Web of Evil: A Novel of Suspense (6 page)

As the one man came to collect his scattered load, the other made his way down to the grass. “Don’t put them there, you stupid asshole,” Tracy shouted at him. “Don’t you know anything? Those are the fours. They belong on this side.”

As the man hefted the rocks out of another wheelbarrow and onto the ground, the truth about Sumo Sudoku finally came home to Ali. When Ted had said it was played with rocks, Ali had envisioned something the size of marbles. These smooth, round hunks of granite were more like boulders, with large numbers chiseled into the surface. From the size and obvious weight of the “fours,” Ali could only guess how much damage the stray eight might have done had it hit her full on.

Ali was still shaken from her near miss when she saw a young woman, blond and very pregnant, emerge from the living room. She walked over to the debris field left by the broken rock and kicked at some of it. “What’s this?” she wanted to know.

Helga had said April Gaddis was gorgeous, and that was true. Even without makeup and with her hair in disarray, she was a fine-featured beauty except for her eyes. They were red and puffy from a combination of weeping and lack of sleep. And she was pregnant enough that the silk robe she wore didn’t quite cover her expanded middle. She was beautiful but utterly distraught and very, very young.

“One of my rocks,” Tracy explained. “That cretin up there didn’t know how to work a friggin’ wheelbarrow. He lost his whole load and it came crashing down on the terrace here. It’s a wonder he didn’t kill this lady. A miracle really.”

As the workman in question scurried to load the remaining rocks back into his wheelbarrow, April looked at Ali uncertainly.

“What are you doing here?” April asked. At least she didn’t try to pretend that she didn’t know who Ali was.

“The lawyers,” Ali said, quickly forgetting her near miss with the exploding rock. “We’re supposed to be meeting with the lawyers this morning in the library.”

April shrugged. “I’m not in any condition to deal with this stuff right now. All I was trying to do was sneak down and get some breakfast from the buffet, but there are way too many workmen here already. I had no idea the crew would be this big.”

Ali had sometimes imagined how she would react in what she had thought was the unlikely event she would ever come face-to-face with April Gaddis, her rival. Ali had scripted any number of biting remarks, but faced with the young woman and seeing her obvious desolation, Ali forgot all of them. Instead, Ali tried to focus on the homespun wisdom passed along to her in the e-mail from Phyllis in Knoxville.

“I’m sorry we’re meeting like this, April,” Ali said kindly. “I’m sorry for your loss.”

Ali’s words seemed to sap all of the young woman’s strength. April staggered over to a nearby table, where she sank onto a chair and made a halfhearted attempt to smooth her hair.

“No one told me
you’d
be coming,” she said accusingly.

“Ted Grantham is the one who set up the meeting,” Ali returned. “He should have told you.”

“He didn’t.” April seemed close to tears.

“I’m sorry,” Ali said.

April probably could have handled a fight, but she was unable to cope with kindness. Her lips trembled, her face crumpled. Burying her head in her hands, she began to sob.

“I can’t believe any of this is happening,” she said despondently. “This was supposed to be my wedding day. I can’t believe Paul is gone, just like that—with no warning at all. Instead of our wedding guests, the house is full of lawyers who are here about his will. Paul’s
will,
for God’s sake! What am I going to do without him? How will I manage? What’ll happen to me? What’ll happen to my baby?”

April’s unbridled grief over losing Paul struck Ali as utterly raw and real—and refreshingly different from her own conflicted emotions. Learning about Paul’s death—seeing him dead—had left Ali more empty than sad. Having him dead made her own life far less complicated. She hadn’t cried. In fact, she hadn’t shed a single tear, not even in the coroner’s office. For that she felt guilty. In a way, being a party to April Gaddis’s uncompromising despair made Ali feel better. She was relieved to know that Paul’s sudden death meant something to someone—even if that person was the one who had unceremoniously booted Ali out of her home and out of her marriage.

And where were April’s friends? Why was she all alone? Without thinking about it, Ali sat down next to the grieving woman, laying a compassionate hand on her shoulder. What this very pregnant twenty-five-year-old was facing now was territory Ali Reynolds knew all too well. She had been there once, too, only she had been a few years younger than April when it had happened to her.

