Hand of Evil Read Online Free PDF

like the well-used rug in the foyer, these things, too, had a dated and somewhat shabby air. For a moment Ali felt as though she had wandered into a time capsule—a museum diorama devoted to some long faded glory—rather than into a house occupied by living, breathing inhabitants.
    All those small details, taken together, left Ali thinking that perhaps Arabella Ashcroft had fallen on hard times. Yes, there was a shiny Rolls-Royce stowed in the garage and it might well tool around town driven by a trusted family retainer who filled in as butler and chauffeur and probably chief cook and bottle washer as well, but the look of the place made Ali wonder if there weren’t times when Arabella Ashcroft had difficulty finding the wherewithal to fill the gas tank. Maybe, in the course of all those intervening years, there had been a complete reversal of fortunes between the well-to-do, sophisticated Ashcrofts and the awkward, small-town girl who had benefited from their largesse.
    The living room was considerably warmer than the foyer had been, and the air in the room was alive with the sharp scent of mesquite wood smoke and the crackle of a roaring fire. Roving wintertime burn bans may have caused most of Sedona’s wood-burning fireplaces to morph into ones fired by gas, but not this one.
    At the far end of the room, two overstuffed leather chairs sat in front of the immense river rock fireplace. What appeared to be a tree-size log blazed on the hearth. A gray-haired woman, dwarfed by the huge chairs, sat upright in one of them. In front of her, on a rolling cart of some kind, was the one thing in the room that didn’t quite fit—a sleek white computer monitor. Coming closer, Ali recognized the computer as an iMAC. The computer was almost identical to the one in Chris’s room and included a wireless keyboard and mouse.
    “Ms. Reynolds,” the butler announced with all due ceremony.
    The woman immediately moved the computer aside. Smiling and looking for all the world like her mother, Arabella Ashcroft stood to meet her arriving guest, pulling a shawl around her shoulders with one hand and offering the other one in greeting. Her dark gray hair was pulled back in a simple French roll. She peered at Ali through thick, eye-distorting horn-rimmed glasses. She wore a pair of slacks and a blue cashmere sweater with a matching cardigan. Her outfit was topped by a single strand of pearls. Ali guessed that the pearls, unlike Aunt Evie’s, were real, and she didn’t doubt for a minute that the sweater set had cost a bundle at one time, too. As they shook hands, however, Ali noticed that the wrist of one sleeve of the cardigan had been carefully mended. Not even Ali’s thrifty mother did that kind of mending anymore.
    “My goodness,” Arabella exclaimed, staring at Ali for a long moment. “How extraordinary! I had forgotten how much you resemble your Aunt Evelyn!”
    Ali Reynolds was Scandinavian on both branches of her family and had inherited a full complement of tall, blue-eyed blondeness that had served her well in her television news career. And she was accustomed to being told how much she resembled her mother just as Arabella Ashcroft favored hers. Ali wasn’t nearly as used to being told she looked like her Aunt Evelyn.
    “Since my mother and Aunt Evie were twins, I don’t suppose that’s too surprising,” Ali observed with a smile.
    “No,” Arabella agreed. “I suppose not. Please, sit down.”
    Ali sat and so did Arabella. During that previous visit, Arabella had lingered in the background while her mother did the talking. Now it appeared as though Arabella had come into her own and moved out of Anna Lee’s shadow.
    “Evie and I were good friends at one time,” Arabella continued wistfully. “We drifted apart the way friends sometimes do. Still, I was terribly saddened to hear of her passing.”
    The fact that Aunt Evie and Arabella Ashcroft had once been friends was news to Ali, but surprise was quickly