J.A. Jance - Outlaw Mountain: A Joanna Brady Mystery

PROLOGUE

Al... ice. Come... find... me.

The faint but drawn-out words, wafting on the chill Novemberair, drifted in through the open window of Alice Rogers aging Buick Skylark.Even though she didnt hear the taunting call or understand the words, thesound alone was loud enough to disturb her and rouse her from herScotch-induced slumber. She woke up, shivered in the cold and blinked at theunremitting darkness that surrounded her. For a confusing, disorienting moment,Alice was afraid she had gone blind. She had no idea where she was or how shehad come to be there. Fighting panic, her hands flailed out in search of clues.The first thing her trembling fingers encountered was the icy, smooth surfaceof the steering wheel. Next she ran her fingertips across the familiar wornplush of the Buicks upholstery.

Breathing a sigh of relief, Alice leaned back against theheadrest. She was in the front seatthe front passenger seatof a car, her owncar. She had fallen asleep there. Again. The best she could hope for was thatmaybe none of the neighbors had seen her. If they had, word was bound to getback to the kids. That was one thing Alice knew from bitter experience. Tombstonewas full of gossips who were only too happy to carry tales.

Alice stayed where she was and rested for the better partof a minute, waiting for the momentary panic to subside, for the franticbeating of her heart to slow and steady. Hoping to get her bearings, shesquinted through the darkness, trying to sort out some familiar landmark thatwould tell her where she was and how she had come to be there.

As dark as it is, she told herself, it must bealmost morning. Where the hell am I?

Vaguely she remembered something about going to dinner atSusans house, but now she had no recollection of having driven the twenty-somemiles from Tombstone out to Sierra Vista. She didnt remember coming back,either. But a taste for Scotch was one of the few things Alice and her growndaughter shared in common. And knowing how dinners with her daughter andson-in-law often turned out, not remembering every blow-by-blow was probablyfor the best. Alice had never held her son-in-law in very high regard. In heropinion Ross Jenkins was nothing but an arrogant jerk. The problem withdrinking Scotch in his presence was that the booze might have loosened Alicestongue enough for her to come right out and tell him exactly what she thoughtof him.

Not good, Alicescolded herself. Not good at all. But then again, even if she had shother mouth off, Alice realized it wouldnt be the first time she had infuriatedher daughter and son-in-law. Most likely it wouldnt be the last, either.Beyond a certain point, that was all a mother could do for her children hangaround long enough to drive them crazy.

Alice found she was calmer now. She still didnt know whereshe was or how she had come to be there, but for some reason the possibility ofhaving yanked Ross Jenkins chain made her feel somewhat better.

Outside the open window, the chilled Sonora Desert wasdeathly silent. Into that silence came a sound that resembled the rattle ofcastanets. Several seconds passed before Alice realized that the noise wascoming from inside her own head, from her upper and lower dentures clackingrhythmically against each other. The brisk November nighttime air had reacheddeep into Alices bones, leaving her whole body shivering and quaking.

Automatically, Alice reached for the button that operatedthe Buicks power windows, but when she pressed the switch, nothing happened.The window stayed wide open.

The key, stupid, Alice muttered aloud. You should knowby now that the window wont work if the ignition keys turned off.

In the all-enveloping darkness, she reached out again.This time she aimed her searching fingers toward the steering column, gropingfor the key. But where her fingers should have closed around her dangling keychain, there was nothing at allnothing but air. The key was missing.

Damn! Alice exclaimed. It must have fallen out. Flow amI going to find it in the dark?

Holding the steering wheel for balance, Alice leaned downand ran her hands across the rubber-covered floorboard. She didnt find thekeys. Instead, her hand shut around the neck of a bottlean almost emptybottle, from the feel of it. In the dark Alice couldnt read the label, but shedidnt have to. Long acquaintance made the round shape instantly recognizable.Dewars, of course. The singular lack of booze in the nearly empty bottle wenta long way toward explaining everything else.

Carefully, Alice checked the bottle lid to make sure itwas screwed on securely. No sense in spilling whatever was left. Once thebottle was propped on the seat beside her, she bent down once more and resumedher search for the missing keys.

Alice, someone called. Wake up.

Wide awake now, she heard the voice distinctly. It seemedto be coming from right outside the car, from a distance of no more than a fewfeet.

Startled, Alice jerked upright and turned to look, but shesaw no one. Still, the nearby presence of that unseen voice filled her withgratitude. That meant she wasnt alone out here in the desert after all.Someone else was here with her. Maybe whoever it was had taken the car keys.

I am awake, Alice called back. I just cant find thekeys. If you could come help me find them ...

I cant, the person called back. You have to find mefirst. Youre it.

Straining to listen, Alice wondered what was wrong withthat voice. The odd falsetto defied identification. She couldnt tell if thesingsong voice belonged to a man or woman; to a child or grown-up. Perhaps itwas a child pretending to be a grown-up, or maybe the other way around. Whoeverit was, the familiar words tugged Alice out of her failing body and back to theworld of her childhood. Come and find me, the words beckoned to her fromacross the years. Youre it.

A spark of memory flared briefly in Alices heart. Was itpossible that the person calling to her from the darkness just outside theBuick was someone from that far-off time in her life when she was just a child?Through the haze of booze she realized that whoever it was had to be someonewho had known Alice Monroe Rogers back then, when she was a little girl. Maybeit was one of Alices three sisters summoning her once again to anold-fashioned game of tag. Maybe it was time to resume a game of hide-and-seekthat had gone unfinished for over seventy years.

As the youngest of Mary and Alfred Monroes seven children,being it had been little Alices lot in life. Being it had been herfateher curse for having been born the youngest, for being the baby. As such,she had borne the brunt of countless jokes and pranks. No doubt, she decided,this was more of the same.

The insistent voice called to her once again through a fogof memory. Alice. Are you coming or not? What are you, a fraidycat?

A wave of goose flesh swept over Alices body. The temperaturein the car hovered in the upper thirties, but the sudden chill she felt hadnothing to do with outside temperatures. Fraidycat! Like being perpetually it,that well-worn phrase came directly from her childhood, too. That was one ofthe terms her three older sisters had hurled in Alices direction to devil her.And it wasnt just her sisters, either. Alices brothers had called her that aswell. Fraidycatl Fraidycat. Fraidycat.

Which of those voices was calling to her now? Alice wondered. Was it Jean, or Jessie, or Rosemary? Orcould it be Thomas, William, or Jack? No, that wasnt possible. Rosemary wasdead. Had been for years. So were William and Thomas. They had gone away toWorld War II and never returned. William had died at Guadalcanal and Thomas ina POW camp in Germany. Jack lived in an Alzheimers group home up inCottonwood. According to Alices sister-in-law, Jack no longer remembered hisown name, let alone those of his four sisters. Jean also lived in a nursinghome, one over in Safford, near where her son and daughter-in-law had settled.She wasnt in much better shape than Jack was. Jessie, the old maid of the family,was eleven years older than Alice. At eighty-seven she still lived in Douglasin a roach-infested assisted-care facility only a few blocks from the ramblingbrick house on G Avenue where the seven Monroe kids had grown to adulthood.