TRIAL BY FIRE (18 page)

“What do we know about her?”

“Not much. Mimi Cooper must be reasonably well-to-do. You can tell that from the Fountain Hills address. Married, with a couple of grown kids. Once Dave has more details, I expect he’ll call them in, especially if it looks like Mimi might turn out to be our victim. If you’re not calling about that, though, what’s up?”

With a sigh, Ali launched into the story of Sister Anselm’s scheme to turn her into an undercover agent, Cecelia McCann. Sheriff Maxwell’s initial reaction was exactly what Ali had expected—not just no, but hell no! Until she mentioned Agent Robson and Sister Anselm’s intention to cut the ATF agent out of the picture. Just as Sister Anselm had predicted, Sheriff Maxwell grabbed the ball and ran with it.

“Hell of a good idea,” he said. “Sounds like you and Sister Anselm are a good duo. You two do what you can. I, for one, am all for it. Dave probably will be, too, as long as you’re not out mixing it up with any bad guys. And just in case Dave drops by the hospital, what’s the name you’ll be going by again?”

“Cecelia. Cecelia McCann. Tell him to act like he doesn’t know me.”

“Will do,” Sheriff Maxwell said. “It wouldn’t do for him to blow your cover.”

Knowing there was a tentative identification on the horizon,
Ali reasoned that things might start happening sooner than later. She sent a text message to that effect to Sister Anselm.

The nun’s text response showed up almost immediately: “Get here when you can. Once you’re in the waiting room, if you need me, remember to text, don’t talk.”

Ali had never imagined that she’d be texting a seventy-something nun toting the latest in phone gadgetry, but then she had never imagined that her mother would be routinely packing a weapon, either. Edie carried her pink and black Taser C2 in her purse at all times, right along with her compact and lipstick.

Thinking of those two remarkable women, Sister Anselm and Edie Larson, made Ali smile. Edie was a generation younger than the nun, but they were certainly of a piece—women of a certain age who had found ways to live and thrive by embracing modern technology rather than dodging it.

Ali went up to her room and checked her suitcase. Fortunately, Leland had included a selection of outfits, one of which was a bright pink jogging suit, and some of her favorite workout shorts. The jogging suit wasn’t exactly designer wear, but she figured that, along with some running shoes, it would allow her to blend into the waiting room crowd a little better than the knit skirt, blazer, and heels she’d worn when she had left home for Prescott much earlier that morning.

Ali drove her car as far as the hospital, left it with the valet, and then walked across the street to the newly redeveloped shopping mall, Biltmore Commons. The sun had dropped behind the western skyline, but it was still incredibly hot—well over a hundred degrees. In the time it took her to cross Camelback and find the store, the tracksuit became drenched with sweat.

How does Sister Anselm hike back and forth in this heat?
Ali wondered.

When she finally located the wig shop, Ali was relieved to slip into Hair Again’s frigidly cool interior. Sister Anselm had told her that the ladies who worked there specialized in dealing with the beauty needs of cancer patients, but they were more than happy to help Ali find a reasonably attractive wig. Within minutes, she was staring at a reflection in the mirror that didn’t look anything at all like the Ali Reynolds she knew. The carrot-topped wig was a long way from Ali’s own blond hair.

The bright pink suit clashed with her new hair color. After all, the idea of Ali undergoing a sudden hair color change wasn’t something even the seemingly all-knowing Leland could have anticipated.

At least it fits,
Ali thought as she made her way back across Camelback to the hospital entrance.
And the less it looks like me the better.

She walked into the hospital through the main entrance. As Ali headed for the bank of elevators, she caught sight of a few media folks still lingering in the lobby. Some of them were people she had spoken to much earlier, but none of them recognized her or gave her so much as a second glance. Obviously the tracksuit and her bright red tresses were doing their job.

Ali was in the elevator, trying to get her head around who she was supposed to be, when her phone rang. “Ali?” Athena said.

Calls to Ali from Chris were far more commonplace than calls from her daughter-in-law, but Ali was delighted to hear from her.

“Yes,” Ali said. “How are you? Where are you?”

