Viva Lost Vegas

by Melanie Jackson

  The Chief’s silence indicated a state of skepticism about our choice of vacation spots. I shared it, but Alex wanted to stay.

  “Okay, Boston. Call if you find out anything else. You kids.” The Chief chuckled again and then hung up the phone.

  I looked up at Alex.

  “So, nap and then breakfast? Or the other way around?”

  “Nap first. Then breakfast. Maybe by then I’ll feel like going out in the cold and fetching Elvis’s car.”

  “Sounds good,” I said, letting Alex wrap his arms around me before falling back on the bed. Fortunately for us, the bed was no more authentically antique than anything else in the room. I might have broken something on one of the old rope mattresses.

  * * *

  As I mentioned before, Alex is part private eye and part forensic accountant. He doesn’t do divorce or adultery, and rarely murder unless I rope him into it. This case was so whacky though that I could see he was drawn to it in spite of the potential for violence.

  Blue didn’t join us at the buffet. She was enjoying a bowl of kibble in the privacy of our room when we went down to breakfast around ten. The previous quiet of the hotel was shattered. A bus was unloading passengers.

  We dodged milling bodies and headed into the dining room.

  The tables were filling fast. I stared at the breakfast buffet. It stretched into the cigarette haze of a now very crowded dining room. The faces of the hungry pilgrims were rapt. They had entered the basilica of fatty foods— all you could eat for $3.99.

  Most of the people in line were either vaguely Elvisy or older, dressed in nearly identical shapeless slipcovers and baseball caps that suggested some kind of club. To add to the indignity they had their names and bus tickets in clear plastic pockets hanging from their necks. At least they weren’t being made to hold hands with a buddy like they do with kindergarteners.

  The woman directly in front of me was slightly stooped and her spine, where it rose out of her housecoat, looked like a string of fat beads. In a complete disregard for plausibility or taste, her hair was tinted lavender— perhaps a malicious prank by a caregiver? But before I could work up a good case of pity or outrage, I noticed that she was stooping because she was carrying a large plastic pail full of nickels.

  Sensing my attention, she glanced back with hard eyes narrowed into unfriendly slits. This wasn’t some softhearted granny. She was as tough as the eggs in the chafing dishes.

  “Coffee,” I muttered to Alex. “Everything will be better after coffee.”

  Alex snorted, but he looked fairly cheerful given the shortage of sleep. I realized that it was Wednesday. That meant I was missing the meeting of the Lit Wits, my writers group. I hadn’t attended too many meetings lately because I was tired of Tara Lee’s red pen and her belief that writing popular fiction is worse than practicing cannibalism, but I had meant to be there for Mrs. Everett’s new story.

  Oh well, she would go on the list of people I needed to apologize to for running away.

  We got our trays loaded with such food as seemed safe and then looked around for an empty table. I did see Jailhouse Rock Elvis and Elder Elvis, a female Elvis and one who was doing some kind of zombie Elvis. Finally our own Elvis spotted us and waved us over to his booth. He had coaxed someone into leaving a full coffee pot on the table.

  Breakfast did indeed make the day seem more possible, though the hotel chef was clearly not trying for a place of honor in the Michelin guide with his breakfast buffet. It was with reasonably high spirits that we collected Blue and went to retrieve Elvis’s wounded car.

  In daylight, Do Not Disturb was seen to be a miserable little town. There are some business that thrive on poverty. Like pawnshops and liquor stores. This main street had both. There was also a strip club which was open. The blinking Girls! Girls! Girls! sign was the last word in tawdry.

  I have noticed something about strip clubs— not that I have been in many. In fact, only two, and one wasn’t really a strip club, just a bar with dancing. But it seemed to me that that male dancers worked in better places. Certainly the female audience was more appreciative than in the bar where the male patrons just stared at the dancers and the dancers kind of stared back, either bored or disgusted. The male strip club had been a lot cleaner too.

  “What are you thinking?” Alex asked.

  “That I would rather live in Hell.” Blue woofed agreement. Elvis nodded too.

