Jackpot (Nameless Dectective) (8 page)

Old photos, I told myself. But they weren’t. The color definition was still sharp and there was only a thin speckling of dust on each print. They had not been on that mantel very long. Who keeps old photographs on display these days?

I had another vivid mental image of Karen Salter, down on her knees in the Russian Hill apartment, her grief and pain naked on her face. While she’d been making her wedding preparations and keeping her bed warm for Davey, the man whose death had so ravaged her was up here having himself a fling with a hot-looking redhead. Sowing a last few wild oats? Or was the redhead one of many?

I looked again at the photo taken in front of the Nevornia Club. All four of them were in that one, arms linked, smiles bright on their faces, Polhemus mugging some for the camera. He and Burnett and the dark-haired girl were in casual clothes; the redhead was wearing a purple blouse with gold piping and a gold skirt with purple piping—the uniform worn by female floor employees of the casino.

I took that photo down and turned it over to see if there was anything written on the back. There wasn’t. I started to return it to the mantel, changed my mind, and slipped it into my shirt pocket instead.

Without touching anything, I made another circuit of the kitchen, bathroom, and small bedroom. In the second bedroom I poked briefly through the contents of Polhemus’s suitcases and duffel bag. The only thing I found of any interest was a handful of extra cartridges for his Saturday night special. There was no sign of the gun itself, not in the luggage or the bed or the drawer in the nightstand or anywhere else in the room.

I was sweating when I finished in there. I had been in the cottage too long—more than twenty minutes now. I knew more than when I’d entered, but I also knew less, and I did not like any of it.

Out on the deck, I thought about leaving the door open as I’d found it. But there was the possibility it might entice somebody else to go poking around inside. I shut it finally, using my handkerchief on the knob, and made sure it was latched before I climbed the stairs to the parking platform.

My instincts, as I jockeyed the car around and headed back toward Highway 89, were to go to the El Dorado County Sheriff’s Department and file a report. But what would I tell them? That I had trespassed on private property, for no valid reason? That I had felt bad vibes and found some dried blood that
could
have come from a severely gashed finger or a high-altitude nosebleed? That I had unlawfully searched the premises and removed a photograph belonging to the owner? There was no evidence that a crime had been committed on those premises, and without any, I did not have a legal leg to stand on.

So?

So I was not going to the El Dorado County Sheriff’s Department. I was going to the Nevornia Club over in Stateline.

THE NEVORNIA was one of the newer, posh casino-hotels. Its fifteen stories vied for attention with the cluster of older high-rise resorts—Harrah’s, Harvey’s, High Sierra, Caesar’s Tahoe—on the quarter-square-mile “glitter strip” just across the Nevada line. Nonstop gambling action and star-studded live entertainment. Gaudy neon and a steady ebb and flow of eager suckers. But for the most part it was the men like Arthur Welker who struck it rich. Evidence of that was the Nevornia’s opulent gold-and-purple facade and decor, its extravagant musical shows, its profusion of boutiques and specialty shops where you could buy everything from diamond jewelry to Oriental antiques. At inflated prices, of course; the house percentage was high on those businesses too.

I left my car in the free Harrah’s lot, on the California side, and walked over to the Nevornia. Even though it was a weekday afternoon, the banks of splashily neoned slots and the rows of purple-and-gold blackjack tables were getting moderately heavy play from tourists and small-timers. The craps and roulette and baccarat layouts were quiet. The high rollers were like vampires: they couldn’t stand the daylight, so they only came out after dark.

I showed the photograph to a woman in a change booth, a sleepy-eyed croupier, and a blackjack dealer; none of them recognized the willowy redhead, or owned up to it if they did. But the fourth person I tried—a middle-aged woman with henna-rinsed hair and a squint in one eye, who presided over an empty pai gow poker table—netted me a small payoff.

She looked at the photo for five seconds and at me for ten, probably trying to decide if I was a pervert. Then she said, hedging, or maybe fishing a little, “You can’t sit here unless you make a bet.” So I made a two-dollar bet, without knowing what the hell I was doing; pai gow poker is a recent addition to the roster of Nevada casino games, put in to accommodate the ever-increasing number of Asian gamblers, and I had never played it before. I won anyway, and slid my winnings over to the henna-rinse’s side of the table. That put her on my side, more or less.

“So why do you want to know about her?” she asked, nodding at the photo.

“The boy with her is my son. He’s been seeing her on the sly and he won’t tell me anything about her. I came up to find out for myself.”

