Deadly Stakes

24

While Sylvia marched across the parking lot and into the office building, Ali’s phone rang.

“Hey,” B. said. “Busy morning?”

“Very,” Ali said without going into detail. “How about you?”

“Checkout time is fast approaching. I’m on my way to the first of two meetings scheduled for this afternoon, then I need to head back to Sedona. Do you want me to pack up your stuff and check you out of the hotel, or do you want to keep the room for another night?”

Ali had expected to be back from her meeting with Valerie Sloan in plenty of time to do her own packing. “Sorry,” she said. “I got held up, and I’m all the way out in Tempe. If you don’t mind grabbing my stuff, I’d appreciate it.”

“Don’t mind at all,” B. said. “See you at home.”

For the next ten minutes, Ali sat in the booth, sipping her drink, and watching the building into which Sylvia Sanders had disappeared. At last the glass doors opened. Sylvia emerged first, accompanied by one of the plainclothes detectives and followed by the second. The first one helped her into the back of one of the waiting unmarked patrol cars. Then he and his partner got into the car and drove out of the parking lot, followed closely by the vehicle with a uniformed officer that had been keeping Sylvia’s Passat blocked in its parking place.

Still unsure what to do next, Ali was gathering her things to leave when Stuart Ramey called. “Any luck on the Dennis front?” she asked, subsiding back into the booth.

“Nada,” Stuart said. “I’m unable to find any mention of someone named Dennis in Gemma’s e-mail history or in her contacts list. I checked both.”

“Who was he, then?” Ali asked.

“You’re sure the witness got the name right?”

“Relatively,” Ali said. “I already checked with Gemma’s one tennis partner earlier today. She claimed they never discussed romantic entanglements. Maybe I should have another chat with the other one.” Ali stopped talking abruptly when she realized what she’d said. “Maybe that’s it,” she said.

“Maybe what?” Stuart sounded genuinely puzzled.

“Maybe Gemma said the word ‘tennis,’ not Dennis,” Ali explained excitedly. “Molly Handraker told me that she and Gemma played tennis on Monday afternoon. Maybe Gemma was talking about something that happened while they were playing or after they finished.” Calling up her notes, Ali read through them until she found what she was looking for. “Last night’s interview with Molly ended a little abruptly. I think I’ll go back to Paradise Valley and ask her about Dennis. And I’m going to need an address and phone number for a student at North High School in Phoenix. Sasha Miller.”

“Will do,” Stuart said.

Minutes later, feeling more like a commuter than anything else, Ali headed north on the 51. Whatever Gemma’s dying word had been, it was the best clue Ali had, and she was sure that everyone else involved in the case-especially Dave Holman-was currently too busy with other things to follow up on it. The jurisdictional wrangling over what to do about A.J. was going to keep any number of people completely occupied for the next several hours. Right that moment, Ali had a clear field, and she intended to use it.

Her first plan was to drive back to the Ralston place on Upper Glen Road, but as she turned off on Lincoln and saw the sign to the Paradise Valley Country Club, she changed her mind. The last time Molly Handraker had seen Gemma Ralston, she was sitting at the bar in the country club. With any luck, someone-the bartender, maybe? — had noticed Gemma leaving with someone else, maybe even the mysterious Dennis.

The country club was for members only, but Ali had a way around that. Pulling over on a side road, she found the number, called it, and asked to be connected to the dining room.

“This is Doris Ralston’s new PA,” she said. “She needs a reservation for lunch at twelve-thirty today, and she’s expecting a guest-Ali Reynolds. Got that?”

“Of course,” the hostess said. “I’m assuming she’d like her usual table? And Ms. Handraker will be there as well?”

“Yes, a reservation for three,” Ali said with a smile. “That will be perfect.” As long as Doris and Molly don’t show up on their own, Ali thought.

A glance at her watch told her she had a few minutes to kill. Since she was only a mile or so away from Gemma’s condo, Ali headed there. She spent the time canvassing Gemma’s near neighbors. It was late morning on a weekday. Mostly, no one was home, but as Ali walked through the neighborhood, she noted the addresses of any houses with obvious security cameras. They might be worth having Stuart Ramey check into later.

