Deadly Stakes

by J. A. Jance

  “Not really. Most people come and go in a matter of weeks. I’ve been here for about six months. I think Ms. Mattson is the only one who was here longer than Mason.”

  “How did you end up at the Mission?” Ali asked, changing the subject. She more than half expected a fudged response. Instead, Regina’s answer was straightforward.

  “I got six months for domestic violence. When I got out, my roommate hadn’t paid the rent on our apartment. She had taken off with all my stuff. I was left with nothing and nowhere to live. The Mission was the last place I wanted to be, but it was also the only place I could go. While I was here, Ms. Mattson found out I could type, and gave me a job. I’ve worked here ever since, answering phones and doing whatever else Ms. Mattson needs.”

  “So the Mission takes both men and women?”

  “Yes, but our rooms are on different floors. The men are on floors one and two; women are on floor three; and no staying-over privileges. You get caught on the wrong floor, and you are O-U-T! Ms. Mattson is very strict about that.”

  “Is there anything else you can tell me about Mr. Sanders?” Ali asked.

  “He was smart. He read books. He could have worked anywhere. He stayed here because he liked it and because it gave him a sense of purpose. He liked helping people, and he made the Mission a better place. Oh, and he smoked, but always outside. There’s a little picnic table out back for us smokers. That’s where he smoked, too . . .” Regina’s voice faded away momentarily. “Wait. I almost forgot. One day last week, I was outside having a smoke when a limo pulled up outside. A real live limo—a white stretch. We don’t see many of those around this neighborhood. I thought maybe it was someone who had taken a wrong turn going to the wedding chapel up the street, but just then Mason came hotfooting it out the front door. The back door of the limo opened, he got in, and they drove away. I asked him about it the next day. He said it was a friend of his from a long time ago who had stopped by to say hello.”

  “Do you know what day this was?”

  “Wednesday, maybe?”

  “And what time?”

  “In the afternoon. During my last break, so it must have been around four. I was surprised he was taking off early like that, but I’m sure Ms. Mattson knew about it. Not much gets past her.” Another phone rang in the background. “I need to answer that,” Regina said. “Do you want me to have Ms. Mattson call you when I hear from her? It may not be until sometime next week.”

  “Sure,” Ali said. She read off her number. “She can call me, or I’ll get back to her.”

  When Regina hung up, Ali felt as though she had caught wind of a tiny thread of James Sanders’s story—gambling tokens from the MGM Grand, a limo, and a visit from an old friend. Maybe if she tugged on that thread hard enough, the whole thing would unravel.

  With that, she left the conference room and went looking for Stuart Ramey.

  13

  What’s wrong with you?” Sasha Miller wanted to know. “You’ve been like on the moon for days.”

  A.J., who had been dozing with his head on the Camry’s headrest, opened his eyes and looked at his girlfriend of three months. After two mostly sleepless nights, the warmth of the sun-filled car had lulled him. His peanut-butter-and-jelly sandwich lay half eaten on the leg of his jeans.

  He straightened up, grabbed the sandwich, and took another bite. “Sorry,” he said. “It’s nothing.”

  The presence of Sasha in his life was one of the unintended consequences of A.J.’s having his own set of wheels. Having his own car had greatly expanded his social milieu. Before the Camry, he’d been limited to places where he could walk or hitch a ride with one of his neighborhood pals. Back when he’d had to suffer the indignity of riding his bike home from work at Walgreens, the possibility of ever having a girlfriend had been nothing more than a pipe dream. Now the dream had come true, and Sasha Miller was a huge part of A.J.’s life—another part that his mother knew nothing about.

  Sasha definitely hailed from outside his neighborhood. Her sprawling family home on Missouri was almost a mansion in comparison with the Sanderses’ small but tidy bungalow. Sasha came from a privileged background, with an insurance-executive father, a stay-at-home mother, and three younger sisters. Sasha could have been a spoiled brat, but she wasn’t. She was bright, funny, and fun. She was also black; well, partially black. That was something A.J. was prepared to tell his mother eventually, but not right now. Again, not an outright lie, but one of those sins of omission.

