Deadly Stakes

12

As soon as breakfast was over, Ali headed for High Noon’s corporate offices in Cottonwood. Having been given a warning call by B., Stuart Ramey conducted her into a conference room and left her to read the mountain of material he had already accumulated, including the fact that for the past five years James Mason Sanders had lived and worked at a halfway house in North Las Vegas called the Mission, where people fresh out of jail could get three hots and a cot. According to the Mission’s fund-raising newsletter, Sanders was the facility’s on-site manager.

The back story on James Mason Sanders, as culled from newspaper articles, related the tragedy of a bright kid pulled into a college-age prank that went awry. A group of Arizona State University fraternity brothers had decided to see if it was possible to use their newly honed computer skills to print their own money. With Sanders doing most of the artwork and one of the other guys laying hands on a ready supply of the right kind of paper, they had printed up and spent a considerable amount of phony twenty-dollar bills. Had they been serious about the project, they probably would have moved on to printing hundreds.

Once the students were caught, the feds didn’t see anything funny about it. The four perpetrators were tried separately. Two, Robert McDowell and Kevin Owens, were found innocent of all charges. It was clear from reading the articles that the two who got off came from families who had been able to pay for name-brand defense attorneys. The two who took the fall, James Sanders and Scott Ballentine, were represented by court-appointed attorneys. Scott, who procured the paper, got off with a five-thousand-dollar fine after agreeing to testify against James Sanders, who was considered the creative genius behind the project.

Sounds familiar, Ali thought, thinking about Lynn Martinson and Chip Ralston.

At the end of one article, Ali discovered a nugget of information:

At the conclusion of the sentencing hearing, where Sanders was given a sentence of twelve to fifteen years, he was led stony-faced from Judge Mathison’s courtroom without exchanging so much as a nod with his weeping wife and their infant child.

Ali picked up the phone and dialed Stuart Ramey. “What became of Sanders’s wife and child?”

“What wife and child?” Stuart wanted to know.

Ali read him the passage.

“I missed that one completely,” Stuart said, “but I’ll look into it.”

“How did you find out all the details about the Mission? When we were talking to Detective Holman last night, he claimed that Sanders had dropped off the grid after he got out of prison.”

“I have my ways,” Stuart said, “some of which you’re probably better off not knowing. For as long as he’s been at the Mission, he’s maintained a checking account at a Wells Fargo branch in North Las Vegas, under the name Mason Sanders. I’ve studied the records for that account for the past three years. His paychecks come and go through that on an automatic deposit. Except for a blip two years ago, when the balance bumped up briefly to twenty grand and then went back down, it’s stayed the same ever since.”

“What about phone records?” Ali asked. “Wouldn’t that be the easiest way to tell if he was in touch with either Chip Ralston or Lynn Martinson?”

“It would be if he had a phone listed in his name, but he didn’t. No cell and no landline, either. What that probably means is that he used a phone at the Mission for making both business and personal calls. It’ll take a while longer to locate those records and go through them. At first glance, I didn’t spot any calls or texts to or from anyone in Las Vegas on Chip Ralston’s phone records or Lynn Martinson’s. That doesn’t mean there isn’t a connection. It just means I haven’t found it yet.”

“Have you spoken to anyone at the halfway house?” Ali asked.

“That’s not my thing,” Stuart said. “I’m great at backdoor data-mining, but I’m not much good at the direct approach of picking up the phone and asking questions.”

“You’re implying I’d be better at that than you are?” Ali asked.

“Aren’t you?”

“Give me a name and number,” Ali said with a laugh.

“The executive director is listed as Abigail Mattson.” Stuart reeled off a phone number, and Ali jotted it down.

“What am I looking for in particular?”

