J. Jance - Deadly Stakes

“Great,” Lynn said with a sigh. “I guess I’d better plan on going out and getting a new one.”

Lynn and her mother had fallen into a pattern where Beatrice did most of the cooking and Lynn did most of the cleaning up. Once the breakfast dishes had been cleared away, Lynn went out to the garage and performed a thorough search through her Ford Focus-to no avail. The rest of the morning, she dialed her own number periodically in hopes that, wherever the phone was, someone might hear it ringing and answer. Each time, however, when it switched over to voice mail, Lynn hung up. There was no point in leaving a message that she most likely would never be able to retrieve.

Once her mother left the house, Lynn searched everywhere again-in the house, in the car. She even went outside and pawed through the Dumpster. Finally, giving up, she forced herself to sit down at the computer. She was determined to find a job that would enable her to move out of her mother’s house, and she devoted several hours each day, Saturdays and Sundays included, to diligent searching.

She had sent out dozens of resumes to dozens of school districts in hopes of finding an administrative position. Once, years ago, she had been a high school English teacher. She wasn’t wild about going back to the classroom, but in this economy, even beginning-teachers’ jobs were hard to come by. She also wasn’t really comfortable with the idea that job searches were now conducted almost entirely online.

Her ill-fated online romance with Richard Lowensdale-he of the many interchangeable last names-had left her with the belief that everybody lied when they were on the Internet. She suspected that school districts overstated their needs as well as their pay scales, while applicants inflated their educational accomplishments as well as their job histories. Disheartening as the process had proved so far, Lynn refused to give up. Today she decided that at three o’clock she’d reward her diligence with a quick excursion to the mall to find a new phone. If she did that while her mother was off playing golf, she might never have to admit that she had misplaced the old one.

A few minutes before three, the doorbell rang. When Lynn looked out through the peephole, she was surprised to see a man in a suit and tie standing on the porch, holding up a law enforcement badge of some kind for her inspection.

Lynn’s heart fell. Convinced that her mother had suffered some kind of health issue out on the golf course, she flung open the door in a blind panic. “Oh my God,” she managed. “What is it? Has something happened to my mother? Is she okay?”

“I’m Detective Larry Cutter with the Maricopa County Sheriff’s Department,” the officer explained, handing her one of his cards.

Lynn studied it for a moment, then clutched at the doorframe in an effort to remain upright. “It says here that you’re with homicide?” she demanded in a shaking voice. “Does that mean my mother has been murdered out on the golf course?”

Detective Cutter frowned. “May I come in?” he asked. “Does your mother’s name happen to be Lynnette Martinson?”

Lynn stepped aside and allowed him to enter. “No,” she told him. “That’s my name. I’m Lynnette Martinson. My mother’s name is Beatrice Hart. What’s this all about? If my mother is all right, has someone else been murdered?”

Uninvited, the detective settled his lanky form on the sofa in the living room, where he studied Lynn with a kind of grim appraisal as she stumbled awkwardly into a nearby chair. His unreadable expression was nothing short of disquieting.

“What’s this about?” Lynn’s voice came out as a quaking squeak. She couldn’t help it.

“When did you last see her?” Cutter asked.

“My mother? She went golfing with her friends. They left shortly before noon.”

“Today?”

Lynn nodded.

“Then I’m sure your mother’s fine,” the detective said.

Relieved, Lynn let out a sigh. When she noticed that her hands were trembling, she gripped the armrests to steady them. “Tell me what’s going on, then. Your card says you’re homicide. That means someone has been murdered. Who? And why are you asking me about it?”

“The victim, a female, has not yet been identified,” Cutter answered. “However, a telephone listed in your name and with an Iowa prefix was found at the scene. We were able to obtain this address from the cell phone provider because it’s listed as the billing address. Does anyone else besides yourself have access to the phone?”

“No, no one else uses it-or,” Lynn corrected, “let’s say no one else is supposed to use it. The problem is, I lost the phone sometime overnight, either last night or early this morning. I’ve been looking for it everywhere and calling it, too, all morning long. I thought maybe I left it at the gas station when I filled up the tank on my way home, and I was hoping whoever found it would answer my call.”

“On your way home from where?” Cutter asked.

“From my boyfriend’s house in Paradise Valley,” Lynn answered. “I spent the night there.” She blushed when making that admission, though there was no reason to be embarrassed. After all, Lynn was a consenting adult, and so was Chip Ralston. Her love life was no one’s business but her own; still, blush she did, and realizing that her face had reddened under Detective Cutter’s unsmiling scrutiny made it that much worse.

“Do you remember the last time you used it?” he asked.

“Yesterday sometime. Late in the evening. I remember calling Chip to let him know I was on my way to his place.”

“After that, it disappeared?”

“As I said, I didn’t notice it was gone until after I got home this morning.”

“You have no idea who might have been using your phone? Is it possible that you lent it to someone?”

“No,” Lynn said firmly. “As I told you before, I lost it. In fact, I was about to go to the store to see about getting a replacement, but you still haven’t told me who’s dead.”

“That’s the problem,” Detective Cutter said. “We don’t know who the victim is. No identification was found on the body, and so far, no one matching the victim’s description has been reported missing anywhere in the Phoenix metropolitan area. We initially thought that finding the owner of the phone would lead us to the victim.”

“But I’m not dead,” Lynn objected.

“I noticed,” Cutter agreed, giving her a tight smile. “Let me ask you this. Do you have any friends or relations or acquaintances living in the Camp Verde/Sedona area?”

Lynn shook her head. “No one,” she said definitively. “No one at all. I know about Sedona, of course. At least I’ve seen photos of it. I’ve heard that the red rocks are very beautiful, but I’ve never been there. I came to the Phoenix area a little over a year ago. My parents retired here, and my father’s health was failing. When I lost my job, the only silver lining was that I was able to come here to help my mother. There wasn’t any time or money for traveling while we were caring for him. Now that he’s gone, maybe I’ll be able to get around to some sightseeing.” Realizing she was talking too much, Lynn paused and took a breath before asking, “Is that where the dead woman was found-in Sedona?”

“Near Sedona,” Cutter corrected, “but closer to Camp Verde.”

“We need to find whoever it was who took the phone,” Lynn said.

“Yes, we do,” Cutter said. “In the meantime, you say you were with your boyfriend last night?”

“Yes.”

“All last night?”

“From ten-fifteen on.” She didn’t want to admit to the detective that she had timed her arrival for an hour when she could be confident Chip’s mother had gone to bed.