Ali had been a happily married twenty-two-year-old and pregnant with Chris when her first husband, Dean Reynolds, had been diagnosed with glioblastoma and died within months. Ali knew what it meant to be expecting a baby who would most likely be and indeed was a fatherless child on the day he was born. She remembered lying awake at night, pregnant, with her back hurting, and with the baby hurtling around inside her womb, and asking those very same questions over and over: What will become of us? How can I raise this baby on my own? Why is this happening to me?

During those dark, sleepless nights she hadn’t known that she would be able to make it; that despite being a single mother she’d somehow manage to go back to school to finish her education and then go on to have a life and career that most people would have thought of as charmed. Back in that terrible time, there had been no easy answers for her, and she didn’t try to pass along any easy answers to April Gaddis, either.

“You’ll manage,” Ali said, patting the weeping woman on the shoulder. “Being a single mother is tough. There are times when the baby is crying and the responsibility is all on your shoulders and you’ll think you won’t be able to live through one more day, but you will. There are times you’ll question God and times when you’ll rail at Him. But some day, on a bright fall afternoon, you’ll be standing on the sidelines of a soccer field cheering like mad when that baby of yours kicks his first goal. That’s when you’ll know God was right; that’s when you’ll know everything you went through was worth it.”

April raised her head. Her bleak eyes met Ali’s. “But the divorce didn’t go through,” she said. “Paul and I weren’t even married. What if he left me out of his will? He said he was going to rewrite it. He told me he had, but what if he didn’t? Where will the baby and I live? What am I going to
do
? What?”

Ali could see that April’s grief had her operating on a very short loop. “That’s why we both have attorneys,” Ali counseled gently. “I’m sure that’s what they’re doing right now—they’re inside sorting things out.”

“But I don’t even have an attorney,” April said. “I never thought I needed one.”

Oh, honey lamb,
Ali thought,
if you were messing around with Paul Grayson, how wrong you were!

“It’s going to be okay,” Ali said with more conviction than she felt.

“Are you sure?” April asked.

Ali nodded. “Now what about you? You look a little queasy. You said you were looking for something to eat?”

Faced with a crisis, Ali automatically reverted to the coping skills she had learned at her mother’s knee. In the Edie Larson school of crisis management there was nothing so bad that it couldn’t be improved by the application of some well-prepared food served with equal amounts of tender loving care and judicious advice.

April nodded. “I called down to the kitchen, but no one answered. The cook’s probably out overseeing the caterers for the film crew.”

Ali stood up. “Someone in your condition shouldn’t be running on empty. Let me go ask Elvira to fix you something. An omelet, maybe? Elvira’s huevos rancheros are wonderful, but probably not for someone as pregnant as you are.”

“Elvira doesn’t work here anymore,” April said. “She quit, or else Paul fired her. I’m not sure which.”

Ali was surprised to hear Elvira was gone—surprised and sorry, both. “But you do have a cook,” Ali confirmed.

April nodded.

“Why don’t I go find her,” Ali offered. “What’s her name?”

“We’ve gone through half a dozen cooks since that first one left,” April said. “Sorry. I don’t know her name.”

“What would you like then?”

“Toast,” April said uncertainly. “And maybe some orange juice.”

“How about some bacon?”

“Oh, no. I don’t eat anything that had a face. I’m a vegan.”

That was, of course, utterly predictable. “Whole wheat?” Ali asked.

“Yes, please. With marmalade. And coffee. Have her make me a latte—a vanilla latte.”

Ali wasn’t sure a dose of caffeine was in the baby’s best interests, but she set off for the kitchen without saying anything. On the way she caught a glimpse of Ted Grantham, Victor Angeleri, and Helga Myerhoff still huddled in the library, still conferring. In the spacious kitchen, Ali found a heavyset black woman standing in front of the stainless steel sinks and working her way through a mountain of dirty dishes.

“The breakfast buffet’s out by the pool house,” she said impatiently. “That’s where the film crew is. There’s food and coffee out there. Help yourself.”

