Pesky Politicians in Las Vegas

by A. R. Winters

  Angela shook her head. “I couldn’t see anyone outside, and pretty much as soon as I saw the cop cars, I decided I shouldn’t be hanging around there.”

  I nodded glumly. Angela had a solid alibi, assuming that the staff at the café backed up her story.

  “Well, thanks for your time,” I said. “You shouldn’t have to stay here since you’ve got such a solid alibi, so I hope you get to go back home soon.”

  Angela stood up, indicating that our interview was over. “I hope so, too. No offense, but Vegas kind of sucks if you’re not into gambling or shows or unlimited buffets.”

  Chapter Eight

  Ian and I drove straight over to the Fisherman’s Wharf Café. Sadly, I’ve faced too many situations in the past where people lied about their alibis—I was pretty sure that the cops must’ve already checked up on Angela’s, but I wasn’t about to take a risk.

  As we drove over, Ian said, “Why are we bothering with her as a suspect? Even if she didn’t have an alibi, she couldn’t possibly have gotten into the house. The front gate was monitored by video cameras, and nobody saw anyone entering through the side gate.”

  “Just because nobody saw anyone entering doesn’t mean that they didn’t. A determined person would just blend into the shadows.”

  “Yeah,” said Ian. “People have jumped out of the shadows and attacked you on other cases.”

  “So it’s possible. Someone who’s determined to be invisible will find a way.”

  “Okay,” said Ian. “Maybe you’re right. Someone could’ve slipped into the house unnoticed.”

  “Especially with that unlocked back door. That’s just creepy—or well-planned.”

  “Maybe someone left the back door unlocked by accident?”

  I shook my head. “The whole place had surveillance cameras except for that door. The people in the house were serious about their security, so something must’ve been going on with that door.”

  The Fisherman’s Wharf Café was like a cross between a café and a modern pizzeria. Framed images of the Italian countryside hung on the exposed brick walls. The furniture was mahogany-colored wood, and at this hour, there were only a few occupied tables.

  Ian and I headed straight to the counter, where I described Angela to the waiter and asked if he remembered her.

  The waiter nodded immediately. “The cops came around a few days ago asking about her, too. She came here that night Carl Wareheim was killed. I remember, because she sat all by herself at the table, and she stayed here till nine o’clock. I thought she would order some food, but she only ordered two coffees, and then she left.”

  Ian and I thanked him for his help, grabbed some coffees to go, and tipped generously.

  When we got back to my car, we sat and sipped our coffees for a few minutes, and Ian said, “Have you tried to get in touch with Carl’s campaign manager yet?”

  I shook my head. “I was so disappointed after talking to those political staffers the other day. I’ve got her number here, but I’m not sure if I should bother to call her.”

  “It’s worth a shot,” Ian said. “She might just say yes.”

  I sighed and nodded. “I guess you’re right.”

  I pulled out my cell phone, found her number, and hit dial. After three rings, someone answered and a voice said, “Patti Williams.”

  I was so surprised to hear Patti herself on the phone that it took me a few seconds to find my tongue. “Oh, uhmm, Patti. Hi. My name’s Tiffany Black, and I’m investigating Carl Wareheim’s death. I’m trying to get in touch with everyone who knew him well, and I was wondering if you might have a few minutes to talk to me?”

  “Are you with the Las Vegas police? I’ve already talked to you guys.”

  I shook my head, even though she couldn’t see me. “No, I’m a private investigator. I was hired by one of the people who is being investigated by the police. You must’ve become quite close with Carl over the past months. Maybe we could sit down to chat for a minute or two? I would really appreciate it.”

  A few seconds ticked by as Patti seemed to consider something. And then she said, “I’m free for the next hour or so. If you can come by my place soon, we can talk.”

  I grinned happily. “Absolutely! Where are you staying?”

  “Suite 1602 at the Watermark Resort. It’s just off-Strip.”