  “Not the prettiest place I ever lived,” he agreed.

  Given the rundown feeling of the town, I had half expected to find the car stripped or riddled with bullets, but the Cadillac was unmolested, except for a layer of dust. We suggested to Elvis that we follow him back to the hotel, just in case the aliens had done something to the engine. This got a grin, so obviously he knew I was teasing and had no hard feeling about it. I kept my eyes moving while Alex drove, looking for possible ambush, but the return trip was uneventful.

  The tour bus had packed up and moved on by the time we got back, but the lobby was far from empty. There was a doctor, a sheriff and a corpse resting in a bag on a stretcher. Behind the desk was a very unhappy hotel employee, whispering desperately into a phone.

  My first thought was that one of the seniors had overdone the ‘cheez’ omelets and then gotten too excited at the slots, but it turned out that the deceased was someone Elvis knew, which he admitted when Sheriff Darrow asked.

  Elvis looked so stricken by the news that a maid had found his fellow impersonator’s body that it gave us an excuse to stay nearby and eavesdrop while the Sheriff questioned him.

  The lawman was old. His face was lean and ascetic and showed little animation. The questions were all routine but the sheriff’s eyes were not. They were a bright green with cloudy patches and greatly enlarged because he wore old-fashioned glasses whose glass lens inflated his eyes to bug size. If he had any suspicions that this wasn’t an accident, he hid them well. Those eyes were fascinating to look at but I wondered how good they were for actually seeing.

  The dead man was calling himself Elvis Junior, but the Sheriff let slip that his real-world name was Herbie Meyers. He was an Elvis impersonator from Carson City. It looked like Herbie had tripped in the bathroom and broken his neck. Dangerous place those bathrooms.

  A deputy came up right after he told us this and then whispered urgently in the Sheriff’s ear. The deputy was slightly younger than the white haired sheriff and built along the lines of Sidney Greenstreet in his ‘fat man’ era. The pair kind of looked like Jack Spratt and his wife. One should never judge books or people by their covers, but I wasn’t feeling optimistic about this less than dynamic duo.

  We were thanked for our time and then dismissed abruptly.

  We wandered toward the elevator. Elvis seemed melancholy at the loss of his compatriot, though he admitted when asked that Elvis Junior had been his greatest competition and his odds of winning were now better. Maybe I should have suspected him, but he was guileless and had been a victim of assault himself. I just couldn’t see him in the role of killer. If this was a killing and not an accident.

  I knew that Alex was itching to get to his computer to investigate and I wanted to call the Chief and find out what law enforcement knew about Herbie Meyers. Bathrooms are dangerous, but the broken neck thing was just a little too coincidental to dismiss after the night before. I wouldn’t betray Elvis and talk to the Sheriff unless I had to, but I needed to find out if there was something more than coincidence going on.

  I asked about his plans and Elvis said he needed to go see a local costumer who was finishing a new outfit for him. The shop was just down the street and I figured, with the sheriff and his two deputies right up the road, that Elvis was probably safe from a broken neck during daylight hours. We parted ways with a promise to meet for dinner. Elvis wanted to say thank you with food.

  My second call to The Chief was less amusing. It took Randy a while to dig up answers on Herbie because it turns out he was in witness protection. Herbie Meyers (
aka Ronald Bronstein) was an accountant who had testified against the mob in Chicago back in ’97 and been living out west since then. The Feds had been notified about the death and were going to look into it, though no one seemed to be on fire about the incident.

  And no one was calling his death a murder yet, but the little voice inside was telling me that this had been no accident. However, as much as I thought about the problem, I couldn’t see any connection between a possible mob hit and what had happened to Elvis last night. Incompetent alien abductors and the mob were not typical allies.

