Deadly Stakes

by J. A. Jance

  Sylvia shook her head. “I doubt that,” she said sadly. “James isn’t that kind of guy.”

  Her words proved prophetic. For over a year after that, A.J. saw and heard nothing from his father, not a single word. Then, the previous afternoon, when he got home from school, there had been a letter addressed to him, with no return address but postmarked Las Vegas, Nevada, waiting in the mailbox. The address on the envelope and the letter inside had been written in a tiny but legible cursive.

  Dear A.J.,

  Please burn this letter as soon as you read it. I’ll be leaving something for you. You’ll need a shovel to dig it up. Go up I-17. Just south of Camp Verde, take the exit to General Crook Trail. Instead of going east, go west. Just before the dead end, take the first left. It’ll be a dirt road, but the Camry should be fine. Follow that for six tenths of a mile. Exactly. Park there and then walk due north three hundred feet. You’ll see a boulder with a heart painted on it. Dig there, on the back side of it. You should probably make sure no one is following you when you go there.

  Because you’re underage, you might need some help accessing the funds, but you’re a smart kid. You’ll figure it out. You deserve to spend time paying attention to your studies and having some fun instead of working at that crappy job at Walgreens. Don’t tell Maddy I said that.

  Don’t thank me, and whatever you do, don’t tell your mother. She’ll try to make you give it back. If you’re cagey about it and only use the funds in dribs and drabs, no one will be the wiser, including your mother.

  Have a great life.

  Your father,

  James Sanders

  A.J. stood with the letter in his hand for a long time, trying to figure out if it was real or if it was James’s idea of some kind of practical joke. And what about those last four words—“have a great life”? Did that mean A.J.’s father was out of his life forever, that he had seen James Sanders for the very last time?

  Eventually, before his mother came home, A.J. did what he’d been told to do. After memorizing the instructions, he took the letter out into the alley behind the house, burned it, and then ground the ashes into the dirt. As the match flared and the paper caught fire, he remembered that old Mission: Impossible mantra: “This tape will self-destruct in five seconds.”

  Now, driving north as he’d been told to do, A.J. couldn’t ditch the idea that he was doing something stupid, all because of a father who evidently wanted very little to do with him.

  “Dumb and dumber,” A.J. muttered to himself. “Like father, like son.”

  3

  The persistent ringing of a cell phone was what roused Gemma Ralston from a cocoon of blessed unconsciousness. At first she thought it was the doorbell—that was the last thing she remembered, going to answer the door in the entryway of her spacious Paradise Valley town home. She tried to remember who had been there when she answered the door, but her mind seemed shrouded in cotton candy. As she came to her senses, she realized it wasn’t her cell phone, it was someone else’s—ringing nearby but with no one answering.

  She turned her head, trying to locate the source of the sound. She was astonished to find herself lying flat on her back on the ground, staring up at a clear blue sky with no idea where she was or how she had come to be there. Next to her was an old burned-out couch, with tufts of scorched, charred batting and rusty springs spilling out of the back and arms. Beyond that was what looked like an old dishwasher. A wrecked fridge lay on its side, its doors permanently opened. The ground was littered with trash—beer cans and broken bottles and moldering fast-food containers.

  The sun was bright overhead, but she knew it was cold because every time she breathed in or out she could see her breath. Somewhere in the far distance, beyond what looked like a scraggly clump of juniper trees, she could hear the rumble of heavy traffic—freeway traffic, most likely. Juniper trees meant she was miles from home, because juniper trees didn’t thrive in the Valley of the Sun.

  For a time she lay there, trying to clear her head and listening to the welcome sounds of civilization. Cars sped past, their tires whining on the pavement. Growling trucks, eighteen-wheelers probably, shifted gears up and down, but nothing in the passing traffic gave her any useful information. What the noisy traffic did tell her was that calling for help was useless. No one would be able to hear her voice.

