Jeffrey and Charles had met in Thailand, where both had lost previous partners to a catastrophic tsunami. No wonder they’d taken pity on Leland.

  Just then, a towheaded boy appeared at the top of the stairwell, popping into view and then racing across the room toward them. “Uncle Lee,” he said, skidding to a stop in front of Leland’s chair. “Are you going to read me a story?”

  “Not now, Jonah,” Leland said. “We have company. I’d like to introduce you to a friend of mine, Ms. Reynolds.”

  Turning to look at Ali, the boy came to attention. “Good afternoon, Ms. Reynolds,” he said seriously, offering a tiny hand. “I’m Jonah, and I’m very happy to meet you.”

  Spoiled or not, the kid had excellent manners. Ali took his proffered hand and shook it. “I’m glad to meet you, too, Jonah,” she said.

  “Do you know my dads?” he asked.

  “Yes, I do,” she replied. “I visited here years ago, before you were born.”

  “You talk funny,” Jonah said. “Are you from America?”

  “Yes, I am,” Ali told him with a smile. “That’s where I met…” She had to think for a moment about what to say next. “… your uncle Lee.”

  With introductions out of the way, the boy propelled himself up and onto Leland’s lap, where he snuggled comfortably under the old man’s chin.

  “Are we having tea now?” he wanted to know.

  “I believe that’s the plan,” Leland replied.

  “Good,” Jonah said. “I’m starving.”

  Tea consisted of delicate cucumber finger sandwiches and freshly baked scones still hot from the oven, and it was delivered by a demure young woman Ali suspected had been borrowed from the waitstaff at the nearest Charlie Chan restaurant to act as their server for the evening.

  Jonah stuck around long enough to devour several scones before heading pell-mell back down the stairs.

  “He’s very bright,” Ali observed as the boy disappeared from view.

  “He is that,” Leland agreed. “I’d never spent much time with little ones before this, and it can be a bit tiring on occasion. Fortunately, he and Anna will be taking their dinners downstairs this evening, so we’ll have a chance to visit.”

  And visit they did. Ali caught Leland up on all the goings-on in Sedona, filling him in on the circumstances surrounding the loss of her father and the relatively recent arrival of Ali’s second grandson. Leland wanted to know how Alonzo was holding up as far as keeping the household running smoothly, and he was thrilled to hear that Bella was still alive and well.

  A little past six, Charles emerged from the kitchen and took a seat as Jeffrey served aperitifs. “We have a perfect division of labor,” Jeffrey explained. “I handle beverage service, and he does the cooking. Fortunately for me, he still loves to cook. What are we having?”

  Charles favored Ali with a conspiratorial grin. “I didn’t want our visitor to think I’m a one-trick pony, so we’re going all-English tonight—wine-glazed beef Wellington, potato puree, and crispy Brussels sprouts with a lemon cream sauce. How does that sound?”

  “Wonderful,” Ali told him, “and it makes me thankful that I only had one of those scones.”

  After sharing a delightful meal and giving Leland what she feared would be a final hug, Ali returned to the hotel. By 8:30 she was back in the suite, where she found Cami on the phone with her laptop open in front of her. Ali started to ask a question, but Cami held up a silencing finger.

  “Okay,” she was saying into the phone. “We’re good to go, then.”

  “What’s happening?” Ali asked once the call ended.

  “You’re booked business class on a 7:30 a.m. Delta flight tomorrow from Heathrow to LAX,” Cami told her. “I’ve got a charter flight lined up there to fly you from LA to Phoenix. Someone from the charter company will meet you at baggage claim and take you to the civil aviation part of the airport for your Phoenix-bound flight. Easy-peasy. I’ve also booked a 4:30 a.m. wake-up call here at the hotel and a 5:00 a.m. car service pickup, so you’d best get packing. Depending on how things go, you should be on the ground in Phoenix somewhere around noon. With any kind of luck, you might be there before B.’s even out of recovery.”