  Although attending a private high school had been one of Sasha’s options, she had elected to come to North High to take advantage of the Advanced Placement courses available through the International Baccalaureate program. She drove to and from school in a two-year-old BMW that had been given to her, fresh off a yearlong lease, for her sixteenth birthday.

  The difference in their wheels—her shiny BMW versus A.J.’s less flashy Camry—testified to the disparity in family income and economic status. Yes, they had both gotten cars for their sixteenth birthdays, but A.J. had never mentioned to Sasha that his had been an unexpected gift from a mostly absent father who also happened to be an ex-con. And even though his father’s treasure-hunt letter was the reason A.J. hadn’t slept for the better part of two nights, he didn’t mention his father to her now, either. Not that A.J. thought Sasha would care about his father one way or another, but he wasn’t so sure about her family. The Millers attended church services two to three times a week, and A.J. had convinced himself that having an ex-con counterfeiter turn up in his family tree would be the ultimate deal-breaker.

  A.J. and Sasha had met in Mr. Cotton’s trigonometry class, where they were both star pupils, and they had been unofficially hanging out ever since the school year started. Because their classmates regarded them as something of an odd couple, they steered away from the cafeteria at lunchtime and ate their sack lunches in either his car or hers.

  “It’s not nothing,” Sasha insisted, scanning his face with her penetrating brown-eyed stare. “Tell me.”

  He wanted to tell someone about his father’s improbable letter and to find out whether other people thought it was for real. He wanted to tell someone about the horror of having that woman die right there in front of him. He wanted to, but he couldn’t.

  “Just some stuff with my mom,” he said.

  Sasha rolled her eyes at him and shook her head, making her beaded cornrows rattle.

  “Come on,” he added. “It’s almost time for the bell.”

  Half an hour later, during trig, A.J.’s cover was blown when Mr. McArthur, the assistant principal, summoned him to the office. All the way there, A.J. was sure someone had figured out that his excuse was a forgery. When he walked into the principal’s office and found his mother waiting for him, he was even more convinced that he was toast. One look at her face let him know she was beyond upset.

  “Mom,” he said, doing his best to play dumb. “What’s the matter?”

  “It’s your father,” Sylvia said, rising from her chair and coming to meet him. “James has been murdered. The police came by my office a little while ago to let me know.”

  A.J. felt his knees buckle. “Where?” he said, staggering to a nearby chair. “When? How?”

  Somehow he suspected he knew the answer to his question even before she told him.

  “Up near Camp Verde someplace,” Sylvia answered. “Officers were investigating another homicide and found James’s body nearby. At this point there’s no way of knowing if he was involved in what went on with the other victim—a woman. They’re still trying to sort that out. I wanted to come here to tell you so you wouldn’t find out on your own.”

  A.J. nodded numbly, thinking about the dying woman and the light going out of those brilliant green eyes. Was this the time when he should admit that he had been there, too? Was this the time to say that he was the one who had sent the text to 911 to try to summon help for her? The problem was, A.J. knew that if he did so, his carefully constructed house of
cards would crumble. His mother would know he had been in touch with his father behind her back. She would learn about the forged excuse; so would the school. At the very least, he’d probably receive a suspension. He’d end up having to tell the cops that lame story about his father’s supposedly buried treasure. If his father was dead, chances are the pipe dream about his father’s promised money easing his way through college was probably gone, too. More than that, if A.J. admitted to having been at the crime scene, the cops might think he had something to do with the woman’s death. As for Sasha? Having her find out the truth about any of this just wasn’t an option. Looking at his mother’s anxious face, A.J. made up his mind.

  “What happened to him?”

  “The cops told me he was shot at close range,” Sylvia said.

  “You said someone else was dead, a woman,” A.J. managed. “Do the cops think he has something to do with what happened to her? Was my father a killer?” His voice cracked as he asked the last question.