She sounded exasperated, overworked, and underappreciated if not underpaid. Having another stranger wander into her kitchen was more than she could handle.

“This is for April—for Ms. Gaddis,” Ali explained. “She asked me if you could make her some toast—whole wheat toast with marmalade, orange juice, and a vanilla latte.”

The woman shook excess water off her hands and then dried them on a tea towel. “Very well,” she said with a curt nod. “Do you want to wait here for it or should I bring it to her?”

“It might be best if you brought it,” Ali said. “We’re out on the terrace.”

“You want some coffee, too?”

“Yes, thank you,” Ali said. “That would be nice.”

Ali returned to the terrace to find April sitting exactly where Ali had left her. She seemed to be absorbed in watching the ongoing rock-hauling and arranging process down below, but when Ali sat down next to her, she realized April was really staring off into space, seeing nothing.

“Breakfast’s on its way,” Ali said.

April nodded without answering.

“So when’s the baby due?” Ali asked. She hoped that drawing April into a conversation might help her out of her solitary reverie and back into the present.

“Two weeks,” she said. “Paul wanted to go to the condo in Aspen on our honeymoon, but my ob-gyn said I shouldn’t fly this close to my due date. We were going to drive over to Vegas instead.”

“Do you know if it’s a boy or a girl?”

“A girl. Paul wanted to name her Sonia Marie. I don’t like that name much,” April added, “but I guess I’ll use it anyway. I wanted something a little more modern. You know—like Hermione from Harry Potter.”

To Ali’s way of thinking, Sonia Marie was a better bet than Hermione any day, but Paul was gone now. Soon enough April would realize that, when it came to her child, she was the one who would be making the decisions—all of them. By virtue of being run over by a freight train, Paul Grayson no longer had any effective say in the matter.

“Breakfast is coming,” Ali said. “It’ll be right out.”

“Thank you,” April said. Then, after a pause she added, “Thank you for being so nice to me.”

You have a lady named Phyllis to thank for that,
Ali thought.
Someone you’ve never met and most likely never will.

She said, “This is a very tough situation, and we’ll probably have to work together to sort it all out. It’ll be better for all concerned if we can be civil to each other.”

April nodded. “Did the cops tell you Paul was murdered?”

“Yes.”

“Who would do such a thing?” April asked as the tears started up again. “I just can’t imagine it. How could they be so cold-blooded as to put him on the train tracks and just leave him there to die?”

“I can’t imagine that, either,” Ali said. And it was true. The idea was as unfathomable for her as it was for April.

“They think whoever did it left him there and then escaped by walking down the train tracks,” April continued. “That’s why they didn’t find any footprints at the scene. They must have planned it that way so there wouldn’t be any evidence. They think the killer had an accomplice who met him somewhere down the tracks, and that’s how he got away. They said he was probably still in the area when Paul died. I guess the engine on the Camry was still warm when the cops got there. Can you imagine doing something like that and then standing around waiting for it to happen?”

April’s words chilled Ali. If the killer had been somewhere nearby when the crash occurred, then he was probably still there when the emergency vehicles were dispatched to the scene as well—at the same time Ali herself was driving past on the freeway.

That meant the cops would go looking for someone who might have given the escaping killer a ride. That also meant Detectives Sims and Taylor wouldn’t have far to look, especially if the old will was still in effect. They’d come after Ali—with a vengeance.

As someone with the three necessary ingredients—motive, opportunity, and an unidentified accomplice—Ali would be exactly what the detectives wanted and needed, a prime suspect.

I
t turned out April was hungry enough that one order of toast and marmalade wasn’t enough to do the job. Ali went back to the kitchen for a second helping. When she returned with it, she was surprised to find a camera crew had arrived. Someone was sweeping up the broken rock, and others were setting up cameras on the side of the terrace, where the city of L.A. would serve as a backdrop. She returned to the table just as Tracy McLaughlin came jogging up the stairs and back onto the terrace.