The henna-rinse laughed knowingly. “I’ll just bet he didn’t tell you about her.”

“Why do you say that?”

“You’ll find out when you meet her.”

“What’s her name?”

“Make your bet,” she said slyly.

I put my original two bucks back on the table. This time I lost it.

She shrugged—easy come, easy go—and said, “Better luck next time.” Then she said, “Her name’s Wendy Oliver. Sweet Wendy.”

“What shift does she work?”

“She doesn’t. Not here, not anymore.”

“Oh? She quit?”

“Fired,” the henna-rinse said with relish. “Thrown out on her sweet little can.”

“When?”

“Make your bet.”

Another two bucks down. The henna-rinse and I lost this time too.

“Couple of weeks ago,” she said.

“You know why?”

“With sweet Wendy, it could be just about any offense you can think of.”

“But you don’t know which one.”

“Nope.”

“Would she be working at one of the other clubs?”

“Maybe. Or maybe she’s just working these days, if you know what I mean.”

“Hooking?” I put my last two singles on the table. “Is she that kind?”

“She’s that kind.”

“I don’t suppose you know where she lives?”

“Try the phone book. She’s probably listed. Easier for her customers to find her that way. If you know what I mean,” she said, and took those last two singles of mine for the house.

There was a concourse nearby, along which I found a bank of telephone booths. I tried the South Lake Tahoe directory first. One Oliver listed: W. Oliver, 274A Tata Lane. The Nevada directory had no listing for anybody named Oliver in this area. So it was W. Oliver on Tata Lane or I was going to have to start over again.

When I got back to my car I looked up Tata Lane on the South Lake Tahoe map. It was off Lake Tahoe Boulevard, down past the wye junction—all of three miles away. But it took me nearly twenty minutes to get there because of the traffic.

The area was a mix of small industrial companies, city offices, the Lake Tahoe Ranger Station, and private residences. Most of the residences were trailers in different parks spread out over several blocks: 274A Tata Lane was on the eastern end of a park called Sugar Pine Estates that didn’t seem to have any sugar pines growing in it. The trailer bearing the number was not much to look at: gray with yellow trim, both colors faded and splotched here and there with rust spots; small front and side yards composed of browned strips of lawn, weedy flower beds, and one diseased-looking tree. Parked under a sagging metal carport was a Toyota Tercel that had had a badly dented right rear fender panel.

I parked across the street. The sun glinted brightly off the trailer’s metal surfaces; unless W. Oliver had air-conditioning, I thought, it would be like an oven inside on hot days. On the carport side was a narrow porch carpeted with dusty green Astroturf. I went up onto the porch—and the screen door opened before I got to it and a young woman leaned out in my direction. She must have seen or heard me coming.

She was the one in the photograph. Tall, slender, with dark red hair worn long and cut in wavy layers; pale skin dusted with freckles and lightly sheened with perspiration; a wide mouth and light-colored eyes, both of which were too wise and too cynical for a woman in her mid-twenties. The green halter top she wore revealed about half of each of her overdeveloped breasts. A pair of skimpy white shorts, cut tight through the crotch, also left little to the imagination. There were freckles on her chest and legs, too—lots of them.

She saw me looking and said in a voice that was part sneer, part tease, “See anything you like?”

“Well, you seem to be advertising.”

“You still read the ads, huh?”

“Sure,” I said. “But I haven’t answered one in years.”

She laughed in a mildly snotty way. I was an amusing old fart, whoever I was. “You selling something?”

“Nope.”

“Neither am I. So?”

“Are you Wendy Oliver?”

“What if I am?”

I took out the snapshot and held it up between us at eye level. “I’ve got some questions about David Burnett.”

Her whole demeanor changed. It was like watching a piece of trick photography: one second she was soft and sexy, cynical and wise and twenty-five; the next second she was tight-drawn, wary, frightened, with lines around her mouth and eyes that made her look ten to fifteen years older.

“Who are you?” she said. Her voice had changed, too; now it was full of tremolos.

“Private investigator.” I put the snapshot away and let her look at the photostat of my license. It seemed to ease her anxiety some—not too much.

“How did you find me? Where’d you get that picture?”

“I just told you, I’m a detective. I get paid to find things and people.”

She gnawed flecks of tangerine-colored lipstick off her lower lip. “Who hired you?”

“Burnett’s sister. You know he committed suicide?”

“Yeah. I heard.”

“Pretty terrible thing, wasn’t it.”

“Awful,” she said.

