Power Play (18 page)

Mrs. Sinclair smiled vacantly at Jake. “Would you like some tea?”

It was past time for lunch, but Jake answered, “No, thank you. I’m fine.”

She had greeted him at the front door when he’d rung the bell. As far as Jake could tell, the house was empty except for her. No servants in sight. No relatives. Does she live in this mausoleum all by herself? he wondered.

“You said you worked with my husband?”

Jake started to shake his head, caught himself, and replied, “I’m working with Franklin Tomlinson on his campaign to be elected to the U.S. Senate. Mr. Tomlinson thinks that your husband’s MHD power generation program could be very good for this state—and the nation.”

“That’s nice,” said Mrs. Sinclair.

Wondering what on earth he should be saying, Jake blurted, “You have a very nice house here.”

She nodded pleasantly. “It was built by my great-grandfather. He founded this town, you know. It’s named after him.”

“Really.”

“He was a great man: a very successful businessman, a civic leader, a true philanthropist.”

“I see.”

Silence stretched between them. At last Mrs. Sinclair asked, “And how is Arlan these days?”

“Oh, he’s … he’s fine, Mrs. Sinclair. He’s very busy at the university, of course.”

“Of course.”

“Um … do you see much of him?”

Her smile remained undiminished. “Now and then. He comes up here once in a while.”

“That’s nice,” Jake said, feeling like an idiot.

Mrs. Sinclair got up from her chair and walked slowly to the window. Pulling the lace curtain back, she asked mildly, “Is that your car? It’s lovely.”

Jake hopped to his feet and went to the window beside her. Yes, she was actually looking at his beat-up old Mustang.

“It needs to be washed,” he apologized.

Turning to him, Mrs. Sinclair asked, “Could you do me a great favor, Mr … eh … oh dear, I can’t recall your name.”

“It’s Ross, ma’am. Jake Ross.”

“Could you do me a great favor, Mr. Ross?” she asked, her fleshy face puckering into a girlishly beseeching expression.

“A favor?”

“I have an appointment on the other side of town, but my car’s in the shop. Would you be kind enough to drive me?”

“Sure,” Jake said. “Of course.”

“I won’t be a minute.” And she turned and hurried out of the parlor.

She came back muffled in a floor-length fur coat. It looked a little bedraggled to Jake, the fur shiny. Could it be mink? he asked himself. Awfully expensive, if it is.

Mrs. Sinclair led Jake to the front hall closet, where she pulled out a long wool scarf and wrapped it over her head. All smiles, she nodded that she was ready to leave the house. Jake zipped up his car coat, pulled his watch cap out of its pocket and, with his free hand, opened the front door.

The afternoon was clear and crisp, although there were clouds building up over the mountains. Jake followed Mrs. Sinclair’s directions through the town of Vernon and out into the brown frozen countryside. Patches of snow covered parts of the fields, although the road was clear and dry.

“Are we heading the right way?” he asked as they drove beneath an overpass for the interstate highway.

“It’s just another little bit,” she said, her eyes aimed straight ahead. “Less than a mile.”

Sure enough, in a minute she pointed excitedly. “There it is! Turn off here!”

Jake saw a fair-sized single-story building, fake adobe style. A dozen or so cars were in the wide parking lot. A garish electronic sign by the side of the road proclaimed,
BLUE MOUNTAIN CASINO
.

A gambling casino.

“This is the place?” Jake asked, incredulous.

“Yes,” said Mrs. Sinclair. “You can park right by the front entrance, there, in the breezeway.”

He helped her to struggle out of the Mustang’s bucket seat. Once on her feet Mrs. Sinclair almost ran to the heavy double doors of the casino’s main entrance.

“Come on!” she insisted, waving impatiently to Jake. “My treat!”

Almost dazed with confused surprise, Jake followed her into the casino. Mrs. Sinclair slipped out of her coat and handed it to a stocky, bored-looking Native American woman tending the coat room. Jake took off his wool cap and stuffed it back into the pocket of his coat. He unzipped the coat but left it on.

The casino’s lobby was lined with slot machines. Down three thinly carpeted steps, the main room was already busy with customers. Jake saw that most of them were middle-aged women sitting in front of slot machines that whirred and dinged incessantly. Farther into the room a few stolid-looking men were sitting at a table playing cards. Others were huddled around another table. Craps, Jake guessed.

