Deadly Stakes (13 page)

“Do you know her personally?”

“I don’t really know her; I know of her,” Lynn admitted.

“She stays in close contact with Dr. Ralston?”

“More with his mother and sister than with Chip. Chip’s mother told him that just because he and Gemma were divorced didn’t mean she was divorcing her daughter-in-law. As for Molly, Chip’s sister? I understand that she and Gemma have been good friends since they met as college roommates years ago.”

“That must make things awkward for you,” Detective Holman surmised.

“A little,” Lynn admitted, “but over time I expect Chip’s family will come around. At least that’s what I’m hoping. It’s also one of the reasons we’re not rushing into anything.”

Another,
Lynn thought to herself,
is that we can’t afford it. I don’t have a job, and he can’t afford a house payment and alimony.

“Have you ever heard Dr. Ralston voice any threats against his former wife?”

“Threats?” Lynn echoed. “Never. Not once.”

“He never made any comments to you that maybe he’d be better off if Gemma were dead?”

“No!” Lynn said forcefully. “He never mentioned such a thing. Not to me, anyway, and I doubt he’d say it to anyone else, either. You need to understand, Chip Ralston is a good man—an honorable man.”

“In your opinion,” Detective Holman said.

The comment made Lynn flush, but she said nothing.

“Let’s talk about the other night,” Holman continued. “You spent the night.”

“Yes,” Lynn said. “I do most nights.”

“You were there the whole night? Was Dr. Ralston there as well?”

“Yes, of course he was. We slept in the same bed.”

“He didn’t go out at any time? Was he on call?”

“We were both there all night,” Lynn repeated.

“Is there a chance he might have slipped out of bed and been gone for a while without your noticing?”

Lynn paused before answering. For years she had struggled with sleep apnea. It was only with the arrival of a breathing aid, a CPAP machine, on the recommendation of a physician specializing in sleep disorders, that she had started sleeping well at night. When she and Chip started dating, she had been too embarrassed to bring it up. Who wants to think that a romantic partner is going to come to bed looking like a gas mask–wearing member of a hazmat team. But she also knew that the mask was the source of her ability to sleep well and safely.

So the first time she and Chip spent the night together—at a casino on the outskirts of Scottsdale—Lynn had brought her mask and machine along, tucked discreetly into her suitcase. She hadn’t really intended to take it out or use it, but then a miracle happened. Chip opened his overnight bag, and Lynn caught sight of his machine, tucked in among his underwear and his shaving kit. Not only did they each have a CPAP machine, they had the same make and model.

Lynn had grabbed hers out of her suitcase, and they stood looking back and forth. “What,” he said finally, grinning. “You, too? Looks like we’re a matched set.”

With that, the two of them had collapsed onto the hotel bed, laughing hysterically. Months into the relationship, the masks and machines were an integral part of their lives. Chip bought Lynn an extra machine to leave at his house so she wouldn’t have to carry hers back and forth. Over time they stopped being self-conscious about it. Donning their masks in the aftermath of lovemaking was as automatic as brushing their teeth after dinner. Lynn had adjusted to the comfort of the machine’s white noise, and when she was at Chip’s house, she slept in a welcome, dream-filled slumber that allowed her to awaken after only a few hours fully rested and alert. More than once, Chip had teased her, saying that when she was asleep with her mask on, the house could fall down around her and she wouldn’t notice.

So he could have crept out without her knowledge, but she didn’t mention that to Detective Holman. “No,” she insisted instead. “That’s just not possible.”

“How long have you known Dr. Ralston?”

“I met him over a year ago.”

“While he was still married to his wife?”

“Their marriage was over long before I came into the picture,” Lynn said. “He was my father’s doctor. That’s how I met him. He does primary care for Alzheimer’s patients and provides counseling for families dealing with Alzheimer’s-related issues. You need to understand that Chip didn’t make any inappropriate overtures to me while my father was alive and his patient. His behavior was entirely aboveboard.”

“So you don’t regard yourself as Gemma’s rival?”

“Absolutely not. I told you. Their marriage was over before I came into Chip’s life.”

“When’s the last time you remember using your phone?”

