Diva Las Vegas (Book 1 in Raven McShane Series) (8 page)

“I don’t want to take up too much of your time on a nice day like this,” I started. The old man’s eyes glistened with interest, but he kept quiet.  “Anyway, I managed to get myself banned from the casino, so you’re the only person I have left to talk to.”

“
Banned
?” he squawked incredulously.  “Who banned you?”

“A guy named Holman and another guy with a mustache.  He didn’t say much.”

“Hmm,” he grunted.  “Holman’s head of security, works for Phil d’Angelo.”

I nodded.

“He’s also a schmuck,” Mel mumbled.

“Among other things.”

Mel shrugged.  “And what makes you think I would just start singing like a canary?  Or that I even have any dirt to dish?”  His gaze was directed down at the track, where Nicole had begun dutifully inspecting the horses as they pranced by.  Mike was watching her too, I noticed.  I elbowed him sharply in the ribs.  “She’s too young for you,” I hissed under my breath.

Mike put up his hands in a protest of innocence.  Mel seemed amused by the whole thing.

I turned back to Mel.  “I don’t know if you know anything,” I said.  “But we did drive all the way down here just to talk to you.”  He turned to face me, and I leaned towards him to give a better view of my cleavage.  Shameless, but effective.  Nicole might have a great pair of legs, but she didn’t have a rack built by the finest plastic surgeon in L.A.  “What I’m really interested in is anything you might know about the murder of George Hannity.”

He looked up from my chest.  “Jesus, you don’t mess around.”

I smiled back at him.

“Look, I heard the same rumors other people heard, and I’m certainly not buddy-buddy with the crowd running the place now.  Did you know they got rid of me?”  He pulled a short cigar out of his coat pocket.  “I’d offer you one, but I wasn’t expecting cigar-smoking company today.”

“No problem,” I said.  “I like them much bigger than that, anyway.  So why did they get rid of you?”

He seemed amused by the question.  “No hard feelings on my part, actually.  That was three years ago and they were the new guard.  I should have retired long ago anyway.  But those are people you don’t want to be messing with, let me just put it that way.  They have a good thing going, and they’re not going to take kindly to some stranger poking around.”  He took a big loud slurp of his martini and then lit his cigar with a match.  “Even if that stranger is a stunning beauty like yourself,” he added.  There was a friendly yet devilish twinkle in his eyes.

I pretended to ignore the compliment, but I made sure to store it in my compliment bank for future reference and re-examination.  “So you didn’t hear any gossip one way or the other whether Cody actually killed George?”

“Nope.  After Cody got off, I don’t think anyone who actually knew anything was in the mood to stir up that pot.”

“Including you?” I asked.

He chuckled, letting loose a big puff of cigar smoke.  He pointed his cigar at Mike.  “Does this guy talk, or do I have to pull a string?”

“I’m her boss,” Mike deadpanned.  “Just here to make sure she doesn’t screw things up.”

Mel shrugged.  “I wouldn’t know anything about the murder,” he said, “but—”.

I raised my eyebrows expectantly.

“I shouldn’t really be telling you this,” he said, sighing.  He slumped a bit in his chair, and he turned to look down on Nicole and the sun-drenched racetrack below.  “I’m dying,” he said simply, catching me completely off-guard.  “I don’t know exactly when, but this is probably my last summer.”

I wasn’t good at sympathetic utterances, so I just sat there in silence.  Several seconds passed before he spoke again.

“Anyway, I didn’t know exactly what was going on,” he explained, “but I had a hunch before I left that some people were taking some liberties with the books.  Not nickel-and-dime stuff either.  By the time I left I was pretty sure that the casino was making more money than it was reporting to the owners.”

“Or the IRS,” Mike said.

“So they were stealing?” I asked.  “Why didn’t you tell anyone this before?” I asked.

He thought for a moment, holding his cigar up to his face to inspect the evenness of the burn.  “That’s a fair question.  For one, I didn’t have much proof.  I just noticed people were living a little higher on the hog than their salaries justified.  A lot of closed-door meetings.  And two, I’m just plain greedy.  Do you know that even though they basically threw me out on my ass, they pay me twenty-thousand dollars a month in a pension?  Out of the blue.  I didn’t have any pension coming to me at all.  I thought it was a mistake at first, but when I asked about it they told me to enjoy retirement and remember my friends at the casino.”

“So you think it’s hush money?” I asked.

“Basically.  I know where a lot of bodies are buried, and I put in twenty-six years in that place. They weren’t going to take any chances on my loyalty, let’s put it that way.  I had a few million saved up already, but with the pension I began developing some expensive habits,” he said, gesturing at the racetrack below.  I couldn’t tell whether he meant the horses or Nicole.