  I nodded. “I know where it is. I’ll see you in ten minutes.”

  I turned to Ian and beamed. “You were right! It was worth a shot. I hope she can tell us something interesting.”

  Chapter Nine

  The Watermark was a family-friendly resort with two spas, three swimming pools, and a large gym for clients. When Ian and I took the elevator up to suite 1602, we discovered that Patti was staying in the penthouse.

  Patti Williams was a short, slightly chubby woman in her late fifties. Her shoulder-length auburn hair was perfectly blow-dried, and though her makeup was sophisticated and understated, her face was wrinkled and she’d clearly never had any Botox or work done.

  She smiled warmly at Ian and me. “Come on in. How can I help you folks?”

  Ian and I entered the suite and looked around. The living area was about twice the size of my living room and furnished with white leather couches and a low glass coffee table. There was a kitchen on the other end of the room, featuring black marble countertops and stainless steel appliances. I assumed that the dining room and the bedrooms were accessed through one of the closed doors we could see.

  “Thank you so much for meeting us,” I said as Ian and I sat down on one of the sofas, and Patti sat opposite us. “We really appreciate you meeting us like this. We know you must be extremely busy.”

  “It’s not a problem,” said Patti. “You sounded quite serious on the phone, and I thought perhaps I should help you out if I can. I know that sometimes the cops get it wrong, and a good private investigator can uncover all kinds of things.”

  I smiled and blushed, surprised at the sudden flattery. Were all politicians so nice? “Well,” I said, trying not to stutter, “thanks again for meeting us. We really just wanted to know a little more about Carl. What was he like?”

  “As a boss?” Patti crossed one leg over another and looked at me seriously. “He paid extremely generously. I got offers from all the other candidates, but he was willing to pay me the most. Which is why I took the job, even though I knew he couldn’t win.”

  “But how could you work for him?” said Ian. “His comments about women are so offensive. I’m not a woman, and I’m offended. He wanted to reduce sentences for rape, and reduce the legal age of consent, and make rape testing kits harder to come by. He kept talking about how women don’t really need to work, and they’re not good at their jobs anyway. Actually, now that I think about it, it’s kind of funny that he hired a woman to be his campaign manager instead of a man.”

  Patti smiled. “Often, what people say is different from what they believe in. Carl might have said all kinds of things about women being dumb and unable to do good work, but at the end of the day, he knew that I was the best political adviser out there. He’s blind to gender when it suits him.”

  But Ian didn’t let up. “Weren’t you upset by all those things he said?”

  I could tell that Ian wanted to go on about all of Carl’s belligerent comments, and I gave him a quick warning glance. I didn’t want him to alienate Patti.

  Thankfully, Patti didn’t seem to be offended. “Honestly, I hated those comments he insisted on making. I meet powerful men all the time—a lot of them are misogynists. They just don’t express what they believe. It’s like all those people out there who are racists, but don’t say what they mean. It’s a horrible reality, but it’s better not to express hatred, even if you believe in it.”

  Ian was about to keep pressing on about Carl’s horrible policies, so I quickly said, “What was it like, working with him?”

  “Well, I tried to get him to shut up about women’s rights, since his beliefs wouldn’t do us any
good, but he didn’t seem to be able to do that. He did, however, talk about blue-collar workers’ rights, and making schools safer for kids, and improving the health care system. Those are all things voters like. I guess it was a little difficult working for him because he didn’t have any political experience, and he didn’t exactly know how the game is played. I took the job knowing there was no way I could make him win. He didn’t really have bad intentions—and I guess he hadn’t met enough smart women to appreciate that women do need equal rights. Maybe I could have changed his mind.”

  “And what was he like in his personal life?” I said. “You read all kinds of rumors about his affairs and things like that.”

  Patti shook her head. “I’ve worked with lots of powerful, rich men. They think they can get away with anything. I don’t really care what a man does in his personal life, but I don’t want the public to know about it. Carl knew that if he wanted to enter politics, he needed to stay on the straight and narrow.”