Earlier, when he’d been giving grief to the groundskeepers, he’d been clad in a T-shirt and a pair of khaki Bermuda shorts. Now, he was dressed in what looked like the same kilt he’d worn for the RV mural. Tucked under one arm, like a football, was a ball of granite—a four, Ali estimated. Nodding briefly in April’s direction, he marched over to the camera crew. He put the ball down on the flagstone terrace. When he straightened, he brushed a long lock of blond hair off his forehead and then stopped to confer with a member of the crew. Meanwhile, the ball of granite set off on its own and rolled drunkenly across the terrace. It came to rest near the leg of Ali’s chair. A five-inch-tall numeral 3 had been sandblasted into its otherwise smooth surface. Having it roll in her direction seemed far less dangerous than having it bounce.

Leaving the camera crew, McLaughlin hurried over to retrieve it. “Sorry about that,” he said.

“This is Tracy,” April said to Ali. To Tracy she added, “And this is Ali.”

No last names were mentioned or seemed to be necessary.

“Glad to meet you,” Ali said.

He nodded. “Same here.”

Just then a sweet young thing, a Hispanic woman in a very short skirt and very high heels, came through the French doors from the living room. Ali recognized her as a former intern from the station, although she couldn’t remember the name. She wore a lapel mic and was dressed in a business suit—interviewer rather than intern attire. Obviously her career had taken an upward swing since Ali had last seen her. As she headed for the camera crew, so did Tracy.

“Now, if you’ll excuse me,” he said. Grabbing his ball, he hurried after her, smoothing his unruly hair as he went. Something about seeing the woman seemed to penetrate April’s fog and she suddenly realized that, of all the people on the terrace, she was the only one wearing a robe.

Abruptly, she pushed her chair away from the table. “I’ve got to go get dressed,” she said.

Since no one had come to summon Ali, she stayed where she was. A few seconds later, Tracy McLaughlin, still holding his granite ball, and Sandy Quijada—she announced her name at the beginning of the interview—stepped in front of the camera for an old-fashioned stand-up.

“This is Tracy McLaughlin,” Sandy said, smiling engagingly into the camera. “You’re generally credited with inventing Sumo Sudoku. Do you mind telling us how that all came about?”

“Just because someone is strong doesn’t mean he’s stupid,” Tracy told her. “It’s one of the oldest clichés in the book. I mean, how many times have you heard the words ‘dumb as an ox’? If you’re a jock, people automatically assume you’re also a dolt. Sumo Sudoku is a game that mixes brains and brawn.”

“How?” Sandy asked.

Not exactly insightful,
Ali thought.

“Sudoku is a game of logic,” Tracy replied. “Regular sudoku is usually played with a paper and pencil. Or a pen if you’re very good.”

“Like a crossword puzzle,” Sandy supplied.

“Right,” Tracy said. “Only with numbers instead of words. It’s done on a square layout of eighty-one squares arranged in a nine-by-nine matrix. Numbers from one to nine are placed in the squares so that all values occur without repetition in each horizontal line, in each vertical line, and in each of the nine three-by-three submatrices that fit within the nine-by-nine square.”

Sandy frowned slightly, as though the word “submatrices” was leaving her in the dust. “So how is Sumo Sudoku different?”

Not a dumb blonde,
Ali thought.
But dumb nevertheless.

“For one thing, it’s played outdoors,” Tracy explained patiently. “Instead of using paper, we use grass or sand or even gravel. It has to be played on level ground so the numbers stay wherever they’re placed. And instead of using a pencil to fill in the numbers, we use rocks like this.” He hefted the granite ball into the air and held it up to the camera so that the sandblasted number 3 was showing.

“This is a number three rock. It weighs thirty pounds. The number one rocks weigh ten pounds. The number nine rocks weigh ninety pounds.”

“That’s a lot of rocks,” Sandy marveled.

Tracy nodded. “It is,” he agreed. “The total weight of the playing pieces is four thousand fifty pounds. Not exactly your grandfather’s game of checkers.”

“I’ll say.” Sandy beamed.

“So when we set up for a game, the grid is made up of individual squares that are two feet on each side, so a full layout is eighteen feet per side. As I said, the terrain should be flat enough to prevent placed markers from rolling on their own, but it may be flat or sloped, grassy or sandy—slightly damp sand is better than dry. Like golf, you must play the terrain as well as the basic game.”

