Reunions and Revelations in Las Vegas: A Humorous Tiffany Black Mystery

by A. R. Winters

  The mystery of what Marcus was going to tell us gave me a little wake-up jolt of excitement. The potential for another clue always does that during an investigation.

  “And Jini, there’s one other thing we have to talk to you about.”

  “The body?”

  “Yes. You were one of the ringleaders in moving it yesterday, were you not?”

  Jini held her palms out in front of her, face up, guilty as charged. “What can I say? Dead bodies freak me out.”

  “They don’t freak us out, do they, Tiff?” Ian said with a happy smile.

  “Ignore him,” I said to Jini. “No one enjoys being around dead bodies, Jini. But surely, as a lawyer, you know that disturbing a crime scene is a serious issue.”

  “I deal in commercial property law. Dead bodies don’t exactly come up often.”

  “But sometimes?” Ian asked expectantly.

  “I was being sarcastic. No. Never. We write and sign contracts. No dead bodies. No police. No crime scenes.”

  “But you know not to mess up a crime scene. Everyone knows that.”

  Jini shrugged. “As I understand it, you photographed it. I felt our comfort—it wasn’t just me, most of the others agreed—outweighed any benefit to leaving the body where it was. I wouldn’t have pushed it, but Roman and Yumi were really upset by it. I mean, Roman’s lost a lot of my sympathy since then, but we were all on the same page yesterday. We didn’t want a dead body next to us.”

  “So it was Roman’s idea, and you just supported him?” I confirmed.

  “Yep. I mean, I think he did it for Yumi. He was acting on her behalf. It’s gentlemanly, don’t you think?”

  “Are you disappointed Marcus didn’t suggest it first?”

  Jini laughed. “A little bit. But I’ll forgive him for that. He helped us carry it eventually.”

  “You’ve got nothing else to tell us?”

  Jini shook her head. “Nope. Marcus should be of more interest to you.”

  When Jini was gone, Ian rubbed his hands together in excitement.

  “What do you think he’s got? A murder weapon?”

  “I think the knife that’s still inside Beryl is going to be our only murder weapon, Ian.”

  “Oh. Right.” He hummed in thought. “What do you think? He remembered something? He found a confession note?”

  “Let’s just wait and see.”

  There was a gentle knock at the door. “It’s me,” Marcus called from outside. “Jini said you’re done?”

  We told him to come in and got him seated in front of us.

  “We believe you have something of interest to tell us. But can we run through a couple of other things first?”

  Marcus agreed. We told him about the will, and he didn’t seem particularly interested or surprised. He told us there was nothing special he had to tell us—except for the one thing.

  “All right,” Ian clapped his hands. “What have you got for us?”

  Marcus reached into his pocket, pulled something out, and then placed it on the table in front of us. Ian and I both lowered our heads to examine it. It was a bag of pills.

  “Explain?” I nodded down at the pills.

  “I’ve been keeping my eyes and ears open. You know, staying in a house with someone who must be a murderer kind of has that effect on me.”

  “Yeah, us too,” I told him. “And?”

  “Yesterday afternoon I was doing some quiet reading in the drawing room. I got a bit hot sitting by the fire. So I moved to a back corner to cool down for a while. You’ve probably noticed there’s an armchair back there?”

  “Yes.”

  “So I was sitting there, by the window. It was getting dark, but the window was the best lit place in the room. Anyway, Yumi and Roman came in together. I glanced up from my book, but they didn’t even notice me away in the corner. I didn’t feel like shouting across the room, so I just carried on reading.”

  “Were they popping drugs together?” Ian asked him.

  “Not exactly. They sat by the fire, together, talking to each other. I couldn’t hear much because their voices were low and the fire was crackling pretty loudly at that point. I didn’t pay them much mind until I heard the word Beryl. Then I couldn’t help but listen. I didn’t mean to eavesdrop, but when someone starts talking about a murder victim your ears just tend to perk up, you know?”

  “Makes sense,” I said.

