Nobody Dies in a Casino (4 page)

“Georgette, lightning could still strike you like it did Reynelda Goff, but I can't put you or any of my authors up for auction until I know more than one house would be interested. She was an unknown commodity and things just clicked.”

“And I'm just a shopworn old frump—is that right?”

No, you're just a midlist author. Among book authors, there are four kinds—self-published, prepublished, no longer published, and published. Among the last, there are two—star authors and the vast majority, midlist authors. There is no low-list author. “Of course not, you have published, what—twenty novels in hardcover?”

“All but one of which is out of print. I'm not even selling paperback rights anymore.”

“The paperback market has really constricted. I can't control the marketplace. I mean, it's not like you're starving.”

“No thanks to my agent. It so happens, miss, that I invested large portions of both my late husbands' estates in the stock market. The marketplace works very well for me except with my writing. I want to know why.” Enlarged knuckles pounded on the menus their waitperson had left and which neither had bothered to open.

“Okay, send me a proposal on the next book and I'll hand it around to see if I can stir up enough interest for an auction. But I'm warning you—there's nothing more embarrassing than throwing a party and nobody comes. And Bland and Ripstop is not going to be happy about this. We're risking a lot here.”

“No, my dear.
We
are risking nothing. Because
you
are fired.”

*   *   *

Charlie sat staring at Georgette's empty chair and martini glass, so stunned she ordered a hamburger with fries and a glass of merlot from the waitperson and didn't realize she'd been forgetting to look over her shoulder until someone startled her from behind.

“Well, for heaven's sakes. It's my partner in crime. May I join you?”

Charlie hadn't heard anyone say “for heaven's sakes” since
Father Knows Best
on Nick. She'd have minded, but it was the woman in cream and gold. This was the first time Charlie had heard her speak.

“I'm Bradone and I feel like I've known you forever.” Her voice fit her perfectly—moderately low, pleasant, mellow, personal.

“I'm Charlie and I—” And I don't know what to say—“Charlie Greene, and yes, please sit down.” Charlie'd never been fired before. She'd parted with clients, but never like this.

“Know what?” Bradone put down the menu. That laughter Charlie sensed, barely below the surface. “I'm going to be deliciously naughty and have a hamburger and fries too and a beer.”

“Why are we partners in crime and how did you know what I'd ordered?”

“Our crime was all that money we won at the other Hilton this morning. I was seated at the table behind you here and overheard your order. And wasn't that Georgette Millrose who left in such an unseemly huff?” This Bradone—she pronounced it
Brad-own
—was striking—in her way, almost beautiful. “And I know that because I've seen her photos and read several of her books. So there.”

“She just fired me,” Charlie blurted, knowing better. Then, of course, she had to explain in what capacity she'd been fired and admit to her occupation, which she never did to strangers.

Charlie tried to cut off her urge to confide.

Bradone was Bradone McKinley, and when Charlie asked what she did for a living, Bradone McKinley swirled the end of a naughty french fry into a puddle of naughty catsup and laughed out loud before taking a bite. It must be wonderful to be so happy all the time.

“I play blackjack and sometimes baccarat. I travel the world. I read the stars.”

“Are you a card-counter?”

“I'm an astrologer.”

“Did you know it was going to be a hot shoe?”

“Not really.”

The music had mercifully paused for a while and imprisoned nature was quacking and squawking and cawing and squeaking. The birds must have had their wings clipped, because nobody took wing but sparrows looking for french fry bits.

“Do you always play blackjack so early in the morning?”

“Only when the timing is right and Venus is making good aspects.” They both managed to put away about half of their burgers and a fourth of their fries. Bradone ordered wine and coffee for herself and Charlie too. Much as she wanted to get on with her life, Charlie found the woman mesmerizing.

“Works wonderfully, but not always, and it's fun. Works well enough though, that I have to be careful to lose money about a third of the time.”

“I don't believe you.” Charlie realized she was grinning. In the last twenty-four hours, she'd witnessed a murder, sat in a Jacuzzi with one of the killers, and been fired by a client for the first time—and she was grinning.