“See?” said Mrs. Sinclair grandly. “See how much fun everyone is having!”

It didn’t look like fun to Jake. All the customers looked grim, almost bellicose. The women at the slot machines seemed determined to hand all their money to the one-armed bandits as fast as they could.

“Come on!” Mrs. Sinclair urged. “My treat!”

Bewildered, Jake followed her down the three steps and onto the main floor. The place looked threadbare, worn out; it smelled of cigarette smoke and stale air.

“Let’s try the blackjack table,” Mrs. Sinclair said, grabbing for Jake’s arm and pulling him down the aisle between the clanging slot machines.

A stern-looking elderly man, gray-haired and gray-faced, stepped into the aisle in front of her. He wore a dark suit and a weary expression.

“Mrs. Sinclair,” he said, his face stony. “You know we’re not allowed to let you play.”

She gave him a girlish smile. “Oh, just for a little bit. I won’t stay long.”

The man shook his head. “I’d lose my job, Mrs. Sinclair.”

“You’re the manager, aren’t you?” she wheedled. “You don’t have to tell anybody that I was here. I won’t tell on you.”

Looking past her to Jake, the manager asked, “And who is this gentleman?”

“He’s from the university. He works with my husband.”

“My name’s Jacob Ross,” Jake said, as if that explained anything.

From behind him, Jake heard a young woman’s voice say, “You’ll have to come with me, sir.”

Turning, he saw a uniformed police officer. She was short, roundish, looked like a Native American. The patch on the shoulder of her bulky windbreaker said
VERNON POLICE DEPARTMENT
. She had a two-way radio clipped on her belt and a wicked-looking automatic pistol holstered at her hip.

Her right hand hovered near the butt of her pistol as she stared unsmilingly at Jake.

BUSTED

The police officer led Jake and Mrs. Sinclair out of the casino, while the manager walked a few steps behind them.

“I’ll tell my husband about this,” Mrs. Sinclair threatened as the officer bundled her into a Vernon PD squad car.

“Yes, ma’am,” said the officer sweetly. “I’ll drive you home. You can phone him from there.” To Jake she called, “Please follow me in your car, sir. Unless you want to leave it here.”

Jake followed the squad car back through town to Mrs. Sinclair’s house. The policewoman got out of the squad car and walked to his Mustang. “Stay in your car, sir. Once I’ve got Mrs. Sinclair back inside her house, you’ll have to follow me to the station.”

Jake felt his brows hike. “Am I under arrest?”

“Nosir. Not exactly.”

Wondering what “not exactly” meant, Jake watched as the policewoman led Mrs. Sinclair up to her front door. The older woman was jabbering away, obviously complaining, but the police officer paid no attention, as far as Jake could see. The cop pushed on the bell, and the door was immediately opened by a blocky, middle-aged woman in a black housemaid’s outfit. Mrs. Sinclair went inside the house with her and the policewoman returned to her squad car.

As she opened the car door she called to Jake, “Just follow me, sir.”

He meekly followed her to Vernon’s police station. It was a small building, but made of solid stone. To Jake it looked like a fort that might have been built during the Indian Wars. He parked beside the squad car and followed the officer into the Vernon Police Department station.

Inside, it looked surprisingly modern. Clean, efficiently laid out with new-looking metal desks that each bore flat computer screens. One wall was covered with TV monitors. Jake realized that just about every intersection in the town was covered by surveillance cameras. He even noticed a pair of screens that displayed the parking lot and front entrance of the Blue Mountain Casino.

So that’s how they knew she went to the casino, he realized. They can watch the whole damned town twenty-four/seven.

The policewoman threaded through the desks toward the back of the squad room, glancing over her shoulder twice to make certain Jake was following her. She stopped at a glass door marked
CAPTAIN HARRAWAY—PRIVATE
. She rapped on the glass panel once, then opened the door and gestured Jake inside.

Captain Harraway rose from behind his desk like a dark cloud. His skin was deep brown, yet his features looked to Jake more Native American than African American. He was big, in all directions, thick arms bulging the sleeves of his blue uniform shirt, heavy midsection straining its buttons.

With a minimal smile, he pointed to the chair in front of his desk.

“Have a seat, Dr. Ross.”

Jake was impressed that the captain knew he had a doctorate. They’ve looked up my file during the time it took us to go from the casino to here.