  “Thank you,” Ali said. “You really do work magic.”

  “Should I tell Angela that she’s off-duty once you leave?”

  “Nope, she’s to stay on the case.”

  “But I don’t really need a bodyguard,” Cami objected.

  “You may not think so, and I may not think so, but B.’s the boss, and he thinks you do.”

  “All right, then,” Cami agreed with a toss of her head. “Whatever B. says goes.”

  CHAPTER 24

  PHOENIX, ARIZONA

  Thursday, January 2, 2020, 3:00 p.m. (MST)

  It took time to get the Highway Patrol’s team of CSIs from Yuma to Quartzsite so they could process the scene, and it took even longer to have the Subaru towed back to the District 4 impound lot. In the meantime, Julie had managed to track down some very interesting details on B. Simpson’s life insurance situation.

  Midafternoon, Detective Steven Flack popped his head into Biba’s office to announce that he had managed to locate a truck stop in Anthem where the stolen red Subaru had pulled off I-17. Once Biba had a chance to review the surveillance video, he gave himself permission to leave his desk and head for Phoenix.

  It was late in the afternoon before he finally arrived at St. Gregory’s. Thanks to Detective Morris’s research, Warren Biba felt he was loaded for bear. With Ali Reynolds out of the country, he expected to have a straight shot at interviewing B. Simpson. Unfortunately, Sister Anselm was there in Ali’s place, and she seemed disinclined to leave the room.

  “How are you feeling today, Mr. Simpson?” Biba asked.

  “Okay so far,” was the answer, “but I’m scheduled for another round of surgery tomorrow morning.”

  With the nun occupying the only visitor chair, this time Biba was the one forced to remain standing—not an optimal situation for conducting a successful interview.

  “I understand your wife’s been called out of the country,” he began.

  Simpson nodded.

  “I’m surprised there was no mention of that when I was here yesterday.”

  Attempting to shrug his injured shoulder, B. winced. “She’s in London,” he said, “filling in for me at a conference. Having her go in my stead was a last-minute decision, one we made after you left.”

  “When will she be back?”

  “Tomorrow maybe,” B. replied, “but I’m not sure.”

  “Must be nice to be able to grab a private jet and hop over to London at the drop of a hat.”

  “It’s business,” B. returned. “This is a high-profile conference, and it was important that High Noon have a presence. Ali and I are full partners in the business,” he added. “I handle most of the outside sales while she manages the home team.”

  “Is that why you do so much traveling?”

  “It is.”

  “I understand there’s quite an age gap between you and your wife,” Biba said.

  The abrupt change of direction caught Simpson momentarily off guard. “Fifteen years,” he said finally, “but since the age difference doesn’t concern Ali or me, why should it interest you?”

  “You know,” Biba said dismissively, “the whole age-gap thing.”

  “What are you saying?”

  “With an older woman waiting back home, it seems possible that on one of your many trips, you might have strayed off the straight and narrow with someone a bit younger.”

  “You’re suggesting I’m screwing around behind Ali’s back?”

  “I’m investigating an attempted homicide,” Biba replied. “When it comes to motive, money is right at the top of the list, with jealousy a close second.”

  “I’m not having an affair,” Simpson declared, “and we’re not having money problems, either.”

  “Speaking of money,” Biba said, “how about if we talk about that?”

  “What about it?”

  “I understand you carry a substantial amount of life insurance.”

  “Of course I do,” B. answered. “Who doesn’t? There are two large individual policies and probably a small amount of group insurance as well.”

  “Tell me about the individual ones,” Biba suggested.

  “I believe one has a face amount of about $500,000 while the other is for $2,000,000. Ali is the named beneficiary on both. The smaller one is for her personal use while the key-man policy primarily benefits the company.”

  “If that’s the case, shouldn’t High Noon be the named beneficiary?” Biba asked.

  “As High Noon’s CFO, Ali is in charge of finances. If her position were to change, so would the beneficiary designation.”

  “But why so much?”

