TRIAL BY FIRE (27 page)

On her way past, Sister Anselm stopped in front of Win and Serenity Langley. “Has anyone asked you to sign your mother’s visitor logbook?” she asked. “I like to keep them for the families of my patients.”

“We
are
her family,” Serenity replied pointedly. “We don’t need a notebook to tell us so.”

“Very well,” Sister Anselm said, walking away. “As you wish.”

“In all the time you’ve spent with her, has she said anything at all about who did this?” Serenity asked. “Does she remember anything at all?”

Sister Anselm looked at Serenity and shook her head. “My patients tell me things in strictest confidence,” she said.

With that, Sister Anselm left the waiting room. A few minutes later, so did Donna. Once the room was empty, Ali expected Serenity and Win would go right on talking. Instead, Win slouched
down in his chair and dozed off. Since he had probably spent most of the night driving from Santa Barbara to Phoenix, that was hardly surprising. With Serenity busy sending off a series of text messages, Ali was startled when her own phone rang.

“Leland here,” Brooks announced, although Ali had surmised as much by looking at her phone. “Do you have any idea when you’ll be returning? I’m going out to buy groceries and was wondering if you’d be home this weekend, and whether you were expecting any company.”

“I can’t say,” she said. “I really don’t have an answer about that.”

“All right. I can get perishables at the last minute anyway,” he said. “What about your room at the hotel? Is it satisfactory?”

There was no doubt about that. “Absolutely,” she said. “How’s Sam?”

“She appears to be managing without you, madam,” Leland said, “but I believe she’s a bit lonely. She even ventured into the kitchen this morning while I was making breakfast.”

“Obviously you’re winning her over,” Ali said.

“I hope so.”

“If you’d like for me to bring anything down to you,” Brooks added, “all you need to do is call. I can be at the hotel within a matter of hours.”

“Thanks,” Ali said. “If I need anything, I’ll let you know.”

A text message came in from B.

Check your e-mail.

“I need to go,” Ali told Leland. “Thanks for staying in touch.” She logged in to her e-mail account and found a new message from B. Simpson.

This is too much to text. And I’m going to give you a summary rather than sending you to all the sites I used—proprietary information and all that.

There hasn’t been a Paul Klee available in the open market for a number of years. If it’s signed and in good condition, it would probably be worth well over a million bucks.

Winston Langley Galleries seems to be in a world of hurt. Two of the locations are running in arrears on rent and utilities. Serenity seems to have an IRS problem as well, so having access to money from the sale of her mother’s painting might help bail her out of her financial troubles.

Winston Langley Jr. looks like something of a cipher. Can’t seem to keep a job or a wife. He’s on marriage number three at the moment. Foreclosed on his last house. Lives in a town house owned by his mother and stepfather. Drives a four-year-old car that was his mother’s.

So far nothing on that art collector, but I’m still looking.

Both Serenity, née Sandra Jean, and Winston Junior received money from their father’s estate, all of which seems to have disappeared. I think Junior had a gambling problem. I’m not sure about Serenity, but I think it’s safe to say that she didn’t put any of her share back into the business.

You might mention some of this to Dave. Seems to me that taking a good look at where the son and daughter were at the time of the incident might not be such a bad bet.

All for now. Hope this helps. If you need anything more, call. I’m at your service. And if you’d like me to be at your service closer at hand, all you have to do is say the word.

B.

That last aside made Ali smile. Despite being turned down, B. was still hanging around and letting her know he was available. Obviously he hadn’t taken her most recent no as her final answer on the subject.

She sent off an immediate reply.

Thanks. This is a great help. If I need more, I’ll get back to you.

The information B. had given her was more than interesting. Nothing in Serenity Langley’s demeanor had hinted that she was having any kind of financial difficulty, but running behind on rent for her various galleries was not a good sign.

Ali took the time to scroll back through her notes to verify what she had been told before. Yes, there it was. According to what Serenity had said, Winston Langley Sr. had been worth a cool ten million bucks at the time of his death. Presumably half of that had gone to Mimi, and a quarter each to Winston’s two children.