The abrupt change in direction caught Lynn momentarily off guard. “I’m pretty sure the last time I used the phone was when I called Chip that evening to let him know I was on my way to his house. The next time I tried to use it was in the morning after I got back to my mother’s place in Surprise. That’s when I discovered it was gone.”

“What can you tell me about Dr. Ralston’s demeanor the last time you saw him?”

“Nothing out of the ordinary. He was glad to see me. I was glad to see him.”

“He didn’t seem upset or preoccupied?”

“No. Not at all.”

“He didn’t seem angry?”

“No. Everything seemed normal.”

“What if I told you that Gemma Ralston is dead?”

“She’s dead?” Lynn repeated weakly.

And that was when he dropped the bomb—or at least what she thought was the bomb.

“And what if I told you that your phone was found at the scene of Gemma’s murder?”

Stunned, Lynn said nothing.

The detective nodded. “Right next to her body, so here’s the thing. How do you suppose your phone got there? Were you at the crime scene and left it behind without meaning to? Or was it left there by someone else in order to implicate you in the commission of that crime—to share the blame, as it were?”

Lynn’s half-empty coffee mug clattered onto the tabletop, slopping coffee in every direction. “I didn’t do it!” she said. She wanted to add,
And neither would he!

“As you said earlier, Dr. Ralston has been under a good deal of financial pressure. People in those kinds of binds can do uncharacteristic things.”

Lynn reached for her new phone. “I need to call him,” she said. “I need to let him know what’s going on.”

“That’s not necessary,” Detective Holman said. “I’m quite sure Dr. Ralston is already aware of the situation.”

“What can I do to help?”

“Just what you’re doing,” he answered. “Talk to me. Give me your take on what’s going on. This has been a completely informal interview, and I really appreciate your help. But I’d like to have a more formal one. That would need to be done in Prescott—at the Sheriff’s Department. That way I’ll be able to record it; have it on the record.”

“You’re saying you want me to drive up to Prescott for an interview?”

“No. I’ll be glad to give you a ride up and a ride back down.”

“A ride. I’m not under arrest, am I?”

“Not at all.”

“All right, then, but what about my car? Shouldn’t I drive it home, and we can leave for Prescott from there?”

“It’s just for a few hours,” he said. “I’m sure it’ll be fine here. Driving all the way out to Surprise and back will add two hours to the trip. I’ll clear it with the restaurant manager before we leave.”

That was how, a few minutes later, Lynn Martinson walked out of Denny’s under her own power and waited patiently while Detective Holman unlocked his vehicle and opened the back door to let her inside. “There’s too much stuff in the front seat,” he explained.

It wasn’t until after she was seated inside with the door locked from the outside that Lynn began to wonder if she’d been lied to again. By yet another man.

Her phone was in her pocket. Detective Holman had strongly suggested that she not try calling Chip; he hadn’t said anything about Lynn not calling her mother. Still, Lynn left the phone where it was. If she hadn’t told her mother about something as simple as losing her phone, how could she explain that she was somehow mixed up in a homicide?

No,
Lynn thought as the big sedan eased out of the parking lot.
I’ll tell her when this is all over. We’ll laugh like crazy.

Hours later and finding herself under arrest, Lynn Martinson wasn’t laughing, and she had yet to call her mother. Beatrice would find out what had happened the same way Lynn had found out about Lucas’s suicide. Someone else—a cop, most likely—would tell her. Having been on the receiving end of that kind of message, Lynn knew how much it hurt.

Sick at heart, Lynn turned over on her side until she was facing away from the barred door and the lit hallway outside her cell. She tried to be quiet about it, but she cried herself to sleep, wondering if any of it was true. Had Chip really crept out of bed without her knowing, murdered Gemma, and then come back to bed as though nothing at all had happened? Had he taken Lynn’s phone with him and left it there in hopes of pinning the blame on her? If so, that made Chip’s betrayal far worse than anything Richard Lowensdale had done.

It would have been easy to give up right then—to fall asleep and, without the aid of her breathing machine, simply not wake up again. But that wasn’t what happened. The next morning, when the lights came on at six-thirty and the jailers rousted her out of bed, Lynn
Martinson sat on the edge of her narrow metal cot and realized for the first time in her life that she was mad as hell and she wasn’t going to take it anymore.

