J. Jance - Deadly Stakes

Two more golfers, one of them in an ordinary polo shirt and chinos and the other in vivid yellow-and-orange-checked pants with a matching orange shirt, bellied up to the bar and ordered Bloody Marys. While Luis mixed their drinks, Ali considered her next move.

“When Gemma left, did she say where she was going?”

“It was hard to tell. She was so busy screeching at me and telling me to go to hell for eighty-sixing her that I don’t believe she mentioned any destination in particular. And let me tell you, as long as she wasn’t in my bar, I didn’t care where she was going.”

“So if you were going to make a wild guess about who might have wanted her dead. .”

“Besides me, you mean.”

“Right,” Ali said with a smile. “Who else besides you?”

“My money’s on the guy in jail,” Luis replied. “Doris Ralston’s son, the ex-husband. I, for one, don’t blame him a bit.”

“Was Chip Ralston here on Monday?”

“Hardly,” Luis said. “He’s not a member anymore. From what I can tell, when he and Gemma divorced, he got the shaft, and she got the membership.”

“Did you ever hear Gemma talking with or about someone named Dennis?” Ali asked.

“Dennis who?”

“I have no idea,” she replied. “All I have is the first name.”

“Doesn’t ring a bell,” Luis said.

Ali glanced at her watch. It was twelve-forty-five.

“Let me guess,” Luis said. “The old lady stood you up?”

“Looks like.”

Luis nodded sagely. “I’m not surprised. She does that a lot. Makes a reservation and then doesn’t show.”

Ali pulled a five-dollar bill out of her purse and slapped it on the bar. “Thanks for the water,” she said. “Turns out it was just what I needed.”

Dodging the hostess in the dining room, Ali made for her car. Once she reached it, she sat inside for several long moments, thinking. It was one thing for Gemma Ralston to be vilified by her ex-husband or the ex-husband’s new girlfriend. They were bound to have their own kind of biases. Hearing the same thing from the bartender, however, gave Ali pause.

The professional bartenders she had known over the years, especially ones who worked in high-end clubs and bars, generally maintained a certain client confidentiality as far as their regular customers were concerned. The fact that Luis had blurted out derogatory comments about Gemma Ralston to a complete stranger came as something of a surprise. If someone like Luis had no trouble wishing Gemma ill, there might be a few others out there as well, and who more likely to know where some of those bodies were buried than Gemma’s ex-sister-in-law and maybe not such a great friend Molly Handraker?

And what about that missing diamond necklace? Molly hadn’t mentioned it. Was that a deliberate oversight on her part or an accidental one? Maybe in a household like theirs, where someone was operating with severe mental deficits, misplaced pieces of jewelry were so commonplace that they weren’t worth discussing, to say nothing of bringing in someone else to help with the search.

Luis had said that Molly had seemed upset when she left. That was something else that had gone unsaid in Molly’s version.

Dave Holman had obviously already gotten Luis’s take on the situation and probably had come to similar conclusions. Therefore, the Yavapai County homicide cop could hardly complain if Ali wound up following the same trail of leads.

Dave was investigating, and so was she. With that in mind, her next stop would be Upper Glen Road, but before she went there, she needed answers to a few more questions. To that end, she got out her phone and dialed the number for the Yavapai County sheriff, Gordon Maxwell.

“Hey,” the sheriff said with an easy chuckle when he heard her voice on the phone. “Dave Holman tells me you’ve been running circles around him this morning, but now that he’s busy duking it out with the Phoenix PD over the custody of a possible suspect, I believe he’s a lot happier with you at the moment than he was a little earlier. His exact words to me were ‘We owe her one.’”

“That’s good to know,” Ali said, “because it turns out, I’m here to collect.”

“Why? What do you need?”

“To talk to Chip Ralston on the phone, and I’m wondering if you can make that happen.”

Her request was followed by a long period of silence that Ali didn’t take as a good omen, especially since her main goal was to ask Chip if he knew anything about the mysterious Dennis who evidently was a presence in his ex-wife’s life.

“I have some questions about his mother,” Ali added quickly. “She’s an Alzheimer’s patient, and Dr. Ralston is a nationally recognized Alzheimer’s expert.”

“I suppose I could give it a try,” Maxwell said. “Give me your number and five minutes. I’ll see if I can arrange to get him to a phone, but even if I do, that doesn’t guarantee he’ll be interested in calling you back. He’s under no obligation to talk to anyone.”

“Tell him it’s about his mother,” Ali suggested. “That should do the trick.”

Ali stayed parked where she was in the country club lot, scrolling through her notes while she waited. Five minutes later, her phone rang, and Chip Ralston was on the line.

“What’s this about my mother?” he asked. “Is something wrong?”

“How long have you known she has Alzheimer’s?”

Chip hesitated before he answered. “The better part of two years,” he said finally. “Given my training and experience, I was the first one to notice and suspect what was going on. What my dad was willing to write off as simple forgetfulness, I saw as something else. When I tried to discuss it with him, my father went into total denial, at least at first. Then he did everything he could to cover it up and keep anyone else from knowing what was really going on.”

“How did that work out?”

“Okay for a while. I think for a long time he managed to pull the wool over almost everyone’s eyes. Then he had a stroke and died. All of a sudden Mom’s condition was out in the open, because she was clearly losing ground. I never quite figured out how it happened, but I ended up being the bad guy in that scenario. People who knew my parents came to the conclusion that I should have done something to help sooner-as though I should have been able to fix it. The problem is, Alzheimer’s isn’t fixable. Besides, given my father’s attitude toward my specialty, he would have eaten ground glass before accepting my help.”

“Did Molly know about your mother’s condition for a long time?”

“I doubt it. She came home when Dad ended up in a hospital with a stroke, but she showed up armed with the trump card. The folks had given Molly a medical power of attorney for both of them. As soon as she got here, she used it to post the DNR in Dad’s room. And ever since, she’s used it to keep me out of the loop as far as Mom’s treatment is concerned.”

“How do you feel about that?” Ali asked.

“How do you think I feel?” he asked with an edge of bitterness. “At the time, Molly went ballistic right along with everyone else, and blamed me for Mom’s deteriorating condition, although I wasn’t allowed to do anything about it then and haven’t been able to since then, either.”

“So you have no say in decisions about your mother’s care?”

“None whatsoever. I probably could have fought that in the beginning, but I was up to my eyeballs in fighting with Gemma and her attorneys. I didn’t have the energy to wage another war on a whole different front with Molly, especially since Molly, Gemma, and Mom were thick as thieves. My financial life was already spinning out of control. A few months later, it went over a cliff. When I saw I would need a place to stay while I got on my feet, I ended up having to go to Molly, practically on bended knee, for help. She made it clear that I could live in the casita but only so long as I promised not to interfere in any way with how she was caring for our mother.”