  “I couldn’t hear much, but I heard Beryl’s name several times, and the word ‘dead,’ and ‘already,’ and ‘kill,’ and, you know, words like that. I mean, everyone here has been talking about it—I expect it’s natural?” He looked at me expectantly.

  “A killing is definitely hot gossip,” I confirmed.

  “Yep. So that’s what I thought at first. But the way they seemed to be talking about it—even if I couldn’t hear the exact words—the way they spoke was different than everyone else. It wasn’t like they were discussing who might have done it. It was more like… I don’t know how to say it—”

  “Like how to cover it up? Like they did it?” Ian prodded, excitedly.

  “Yeah, maybe. Something like that. There was concern in their voices, like they were worried about being found out about something.”

  Ian sat back in his chair, arms crossed, a smug smile on his face. “Knew it. We should have guessed earlier.”

  “What about the pills?” I asked.

  “I saw Roman pass something to Yumi. But I wasn’t sure what. Then he left the room, I heard him going upstairs. I put my book down. Yumi got up and walked to the door of the drawing room. She stuck her head out, like she was looking to see if anyone was there, then she hurried out. Of course neither of them had noticed that I had been in the drawing room the whole time. But she snuck out, walking so quietly it was like watching a ghost. Not a single floorboard seemed to creak, which in the house was pretty astonishing.”

  “And you followed her?”

  “I don’t exactly want to say I followed her, but when she left the room, I did kind of walk outside to see where she might be going. She slipped out the front door, and she was being really careful not to make a sound when she opened the big door.”

  “And? Where did she go?” Ian asked excitedly.

  “I went to one of the windows in the hallway and watched her. There’s a dumpster in the driveway. You’ve seen it, right?” We nodded. “She went there, lifted the lid, and dropped something inside.”

  “These?” I nudged the pills in front of us.

  “Exactly. If she hadn’t been acting so suspiciously, I wouldn’t have thought anything of it. But because of the way she went about it—why not use the trash can in the kitchen?—I thought something was up. When she came back in, I acted like I was heading into the drawing room. I said hi to her, and she went upstairs. When I heard their door close, I went outside and looked in the dumpster. There were several big plastic sacks, but near the front, just where I’d seen her put her hand, was this little bag of pills.”

  Marcus sat back in his chair and shrugged, indicating it was now up to us what to do with the information.

  “Thank you very much, Marcus. This could indeed be relevant. You don’t mind if we keep them, do you?”

  He shook his head. “Of course not. Call me old-fashioned, but dumpster pills aren’t exactly my thing.”

  Ian and I both laughed at him. “Dumpster pills!” Ian repeated. He nudged me. “They’re our thing, aren’t they?”

  “In this one, rare instance they are.”

  “Anything else I can do for you guys?”

  “No, you’ve been great, Marcus. If you could keep that information to just you and Jini that would be great though. Did you tell anyone else?”

  He shook his head. “Not even Dad.”

  “Awesome. Thanks so much. I expect Roman would appreciate you both joining him outside now.”

  “Yeah. Are you sure we can’t drag this interview out until dinner time?”

  I laughed and shook my
head at him. “Nope, sorry. Out to the salt mines with you. Ian and I will come and help in a little while. We’ve got a couple of little things to follow up on first.”

  When Marcus was gone, Ian and I took a look at the pills. I emptied a couple out onto the table. On one side of the pill were numbers reading 7.5/325. On the other side was the word Percocet.

  “What are those?” Ian asked.

  “Painkillers. Strong ones. Opioids, I believe.”

  Ian nodded. “And what do we think Yumi was doing with them?”

  I pushed one of the pills around on the table. “Too many of them can cause an overdose.”

  “A deadly one?”

  “Sure, if the dose is high enough. And I bet it’s easier for a ninety-year-old to overdose than someone younger, don’t you?”

  “Yeah. But Tiff, I don’t think Beryl died of a pill overdose. She died of a knife-in-the-heart overdose: maximum dosage, zero.”