Be careful. She's probably setting you up to look at a book proposal for astrologers who want to gamble.

Evening had softened the sun and the breeze was dry and cool, sweet with tropical plants blackmailed somehow into living here. Children splashed and chattered in a swimming pool on the other side of a hillock.

“I know you don't believe me, Charlie. Nobody does. That's the beauty of it. I've been doing this for years. It's a fabulous life. Monte Carlo, Malaysia, Macao, Alaska, cruise ships, Latin America—the world is very literally my oyster.”

“Do you have a home base?”

Bradone Mckinley had a home in Santa Barbara, where she retreated when the stars were not propitious for gambling. “And to rest and to study. Astrology takes a lot of study.”

She salted away a third of her earnings after taxes, made a point of losing a third—usually at baccarat, because it was faster—and spent the rest for living and traveling expenses. “I love travel, astrology, blackjack, my home in Santa Barbara. I couldn't be happier.”

“Any family?”

“Just my cats and a houseboy.”

“You should write a book,” Charlie said, testing her.

“That's too much work. I already have plenty of money.” As if to prove it, Bradone insisted upon paying the tab for both of them. “Notoriety, I don't need. I like my life the way it is. And I so enjoyed watching you winning this morning. You're great company when you're not too intense.”

Charlie had enjoyed it too, and the dinner, and the company. She felt a little lonesome when they parted ways on the street outside.

She should head back to her room and check her E-mail. Call Libby. But she turned up the street toward the Treasure Island Casino instead, crossing Las Vegas Boulevard so she wouldn't have to pass the place where the hunk pilot had died. She passed the statues of a triumphant Caesar, out to sack your bank account instead of Gaul, and winged angels lauding the idea by blowing silent trumpets from their pedestals along the drive of Caesar's Palace.

The courtyard of the Treasure Island was red with stage smoke as a pirate ship defied a brig of Her Majesty's Navy with phony cannon shot and firecrackers over the heads of the assembled tourists crowding an enormous wooden gangway entrance to the casino. The brave Brits fired back and many a stuntman on either side met his demise in the broiling waters of battle.

Yes, it was silly, but it made Charlie happy again. If Hollywood was the reality you were trying to get away from, it took something as bizarre as Las Vegas to do it.

She battled her way through the throng—let Mr. Thug try to follow her now, har, har—to get inside to the blackjack tables, where she happily lost and won and lost again thirty dollars that would never compound or DRIP or whatever.

By the time she made it back to the Las Vegas Hilton, her stomach remembered to turn sour over her fat-drenched dinner and the wine. So she stopped by the twenty-four-hour café for milk and dry toast.

Her stomach might feel bad—it was a grouchy stomach anyway—but she felt pretty good.

Until she glanced at the headlines of the
Las Vegas Sun
left on the seat next to her.

A cop on the Strip had been found murdered. No question of pedestrian error here. This was an obvious hit-and-run. His name was Timothy Graden. Timothy Graden left behind a wife and two young children.

There was a picture. He was the bicycle cop who wouldn't believe her at the scene of another murder last night.

CHAPTER
5

C
HARLIE WOKE UP
the next morning much as she had the one before—early, rested, hungry, guilty. She was on a roll here.

Nothing like murder and being away from home to get some quality sleep. She ordered a bagel, coffee, and milk in deference to her type D stomach. A proud and efficient type A personality, Charlie had been saddled with an underachieving digestive track.

I was too sick and tired to do anything about the bicycle cop last night, she told her other self. I mean, what good does it do to kill myself when it wouldn't make the cop, or Pat the pilot, rise from the dead? I am not God.

You are a woman of elastic morals.

I am a survivor in a totally fascinating but corrupt world.

So was Attila the Hun.