Much of Mimi Cooper’s portion of that estate was evidently
still intact. Upon her death, five million more or less, with or without the missing painting, would go to Hal Cooper. Upon Hal’s death, whatever remained would go to the two children, and Hal was still a relatively young man.

No wonder Serenity despised Hal so. As far as she was concerned, he had waltzed onto the scene and was in the process of making off with half of her birthright.

It was while Ali was reviewing her notes that she noticed something odd. Hal had clearly mentioned the missing painting to Donna Carson, Serenity’s personal assistant, but today, when he had mentioned the Klee’s disappearance to Serenity, she had acted as though it was all news to her.

Ali had regarded Serenity’s hysterics after leaving Mimi’s room as phony and over the top. Was this more of the same? Had she been putting on a show about the painting’s having gone missing when she already knew exactly where it was and what had happened to it?

The other possibility was that Donna had either forgotten to mention it or had deliberately neglected to pass that information along to her boss. Why would she do that?

Ali was sure that by now any number of officers would have interviewed Donna to see what, if anything, she knew. After all, since she had stopped by the house on the day Mimi disappeared, that meant Donna was one of the last people to see her. Had she noticed anything out of the ordinary at Hal and Mimi’s Fountain Hills home? Had she seen someone hanging around who didn’t belong there? Ali wished she could have somehow been privy to that interview, but she wasn’t. Most likely no one else at the Yavapai County Sheriff’s Department had been informed about it, either.

Then there was Serenity’s mysterious client, Mr. Yarnov. Ali
had been unable to provide B. with any pertinent information other than the man’s last name. Consequently, it was hardly surprising that B. had come up empty, but the Mr. Yarnov in question had to be worth big bucks. Obviously Serenity had a clear idea of exactly how much the missing Klee was worth, but she also seemed to think it might well be within Mr. Yarnov’s price range. That meant the guy had plenty of spare change—
petro-dollars, perhaps?—clinking around in his pockets. Although Yarnov seemed like a common enough name, Ali doubted there were all that many Yarnovs running around with art money to burn.

Ali did some Google searching of her own but came up empty as well. None of the Yarnovs she found seemed likely to be art-collector types. Gradually the room filled up as James’s assortment of concerned relatives reassembled. Ali recognized some of them, but not all. Since Lisa and Max had buried the hatchet for the time being, the relatives did the same. This time they didn’t divide up into warring camps, but in the midst of all that activity, Win Langley continued to sit in the center of the room, sound asleep and snoring.

Time passed, and finally Win awakened. After a brief discussion, he and Serenity decided to go to lunch. Ali was thinking about the possibility of lunch herself when Mark Levy returned. He dropped a small rectangular box on the table in front of Ali. Inside she found two pieces of pepperoni pizza.

“Hope you like pepperoni,” Mark said.

“Thank you,” Ali said, gratefully grabbing one of the slices. “I adore pepperoni. Can I pay you for this?”

“No,” he said, shaking his head. “I couldn’t stand to listen to any more of their B.S.” Mark nodded toward the two empty chairs where Win and Serenity had been sitting. “I had to go
sit in the lobby for a while just to cool off. With their mother in the other room dying, you’d think those jerks would start to figure out what’s important. Besides,” he added, “I think they’re wrong. That Hal guy loves his wife. I don’t think he gives a damn about the money.”

It was interesting that both Mark and Ali had sat on the sidelines in the waiting room and had come away with the same impressions—that Mimi’s kids were a pair of greedy opportunists while Hal Cooper was the genuine article. Sister Anselm, too, seemed to be of a similar opinion.

Ali was just finishing the second piece of pizza when a nurse stopped in front of Mimi’s door long enough to post a bright red sign. Ali didn’t need to be told what it was—a DNR designation.
Do Not Resuscitate
. That meant that somewhere along the line Mimi Cooper had drafted a living will. Hal had most likely asked the attorney’s office to fax it over to the hospital.

Moments later a new patient arrived, an older woman. As the burn-unit staff swung into action, the gurney was wheeled into room 812. The door had barely closed when her relatives churned out of the elevator and into the waiting room.

