“Can’t you come home now?”

“I need to talk to my doctor and ask him.”

“But you are a doctor. Can’t you just tell him?”

Lani laughed and kissed the top of his head. “When you’re the patient, it doesn’t quite work that way.”

AS FAR AS DIANA LADD and Brandon Walker were concerned, the Tucson Festival of Books took a big hit on Sunday. After their Saturday from hell, Diana was an understandable no-­show at her Sunday panels and signings. And if anyone wondered why, all they had to do was take a look at the front page of the Arizona Daily Sun.

Besides, putting on a smiling face with her husband would have been a challenge, since Diana was barely speaking to the man. Yes, she was overjoyed that Brandon and Dan had found Lani and engineered her rescue, but she was not pleased that they had put themselves in danger. The only member of the team who wasn’t in the doghouse happened to be the dog. Bozo’s timely heroics left him entirely free of blame.

Amanda Wasser called Brandon late in the afternoon. “My father is out of the ICU,” she said. “His condition has been upgraded from guarded to serious.”

“Have you seen him?”

“Yes.”

“And?”

“His first words were ‘You look just like your mother.’ But that’s not why I called. I just got off the phone with Mr. Glassman. Ava Richland confessed.”

Brandon was astonished. “She did what?”

“The prosecutor agreed to take the death penalty off the table if she confessed to everything, and she did—­to Henry Rojas’s death, of course, but also to the murder of Amos Warren. She killed him so she could lay hands on his stuff, and she murdered Kenneth Mangum/Myers because he was trying to blackmail her. And then there’s the case of Clarence Hanover . . .”

“Wait, are you telling me that Ava murdered her first husband?”

“Yes, and she got away with that one, too. She pushed him into Pantano Wash during a flash flood. I guess she admitted to his homicide because her attorney convinced her that if anything else surfaced later on, her death penalty plea agreement would go away. In addition to that, she admitted to ordering the deaths of the José brothers and masterminding the prison riot scheme designed to cover the attacks on Max José and my father.”

“Does your father know about any of this?” Brandon asked.

“Not yet,” she answered. “I called you first.”

“Even with Ava taking responsibility, Big Bad John isn’t going to want to be released from prison,” Brandon warned her. “He’s worried about being a burden to you.”

“Mr. Glassman says that if all this works out, there should be some wrongful conviction funds to help with my father’s continuing care.”

“Back to Ava; you say Kenneth tried to blackmail her?”

“He may have pretended to be my father’s best pal, but it turns out he was also an accessory after the fact in Amos Warren’s homicide. Ava confessed that he helped her retrieve Amos’s vehicle from the crime scene. He also helped her remove Amos’s goods and transport them from his home as well as from the storage unit. I’m not sure why he bothered testifying on my father’s behalf at the first trial, since every word out of his mouth was a lie. Maybe his conscience was bothering him.”

Just then something else occurred to Brandon. “When I got to Ava Richland’s house yesterday afternoon, an ambulance was just taking her current husband, Harold, to the hospital. Did she try to do him in, too?”

“Probably not. It turns out she was far better off with him alive than dead. Harold’s son has created a complicated marital trust that would have left him running Ava’s show once Harold passes on. That’s most likely why she was leaving town. She’d put together a collection of smuggled diamonds that would have kept her in the manner to which she’d become accustomed. She was planning on going elsewhere and living under an assumed name—­several assumed names. It almost worked. If it hadn’t been for TLC and you, it might very well have worked.”

“It wasn’t just me,” Brandon objected. “A guy named J. P. Beaumont up in Seattle and his pal Todd Hatcher helped out, too.”

“How are the two boys doing?” Amanda asked.

“Gabe was released from the hospital early this morning. Tim is still there, but my daughter tells me he’ll be fine.”

“And your daughter?”

“She’s fine, too.”

“I’m so glad,” Amanda breathed. “I couldn’t have stood being responsible for anyone else coming to grief. I’ve done quite enough harm as it is.”

“You can’t blame yourself,” Brandon counseled. “None of this is your fault. Do the doctors say how long John will be hospitalized?”

“Most likely the better part of a week.”

“Let him know that I’ll be dropping by,” Brandon Walker said. “I hate to think of you sitting around in the hospital all by yourself.”

“I’m not by myself,” Amanda said. “A man from the prison is here with me. His name is Aubrey Bayless. He says he’s my father’s friend, and he’s going to hang around to make sure nothing else happens.”

I WAS AT THE AIRPORT waiting in the cell-­phone lot for Mel’s plane when Brandon Walker called to give me an overview of what had happened. I knew some of it already because Todd Hatcher had kept me apprised as to how things had played out the night before.

Ava’s confession to multiple murders, however, came as a complete surprise. There was a certain righ­teous­ness in the fact that Amanda Wasser, the daughter of the man Ava had framed for one of her own murders, was the one who ultimately brought her down. I liked that. It may have been justice delayed by decades, but it was far better than no justice at all.

“And Myers died because he tried to blackmail her?”

As I asked the question, I couldn’t help thinking about Calliope Horn-­Grover. She may have had her suspicions, but she still clung to the hope that the Kenneth Myers she had known was a good guy. She still wore the pendant he had given her. That left me in a dilemma. Would I tell her about the blackmail scheme or wouldn’t I? Would I reveal that, more than just knowing about something, he had been an active accomplice? Right at that moment, I couldn’t say for sure one way or the other. Sometimes we’re better off living with our illusions wavering but relatively intact than we are knowing the whole truth.

“That’s the story,” Brandon continued. “Last night, when they booked Ava into the Pima County Jail, they ran her prints through AFIS. The name Ava Hanover popped up in relation to an arrest on a reckless driving charge near Sacramento, California, on the second of May 1983. The police report there indicates she was trying to drive straight through from Seattle to Arizona and fell asleep at the wheel.”

“That gave her both motive and opportunity to kill Kenneth Myers,” I said.

“And now we have a confession,” Brandon added.

Call waiting sounded. I saw on the screen it was Mel. That meant her plane was on the ground.

“Hey, Brandon,” I said. “I’ve gotta go, but good on you. Sounds like you nailed her.”

“We all did, Mr. Beaumont. Thanks for your help.”

“Beau,” I told him. “Call me Beau.”

“Okay,” Brandon said. “Next time, I will.”

Mel had traveled with one carry-­on, so there was no need for her to wait around at the luggage carousel. On the drive back to Belltown Terrace, I repeated everything Brandon Walker had told me.

“Sounds like you and Todd Hatcher have been a pair of busy little bees while I’ve been gone,” she observed.

“Busy, yes,” I agreed, “and I’ll be the first to admit it’s been fun.”

“So on your first at-­bat with TLC, you obviously hit it out of the park,” Mel observed. “You saved a young woman’s life and took down someone who’s clearly a criminal mastermind.”

“Todd Hatcher is the one who hit it out of the park. All I did was put him in touch with Brandon Walker.”