Strip Search (22 page)

“She didn’t entertain clients in here,” Gina explained. “This was just for her.”

“I can see that,” I said quietly.

“Is there anything else…?”

“No. If you don’t mind, I’d prefer to be left alone. It’s easier for me to listen.”

Gina blinked. “Listen? To what?”

“To the room,” I said, closing my eyes.

The soft click of the door told me Gina had exited. I let my mind wander, burrowing down into deep contemplation of what I had seen. This office was a little too obvious to be the secret I’d sensed Gina was withholding. But it was a start in the right direction. At least, I hoped it was.

The predominant color was pink. Curtains, wallpaper, mostly plastic furniture. Pink. There was no desk as such, but the center of the room had a round plastic table, low to the ground. More a playground than an office. Someplace to play pretend games with your Barbies. Though to be fair, I spotted no Barbies, or Kens, but an entire wall of the room was covered with stuffed animals. Bears, giraffes, koalas, dogs, and cats. Lots and lots of cats.

I opened my eyes. Why would she do this? Even if it was restricted from unfamiliar visitors, there was always a chance someone might stumble in. How could this place help her maintain her reputation in the business world? What was its purpose?

Its purpose, I realized, was to make Danielle happy. To recapture the innocent childhood she never had. To give her a place of retreat. Escape. Based on what I’d read, that seemed to be the theme that permeated all her films. Sure, they were sexual fantasies, but they also had strong strains of escapism. Pirate stories, outer space tales, Jane Eyre-like sagas of strong women finding a place for themselves in the Victorian world. None of them involved little girl fantasies; catering to that fetish would’ve been too controversial. So why did she indulge in it herself? What was she trying to accomplish? What need did this satisfy? What had she lost that she was trying to reclaim?

I wasn’t going to find the answers to my questions just standing around. I strolled through the room, brushing my fingers on the artificial surfaces, looking for anything out of the ordinary (that is, more so than the entire room), anything that might give me a clue to who Danielle Dunn really was. I opened a closet door and found a toy collection that would be the envy of the richest kid in Summerlin. But there was no Trivial Pursuit, no Monopoly, no Scrabble, nothing a self-respecting adult might play. It was Careers and Mystery Date and Talk to Me Girlfriend. A huge collection of dolls, I think they were from that woman’s collection, Madame Whatever. Or maybe Marie Osmond. And American Girls. I wasn’t sure. What I knew about dolls you could fit in a thimble. There were bead kits for making jewelry. Crafts kits for making homemade bookmarks, valentines, calendars. Tons of books, but all of the same sort—
Little Women, Anne of Green Gables, Z is for Zacharias, Black Beauty.

My first impression was that she was trying to recapture her lost childhood, but she left home when she was sixteen, an age when I would’ve expected her to be well beyond most of this stuff. Rachel had been through a bead jewelry phase, too, but that was a good long time ago. No, there had to be something more going on here. If only I could figure out what it was.

I closed the closet door and examined the pictures hanging on the wall. They were all of Danielle. Sometimes she was paired with other people, but she was always present. There were no family photos, no pics of mom and dad, no siblings. Most were promotional photos taken from the sets of various films. In one, her blond hair was tightly tied, giving her a youthful, almost innocent look. She was either very young or skillfully using makeup to convey that illusion. In the next, her face was surrounded by blond ringlets and she was wearing a low-necked Regency costume. I could only imagine what the film must’ve been.
Pride and Prejudice,
with explicit sex. Did Elizabeth get it on with D’Arcy, or perhaps one of her sisters? It made the mind reel.

The only photos I found that didn’t appear to be stock shots, either taken on a set or by pros at celebrity events, were on a table in the corner that presumably functioned as Danielle’s work space. The top of the desktop was almost the antithesis of my own—tidy, organized, and devoid of paper. Was Danielle a neat freak, or had Gina done some after-the-fact expurgation? At any rate, in one corner, she had framed a series of pictures that showed Danielle surrounded by large numbers of small children, hordes of them. Dorothy surrounded by munchkins, except the munchkins adored her.