“I’m on my way to Tempe,” Athena said. “I’m bringing down a load of stuff for the apartment.”

Athena and Chris were working on master’s degrees to keep their teaching credentials up-to-date. They had sublet an apartment
in Tempe so they could attend both sessions of summer school, but the first session wasn’t set to start for a week.

“Wait,” Ali said. “I thought you and Chris were going to fly to Minnesota this week to see your grandmother and your folks.”

Having just heard about Sister Anselm’s troubled early life, Ali couldn’t help comparing Athena’s situation with that. When Athena’s first husband divorced her, her parents—for reasons known only to themselves—had stuck with their former son-in-law, his new wife, and their new baby. It had saddened Ali to realize that Athena’s folks had turned away from their own daughter. Only one member of Athena’s family had deigned to attend her wedding to Chris. Ali had been glad to hear they planned to make a brief visit to Minnesota prior to the start of summer school. She was hoping that breach, like the one that had long existed between Ali and Chris’s paternal grandparents, could also be repaired.

“We’re not going,” Athena said. “I changed my mind.”

Ali was smart enough not to ask why. “I’m sure you had your reasons,” she said.

“Yes,” Athena said. “I do, and I’d like to talk to you about it.”

Heading into the waiting room as a supposedly undercover operative, Ali was in no position to play hostess to Athena, but she didn’t want to turn her down, either.

“I’m working right now,” she said. “Could I meet up with you later this evening? Are you staying over in Tempe tonight, or going back to Sedona?”

“I’m staying,” Athena said. “Give me a call when you’re available.”

Closing her phone and exiting the elevator, Ali saw that the waiting room was even more crowded than it had been earlier.
As far as Ali could tell, all the visitors in attendance were there for James rather than for the woman in room 814.

In Ali’s absence, James’s two sets of still-feuding relatives seemed to have taken possession of most of the furniture in the room, leaving a chair-free no-man’s-land between them. A group of teenagers, presumably James’s friends, had invaded that space. Using a collection of backpacks to mark their territory and to provide backrests, they sat on the highly polished tile floor and talked quietly among themselves.

Ali pulled one of the few unoccupied chairs into what appeared to be neutral territory. Settling into it, she opened her computer. While she waited for her AirCard to connect, she listened to the talk buzzing around her. Sister Anselm was right. It was as though the presence of the computer rendered her invisible.

The kids may have been there because of James, but they weren’t talking about him. They were more concerned with other issues—who had flunked which class and was having to go to summer school; who had dropped out and was going to get a GED; who had gotten tossed out of a local movie theater for fighting; and whose parents had kicked someone out of the house when they had figured out at the last minute that he wasn’t going to graduate.

Listening to that, Ali reminded herself to be grateful that Chris had been such an easy kid to raise. She was also thankful that Chris and Athena were the ones dealing with teaching high school–aged kids like these on a daily basis. After enduring a solid nine months of doing that, a vacation should have been in order. Ali couldn’t help wondering why Athena and Chris had abruptly canceled their plans to visit Athena’s family.

Settling into a chair, Ali tuned in to what James’s relatives
were saying. It was more of the same. When they had first trooped into the waiting room, Ali had marveled at their apparent solidarity, their show of support and love for James, but they had also brought along a history of petty grievances.

It was shocking to see how completely what she had thought of as a united front had shattered in a few hours’ time. A woman Ali had determined to be James’s grandmother on his mother’s side was still mad that his daddy had gotten drunk and disrupted Thanksgiving dinner—two years earlier. James’s older sister, the one with the two now hungry and cranky kids in tow, was firmly aligned on her mother’s side of the grievance list, while the younger sister stuck with her dad’s group. The father’s relatives had their own list of complaints. At some point in the past, one of the father’s former brothers-in-law had borrowed a truck and wrecked it. That incident was still up for discussion, as were noisy arguments about child support and visitation.

Ali was more than a little taken aback by the casual way in which these folks dragged their private battles into the public arena, and she knew that Sister Anselm was right to place someone in the waiting room. If family members showed up to keep a vigil for the patient in 814, any fractures in their relationships were bound to show up as well.

To say nothing of ours,
Ali thought ruefully.

