Snakes and Ladders Read online

  “But once that’s taken care of,” replied Mitchell, “isn’t it possible that we can consider those original goals again? You can step into Gerard’s role.”

  She laughed, an unaccustomed sound. “You flatter me, Mitchell, but my world is the scientific world—the world of the lab, not the world of the boardroom. And certainly not,” she added with a shudder, “Washington and those halls of power.”

  He smiled. “I think you underestimate yourself, Louise.”

  “I never underestimate myself,” she replied. After a moment, she added, “You, however …”

  His heart leapt. “What do you mean?”

  She sat back in her chair and looked at him speculatively. “You’re so young, Mitchell, but I can see in you some of the characteristics that made Gerard so successful in business, and could have made him so successful in politics. Intelligence. Drive. A sense of presence. A sense of decorum. Perhaps it’s not out of the question that we may be able to pursue those goals again.”

  Mitchell’s mind whirled at the possibilities of what Louise was suggesting, but he was saved from having to respond when Louise’s cell phone whirred from her desk.

  She stood, retrieved it, and glanced at the caller ID. “Yes?” she said by way of greeting, then, after a moment, “Hold on, Mitchell is here and I’d like him to hear this too. I’m putting you on speaker.”

  She returned to the chair and sat down. “Go ahead,” she said toward the phone. “Start from the beginning.”

  “I found them,” said Millard, the buzz of traffic filtering over the connection. “I figured that at this point even Owen McNally might have gotten tired of eating at restaurants all the time, so I took a photo I got from the Penn website and showed it around at the local grocery stores. Got lucky at the third one I went to—a place called Bashas’ in West Sedona. They said McNally comes in almost every day, usually with a teenage girl, and sure enough, they showed up today.”

  “What if the person you talked to mentions to McNally that someone’s looking for him?” Louise asked sharply.

  “I don’t think they will. I gave them a glimpse of a badge—no one ever asks to see it up close—and implied that the authorities would be none too pleased if the fat guy got wind of any interest in him.”

  “Very good,” said Louise.

  “He’s driving an older SUV—too old to be a rental. If he’s bought a car, seems like they’re planning on staying for a little while.”

  “His vehicle is still in the shed in back,” interrupted Louise. “We need to get rid of that.”

  “Yeah, I’ll work on that when I get back.”

  “All right.”

  “They’re staying in a house nearby. I can’t find any reference to it on the home rental sites, and I don’t believe McNally owns it, so I figure it must belong to a friend.”

  “What are they doing there?”

  “I just located them and the house a little while ago. I haven’t had a chance to find out.”

  “Well, keep an eye on them and let me know what they’re up to.”

  “Yeah,” said Millard, in a voice that made it clear he didn’t need to be told.

  Louise addressed Millard but turned her eyes to Mitchell. “George, now that we know where McNally and Ballard are, I think it’s working well to have you there to keep an eye on them, and for Mitchell to stay here with me for the time being.”

  “Sounds good to me,” said Millard.

  Mitchell nodded. “Yes, all right.”

  “Let me know what you find out, George,” Louise said, and ended the call. She turned to Mitchell. “We’ll wait to hear from George. We need to be patient, and we need to be careful. We’ve gotten away with Brashear’s murder. We need to get away with two more.”

  20

  “I’m going to yoga class,” said Lizzy to Owen as she headed for the door.

  “Again? Didn’t you just go to yoga class yesterday?”

  “Yes. But I like it a lot. I think I’m getting a lot out of it.”

  “Well, if you’re going to have a teenage obsession, yoga is certainly a wholesome choice,” he said agreeably.

  Lizzy ran down the steps to the driveway and strapped her yoga mat to the back of her bike. She coasted to 89A, then pedaled east, toward Uptown Sedona, skimming past Namaste Yoga and Meditation, her professed destination.

