“What cat?” Bob demanded. “Since when do you have a cat? You always hated cats.”
In the crowded days between her father’s snowboarding accident and Ali’s own trip to the hospital, there hadn’t been much occasion for visiting.
“Sam belongs to Matt and Julie Bernard,” Ali explained. “It’s only temporary. Samantha’s the first cat I’ve ever really made friends with, and she’s not half bad. Ugly, but not bad.”
Bob laughed. “That sounds a lot like what your mother says about me on occasion.”
When it came time to leave the house, Ali spent the better part of ten minutes fruitlessly searching for her purse. Baffled, she finally thought to look in the shopping bag her mother had used to bring her wrecked clothing home from the hospital.
Sure enough, there, zipped into a Ziploc bag, she found the remaining contents of her purse-wallet, MP3 player, three tubes of lipstick, a compact, nail file, a few paperclips, out of date credit card receipts, a plastic tampon container, and other assorted junk. The collection included an official-looking Yavapai Sheriff’s Department document that notified her that her Coach bag had been kept as evidence and could be claimed at a later date.
Right, Ali thought. A Coach bag with a bullet hole in the bottom.
Ali paused long enough to write “buy purse” on her to-do list. She stuck that along with the printout from Reenie’s e-mail into her makeshift, see-through plastic purse and then set off for Phoenix by way of Cottonwood.
It was only a little past ten when Ali drove into the yard at Ed and Diane Holzer’s place. She saw at once that their car was missing from the carport and no one answered her knock. Thinking Ed might have gone to his office, Ali drove on into town.
Holzer Property Management was located at the corner of Aspen and South Main in a block Ed had purchased and redeveloped. It was tucked into a small commercial complex that contained two dentists, an accountant, a chiropractor, a Mailboxes, Etc., and a Subway sandwich shop. Ali was disappointed when she saw no trace of Ed’s Buick in the parking lot there, either, but she went inside to check all the same.
The receptionist just inside the door was clearly troubled by Ali’s appearance. “Ed isn’t in today,” she said, trying hard not to stare at Ali’s cuts and bruises. “I believe he had a doctor’s appointment this morning, but Bree is in. Would you like to talk to her?”
“Sure,” Ali said. “Why not?”
Ali was shown into a conference room where she found Bree seated in front of an unfurled stack of architectural drawings. “My God!” Bree exclaimed, leaping to her feet and coming around to give Ali an effusive hug. “You look awful! I heard about what happened, but I didn’t expect…”
“…me to look like the wrath of God?” Ali finished with a pained grin. “Believe me, I’m a lot better now than I was two days ago.”
“Grab a chair,” Bree said, resuming her own. “What can we do for you?”
“I was looking for your dad.”
Bree shook her head. “Sorry,” she said. “You just missed him. Mom and Dad left about twenty minutes ago. They’re on their way to Phoenix so Dad can see his cardiologist.”
“Phoenix,” Ali said. “That’s where I’m going, too. Do they have a cell phone? Maybe I can catch up with them there.”
Bree shook her head. “Sorry. Dad hates cell phones. Loathes them, in fact. Wouldn’t have one on a bet. But this sounds urgent. Is there something I can do?”
Ali considered for a moment before deciding there was no reason not to ask Bree about the accounts. She was, after all, a managing partner. Presumably, whatever Ed knew Bree knew and vice versa.
“I’m doing some tracking on Reenie’s movements the afternoon she died,” Ali began.
There was a subtle shift in Bree’s demeanor. “How come?” she asked, frowning. “As far as I know, it’s all settled. At least that’s what they told me-that according to Detective Farris the case was closed.”
“It may be closed as far as he’s concerned,” Ali said. “Closing cases is what he gets paid for, but can you just accept that, Bree? Can you see your sister just giving up without a fight? I can’t. She wouldn’t turn her back on her kids that way. I still believe she’d stay and duke it out.”
Bree took a deep breath. “The point is,” she said, “this has all been terribly hard on my parents. They’re starting to come to terms with what happened. It’s only going to make things worse if you keep going over the same ground. Don’t bother them with this, Ali, please. Let it go. Give them a chance to get past it.”
Here was someone else telling Ali to drop it, to mind her own business. And in the old days the old Ali-the old please-everyone-but-yourself Ali-might have backed down.
“Hurting your parents is the last thing I want to do,” she said. “But Reenie was my friend, Bree, and as a friend, I want answers about why she’s dead-answers I can accept. Detective Farris may be right-suicide may well turn out to be the answer-but I still want to know why she did it, why she just gave up.”
“So what are you doing about it?” Bree asked.
“Trying to find out what Reenie did after she left Dr. Mason’s office in Scottsdale that Thursday afternoon. I have reason to believe she visited a bank, United First Financial in Phoenix. I believe she was trying to track down some trust accounts that had been established in her children’s names, but the bank manager wasn’t able to locate them.”
“Oh, those,” Bree said at once. “I’d forgotten all about them, but now that you mention them, I do remember. Dad and Mom set one up for Matt right after he was born, and they started one for Julie as soon as she showed up as well. I’m sure misplacing them is just a bookkeeping error of some kind. I can’t imagine why on earth Reenie went to the bank directly instead of calling here.”
“You have the records?”
“Of course we have the records. All it would have taken is a single call from Reenie to me to straighten this whole thing out, but then again, with everything that was going on in Reenie’s life right then, she probably wasn’t thinking straight.”
“Probably not,” Ali agreed.
“Anything else I can do, then?” Bree asked.
“No,” Ali said. “Thanks for your help. I should probably be going. Give your folks my best, and when I talk to Andrew Cargill I’ll let him know he should call you for information on those missing accounts.”
“You’re still going to talk to him?” Bree asked sharply. “I thought…”
“Andrew Cargill is the last person who saw your sister alive, Bree. Reenie may have mentioned something to him about where she was going and what she planned to do next.”
“But-”
“It’s what I have to do, Bree. For Reenie and for my own peace of mind.”
Ali left then, without looking back, sensing rather than seeing Bree watching her exit from behind. Once back in the Cayenne, she programmed the address for First United Financial into her GPS and headed for Phoenix.
The sky overhead was a bright, cloudless blue. The winter rains had done their magic. Even with springtime weather only a few days old, there was already a hint of green everywhere as hardy high desert grasses poked their way up out of the ground. On I-17 traffic was heavy but moving and not at all slow. Spilling downhill from the Mogollon Rim and Arizona’s high country, the freeway’s long sweeping curves made the steep descent deceptively smooth. It was a stretch of highway where unwary truckers and motorists, oblivious to the force of gravity, could find themselves sailing along at speeds well above the 75-m.p.h.-posted limits.
It was also a part of the highway whose long vistas of distant mountains never failed to raise Ali’s spirits. She passed the broad, grassy expanse of Sunset Viewpoint. As she started down the first steep grade that led to Black Canyon City and to the Valley of the Sun far below, her cell phone rang. Ali pressed the button, glad she had set her phone on hands-free mode.
“Ali?” the distinctively deep voice asked. “It’s Helga.”