  The phone, silent for what must have been a matter of minutes or maybe longer, rang again. Moving her head, Gemma could see it lying on the ground just out of reach, but when she tried to turn her body so she could grab it, nothing happened. Her arms and hands refused to obey her brain’s commands. They wouldn’t move. That was a shock. She couldn’t move—not at all. Not a finger; not a toe. Gritting her teeth, Gemma tried again, but again nothing happened. Tears of frustration spilled out of her eyes and rolled down her face. She could feel them slipping unchecked into her ears, but that was all she felt. The rest of her body told her nothing at all. She was alone, helpless, and trapped. For the first time it occurred to her that she might die. Once again she drifted into unconsciousness.

  When she awakened, more time had passed. On the far side of the sound of traffic, the sun had risen higher in the sky. Gemma Ralston was all too aware of how direct sunlight could ravage her pale skin. In her adult life, she never set foot outdoors without a coating of sunscreen. This time the sun wasn’t hot, but there was no shade from it, either—no protection. Already her bare arm—the little she could see of it—was turning bright pink.

  The growing warmth brought with it far worse torments than the possibility of sunburn: flies, swarms of them. They landed on her body. Other than twisting her head back and forth to keep them from landing on her face, she could do nothing to shoo them away. Horrified, she looked at her bare arm and saw a line of ants scrambling across her reddening skin. She couldn’t feel them, but she could see them and knew that soon they would be eating her alive. It was her worst nightmare, but at least she couldn’t feel it. At least not yet. She drifted off once more.

  The ringing phone awakened her again. Four rings this time, and then it quit. If only she could reach it and let someone know that she needed help—that she was badly hurt and maybe dying. She had enough of her wits about her to realize that if she were paralyzed, maybe dying was the best idea; better than spending the remainder of her life as a bedridden vegetable. She was terribly thirsty. Her tongue felt swollen. Even if she could have reached the phone, she doubted she’d be able to talk. With that, she drifted off.

  When the phone rang yet again, she didn’t bother opening her eyes. There was no point. If she didn’t look, she wouldn’t see the ants and flies that she knew were there. But then a miracle happened. The fog in her head cleared a little. She remembered who had rung the doorbell. Then she heard the sound of something other than the thrum of traffic. It was a male voice, speaking to her.

  “Hey, lady,” he said. “Are you okay?”

  She opened her eyes. A very tall young man was standing over her. Maybe he was an angel, but squinting up into the sun, which was now high overhead, she saw no sign of wings. He was batting at the flies milling around her and around him. That didn’t make sense. Why would flies bother an angel? Still, the horrified look on his face as he stared down at her spoke volumes. He reached down and brushed something off her. An ant, maybe? She wasn’t sure.

  “Help me,” she croaked, but the words came out more as a low moan, completely indecipherable. “Water. Please.”

  He backed away from her and disappeared momentarily from view. She was afraid he had abandoned her. “Don’t leave me. Please.”

  “You’re hurt,” he said, reappearing above her. “Hold on. There’s a phone here. I’m calling 911.”

  She closed her eyes, shutting out the blazing sunlight, but she heard the welcome sound of keys on a cell phone being punched. A moment later, he said, “Crap. No service. I wonder if a text would go through.”

  There was more key punching—lots of key punching. “Okay,” he sa
id. “I texted 911. They’re coming. Can you hang on? I’ve got some water in the car. I’ll go get it.”

  Gemma wanted to feel it in her throat, to taste it with her tongue; but more than water, more than anything, she didn’t want to be left alone. Before her rescuer walked away, she tried her best to tell him what she remembered, but she could feel herself drifting away again. Maybe this time there would be no coming back.

  4

  Even without a hard copy in hand, A.J. followed his father’s directions with no problem. Once he turned off the freeway, he had to cross a cattle guard, and before he could turn onto the nameless dirt track, he had to get out of the car, open a metal-framed gate, drive through, and then close it again. Once on the far side of the gate, he began measuring off the six tenths of a mile.

  The road was narrow and rough in places but drivable, even in the Camry. Garbage tossed out on the shoulders—beer cans, mostly—testified that it was a party spot, the kind of place favored by kids A.J.’s age to do their illegal drinking and smoking, probably all kinds of smoking. Truth be known, now that he and most of his friends had cars at their disposal, A.J. had done a modest amount of desert-style partying himself, not enough to get in trouble, as long as they didn’t get caught, but enough so that he recognized the landscape markers for what they were.

