J. Jance - Deadly Stakes

“You’re the writer working for Lynn’s mother?” he asked.

Ali nodded. “That means I have no official standing, and you’re under no obligation to speak to me-” she began, but Chip Ralston cut her off.

“Have you seen Lynn?” he demanded with a distinct catch in his voice. “How is she? Is she all right? I’m so sorry to have dragged her into this mess.”

Words of what sounded like genuine concern for Lynn weren’t what Ali had expected to be the first thing out of the man’s mouth. His undisguised anguish brought Ali down on the side of not pulling any punches.

“She’s okay, considering the circumstances,” Ali answered, “but I’m here to ask one question on her behalf: Are you going to take the deal?”

“The deal to point the finger at Lynn?” Ralston replied. “Absolutely not. Whatever Gemma’s and my marital difficulties may have been, they weren’t Lynn’s fault. She’d have no earthly reason to kill Gemma. None. I just got off the phone with my attorney. I’ve instructed him to cut a different deal. I’ll agree to plead guilty to first-degree manslaughter on the condition that he drops all charges against Lynn.”

“That’s not what the prosecutor proposed originally, and he probably won’t be too happy about that,” Ali said softly. “Your lawyer won’t be, either.”

“Of course my lawyer won’t be,” Chip Ralston agreed. “He’s my mother’s attorney, not mine, and he’s looking to make a fortune because he thinks his fee will be coming out of her checking account. But I’m not going to be responsible for depleting my mother’s economic resources. Truth be known, I’ll probably end up qualifying for a public defender, too, but I’m not going to bother. This is exactly what Gemma wanted. She said she’d ruin me, and she has.”

“Why?” Ali said.

“Why what?” Chip asked.

“Why did Gemma want to ruin you?”

“Because I was a disappointment to her,” he said. “Because I never measured up to her lofty expectations. She thought she was getting a carbon copy of my dad-a world-renowned surgeon-not a ‘do-gooder’ general practitioner. I made reasonable money but not great money. She wanted the kind of prestige my father had and the kind of lifestyle my mother had, and if she had been just a little more patient, she could have had it regardless of how much money I make. My father died last year. My mother is eighty-eight, and she’s not in the best of health. She’s not going to last forever. I think Gemma got tired of waiting around for my parents to croak so she could grab half of my inheritance. She wanted to get out while she was young enough and attractive enough to find herself another meal ticket-not that she needed one after she took me to the cleaners. Now look where it got her.”

“Who do you think killed her?” Ali asked.

“Probably her latest fling, whoever that guy is,” Chip answered. There was no disguising the bitterness in his voice.

“Did you kill her?” Ali asked suddenly. “Or did you hire someone else to kill her?”

The phone in Chip Ralston’s hand shook, but his voice was steady. He held Ali’s eyes without blinking. “No,” he said. “I did not.”

“But you just told me you’re going to plead guilty.”

“To manslaughter,” he agreed, “but only if I can get the prosecutor to drop all charges against Lynn. She’s the one good thing that has happened to me in a very long time. I’m not going to let Gemma destroy her, too.”

“Who is James Sanders?” Ali asked.

Chip blinked. “Who?”

“James Mason Sanders is a small-time crook whose body was found in the same general area as your former wife’s body. I’m trying to figure out if there was any connection between them.”

Chip Ralston shook his head. “It’s not a name I recognize, but Gemma wasn’t exactly forthcoming about her pals and her relationships. It’s come to my attention that she engaged in a good deal of risky behavior, including signing up for any number of dating websites both before and after she filed for a divorce.”

“You have reason to believe she was unfaithful?”

“Are you kidding? I don’t believe she ever was faithful,” he replied. “I just didn’t know it at the time.”

“What do you mean?”

“Look, I always wanted to have kids,” he said. “I thought I’d make a great dad, and I wanted us to have kids. She claimed she did, too, at least at the beginning. Once I got through medical school, we tried for years to get pregnant, and it didn’t work. We both went for tests. My sperm count was fine. She told me that her doctor said she was the one with the fertility problem, but she wasn’t willing to do anything about it.

“I suggested in vitro. She said no dice. I said, ‘Fine, let’s adopt.’ She said no, that if we were supposed to have kids, it would happen, but it didn’t. Later, I found out that she was on the pill the whole time. I wasn’t meant to find that out, you see. After she moved out of the house, someone in her doctor’s office screwed up and mailed me a copy of her prescription renewal. After that, HIPAA be damned, I went looking for her prescription records. I found out she’d been taking the pill for years-for as long as we’d been married.”

Ali looked at him and said nothing. She had suffered through a series of betrayals at the hands of her second husband, Paul Grayson. In Paul’s case, his faithlessness had resulted in the out-of-wedlock birth of more than one child-something Ali had discovered only after the man’s death. In Chip Ralston’s case, he had no children at all to show for Gemma’s betrayal. Ali understood, however, that the hurt was much the same.

“You might think I would have been pissed about that, but you know what?” Chip Ralston asked. “I ended up being grateful. It turns out Gemma was right not to have kids. She would have made a terrible mother.”

“What about you?” Ali asked. “Did you have affairs?”

Chip shook his head. “Never. I didn’t meet Lynn until long after Gemma had already flown the coop.”

“Lynn said that even after the divorce, Gemma stayed friends with both your mother and your sister.”

“Look,” he said, “when it comes to families, I believe in live and let live. My mother always thought Gemma was terrific, and I never tried changing her mind. When Lynn showed up on the scene, I made it clear to my sister that I expected her to be civil. The one time she and Lynn met in public, Molly was polite, which is more than I can say for my mother.”

“Did you object to your mother remaining on friendly terms with Gemma?”

“That was her business, not mine.”

“Do you know of anyone who wished Gemma ill?” Ali asked.

“You mean other than yours truly?” Chip asked.

In spite of herself, Ali liked the guy. She was surprised to realize that, plea bargain or not, she more than half believed that he hadn’t had anything to do with killing his wife. “Yes,” she said. “Other than you.”

“No,” he said. “I’m sorry. I have no idea. If I did, I’d tell you.”

“All right, then,” she said, pushing back the molded plastic chair and standing up. “Thank you for agreeing to speak to me.”

She watched him put down his handset. The county attorney had assumed that the plea bargain offer would cause the two suspects to start pointing accusing fingers at each other. Instead, Chip Ralston had thrown himself under the bus.

Unsure what to do about this unexpected turn of events, Ali left the visitation room, collected her weapons from the lockbox, and waited until a guard let her back outside. Determining guilt or innocence wasn’t in Ali’s job description.

Once on the street, Ali dialed B.’s number. “I’m on my way to Phoenix,” she said. “I’ll probably end up spending the night.”