Deadly Stakes

by J. A. Jance

  “She was talking like that in front of her daughter?”

  Ali nodded.

  “That’s got to be tough on Molly,” B. offered.

  “You’re right,” Ali agreed, “especially since, if Chip ends up out of the picture, Molly’s the one who’ll be left shouldering most of Doris’s care. I get the feeling that there’s enough of a family fortune that she won’t have to be pinching pennies and worrying about keeping a roof over her mother’s head and food on the table, but dealing with a patient with dementia has to be incredibly challenging.”

  “Speaking of Chip being in or out of the picture, have you heard any word on the plea agreement?”

  “I talked to Paula briefly. According to her, Chip Ralston and Cap Horning are back-and-forthing on Chip’s proposed plea agreement. He’s upped his offer to plead to second-degree homicide as long as Lynn walks. In that scenario, Chip goes to prison, Lynn gets off but she doesn’t get her man, and Molly still ends up taking care of their mother.”

  “Lynn doesn’t get her man again,” B. added. “In other words, no happily-ever-afters for anyone concerned.”

  “Not so much,” Ali agreed.

  “What’s on your agenda for tomorrow?”

  “I have one more lead to track down tomorrow morning. Molly gave me the name of another one of their gal pals—Valerie Sloan. She and Gemma were supposed to play tennis on Tuesday. When Gemma was a no-show, Valerie’s the one who called in the missing persons report. I’m hoping that once I talk to her, Valerie may be able to fill in some of the blanks in Gemma’s social history. I feel like I’m missing something.”

  “What?”

  “Think about it. Chip Ralston’s marriage goes on the rocks, and he runs home to his mother’s place. He’s a well-known—make that nationally known—expert on the subject of Alzheimer’s, but he doesn’t have the balls to tell Lynn that his mother is following in Lynn’s father’s footsteps. Does this sound like a cold-blooded killer to you?”

  “I have to agree. More like a gutless wonder than a killer,” B. agreed. “But if Chip Ralston didn’t do it, why offer to take the plea?”

  “To protect Lynn, maybe?” Ali asked. “But she doesn’t strike me as much of a cold-blooded killer, either. She’s someone who’s been so traumatized by one bad relationship after another that she can’t even find a job, to say nothing of hold one.”

  “Who’s responsible, then?” B. asked. “The other dead guy? Maybe Sanders was a hired hit man who got cold feet and ended up being taken out by someone else.”

  “Which brings us back to square one, because hit men don’t come cheap,” Ali said.

  “Okay, so who would be footing the bill for a hired hit?”

  Ali shrugged. “According to what I’ve been able to find out, neither Chip Ralston nor Lynn Martinson is rolling in the dough. That’s why I want to talk to Gemma’s friend Valerie. There may be someone in her life that we don’t know about so far, including something that leads back to James Sanders. He’s the only one of the group who seemed to have plenty of cash to throw around at the moment. In the days before he died, he spent at least five thousand bucks with no clear indication of where it came from.”

  “In other words, for the time being, you keep looking for a possible connection.”

  Ali nodded. “Until either Paula Urban or Beatrice Hart tells me to back off. In the meantime, are we having dessert or another glass of wine?”

  “I say we skip both in favor of going back to the hotel.”

  Which they did. Ali was sound asleep the next morning when her phone rang. Searching for it on her bedside table, she discovered that B.’s side of the bed was already empty. Through the glass doors between the bedroom and the sitting room, she could see him on the sofa, laptop on his lap and phone to his ear. There was a coffee service sitting on the coffee table in front of him. The fact that he could be up and working while she was asleep was one of the very real advantages of having a suite.

  “I didn’t wake you, did I?” Stuart Ramey said on the phone.

  “You did,” Ali admitted, “but I needed to get moving. What’s up?”

  “I never was able to get a line on that limo,” Stuart said. “They must have gotten out of the vehicle before they got to the hotel entrance, but I sent their IT people a photo of James Sanders. They ran it through their facial recognition software, and voilà. They found both Sanders and the guy he was with.”

