Free Deadly Stakes by J. A. Jance Page B

scene of the crime. I’m pretty sure the detective came here thinking I was the victim—the woman who’s dead. Now he may think I had something to do with it.”
    “Did he come right out and say you were a suspect?”
    “No, but he asked me where I was last night. I told him I was at your place, so he’ll probably be calling you to verify that. What I can’t figure out is how my phone got all the way up to Camp Verde.”
    “I can’t, either,” Chip said. “Camp Verde’s got to be close to eighty miles from here. When’s the last time you remember using it?”
    “I called you last night to tell you I was coming over, remember?”
    “Just a sec,” Chip said. “Let me check.” A moment later, he came back on the line. “Yes, I see in my call log that you called me on your cell around a quarter to ten. What time was the woman killed?”
    “I don’t know. Sometime overnight, I guess,” Lynn said. “The detective didn’t tell me that much, just that my phone was found at the scene. The only thing I can think is that I must have lost it when I stopped at the gas station on my way home this morning. Do you think I need an attorney?”
    “Can you afford an attorney?”
    It was an unnecessary question, because Chip already knew the answer.
    “Not really.”
    “Well, then,” he said reassuringly, “since we both know you weren’t involved in anything, we’ll just have to let things play out.” Lynn heard a buzz in the background, followed by a woman’s voice. “Gotta go,” he said. “Tina tells me there’s a detective Larry Cutter out in the waiting room.”
    Lynn sat with the phone in her hand for several long moments after Chip hung up. She couldn’t help but be grateful for the reassurance she had heard in his voice. After the whole ego-shattering mess with Richard Lowensdale, Lynn hadn’t expected to fall in love again. For one thing, she hadn’t expected to find a man she could trust, but she had, and Chip Ralston was it.
    Lynn had come on the scene at a time when her father was so far gone that he had been beyond help. Her mother was the one who needed care and support, and Chip—Dr. Ralston to all of them then—had been sympathetic and supportive and incredibly understanding. Lynn had been more than a little attracted to him from the beginning, but she had never expected anything to come of it. After her father died, she was impressed when Dr. Ralston showed up for the memorial service. When he had called her a month or so later, asking how her mother was doing, she had thought it was just that—his being solicitous of her mother. It was only when he came courting that she was gratified to learn he had something else in mind.
    Lynn was astonished to discover that what she’d thought was a one-sided attraction was reciprocated. Now this kind, caring, well-educated, and dependable man was part of her life—her scatterbrained life.
    With that thought in mind, Lynn put down the landline phone and went looking for her purse. It was time to go to Verizon and get a new phone.

7
    B y the time the ten o’clock news came on that night, A.J. was glued to the television set in his bedroom. Somehow he had made it through his two-hour shift at work and through dinner without blowing apart. His mother had made carne asada burritos. That was his favorite meal and usually he gobbled down several. That night he barely managed to eat one.
    “Since when did you stop liking carne asada? ” his mother asked.
    “I’m just not hungry,” he said.
    “I made the amount I always make,” she said. “So we’ll have the same thing for dinner again tomorrow night.”
    A.J. helped with the dishes and then went into his room, ostensibly to do homework, but the words on the pages made no sense. What he kept seeing in his mind’s eye were those vivid green eyes staring blankly up at the sun.
    Who was she? A.J. wondered. Who killed her and why?
    He wasn’t at all surprised when news about the Camp Verde