J. Jance - Deadly Stakes

“Not so much,” Ali agreed.

“What’s on your agenda for tomorrow?”

“I have one more lead to track down tomorrow morning. Molly gave me the name of another one of their gal pals-Valerie Sloan. She and Gemma were supposed to play tennis on Tuesday. When Gemma was a no-show, Valerie’s the one who called in the missing persons report. I’m hoping that once I talk to her, Valerie may be able to fill in some of the blanks in Gemma’s social history. I feel like I’m missing something.”

“What?”

“Think about it. Chip Ralston’s marriage goes on the rocks, and he runs home to his mother’s place. He’s a well-known-make that nationally known-expert on the subject of Alzheimer’s, but he doesn’t have the balls to tell Lynn that his mother is following in Lynn’s father’s footsteps. Does this sound like a cold-blooded killer to you?”

“I have to agree. More like a gutless wonder than a killer,” B. agreed. “But if Chip Ralston didn’t do it, why offer to take the plea?”

“To protect Lynn, maybe?” Ali asked. “But she doesn’t strike me as much of a cold-blooded killer, either. She’s someone who’s been so traumatized by one bad relationship after another that she can’t even find a job, to say nothing of hold one.”

“Who’s responsible, then?” B. asked. “The other dead guy? Maybe Sanders was a hired hit man who got cold feet and ended up being taken out by someone else.”

“Which brings us back to square one, because hit men don’t come cheap,” Ali said.

“Okay, so who would be footing the bill for a hired hit?”

Ali shrugged. “According to what I’ve been able to find out, neither Chip Ralston nor Lynn Martinson is rolling in the dough. That’s why I want to talk to Gemma’s friend Valerie. There may be someone in her life that we don’t know about so far, including something that leads back to James Sanders. He’s the only one of the group who seemed to have plenty of cash to throw around at the moment. In the days before he died, he spent at least five thousand bucks with no clear indication of where it came from.”

“In other words, for the time being, you keep looking for a possible connection.”

Ali nodded. “Until either Paula Urban or Beatrice Hart tells me to back off. In the meantime, are we having dessert or another glass of wine?”

“I say we skip both in favor of going back to the hotel.”

Which they did. Ali was sound asleep the next morning when her phone rang. Searching for it on her bedside table, she discovered that B.’s side of the bed was already empty. Through the glass doors between the bedroom and the sitting room, she could see him on the sofa, laptop on his lap and phone to his ear. There was a coffee service sitting on the coffee table in front of him. The fact that he could be up and working while she was asleep was one of the very real advantages of having a suite.

“I didn’t wake you, did I?” Stuart Ramey said on the phone.

“You did,” Ali admitted, “but I needed to get moving. What’s up?”

“I never was able to get a line on that limo,” Stuart said. “They must have gotten out of the vehicle before they got to the hotel entrance, but I sent their IT people a photo of James Sanders. They ran it through their facial recognition software, and voila. They found both Sanders and the guy he was with.”

“Who?”

“His name’s Scott Ballentine. Turns out he’s a whale.”

“A what?”

“A whale. That’s what casinos in Vegas call the big hitters, the regulars who come in a couple of times a month and can afford to drop a fortune at the baccarat tables.”

“Wait a minute,” Ali said. “Scott Ballentine. How come that name sounds so familiar?”

“Because he’s one of James Sanders’s counterfeiting pals from back in the old days. He’s the guy who paid the fine and got off while Sanders went to prison. While James was in prison, Ballentine moved to California, where he invented some kind of medical device, made a fortune, and then went broke. A few months ago, he won a massive patent-infringement lawsuit, which means that he now has more money than God. At least that’s what his website says, and his favorite outing is in Vegas, at the MGM Grand, playing baccarat. My new BFF-the casino’s very capable IT lady, Laura Cameron-just sent me copies of the security tapes for the day in question, which I found most interesting,” Stuart continued. “Want me to send them to you?”

“Please.”

“Call me back after you take a look. I’ll send them to you in short order.”

Ali hustled out of bed, grabbed a robe from the bathroom, and then joined B. in the sitting room. “I’m on hold,” he said, holding the phone away from his ear. “What’s up?”

“Stuart’s sending me some videos,” she explained.

By the time Ali had poured her own cup of coffee, three different files had come through, each of them loaded with a film clip. Ali went through them one at a time. In the first one, two men walked through what appeared to be the front entrance to the casino. In the first clip, Ballentine-dressed in a sport coat and tie-appeared to be carrying a leather briefcase. Sanders, dressed in what looked like khaki work clothes, was carrying something as well. Ali paused the clip several times, trying to get a better look. The object Sanders was carrying appeared to be made of metal. It was smaller than a briefcase but wider. Blockier.

In the second clip, the two men were standing side by side at the counter of a cashier’s cage with a lighted neon sign saying BACCARAT glowing in the background. There was some wordless chatting between Ballentine and the cashier in the cage. Eventually, Ballentine opened the briefcase and removed a long, narrow piece of paper. He pushed it through the opening at the bottom of the window. The cashier took it, held it up to the light, and studied it.

That’s got to be a check, Ali thought.

After a little more talking, Ballentine pushed something that looked like an ID through the window. The cashier took the ID and the check and disappeared. Some time passed; Ali could see Ballentine chatting easily with Sanders. Ballentine seemed completely at ease, while Sanders looked the opposite-nervous and uneasy. Finally, the clerk returned and started pushing piles of gambling tokens out through the window and across the counter. Ballentine waited patiently, watching and probably counting, too.

Looking at the stacks of chips, Ali let out a whistle.

“What?” B. said.

“Look at those chips,” she said, holding her iPad so B. could see it. “I’m betting every one of those chips is worth a thousand bucks.”

Ballentine said something to the cashier, then nodded to Sanders, collapsed the stacks of chips into a mound, and pushed them in Sanders’s direction. For a moment nothing happened. Ballentine said something and nodded again, as if encouraging Sanders. At that point, Sanders bent over, reached down, picked up the metal object, which had evidently been on the floor, and set it on the counter. That was when Ali realized what she was seeing was most likely a strongbox.

For a moment Sanders struggled with the latch. When he wrenched the box open, he held it along the edge of the counter and shoved the mound of chips inside. When he was done and the strongbox was latched, he waited while Ballentine finished loading his briefcase with the second pile of tokens. Once Ballentine’s briefcase was closed, the two men shook hands briefly. After that, Ballentine turned and headed for the baccarat tables, while Sanders took his loaded strongbox and walked away.

The third and final clip showed Sanders alone, carrying the strongbox and exiting the casino. By the time it ended, Ali was already on the phone to Stuart Ramey. “Any idea how much money was there?” she asked.