  He had covered almost the entire six tenths of a mile when the narrow road widened out into a small clearing. Obviously, the area had long been used as an illegal dump, with abandoned rusting appliances and a collection of rotting furniture scattered here and there in the rocky dirt. Because this was the first wide spot in the road, A.J. decided to park and then walk the rest of the way. There might not be a place to pull off properly when he reached his destination.

  He stopped next to the rusted hulk of what had once been a turquoise dishwasher. Remembering James’s none too subtle warning about the possibility of being followed, A.J. got out of the car and stood for a while, listening and watching the road behind him. All he heard was the low grumble of traffic roaring down I-17 half a mile or so away. Between there and the turn-off, there was no telltale plume of dust that would have revealed a vehicle tailing him to the appointed place. Only when he was sure he was unobserved did he open the trunk and pull out the shovel he had stowed there. That was when he heard an unexpected noise—the shrill jangling of a cell phone, ringing somewhere nearby.

  The hair prickled on the back of A.J.’s neck. With his heart hammering in his chest, he realized that whoever his father had been worried about most likely hadn’t followed him here. They must have learned about the destination well in advance, and they were already here, waiting for him to show his hand. His first panicky thought was to ditch the shovel. He quickly pushed it out of sight under the back of the car, then straightened up and looked around. At first he saw nothing. There were no other vehicles, but if someone were watching him, he had no intention of walking closer to the original target and giving away the location of the critical boulder. Instead, shoving his shaking hands deep in his pockets, he sauntered as casually as he could manage in the opposite direction.

  That was when he saw what looked like a lump of rags lying next to a burned-out hulk of a sofa with springs sticking out in every direction. At first he thought the pink he was seeing was a swath of material of some kind, like a long, thin scarf. It was only when he edged closer that he realized he was looking at a person, and the length of pink was actually a terrible sunburn on her long bare leg.

  She lay so still, breathing so shallowly, that at first A.J. thought she was already dead. Dried blood from a wound on her chest had burned black in the sun, with flies and ants both feasting on the appalling mess.

  “Hey, lady,” he said. “Are you okay?”

  To his surprise, a pair of green eyes fluttered open in the sun-blistered face. He reached down and brushed a single ant from her dried, cracked lip. Disturbed by his arrival, a cloud of frenzied flies swooped into the air. She made an awful sound of some kind, something he couldn’t understand. Looking around, he noticed the cell phone lying just beyond the reach of her outstretched fingers. He grabbed it up. It was all he could do to make his fingers dial the emergency number. When he punched send, however, the NO SERVICE notice showed up on the screen. There was enough of a signal for the phone to ring, but not enough to place a call.

  A.J. remembered someone telling him once that text messages sometimes went through when voice calls wouldn’t. He tried texting 911. Almost immediately, a text response appeared on the screen: “911. What are you reporting?”

  Typing with shaking fingers made for a slow, cumbersome process. It took a lot longer than it would have taken to say where he was and describe the situation, but eventually, he made it work. Only when the operator told him that help was on its way did he turn his attention back to the stricken woman. He explained to her that an ambulance was coming. It worried him that she couldn’t seem to move at all. The heartbreaking noises she made weren’t words, but he realized that she had to be terribly thirsty.

  “I’ve got some water in the car,” he told her. “I’ll go get it.”

  He was gone for only a matter of seconds—the time it took for him to race back to the Camry, retrieve the half-empty bottle of water he had left on the car seat, and make his way back. She needed water. Now wasn’t the time to wonder if she’d object to drinking from a bottle with his germs on it. By the time he returned to her side, however, he could tell it was too late for water.

  She tried to say something. “Dennis.”

  “Dennis,” he repeated. “Who’s that? Your boyfriend? Your husband?”

  She didn’t answer; she was gone. The light went out of the bright green eyes. Open and empty, they stared sightlessly into the blazing sun. For a moment, waiting to see if she would breathe again, A.J. found it hard to breathe himself. When she didn’t, he dropped both the cell phone and the open water bottle and fell to his knees beside her, agonizing about what he should do. He wondered if he should try to revive her, but compressing her chest would have meant burying his hands in the bloody mess, and he couldn’t bring himself to do that.