  “The officer I spoke to hinted that might be the case,” Sylvia replied, “but I don’t believe it. Not at all. James did plenty of questionable things in his time, but I can’t believe he’d be involved in a homicide. I never once knew him to be violent.”

  A.J. was thinking about the shovel he had left behind at the crime scene. He was thinking about his damning fingerprints on the cell phone.

  “I know you barely knew your father, but this has to come as a terrible shock,” his mother began, studying his face. “If you want to go home—”

  A.J. hopped up out of his chair. “No,” he said quickly. “I should probably get back to class. We’ve got a big test tomorrow.”

  His mother looked a little surprised. “All right,” she said. “But if you don’t want to go to work this afternoon, I understand. I’ll be glad to call Maddy to let her know you won’t be in today.”

  “It’s okay,” he said. “I’ll be fine, and I need to go to work.”

  The truth was, he dreaded being at home with his mother. That would be far worse than going to work.

  He made his way back to class. Sasha, seated two rows away, caught his eye as he returned to his desk.

  A.J. sank into his chair and covered his face with one hand. He knew he would have to tell Sasha the truth sometime, and when he did, it would all be over.

  Maybe that was just as well.

  When the bell rang, she caught up with him before he made it to the corridor. “What’s wrong? And don’t try telling me it’s nothing.”

  “It’s my father,” A.J. said softly after a long pause. “He’s dead.” Then, to his horror and as much as he tried to keep it from happening, he began to cry.

  14

  As soon as Ali located Stuart’s office, tucked in the far corner of what was a former warehouse facility, she understood why he had sequestered her in the conference room. For one thing, he evidently lived in his office. Rumpled bedding on an army cot was half hidden behind a cloth-and-wood screen covered with Post-it notes and an impressive collection of pizza coupons. The room was in semi-darkness, and the air was thick with the perfume of pizza.

  Stuart sat at one of a bank of computers in the middle of the room with a pizza box at his elbow. He looked up at her in surprise as she entered the room, then shoved the box in her direction. “Lunchtime,” he said. “Want some?”

  “No, thanks,” she said. “I think I have a lead. I have reason to believe that James Sanders recently came into a sum of money, so maybe the idea of him being hired to make a hit isn’t so far from the mark.”

  She went on to relate everything Regina had told her, including the fact that James had most likely used a work-based computer for both e-mail and telephone communications. Stuart listened, nodding absently while keeping one eye on the data flashing across the screen of the computer in front of him. It would have been easy for Ali to think that he wasn’t paying attention, but she knew he was.

  “There are a lot of stretch limos in Vegas,” he said when Ali finished her recitation. “So that doesn’t help us much, but knowing the token came from the MGM Grand might. Thousand-dollar tokens aren’t handed over to every Tom, Dick, and Harry who wanders in off the Strip. And the casinos take their security arrangements very seriously. It’s my understanding that they video everything—every hallway, every entrance, every table. And unlike the folks running the local traffic cams, casinos keep everything they video on a permanent basis. What day was that again?”

  “Regina said she saw the limo on Wednesday a week ago. The limo picked Sanders up about four P.M. We don’t know that they went directly to the hotel. That’s just an educated guess.”

  “But the guy in the limo was evidently expected,” Stuart said. “That means there must be some point of contact that we’ll be able to find. Is it possible Dr. Ralston made a quick trip to Vegas last week? Let’s say that’s who the guy in the limo was—Charles Ralston. If that’s the case, somewhere along the line, we’re going to find some communications links between them. Let me work on this for a while. In the meantime, I’ve got something else that may interest you.

  “James Mason Sanders married Sylvia Ruth Bixby on June sixteenth, 1996, a few days after she graduated from high school. The wedding was a little late, since their baby, Alexander James, who just turned seventeen himself, was born less than three months later. The wedding took place just before the whole counterfeiting mess started to come apart. I found records of the marriage but no sign of a divorce.”

  “So it was a shotgun wedding, but she stayed married to him the whole time he was in prison and even after he got out?” Ali asked.