“You don’t sound very upset.”

“It didn’t just happen yesterday. Besides, Dave and me, we weren’t that close.”

“That’s not how it looks in the photo.”

“I don’t care how it looks in the damn photo.”

“Why did he kill himself, Wendy?”

“How should I know?”

“Money? Winning a lot, losing more?”

“I don’t know anything about that,” she said. But she was lying. I could see it in her eyes.

“Who told you about the suicide? Jerry Polhemus?”

“So?”

“When?”

“Day after it happened.”

“In person or on the phone?”

“He called up.”

“Where did he call from? San Francisco?”

“Yeah.”

“Then he must have just gone home. He was at Fallen Leaf Lake the night Dave died.”

“Yeah, that’s right. He found out when he got back.”

“Did you see him while he was up here?”

“No.”

“Talk to him?”

“No. He called but ... no.”

“When was the last time you saw or talked to him?”

“I don’t remember. Weeks ago.”

“Not in the past couple of days?”

“No. I told you. Listen, what’s the idea—”

“How about the weekend Dave won his big jackpot. You see both of them then?”

For some reason, that seemed to scare her all over again. “I don’t remember. What difference does it make?”

“Must have been pretty exciting, Dave hitting a Megabucks slot for two hundred grand.”

“I wouldn’t know.”

“Weren’t you with him at the time?”

“No. Hell, no.”

“I had the idea you were.”

“Well, you had the wrong idea.”

“But he came and told you about it afterward?”

“... Is that what Jerry said?”

“I’m asking you.”

“All right, yeah, he told me about it afterward. So what?”

I let a few seconds pass in silence. Then I said flatly, “What are you afraid of, Wendy?”

She didn’t want to hear that, either. She might have pulled back inside and shut the door in my face, or she might have told me to go to hell; she didn’t do either one. Something kept her standing there talking to me—the same sort of thing, maybe, that keeps a rabbit standing in thrall of a snake.

She gnawed off some more lipstick before she said, “Listen, my boyfriend’ll be home any minute. He catches me talking to a strange guy, he’ll kick my ass. So why don’t you just leave me alone, okay?”

“Your boyfriend isn’t what you’re afraid of.”

“No? You don’t know Scott.”

“Were you living with him while you were seeing Burnett?”

One, two, three beats. “Yeah. You happy now? Scott doesn’t know. He finds out, he’ll
really
kick my ass.”

“Tell me about you and Burnett.”

“Tell you what? There’s nothing to tell. We saw each other a few times, had some grins together ... that’s all.”

“When did you start seeing him?”

“What difference does that make?”

“Answer the question, Wendy.”

“Last year. Late last year.”

“How did you meet?”

“He came into the Nevornia, where I used to work. Him and Jerry. I was dealing blackjack and play was slow that day and we started talking.”

“Pretty heavy gambler, was he? Big bets?”

“Not Dave. Five bucks a hand, tops.”

“So the two of you got to talking. Then what?”

“Jerry’s got this cabin at Fallen Leaf Lake. They were up for a long weekend and Dave asked me if I wanted to come party with them.”

“And you said yes.”

“Scott had a winter job in L.A.,” she said, and shrugged.

“Dave tell you he was living with a girl in San Francisco? That they were planning to be married soon?”

“You kidding? Guys say that, it chills you right out. Dave was no airhead. He knew what he was doing.”

“Sure he did. Good old Dave. He tell you about his fiancée later or did somebody else?”

“He told me. Didn’t matter by then. He had somebody, I’ve got somebody—that’s the way it is. We were just having some grins, I told you that.”

Yeah, I thought. Grins.

I said, “Who else was at Jerry’s cabin that first weekend?”

“His girl, nobody else.”

“The other girl in the photo?”

“Yeah.”

“What’s her name?”

Five-second hesitation. “Janine. Janine Wovoka.”

“You know her well?”

“No. We never met before then.”

“She live here in Tahoe?”

“No.”

“Where, then?”

“Reno. She lives in Reno.”

“Where in Reno?”

“She never told me and I never asked.”

“She tell you where she works?”

“Coliseum Club. She did then, anyway.”

“Not anymore?”

“I dunno. I haven’t seen her since the last time the four of us were together.”

“The weekend Burnett won his big jackpot, you mean.”

“I told you, I wasn’t with him then!”

“Jerry was, though. How about Janine?”

“How should I know?”

“What was Janine’s job at the Coliseum Club?”

“Change-girl. She was trying to get on as a dealer.”