J. Jance - Deadly Stakes

“Would you like me to join you?” B. asked.

Yes, that was what she wanted, but she hadn’t wanted to say it in so many words.

“What about your work?” she asked. “Can you afford the interruption? Besides, you already spend so much time in hotels. .”

“Not in hotels with you,” he countered. “Besides, through the magic of telecommuting, I can work anywhere. It would give us a chance to revisit the Ritz,” he added. “Return to the scene of the crime, as it were. With any kind of luck, maybe when you’re finished working, we could grab a late dinner at Morton’s.”

The Ritz-Carlton at Twenty-fourth and Camelback was where B. and Ali had spent their first full night together, and Morton’s, next door, was where they had shared a very romantic dinner.

“You’re sure you don’t mind?”

“If I minded, I wouldn’t have offered,” B. said. “Now, is there anything you need me to bring?”

It was close to four in the afternoon. The idea of driving directly to Phoenix without having to drive the eighty miles back to Sedona had some real appeal.

“Ask Leland to pack an overnight kit for me,” she said. “Actually, ask him to make it for two nights, in case I have to stay longer.”

Ali knew from experience that Leland would pack for her as well or better than she would herself. The thought that at some point she would have to learn to get along without the faithful service of her aide-de-camp was one she quickly put aside.

“All right,” she said. “You go straight to the hotel. I’ll meet you there.”

And I’ll go track down James Sanders’s grieving wife and son, she thought. Going to see them was the last thing she wanted to do, which was enough to move it to the top of the list. That was always one of Ali’s mother’s watchwords: Do the tough things first.

Not wanting to call undue attention to what they were doing, A.J. and Sasha decided that they wouldn’t head north until after school got out. Ditching their afternoon classes wasn’t the way to go unnoticed. A.J. called work and told them that he wouldn’t be in due to a family emergency. Then, leaving the Camry in the school parking lot, they took off in Sasha’s BMW. Unlike A.J., she had access to her father’s credit card and didn’t have to hoard every ounce of gas. When they stopped to fill up, she paid for fuel and for a pair of immense sodas. Later, when they stopped at Ace Hardware to buy a new shovel, she whipped out her credit card again.

“Don’t worry,” she said. “Daddy never checks, but if he asks me about it, I’ll tell him it’s for Christmas.”

Nodding, A.J. went along with the program. He was too worried and conflicted to argue about any of it. He was worried about returning to the crime scene. He was worried that there would still be cops there. Most of all, now that he had told Sasha everything, he was worried that the money wouldn’t be there-that Sasha would see right through his father’s lie and know that A.J. was stupid beyond words. Finding money under a rock was like the Tooth Fairy leaving money under a pillow-not gonna happen.

For a time, they drove north without speaking. It was only when Sasha spoke that A.J. realized that she, too, was chewing over what he had told her.

“So those are really the only times you remember seeing your father, at the store? That once and later when he bought you the car for your sixteenth birthday?”

A.J. nodded numbly.

“And he really did go to prison for counterfeiting?”

A.J. nodded again.

“Why didn’t he come back home after he got out?”

“I have no idea,” A.J. said. “That’s one of the things I would have liked to ask him.”

“I’m sorry you can’t,” Sasha said.

A.J.’s eyes filled with tears. “Me, too.”

Traffic was slow leaving the city. It seemed to take forever to get to the turn-off, but at last they reached the General Crook Trail exit. As A.J. got out to open the gate, he scanned the horizon to see if there were any vehicles parked at or near the crime scene. He saw nothing. Sasha babied the BMW along the rutted road. When they reached the spot where the green-eyed woman had died, the place was marked with a series of streamers made up of bits of yellow crime scene tape blowing sideways in the wind.

“That’s where I found the woman,” he said, nodding toward the tape, “but keep going. When the mileage marker on the odometer hits six tenths of a mile, stop. You stay with the car and turn it around. That way, if I do find anything, we’ll be able to take off in a hurry. I want to get out of here before someone sees us.”

That was what A.J. told her, but the truth was, he had another reason for leaving Sasha in the car. He didn’t want her to witness his humiliation when his shovel search came up empty. During the long slow drive from Phoenix, A.J. had convinced himself that the entire undertaking was beyond stupid. His father was a crook and a liar. There wasn’t any hidden money and never had been. A.J. had spent much of the trip berating himself for telling Sasha about it in the first place. If only she hadn’t insisted on coming along. If only he hadn’t let her.

Sasha stopped the car next to another area that had been marked off with crime scene tape; here, most of it was intact. Feeling almost sick to his stomach, A.J. got out and stood looking at the spot where his father must have died. His mother had said his father had been shot. For a moment he stood there with his hand shading his eyes, peering around, more than half expecting to see a rough chalk outline of where James Sanders’s body had been found. To his immense relief, there was no visible sign of bloodstains.

Glancing back over his shoulder, A.J. noticed that the place where the green-eyed woman had died wasn’t visible from here. There was a slight rise between the two spots and a place where the road twisted sharply left and right, following a streambed. So although the two victims-his father and the green-eyed woman-hadn’t died in exactly the same place, it had been close enough that even James Sanders’s son had to confront the possibility that there was some terrible connection between them.

What if this money-the unexpected windfall from his father-had something to do with the murder of the green-eyed woman? What if his father was really a contract killer and the money he had promised A.J. was ill-gotten gain? A.J.’s mother had insisted that James would never be violent-that he’d never hurt someone-but how much did she know? As far as A.J. knew, his parents had never even lived together. Why was that? Had his mother understood what James was really like, and that was why she had avoided living with him once he got out of prison?

Turning away from both crime scenes-the one he could see and the one he couldn’t-A.J. tried to shake off the dread-induced lethargy that had overtaken him. Only when Sasha pressed the trunk release and the lid flipped open did he snap out of it. Marching determinedly to the back of the BMW, he retrieved the shovel.

This area, like the spot where A.J. had found the dying woman, had been cleared of both scraggly vegetation and rocks and turned into an informal and illegal trash-dumping ground of long standing, with layers of general garbage along with abandoned mattresses and appliances littering the desert landscape. What rocks remained-boulders, really-were on the far perimeter of the clearing. With the shovel balanced on his shoulder, feeling like one of Snow White’s dwarves, A.J. marched purposefully in what seemed to him to be the direction of due north, to the boulder where his father had claimed he had left a heart to mark the correct spot.

With every step he took, A.J. told himself that he shouldn’t be disappointed when the designated heart wasn’t there. But as soon as he came to the first boulder, there it was. The heart, tiny though it was, stood out because it was bright and recent and painted in what appeared to be nail polish. On either side of the glowing heart, scratched on the rock’s rough surface and faded almost to invisibility, were two sets of barely legible initials. The first one was clearly J.S. The second one might have been an S and some other letter-a P or a B. A.J.’s mother’s name was Sylvia. Her maiden name had been Bixby, so maybe the faded second letter was a B.