Chapter Six
I spent the afternoon looking up details of Carl’s potential opponents in my PI database. The two candidates he was running against were Senator Samantha Pritchett from Ohio and Senator Chase Wingrove from Illinois.
Unfortunately, the database only brought up details of where Senators Pritchett and Wingrove lived permanently—not where they were staying while in Las Vegas.
I considered calling up some of my contacts at the different casinos and begging them to ask around, but in the end, I decided that my time would be better used by giving these politicians a phone call.
It was relatively easy to pull up details of their cell phone numbers, and I spent the rest of the afternoon trying to get in touch with them. Both my calls were picked up by staffers, who were very polite in listening to me and expressing empathy for my mission.
I explained that I didn’t think their bosses had anything to do with the murder, but that they could shed some light on Carl’s personality, and that it was very important for my investigation that I talk to them.
“I understand,” murmured each of the staffers I spoke to. “I’ll pass your message on, and then I’ll get back to you if we can make time to talk to you.”
After I’d spent far too long on the phone, I lay back on the sofa, feeling dejected and dispirited. I wasn’t sure that the staffers would pass on my message, and even if they did, the politicians had no reason to talk to me; they were all busy people, and talking to me wouldn’t help them in any way.
There was a knock on my door a few minutes later.
“You look really glum,” Ian said when I opened the door. “What’s wrong? Have you been fired from the casino already?”
I shook my head. “Weight controls are officially going to be announced in two weeks’ time. But I’ve been calling up the senators, and nobody wants to talk to me.”
“It doesn’t matter,” said Ian. “They’re very busy people. And they probably couldn’t have helped us anyway.”
I forced myself to smile. “You’re right. But still, it would have been good to talk to people who knew Carl better than most.”
“Maybe they didn’t even know him that well,” said Ian. “The people we really need to talk to are his wife and her daughter.”
“Ellen and Trish,” I said thoughtfully. “My research on Ellen turned up some interesting things last night.”
“My research on Carl didn’t turn up anything very interesting—not anything we didn’t know already. All I learned was that he’s a Men’s Rights activist, and he thinks that women need to have some rights taken away. I can see why people hate him; on top of all his bad policies, he keeps making really mean comments about women in general, like saying that they can’t manage to be both a mom and an employee, so they don’t need equal opportunities at work. I’ve read online that a number of women accused him of having affairs with them and being violent toward them.”
“But those are all anonymous reports. Sometimes, rumors come out during election time. Anonymous rumors don’t mean much.”
“But there are two women who accused him of stuff publicly. We should talk to them.”
I nodded. “I haven’t had a chance to look them up yet. And I guess there’s his ex-wives and their kids as well. Did you learn anything about them?”
“Nothing unusual. He was married twice, and had five sons with those two women. But one of the ex-wives lives in California, and the other lives in New York. I don’t think any of them were in Vegas when he was killed.”
“I’ll have to get in touch with my contacts at the airport, just to make sure that’s not the case.” I frowned thoughtfully. “Though, I don’t think that would be the case. If any of them had been here, the cops would be investigating them, instead of saying that Gary’s the chief suspect.”
“Carl comes from an old political dynasty. Plus, he’s got a successful business and he’s super-rich—which is why he’s even considering running in the primaries. If this guy were anyone else, no one would’ve taken him seriously. He’s never been active in politics before, and maybe that’s why the FBI doesn’t seem to care much about his death and they’re leaving the local cops to investigate.”
“Well, technically, he’s still a private citizen and he isn’t serving the country yet. And maybe the FBI’s already done a quick sweep through, and they’ve decided that this isn’t a political death. Or maybe they’re investigating in the background, and just pretending not to be involved.”
“What did you learn about Ellen?” said Ian. “I didn’t have time to look her up. There were all these articles about Carl, but they basically all said the same thing—how he hates women, and he’s trying to introduce really old-fashioned, backward policies.”
“Well,” I said, feeling a bit enthusiastic about the investigation again, “the first thing that’s really odd about Ellen Wareheim is that she’s not the typical politician’s wife. She’s not at all the kind of person you’d expect to marry a man who’s a descendant of one of the most powerful political families in America. She never even lived in New York—she grew up and lived in Indiana her whole life.
“Ellen was an elementary school teacher, and a single mother. All the news reports talk about her being a sweet, shy woman. She’s also quite plain-looking—unlike those model types who seem to marry rich men and politicians. Ellen was married briefly for two years before her first husband died of lung cancer; her daughter Trish was born then. Trish is sixteen now and goes to boarding school in Vermont.”
“That’s not at all the kind of woman Carl married previously,” said Ian. “His first wife was a D-list celebrity, and his second wife was a model. Both of them were really good looking.”
“And I’m guessing neither of them had kids from a previous marriage. Carl met Ellen when she came to New York to attend an awards ceremony for schoolteachers. Apparently, he was very persistent, and they got married after a one-month courtship. They were married for two years now.”
“That’s not like his two previous wives either,” said Ian. “Carl dated his first wife for five years before he married her, and he dated his second wife for three years before he married her.”