  “Who?”

  “His name’s Scott Ballentine. Turns out he’s a whale.”

  “A what?”

  “A whale. That’s what casinos in Vegas call the big hitters, the regulars who come in a couple of times a month and can afford to drop a fortune at the baccarat tables.”

  “Wait a minute,” Ali said. “Scott Ballentine. How come that name sounds so familiar?”

  “Because he’s one of James Sanders’s counterfeiting pals from back in the old days. He’s the guy who paid the fine and got off while Sanders went to prison. While James was in prison, Ballentine moved to California, where he invented some kind of medical device, made a fortune, and then went broke. A few months ago, he won a massive patent-infringement lawsuit, which means that he now has more money than God. At least that’s what his website says, and his favorite outing is in Vegas, at the MGM Grand, playing baccarat. My new BFF—the casino’s very capable IT lady, Laura Cameron—just sent me copies of the security tapes for the day in question, which I found most interesting,” Stuart continued. “Want me to send them to you?”

  “Please.”

  “Call me back after you take a look. I’ll send them to you in short order.”

  Ali hustled out of bed, grabbed a robe from the bathroom, and then joined B. in the sitting room. “I’m on hold,” he said, holding the phone away from his ear. “What’s up?”

  “Stuart’s sending me some videos,” she explained.

  By the time Ali had poured her own cup of coffee, three different files had come through, each of them loaded with a film clip. Ali went through them one at a time. In the first one, two men walked through what appeared to be the front entrance to the casino. In the first clip, Ballentine—dressed in a sport coat and tie—appeared to be carrying a leather briefcase. Sanders, dressed in what looked like khaki work clothes, was carrying something as well. Ali paused the clip several times, trying to get a better look. The object Sanders was carrying appeared to be made of metal. It was smaller than a briefcase but wider. Blockier.

  In the second clip, the two men were standing side by side at the counter of a cashier’s cage with a lighted neon sign saying BACCARAT glowing in the background. There was some wordless chatting between Ballentine and the cashier in the cage. Eventually, Ballentine opened the briefcase and removed a long, narrow piece of paper. He pushed it through the opening at the bottom of the window. The cashier took it, held it up to the light, and studied it.

  That’s got to be a check, Ali thought.

  After a little more talking, Ballentine pushed something that looked like an ID through the window. The cashier took the ID and the check and disappeared. Some time passed; Ali could see Ballentine chatting easily with Sanders. Ballentine seemed completely at ease, while Sanders looked the opposite—nervous and uneasy. Finally, the clerk returned and started pushing piles of gambling tokens out through the window and across the counter. Ballentine waited patiently, watching and probably counting, too.

  Looking at the stacks of chips, Ali let out a whistle.

  “What?” B. said.

  “Look at those chips,” she said, holding her iPad so B. could see it. “I’m betting every one of those chips is worth a thousand bucks.”

  Ballentine said something to the cashier, then nodded to Sanders, collapsed the stacks of chips into a mound, and pushed them in Sanders’s direction. For a moment nothing happened. Ballentine said something and nodded again, as if encouraging Sanders. At that point, Sanders bent over, reached down, picked up the metal object, which had evidently been on t
he floor, and set it on the counter. That was when Ali realized what she was seeing was most likely a strongbox.

  For a moment Sanders struggled with the latch. When he wrenched the box open, he held it along the edge of the counter and shoved the mound of chips inside. When he was done and the strongbox was latched, he waited while Ballentine finished loading his briefcase with the second pile of tokens. Once Ballentine’s briefcase was closed, the two men shook hands briefly. After that, Ballentine turned and headed for the baccarat tables, while Sanders took his loaded strongbox and walked away.

  The third and final clip showed Sanders alone, carrying the strongbox and exiting the casino. By the time it ended, Ali was already on the phone to Stuart Ramey. “Any idea how much money was there?” she asked.