“Who did you talk to about the pension?” I asked.

“Whom.”

“Sorry?”

“Never mind,” he said.  “Phil d’Angelo—he’s in charge of all the numbers, the books, that sort of thing.”

Nicole waved at us from the track below.

Mel smiled indulgently.  He felt the need to unburden himself.  “Since my wife
passed
four years ago, Nicole’s been the highlight of my life.  For eight hundred a week, she cooks, cleans and takes me places three days a week.  There’s no simpler pleasure I know these days than to park myself in a chair in the backyard and watch her mow the lawn.  Nothing but a red bikini top and jean shorts.  Back and forth she goes, back and forth.”  He chuckled.  “She’s usually lost in whatever music she’s got on her headphones.  But she knows I’m watching and I think she secretly kind of likes the attention.”  He looked at Mike conspiratorially.  “Those legs of hers,” he said wistfully.  “They’re about all that’s getting me out of bed these days.”

Mike nodded gravely, and I let the horny old man think about Nicole’s legs for a few more seconds.  “About the management,” I said, “do you think Cody was involved in cooking the books?”

“Could be,” he said, taking another long puff of his cigar.  “Honestly, I didn’t  know him that well.  When he came in to work there it was more as a hobby, I think.  You know, he was basically a trophy house husband whose wife owned part of the place.  He was just a stage dancer, you know, and I think he wanted to look and act like he was a businessman or something.  Phil D’Angelo really runs things over there.”

“I can relate to that,” I blurted out.  Cody and I had something in common: we both wanted to find something more productive to do than taking our clothes off for money.

Mel drained the rest of his martini as if it were his last, and he turned to face me directly.  “It wouldn’t surprise me if my hunch about embezzlement was part of the reason George Hannity was killed, if that’s what you’re getting at.  He was a tough owner and a straight shooter.  Not everyone was thrilled to have him lurking around.”

“And if he found out anyone was ripping him off, the gravy train would end?”

“Could be.  Wouldn’t be the first time someone was murdered in that town to protect the skim.”  He chuckled knowingly.

“That stuff was before my time,” I said.  “Or I thought it was, anyway.”

“In the good old days,” Mel said, “the casinos were run by the mob and financed by union pension funds.  Anyone who threatened the skim would be shot, execution style.  Don’t think everyone’s a boy scout all of a sudden.”

He didn’t need to tell me that.  After all, I’d been
backroomed
like a common card counter just last week.  “You’ve been very helpful.”  I elbowed Mike and stood up. “Thank you for talking with us.”

“Did I have a choice?” he asked, grinning broadly and grabbing my arm with a little affection.  “Sorry you had to come all the way out here to find me,” he added.  “But I’m
very
glad I got to see you in person.”

“And if anyone asks,” I said reassuringly, “I didn’t hear anything about the casino from you.”

He winked.  “At this point, you can give them all the finger for me.”  Nicole returned with another martini for Mel, although this one clearly had more ice than gin in it.  Smart woman.  I handed Mel a business card in case he thought of anything else later, and we left the two of them to enjoy the races in peace.

Mike and I took the escalator down to join the rest of the unwashed masses in the cheap seats.  “Nicole seemed to like you,” I said.

“Why do you say that?”

“She didn’t twist her face into a disgusted frown when she looked at you.”

“Oh.”

“I was beginning to get jealous.”

Mike grunted.  Apparently the topic of conversation didn’t interest him.

He looked thoughtful on our walk back to the car.  “So what do you think?”

“You mean, is that enough to nail Cody Masterson?”

He nodded.  “If Mel’s hunch is right, Cody’s got a steady flow of tax-free cash coming in.  That’s hard to give up.”

“Tax free and partner-free, too,” I added.  “If Cody’s been skimming money off the top, he would have been stealing from George.  If George had found out he was getting ripped off . . .”  I trailed off.

Mike finished my thought.  “I can’t think of a better reason for Cody to blow George’s brains out on a deserted highway.  Especially if George was about to end it or turn Cody in to the cops.”

We left the racetrack parking lot and made our way back downtown to the hotel, where we checked out.  Mike was quiet for most of the drive back to Vegas.  I wasn’t sure if he was lost in thought or just hung over.  He hadn’t said a peep about last night, and I was beginning to wonder if he even remembered our romp in the hot tub.  We hit the Nevada border around four o’clock, and that seemed to rouse Mike out of his thoughts.

“This Mel guy didn’t seem too sure that Cody was actually involved in this skim business,” he said.

“Is that what you’ve been thinking about all this time?”