“Maybe he got tired of dating women for a long time? Maybe he just wanted to get married.”
“But why would he do that? He was a successful, well-connected businessman. He probably had women falling over him all the time.”
“I’m not sure why he would marry her, but she did bring a kind of down-to-earth quality to his political campaign.”
“I guess you’re right,” said Ian. “And maybe as you get older, your taste in women changes.”
I nodded. “But that’s not the really surprising thing about her. I found out that, according to Carl’s will, Ellen and Trish don’t get very much money. Most of his money is divided between his five children from his previous marriages. His ex-wives get nothing. Trish gets a small trust fund that will pay out a few thousand a year, just enough to cover her living expenses, but not enough to cover the fees at her private boarding school or any future college tuition. Ellen gets a small apartment that they owned together in Florida and fifty thousand in cash. Of course, the apartment is worth at least a quarter of a million.”
Ian stared at me, his eyes round and his mouth forming a perfect O.
“That’s nothing!” he finally managed to say. “Carl was worth billions. I can’t believe he would leave so little to his wife and stepdaughter.”
“I know. Ellen’s not going to be destitute, but she’s definitely worse off now that Carl’s dead.”
“But,” said Ian, “I thought you couldn’t disinherit your spouse and kids?”
“You can’t,” I said. “But I read an article that explained it all. Ellen basically waived her right to a proper inheritance when she signed her prenup. She would’ve gotten more money if she’d just divorced the man. As it turns out, Carl’s business is going through a rough patch—the man’s in a lot of debt and doesn’t
have as many assets as most people think he does.”
“Which is why Ellen can’t inherit much. She should’ve waited till his business started doing better if she wanted to inherit more.”
“Exactly,” I said. “Carl took on debt so he could expand. Perhaps in five years’ time he’d be rolling in the cash again.”
“Or maybe he went into debt to fund his campaign.”
“That’s possible,” I admitted. “But either way, now Ellen doesn’t get much from Carl’s death. She didn’t even have insurance on him.”
“That’s harsh,” said Ian.
“Plus,” I said, “Elwood said Ellen had a solid alibi for Carl’s death. There’s no way she could’ve killed him.”
Ian nodded. “I suppose we can rule out Ellen and Trish as suspects. Did you learn anything interesting when you went to see Detective Elwood?”
I filled Ian in on what I’d learned about the back door being unlocked, and nobody being seen entering through the side gate. “Things aren’t looking good for Gary,” I said. “I might as well call Angela Everton and see if she’ll agree to meet us.”
“Don’t call her,” said Ian, his eyes glimmering wildly. “Let’s be like those cool TV show detectives! We can just bust in on a suspect—maybe even kick down a door.”
“Have you ever kicked down a door in your entire life?”
“No. But I’ve watched a lot of Kung-Fu movies and I know how to break boards.”
“By watching movies?”
The excitement in Ian’s eyes died down a tad. “Sure. How hard can it be?”
“I’m not convinced Angela would appreciate having her door kicked down.”
“But if we call her ahead of time, she might not agree to meet us.”
“That’s true,” I admitted.
“If you can use your PI database to find out where she’s staying in Vegas, we could just show up there and try to talk to her.”
“That sounds like a better plan,” I said. “But no kicking down doors.”
“I can’t promise anything. If the urge to kick down a door comes over me, I’ll just have to do it.”
“Ok,” I said, “I’ll fire up the database again, and you can practice kicking down doors.”
Ian looked at my front door hesitantly. “I don’t think I need to practice. It’s just one of those spur-of-the-moment things, you know. If I feel it, I’ll feel it.”
I hid my smile and searched through Angela Everton’s records, but I couldn’t find out where she was staying in Vegas. Finally, I looked up Angela’s family details and discovered that she had a younger sister named Aria.
I wasted no time in contacting Aria, and explained that I was an old friend of Angela’s who was living in Vegas and hoped to look her up—did she know where Angela was staying? Aria helpfully provided me Angela’s Vegas address, and I thanked her and hung up.
I turned to Ian. “Let’s go and see if Angela will agree to talk to us.”
Chapter Seven
It turned out that Angela Everton was living on Balzar Avenue, one of the worst streets in Las Vegas. The houses here had bars on the windows, the walls were graffitied, and the people who hung around aimlessly on street corners were tattooed and often wore gang colors.
I parked my car on the street and said a quick, silent prayer that it wouldn’t get broken into or stolen, and then Ian and I headed over to Angela’s.
Angela was staying in an apartment building that seemed to have been built in the 40s and 50s. The narrow stairwell was dark and dirty and smelled of garbage gone ripe. Ian and I trudged up to the third floor, and when Ian said he wasn’t feeling any door-kicking urges, I knocked loudly.
A tall, slim woman with a close-cropped military-style haircut opened the door. She was pale and freckled, and her green eyes peered out at us suspiciously. “What?”
“Are you Angela Everton?” I said nervously.
Angela squinted at me. “Who wants to know?”
I shifted from one foot to the other. “My name’s Tiffany, this is my partner, Ian. We’re investigating the murder of Carl Wareheim.”
