Deadly Stakes (35 page)

Ali thought about what she’d been told. “If they’ve been stripping out the valuables and assets, that means they’ve been working this gig for a long time. Months. Probably since Doris’s husband died.”

“Most likely since before James Ralston died,” Dave corrected grimly. “Faux Molly tells us that the elder Dr. Ralston was given a bit of a chemical boost on his way out. Barry is a former pharmacist. He’d know how to pull something like that off without arousing suspicion, and since James Ralston was in a hospital and under a doctor’s care, they could be relatively certain no postmortem would be done, especially in view of the fact that a proper DNR was posted in James Ralston’s room.”

“Contemptible people,” Ali muttered. “Truly contemptible.”

“Yes,” Dave agreed. “Scary people. Greedy people, and picking on someone who’s mentally deficient like that . . .” He shook his head.

“She may not be,” Ali said.

“What do you mean?”

“I think they’ve been dosing her with low levels of the same drug they gave me and most likely Gemma Ralston as well.”

“If they’ve been dosing her all along, that’s probably one reason why Molly was so adamant about keeping Chip away from their mother.”

Ali nodded. “He might have recognized that her confusion was something other than what they were pretending it was, namely Alzheimer’s.”

“I’ll let him know,” Dave said. “Tell him that he should probably have his mother checked out.”

“Earlier, you said you had several pieces of good news,” Ali pointed out. “What else?”

“Oh, that kid you were worried about—the one with the strongbox full of gambling chips.”

“A. J. Sanders? What about him?”

“He’s in the clear. A woman walked into the North Las Vegas Police Department this afternoon and turned herself in. Said she was the one who killed James Sanders.”

“What woman?”

“Abigail Mattson.”

“The executive director of the Mission?”

“That’s the one. She claimed that she and James Sanders had a thing going, and he knew what a struggle she was having keeping the place afloat. Recently, when he came into a bunch of money, he gave her a chunk of it to help out. It pissed her off that, instead of using his windfall to grubstake her pet project, he decided to give the lion’s share of it to his kid.

“That was when the whole thing went deadly. Abigail admitted to putting a GPS device—an illegal one—on his car, in hopes of grabbing the money before he dropped it off. Fortunately for Sanders’s son, James beat her to the punch. She also said she planted the murder weapon at A.J.’s house to implicate him, but when one of the cops in Las Vegas started asking too many questions, she crumbled. A.J. said Gemma Ralston mentioned someone named Dennis just before she died. We’re trying to sort out if he’s an associate of Barry and Molly’s.”

“I’ll bet he isn’t,” Ali said. “I’ll bet he doesn’t exist. Gemma was drunk out of her head the night she died. Between the booze and whatever drug they gave her, I’ll bet playing tennis with Molly is the last thing she remembered. Tennis/Dennis.”

“Makes sense,” Dave said. “But for the time being, we’ll keep looking for him, just in case.”

Ali leaned back in her chair and closed her eyes. The doctor had given her something for the pain, and she was starting to feel drowsy. “You’re right,” Ali said at last. “That’s all good news.”

“It’s good for me, too.” Dave grinned. “The county attorney has been going after Sheriff Maxwell in a big way. One of his metrics is our closure rate, which has taken a big step up today. I think you could say the Yavapai County Sheriff’s Department is currently batting a thousand.”

“Does A.J. get to keep the money?”

“As far as I can tell. There’s one more thing you probably haven’t
heard. I finally got James Sanders’s autopsy results today. The official one. Two weeks ago he got a cancer diagnosis—pancreatic, stage four. Scott Ballentine had stayed in touch with him. Said he owed James a huge debt for taking the fall on that counterfeiting rap years ago. Ballentine said he had told James over the years that he had more money than sense, and if there was ever anything he could do for him, to let him know.”

“Let me guess,” Ali said. “He took him up on it exactly twice—once a year ago, so he could get A.J. a car for his sixteenth birthday, and again last week, so the kid could have money to go to school.”

“You’re pretty smart for a girl,” Dave said. They were both laughing when the door to the interview room swung open. A plainclothes cop came out, escorting a lush blonde who looked to be fifteen years younger than the real Molly Handraker.