How did a notorious porn star manage to make public appearances with children without being inundated by objections from the PTA? Where were these taken? Public schools? YMCAs? In some, she appeared to be handing out gifts, the same type of fuzzy fluff that filled her office. What could be the purpose? Usually, when celebs choose their charities, they target groups that might create goodwill that would lead to business opportunities. But there was little chance that these toddlers were going to become porn flick aficionados anytime in the near future. Every appearance must be fraught with controversy and a million hoops to jump through. Why did she do it?

And how did that relate to her secret? If it did. Maybe it was the Valium coursing through my system, but I had the distinct feeling I was not in top form. My antennae were not firing like they should. I was missing something. I knew it. And I hated myself for it.

I found one more photo, tucked on the wall behind an elaborate two-story dollhouse, one big enough to house Barbie, Skipper, and their entire extended family. She was holding a stuffed animal and dressed in a rather skimpy undergarment and—

Wait. I was missing the obvious. I didn’t need Colin to point out the punning that was going on here. She was holding a teddy; she was wearing a teddy.

I peered at the photo, once again letting my mind wander. What did it mean? Why had she allowed this one anomalous photo in this child’s paradise? Granger and his team must’ve spotted it, and I could imagine the snarky macho remarks it must’ve engendered. But I saw it as something more. Like maybe the key to the puzzle.

I turned back to the shelf inundated with stuffed animals where E.T. could’ve easily hidden. Took me almost five minutes to find the one I wanted. The bear she was holding in the picture. I wasn’t certain, but I believe the distinctive cap and attire identified this furry gentleman as Paddington Bear. I think. Like I said, I was more a stickball and riding-my-bike-with-no-hands kind of girl.

I held the little ball of fluff in my hands. There was nothing extraordinary about it. I was glad no one else was in the room, because if they were, I felt certain I would become an instant object of ridicule. At the same time, there was something…

I squeezed the teddy bear, hard. I don’t know what I expected—maybe it would cry “Mama” or something. It didn’t. No sound at all. But inside, I felt something crunch.

Zipper in the back. I opened it up and found a long envelope. Stuffed with cash.

Now I was cooking with gas. A slush fund. Payoffs. Bribes. The stuff murder motives were made of. I pulled the envelope out and stared at it.

Only four words on the front: CLARK COUNTY CHILDREN’S HOME.

The money was going to a children’s home? An orphanage for wayward children or something? What would be the point of making a charitable contribution in cash? You wouldn’t even get the tax deduction. I’d never heard or read anything about this, and Gina didn’t mention it, so it couldn’t have been for publicity purposes. What was going on here? A quick riffle through the cash suggested that there were several thousand dollars tucked in there.

I bagged it, marked the bag, then tucked it inside my jacket. I had no idea what it meant. But I was certain it was important. Not that I had any illusion that this was the big elusive secret I had been seeking. But perhaps, with a little luck and intuition, it might lead me to it.

I FOUND DARCY outside the studio—far outside, actually. I was afraid I had lost him. I did find him eventually, almost a quarter of a mile away, walking around an old water tower in an uncultivated dusty strip of desert behind the studio.

“Find anything of interest?” I asked him.

He was pacing in circles, staring at the muddy ground. “I did not like the studio. I think that is a place where they do sex.” His hands began flapping with the utterance of the last word.

“Well…perhaps. Mostly simulated, I think.”

His head tilted at an odd angle; the inflection of his voice, though questioning, was all wrong. “Simulated?”

“Yeah. You know. They fake it.”

“They were doing sex but not really doing sex?”

“Yeah, they just—look, I don’t really know that much about it.”

“About doing sex?”

“About—” I pressed my hand against my forehead. I was not getting dragged into this. “Look, let’s get back in the car and head downtown. I’ll tell you what I learned. Maybe you can make some sense of it.”

He looked up at me, hands still flapping. “Do you know how many water towers there are in Las Vegas?”

I gave him a long look. “Two hundred and twelve.”

His eyes widened as if he were impressed. “That was true in 1971. You should update the books in your library.”

“Yeah, well, I’m on a tight budget.” No way I was going to tell him I just plucked that number out of the air.

“Today there are four hundred sixty-six. And twelve more are being planned.”

“Do tell.”

