Deadly Stakes

5

Edie Larson’s election-night party in the rec room at Sedona Shadows should have been a disaster. After all, by the time the TV station in Flagstaff started scrolling election results across the bottom of the flat-screen TV on the wall, there was already a two-hundred-vote margin. As later results came in, that deficit narrowed, but not enough. The looming loss didn’t seem to bother Edie, and it had zero effect on her high spirits. It looked to Ali Reynolds as though her mother were having the time of her life.

One of Bob Larson’s new friends, a fellow resident from Sedona Shadows, was providing the music. Mike Baxter, a mostly retired DJ, played his music the old-fashioned way-on vinyl records. He had been widowed after fifty-three years of marriage, and his kids had suggested that taking care of the family home was probably too much for him. Mike correctly read the situation and realized that his kids weren’t nearly so worried about upkeep on the old place as they were about seeing it turned into ready cash. They had wanted him to hand it off to an overeager residential developer who just happened to be his son’s good pal. Resisting what he regarded as underhanded pressure, Mike had opted to sell the place to someone else, back when suburban Chicago property values were booming. He then departed the Midwest, taking with him a neat profit in real estate as well as his primo collection of vinyl records, gathered one by one over sixty-plus years. Once in Arizona, he settled happily into a new downsized life that included several years with a new wife.

For years Mike had supplemented his retirement income by spinning the old records at events for those he liked to call golden-agers. The music he brought had nothing to do with YMCA, rap, or disco and everything to do with crooners like Frank Sinatra, Patti Page, and Rosemary Clooney as well as the pioneers of rock and roll. Widowed a second time, he downsized yet again. This time he left the heat of Phoenix in favor of cooler Sedona. Even though he was on his own, he had taken a two-bedroom unit in Sedona Shadows. One bedroom was for sleeping, and the other was reserved for his record collection.

Once a week now, Mike did a Saturday-afternoon Sock Hop for the benefit of the facility’s residents and any members of the public who cared to venture inside. His sidekick in the operation was Ali’s dad, Bob Larson, who handled the electronics and the sound system while Mike handled the platters and the patter. Over the months the two of them had become good friends, and it had been Mike’s idea that there should be music at the election-night party.

Ali had thought that was a good idea when she hoped for a victory celebration. It had turned out to be an even better way to celebrate defeat. So were the several cookie sheets of Sugarloaf Cafe sweet rolls Edie had ordered from the new owners of the diner that once was the Larson family’s livelihood. Edie herself cheerfully dished them out to everyone who showed up at the party, even though Ali suspected some of the attendees hadn’t been among Edie’s supporters.

The sweet rolls were gone, but the party was going strong. Bob and Edie had again taken to the dance floor when Ali’s son, Christopher, stopped by to chat with his mother while his four-year-old son, Colin, snoozed on his shoulder.

“Grandma seems to be taking this all in stride,” Chris observed. “How are you doing?”

Ali shrugged. “Losing by fewer than two hundred votes is a respectable loss,” she said. “I think we’ll be able to hold our heads up. It’s not like we took a complete drubbing.”

“You look tired, though,” Chris said. He was a great son, but diplomacy had never been his strong suit.

Ali kissed the tip of Colin’s nose and then smiled at Chris. “That’s because I am tired,” she said. “Running a political campaign is hard work. Truth be told, I think your grandmother had a lot more fun running for office than she would being in office, because then she would have to deal with all the various oddball factions out there.”

“You mean like the anti-contrails folks?”

“That’s one,” Ali said.

Chris laughed. “Grandpa says he thinks they’ll try outlawing gravity next.”

Ali laughed, too. “Grandpa’s opinions are part of the reason it would be tough for your grandmother to hold office. She’d have to learn to deal with one extreme out in public and the other extreme at home. It probably would have driven her nuts.”

Just then Ali’s daughter-in-law, Athena, showed up with Colin’s twin sister, Colleen, in hand. Colleen, the far more gregarious of the two, was going strong at nine-thirty and had to be led from the dance floor.

“Do we have to go home?” she demanded. “I’m having fun.”

“Yes, we have to go home,” Athena said firmly. “Preschool tomorrow.”

Colleen made a face but didn’t make a fuss. She looked up at Ali. “Sorry Grandma didn’t winned,” she said.

Ali smiled at her granddaughter without trying to straighten out that pesky irregular verb. “No, we didn’t, sweetie,” she said, leaning down to collect some night-night love. “Maybe next time.”