  “Chloe,” The Chief said, and I knew he was concerned because he was using my first name. “I’m not going to tell you to stay out of this because as of yet there is no official ‘this’ to avoid— and because it would be useless to ask a bloodhound not to track a scent when it’s stuffed under her nose— but the sheriff in that country does not have a reputation for liking the wide open spaces of the mind. He doesn’t like crime in his county and prefers not to be told about things especially by strangers. It would be better not to approach him if you can avoid it. And if you do feel the need to tell him something unusual, give him my number first. I’ll vouch for you.”

  “Thanks, Chief.”

  I couldn’t hear it, of course, but I am pretty sure The Chief was shaking his head as he hung up the phone.

  Chapter 4

  I left the room to Alex and Blue. Thinking comes easier when I am mobile and a short walk, perhaps down to the costume shop, seemed in order. After all, the owner probably knew a lot of the Elvises and people at the hotel, why not the dead one? But down the hall near the elevator I found a teenage girl in a maid’s uniform, pale of face, red of eye and staring at the door to 208 like it was the entrance to Hell.

  For most people, maids are anonymities, interchangeable and less noticeable than wallpaper. But I always look at them because meter maids are also overlooked and dismissed and I don’t much like it. Besides, I was sure that I had found the maid who discovered Herbie’s body and she was trying to work up the courage to go back into his room. Being young and inexperienced, finding her courage might take a while. She needed some help, so I made a detour in my plans.

  “Excuse me,” I said gently and she jumped, so fixated on the door that she hadn’t been aware that I was standing beside her. “I heard about what happened. You must be very upset.”

  She nodded and reached in her pocket for used Kleenex. Her name tag said Gretchen. She looked enough like Mr. Dickerson that I was sure she was some relative, perhaps a daughter or niece.

  “You have to clean out the room now?” I guessed. This was bad news. If the hotel room was a crime scene we would be destroying evidence. I asked without much hope: “Would you maybe like me to go in with you so you aren’t alone?”

  Bless her innocent heart. She nodded again and I began to wonder if she was mute.

  “You have a key?” I asked and with another nod she pulled out a card key and opened the door with shaking hands.

  Gretchen made no move to enter the dark chamber, so I reached around her and flipped on the lights— keeping my sweatshirt pulled down over my hand, though probably the deputy and medical personnel had already touched it and ruined any prints. I touched Gretchen’s arm. The flesh was chilled.

  “It’s okay. I’m with you,” I said and urged her forward.

  The room was almost identical to our own, right down to the broncos on the curtains, no doubt chosen because the owner had gotten a great deal on the fabric. The bed was unmade— of course— but the only other thing out of place was a scattering of silver sequins on the floor near the bathroom.

  There was a jumpsuit laid out on the bedspread. It looked a bit like a body, stiff white patent leather only slightly deflated. It had fringe and silver studs on the belt, but no sequins. It was also fairly small. I couldn’t wear it, but it wasn’t a great deal too large for me. Herbie obviously hadn’t been a giant. It probably wouldn’t have taken a really strong man to overcome him.

  A glance in the open closet didn’t reveal any other costumes and I stared at the sequins with consternation. Did the man wear spangled briefs?

  “They want you to pack his clothes?” I asked.

  The poor girl went another shade lighter. Her ice blonde hair had more color than she did.

  “Why don’t you sit down by the window?” I said. “Just look out at the parking lot and I will pack up for you, okay? There is no need for you to touch his things if you don’t want to.”

  I guided the girl to the wooden chair and her knees kind of collapsed. She put her head down on the small table.

  “Just rest,” I said, hoping she didn’t pass out. If she fainted, the only decent thing to do would be to call for help and I didn’t really want to explain to anyone what I was doing in the deceased’s hotel room.

  Because I have a dog, my pockets always have plastic bags. Being careful, I first used my phone to photograph the sequins on the floor and then gathered the stray spangles into a black baggie. Chances of even partial fingerprints were slim, but I observed protocol as much as I could.