  “You may think that’s an exorbitant amount, but it’s not. Each year I’m personally responsible for bringing in about a million bucks’ worth of new business. In the event of my death, that policy is designed to give her two years to find a replacement. And if you think Ali’s after the insurance proceeds, forget it. One of the reasons she’s CFO is that she’s good at math. Given a choice between grabbing the insurance money for herself or maintaining the business, there’s not a doubt in my mind which one she’d choose.”

  “But…”

  “No buts,” B. said. “You’ve been here for less than ten minutes, Detective Biba. In that time, you’ve accused me of being unfaithful to my wife and suggested that my wife is trying to have me murdered in order to collect the insurance proceeds. As far as I’m concerned this interview is over. Either show yourself out, or I’ll have Sister Anselm here escort you out.”

  Biba didn’t argue the point. “Very well, Mr. Simpson, I’ll go,” he said, “but please advise your wife that, upon her return, we’ll want to speak with her at her earliest convenience.”

  “Oh, I’ll tell her, all right,” B. answered sarcastically, “but here’s a word of warning, Detective Biba. You should probably be careful what you wish for, because you might just get it.”

  CHAPTER 25

  BEAVERTON, OREGON

  Thursday, January 2, 2020, 8:00 a.m. (PST)

  As far as his work was concerned, Ramon Muñoz had learned that things were generally fairly quiet in the early part of January, so he spent most of the next morning in his cottage, using his computer to investigate the life and times of Sergio Gomez. What he found wasn’t pretty.

  Ramon’s close connections with various law enforcement agencies gave him access to computer databases not accessible to the general public. Poring through those along with police reports and court documents, Ramon was able to piece together a fairly comprehensive biography of his biological father.

  At the time Sergio was born, his own father was already in the US illegally. His wife came north, expecting to reunite with her husband. Unfortunately, her husband, a field hand, had died in an automobile accident two months before Sergio was born. As a consequence, the life husband and wife had planned to live together never materialized. Around the time Sergio turned five, his mother disappeared with no explanation, leaving her son to grow up in a series of foster homes, the last one in Pasadena.

  Life there had been stable enough that Sergio had graduated from high school and spent a semester enrolled in junior college. After dropping out of that, several jobs in the fast-food industry had given him enough experience for him to be offered the night manager job for a locally based fast-food joint known as Tacos to Go. That was where he had hired Sylvia Garcia, and that’s where he had raped her. She may have been his first victim, since Ramon could find no record of anyone else ever lodging a complaint against him prior to that incident or after it, either, for that matter, because, from that point on, apparently none of Sergio’s other victims lived to tell the tale.

  After a short-lived career in the fast-food business, Sergio had drifted into the world of gangs and drugs. In 2006 a gangland brawl landed him in jail on felony assault with intent to kill, an arrest that triggered the mandatory collection of his DNA. A check with CODIS linked him to the rape kits collected from two separate homicide victims. Lulu Sanders, age fourteen, had been raped and murdered in July 1995. Isabel Griffith’s death occurred three years later, in September 1998. She was sixteen years old at the time of her death.

  Sergio had been charged and convicted of both crimes. He died of hepatitis in the California Correctional Institution in Tehachapi, California, on April 1, 2007, less than five years into his sentence of life without parole.

  Good riddance, Ramon thought, closing the lid on his laptop. Not nearly what you deserved, you son of a bitch, but I’ll take it.

  After that, Ramon went for a run. As his feet pounded away on the cold, wet pavement, he attempted to take everything he had learned about his parents’ histories and apply it to his own life. He had a girlfriend—Molly Braeburn—an officer for Gresham PD. She’d been on leave for the past two weeks, caring for her mother in San Diego who had just undergone surgery for colon cancer. Molly was due home on Saturday evening in time for her shift on Sunday.