As Chris and Athena left, Dave and Priscilla Holman took their places. Dave, a Sedona native, was the chief homicide detective for the Yavapai County Sheriff’s Department. Years earlier, when Ali had come back home to Sedona after the collapse of her marriage, she and Dave had been an item for a while, but the demands of his being a single dad with sole custody of his kids had proved too much for their budding romance. At a time when kids and work were his two top priorities, their love life had placed a very distant third. Their breakup had been amicable, and they had managed to remain friends. Ali had taken up with B. Simpson, and when Dave’s kids had gotten old enough, he had hooked up with and eventually married Priscilla Morse, a savvy businesswoman who owned a local chain of nail salons.

Living in a small town meant there were very few secrets. From the beginning, Priscilla Morse Holman had known about Dave’s previous relationship with Ali, but she had also been one of Edie Larson’s staunchest supporters in the campaign for mayor. Initially, there were a few awkward moments between Ali and Priscilla, but the kinks had worked themselves out over the course of several months. Although the two women weren’t exactly close friends, they weren’t rivals, either.

“Sorry we’re late,” Priscilla said. “He was working,” she said, sighing and sending a pointed look in Dave’s direction. “Give this guy a murder case to work on, and he’s like a dog with a bone-he just can’t let it be.” The sweet smile she sent in Dave’s direction took some of the edge off what might have been considered bitchy criticism. “Now, where’s that mother of yours?” Priscilla asked, looking around the room. “I assume she’s got a handle on being a good loser?”

“See for yourself,” Ali said, pointing to the dance floor, where Bob and Edie Larson were doing a credible job of rocking to Bill Haley and his Comets’ iconic “Rock Around the Clock.”

“I heard there were sweet rolls,” Dave said, glancing hopefully in the direction of the refreshment table.

“Sorry,” Ali said. “They’re gone.”

“All of them? Too bad!” Dave’s disappointment was obvious. As a single guy, he had been a regular customer at the Sugarloaf Cafe and a devoted fan of Edie’s sweet rolls, which the new owners still made according to Edie’s recipe and specifications.

“You snooze, you lose,” Ali said. “All that’s left is coffee and punch and maybe a Girl Scout cookie or two. But what case?” she asked, leading him toward the coffee urns. “I’ve been so buried with election doings that I haven’t paid attention to anything else.”

“It just happened this morning,” Dave said. “So you haven’t missed much. Someone sent a text to 911 about an injured woman found off I-17 near General Crook Trail. By the time we could get to her, she was already dead, and whoever placed the call was long gone, too. No ID on the body, but we found a cell phone; we hoped it would lead us to the victim’s name, but that turned out to be a dead end. The owner of the cell phone is alive and well and living down in Surprise. She claims that her cell phone disappeared overnight sometime last night, so that puts us back to square one on IDing our victim. The autopsy is scheduled for tomorrow morning in Prescott. I’d like to know who she is before the ME cuts into her, but I don’t think that’s going to happen.”

“Maybe someone will file a missing persons report,” Ali suggested.

Dave nodded. “Let’s hope,” he said.

At one time Ali had been on track to serve as a sworn officer with the Yavapai Sheriff’s Department. After passing a challenging police academy course, she was disappointed when a budget shortfall had caused her to miss the cut. She was officially listed as a reserve officer with the department, although in the months leading up to the election, she had done no shifts. Had Ali been an ordinary civilian, Dave probably wouldn’t have spoken so freely about the difficulties of the new investigation. In listening to him, Ali felt the tiniest twinge of regret-jealousy, almost. Dave Holman was working a case. Ali Reynolds wasn’t.

At the table, Dave snagged the last remaining Thin Mint and a pair of Girl Scout badge-shaped shortbreads. “Missed dinner,” he added, reaching for a coffee cup. “We were out working the crime scene until just before dark, then I had to go into the office.”

Yavapai County covered over eight thousand square miles and was only slightly smaller than the state of New Jersey. The Investigations Unit worked out of the departmental office in Prescott, eighty miles away. That meant that between leaving the crime scene and arriving at the party, Dave had done about 160 miles’ worth of driving. No wonder Dave and Priscilla had arrived at the party late.

“But Priscilla would have had my ears if we hadn’t made it, so here we are.” Dave reached for one of the last remaining shortbreads.

“If she hadn’t, I’m sure my mother would have,” Ali said with a laugh.

“Your mother would have what?” a beaming Edie Larson asked, arriving on the scene with Priscilla and Bob Larson trailing behind her.

Dave grinned at her. “You would have taken off my ears if we hadn’t shown up for the party.”

“That’s right. You don’t get off just stuffing envelopes and ringing doorbells.”

“What are you going to do now?” Dave asked.