  Stuart nodded. “As far as I can tell, they stayed married then and were still married when he died.”

  “That’s taking the words ‘for better or worse’ very seriously, with a lot more worse than better.”

  “I’ll say,” Stuart agreed. “I checked public records in Nevada, too, just in case Sanders instituted divorce proceedings there. No such luck. As for the kid? As far as I can tell, he’s okay. Alexander is a senior honors student at North High School in Phoenix, where he’s taking lots of Advanced Placement courses. His mother may have been on her own the whole time, but she’s done something right in raising him.”

  Ali’s phone rang. When she saw the number, she left Stuart’s office and took the call in the corridor.

  “You have got to be kidding me!” Dave Holman exclaimed. “Are you really working for the public defender?”

  He spoke in a way that registered in Ali’s ear as an audible sneer. He didn’t utter the words “How could you?” aloud, but the message was there nonetheless.

  “I’m actually doing a project for Lynn Martinson’s mother,” Ali said. That was the truth, if not the whole truth.

  “Lynn Martinson is a suspect in a homicide in this jurisdiction,” Dave pointed out, his voice flat with anger. “And you’re a reserve officer. When I came by your place last night, I thought I was speaking to a fellow officer. It never occurred to me that I was talking to someone on the other side.”

  “When you were there last night, there was no other side—” Ali began, but Dave cut her off before she had a chance to finish.

  “I’ve just been on the phone with Sheriff Maxwell. He’ll be expecting your letter of resignation before the end of business today.”

  With that, Dave hung up. Ali was left with a dead phone in her hand and a puncture wound in her heart as well as her pride. Her primary responsibility as a reserve deputy had been to help transport prisoners from one jurisdiction or facility to another. The use of reserve deputies helped keep patrol officers where they needed to be—on patrol.

  Ali hadn’t intended to offend Dave, and so far she had done nothing to undermine his investigation. His reaction seemed over-the-top. She had seen the situation with Beatrice Hart and Paula Urban as a temporary arrangement. She hadn’t expected it to be something that would undo years of established relationships, but it sounded as though irreparable damage had
already been done. If Sheriff Maxwell was expecting her resignation, she would give it to him.

  Ali called home to let Leland and B. know that she was on her way to Prescott. Before she headed out, she stuck her head back in Stuart’s office and gave him the same information. “If you come up with anything,” she said, “call me. I’ll probably drop in on Paula Urban while I’m in Prescott and let her know what we have so far.”

  It should have taken an hour and fifteen minutes to get from Cottonwood to Prescott. She did it in just over an hour and considered herself lucky not to have a speeding ticket to show for her trouble. She pulled up in front of the Sheriff’s Department and parked in a designated visitor’s spot. After all, if she was being given her walking papers, that’s what she was—a visitor.

  During her brief stint as a media relations officer, her office had been temporarily shoehorned into a corner of the front lobby, which had done nothing to endear her to the front-office clerks who felt their territory had been invaded. That had all changed.

  The revamped media relations department, with Ali’s onetime intern Mike Sawyer in charge, was no longer housed in the lobby. All evidence of the previous arrangement had been eradicated. The cubicle where Ali’s desk once sat was long gone. In its place was a long chest-high counter stocked with a supply of forms that could be filled out and passed to the clerks through a bank teller–like opening in their Plexiglas shield. Ali paused long enough to grab one of the forms. Using the back, she scrawled off a one-sentence note of resignation and then made her way to the service window.

  Holly Mesina, the head clerk, greeted her with a knowing smirk. “The sheriff is expecting you,” she said. “Do you need someone to show you the way?”

  “No,” Ali said. “I believe I can manage.”

  With that, Holly pressed the button unlocking the door that accessed the department’s interior offices. There was no one seated at the secretary’s desk outside Sheriff Maxwell’s open door, so Ali walked up to the door and tapped on the doorjamb. Gordon Maxwell sat leaning back in his desk chair while a Mozart piano concerto played through the speakers on his computer. The moment Ali knocked, he sat up and stifled the music.