That was what he was thinking as he drove back to Phoenix with plenty of leeway for making it to work on time. No one had seen him come or go, and as long as he didn’t tell anyone about it, no one was likely to find out. All he had to do was keep his mouth shut. As far as his mother knew, he was at school, and when he turned in his excuse tomorrow, school would think he had been at home with a sore throat.
It wouldn’t take long, however, for A. J. Sanders to realize how wrong he had been. It turned out that leaving the scene of the crime was the worst possible thing a Good Samaritan could have done, and once the cops did come looking for him, his entire future would be hanging in the balance.
5
Edie Larson’s election-night party in the rec room at Sedona Shadows should have been a disaster. After all, by the time the TV station in Flagstaff started scrolling election results across the bottom of the flat-screen TV on the wall, there was already a two-hundred-vote margin. As later results came in, that deficit narrowed, but not enough. The looming loss didn’t seem to bother Edie, and it had zero effect on her high spirits. It looked to Ali Reynolds as though her mother were having the time of her life.
One of Bob Larson’s new friends, a fellow resident from Sedona Shadows, was providing the music. Mike Baxter, a mostly retired DJ, played his music the old-fashioned way-on vinyl records. He had been widowed after fifty-three years of marriage, and his kids had suggested that taking care of the family home was probably too much for him. Mike correctly read the situation and realized that his kids weren’t nearly so worried about upkeep on the old place as they were about seeing it turned into ready cash. They had wanted him to hand it off to an overeager residential developer who just happened to be his son’s good pal. Resisting what he regarded as underhanded pressure, Mike had opted to sell the place to someone else, back when suburban Chicago property values were booming. He then departed the Midwest, taking with him a neat profit in real estate as well as his primo collection of vinyl records, gathered one by one over sixty-plus years. Once in Arizona, he settled happily into a new downsized life that included several years with a new wife.
For years Mike had supplemented his retirement income by spinning the old records at events for those he liked to call golden-agers. The music he brought had nothing to do with YMCA, rap, or disco and everything to do with crooners like Frank Sinatra, Patti Page, and Rosemary Clooney as well as the pioneers of rock and roll. Widowed a second time, he downsized yet again. This time he left the heat of Phoenix in favor of cooler Sedona. Even though he was on his own, he had taken a two-bedroom unit in Sedona Shadows. One bedroom was for sleeping, and the other was reserved for his record collection.
Once a week now, Mike did a Saturday-afternoon Sock Hop for the benefit of the facility’s residents and any members of the public who cared to venture inside. His sidekick in the operation was Ali’s dad, Bob Larson, who handled the electronics and the sound system while Mike handled the platters and the patter. Over the months the two of them had become good friends, and it had been Mike’s idea that there should be music at the election-night party.
Ali had thought that was a good idea when she hoped for a victory celebration. It had turned out to be an even better way to celebrate defeat. So were the several cookie sheets of Sugarloaf Cafe sweet rolls Edie had ordered from the new owners of the diner that once was the Larson family’s livelihood. Edie herself cheerfully dished them out to everyone who showed up at the party, even though Ali suspected some of the attendees hadn’t been among Edie’s supporters.
The sweet rolls were gone, but the party was going strong. Bob and Edie had again taken to the dance floor when Ali’s son, Christopher, stopped by to chat with his mother while his four-year-old son, Colin, snoozed on his shoulder.
“Grandma seems to be taking this all in stride,” Chris observed. “How are you doing?”
Ali shrugged. “Losing by fewer than two hundred votes is a respectable loss,” she said. “I think we’ll be able to hold our heads up. It’s not like we took a complete drubbing.”
“You look tired, though,” Chris said. He was a great son, but diplomacy had never been his strong suit.
Ali kissed the tip of Colin’s nose and then smiled at Chris. “That’s because I am tired,” she said. “Running a political campaign is hard work. Truth be told, I think your grandmother had a lot more fun running for office than she would being in office, because then she would have to deal with all the various oddball factions out there.”
“You mean like the anti-contrails folks?”
“That’s one,” Ali said.
Chris laughed. “Grandpa says he thinks they’ll try outlawing gravity next.”
Ali laughed, too. “Grandpa’s opinions are part of the reason it would be tough for your grandmother to hold office. She’d have to learn to deal with one extreme out in public and the other extreme at home. It probably would have driven her nuts.”
Just then Ali’s daughter-in-law, Athena, showed up with Colin’s twin sister, Colleen, in hand. Colleen, the far more gregarious of the two, was going strong at nine-thirty and had to be led from the dance floor.
“Do we have to go home?” she demanded. “I’m having fun.”
“Yes, we have to go home,” Athena said firmly. “Preschool tomorrow.”
Colleen made a face but didn’t make a fuss. She looked up at Ali. “Sorry Grandma didn’t winned,” she said.
Ali smiled at her granddaughter without trying to straighten out that pesky irregular verb. “No, we didn’t, sweetie,” she said, leaning down to collect some night-night love. “Maybe next time.”
As Chris and Athena left, Dave and Priscilla Holman took their places. Dave, a Sedona native, was the chief homicide detective for the Yavapai County Sheriff’s Department. Years earlier, when Ali had come back home to Sedona after the collapse of her marriage, she and Dave had been an item for a while, but the demands of his being a single dad with sole custody of his kids had proved too much for their budding romance. At a time when kids and work were his two top priorities, their love life had placed a very distant third. Their breakup had been amicable, and they had managed to remain friends. Ali had taken up with B. Simpson, and when Dave’s kids had gotten old enough, he had hooked up with and eventually married Priscilla Morse, a savvy businesswoman who owned a local chain of nail salons.
Living in a small town meant there were very few secrets. From the beginning, Priscilla Morse Holman had known about Dave’s previous relationship with Ali, but she had also been one of Edie Larson’s staunchest supporters in the campaign for mayor. Initially, there were a few awkward moments between Ali and Priscilla, but the kinks had worked themselves out over the course of several months. Although the two women weren’t exactly close friends, they weren’t rivals, either.
“Sorry we’re late,” Priscilla said. “He was working,” she said, sighing and sending a pointed look in Dave’s direction. “Give this guy a murder case to work on, and he’s like a dog with a bone-he just can’t let it be.” The sweet smile she sent in Dave’s direction took some of the edge off what might have been considered bitchy criticism. “Now, where’s that mother of yours?” Priscilla asked, looking around the room. “I assume she’s got a handle on being a good loser?”
“See for yourself,” Ali said, pointing to the dance floor, where Bob and Edie Larson were doing a credible job of rocking to Bill Haley and his Comets’ iconic “Rock Around the Clock.”
“I heard there were sweet rolls,” Dave said, glancing hopefully in the direction of the refreshment table.
“Sorry,” Ali said. “They’re gone.”
“All of them? Too bad!” Dave’s disappointment was obvious. As a single guy, he had been a regular customer at the Sugarloaf Cafe and a devoted fan of Edie’s sweet rolls, which the new owners still made according to Edie’s recipe and specifications.