  “I know.” I picked up the two pills and put them back in the bag.

  “Suggestions?” I asked him.

  “Beryl had a pill box beside her bed, didn’t she?”

  “Yes…” I answered.

  “I have an idea.” Ian sprung to his feet. “Come on.”

  Ian and I went straight upstairs to Beryl’s room. It was cold and felt so empty it seemed like the room should produce echoes. It didn’t. On the bed, there was a vague indentation where Beryl’s body had lain before it was moved by the others. On one side of the bed, the smashed pieces of the broken lamp still lay on the floor, though some had clearly been kicked to the side in a blatant destruction of the crime scene—accidental or not.

  “Look!” Ian said as he picked up the chunky turquoise box. He opened it up while I winced. There went any fingerprints that might have been on it.

  I stood next to Ian and we both looked inside. It was divided into seven big daily compartments, and then within each compartment were three more sub-compartments for morning, midday, and evening. All of them were stuffed with pills.

  “How many was she popping?” Ian asked, with a shake of his head.

  “People her age often have a number of conditions.” I opened up one of the night time compartments. There were four pills inside it. One looked vaguely like the Percocet, and then there was an oval-shaped white pill, a gel-filled yellow one, and a small green one.

  “Here’s my theory,” Ian said. “Someone—” He made air quotes with his fingers. We both knew he meant Roman or Yumi. “Snuck in here to replace Beryl’s pills with the Percocet to get her to overdose. Only they realized she would notice that they were different, and so they stabbed her with a knife instead.”

  I nodded. “Or maybe before they even picked up the pillbox, Beryl woke up and saw them, and they panicked, and stabbed her.”

  “Good thinking, Tiff.”

  Ian put the pillbox back down and closed it. After considering for a moment, he picked it back up, stuffed it into one of the roomy pockets of his cargo pants, and carefully buttoned it closed. “Might need this. Are you thinking what I’m thinking?” Ian asked me, his eyes alight with excitement. He loved this stage of an investigation.

  “If you’re thinking now is the perfect time to look in Yumi and Roman’s room—”

  “Bingo!”

  Chapter Eighteen

  Roman had what must have been the largest guest room in the house. As he had been staying there for some months while working on Beryl’s memoirs, it made sense. The room was much brighter than mine, with two sets of windows that looked out from the front of the house. He also had a writing desk, a bookshelf, and even a small sofa as well as a large double bed.

  My first port of call was the windows, to see what was going on outside. The sky was a light gray, with the clouds now high overhead and the sun sending bright beams through the fading clouds. The ground was still covered in a thick sheet of snow and ice, and there were clear tracks leading from the house along where the road usually lay—when it wasn’t buried in snow.

  Salt had been spread the road, and although it hadn’t melted the snow yet, it was doing the job, and the rough outline of the track was at least becoming visible.

  The track led away from the house, taking two visible winding turns around rocky outcrops, before disappearing off to the right about a quarter of a mile away. No one was visible, so I figured they must all be around the corner continuing their expedition to the avalanche and salting the road as they went for when we would finally be able to make our exit.

  “Looks like we’ve got a few minutes. Let’s see what we can find.”

  “Hey, they’ve got an en suite bathroom.” Ian was peering through a second door in the room. “That’s not fair. I don’t have one. You don’t have one, do you, Tiff?”

  “Nope.”

  Ian shook his head and muttered.

  “You can’t complain when you’re staying for free.” I walked over to join him by the bathroom. We both walked inside.

  “We’re not staying for free, are we?” Ian pointed out. “We’re working now.”

  “So was Roman. Remember, Ian, life’s not fair.”

  “Don’t I know it,” he muttered as he began to poke around the bathroom.

  For a multi-millionaire who wasn’t yet thirty years old, he sure found a lot to complain about. Especially since he also had the best job in the world—assistant to a beautiful and talented boss.

  “Try not to mess anything up,” I said to him. “We don’t want them to know we were in here.”