Whatever was going on between Chris and Athena didn’t sound good.

Upon opening her computer, Ali’s first instinct was to log on and track down the Mimi Cooper missing persons information on her own, but knowing she also needed to put the Holly Mesina issue to rest, she decided to deal with that.

First things first,
Ali thought.

She walked down the hall, far enough to be out of earshot, and called Holly’s extension, leaving a cheery message. “Sheriff Maxwell just called and told me there’s a missing persons report from Fountain Hills that could be relevant. I need the details. Please give me a call when you can.”

She left her number. That was enough. The message served notice to Holly that Ali was aware that she was withholding information. By invoking Sheriff Maxwell’s name, Ali was also letting Holly know that she would be called to account for not doing what she had been told to do.

Ali had closed her phone and was returning to the waiting room when the elevator door opened and a distraught man in a
rumpled airline uniform rushed off and headed for the nurses’ station.

Is this the woman’s husband,
Ali wondered,
or is it her son?
He looked to be a good twenty years younger than Ali would have expected.

“I’m here about my wife,” he said urgently to the woman behind the counter. “Her name is Mimi Cooper. I need to see her.”

“I’m afraid we have no one here by that name—” the attendant began.

“Don’t you understand?” he demanded. “That’s what I’m here for—to give you her name. It’s that woman from the fire in Camp Verde last night. She may be my wife. I came home from a trip and found out Mimi is missing. When I called the marshal’s office in Fountain Hills, the person I spoke to there suggested that I check here.”

“One moment,” the attendant said calmly. “Let me see if her attendant is available.”

“I don’t want to see her attendant,” the man insisted. “I want to see my wife, and I want to see her now.”

It was almost the same thing Agent Robson had said, but with far better reason.

Within moments, Sister Anselm emerged from room 814. When she stripped off her paper gown Ali saw that the green scrubs had been replaced by a set of floral-patterned ones.

“May I help you?” Sister Anselm asked calmly, addressing the agitated man who was pacing back and forth in front of the counter. He stopped in midstride.

“Are you Mimi’s doctor?” he demanded. “Is she going to be all right?”

“I’m Sister Anselm,” the nun responded, “and no, I’m not a physician. I’m what’s called a patient advocate. I’m assigned to care for the patient in room eight fourteen. I don’t believe I caught your name. What was it again?”

“Cooper,” he said. “Hal Cooper. My wife’s name is Mimi. Mimi is short for Madeline—Mimi Cooper.”

“What makes you think she’s here?”

“My wife is missing,” he declared. “When I talked to the cops over in Fountain Hills, one of them suggested that I come here. She had seen something on the news this morning about an unidentified victim of a fire. She wondered if the two incidents might be connected.”

“Tell me about your wife,” Sister Anselm said solicitously. She collected a pair of chairs, set them fairly close to Ali, and then guided Hal Cooper into one of them. “How long has she been gone?”

Before taking a seat next to him, Sister Anselm nodded slightly in Ali’s direction. Taking the hint, Ali understood what was expected. This was turning into an interrogation of sorts, and Ali would be transcribing it. Opening her computer screen to a new document, she began to type.

“That’s the thing,” Hal said quickly. “I don’t really know how long ago she left. I came home from a trip this afternoon and she was gone.”

“She didn’t give you any idea about where she was going, or why?”

“No,” he said with a sigh. “We had a big argument before I left. A serious argument. I thought she’d get over it, but the whole time I was out of town, she wouldn’t take my calls. I left one message after another. She never picked up, and she never called me back, either.”

“How long were you gone?” Sister Anselm asked.

“A week,” he said. “I’m a pilot for Northwest,” he added unnecessarily; his rumpled uniform made that obvious. “When I’m scheduled to do international flights I’m usually gone for about five days at a time. This time I was away for two extra days. I stopped off in Michigan to see my mother. When I came home this morning, Mimi’s car wasn’t in the garage, and she was gone. I found both her cell phone and her purse in the bedroom. That really worried me—Mimi doesn’t go anywhere without those. But other than that, there was nothing out of place, and no sign of a struggle. The painting was gone, but I didn’t notice that until later.”