  “Do you believe that he used to have lots of affairs in the past? What about allegations that he molested women, or beat them up?”

  I had expected Patti to deny those accusations strongly, but instead, she shrugged. “I’m really not sure about his affairs. And I can’t speak about his past behavior at all. Honestly, I was in the dark about those things, and I just chose not to believe them.”

  “Even when Danielle and Emma came forward?”

  For a moment, I saw a flicker of impatience in Patti’s eyes, but she suppressed it quickly and replaced it with a charming smile. “It’s not up to me what Carl did in the past, but it was my job to manage the present.”

  “What does that mean?”

  “I gave both of them the opportunity to chat with Carl face-to-face, clear things up with him.”

  I stared at her in shock. “I always thought Carl was too arrogant to deal with troublemakers.”

  “That’s just his public persona,” she said. “I encouraged him to talk to these women, see if he could sort things out.”

  “But none of them talked to him, did they?” said Ian. He looked just as stunned by Patti’s revelation as I felt.

  “Emma flat-out refused to talk to me or Carl,” said Patti. “But Danielle was more reasonable. She said that she was really trying to get Carl to talk to her. So I passed her number on to him and told her to come down to Vegas. Carl would make a meeting happen.”

  “Did they ever meet?” I said.

  Patti shrugged. “I don’t think so. I know that the back-door camera at Carl’s place wasn’t working, so she could go in discreetly with nobody knowing.”

  “OhmyGod,” breathed Ian. “He was planning to pay her off.”

  Patti shrugged. “If he needed to. It’s funny how nobody speaks up about these things until the man they’re accusing is in the spotlight. Really makes you think, doesn’t it?”

  I looked at her contemplatively. She had a point.

  “You think these women are making all the stuff up?” said Ian. “You think that Danielle, who’s saying that Carl is the father of her baby, is just making it up? That kind of stuff can be proved with a simple DNA test.”

  “Like I said,” Patti replied calmly, “I can’t control what a candidate did in the past. I can only control the present outcomes. If you’re asking me if Carl was a saint, the answer is that I don’t know. Most likely, he wasn’t. But I don’t think he was a horrible, terrible person either.”

  “Did he actually meet with Danielle before he died?” I said.

  “You’d have to ask Danielle,” said Patti smoothly. “Carl certainly never told me that he’d met her.”

  Ian and I exchanged a glance. Perhaps Carl had planned to meet Danielle on the day he died. Perhaps that’s why he’d kept the back door unlocked, so that she could sneak in and talk to him in private.

  “When you worked with Carl, did he seem like a nice person? Was he respectful, polite?” I asked.

  Patti nodded. “He was always very respectful to me. He was really pleased that he’d convinced me to work for his campaign, and he always treated me well.”

  “How did he treat the people around him?”

  “He was a busy man,” said Patti. “Sometimes he would be a little curt, but I don’t think he meant to be rude or unkind.”

  “Did you meet his wife and stepdaughter?” I said.

  “I met them once very briefly,” said Patti. “I wasn’t working for his wife and stepdaughter. I never really interacted with them.”

  “What did Carl’s relationship with them seem like?”

  “Like I said, I only met them once. We spent about an hour having snacks and coffee together, and they seemed like a perfectly normal family.”

  “Not that you can judge a family in an hour,” said Ian.

  Patti nodded. “Of course.”

  “And what about Carl’s staff here?” I said. “Did you know how the house was run? Who would have been with Carl the night he was killed?”

  “Carl had four bodyguards to guard the house on rotating shifts,” said Patti. “He used other bodyguards when he went out in public. One of them would have been there in the house, on the night he died. And as for staff, none of the staff stayed in the house overnight, from what I know. There was a housekeeper during the day, but she made dinner and left at around six o’clock every day. I think they would have a cleaner come in the morning, and of course there was the gardener, who also came in the mornings.”