“For whatever changed,” Stuart said. “Sanders worked at the Mission for years without any record of his ever having a driver’s license or owning a vehicle. Last week he evidently went out and bought a vehicle from a private party, paying for it with a handful of cash. The next thing we know, he’s been found three hundred miles away, shot to death in that same vehicle, a ten-year-old Lumina, which is still registered to the original owner. How come he suddenly needed a car when he evidently hadn’t needed one in years? And how did he suddenly have enough money to pay cash for the vehicle-seventeen hundred bucks-when there’s no change in the balance of his bank account? The money had to come from somewhere.”

“What’s the going rate for knocking off a troublesome ex-wife these days?” Ali asked.

It was Stuart Ramey’s turn to laugh. “Beats me,” he said. “I’ve never had a current wife, to say nothing of a troublesome ex.”

Once Ali was off the phone with Stuart, she sat for a moment, looking at the phone in her hand, while she considered what she would say and how she would say it. Straying too far from the truth probably wouldn’t be a good idea. When she dialed and the phone rang, it was answered by a woman who sounded relatively young. “Ms. Mattson’s office.”

“My name’s Alison Reynolds,” Ali said. “I’m from Sedona, Arizona. I’m looking into the death of James Sanders. I believe Ms. Mattson was his supervisor. Is she in?”

There was a sharp intake of breath. “Are you a reporter?” the young woman asked.

Once Ali would have had to answer yes to that question. “No,” she said. “I’m not a reporter. And you are?”

“I’m Regina, Ms. Mattson’s secretary. Ms. Mattson isn’t in today. She was so upset by what happened that she called in sick. She’s taking the rest of the week off, but she gave me specific instructions that I’m not to discuss the situation with any reporters.”

Without bothering to attempt a lame denial, Ali simply forged ahead. “Did you happen to know Mr. Sanders?”

Regina immediately burst into tears. “Of course I did,” she sobbed. “Everybody here knew Mason and loved him. He’s such a nice guy. Not like some of the other creeps who come through here.”

“Through the Mission. You mean the clients?”

“I know we’re here to help them, but some of them are such no-good losers,” Regina declared. “They don’t want any help. They don’t want to make their lives better. Mason may have started out the same way years ago, but he wasn’t like that at all, and what he did for me last week was just unbelievable.”

“What was that?” Ali asked.

“I had fallen behind on my car payments,” Regina said. “Way behind. One day while he was here in my office, sweeping and dusting, the finance company called me again. He heard the whole thing. Afterward he asked me about it. I told him how, every morning when I got up, I was afraid the repo guys might have come to get it overnight.

“The very next day he came into my office, stopped by my desk, and gave me what looked like a box of candy-See’s peanut brittle, my favorite. When I looked inside there wasn’t just peanut brittle in the box. There was also enough money to pay off my car loan-three thousand bucks. I told him he shouldn’t have, but he just grinned at me. He said he’d had some good luck and he wanted to share the wealth. He asked me not to tell anyone, and I shouldn’t have told you, either, but you can’t imagine what a miracle that was in my life.”

“He gave you that much money in cash?” Ali asked, wishing she weren’t thinking about the counterfeit twenty-dollar bills that had landed James Sanders in prison in the first place.

“Not in cash,” the woman answered. “In tokens. From the MGM Grand. Three thousand-dollar tokens. Over the weekend, I went to the casino and cashed them in. On Monday I was able to pay off my car loan. I could hardly wait to show the paperwork to Mason and to thank him, but he wasn’t here on Monday, and he never came back to work. I sent him an e-mail thank-you note, but I don’t know if he ever saw it.”

“So he had an e-mail account?”

“Ms. Mattson let us use our Mission addresses for personal e-mail. I don’t have a computer at home, you see,” she added. “This was Mason’s home, and he didn’t have a computer of his own, either.”

“So Friday was the last day you saw him?”

“Yes, like I said, he wasn’t at work on Monday. Ms. Mattson reported him missing on Tuesday. Last night someone called and told her he’d been found murdered somewhere in Arizona. I can’t believe he’s dead. I just can’t.”

While Regina dissolved in tears once more, Ali was busy doing the math. In the week before he died, James Mason Sanders-a man whose checking account balance rarely made it over the thousand-dollar mark-had handed out close to five thousand dollars in cold cash without causing any appreciable movement in his bank balance.