“I told Carol a thousand times that those damned cigarettes would be the death of her!”

The speaker was a silver-haired lady who moved with the aid of a walker and had to be well into her eighties.

“She told me over and over to mind my own business. Now look what’s happened. I’ll never be able to forgive myself.”

She burst into tears and sank into the nearest chair, the one formerly occupied by Serenity Langley. She reached into a large purse that was perched in a basket between the handles of the walker. Pulling out a lace-edged hanky, she gave her nose a noisy blow.

“Now, Sarah,” an elderly gentleman said, patting her knee. “What’s there to forgive? This isn’t your fault. You know as well as I do that if you had tried to take your sister’s Camels away, she would have made both your lives a living hell. Alva’s ninety-three, for Pete’s sake. That’s a good run for anybody. If she wants to burn herself up along with that old recliner of hers in front of reruns of
Dr. Phil,
so what? God love her. If it kills her, let it. If you ask me, dying that way is better than dying of lung cancer anyday.”

“But what’s Carol going to think?” Sarah asked, sniffling. “You know how she is. She always blames me for everything. She’s going to say I should have done something to prevent it.”

“Let her harp at you as much as she wants,” the old man advised. “Just don’t pay any attention. Besides, I didn’t see her stepping up to the plate when Alva showed up in Phoenix needing a place to live.”

“She’s so much younger than Alva and I are, Roy.”

Roy was already shaking his head.

“Maybe, at her age, it’s about time she got over being the baby of the family,” he said. “When Alva ended up on your doorstep, did Carol offer to help out? Nosiree! She didn’t lift a finger. As far as she was concerned, Alva’s problems were your problems and nobody else’s.

“As for the cigarettes? If Carol says word one to you about that, I hope you call her on it. If she expects you to be able to take Alva’s cigarettes away, maybe she should take a look in the mirror. What do you think would happen if you suggested she should give up her blasted Captain Morgan? That’s not gonna happen, never in a hundred years!” He snorted. “And speaking of which,” he added. “If you ask me, anyone who would swill down rum and coke night after night, year after year doesn’t
have much room to talk. That’ll kill her just as dead as Alva’s cigarettes are killing her.”

It could have been a comedy routine, but it wasn’t. This elderly couple and the woman’s even more elderly sister were here in the hospital dealing with their own set of life-and-death issues, just like James’s family and friends, and Mimi’s.

They were all asking the same questions. Who would live? Who would die? Why? And who would be left to shoulder the blame? Ali didn’t know the severity of Alva’s wounds, but her age, like Mimi’s, would count against her survival. James had youth on his side. That might mean he had a better chance of surviving, but there was no way to tell how he would be affected long-term.

As Ali silently mulled over the blended fates of the people in the room, Win and Serenity returned from their lunch break.

Noticing that a pair of new arrivals had taken over the chairs she and Win had previously occupied, Serenity gave the old folks a hard-edged stare calculated to let them know they had blundered into reserved seating and they ought to move along.

Serenity’s reproof was relatively ineffective due to her stepping off the elevator with her cell phone glued to her ear. Sarah and Roy, oblivious to what Serenity considered an error in judgment, remained where they were, both of them engrossed in watching a televised baseball game on a set where the volume was now turned as high as it would go.

“I remembered something else,” Serenity said into her phone as she flounced into another chair. “Call me back when you can.” She closed her phone and looked at her brother. “I swear, half the time Donna doesn’t seem to have her mind on the job, and I’m really tired of it. Yes, I know she’s been around for years. She’s familiar with the clients and she knows the business, but
it’s about time she figured out that she isn’t indispensable. I’ll bet I could find someone else to do her job in no time, and I wouldn’t have to pay that new person nearly as much as I’m paying her.”

“So do it,” Win said, shrugging. “If Donna’s not pulling her weight, get rid of her. You don’t owe her anything.”

The door to Mimi’s room opened and Hal burst into the hallway. His face was flushed. His hair stood on end. Looking distraught, he hurried over to the nurses’ station. “Where is she?”