“We’ve got a name on this one now,” the cop said, speaking mostly to Dave. “Candace Kestral. We’ve got a car outside that’s going to transport her to the jail in Kingman. If you have questions for Ms. Kestral, that’s where she’ll be. We’ve been in touch with Las Vegas PD. Turns out that earlier this evening, someone contacted an outfit called
Minnesota’s Most Wanted
with an anonymous tip, letting them know that Barry Handraker, one of their top fugitives, was living it up in a unit at Turnberry Towers. It turns out Ms. Kestral lives there, too. Las Vegas PD was in the process of obtaining a search warrant when all hell broke loose over here. Turns out Handraker has been on the lam for months, but they got the tip and we got Handraker at almost the same time. Odd how it all came together, isn’t it?”

Dave Holman glanced in B.’s direction and then turned back to the other detective. “It’s odd, all right,” he agreed.

The Mohave County detective examined Ali, taking in her torn and bloodied clothing as well as the bandages on her feet. “Today’s kidnapping victim, I assume?” he asked.

“One and the same,” Dave said. “Her name’s Alison Reynolds.”

“Very good,” the detective said to Ali. “Just let me get this one sent off to the slammer, Ms. Reynolds. I’ll be right back to take statements—Mr. Brooks’s statement first and then yours. Do you need anything while you’re waiting? Something to eat or drink? It’s not too late to order pizza.”

Until he said that, Ali hadn’t thought about being either hungry or thirsty, but she realized she was famished. “Pizza sounds good.”

“What kind?” the detective asked.

Now it was B.’s turn to interject. “When it comes to pizza and the lady, there’s only one kind, and that’s pepperoni.”

There was a considerable delay before the detective reappeared. While he was out of the room and they waited for the pizza delivery, Ali went over to the couch, where Leland Brooks was sitting apart from the others.

“While we were in the ER, B. told me what you did,” she said. “That he had asked you to bring him the phone, but you insisted on coming along. To hear him tell it, you practically hijacked the helicopter to be allowed on board.”

“I wasn’t about to be left out of all the excitement,” Leland said. “When we saw the situation on the ground, I told Mr. Simpson that it made sense for me to be the one dropped off to make contact with the enemy. After all, I’ve had some actual training in hand-to-hand combat. I’m afraid Mr. Simpson’s experience is more of the video-game variety, which is good as far as it goes, but when it comes time for cracking heads, I say go for someone who understands how to get the job done.”

Pizza and sodas came and disappeared. It was almost two o’clock in the morning before Ali finished giving her statement. B. had asked the helicopter to hang around long enough to give Leland Brooks and Dave Holman a lift back to Sedona. Only after they flew away did Ali and B. head for the barn.

The room in the Lake Mohave Resort was far humbler than the one in the suite in the Ritz-Carlton in Phoenix, but the king-size
bed was spacious, the sheets were clean, and the nonsmoking room smelled fresh. Even had the room not been comfortable, it was unlikely Ali Reynolds would have noticed.

She was far too intent on cuddling up to the warmth of B. Simpson’s long bare back and falling fast asleep.

36

W
hen Ali awakened the next morning, her body felt like it had taken a beating.

“It did,” B. said when she complained to him about it over breakfast in the resort’s dining room. “After a day spent throwing yourself into ditches, dragging yourself through piles of broken glass, and spending hours crammed in a trunk? I’m surprised you can walk.”

“You know what was nice about that whole thing?” Ali asked.

“What?”

“Bullhead City is the end of the known universe as far as the media is concerned. No reporters.”

“You’re right,” B. agreed. “Considering High Noon’s somewhat illicit involvement, I think it’s advantageous.”

They drove B.’s Enterprise rental back home to Sedona, taking their time. When they got as far as Williams, B. turned off and headed for the Grand Canyon.

“Why?” Ali wanted to know.

“Because I want to,” B. said. “Because yesterday, while you were out risking life and limb, I was figuring out what was important. I almost lost you, Ali. It’s one way of getting a guy’s undivided attention. So now I’ve got some debts to repay, except they’re mostly not repayable.”

“Stuart Ramey, for one?” Ali asked.

“Yup,” B. said. “You’ve got it. He went way out on a limb yesterday, and if it hadn’t been for his working like crazy in the background,
there’s no way we would have found you in time for Leland Brooks to knock Barry Handraker senseless before he managed to finish you off.”