“Did Mr. Sanders earn much money working at the Mission?” Ali asked.

“Minimum wage,” the young woman answered. “That’s what we all get, but he told me once that he didn’t need much as long as he had a roof over his head and important work to do.”

“What do you think he meant by that?”

“He believed in what the Mission does-helping people find their way, stay out of trouble, make something of themselves. I think he believed in it more than anyone else. He said that working here gave him a purpose in life.”

“What about the three thousand dollars that he gave you? Did he mention where it came from? Was he a gambler, for instance?”

“Not that I know of.” Regina paused. “Well, maybe he was, because how else would he get those tokens? I’ve heard of thousand-dollar tokens, but those are the first ones I ever saw. They’re usually reserved for really high-stakes games.”

“What exactly did Mr. Sanders do at the Mission?”

“He checked people in and out. Made sure the room and the bedding were clean when someone moved in. He swept the halls. Emptied the trash. Made sure people weren’t smoking in their rooms. Replaced the batteries in the smoke alarms. Fixed leaky faucets. You know, stuff like that, but don’t think he was just a glorified janitor. Ms. Mattson runs the place, but Mason was the glue that held it together. She was the one who was out in public, raising funds. He was the guy doing the hands-on work.”

“So you’re saying they were partners?”

“I guess,” Regina said. “Not officially, maybe, but yes.”

“Was he good friends with anyone else there?”

“Not really. Most people come and go in a matter of weeks. I’ve been here for about six months. I think Ms. Mattson is the only one who was here longer than Mason.”

“How did you end up at the Mission?” Ali asked, changing the subject. She more than half expected a fudged response. Instead, Regina’s answer was straightforward.

“I got six months for domestic violence. When I got out, my roommate hadn’t paid the rent on our apartment. She had taken off with all my stuff. I was left with nothing and nowhere to live. The Mission was the last place I wanted to be, but it was also the only place I could go. While I was here, Ms. Mattson found out I could type, and gave me a job. I’ve worked here ever since, answering phones and doing whatever else Ms. Mattson needs.”

“So the Mission takes both men and women?”

“Yes, but our rooms are on different floors. The men are on floors one and two; women are on floor three; and no staying-over privileges. You get caught on the wrong floor, and you are O-U-T! Ms. Mattson is very strict about that.”

“Is there anything else you can tell me about Mr. Sanders?” Ali asked.

“He was smart. He read books. He could have worked anywhere. He stayed here because he liked it and because it gave him a sense of purpose. He liked helping people, and he made the Mission a better place. Oh, and he smoked, but always outside. There’s a little picnic table out back for us smokers. That’s where he smoked, too. .” Regina’s voice faded away momentarily. “Wait. I almost forgot. One day last week, I was outside having a smoke when a limo pulled up outside. A real live limo-a white stretch. We don’t see many of those around this neighborhood. I thought maybe it was someone who had taken a wrong turn going to the wedding chapel up the street, but just then Mason came hotfooting it out the front door. The back door of the limo opened, he got in, and they drove away. I asked him about it the next day. He said it was a friend of his from a long time ago who had stopped by to say hello.”

“Do you know what day this was?”

“Wednesday, maybe?”

“And what time?”

“In the afternoon. During my last break, so it must have been around four. I was surprised he was taking off early like that, but I’m sure Ms. Mattson knew about it. Not much gets past her.” Another phone rang in the background. “I need to answer that,” Regina said. “Do you want me to have Ms. Mattson call you when I hear from her? It may not be until sometime next week.”

“Sure,” Ali said. She read off her number. “She can call me, or I’ll get back to her.”

When Regina hung up, Ali felt as though she had caught wind of a tiny thread of James Sanders’s story-gambling tokens from the MGM Grand, a limo, and a visit from an old friend. Maybe if she tugged on that thread hard enough, the whole thing would unravel.

With that, she left the conference room and went looking for Stuart Ramey.