At exactly twelve-fifteen, she presented herself at the gatehouse for the Paradise Valley Country Club. She nodded at the guard as he waved her through. Parking in the clubhouse lot, she scanned through her iPad notes until she located the name of the bartender. Luis, with no last name. Armed with nothing but the name Luis, Ali made her way into the clubhouse. The dining room was busy, and the harried hostess cast a worried glance first at her list and then in the direction of an occupied table by the far window.

“The rest of your party isn’t here yet,” she said. “Would you mind waiting in the bar?”

“Not at all,” Ali said graciously. And please don’t throw me in the briar patch. She turned back to the hostess. “Is Luis working today?”

“Luis Cruz?” The hostess nodded. “He came on at eleven.”

Better and better, Ali thought.

She made her way into the bar. There were a number of people there, some of them watching CNN and the others glued to a golf tournament being played in some cold clime where the players and the few fans braving the edges of the fairways and the grandstands at the greens were bundled up to ward off wind and rain.

Ali took a seat and waited for the bartender-a guy in his thirties with a buzz cut, a pencil-thin mustache, and a bull neck-to turn in her direction. “What can I get you?” he asked.

“Just water,” she said. “I’m meeting Doris Ralston and her daughter, and they’re not here yet.”

“Ice?” he asked.

“Yes, please.”

The bartender brought the water and set it in front of her. “Not a good time for the Ralstons,” he said.

“So you’ve heard?”

“Everybody’s talking about it,” Luis said with a shrug. “First Molly’s father died a few months back; the mother is having health issues of some kind; and now her brother is accused of murder. From where I’m standing, Molly Handraker has her hands full.”

“You know her then? Molly, I mean.”

He shrugged. “Not well. I’ve only known her since she got back to town, but I’ve heard stories about her family. You know the type-the sons are the fair-haired boys and can do no wrong, and the girls are second-class citizens who are supposed to grow up and be wives and mothers and join the Junior League. When you’re playing that game, being beautiful helps. Molly’s not bad-looking, but taking care of her mother is wearing her down. I feel sorry for her.”

“What can you tell me about Gemma Ralston?”

Luis gave Ali a searching look, then shook his head. “Gemma’s another story,” he said, “and this would probably be an excellent time for me to keep my mouth shut. How about those Cardinals?”

Turning his back, Luis walked away from Ali’s end of the bar. For the next few minutes, he made dutiful rounds of all the other customers, mixing cocktails and pouring drinks for them and for waitresses from the dining room, and providing another pitcher of beer for the guys watching the golf tournament. Finally, he returned to Ali.

“I take it you didn’t like Gemma Ralston?” she asked.

He gave her a baleful look. “What’s your deal in all this?”

“I’m a freelancer,” Ali said, producing a business card and handing it over. “My name is Ali Reynolds, and I’m doing a writing project on early-onset Alzheimer’s.”

She had noticed that the word “freelancer” prompted far fewer negative reactions than the word “reporter.” Maybe freelancing put people in mind less of out-of-control journalists and more of men out in armor, tilting at windmills and slaying the occasional dragon. What could be a more understandable dragon to slay than a dread disease that scared the hell out of everyone?

“Luis Cruz,” he said, accepting both the card and the explanation. “I’ve never had a problem with any of the other Ralstons, but Gemma is another story. Let’s just say whoever took that woman out did the whole world a favor. And in case you’re interested, I told the cops the same thing.”

“They talked to you?”

“Sure. Why wouldn’t they? Gemma Ralston was here on Monday night, the same night she went missing. As a matter of fact, she and Molly Handraker were here together. I overheard them talking about a diamond necklace, Mrs. Ralston’s most likely. It had disappeared, and Gemma mentioned dropping by the next day to help look for it. Molly said something like ‘You don’t need to bother-she won’t even remember,’ and Gemma says, ‘I told your mother I’d come help, and I will.’ Molly stayed around a while longer after that, but when she left, I got the feeling that she was upset about something.”

“Did Gemma leave then, too?” Ali asked.