“Here you’re going to play on grass?” Sandy asked.

If Tracy McLaughlin had a sense of humor, it wasn’t apparent in the dead seriousness of his responses. “That’s right. The game is prepared by placing all the markers ten feet from the edge of the grid. The judges will place the starting pieces in position. They are marked with an International Orange adhesive tag and may not be moved for the duration of the round. The remainder of the pieces will remain untouched and on the sidelines until the starter’s signal. Markers may be moved at will during the round, but doing so more than once will slow the competitor. Markers may be carried or rolled. Speed is essential. So is accuracy.”

Listening to him drone on, outlining the rules, it occurred to Ali that she was listening to an engineer masquerading as a bodybuilder. Sandy’s attention seemed to be wandering, too.

“So how will today’s match work?”

“What’s all this?” Victor Angeleri demanded. His sotto voce greeting to Ali provoked an angry frown and an exaggerated shushing motion from a woman on the sidelines with more tattoos and piercings than clothing.

Ali rose to her feet and hurried inside with her attorney on her heels. “Mr. McLaughlin is outlining the rules for Sumo Sudoku,” she said, once in the living room. “It’s supposed to be the next big thing.”

Victor stopped and looked back out on the terrace. “Really? Next to what?”

“Beach volleyball, for all I know,” Ali answered. “But from what I’m hearing, I’m guessing the world is safe from Sumo Sudoku. What about the will?”

“Les just got here,” Victor told her. “It’s time.”

Victor ushered her into Paul’s study—what used to be Paul’s study. An unfamiliar man was seated behind Paul’s ultramodern mirrored glass and stainless steel desk. He rose when Ali entered the room. “Les Jordan,” he said. “You must be Ms. Reynolds.”

Ali nodded.

“Sorry to be meeting under such unfortunate circumstances.”

Ali nodded again. She looked around. Usually there were only three extra chairs in the room—two captain’s chairs and a leather sling-backed contraption that was supposedly ergonomically superior to any other chair in the house. It was also Ali’s least favorite. Helga was seated next to the wall in that one. It would probably soon be Helga’s least favorite as well since her feet barely touched the floor. But today, with four lawyers already present, three extra swivel chairs from the game table in the family room had been crammed into the study as well.

Ali took one of those while Victor and Ted Grantham settled into the two captain’s chairs. “I expect Ms. Gaddis should be joining us any moment,” Mr. Jordan said seriously. “If you don’t mind waiting…”

It wasn’t lost on Ali that, while they waited for April to put in her appearance, Ali was sitting in a roomful of attorneys, all of them chalking up billable hours at an astonishing rate.

And it’s all Paul’s fault,
she thought.
If he hadn’t gone and gotten himself killed, if he’d tended to business, if he’d kept his pants zipped
…

“Would you care for some coffee?” Mr. Jordan asked.

There was something about being in her former home and being offered coffee by a visitor, especially a visiting attorney, that rubbed Ali the wrong way. “No thanks,” she said. “April and I had coffee together out on the terrace a few minutes ago.”

It was worth the price of admission—whatever that might be—to see four attorneys watching her in drop-jawed amazement. Before any of them replied, however, two newcomers showed up in the library doorway. One was a relatively attractive woman of indeterminate age. Her face was a tight-skinned mask that spoke of too many dollars spent on a high-priced plastic surgeon. Ali recognized the type—a Hollywood socialite wife—or more likely ex-wife—with more nerve than money. The bow tie–wearing man at the woman’s side was, Ali realized at once, yet another attorney—making the grand total five in all. Five too many.

“Good morning, Mrs. Ragsdale,” Les Jordan said smoothly, rising to his feet. “Come in, please. I didn’t realize you would be here or that you’d be bringing someone with you. I’ll send out for more chairs.”

“We’ll only need one,” the woman said. “My daughter won’t be attending this meeting after all. She’s not feeling up to it.”

“Well then,” Les said, “with all due respect, you probably shouldn’t be here, either, Mrs. Ragsdale. Client confidentiality rules and all that.”