  There was a white porcelain sink that looked like it would have been the height of fashion in the mid-nineteenth century. Sitting next to it was a cup with two toothbrushes and a tube of toothpaste, and next to it a contact lens case. Carefully, Ian opened the small cabinet above the sink, raising his eyebrows at me for approval of his cautiousness.

  His hand whipped up. “Bingo!”

  He pulled out a packet of pills and held them up triumphantly.

  I shook my head. “They’re blood pressure pills. Nanna has the same ones.”

  Ian put them back. He withdrew a men’s wash bag. He unzipped it. Inside, we found a men’s razor, some cologne, a comb, and some moisturizer.

  Inside the cupboard was a bigger container of moisturizer, this one apricot-scented, and nothing else.

  Ian put the wash bag back in the cupboard. There was a bathtub with a shower curtain around it next to it. I pulled open the curtain. There were two bottles of shampoo, one bottle of conditioner, and one bottle of shower gel.

  “See anything suspicious?” I asked my partner.

  “Nope. The main room’s where it’s going to be.” Ian was already at the door. “Come on.”

  While Ian began searching, I checked the window again. In the distance, I saw someone walking toward the house. I couldn’t quite make out who it was, though I’d guess it was one of the women.

  “Let’s be quick. Someone’s coming back.”

  “Let’s tear this place apart!”

  “Carefully!”

  “Of course. That’s my middle name.”

  It was definitely not his middle name.

  We got to work, going through their room with as much sensitivity as was possible, considering the invasive nature of what we were doing.

  Ian went through Roman’s stuff while I went through Yumi’s.

  “Books on writing,” Ian said. “And a couple of biographies. Nothing good.”

  “What do you call good?”

  “You know. Graphic novels.”

  “You mean picture books?” I asked with feigned innocence.

  “Not picture books, Tiffany, I mean—”

  “Oh, those comics you like?”

  “A graphic novel is a serious medium, Tiffany! They’re respected now.” He sniffed. “By people with taste. Which clearly Roman doesn’t have. His books are all boring.”

  “I guess anything without pictures is boring, isn’t it, Ian?”

  He rocked his head left and right whil
e considering. “Possibly. Stop distracting me. Let’s do this quick.”

  We got back to searching, our literary criticism over for the moment. After going through Yumi’s half of the closet and the drawers underneath, I checked the window again.

  “Ian? It’s her. Yumi.”

  He joined me by the window. Her long, blond hair—and black eyepatch—were now clearly visible. She was tramping back down the fresh-salted road. It would take her no more than two minutes to reach the house, even at her leisurely pace.

  There was a dresser, with a mirror on top, and a makeup bag in front. I quickly searched it, finding little of interest. Then I opened the drawer at the top of the dresser.

  “She’s almost here,” Ian called from the window.

  “Just a second…”

  In the drawer was a purse, and inside that was a wallet. I guessed there was no point in her carrying it around while we were stuck in this house. We couldn’t even shop online without an Internet connection.

  It was in the wallet that I found the key, the vital clue that was bound to tear the weak social fabric of the house apart. “Ian!”

  “She’s here,” Ian hissed. I could hear the door downstairs opening.

  “Ian. Look at this.”

  He stood next to me and looked at what I was holding.

  “Is that—I mean—But surely that’s—”

  “Exactly. Come on. Let’s get out of here.”

  We closed the door gently behind us, just in time to pass Yumi on the stairs.

  “Are you okay?” I asked her.

  “It’s so bright out there now, with the snow and the sunlight. Roman thought I should come inside and rest.”

  “Good idea. Are you sure you don’t want Maeve to come and check on you?”

  She shook her head quickly. “No, definitely not. I’m fine, really.”

  “If you say so.”

  When we went downstairs, we went to find Maeve anyway.

  * * *

  The housekeeper sat in front of us once again. The fireplace crackled, and the room smelled of that morning’s coffee with a smoky undertone wafting from the fire.