Too late she realized that Alton had been right to do the accounting every month. Had she done that, she could possibly have limited her loss. But now? Her first instinct was to pick up the phone, dial the first bank, and go to war with the manager. She had the phone in her hand when she thought better of it and put the receiver back on the hook. The bank statements for January had not yet arrived. If she called the bank and alerted them, that might also serve to alert whoever was doing it. She wanted the guilty parties caught and punished every bit as much as she wanted them stopped.

Instead, she tracked down the phone number for Joe Friday, the guy who had installed what he had explained was something like a distant band of guardian angels there to watch over her.

“Good morning, Betsy,” he said when he answered. Obviously his caller ID was in good working order. “What’s up?”

“I’ve been going over my bank statements,” she said. “Someone has been making unauthorized withdrawals all year long in every one of my accounts. They’ve been using ATMs, which I’ve never once used. I’m mad as a wet hen about it, and I don’t know what to do.”

“I’ll call Stuart,” Joe said. “Believe me, this kind of thing is right up his alley. He’ll be back in touch as soon as possible.”

When the phone call ended, Betsy reached down, lifted Princess into her lap, and held her close. “See there?” she told the squirming dog. “I wasn’t just being paranoid. Someone really is after me.”

29

As Ali drove out of the parking lot, she caught sight of a departing air ambulance. She was relieved to know that both Enid and her baby were flying off to Tucson, well beyond The Family’s reach.

The Crown Inn Motel just up the street from the hospital was convenient if not particularly inviting. What she needed that morning was a shower and some breakfast. The Crown Inn offered both because it came complete with an attached restaurant, the Pancake Castle.

The room itself was marginal at best, with a shower that offered little more than a dribble of water and clean but aged towels that were see-through thin. Rinsing the shampoo out of her hair under a chin-high shower head presented a challenge, but she managed to make it work. The mirror over the sink was so short that she had to lean over the basin to see enough of her face to put makeup on. Even so, when Ali stepped out of the bathroom, she felt like a new woman.

She emerged just in time to hear the end of a phone call. “Okay,” B. was saying. “We’ll stop long enough for breakfast, then I’ll head out. I should be in Cottonwood about the same time the warrants arrive.”

“Cottonwood,” Ali echoed. “I thought you were driving over to Kingman with me.”

“Sorry, babe,” he said. “You’re on your own. Warrants issued in Phoenix should be in Cottonwood sometime within the next two hours. I need to be on hand to sign off on them.”

“That was fast,” Ali observed.

“It’s Interpol,” B. answered. “The last part of that word may be P-O-L, but in my experience it really should be P-U-L-L. The fact that any number of kids may be in jeopardy means that everybody concerned is jumping through hoops. The warrants give us authorization to dispatch Stu’s drone guy. The FBI has its own drone capability, but our guy is on-site, and theirs isn’t.”

“I was looking forward to having you along to back me up when I go talk to Alvarado.”

“Hey.” B. grinned. “Don’t forget our agreed-upon division of labor. Stu, Cami, and I handle High Noon’s geek stuff; you’re in charge of PR. You make nice with Sheriff Alvarado, and we’ll handle the drone issues.”

•   •   •

Once inside the tackily turreted Pancake Castle, B. opted for the King—a full stack—while Ali took the Queen—a short one. Both breakfasts came with crisp bacon and coffee included. The pancakes turned out to be a bit thick for Ali’s taste and not nearly up to the delectably thin ones her father, Bob Larson, used to serve at the Sugarloaf. Still, Ali downed hers with relish.

“Oh,” B. said after they ordered. “I almost forgot. Stu just received a message from Joe Friday. Betsy called Joe in a blind panic this morning because she discovered that someone has spent the last year lightening her bank accounts to the tune of some sixty thousand bucks.”

Ali whistled. “How did they do that?”

“By making unauthorized withdrawals using debit cards that Betsy somehow didn’t know she had. It started in January of last year. Stu’s in the process of tracking down the dates, times, and ATM locations that were used for the transactions. He’s hoping to locate security tapes.”

“If the withdrawals started in January,” Ali asked, “how come it went undiscovered for so long?”

“For one thing, the amounts were small enough that they didn’t raise any red flags. Betsy is one of those people who does all her accounting work once a year, just in time to meet the April 15 IRS deadline. Today was the day she tackled that job, and today is also when she noticed the problem.”

“Did she go to the cops?”

“Not yet,” B. said. “Surprisingly enough, she reached out first to Joe, who immediately put Stu on the case. Betsy evidently has issues with some of the local law enforcement folks and came to us instead.”

“I don’t blame her,” Ali said. “When she was worried that someone had tried to kill her, the local sheriff came right out and told her she was nuts. What about Athena? Has Betsy mentioned any of this to her?”

“That’s not clear at the moment,” B. answered. “If she had, I’d think Athena would have called to discuss it.”

“Betsy probably doesn’t want to worry Athena any more than she already has.”

“In that case,” B. said. “I won’t mention it, either, at least not until I get a clear reading from Stu and/or Betsy.”

“Good thinking,” Ali agreed.

Twenty minutes later, Ali hit the road, heading west on I-40. She had spent most of the previous day and all of the night inside the hospital. During that time, the weather had taken a turn for the better. For the first twenty miles or so, a tall berm of plowed snow lined the roadway although the pavement was clear and dry. As the road gradually descended in elevation, so did the snow lining the highway until eventually it disappeared altogether. Ali was thinking about her upcoming meeting with Sheriff Alvarado when her cell phone rang.

“Good morning,” Andrea Rogers said when Ali answered. “I’m slow getting started this morning. I stayed up way too late looking through boxes, and I ended up oversleeping. I turned the alarm off instead of punching snooze and went right back to sleep.”

“Did you find anything?” Ali asked.

“Yes and no. Seeing some of the names made me realize we need to computerize those old files. It turns out in some cases, we’re dealing with second- or even third-generation abusers, as in violence begets violence. There’s one family where both the grandmother and her grandson’s spouse have come through the shelter. Unfortunately some files we dismissed as being ancient history are all too current.”

“Did you find anything leading back to Colorado City?”

“No, but I did run into Reenie’s ancient computer. It’s a tiny little thing—a Toshiba laptop, one that used those little floppy disks—the hard plastic ones. Why they called them floppies, I have no idea.”

Ali recalled the long-ago era of floppy floppy disks, but now was no time to go off into a discussion of the history of computer science.

“So?” she asked.

“When Irene was starting the shelter, it was a one-woman outfit that operated out of a cubbyhole office down in the basement. She had no clerical help until the YWCA was able to give her a part-time assistant for a few hours a week. Up to then, that computer was all she had. It’s dead as a doornail now, of course, but I found a small file box—a gray plastic container—that’s loaded with floppy disks. There might be something on one of those, but I have no idea how you’d go about accessing the information.”