  “So on the night he died,” I mused thoughtfully, “it would have just been him in the house. Plus his wife and stepdaughter, plus one bodyguard.”

  Patti nodded. “I guess so.”

  Ian and I asked Patti a few more questions about her experience working with Carl, and what kind of policies and tactics they had planned to use in the future. She shared little tidbits with us, and then she said, “Have you talked to the other people who are running in the primaries?”

  I shook my head sadly. “I haven’t been able to get in touch with them. I guess they’re too busy to see me.”

  Patti frowned. “It’s not nice of them to refuse to meet you. I really want Carl’s death to be sorted out. He was a good boss, and he was always decent to me. I hope they find whoever did this.”

  “Well, I suppose the other politicians are busy.”

  Patti shook her head. “They’ve both been calling me up every now and then, now that I’m not working for Carl anymore, and trying to hire me. They’d do me a favor if I asked them to. What if I give them a buzz and ask them to meet you?”

  I looked at Patti, eyes wide with surprise. “You’d do that for me?”

  “Of course. Like I said, I want to know what happened that night. Why don’t I call them for you? And then I’ll text you with the time and date they agree to.”

  I looked at her doubtfully. “Are you sure? I can’t believe you’d go to all that trouble for me.”

  “It’s nothing.” Patti stood up. “I’ll call them tonight. I have to meet someone for an early dinner now, but hopefully I’ll text you later tonight. It was nice meeting you two.”

  Ian and I stood up and thanked her profusely for her help. As we headed back down to my car, Ian said, “Do you think she’ll really try to convince the other politicians to talk to us?”

  “She seems serious about finding out who killed Carl. It would be nice if she helped us touch base with the other politicians, but even if I can’t talk to them, it’s no big loss. I think the people we actually need to sit down with right now are Carl’s wife and stepdaughter.”

  “And the bodyguard who stayed overnight that day,” Ian reminded me.

  Chapter Ten

  I was in a good mood when I turned up to my shift at the Treasury Casino, and I found myself relaxing as the bright lights and happy music of the casino flooded my senses.

  The Treasury Casino always smelled of something soothing and citrusy, and even the garish carpets looked warm and familiar tonight. It was a Wednesday, so things weren
’t as busy as they might have been, and there were often a few minutes when there was nobody at my table and I had a moment to gather my thoughts.

  So far, the investigation into Carl’s death hadn’t gotten very far. But before I’d come over to my shift, Patti had sent me a text, saying that she’d arranged for the other politicians to meet me, and mentioning the times and dates when they would be free to talk to me.

  That was a stroke of good luck, but I wasn’t sure how much a conversation with those politicians would actually help the investigation. I knew that my next goal would be to try to talk to Carl’s wife and his stepdaughter. They had both been home when Carl was poisoned, and perhaps one of them could tell me if they had heard or seen anything unusual that night.

  I took a quick nap after I got home from my shift, and my alarm went off just before lunchtime. I got dressed quickly, grabbed Ian from his apartment and drove over to my mother’s house in North Las Vegas.

  I have lunch or dinner at my parents’ place every couple of days, but today was special—Nanna and her new husband Wes were stopping in Vegas for a few days during their honeymoon. I couldn’t wait to see Nanna, and when I knocked on the door, she flung the door open and gave me a tight hug.

  “Nanna!” I said when I managed to extricate myself and take a good look at her. “You’ve gotten all tanned!”

  Ian and I followed Nanna into the house and over to the den, where my dad and Wes were watching college football.

  Greetings were exchanged all around, and then I turned to look at Nanna again. “I can’t believe you’re a married woman!”

  Nanna shrugged modestly. She was looking wonderful for her eighty-something years. Her skin was still wrinkled, and she was still shrunken down from time, but her blue eyes had a permanent happy twinkle in them, and her white hair had been freshly styled. She was wearing a green velour tracksuit and a thick gold wedding band.