  Owen had contacted his colleague in Phoenix for therapist recommendations, and then got pulled into an all-consuming professional discussion about nature versus nurture. While the multiday debate raged, Lizzy returned to her own search for alternatives and found what she thought was a promising option. She showed her finding to Owen.

  “That’s interesting,” he said. “But just give me another day or two, Pumpkin, and I’ll find you a real therapist. Or,” he said, glancing at the website, “a counselor with some sort of recognized certification.”

  As she approached Uptown Sedona, the view to her right—the green and gold brush of the valley leading the eye to the jagged red peaks in the distance—began to disappear behind the stores and businesses catering to Sedona’s visitors. They strolled along tree-shaded sidewalks lined with Southwestern-themed art galleries, clothing shops, jewelry stores, and restaurants, or sunned themselves on the eastward-facing balconies of hotels.

  She approached the point just before the last stores gave way again to desert scrub as 89A met up with Oak Creek and began its increasingly green path up Oak Creek Canyon. She pulled her bike to the side of the road in front of a building whose stone facade and hacienda-style covered porch blended pleasingly with its stunning red rock backdrop. The building housed two businesses—a leather store on the left and, on the right, the business whose website she had shown to Uncle Owen: Philip Castillo, Psychic Counselor.

  She chained her bike to a fence in back of the building, then walked to the front. A sign behind the glass panes of the door read Walk Ins Welcome. A small wooden box attached to the wall held brochures. She pulled one out and read the same information she had read on the website and shown to Uncle Owen.

  Take advantage of the positive energy of the Red Rocks of Sedona to access your own limitless potential! Only your self-doubt holds you back from achieving the goals you aspire to, or from overcoming the barriers that are standing in your way. Psychic Counselor Philip Castillo can help you recognize and tap into your own power—the power to achieve your dreams.

  The photo on the brochure showed a man in his early thirties, with longish black hair combed back from dark eyes and a sun-weathered face. He looked directly at the camera, his mouth turned up in a slight smile.

  She slipped the brochure into her knapsack. She wasn’t going to wait around for Uncle Owen’s professional debate to run its course. She was an adult—or almost. She was the one who had gotten them into this mess. It was only right that she should be the one to find a way to get them out of it.

  She stepped into a waiting room furnished with a rustic bench and the half-circle pigskin chairs she had learned from Uncle Owen were called Equipale—“the Southwest’s snub to people my size,” as he described them. Complexly woven rugs hung on the walls, and kachina dolls stood on shelves in the corners of the room. A colorful striped curtain covered a door leading to the back. Native American flute music played softly on an old CD player.

  She heard steps from the back room and the man from the brochure stepped through the curtained door.

  “Miss Patrick?”

  Elizabeth Patrick was the name she had used to sign up for her yoga class and for the unsuccessful visit with the therapist, the only other times she had had to provide a last name since leaving Pennsylvania.

  “Yes. Please call me Elizabeth.”

  “Certainly, Elizabeth. I’m Philip.”

  He stepped to the door and turned the sign to display Session in Progress - Please Stop Back Later. He glanced out the door. “Did you come with anyone?”

  “No. Just me.”

  He hesitated. “I usually lock the d
oor so people don’t come in while we’re talking,” he said. “Is that okay?”

  “Sure,” said Lizzy.

  Philip flipped the lock, then held back the curtain leading to the back room.

  It was windowless and darker than the sunlit front room. A woven rug softened the wooden floor, a low bookshelf along one wall was topped with Indian pottery. On the wall was a large painting on what looked like old paper or cloth. Its detail, an inked grid of red-bordered orange lines overlaid with human figures and undulating black shapes, was indistinct in the dim light. Two of the Equipale chairs faced each other across a narrow table. He gestured her into the one closer to the door and circled the table to the other chair.

  “Can I get you something to drink? Tea? Water?”

  “That’s okay, I brought some water with me,” she said, pulling a bottle out of her knapsack.