Dismissing him with a look, Mrs. Ragsdale turned away from Les Jordan and addressed the other people in the room. “My name’s Monique Ragsdale,” she said. “April Gaddis is my daughter. And this,” she added, indicating the man beside her, “is Harlan Anderson. I’ve retained him to be here on the baby’s behalf—on Sonia Marie’s behalf. Regardless of whether or not we’re dealing with an old will or a new one, Mr. Anderson and I are here to make sure that my granddaughter’s interests are protected.”

Leaving Harlan standing, she strode into the room, settled her designer-clad self into one of the game room chairs, crossed her long high-heeled legs, and then gave Les a cool appraisal. “Shall we get started then?” she asked.

Ali knew at once that Monique was one tough cookie. Short of someone bodily throwing her out of the room, she and her attorney weren’t leaving.

Les looked questioningly at Ali. “By all means,” Ali said. “Let’s get on with it.”

Les Jordan sighed. First he went around the room, making all the necessary introductions, saving Ali for last.

“I know who she is,” Monique said shortly. “I’ve seen her before. On TV. Now tell us about the will.”

“The truth is, a new will was prepared,” Jordan continued. “It’s been drawn up, but it was never signed. We expected to finalize this after the divorce hearing yesterday. Obviously that didn’t happen, so the most recent last will and testament, the one that’s still in effect, is the one that was drawn up eight years ago shortly after Paul’s marriage to Ms. Reynolds here.”

A file folder had been lying on the table in front of him. He opened it now and began to read. Ali only half listened. She was familiar with the provisions. Shortly after the wedding, she and Paul had signed similar documents. Ali had left behind a trust for Chris. Paul had named some charitable bequests. Other than those, they had left everything to each other. Ali remembered that they had signed the wills in some other attorney’s office. At the time, it had seemed that Paul was going out of his way to protect Ali’s interests. Now, though, under these changed circumstances, being Paul’s sole beneficiary opened several cans of worms, not the least of which, Ali realized, would be Monique Ragsdale.

As Les Jordan read through the provisions—the charitable bequests as well as the personal ones—Monique became more and more agitated. The bottom line was clear. Ali Reynolds was still Paul Grayson’s wife, and since much of what they owned was community property, it went to Ali.

“You mean to tell me that April and her baby get nothing?” Monique demanded. “How can that be? You drew up the new will. Why wasn’t it signed?”

Les Jordan was exceedingly patient. “Paul and I had an appointment to sign the will yesterday afternoon after the divorce was final. He wanted to do it that way. Thought it would be cleaner somehow. We were scheduled to meet here at the house so he and April could both sign new documents. Obviously that didn’t happen.”

“I knew Paul Grayson,” Monique declared. “He was an honorable man. I can’t believe he meant to leave either his intended bride or his child unprovided for.”

Honorable?
Ali thought to herself. With Paul Grayson’s legal widow sitting right there in the room and with his pregnant not-bride sitting somewhere upstairs, that seemed an odd thing to say. You could call Paul any number of things, but honorable certainly wasn’t one of them.

“Intended and legally married are two different things,” Jordan pointed out.

“But still,” Monique continued. “The only thing that prevented him from marrying April was his tragic and untimely death. In fact, I happen to believe that’s the whole reason he’s dead. That whoever killed him did so just to make sure the marriage between my daughter and Paul Grayson never happened.” The pointed look she cast in Ali’s direction at the end of that little speech spoke volumes.

Ali’s cheeks flushed. It was galling to have to sit in the room and have your husband’s mistress’s mother come right out and accuse you of murder. Ali was about to open her mouth to defend herself when Victor touched her arm. With a slight warning shake of his head he admonished her to keep quiet.

“We’re all dealing with a good deal of emotional upheaval at the moment, Ms. Ragsdale,” he said soothingly. “For right now, though, I think it would be best if we all refrained from tossing around unfounded allegations.”

Les Jordan nodded in agreement. “Mr. Angeleri is right,” he said. “We need to keep from being drawn into making any kind of accusations. As for the baby, there are laws on the books in the state of California that are specifically designed to deal with cases like this—laws that protect the interests of in utero or omitted offspring. No doubt some funds would be made available from the estate to support the child and monies held in trust until he or she—”