Late in the afternoon, when they had finally placed Lynn under arrest, they had told her that Gemma’s blood had been found in Lynn’s Focus. If that was true, if Gemma’s blood had turned up in Lynn’s vehicle, she sure as hell hadn’t put it there. And if anybody thought they were going to get her to plead guilty to something she hadn’t done, then, as her mother would say, they had another think coming.

11

L
ong after B. was snoring up a storm, Ali lay awake thinking about Beatrice Hart and her daughter. When Dave brought up the possible plea bargain with Lynn Martinson’s mother, he evidently assumed that Beatrice would do what she could to help get Lynn agree to the deal. In fact, she had headed out for Prescott determined to do the opposite.

Unable to sleep, Ali crept out of the bedroom and back to the library, where she relit the gas log and pulled her autographed copy of Brenda Riley’s book,
Web of Lies: The Life and Death of a Cyberpath,
from its spot on the bookshelf.

Thumbing through the pages, Ali found herself reading the chapter that dealt with Lynn Martinson. It was easy to see how Lowensdale’s phony claim of having a daughter with drug issues had given him an opening into Lynn’s life. He had preyed on her vulnerabilities in the same way he played on the other women he had victimized. As the local superintendent of schools, she had been a public person with a troubled son, one who committed suicide while incarcerated on drug charges. Lucas’s death had occurred after Lowensdale had ended his supposedly promising relationship with Lynn. Already brought low by her fiancé’s unexplained abandonment, Lynn had fallen apart completely.

In the last passage in the chapter devoted to Lynn, she said that her experience with the cyberstalker had left her so emotionally depleted that she doubted she’d ever risk another romantic entanglement.
It struck Ali as sad that she had become involved in yet another seemingly troubled relationship. This time she had a middle-aged boyfriend who lived at home with his mother and might or might not be involved in the murder of his former wife.

Yes,
Ali thought, returning Brenda’s book to the shelf.
Beatrice is right. Her daughter does have terrible taste in men.

With that, Ali tiptoed back into the bedroom and snuggled up next to B. She drifted off to sleep grateful that she, unlike Lynn Martinson, was at home and lying in her own bed rather than locked up in a jail cell, awaiting possible homicide charges.

When Ali awakened hours later, she was alone in bed. B., whose interior time zone was perpetually half a world away, was seated on the bedroom love seat, engrossed in something on his iPad.

“Good morning, sleepyhead,” he said.

“What time is it?”

“After eight. Want some coffee?”

“Please.”

As he headed for the kitchen, Ali scrambled out of bed. She hadn’t made it to the bathroom when her cell phone rang on its bedside charger. The 928 area code on the readout meant the call was coming from a Prescott-area telephone, though the number wasn’t one Ali recognized.

“Is this Ali Reynolds?”

“Yes.”

“My name is Paula Urban. I’m the public defender in Prescott—”

“And Lynn Martinson’s attorney,” Ali supplied.

“Exactly,” Paula said. “Ms. Martinson’s mother, Beatrice Hart, is in my office this morning. She suggested I call you. My client was offered a plea bargain that she has decided not to accept.”

“Which means she may end up being charged with first-degree homicide,” Ali suggested.

“That’s correct. I was explaining that there may be some budget constraints in my office’s ability to launch a full-scale investigation. Ms. Hart suggested that if I needed any investigative work done, you
were a detective she would be glad to hire. We just Googled you, Ms. Reynolds. You appear to be extensively involved in a scholarship program of some kind, but I don’t see anything that would lead me to believe you’re a private investigator. Are you?”

“No,” Ali said at once. “I’ve done some investigative work as a journalist on occasion, but I’m not a licensed private investigator. That takes years of law enforcement–based investigation experience that I don’t happen to have.”

“I was afraid that might be the case,” Paula Urban replied, “but Ms. Hart may have come up with a work-around. Hang on for a moment. I’ll let her explain.”

While Ali waited on her end, B. returned to the bedroom with a mug of coffee gripped in each hand. “What’s going on?” he asked. He passed one of the cups to Ali and then returned to the love seat.