  “Five hundred thousand,” Stuart said.

  “Each chip is worth a thousand bucks?” Ali asked.

  “That’s right. My BFF was able to find out because special arrangements for cashing a cashier’s check of that size had been made in advance. To prevent money laundering, transactions of that size are also reported to the IRS. The chips come out in stacks of ten each for ease of counting. Looks to me like Sanders got the lion’s share—thirty stacks, as opposed to Ballentine’s measly twenty.”

  “So we’re talking about three hundred thousand dollars?”

  “Yup,” Stuart said. “And he walked out of the place carrying it in that little metal box.”

  Stuart may have said “metal,” but Ali’s mind immediately translated it into something else—“little tin box.” One of the things Ali had inherited from her aunt Evie, along with the double-wide mobile home, was an extensive collection of musical comedy recordings, including the almost forgotten original cast recording of Fiorello! In it, the main character’s poker-playing friends had accounted for their ill-gotten gains by claiming their riches came from money saved in “a little tin box that a little tin key unlocks.”

  Somehow Ali doubted James Mason Sanders had been humming a few bars of that as he walked through the casino with that box full of chips, but he should have been. “That’s a big bundle of money to be carrying around, even in broad daylight,” she said. “Did you check the tapes to see if anyone followed him out?”

  “I already thought of that, and the answer is no,” Stuart said. “Nobody followed him. Sanders walked out the main entrance, hailed a cab, and went straight back to the Mission. I got the cab’s number from the security tapes. I already checked the cabbie’s records.”

  “So he leaves the casino with three hundred thousand bucks, and in the next several days, he drops five thousand. Less than a week later, Sanders turns up dead. So where’s the rest of the money? Did somebody search his room?”

  “Yes,” Stuart said. “He stayed in a one-bedroom unit at the Mission. Room and board were part of the paycheck. His unit was searched by the North Las Vegas police department, who executed a warrant at the request of investigators from Yavapai County. No money was found on the premises, and neither were any gambling chips.”

  “You know all this how?” Ali asked.

  “A good buddy of mine works for them,” Stuart answered.

  In Ali’s estimation, Stuart Ramey had “good buddies” almost everywhere.

  “What about the strongbox?” Ali asked. “Did they find that?”

  “Nope. Nada.”

  “We know he picked up the money,” Ali mused. “He evidently preferred having chips rather than cash. How come?”

  “He sure as hell didn’t put it in the bank,” Stuart said, “at least not into any of the accounts I’ve been able to find.”

  “So if James Sanders was still carrying the chips around, maybe his death was a straight-out armed robbery. That scenario makes it less likely that his case had anything to do with Gemma Ralston’s death, even with the geographical proximity.”

  “Would you like me to keep following up on the money situation?” Stuart asked.

  “Yes,” Ali answered. “I’m guessing we’re late to the party. We’re probably not the first ones to learn about those gambling chips, and we’re not the first ones who are asking what happened to them, either. A reporter from the Las Vegas Examiner was down here in Phoenix yesterday, asking questions about James Sanders. Her name is Betty Noonan. See what you can find out about her. It might be helpful if we knew what her angle is.”

  “I’ll look into it,” Stuart said. “Anything else?”

  “Also see what else you can find out about Sanders’s pal Ballentine,” Ali said. “You said Gemma Ralston’s Hearts Afire profile said she was looking for a high-end meaningless relationship. With a boatful of new money, Ballentine or even Sanders could be likely targets for someone like her.”

  “You’re right,” Stuart agreed. “Could be.”

  “Sorry, Stuart,” Ali said. “I’ve got another call.” She switched over to find Paula Urban on the line, in a state of high umbrage.

  “Did anyone ever mention that Cap Horning is a complete jackass?”

  It seemed to Ali that Sheriff Maxwell had come close, without using that exact word. “What’s he done now?” she asked.