“What are you going to do about it?”

“You mean what are
we
going to do about it?” B. asked. “Stu’s already earning top dollar. I’ll no doubt give him another raise, but what’s he going to do to enjoy it? The man spends his whole life—morning, noon, and night—sitting in front of a computer screen. I asked him, if he could go anywhere on the planet, where would it be? And guess what? He said he’s always wanted to go to Paris, to the Louvre. So I’m sending him on a compulsory vacation. Three weeks. First class. All expenses paid.”

“Does Stuart speak French?” Ali asked.

“Not a word, so I’ll be making arrangements for him to have his own personal guide.”

There was another short pause. “Let me guess,” Ali said. “The next debt is to Leland Brooks.”

“Yup. Big-time.”

“What’s your idea there?”

“You told me about his invitation to that family reunion. I can understand after so many years of being separated from his family, his reluctance for the initial contact to be at a huge cattle-call family event that has the potential for turning into an over-the-top circus. So how about if, sometime between now and Christmas, you use my frequent-flier miles and take him across the pond? That way he’ll have you there to rent a car and do the driving. I have it on good authority that UK car-rental companies won’t rent to anyone his age, so he’ll have a nonfamily member there to run interference for him. If his relatives turn out to be a bunch of homophobic bigots, you can drag him out of the fray and bring him home.”

Ali nodded. “And making contact now will put him in a lot better place to decide whether he’s going to the family reunion come next summer.”

“Exactly,” B. said.

They fell quiet after that, lost in their own thoughts. Ali was thinking about how, the previous day, B. and Stuart Ramey had risked everything they had worked for over the years in order to save her from what was, essentially, a bit of her own foolishness. She never should have gone to see a homicide suspect on her own. But B. and Stuart had stepped up. Together they had put everything on the line. Yes, Stuart had been the one with his fingers on the keyboard, but he had done it with B.’s full knowledge and encouragement.

Given all of that, her previous objections to marrying B. Simpson seemed downright petty.
Maybe,
she thought,
after turning him down so many times, I’ll have to do the proposing.

Those were the thoughts running through her head as they headed north toward the Grand Canyon, but she didn’t say any of them aloud. When they got to Bright Angel Lodge, Ali was surprised to learn that on this supposedly spur-of-the-moment side trip, they had a luncheon reservation. As B. helped her from the car to the door, Ali worried that her bandaged bare feet would consign them to the “no shoes no service” side of the universe. It didn’t happen. Their reserved table next to the restaurant’s massive windows gave them a spectacular and unobstructed view of the canyon.

When it came time for dessert, Ali tried to turn it down, but B. insisted on sharing a slice of pumpkin cheesecake. Halfway through, Ali’s fork ran into something surprisingly solid. When she pulled out the offending item, it turned out to be an amazing diamond solitaire.

“How did you manage this?” she asked, dipping the ring in her water glass and rubbing it clean with her napkin.

“I already had the ring picked out,” B. admitted. “I called the jeweler in Flagstaff first thing this morning and asked him to drive it over. I was going to give it to you for Christmas, but that’s too far away. Yesterday I almost lost you. I couldn’t believe how much it hurt. If you had ended up in a hospital somewhere, badly hurt or dying, I wouldn’t even have had the right to see you. Please marry me, Ali. It’s time.”

For a moment she didn’t answer him. She was too busy fussing
with the ring. When it was properly dried, she slipped it on her finger.

“You’re right,” she said. “It is time.”

“So that’s a yes?”

“Yes,” she said with a smile, leaning over to give him a light peck on the cheek. “That’s definitely a yes.”

Afterword

B
y the time they got home that evening, they had decided on and arranged for a Christmas Eve wedding in Las Vegas. Stuart Ramey would be the best man. Sister Anselm would be the matron of honor. The twins, Colin and Colleen, would be ring bearer and flower girl, respectively.

Back at home, still feeling more than a little stiff, Ali put her Googling skills to work and located Scott Ballentine at his office in Newport Beach, California. She used the old freelancer ruse to get past the corporate gatekeepers.

“You’ve heard what happened?” she asked once Ballentine knew who she was and why she was calling.