“It would have been great if she had, but she didn’t,” Luis continued. “As usual, she stayed on, drinking and throwing her weight around. As soon as Molly’s back was turned, Gemma started bad-mouthing the woman who was supposed to be her best friend. That didn’t sit too well with me. Snobs don’t bother me-there are plenty of those around here-but I don’t like two-faced snobs.”

“Did she leave with anyone?”

Luis shook his head. “The cops asked the same question. She left by herself around nine or so. Not quite drunk but getting there. She raised hell when I cut her off and suggested she call a taxi. She threw a fit and went screaming to my manager about it. She wanted him to fire me on the spot.”

“I guess that didn’t work,” Ali observed with a smile.

“No, it didn’t, but no thanks to her,” Luis replied. “Even though I was in the right for cutting her off, I still ended up getting a write-up. Customer complaints are a big deal around here, so pardon me if I say good riddance. By the way, she evidently disregarded my advice and drove herself home after all. So don’t bother asking where I was on Monday night, because I was here working until two A.M. You can check the time clock. I’m sure the cops already did. And after I left work, I went straight home. There’s a security camera on the parking garage of my building. It’ll show that I was home safe and sound at two-thirty. They’re welcome to check that for themselves, and so are you.”

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.”

“As long as she had the durable power of attorney, she had you over a barrel.”

“In spades,” Chip agreed. “Did then and still does.”

“From what you’re saying, I take it you and your sister aren’t on the best of terms?”

“Molly and I were never on good terms,” Chip replied. “I know there are families where brothers and sisters get along like gangbusters and chum around together. Our family has never been like that. We’re likely to show up for compulsory photo ops on major holidays, but that’s about it. More for show than go.”

“Did you ever tell Lynn what was going on with your mother?”

Chip paused. “No,” he said finally.

“Why not?”

“Because I was ashamed, I guess,” he admitted. “Because I didn’t want her to think I was a hypocrite. Here I am, out at the support group meetings, telling my patients that Alzheimer’s is something that has to be handled as a family, while as far as my own family is concerned, I’m completely shut out from practicing what I preach. So that’s one part of my reluctance to have Lynn involved in my mother’s life. The other part is my mother’s total focus on Gemma. It doesn’t matter if Gemma is dead or alive. As long as Mom maintains that powerful connection to my ex-wife, she’s never going to accept Lynn’s presence in my life. On the one occasion I did try to introduce them-”

“I know. Your mother went ballistic.”

“That’s putting it mildly.”

“How would you characterize your sister’s care of your mother?”

“I’m not privy to everything that goes on, but she seems to be doing a good enough job. For a while there were problems with Mom setting off the alarm system overnight, but I believe they adjusted her meds so she’s sleeping better. At least she was. There’s a chance that the shock of Gemma’s death might spark another crisis. In that case, Molly might end up needing extra help. She might even call Consuelo back.”

“That’s the maid your sister fired?”

“Yes,” Chip said. “I’m sure she could use the work. She was really loyal to my mom. It’s a shame she had to be let go. Molly always claimed it was a matter of saving money.”

“Might the maid have stolen something?”

“Consuelo? Never,” Chip declared. “Why?”

“Your mother said something to Gemma about losing a necklace, a diamond necklace. With your mother’s condition, it’s hard to tell if it’s something that happened recently or a long time ago.”

“Yes,” Chip agreed. “The time lines do tend to get muddled, but I can’t imagine Consuelo ever stealing something from anyone at all, much less from Mother. I think it’s more likely that whatever it is simply got misplaced.”

“Okay,” Ali said. “One last question. Did your ex-wife have a friend or acquaintance named Dennis?”

“What I don’t know about my ex’s affairs, romantic or otherwise, would fill volumes-for all I know, there could have been a dozen Dennises in her life, but I don’t remember hearing that name mentioned. Ever.”

“I take it there’s still no word from Cap Horning?”

“Not so far. Anything else?”

Ali’s phone buzzed. Stuart Ramey’s name and number appeared on the screen. “Thanks for your help, Chip. I have to run. I’ve got another call.”