner it’ll go away, but the earliest I’ll be able to drive back up to Vegas will be Saturday morning-unless the court appearance finishes up earlier.”

“Does Crystal want to go back?” Ali asked.

“What do you mean?” Dave asked.

“When I picked her up last night, I got the impression that she was hoping to come live with you on a permanent basis.”

“Crystal’s old enough to have some say in the matter, but not by pulling a stunt like this, and for right now the divorce decree is very clear. It specifies that Roxie gets full custody and I get to pay full child support. If Crystal were to come to live with me, Gary and Roxie would have to lose some of the child support. Believe me, that’s never going to happen.

“Besides,” he added, “if it did, what would I do with her? Where would we go? This is only a one-bedroom place, but it’s as much as I can afford. I’m fine here on my own, but it would never work for two people. Tonight, Crystal is in the bedroom, and I’m camping out on the couch. That’s not feasible in the long run. If she was going to stay on here permanently, I’d have to find somewhere else to live. You take what I make, deduct what I pay in child support, and figure out how much is left. Not very much. Not enough to pay for a decent two-bedroom apartment. We’d end up in one of those trailer parks down by Oak Creek. They’re probably okay, but they’re not the kinds of places where I’d like to raise my daughter.”

Ali could hear the distress in Dave’s voice. Buffeted by indecision, he was unable to see his way clear in any one direction.

“Why don’t you bring Crystal here tomorrow and let me look after her for the day?” Ali suggested finally. “Better yet, bring her along to the Sugarloaf when you come to breakfast tomorrow morning. I’ll come down to the restaurant and pick her up. She can stay with me until you get back from Prescott. Ditto for Friday.”

“Are you sure you wouldn’t mind?” Dave asked. The relief in his voice was obvious. “I mean, you’ve already done so much…”

“Hey, Dave,” Ali said. “Hello!!! It’s Ali Reynolds, remember me? Remember everything you did for me when we were out in California? We’re a long way from being even. Besides, isn’t that what friends are for?”

“As long as you’re sure you don’t mind.”

“I don’t,” Ali said. “See you in the morning.”

Ali had planned on returning to Arabella’s diary, but she changed her mind, closed the slim volume, and returned it to her purse.

If I’m going to be dealing with Crystal Holman all day tomorrow, Ali told herself firmly, I’d better try to get some sleep.