  A.J. was a month and a half past his seventeenth birthday, but this was the first time he had ever seen a dead person. Sure, he’d seen pretend dead people in movies and on TV shows, but never like this. He knelt there, sick and dizzy, as the breakfast burrito he had eaten at a fast-food joint in Black Canyon City threatened to erupt from his gut and the spilled water disappeared into the parched earth.

  A.J. stayed where he was, swaying on his knees, until he could breathe again; until he could quell his roiling stomach; until the sharp stones biting into his kneecaps got his attention. Then he staggered upright.

  He needed to think, and he needed to put some distance between the dead woman and himself. When his head cleared, he had only one thought—to get away. Once the emergency responders got there, to say nothing of the cops, there would be all kinds of questions: Was A.J. the one who had placed the 911 text? Who was the woman, and who was he? If he didn’t know her, what was he doing there? Why wasn’t he in school? Eventually, the whole story would come out—the lame story about his father’s fool’s errand to find a buried treasure. If that emerged, so would all of A.J.’s other secrets—the ones he’d been carefully keeping from his mother.

  Half sick to his stomach, he made it back to the car. Because he wasn’t thinking straight, he did something incredibly stupid. He turned the key in the ignition, shifted into gear, swung the Camry into a tight U-turn, and drove away. He was opening the metal gate to let himself back onto the highway intersection when he realized he had left the shovel behind. He was tempted to go back and get it, but he didn’t dare. Out here in the middle of nowhere, he had no idea how long it would take for emergency responders to arrive, but he was sure they were well on their way. If he went back for the shovel, they’d find him at the crime scene, and then he’d be stuck answering all those difficult questions. So he went through the gate, closed
it behind him, got back in his car, and drove like a bat out of hell.

  He hadn’t gone over a mile on the freeway when he saw the flashing lights of an approaching state patrol car speeding north on I-17. As the cop car flew past, siren blaring, A.J. breathed a sigh of relief. He had made the right decision in not going back for the shovel. Had he done so, they would have caught him there for sure.

  That was what he was thinking as he drove back to Phoenix with plenty of leeway for making it to work on time. No one had seen him come or go, and as long as he didn’t tell anyone about it, no one was likely to find out. All he had to do was keep his mouth shut. As far as his mother knew, he was at school, and when he turned in his excuse tomorrow, school would think he had been at home with a sore throat.

  It wouldn’t take long, however, for A. J. Sanders to realize how wrong he had been. It turned out that leaving the scene of the crime was the worst possible thing a Good Samaritan could have done, and once the cops did come looking for him, his entire future would be hanging in the balance.

  5

  Edie Larson’s election-night party in the rec room at Sedona Shadows should have been a disaster. After all, by the time the TV station in Flagstaff started scrolling election results across the bottom of the flat-screen TV on the wall, there was already a two-hundred-vote margin. As later results came in, that deficit narrowed, but not enough. The looming loss didn’t seem to bother Edie, and it had zero effect on her high spirits. It looked to Ali Reynolds as though her mother were having the time of her life.

  One of Bob Larson’s new friends, a fellow resident from Sedona Shadows, was providing the music. Mike Baxter, a mostly retired DJ, played his music the old-fashioned way—on vinyl records. He had been widowed after fifty-three years of marriage, and his kids had suggested that taking care of the family home was probably too much for him. Mike correctly read the situation and realized that his kids weren’t nearly so worried about upkeep on the old place as they were about seeing it turned into ready cash. They had wanted him to hand it off to an overeager residential developer who just happened to be his son’s good pal. Resisting what he regarded as underhanded pressure, Mike had opted to sell the place to someone else, back when suburban Chicago property values were booming. He then departed the Midwest, taking with him a neat profit in real estate as well as his primo collection of vinyl records, gathered one by one over sixty-plus years. Once in Arizona, he settled happily into a new downsized life that included several years with a new wife.