Free Deadly Stakes by J. A. Jance

“Does your mother’s name happen to be Lynnette Martinson?”
    Lynn stepped aside and allowed him to enter. “No,” she told him. “That’s my name. I’m Lynnette Martinson. My mother’s name is Beatrice Hart. What’s this all about? If my mother is all right, has someone else been murdered?”
    Uninvited, the detective settled his lanky form on the sofa in the living room, where he studied Lynn with a kind of grim appraisal as she stumbled awkwardly into a nearby chair. His unreadable expression was nothing short of disquieting.
    “What’s this about?” Lynn’s voice came out as a quaking squeak. She couldn’t help it.
    “When did you last see her?” Cutter asked.
    “My mother? She went golfing with her friends. They left shortly before noon.”
    “Today?”
    Lynn nodded.
    “Then I’m sure your mother’s fine,” the detective said.
    Relieved, Lynn let out a sigh. When she noticed that her hands were trembling, she gripped the armrests to steady them. “Tell me what’s going on, then. Your card says you’re homicide. That means someone has been murdered. Who? And why are you asking me about it?”
    “The victim, a female, has not yet been identified,” Cutter answered. “However, a telephone listed in your name and with an Iowa prefix was found at the scene. We were able to obtain this address from the cell phone provider because it’s listed as the billing address. Does anyone else besides yourself have access to the phone?”
    “No, no one else uses it—or,” Lynn corrected, “let’s say no one else is supposed to use it. The problem is, I lost the phone sometime overnight, either last night or early this morning. I’ve been looking for it everywhere and calling it, too, all morning long. I thought maybe I left it at the gas station when I filled up the tank on my way home, and I was hoping whoever found it would answer my call.”
    “On your way home from where?” Cutter asked.
    “From my boyfriend’s house in Paradise Valley,” Lynn answered. “I spent the night there.” She blushed when making that admission, though there was no reason to be embarrassed. After all, Lynn was a consenting adult, and so was Chip Ralston. Her love life was no one’s business but her own; still, blush she did, and realizing that her face had reddened under Detective Cutter’s unsmiling scrutiny made it that much worse.
    “Do you remember the last time you used it?” he asked.
    “Yesterday sometime. Late in the evening. I remember calling Chip to let him know I was on my way to his place.”
    “After that, it disappeared?”
    “As I said, I didn’t notice it was gone until after I got home this morning.”
    “You have no idea who might have been using your phone? Is it possible that you lent it to someone?”
    “No,” Lynn said firmly. “As I told you before, I lost it. In fact, I was about to go to the store to see about getting a replacement, but you still haven’t told me who’s dead.”
    “That’s the problem,” Detective Cutter said. “We don’t know who the victim is. No identification was found on the body, and so far, no one matching the victim’s description has been reported missing anywhere in the Phoenix metropolitan area. We initially thought that finding the owner of the phone would lead us to the victim.”
    “But I’m not dead,” Lynn objected.
    “I noticed,” Cutter agreed, giving her a tight smile. “Let me ask you this. Do you have any friends or relations or acquaintances living in the Camp Verde/Sedona area?”
    Lynn shook her head. “No one,” she said definitively. “No one at all. I know about Sedona, of course. At least I’ve seen photos of it. I’ve heard that the red rocks are very beautiful, but I’ve never been there. I came to the Phoenix area a little over a year ago. My parents retired here, and my father’s health was failing. When I lost my job, the only silver lining was that I was able to come here to help my mother. There wasn’t