“If you’re cops, I need to see your warrant before I let you in.”
I shook my head. “We’re not cops. We’re working for Gary Wilkerson.”
Angela looked from me to Ian suspiciously. “Why are you working for Gary?”
“Gary’s a high school friend of mine. Apparently, he’s the primary suspect in the case, but we know he didn’t do it. We’re just trying to find out if there’s anything the police might have overlooked. Is it okay if we come in to talk to you for a few minutes?”
“Why? So you can frame me for the murder instead?”
“I’m sure you had nothing to do with the murder,” I said, trying to sound as though I believed it. “We’re just wondering if you could tell us a little more about this. Someone out there hated Carl enough to kill him, and we need to find out who it could’ve been.”
Angela rolled her eyes. “Okay, come in.”
Inside, the apartment was a little more spacious than I’d expected and smelled like Pine-Sol.
It was decorated with clean-looking midcentury modern furniture, and a framed poster of Hitchcock’s The Birds hung on one wall. Ian and I sat down on a sofa, and Angela sat on the tub chair opposite us as I looked around. The large room we were in served as both the living and the dining area, and there was a medium-sized kitchen at the far end. I could see a passage along one wall, and I assumed it led to bedrooms and a bathroom or two.
“Wow,” said Ian. “This place is a lot nicer inside than I’d expected.”
“Well,” said Angela, “the way I see it, the building and the streets are much worse than I’d expected. I’d read in the description that this wasn’t the fanciest of areas, and that the building was a little run-down, but I didn’t expect it to be a dump like this.”
“So you rented this place from one of those house-sharing websites?” said Ian.
“Yeah,” said Angela. “And once I go back home, I’m giving this guy a bad review. Sure, the place is clean. And I can deal with the lowlife who hang out on street corners—I’m a pretty tough person—but I don’t want to have to pay for that privilege.”
“I guess you picked the place because it was cheap,” said Ian.
“Yeah. We just wanted to rent the cheapest place out here so we could follow Carl and protest his policies. And the place has two bedrooms, so my girls and I could all fit into one place.”
“Are your friends still here?” I asked, wondering if I should talk to the other women who protested with her.
“No, they split once we heard about Carl’s death.” Angela rolled her eyes and let out an exasperated sigh. “I was the only one who was on the cops’ radar, because of that egg-throwing incident a few weeks back. It was totally worth it, though. Plus, they’ve got nothing on me.”
“Really?” I said. “So your friends just left?”
“Well, Carl was dead, which means his policies are dead too. We don’t have anything to protest against here—there are other privileged white males out there making life difficult for women, and other causes that need our support. I don’t blame my girls for leaving. There were doing what was best for them, and what’s best for the causes we believe in. If the cops hadn’t asked me to stay back, I would’ve left too.”
“So you’re staying here all by yourself?” said Ian. “What do you do all day?”
Angela narrowed her eyes at Ian. “Are you trying to hit on me?”
Ian leaned back and waved his hands furiously in front of him. “No, no. It’s not like that at all. I was just being polite. I like to be polite. I mean, if you’re here on vacation, you would probably go to the casinos and hang out there all day. Or you might go to a show or two. But you didn’t come here on vacation, and you don’t work here, so I was wondering what you do all day.”
Angela seemed satisfied by Ian’s explanation. “Hmm,” she said, leaning back in her seat and relaxing
again. “I don’t want to waste money in the casinos, and I hate having to pay for this stupid place longer than I need to. Mostly I spend my days reading up on stuff. Might as well put my time to use. I hope they finish the investigation quickly so I can go home and get back to work.”
“I read that you’ve been protesting Carl’s policies for the past two months—ever since he announced that he might be thinking of running in the primaries.”
Angela nodded. “Yeah, I feel kind of obligated to protest stupidity.”
“Did you ever meet Carl in person?”
Angela shook her head no. “I’ve been trying to set up an appointment, but his people wouldn’t let me through. I was hoping that maybe if I talked to him and explained things to him, he would try to understand. Anyway, now I guess I don’t have to.”
“So you don’t really know much about Carl as a person, beyond what you’ve read about him and seen on TV.”
Angela shrugged. “That told me all I needed to know.”
I felt slightly dejected. If Angela had never actually met Carl, she wasn’t going to be much help.
I said, “Where were you on the night that Carl was killed?”
Angela smiled thinly. “You’re asking for my alibi? I was hanging out most of the evening at the Fisherman’s Wharf Café in Henderson.”
“That’s really close to the house where Carl was staying,” said Ian. “You could have even walked to his house from that place.”
“Yeah, but I didn’t. I was at the café till about nine o’clock.”
Gary had been seen entering Carl’s house at 7:30, and the papers had mentioned that Carl’s time of death had been calculated to be around 8:30.
“What did you do after that?” said Ian.
“Ironically, I decided to take a walk past Carl’s house. The cops were already there—I saw the ambulance and the cop cars and decided to head back. I didn’t know at the time that he’d been killed, but I knew that something was wrong.”
“Did you notice anything at all at that time? Were there people outside, maybe you overheard something?”
Pesky Politicians in Las Vegas Page 4