J. Jance - Deadly Stakes

Before Ali could comment, B. returned with another tray, this one loaded with a bowl of steaming stew and several slices of buttered bread. He set the tray on the coffee table in front of Beatrice and then sat down on the love seat next to Ali. Beatrice gave him a questioning look.

“He knows all about this,” Ali said, nodding in B.’s direction. “It was due to a background check from his computer security company that Brenda Riley found out the truth about Richard Lowensdale.”

“Oh,” Beatrice said, nodding. “I remember. The High Noon guy. So I guess I have both of you to thank that Lynn wasn’t hurt worse than she was.”

The man who had helped Ali in the trenches had been B.’s second in command, Stuart Ramey, but neither Ali nor B. corrected Beatrice’s understandable misapprehension.

Ali waited while Beatrice tasted a tiny spoonful of Leland’s stew, then said, “Delicious. You’re a wonderful cook.”

Ali nodded her thanks and asked the next question without bothering to correct Beatrice’s erroneous assumption about the stew. Sometimes it was simply better to let people be.

“You mentioned that Dr. Ralston was going through a rancorous divorce,” Ali said. “How did you know about that?”

“Because Lynn told me,” Beatrice answered. “The woman and her lawyers have taken the man to the cleaners. He ended up having to unload several properties in a disastrous real estate market. He also had to buy out her interest in his medical practice. That put him far enough behind financially that he had to go back home and live with his aging mother-not a good sign, if you ask me. According to Lynn, Chip’s pet name for his ex is ‘the green-eyed monster.’”

Ali managed to keep from smiling, and so did B. After B.’s own ego-damaging divorce, “green-eyed monster” was how he sometimes referred to his ex-wife, too.

“Did Lynn ever mention what caused the divorce? Was there any indication of domestic violence issues? For instance, did Chip ever voice any threats toward his ex?”

“Not as far as I know,” Beatrice answered. “Still, it strikes me as a strange kind of divorce. According to Lynn, Gemma treated Chip like dirt, and yet she stayed in close contact with Chip’s mother and his sister, Molly. I know a couple of times, when Lynn was staying over with Chip, Gemma dropped by to visit with either the former mother-in-law or the former sister-in-law. I don’t know how most divorces work or even how they’re supposed to work-Horace and I were married to each other for fifty-eight years-but you can bet that if I’d divorced him, I would have written his mother out of my life immediately. That’s what Lynn did with her former mother-in-law, too.”

“As far as you know, there was nothing unusual going on this week between Chip and his ex? No new crisis of any kind?”

“No new crisis,” Beatrice allowed, “just the ongoing one. From what Lynn has told me, I’m sure Chip resents the neverending financial difficulties from the divorce settlement. He’s a middle-aged man, and having to start over at that age is tough. Of course, there will be some money coming to him when his mother dies. I understand that his parents were very well-to-do. His father died relatively recently and suddenly. A stroke, I believe. Chip and his sister are their only kids. Not kids, of course. Their only heirs.”

Ali noticed that all the while Beatrice Hart was answering questions, she was stowing away the bowl of stew. She finished it off by sopping up the last of the gravy with the remains of a thick slice of Leland’s bread. She may have been worried about her daughter, but that hadn’t affected her appetite. B. was offering her a second helping when Ali’s phone rang. She excused herself and went as far as the dining room so she could answer with some assurance of privacy.

“Hey,” Dave Holman said. “I saw that you called, but I’ve been knee-deep in two different homicide investigations all day long. It turns out the county attorney has put a deal on the table for one of them, so it’s up to the lawyers to do their stuff. That means I’m on my way home and returning calls as I go. I trust you’ll forgive me for calling back without listening to your message. What’s up?”

Ali was sure she knew which investigations had kept him occupied all day, but she wasn’t at all sure how he would react to hearing the identity of the visitor sitting in her library and savoring Leland’s beef stew. “I was actually calling on behalf of someone, a woman named Beatrice Hart.”

“Lynn Martinson’s mother?” Dave demanded after a moment of stark silence. “How the hell did that happen?”

Although the name was one Dave clearly recognized, Ali thought it best to recount the whole story.

“Wait, wait, wait,” Dave said when Ali finished. “Who’s this Brenda Riley?”

“A friend of mine from back in my old news-broadcasting days. She’s originally from Sacramento. Now she and her new husband live in Ashland. She’s the one who got mixed up with the cyberstalker in California a couple of years ago. The guy’s name was Richard Lowensdale/Lattimore/Loomis/Lewis. He had any number of aliases, and Mrs. Hart’s daughter, Lynn, was one of his many victims. Given what Mrs. Hart describes as Lynn’s unfortunate track record with men, Beatrice seems to think her daughter might be in danger right along with the new boyfriend’s ex-wife. For some reason, she was reluctant to call you directly.”

“I wish she had,” Dave grumbled, “but it’s too late for that now. I’m about twenty minutes out. If you can keep her there, I’ll stop by your place before I head home.”

“She’ll wait,” Ali assured him. “B.’s plying her with Leland’s beef stew.”

“If there’s any left, I may ask for some, too,” Dave said. “Priscilla’s bent out of shape that I’m missing dinner again, but that’s what she gets for marrying a cop.”

“What should I tell Beatrice?” Ali asked.

“That I’m on my way,” Dave said.

“How bad is it?” Ali asked, more than half expecting to hear that Lynn, like Gemma, had come to grief.

“About as bad as it can get,” Dave answered. “Lynn Martinson is in jail and in a jumpsuit. So is her boyfriend, Mr. Ralston, or should I say Dr. Ralston? Cap Horning, the county attorney, is waiting to charge them, but he just made both of their attorneys the same offer. Whoever talks first gets charged with a lesser offense that takes the death penalty off the table. The plea deal expires at the end of twenty-four hours. If neither of them takes it, they both get charged with murder in the first degree, and all bets are off.”

“You said ‘both’ attorneys?” Ali asked. “Does that mean Lynn has one and Chip has another?”

“That’s correct. Dr. Ralston’s attorney arrived from Phoenix wearing a five-thousand-dollar suit and driving a silver Porsche Carrera. Ms. Martinson is evidently in a somewhat different economic league. She has a court-appointed defense attorney named Paula Urban. Paula isn’t exactly a greenhorn. She’s done a boatload of drug charges, domestic violence cases, and grand theft autos. As far as I know, this is her first homicide case.”

Ali knew those were words that Beatrice Hart wouldn’t find the least bit reassuring.

“So what are you going to tell her?” Dave asked.

“That the lead investigator from the Gemma Ralston case is on his way from Prescott and that he’d like to speak to her.”

“Fair enough,” Dave said. “See you in a couple.”

Pocketing the phone, Ali returned to the library.

Beatrice looked up at her anxiously. “Well?” she asked.

“I spoke to someone from the Yavapai County Sheriff’s Department,” she said. “I didn’t mention it before, but Dave Holman is the county’s lead investigator in the Gemma Ralston case and he’s on his way here from Prescott. I asked them to have him stop by the house to talk to you. He should be here in the next fifteen minutes or so.”