“No.  I have a headache, that’s all.  How much did I have to drink last night?”

“Not too much.  A gringo margarita and a half a beer.”  I didn’t mention that the half beer was probably as strong as two normal beers.

“Huh.  Anyway, your problem is still the same,” he said.  “Something like a skim is hard to prove.  It’s a complicated process that’s all done on the inside, and you happen to have gotten yourself banned from the place.”

“Are you volunteering to help me?”

“No.  I do actually have some of my own cases, you know.”

“But they’re not as much fun as working with me, are they?”

“True.”  He smiled.  “But let’s face it.  I’ve lived in Vegas for fifteen years.  I remember the FBI once spent two years proving a single case of skimming.  They had informants on the inside, specially trained agents, accountants, handwriting experts, marked bills, wiretaps, and God knows what else.  And you’re just you.”

“Thanks for the vote of confidence.”

“My point is, I don’t think you want to open that whole can of worms.  And you don’t have to.  The details of the skim aren’t that important right now, or at least that’s not what your client hired you to sniff out.  That would take forever, and for you it’d be impossible.  The real question is, did George Hannity find out about a skim before he was killed?  And if so, was Cody involved?”

“I don’t think I’m with you all the way,” I said.

“The point is that any embezzlement operation is irrelevant unless you can show that George Hannity had actually found out about it.  Otherwise there’d be no reason to kill him.  So if you can show that he knew about it, and if you can show that Cody’s tied into the whole thing, that might be enough to take him down.”

I nodded.  “I get it.  If I find out Hannity knew nothing about it, I can drop it and focus on other things.  No sense going off on a wild goose chase if I don’t have to.”

“Exactly.”  Mike had a good point.

We got back to Las Vegas just in time for the tail end of rush hour, and I dropped Mike off his house.  He gave me a smile and thanked me for dragging him along.  But that was it.  Shy Mike was back.

I got home and checked my mail.  I was surprised to find a cashier’s check for $4,500 along with a copy of my retainer agreement signed by Barbara Finley, the woman from Indiana who’d called the week before.  I was almost certain she’d been scared off by my hourly rates, but I was happy to be wrong.  As instructed, Barbara included a note describing what she’d sniffed out about her husband’s itinerary.  He’d be arriving Thursday morning on Northwest Airlines flight 903, staying at Mandalay Bay with a party of five or six, leaving Sunday.  She’d also enclosed a few pictures of her husband to help me identify him.  Easy work—no hassle, paid up front, nobody gets hurt.  The best part was that clients like Mrs. Finley were always happiest when I had nothing interesting to report. 

The sun was creeping lower and lower, and after the long road trip all I wanted to do was open a bottle of champagne and lounge on my balcony to watch the Strip light up at night.  Actually, what I really wanted was for Mike to join me in the hot tub in the pool downstairs, but it seemed like he only put out after tequila.  I made a solemn resolution to get him drunk more often.

In a rare moment of genius I came up with a way to be lazy and get some work done at the same time.  I could call Rachel.  We hadn’t talked much about my progress so far.  Probably because I hadn’t
made
any progress.  I picked up the phone and dialed her cell number.

“How’d you like to come over for some champagne?  We can order food and watch the Strip light up from my balcony.”

“Um, okay.  What’s the occasion?”

“Just want to talk a little about the case.”  I cringed, unable to believe my own fib.  I
fessed
up.  “Actually, it’s really just an excuse to open some bubbly.”

She laughed.  “You need an excuse?  Just give me your address and I’ll get there in a half hour.”

That gave me enough time to dig out a few bottles I had stashed away underneath my bed.  One for the freezer, one for the fridge.  I was glad Rachel was joining me.  We’d been great friends five years ago, but things had changed when she married George.  But even after George was killed Rachel didn’t make any efforts to restart our friendship.  I supposed that once you were admitted to high society, there wasn’t much reason to rekindle old friendships with commoner like me.

Rachel was on time.  It was still over 90 degrees outside, and she was dressed for it.  She wore casual athletic shorts, sandals, and a thin brown zip-up cotton top.  When we got outside to my balcony, she removed the top.  She knew I was checking her out, so she made a little display out of it by swinging her top around above her head.  She was pushing forty, but she looked fantastic in the skimpy red bra she wore underneath.  The washed-out Rachel I’d seen at Cougar’s a week earlier was gone.

“You look great,” I said.  “Every time I see you, I think I should have gone with C’s.  Mine are too big.”

“That’s crap and you know it,” she said, smiling.  “By the way, your valet guy is
gorgeous
!  He can park my car anytime.”

“Must be Tommy.  Working late.”