  The bathroom came next, since it was where the ‘accident’ happened. The floor had cast-off jeans, underwear (not spangled), newish athletic shoes, socks and an old sweatshirt that said Chicago U. I photographed these in place, being sure that the sweatshirt logo was clear. Then I knelt and checked the floor. It was dry and not slippery. Next I went to the shower, feeling the pan to see if maybe it was slick with shampoo or soap, but if it had been slimy at the time of the ‘accident’ it wasn’t now. The towels were dry. In fact, there wasn’t a drop of moisture anywhere in the bathroom. I doubted that Herbie had gotten to his shower before he died.

  There were no medications on the counter, but I couldn’t rule out drugs, self-administered or otherwise, perhaps causing him to have a dizzy spell. Toothpaste tube and deodorant went in another baggie and into my pocket. Hair brush and tooth brush and dirty clothes I carried to the bed. I shook out his clothing carefully, finding more stray sequins and a muddy shoe print from a hiking boot. It wasn’t large and might have belonged to the Herbie, but I photographed it anyway, laying a room service menu beside it to give scale. There was also a set of keys in the pants pocket. Those I set aside and then folded the garments in a tidy pile.

  I debated keeping Herbie’s things in case they were needed for forensic analysis, but knew I couldn’t justify it. It would raise too many questions and might bring the sheriff back in. The hotel would probably hang onto the bag until they received instructions from next of kin. That gave us a little time. The sheriff might not be willing to call this a suspicious death, but I was betting the Feds would be all over it.

  A glance at the maid showed me her head was still down on the table and I was unobserved. The duffle on the closet floor revealed nothing, though I searched carefully before putting the clothes inside. The closet held worn, white cowboy boots and a felt cowboy hat, but that was all. Herbie was traveling light. Too light. Had something been taken from the room? But what? And why?

  Then I wondered if he was also patronizing the costume shop down the road. I know nothing about being an impersonator, but it seemed to me that over the course of a three day competition that one might want more than one costume. The chief had warned me to be careful not to run afoul of the local law, so I couldn’t be upfront with my questions, but what else was new? Maybe it was time for me to see about ordering a wedding dress. A bride should have something nice to wear when she gets married.

  But first I would help Gretchen change the sheets and make sure she took Herbie’s bag got to the manager’s office. Poor girl. Maybe it was just shock, but her reaction suggested a brain about as complicated as Tinker Toys. I was also pretty sure that she believed in ghosts.

  * * *

  If I was going to order a wedding gown from the costumer, even if I never actually wore it, I felt that I should inform Alex and take Blue with me. After all, a girl needs support from her best friend when
she makes an important decision. And there might very well be a killer in the area. I trusted Blue to alert me to any unfriendly persons.

  Alex was being protective and wanted to come, too, but I explained about it being bad luck for the groom to see the gown before the wedding and that it might look suspicious if he came along, so he contented himself with leaving Blue to guard me.

  I let him upload the photos from my phone and take the bags of evidence which he could dust for prints. That would keep him busy while I snooped.

  There were cars in lots along the main street, but none on the thoroughfare itself. I guess because ghost towns shouldn’t have modern automobiles cluttering up the view of historic buildings. Also, they wouldn’t need to hire meter maids to enforce parking laws.

  There were pedestrians on the raised wooden walkways, but not many. A lot of stores had signs that said: Grand Opening April 1st.

  A grand opening on April Fools Day? That didn’t seem auspicious to me.

  Molly Mines was a small town and it should have felt familiar to me since I’ve lived in one all my life, but it wasn’t a place where real people lived. It was synthetic. There were no schools, no parks— no children. It reminded me of a stage set, pretty but lifeless, except for the wind that never stopped blowing.

  Blue and I bumped into Elvis on the way to the shop and he was looking more chipper. I asked about his costume and he was enthusiastic, though hazy on the details, except to say that it was black leather and would be ready that afternoon. I told him about my need for a wedding dress and asked if the shop might have something for me. I was hoping to chat some more, but the question stumped him and he started to look nervous about the thought of being asked to help select a gown, so I said I would just go and have a look on my own.

  His relief was comic. He reminded me that we were going to dinner at a steakhouse after rehearsals and I assured him I hadn’t forgotten.