  “I’d like him to quit waffling on the deal Chip Ralston proposed. Either Horning takes it and lets Lynn Martinson walk, or else we go after her defense full-bore. The problem is, he has a while to go on that seventy-two-hour deadline, where he’ll either have to charge them or let them go. Do you have anything for me?”

  Ali brought Paula up to date with what she had learned from Stuart.

  “All right, then,” Paula said when Ali finished. “I think you’re right. With that much money involved, robbery is far more likely. So let’s step away from the Sanders situation and leave that one up to the cops while we concentrate on Gemma et al.”

  “Okay,” Ali agreed. “I’ll be tracking Valerie Sloan as soon as I get showered and dressed and have some breakfast.”

  “You stayed in Phoenix last night?”

  “Yes.”

  “Where?”

  “At the Ritz,” Ali said.

  “The Ritz! You’re not expecting to bill Beatrice Hart for that hotel room, are you?” Paula asked.

  “No,” Ali said, grinning at B. “I’m pretty sure the hotel bill will be on someone else’s nickel.”

  21

  Valerie Baker Sloan lived in a condo development on the far side of Scottsdale Road that would have been considered a low-rent district by Paradise Valley standards. She was a blue-eyed blonde, but one in need of hair color. She had the nut-brown sun-damaged skin of a woman who spent much of her time in the great outdoors. In November, when visitors from the Midwest were all sporting shorts, she opened the door and showed her Arizona roots in her manner of dress—a jogging suit topped by a cardigan sweater knotted around her neck.

  Ali had called ahead, so she was expected.

  “You’re the writer?”

  Ali nodded.

  “Come on in,” Valerie said without bothering to ask for ID. “Please pardon the mess.”

  She led the way into a spacious living room dominated by an immense rear-projection television set and an equally huge treadmill, along with a gym-worthy collection of high-end weight-lifting equipment. She shifted a pile of grimy clothing onto the floor behind the couch. Moving the clothing uncovered a pair of football jerseys with two and a half pairs of dusty cleats. She pushed those onto the floor in front of the couch, where they bounced off an accumulation of empty soda cans and dirty paper plates, some with pizza crusts attached.

  “Twins,” Valerie explained, motioning Ali into a relatively clean easy chair. “Before the divorce, the boys had a separate room for all this junk and a housekeeper to pick up after them. Now we have this room, and I’m the unpaid housekeeper. I spend most of my time in the master, while I count the days until they leave for school next September. Once they do, they’ll be fully qualified to live in any frat house on the planet. Then I’ll be able to muck the place out and have a life again.”

  Ali look
ed around what could best be categorized as an upscale pigsty and compared it to Sylvia Sanders’s far more humble but compulsively neat living room. Ali suspected the same would be true for Valerie’s twins—that they wouldn’t compare very favorably with Sylvia’s son, A.J.

  “You’re here to talk about Gemma?” Valerie asked. She had perched herself on one arm of the sofa in a none too subtle hint that she didn’t expect Ali to stay long.

  “Yes,” Ali said. “I’m a freelancer doing a research project on the investigation into Gemma’s homicide.” That little white lie was getting easier to say every time she repeated it.

  “I’ve already told the cops everything I know,” Valerie said. “Couldn’t you talk to them?”

  “I’m sorry for the loss of your friend, but I’d rather talk to you,” Ali said placatingly.

  “All right,” Valerie said, giving in. “What do you want to know?”

  “Tell me about Tuesday. I understand you’re the person who reported Gemma Ralston missing.”

  Valerie nodded. Her eyes misted over briefly, then she shrugged off the sadness in the same determined way she had shifted the stack of clothing from the couch to the floor, as though she didn’t have either the time or energy to give way to an overly emotional response. “When Gemma didn’t show up for our tennis date and didn’t answer my calls, I went to her place to check on her. She wasn’t there, but her stuff was—her purse, keys, and car. The front door was unlocked and open. I called the cops. They took over from there. End of story.”

  “You’ve been friends a long time?”