J. Jance - Deadly Stakes

With the gun still trained on Ali, the woman spoke over her shoulder to her passenger. “Did you get through to 911, Mama?”

“Please,” Ali said. “I can explain. Just put the gun down before someone gets hurt. My name is Ali Reynolds. I’m a freelancer working on an article about Gemma Ralston’s murder. I came here hoping to speak to Chip Ralston’s mother and sister-Doris Ralston and Molly Handraker.”

As if on cue, the second woman-clearly the elderly mother in question-stepped out of the vehicle, an older-model Jaguar. For several long seconds, Doris Ralston stood swaying unsteadily beside the open passenger door while she used both hands in a vain attempt to operate a cell phone. “Where are my reading glasses?” she grumbled. “Without them, I can’t make this thing work. The numbers are too small.”

“Oh, for pity’s sake, Mama,” Molly said. “Can’t you do anything? Give me the phone and get back in the car.” She lowered the weapon long enough to collect the phone. When the gun was no longer pointed in her direction, Ali, who wasn’t wearing body armor, allowed herself a small sigh of relief.

“What are you doing prowling around in our backyard when nobody’s home?”

“Please,” Ali said. “You don’t need to call the cops. If you’re Molly Handraker, I just need to talk to you.”

“What about?”

“Gemma Ralston’s murder.”

“Who are you again, and who are you working for?”

Even though the younger woman had yet to dial a number or press send, she still held the phone in one hand and the weapon in the other. Loose gravel from the driveway was biting into Ali’s kneecaps. She needed to bring the confrontation to some kind of peaceful ending.

“My name is Alison Reynolds. As I said, I’m a freelancer. I’ve spoken to some of the investigators working the Gemma Ralston homicide. Some of them seem to be convinced that Lynn Martinson acted alone. Others seem to think your brother and she were in on it together. I wanted to get your take on it.”

“You still haven’t explained what you were doing prowling behind our house while we were out having dinner.”

As she spoke, Molly walked over to the open driver’s door of Ali’s Cayenne and peered inside. Ali suspected she was checking to see if the car was loaded with stolen goods. Meanwhile, the open-door alarm continued to ding away, filling the quiet night with its annoyingly tuneless racket.

“I rang the bell at the front door,” Ali said. “When no one answered, I started to leave. On the way down the driveway, I decided to see if anyone was home at Chip’s place.”

“Chip doesn’t live here anymore,” Doris said, unexpectedly inserting herself into the conversation. “Not since he and Gemma got married.”

“Mother!” Molly said warningly. “Stay out of this. Let me handle it. He does too live here. Remember?”

Ali didn’t know why, but for some reason, the older woman’s querulous comment seemed to have tipped the scales in Ali’s favor. The young woman was wearing a loose-fitting denim jacket. The gun disappeared into one of the jacket pockets while the phone slipped into another.

“This isn’t very convenient,” the younger woman said, “but it’s too cold to be standing around out here talking. Mother will catch her death. I need to get her inside. Come on.”

With that, she walked over to Ali, held out one hand, and helped her to her feet. Close up, Ali noticed that the clear crisp air was alive with the sharp bite of booze. Molly had evidently enjoyed several cocktails along with dinner. That realization sent an additional surge of relief coursing through Ali’s body. There was little doubt that she had just dodged a very real bullet. An angry woman with a handgun was dangerous enough. An angry drunk of either sex with a handgun was even more so.

“Do you have any ID?”

Ali fumbled in her own pocket, found a business card, and passed it over. Molly held it up to the headlights and examined it. “Something with a photo, maybe?”

“In my purse in the car,” Ali said.

“Get it,” Molly ordered. “I’m not letting you into our house until I know you are who you say you are.”

Ali stumbled back to the car and grabbed her purse. In the process, she managed to pull the key from the ignition and shut off the door alarm. By the time she had her wallet open to her driver’s license, Molly had stowed her mother back in the Jaguar’s passenger seat. Molly examined the ID and then handed it back.

“As you can well imagine, it’s been a tough day around here. You’ll need to follow us back up to the front door. I take Mother in and out of the house that way. There are only a few steps from the garage up to the laundry room, but these days, even those are more than she can manage.”

More than I could, too, Ali thought. Her knees and hands were still shaking as she made her way back to the Cayenne and managed to climb inside.

Molly backed the Jaguar onto the main driveway and then drove up to the front entrance while Ali followed in the Cayenne. Molly parked at the door before getting out of the vehicle and walking around it to assist her mother. Doris Ralston got out of the car, holding on to her daughter’s arm with one hand while gripping a cane with the other.

Molly unlocked the oversize double doors and led the way into the house. Ali trailed behind them. She was surprised that no interior alarm sounded. What looked like a security control panel was right next to the door, but Molly and Doris bypassed it without stopping. They walked through a spacious entryway into a large, comfortably appointed living room-an old-money room-where the highly polished hardwood floor was dotted with aged but entirely authentic Navajo rugs. The chairs and tables were genuine Mission, and the lamps were equally genuine Tiffany. Above a massive and mostly unnecessary fireplace was a full-length oil painting of a much younger Doris Ralston clad in a sapphire evening gown.

As Molly eased her mother down onto a long leather sofa, Ali couldn’t help noticing that although the two women resembled each other, mother and daughter were anything but a matched pair. Doris Ralston looked to be somewhere in her eighties, decidedly frail but utterly fashionable. She was dressed in a classic St. John’s knit that was probably at least a decade old, as were her low-heeled pumps, but her thinning white hair was carefully combed, and her liver-spotted hands were beautifully manicured.

Molly, somewhere in her forties, with a mane of wavy auburn hair, was a younger image of her mother’s good looks, but with a harder edge. Years of smoking were beginning to carve an indelible mark into the curve of her cheeks. In her choice of clothing, Molly Handraker diverged from her mother’s in every way. The skimpy tank top she wore over possibly surgically enhanced breasts didn’t quite meet the top of her low-rider jeans. The denim of the pencil-thin pants was suitably worn in all the right places, but Ali suspected that the wear in the denim came from that-actual wear-rather than the artificially preworn look available new at Old Navy. Her stiletto boots were far more of a fashion statement than they were practical. The outfit was topped by a short sequined denim jacket.

Once Doris was seated, Molly stripped off the jacket and dropped it on a nearby chair before joining her mother on the couch.

“Remind me,” Doris said, nodding and frowning in Ali’s direction. “Who is this again, and what’s she doing here?”

“She’s a writer,” Molly answered brusquely. “She’s here to talk about Gemma.”

“What about Gemma?” Doris asked, looking around the room with a puzzled expression, as though the object of her search might be hiding behind or under one of the room’s massive pieces of furniture. “Did she call me today? Wasn’t she supposed to come to dinner with us tonight? I do so enjoy her company.”