  Philip sat in the facing chair. “I normally ask people to turn their cell phone off since it can be distracting if it rings during our session, but you can do whatever you find comfortable.”

  “That’s no problem,” she said. She pulled her phone out of her pocket and switched it off.

  “So,” said Philip, “what can I help you with?”

  “I found you online. Psychic counseling sounds interesting. And useful.”

  “Do you have a psychic issue you’re wrestling with?”

  She laughed nervously. “Doesn’t everyone?”

  “Everyone should, but not everyone does. Or recognizes it.”

  Lizzy’s hand drifted to the bear pendant at her throat.

  “Blaming yourself for something?” he asked.

  She started. “Why do you ask that?”

  He gestured toward her necklace. “The Zuni bear.”

  She dropped her hand. “Isn’t everyone?”

  He laughed. Not the deep, harsh laugh she would have expected from his speaking voice, but a light, happy sound. “Everyone should be,” he said, “but not everyone does. Or recognizes it.”

  She smiled tentatively at him.

  “I …” She had planned to use the same “I want to be more in control” line she had used on the therapist, but was suddenly unwilling to risk a repeat of that conversation. “My dad died recently,” she said, surprising herself.

  “I’m very sorry to hear that,” he replied, his eyes softening.

  Lizzy wiped her nose with the back of her hand, and Philip moved a box of tissues from a shelf behind him to the table.

  Lizzy pulled out a tissue and blotted her nose. “Thanks.”

  “How recently?” asked Philip.

  “December fifth.”

  “It’s never easy to lose a parent, but it’s especially tough around the holidays.”

  Lizzy blew her nose. “It wasn’t much of a holiday.”

  “No, I wouldn’t think so.”

  He moved a wastepaper basket next to the table and she tossed the tissue into it.

  “Are you here with your mom?” he asked.

  Lizzy pulled another tissue from the box. “No. My mom’s dead.”

  Philip knit his brows but remained silent.

  “She died a long time ago. When I was seven.” Her hand crept to the Zuni pendant again.

  “Do you blame yourself for your mother’s death?” he asked.

  She smiled wanly at him and dropped her hand. “Now I know how you’re doing that.”

  He smiled back at her. “I gave away my trick.”

  She sat back in the chair and sighed. She ran her hand up the back of her shorn red hair. “My mom was sick. She had had a lot of little strokes, and … I behaved in a way that made her situation a lot worse.”

  She expected to hear some variation of the response she had always heard from her father, Uncle Owen, and Ruby: that she had been a child, that she couldn’t have known what effect she was having on her mother, that she couldn’t blame herself for what had happened. But Philip merely said, “That would be a hard thing to live with.”

  They sat in silence for a few moments, then Philip asked, “And your father’s death—do you feel responsible for that, too?”

  She nodded slowly. “Yes. Not in the same way, but … yes.”

  “It’s a heavy burden for a young woman to bear.”

  They sat in silence again, then Philip asked, “You’re not here in Sedona by yourself, are you?”

  Lizzy shook her head. “No, I’m here with my uncle. Actually, he’s my godfather, but I call him Uncle Owen.”

  “Do you get along with Uncle Owen?”

  She smiled. “Oh, yeah. He’s a great guy. And he would do anything for me. I love him a lot.”

  “Have you spoken with him about how you feel about your parents’ deaths?”

  “Yeah. He doesn’t blame me for what happened to my parents, but it doesn’t really help me feel better about it.” She picked at a loose thread on the sleeve of her blouse. “Are your parents still around?”

  Philip shook his head. “No. My mother also died when I was young, and my father disappeared a few years later.”

  “I’m sorry to hear about your parents.” After a moment, she sat forward. “I didn’t really mean to talk about my mom and dad. The reason I came is that …” She took a deep breath. “I want to be more in control. So I don’t hurt people the way I hurt my mom. I can’t explain how. I can just say that being more in control will help.” She pulled the brochure out of her knapsack. “‘Only your self-doubt holds you back from achieving the goals you aspire to, or from overcoming the barriers that are standing in your way,’” she read, then looked up. “I want to set aside my self-doubt and overcome my barriers.”

