Betrayal of Trust by J. A. Jance Page A

be done. On that occasion Ross’s reaction to my showing up beside his bed of pain had been to tell me to get the hell out in no uncertain terms. It was another three months before he finally picked up the phone himself and called to ask for help.
    Note to people with loved ones on that thorny path: You can’t make them be ready to ask for help, and there are no high bottoms. Low bottoms are what it takes for people to decide they want to get better.
    â€œTop of the evening to you, Mr. and Mrs. Beaumont,” Iris said.
    I wasn’t sure about Iris’s age, but she was evidently from a generation that didn’t hold with women hanging on to either their maiden or their previously married names. Mel raised an eyebrow at that but let it pass.
    â€œRight this way,” Iris added. “Himself is in his office.”
    Lars Jenssen, my grandmother’s widower, a retired Alaskan halibut fisherman, speaks with a Norwegian accent that is thicker on the phone than it is anywhere else, except when he’s in the company of other retired Norwegian halibut fishermen. Then he’s barely understandable.
    As Iris led us to Ross’s home office, I couldn’t help wondering about her Irish brogue. Was it real or was it something she cultivated and put on occasionally, when it suited her, along with the gray uniform and dainty white apron?
    She motioned us into the room. I was glad to see that the old teacher’s desk that had once graced Ross’s turret office in the Water Street house had made the transition from one place to another, most likely with an interior designer dying a thousand deaths in the process.
    Ross stood up and shook our hands in greeting. “Have you eaten?” he asked. “If you’re hungry, Mrs. O’Malley here whipped up her standard lemon-and-vanilla Irish curd cakes earlier this afternoon.”
    â€œThanks,” I said, “but Julie Hatcher made sure we didn’t go away hungry.”
    He smiled and shook his head. “I’ll say one thing for that girl, she sure can cook. Something to drink then?”
    Between the governor’s mansion and Todd Hatcher’s place, I’d had enough iced tea to float a battleship. Mel must have been in the same condition.
    â€œNo, thanks,” she said. “We’re good.”
    â€œAll right then, Mrs. O’Malley,” Ross said. “That’s all. Thank you, and good night.”
    Mrs. O’Malley tottered off, and Ross gestured us into a pair of high-backed leather chairs. Unlike the desk, the derelict recliner from his old office hadn’t survived the move, so the interior designer had won at least one round.
    â€œI’m assuming those are the evidence boxes?” he asked as I placed them on the desk.
    â€œYes,” I said. “We thought you’d want to see what we picked up.”
    Once again we donned gloves. Once again we removed what was in the boxes and went through it item by item.
    â€œTodd made copies of everything on his computer’s hard drive,” Mel explained when we got to the laptop. “There might have been other files on an external drive or online storage, but we didn’t find any evidence of an additional drive.”
    â€œAnd he’s working on the phone records?” Ross asked.
    â€œHe’ll be working on extracting a photo from the video first,” I said. “The phone records will be second. The way Todd works, I expect we’ll have a photo in hand first thing tomorrow morning.”
    â€œGood,” Ross said. “That’s the first step—identifying the victim.”
    There was no need for a comment from either Mel or me. We were both in full agreement. In a homicide investigation, once you have the name of the victim and/or a crime scene, everything else grows out of that.
    â€œSo what’s your read on the situation?” Ross asked. “With the governor’s grandson, that is.”
    Ross