“I’m not sure,” Edie said. “I’m exploring my options.”

“What about taking another cruise?” Bob suggested. “What’s that song Mike was playing a little while ago?”

“I suppose you mean ‘If You’ve Got the Money, Honey, I’ve Got the Time’?” Edie responded.

“Exactly,” Bob said, “and since we do have the money, I think we should have as much fun as we can while we can.”

The idea that her father would become a cruise enthusiast was an unintended consequence of Ali’s having sent them on a Caribbean cruise several years earlier. Since then they had chalked up a cruise to Alaska, but Bob had a whole list of cruise possibilities, and he was determined to cross off as many as he could.

With that Bob excused himself to help Mike disassemble his portable dance floor and pack that up, as well as all the DJ equipment. Dave’s cell phone was ringing as he and Priscilla let themselves out. Leaving Edie to say good night to the rest of the departing guests, Ali busied herself helping a handful of campaign volunteers clean up. Chairs and tables had been relocated in order to create room for the dance floor. Those all needed to be returned to their customary positions. By the time Edie said goodbye to the last guest, Ali was carefully moving a half-completed fifteen-hundred-piece jigsaw puzzle back to its allotted place.

“Everyone keeps asking me what I’m going to do next,” Edie said. “The problem is, I have no idea.”

Ali gave her mother a sympathetic smile. “Welcome to my world,” she said. “I’ve been grappling with that very question ever since the whole police academy thing blew up in my face. You handled yourself really well tonight, Mom. You did yourself proud under very difficult circumstances.”

Edie nodded. “Thanks. I told myself this morning that win, lose, or draw, I was going to look like I was having fun no matter what. When the returns started coming in and I could see we were falling behind, I told myself, ‘Stiff upper lip and all that.’ The funny thing is, I started out pretending to have fun, but pretty soon I really was having fun. Besides,” she added, “I know your father’s relieved. Bobby’s been a brick about all this, and he never would have voted against me in a million years, but I’m equally sure he would have hated it if I had won.”

“He would have continued to be a brick,” Ali assured her mother, “but I think he’ll be glad to have you all to himself. From what you’re saying, though, I take it you’re not that disappointed that we lost?”

“I don’t suppose I am,” Edie agreed after a pause. “Not really. It was our first time out, and we came really close to unseating an incumbent. That counts for something. And I’m glad I ran. Doing that taught me that I can do anything I set my mind to. Now all I have to do is figure out what that is. Speaking of same, now that you’re out of a job, too, what’s your next step?”

“I’ll have to start thinking about next year’s scholarship nominees, and the symphony has been after me to take charge of next spring’s author luncheon. I’ve been putting them off because I was too busy with the election.”

Edie smiled. “You don’t have that excuse anymore.”

“No, I don’t,” Ali agreed. “I guess I’ll give them a call and see if they’ve gotten someone else to handle it.”

“When does B. get in?” Edie asked.

“He’s due back from Hong Kong tomorrow afternoon.”

“Does he know about the election?” Edie asked.

Ali nodded. “I sent him a text while you were giving your concession speech. He said you gave it the old college try and that he’s proud of us both.”

“We did give it a good try, didn’t we?” Edie said. “We certainly did.”

There was a hint of sorrow in her voice that belied her words, and Ali suspected that her mother was maintaining that stiff upper lip for her daughter’s benefit.

“Get some rest, Mom,” Ali advised. “I’ll spend the morning pulling together the rest of the financial reports-paying the last few bills, that sort of thing.”

“Is the campaign going to end up owing a lot of money?” Edie asked.

“No,” Ali said. “No worries there. The outstanding bills amount to only a couple of hundred dollars.”

Most of Edie’s campaign had been done the old-fashioned way-expending shoe-leather and building yard signs-rather than buying television and radio airtime. “Edie for Mayor” campaign workers had done plenty of walking, but they hadn’t spent much money, which was more than could be said for their opponent. According to federally mandated campaign finance reports, Ali had learned that the newly reelected mayor of Sedona had won that two-hundred-vote margin by spending almost two hundred thousand dollars in campaign funds, most of it his own money.

“That’s a relief, then,” Edie said. “I wouldn’t want to be out busting my butt and asking for donations to retire campaign debt. People hate donating to lost causes. On that note, I think I’ll head for the barn.”

With that, her mother got up. Edie walked across the lobby with her shoulders back and her head held high. It was an impressive act, one that might have fooled someone else, but not her daughter. Ali saw right through it to the disappointment underneath, and it broke her heart that there wasn’t a thing she could do about it-not a single thing.