  Philip laughed softly. “Then I guess you came to the right place. Why don’t you tell me a little bit about yourself.”

  Lizzy told him.

  Without naming any of the locations, she described her early years in a fashionable suburban town outside a large city. She described the need, although not the reason, for the move to a remote vacation cabin with her mother, and the circumstances, although not the cause, of her mother’s death. She described the subsequent move with her father to a less fashionable town outside the same large city, and made a vague reference to the attempted Christmastime trip to one city that ended abruptly in another.

  She made no reference at all to her kidnapping by Louise Mortensen and Gerard Bonnay, or to her rescue by Uncle Owen, Andy McNally, and Ruby DiMano. In the version she shared with Philip, her next stop after the aborted Christmas trip was an unidentified rural town, and from there through various interim destinations before arriving in Sedona. As she spoke, she realized she had never had to tell anyone about her life, because the few people in her small circle had been part of that life as she was living it.

  She paused to decide where to go from there, then gave a start. “What time is it?”

  Philip glanced at his watch. “Two-fifteen.”

  “I’ve gone over my time. I only brought enough money for half an hour.”

  “That’s fine—I was interested in what you had to say.”

  She got the money out of her knapsack and handed it to Philip. “Can I come back for another session?”

  “Of course.”

  “I’m not sure when I’ll be able to get back.”

  “Just call me when you’re ready.”

  She stood. “Thanks. That was helpful.” She paused. “Although I didn’t give you a chance to say much.”

  “Sometimes just talking helps. Sometimes hearing the words out loud can put things in a different perspective that enables you to see options you didn’t see before. Plus, I’d like to think over what you told me anyway.” He held the curtain back for her and followed her into the waiting room. “You’re not from around here, are you?”

  “No.”

  “Where do you come from?”

  She hesitated. “Florida.”

  “Oh, yeah? Whereabouts?”

  “The Keys.”

  He laughed. “Really? I didn’t think an
yone who was actually from the Keys ever left.”

  She smiled weakly. “I guess a lot don’t.”

  “I love the Ferris wheel in Marathon.”

  “Yeah, it’s a good one.”

  He opened the door for her and looked out at the few parking spaces—all empty—in front of the building.

  “Did your uncle drop you off?”

  “I have a bike, it’s parked in back. I used to have to walk everywhere, but anymore I can ride.”

  She went to the back of the building, unlocked her bike, and started her ride back to West Sedona.

  It had been a relief to talk to someone about her situation, even if she had to disguise the details. In fact, despite the fact that she had given Philip Castillo little opportunity to exercise his counseling skills, she felt more optimistic than she had in months. But she was pretty sure that Uncle Owen wouldn’t be quite as enthusiastic as she was. As uncomfortable as lying to Owen made her, she would wait to tell him about her sessions with Philip until she could decide herself if they were what she was looking for.

  21

  Lizzy was making scrambled eggs for dinner. When she and Owen had settled into their borrowed house in Sedona, she had wanted to pull her weight—no pun intended, she added hastily, for Owen’s benefit—and decided she would share the dinner preparation responsibilities.

  She discovered she was woefully unprepared—her mother, her father, or Ruby, when she was working as the Ballards’ housekeeper, had done the cooking when Lizzy was growing up—so Owen was giving her some cooking lessons. She had made a mess of a pork roast, and they had decided to go back to the basics.

  She put a plate of eggs—two for her, four for Owen—at each place, next to plates of toast and bacon and a small bowl of jam. She brought a pitcher of orange juice from the fridge and filled the juice glasses. She had decorated the table with a centerpiece—a small potted cactus that usually lived on the patio—and had folded the napkins into fans based on a video she found online.

  Owen sat down. “Doesn’t this look nice,” he said appreciatively.