She smiled lasciviously.  “Yum!  Now where’s this champagne you promised?”

I got out a couple glasses and poured from the bottle that had been in the freezer.  It wasn’t quite cold enough yet, but we didn’t care.  We clinked glasses, took healthy gulps, and settled into the two reclining deck chairs on my balcony.  The giant fake hot air balloon outside the Paris casino was beginning to glow a deep blue.

“I was in San Diego the last two days,” I said.  “Finally found Mel Block.”

“So he’s still alive?”

“Yeah, but not for long.  He’s got a nice pad in La Jolla and a little waif who acts as his maid.  Anyway, he has a theory that some insiders might have been skimming profits from the casino.”

“When?”

“He thought it’s been going on for awhile, but he was short on details.  More of a hunch kind of thing.  He just knows they’ve been paying him an awful lot of money for no apparent reason.  He thinks it’s so he keeps his mouth shut.”

“Wow,” she muttered.

“So George never mentioned anything about this?  He wasn’t suspicious that someone was ripping him off from the inside?”

Rachel thought about it for a second.  “Not that I remember.  He would have gone through the roof, though.  As hard as he worked for that place—and his dad, too—to think that someone would be stealing from him is pretty scary.  Especially if it was his brother-in-law.”

“No doubt.”  We’d managed to polish off our champagne in less than five minutes.  I poured us fresh glasses.

“So does Mel think Cody was involved in this?”

“He wasn’t sure, but he thought it was possible.  So you’re sure George never mentioned anything about this?”

“Yeah, I’m sure.  I would remember something like that.  If they were stealing from George, they were stealing from me!”

“Good point,” I said.

“I suppose you might try talking to Amy herself.  I never really talked about business with George, but he and his sister were pretty tight.  She might have known if something was up.”

I refilled my glass again.  “That will be a fun conversation.  Hi, I’m wondering if your husband was stealing from the casino and murdered your brother when he found out.  Can we talk?”

“Yeah, I guess I hadn’t thought about it that way,” Rachel said.

“Anyway, it’s too nice a night to talk about business.  But I think now I can officially deduct the champagne as a business expense.”

“Happy to help,” she said.  “Can you deduct Chinese food too?”  Her eyelids were getting a little droopy.  I had forgotten what a lightweight she was.

“I don’t see why not.”  I went inside to get a menu, and we decided on the Happy Family Special, which seemed to come with two helpings of every kind of fried meat I could imagine.

It was still hot outside, and we sat like steamed dumplings as we waited for our food and watched the daylight fade to black.  Rachel was well past her limit for champagne.

She turned to look at me suddenly.  “You getting any these days?”

“Any what?” I asked.

She smiled mischievously.

“What are you, in high school?”  I laughed.

She frowned.  “I take that as a ‘no.’”

“Actually, I should thank you.  My little San Diego trip gave me an excuse to get out of town with this guy I kind of work with.”

“Do tell.”  She turned her recliner a few degrees to face me.

“Well, he’s kind of shy.  Mike’s his name.  Actually, he’s supposed to be supervising my work during my first year as an investigator.”

“So . . . he’s ugly?”

I chuckled.  “Not even close.  You should see his abs.  Anyway, he’s a Mormon, and like I said, he’s kind of shy.”

“So the answer is, ‘no, you’re not getting any.’”  Rachel made a face.

“Not exactly.  After a couple of drinks, Mike turned into a beast.”

“I thought Mormons don’t drink,” she said.

“Just like Catholics never miss church on Sundays.”

“So you got him drunk?”  She pretended to be shocked.

“It was worth it,” I said.  “And the guy’s like thirty-five.  He’s a big boy.  A very big boy, actually.”  An X-rated image of a dripping wet naked Mike popped into my head.

She raised her eyebrows.  “So are you guys an item?”

“An item?  Who says that anymore?”  I chuckled.  “No, I doubt it.  He didn’t even kiss me goodbye when I dropped him off at home.”

“Wow,” she said.  We sat in silence for a minute.  “So how drunk did you get this poor young man?”

I thought about it for a second.  “He was pretty tanked, I guess.  Why?”

“Well, are you sure he remembers sleeping with you?  That happened to me once when I was in college.  Guy got me drunk and apparently we had a lot of fun that I will never remember.  He was offended when I barely said ‘hi’ to him the next day.”

“That only happened
once
?”

She shot me a dirty look.

“I suppose it’s possible,” I said.  “Mike never mentioned it today and he acted almost like nothing had happened.”  That would explain a lot, I thought.  I poured off the rest of the bottle right before our Happy Family special arrived.  It made us very happy indeed, but we both developed a food coma and passed out watching a Lifetime movie.