“We need lots of water towers. Las Vegas is in the middle of a desert.”

“That fact I actually knew.”

“This one leaks.” He pointed up at the base of the water repository, then down to a wet patch on the ground. Apparently it had been dripping for some time because the muddy area was quite sizeable.

“Well, when we get back to headquarters, we can report that to the city officials. Don’t want our tax dollars going to waste.”

“The leak makes mud.”

“Water and dirt will do that.”

“The killer tracked mud into the crime scene.”

I stopped, pivoted. “And how did you know that?”

“I saw where the tracks had been fixed and lifted when I—”

“When you broke into the crime scene. Yes, don’t remind me.” I crouched down on the ground. “So you think this is where the mud came from?” I placed a finger in the sticky ooze. That would explain the presence of mud when we haven’t had rainfall for about two months. But why would the killer be hanging around the water tower?

Darcy grasped a rung on the ascension ladder on the east side of the tower. “Do you know that this ladder has one hundred and forty-two rungs?”

“Does it? I wouldn’t have guessed a rung over one-forty. But why would anyone want to—”

I looked up to the top of the ladder, and the answer to the question was so obvious I didn’t even need to finish asking. Not so obvious that any of us had noticed it before, mind you, but obvious once Darcy led you to it. “If he climbed to the top and used a pair of field glasses,” I said, “he could see straight into the studio’s second-story soundstage.”

“If he was not afraid of heights. I do not like heights. I like for my feet to be on the ground. Do you like—”

“And that would explain how he knew so much about what was going on in there. How he knew that handcuffs—real ones—could be useful. How he knew everyone else had left and Danielle was alone. How he knew where to find her. He’d been spying on her from this water tower, waiting for his opportunity.”

Darcy looked up at me sheepishly. “Have I been useful?”

“Of course you have. This confirms that she wasn’t chosen randomly. That the killer was waiting for an opportunity to get to Danielle. And perhaps, that it was important that he confront her in her workplace.”

“Do you think that maybe he wanted to do sex with her?”

“No.” I batted a finger against my lips. “No, I don’t think that has anything to do with it.”

“Then what does?”

“I don’t know.” Teddy bears. And that formula for testing prime numbers. Not that any of that makes the slightest amount of sense. I squeezed him on the shoulder. “I suppose I don’t need to mention that this investigation has become a custard event.”

He jumped up and down. “Very Excellent Day! Very Excellent Day!”

“An overstatement, perhaps. But I’m starving. What flavor are we having today? Wait, don’t—”

But it was too late. “Today is Thursday, and it is the third Thursday of the month, so that would mean whichever flavor is third in the alphabet, unless they have Pumpkin Crunch, because Pumpkin Crunch always wins on Thursdays, unless it is spring, because in spring they have fruit flavors that they do not have in the fall, like…”

WE HAD ALMOST MADE IT to the custard joint when O’Bannon rang me on my cell phone. “Where are you?” he asked, without even bothering with niceties like “hello.”

“I’m on my way back from DannyDunn Studios,” I said, not exactly answering the question—but close enough to get by, I hoped. “Why?”

“We have a third victim.”

“God.” I felt my heart sinking to the base of my chest. “Are you sure?”

“Well, we haven’t found the corpse yet—at least not the majority of it. But all signs point to the same guy. How soon can you get to the Legal Arts Office Complex on Sanders and 47th?”

“About ten minutes. I’ll just have to drop off—” I stopped myself just in the nick of time. “My dry cleaning.”

“Huh?”

“I’ll be there before you know it. So…I suppose you’re working off what was left behind? Another head? Or just the face?”

“Neither.”

“Then how do you know—”

“This time the bastard chopped off his left arm.”

“His—” I felt my blood pressure rising. “What sense does that make?”

“That’s what we keep hoping you’ll tell us. See you soon.” He rang off. I’d have to be deaf to miss the seriously gruff tone in his voice.

“Darcy, you’ll have to give me a rain check on the custard. Got to visit another crime scene.”

“I want to go with you!”

“I know you do. And I wish you could. But it’s not a choice. And don’t go stealing any more badges from your father.” I gave him a wink. “I’ll sneak you in myself. As soon as I can.”