  The couple had met some six months earlier when Ramon had been hired to do composite sketches of a pair of home invaders who had broken into houses to terrorize and rob elderly residents. Molly and Ramon had met in a break room and instantly hit it off. They’d been a couple ever since. She was Ramon’s first serious relationship. He’d thought about asking her to marry him over the holidays, but with her mother seriously ill in California, he had decided to delay popping the question.

  Now he was glad he had waited for more than one reason. Molly was on the pill. At least she said she was, but what did he know? What if she wasn’t or if it just didn’t work? What if she turned up pregnant the same way his mother had? What would happen then?

  The two of them had never discussed any of those what-ifs, but Ramon realized now they should have. If she did conceive out of wedlock, would they still go ahead and get married? And if they didn’t marry, would Molly want to keep the baby, put it up for adoption, or would she choose to have an abortion? Ramon wasn’t sure about any of that, and he might not have any say in the matter, anyway.

  And if they decided to go ahead and get married, what would happen then? Were they ready? What kind of marriage would it be—as good as his mother’s with Larry Rogers, as bad as his mother’s with Frank Muñoz, or something in between? And most of all, what kind of parents would they be?

  Then there was the matter of his mother’s history. What was he supposed to do about that? Ramon was willing to keep her secret as far as Larry and his sisters were concerned, but what about Molly? If they were serious about getting married and having a future together, didn’t he have an obligation to tell her? And wasn’t it better for her to learn about it directly from him rather than have it show up later on from some outside source?

  Back from his run, Ramon put on work clothes and went out into the yard to do some long-neglected pruning. Working on that helped settle his nerves. As the day progressed, he was surprised to find himself feeling almost lighthearted. The emotional encounter with his mother had somehow lifted a terrible load off his own shoulders, but he kept wondering if she had mentioned any of it to Larry. Since she had kept the awful truth from her son, what were the chances she had done the same thing to her husband?

  Once it started getting dark, Ramon went to his own place to shower, then he headed for the main house. With Larry’s upcoming surgery in mind, Ramon had gifted his mother with a spa day for Christmas, and today was the day she was redeeming it. After a long weekend of nonstop cooking, she had announced prior to leaving the house that she’d be bringing home takeout for dinner.

  Ramon found Larry sitting in his recliner and watching the local news. “Hey,” he said, “you were just on TV.”

  “I was?” Ramon asked. “How come?”

  “Not you—one of your cases, one from last summer, the one in Cannon Beach,” Larry said. “They finally caught the guy. Hold on, I’ll run it back.”

  Just before the start of the school year, a seven-year-old kid named Chip Andrews had been playing on the beach near Haystack Rock on the Oregon coast. At some point, Chip had returned to the family’s rented condo to retrieve a kite. On the way through the parking lot, he was accosted by a stranger who had attempted to lure him into a vehicle. The kid had been smart enough to take off running. Later, when he told his folks about what had happened, his mother had insisted on filing a police report. No onlookers had witnessed the event, and Chip was unable to identify the make or model of the car.

  At that point, Ramon Muñoz had been called in. He had spent the better part of four hours working with Chip to create a composite drawing of the man in question—a white male with blue eyes and stringy long blond hair. Ramon had been impressed by the details the kid had been able to recall—including a gap between the assailant’s two front teeth and a scar that ran from the bottom of his left ear to his chin.

  Finishing the drawing had marked the end of Ramon’s personal involvement in the case, which, as a general rule, was how things worked. If the suspect was captured eventually, most of the time no one from the various cop shops involved bothered to let Ramon in on any of the details. He learned about case outcomes the same way everyone else did—either on TV or in the local newspaper, the Oregonian.

  That was the case today. As the news broadcast resumed, the anchor was saying that four months after the fact, the suspect in a Cannon Beach attempted kidnapping had been apprehended and charged. The suspect turned out to be a recently paroled convicted child molester from Longview, Washington. In the course of the news clip, they showed the suspect’s current mug shot side by side with Ramon’s composite drawing. Between Chip’s detailed recollection of the man’s appearance and Ramon’s ability to translate the boy’s words into lines on paper, the resemblance between the two was uncanny.