"What about your bedtime?" Dave asked. "And what about dinner? Did you have anything to eat?"
"Not since lunch."
"I'll take you to dinner then."
"What about the reporters?"
Dave grinned. "Don't worry. I'm not stupid. I've learned the drill. You call the bellman, go up and down in the service elevator, and hand over the tip. How do you think I got April in and out without being seen? And then there's my secret transportation device."
"What's that?"
"I'm sure the reporters have spotters keeping an eye on your Cayenne. And I don't doubt there was a huge flap when Victor took off in that enormous Lincoln of his. But it turns out nobody pays the least bit of attention to a beat-out Nissan Sentra. It's right up there with one of Harry Potter's invisibility cloaks."
Ali was genuinely surprised. In the months since she'd stopped working, she had returned to her long-neglected habit of reading for pleasure. She had allowed herself the guilty indulgence of reading the entire Harry Potter series and had enjoyed it far more than she had expected.
"You read Harry Potter?" she asked.
Dave rolled his eyes. "I've got kids, don't I? Now, are you coming to dinner or not?"
"Where are you taking me?"
"Somewhere no one will expect to find you," he said. "Denny's. And don't give me any grief about it. After forking over a fortune in tips this afternoon, it's the best I can do."
"Are you kidding?" Ali asked. "If you're offering a Grand Slam, I'm there."
CHAPTER 10
In the months Ali had been back home in Sedona, she had become reacquainted with the small-town intimacy of the Sugar Loaf Cafe. Now she found herself disappearing in the bustling anonymity of a corporate-run restaurant. The colorful, multipage plastic menus were the same everywhere. So was the food. The meal Ali ordered was good, but it didn't come close to measuring up to one of Bob Larson's.
"Victor thinks you should leave," Ali told Dave over dinner. "You and Mom both. He's afraid that having you poking around will somehow muddy the waters.'"
"Tough," Dave Holman replied. "I don't like Victor. Victor doesn't like me. That makes us even. I have three weeks of vacation coming. I called the office this afternoon and told Sheriff Maxwell I'm taking 'em. I'm here for the duration. And if things get settled sooner than that, I'll camp out over at Lake Havasu and visit with my kids."
"How are they doing?" Ali asked.
While Dave had been off serving in Iraq with his reserve unit, Roxanne, his now former wife, had taken up with a sleazy timeshare salesman. Months earlier, when the new husband had been transferred to Lake Havasu, Roxanne had moved, taking Dave's kids with her. He had been devastated.
"Medium," Dave replied glumly. "Gary, the cretin, lost his job. Got caught in some kind of corporate hanky-panky. Roxie didn't tell me any of the gory details, and I'm probably better off not knowing. The thing is, Gary is currently unemployed, and they may end up having to move again. I'm not sure whereVegas, maybe. The kids are sick about it. So am I."
"Have you thought about taking Roxie back to court and trying to get custody?" Ali asked.
Dave shook his head. "Are you kidding? I'm a man. I've got about as much chance of winning a custody fight as I do of winning at Powerball. And since I never buy a lotto ticket, that's not likely to happen. But let's not talk about that. Let's talk about you."
"What about me?"
"This is serious, Ali. Really serious."
"Victor has already pointed that out," Ali responded. "Several different times. And it could be serious for you, too. Earlier the LAPD cops were asking a lot of questions about you. So was Victor, for that matter."
"Screw Victor," Dave said. "But it makes sense. If the cops are looking for you to have an accomplice, then I could be a likely subject. Who better than a renegade homicide detective to figure out a way to cover up a murder?"
"So what do we do?" Ali asked.
"We fight back."
"But you can't do that, can you? You're a cop."
He smiled grimly. "You'd be surprised at what I can do. What did you tell the two homicide dicks?"
"I told them exactly what happened, that you and Mom and I were all together at the hotel this afternoon, right up until we went over to the house and found Monique at the bottom of the staircase. I got the impression that they were going to go check out the hotel's security tapes to see whether or not I was telling the truth about my comings and goings."
"Did they tell you what time Monique took her header?" Dave asked.
"No. Why?"
"Because she may have been on the floor for a long time before we found her. If she fell before I got to the hotel, we could still have a problem on that score."
"Is there any way to find out?" Ali asked.
"Officially, no," Dave replied. "Unofficially, maybe. I'm assuming they asked you who all was at the house today."
Ali nodded.
"You'd better tell me, too, then," he said. "Give me the whole list. As far as I'm concerned, it's time we started running our own parallel investigation."
"But" Ali began.
"Victor Angeleri is looking out for you," Dave said, "but the man is being paid good money to look out for you. Nobody's paying my freight. I'm the one who has to look out for me. If you don't want to have anything to do with this, fine. I'll do it on my own."
"What do you need exactly?"
"I need you to tell me whatever you told them. In detail."
Knowing she had been leaving April's room for the night, Ali had dragged her computer along with her when she headed out. Now, at Ali's request, Dave went out to his Nissan and retrieved Ali's laptop. For the next hour or so, Ali told the story one more time, using her air-card network to pluck appropriate telephone numbers and addresses off the Internet. Dave's method was far more low-tech. He jotted his notes expertly on a series of paper napkins, including the part about her close encounter with the boulder.
"You're sure it was an accident?" Dave wanted to know.
"I think it was an accident," Ali told him. "It looked like an accident, but with everything else that's gone on amp;"
"We'd better check it out," Dave said.
When they finally finished the grueling process, Ali was a rag. "I've got to go back to the hotel," she said. "It's time."
By then it was late enough and the lobby deserted enough that Ali risked venturing in through the front door. Upstairs, walking toward her room on what was posted as a nonsmoking floor, she was surprised to find the corridor reeking of cigarette smoke. She was tempted to call back down to the lobby to complain, but then she thought better of it. The last thing April or Edie needed was someone from hotel security pounding on doors and waking everybody up.
Inside the room, Ali found that her mother hadn't bothered to close the blackout curtains. Even without turning on a light, there was plenty of illumination for Ali to find her way around the room. Her mother was sound asleep, clinging to the far side of the single king-sized bed. Ali undressed and climbed in on the other side. By the time her head hit the pillow, she was asleep. She awakened to the click of the door lock and the smell of coffee as Edie let herself back into the room. A glance at the clock told Ali it was past seven.
"Sorry to wake you," her mother apologized. "I've been up since four, and I finally couldn't stand it anymore. I had to go downstairs to get some coffee and the newspapers."
She unloaded two paper cups and a stack of newspapers onto the coffee table while Ali got up and staggered into the bathroom.
"You must have gotten home late," Edie observed over the top of a newspaper when Ali emerged.
"Dave took me to Denny's for dinner," Ali answered. "And you're right. It was late when I got home. Anything in the paper?"