Settling himself in his squeaking swivel chair once Jake was seated, Harraway clasped his hands in front of him and said, “We’ve got a sort of situation on our hands.”

Jake said nothing.

Leaning forward on his beefy arms, Harraway went on, “Y’see, Mrs. Sinclair’s from one of our most prominent families. And she’s got this problem.”

“Gambling?”

With a weary nod, the captain said, “Hooked like an addict. She’d blow what’s left of the family fortune if we didn’t keep her out of the casino.”

Jake began to understand. “So you keep an eye on her.”

“We sure as hell do. Her uncle’s the mayor of this town and just about everybody on the town council is related to her, one way or the other.”

“Does she live alone in that big house?”

“She has a couple of servants. Gave ’em both the day off just before you arrived.”

So she planned to have me drive her out to the casino all along, Jake realized. As soon as I phoned her this morning she started hatching her little plot.

Harraway interrupted his train of thought. “Now, what I need to know is, what’re you doing here? Why’d you come all the way up here from the university to see her?”

How much should I tell him? Jake wondered. How much can I tell him?

Harraway sat hunched over his desktop, his eyes focused on Jake like a pair of hunting rifles. The expression on his dark face seemed to say,
I know just what you’re thinking, buster. Make your story a good one.

Jake sucked in a breath, then said, “I’m working with Franklin Tomlinson on his election campaign. I’m his science advisor.”

“What’s that got to do with Mrs. Sinclair?”

“Professor Sinclair runs the MHD program at the university and—”

“MHD? What the hell’s MHD?”

“It’s a new way to generate electrical power. Professor Sinclair heads the university’s program and Tomlinson is interested in its possibilities.”

“So?”

Thinking as fast as he ever had in his life, Jake said, “So I came up here to pay a call on Mrs. Sinclair. It seemed like a polite thing to do.”

“You drove two hours to pay a social call on Mrs. Sinclair.” Harraway’s voice rumbled with suspicion.

Jake nodded. “That’s right.” It was weak, but it was all he had.

The phone on the desk buzzed. Harraway glanced past Jake, out through his office window to the clerk sitting out there, then picked up the phone in his massive paw.

“Harraway,” he said. “Yes, Professor. Good of you to call. Yes, she tried to sneak out to the casino again, but the manager wouldn’t let her play. We got her home again all right. No trouble.”

He listened for several moments, his eyes flicking from Jake to the squad room beyond his office windows, then back to Jake again.

“She had a visitor and got him to drive her to the casino. Guy from the university, says he’s working with you. Dr. Ross. Ja—”

Even from across the desk Jake could hear Sinclair’s furious outburst on the phone. Harraway’s eyes went wide, then narrowed again.

“Yes, sir. Yes, I agree. I’ll tell him. He’s right here in my office, right this minute.”

More angry chatter from the phone. At last Harraway said a polite good-bye and hung up.

“The professor wants me to lock you up and throw away the key.”

Jake swallowed hard. “I only wanted to meet her…”

“He’s damned pissed at you, boy.”

“I didn’t do anything wrong.”

Harraway pointed a finger at Jake, like a pistol. “Let me give you some advice, Dr. Ross. Get out of Vernon. Get out
now
and don’t
ever
come calling on Mrs. Sinclair again. If we see you in this town again we’ll find a reason to arrest you. Vagrancy, littering, child molesting: we’ll find some charge and make it stick. Do you understand?”

Jake nodded dumbly.

“Now get the hell out of here and don’t come back.”

Jake scrambled to his feet.

“And you’d better go see Professor Sinclair as soon’s you get back to the university. He wants to talk to you.”

REVELATION

Jake was only half surprised to see that Nacho Perez was in Sinclair’s office. He was standing by the window, looking out at the snowy peaks of the distant mountains, hands clasped behind his back, rumpled suit jacket hanging loosely on his spare frame.

Jake had phoned Sinclair from his car as he drove back to the university. Even in the cell phone’s tiny speaker he could hear the fury radiating from the professor’s voice.

“You get yourself to my office the instant you reach the campus. Do you hear me? The very instant!”

Starting to feel angry himself, Jake had replied tightly, “I’ll be there.”

And Perez was there, too. As he stepped into the professor’s sizeable office, Jake wondered if Monster were downstairs in the parking lot, waiting for him.