Duel to the Death by Jance J. A

Author:Jance, J. A. [Jance, J. A.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Mystery, thriller, Suspense, Crime, Adult, Adventure
ISBN: 9781501151002
Goodreads: 36101180
Publisher: Gallery Books
Published: 2018-03-20T07:00:00+00:00

32

Yavapai County Sheriff’s Office’s substation in the Village of Oak Creek was located in a strip mall and close enough to B.’s house that Ali could easily have walked there and back. This time she chose to drive. When she arrived in the parking lot, Dave’s SUV was nowhere to be seen. She pulled into a visitor slot and sat there wondering. Since Dave wasn’t there, should she even bother? Finally, though, shrugging off her momentary indecision, she collected the soda can and went inside.

Behind the counter sat a sweet-faced young woman with her long blond hair pulled into a knot at the back of her head. At first glance, Ali wondered if she was old enough to be out of high school. Was the sheriff’s department hiring teenagers these days? When the woman stood up, however, Ali was surprised to see that she was actually a uniformed officer—Deputy L. Harper.

“May I help you?” she asked.

“I was hoping to see Detective Holman,” Ali said.

“Sorry, he’s unavailable,” Deputy Harper replied. “We had a homicide overnight, and he’s working that. Can I be of service?”

This seemed like a lost cause, but Ali decided to take a crack at it anyway. “My name is Ali Reynolds,” she said. “My husband and I own High Noon Enterprises, a company located on the far side of Cottonwood—on county land rather than inside the city limits.”

Deputy Harper frowned, and Ali was sure she was already losing her. “Any relation to Ms. Reynolds, the math teacher over at the high school?” the deputy asked.

Ali was taken aback. “Why, yes,” she said, “Athena is my daughter-in-law.”

Deputy Harper’s face broke into a beaming smile. “She’s the best teacher I ever had!” she exclaimed. “Until I met Ms. Reynolds, I thought I hated math. It turns out, I just hated bad math teachers. And she’s, like, this incredible inspiration to everybody, I mean, with her arm and leg and all. It was because of her that I decided to apply for a job with the sheriff’s office after I got my associate’s degree.”

Before Athena and Chris met and married, she had served with the Minnesota National Guard and had returned from a deployment to the Middle East as a wounded warrior and partial amputee, having lost one arm from below the elbow and one leg from below the knee.

A little more hopeful now, Ali returned to telling her story. “On Friday, someone gained entrance to our facility under false pretenses by claiming to be a county building inspector. He may have interfered with some of our electronic equipment. I had spoken to Detective Holman about this earlier, but . . .”

“It sounds like a property crime,” Deputy Harper interrupted. “Detective Holman doesn’t deal with those. Have you filed a police report?”

“Not yet,” Ali began.

“Was there any damage?”

“Not that we know of,” Ali replied, “at least not so far.”

Deputy Harper was already reaching for a clipboard with a pen attached by a length of string. When she placed it on the counter, Ali saw it contained a blank incident reporting form.

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