Charlie crawled into bed with her diminished breakfast, drank all of the milk first, then turned on the news. Good old Barry and Terry filled her in on a few details of the bicycle cop's demise but didn't report if it had happened on the Strip like Patrick Thompson's. Terry mentioned briefly that investigators were looking for a black limousine, license number unknown, and went on to workers at the Yucca Mountain site who were claiming a cover-up in the investigations into their charges that grains of radioactive sand had been discovered in their baloney sandwiches.

“The DOE's Yucca Mountain Project Office,” Barry assured Terry and Charlie, “has pointed out once again that, though the mountain is being prepared to store radioactive waste, no significant amount has been delivered as yet and also that the workers' sandwiches were assembled elsewhere. Workers maintain that large quantities of various forms of hot waste material is even now being tested inside the mountain to determine the facility's usefulness as a safe storage area for the literally infinitely hazardous stuff.”

“Meanwhile, that other area is in the news again today too,” Terry added, unaware of the bright smear of lipstick on a front tooth. “The apparently unlimited curiosity of tourists in the supersecret government base shown on the maps only as Area Fifty-one caused trouble again yesterday both at tiny Rachel, the closest town, and on an unmarked dirt road that leads off across the vast uninhabited desert. Two hunters from Michigan claim they were forced to turn back by armed men in aviator sunglasses and dark leather jackets.”

Terry had gotten the news of her unsightly tooth, probably from the little receiver behind her ear, about halfway through the first sentence. It dimmed her smile drastically. Charlie could see her relief just as the taped interview with the two hunters from Michigan replaced her on the screen.

Officer Graden probably died because of you. He probably made forbidden inquiries about Pat the pilot because you insisted Pat was murdered. So, how safe are you—the star witness?

So, what are you saying? I should have ignored Pat's murder, let it pass for pedestrian error?

Why had Pat been flying over Yucca Mountain? If it was being dug to form storerooms for the bad stuff, what would anybody be able to see from the air?

The hunters from Michigan drove a snazzy Ford Expedition, shown hanging from the end of a tow chain. They were particularly angered that, on the way back toward Rachel on the dirt road, all of their heavy-duty tires had been slashed.

Charlie ate the bagel dry and wondered how “tiny Rachel” could support a towing service. Maybe by putting sharp things in the road after a tourist vehicle had set out for Groom Lake. And she'd read somewhere that the mysterious guards of Area 51's borders wore camouflage uniforms.

She turned off the TV, poured her coffee, and, for penance, took her Toshiba notebook out of the safe in the closet to check her E-mail.

Type A types may sleep better away from home, but they do not vacation like other people.

There was a message from Larry Mann, her assistant, one from Ruby Dillon, Richard's office manager and right-hand woman, one from Mitch Hilsten, superstar. Nothing from Libby—both a comfort and a worry.

Libby Greene had an old car, a new computer, a new boyfriend, and a new part-time job. Charlie didn't know where to expect trouble next—she just knew to expect it.

Libby has made it to seventeen without screwing up major. That's more than you can say.

Ruby wanted to know why the hell Richard wasn't answering his E-mail or her phone calls. Richard, determined he and his subordinate would get away from the office, had refused to bring his pager or cell phone and insisted Charlie do likewise.

Larry hoped she was having a good time and getting some rest. Reynelda Goff was giving her publisher trouble over revisions to
Bewitched and Bedeviled in Boulder,
which, if you knew Boulder, sounded more like a nonfiction book than a historical novel. (Reynelda was of the age to say “an” historical novel.) The title had almost nothing to do with the story. But it did relate to last year's news event in Boulder, which related to why Pitman's Publishing paid such a ridiculous price for it. Reynelda had turned artistic on them—not an unusual happening when big money makes one suddenly famous. But the news event and the fame had faded by now and the book still hadn't made it to the printer.

There was an analogy between publishing and Las Vegas here that Charlie Greene didn't want to think about.

Larry had a few more office details to relate, one a promising query on Sheldon Maypo for a possible writing job at an ad agency. Pitch a treatment for a feature film and get a job writing commercials. Hey, anything's better than nothing, and Shelly wasn't getting any younger.