Casino Girl

by Leslie Wolfe

  “It’s your right, sir,” I replied coldly. “Please inform your attorney we will come back with a warrant for your DNA, and we have no interest to ask your whereabouts the night Crystal Tillman was killed.”

  That statement got his attention. He frowned and put the receiver back in its cradle, then sat in his chair, tilting it back slightly.

  “Why is that?” he asked.

  “We have video that already puts you at the scene,” Holt said casually. “You had motive, you had means, and plenty of opportunity.”

  He didn’t say anything; the way his lips pressed together told me he had a lot to say but knew better than to speak without his lawyer present.

  “How did she die?” he eventually asked, still frowning.

  “Ha, nice try,” Holt reacted. “Please have your lawyer call us, Mr. Steele. Today.”

  He nodded once, then pressed a button on his desk phone.

  Miss Gentry appeared immediately, charming and efficient and smiling.

  “Please escort the detectives out of the building, and have Dennis see me ASAP.”

  Miss Gentry’s smile died the moment she closed the door to her boss’s office. Her demeanor had stiffened, and her disposition had dropped about sixty degrees in temperature. Patient and diligent, she waited until we left the building and watched us cross the street to our car from the lobby window.

  “Great,” I said with a long sigh as I climbed into the SUV. “He’s lying, but I still don’t think he’s behind this whole thing, threats or no threats.”

  “Why? Because of that, ‘poison is a woman’s weapon’ rule you have?” he asked, making quote signs with his fingers.

  “Maybe,” I replied, taking a moment to think. What was it about Steele’s well-rehearsed lies that led me to believe he might be innocent? And what was he hiding? As far as I was concerned, he was still a lead, a person of interest in Crystal Tillman’s death. First impressions could be deceiving, even if they were my own first impressions.

  “I happen to agree,” Holt said. “I don’t think he’d poison someone, even if he were homicidal. He seems to be more of a straight shooter, calm, methodical. Men shoot their victims, or stab them, or strangle them if their rage is of a more personal nature.”

  “People with his kind of money don’t kill with their own hands,” I said, thinking of the pro who’d blown up the morgue and killed Erika. “I’ve heard of contract killers who poison their targets and are quite good at it. Might be the same guy who committed both murders, a contract killer on someone’s payroll.”

  “The poison rule doesn’t apply to them, does it?”

  “A tool is a tool, right?” I said, then looked outside the window as Holt started the engine, getting ready to leave. “But Steele is definitely hiding something serious. A man like him doesn’t lose it that easily.”

  “Lose it? He seemed in perfect control,” Holt replied, turning to me, seemingly confused.

  “No, not now. On the video, here,” I said, pulling up the video on my phone and showing it to him.

  We put our heads together to look at the small screen and Holt’s proximity stirred me a little. I inhaled his scent, aftershave and a tinge of something else, maybe shower gel, all too familiar.

  Baxter, get a bloody grip, I thought as I swallowed a curse and focused on the video.

  “See here?” I said, and froze the recording. “See how his hand clutches Crystal’s strap? See the tension in his arm, in the tendons on his neck, in his knuckles? He could’ve strangled Crystal right there, on that stage. That’s rage, or maybe deep resentment. He definitely doesn’t appear that cool-headed.”

  “Okay, shifting gears,” he said, actually shifting into gear and peeling away from the curb. “Who would use poison?”

  “The majority of deaths by poisoning have been linked to women perpetrators,” I said, quoting from memory. “Anne can tell you specifics and numbers. It’s in a woman’s psychology to use indirect methods to achieve her goals. That’s why women prefer poison, because it doesn’t put actual blood on their hands. That makes them more difficult to catch.”

  “Huh,” he reacted. “I don’t know about that.”

  “Well, at least that was the case before the age of modern forensics and trace evidence analysis,” I added with a light laugh. “Don’t worry, we’ll catch Crystal’s killer; I promised Tina.” I turned to look at Holt again. “What next? Ellis MacPherson?”

  “Yes. He’s my bet, you know. The lover is always your best shot. I’m thinking she cheated on him, or she broke up with him, or something. You have a rule with women killers and poison, I have a rule with sex partners. It’s always the partner somehow, or the cheated wife. You’ll see.”

  “Do you think Crystal dumped Ellis for Paul Steele? Or, the other way around?”

  It wasn’t the first time we’d asked that question. Questions we had plenty. Answers, not that many.

  35

  Ellis

  Visiting with Ellis MacPherson was not as simple as ringing the bell and showing some ID. His home, a sprawling estate on the northeast boundary of the Anthem Country Club in Henderson, had a gate meant to keep all unannounced visitors away. Holt pulled up next to the intercom and pressed the button.

  “Detectives Holt and Baxter to see Mr. MacPherson,” he said, holding his badge close to the camera lens pointed straight at us.

  “Do you have an appointment?” a man’s voice asked.

  “No, we don’t, but it is imperative we see Mr. MacPherson immediately.”

  “Please wait,” the man said. The intercom crackled a bit and turned silent.

  Less than a minute later, the massive gates opened, and we drove inside the property.

  I’d never before had the opportunity to see one of these properties from within, and I was embarrassed at how slack-jawed I’d turned in mere seconds. The house had to be more than twelve thousand square feet, surrounded by acres of perfectly kept lawn, apparently immune to the desiccating touch of the desert. The building, a single-story contemporary design in stone and glass, took my breath away.

  Holt pulled up at the main entrance and offered me a tissue.

  “What’s this for?” I asked as I took it hesitantly.

  “You’re drooling,” he replied with a wink.

  I punched him in the shoulder unceremoniously, then put on a straight face and approached the door, already opened by a uniformed butler.

  “Please, come in, Detectives,” he said, and his wasn’t the same voice I’d heard on the intercom. “Mr. MacPherson will see you in the study.”

  He led the way and I kept up, a little distracted by the lavish décor. Even the interior walls were stacked stone, and the furniture wasn’t anything I’d seen in any store. Apparently, the MacPhersons and I shopped different venues.

  We entered the study, a vast room decorated with wall-to-wall bookcases and leather seating in small clusters around coffee tables. Next to the fireplace, a cello was placed on a stand with the bow neatly by its side.

  Ellis MacPherson sat by the window, his forehead leaning into his left hand while his elbow rested on the windowsill. He didn’t look at us when the butler announced our names.

  I approached, clearing my throat quietly. “Detectives Baxter and Holt, Mr. MacPherson. Thank you for seeing us.”

  When he finally looked at me, I could see his eyes were hollow, as if the life that had once lit them was now extinguished, a faint memory of the past. I instantly recognized the look of unbearable grief, the aftermath of death ripping someone’s heart apart.

  He was a handsome, dark-haired man with sensitive, slightly feminine features and the fine, long fingers of a virtuoso. I recognized him from adverts I’d seen for his concerts, but in person he seemed fragile, distraught. It was as if I was looking at myself in the mirror after Andrew had died.

  “We won’t take too much of your time, Mr. MacPherson,” I said in a low tone of voice. “We’re investigating the murder of Crystal Tillman, whom I belie
ve you knew?”

  He nodded a couple of times, then clasped his mouth in his hand, as if stifling a sob.

  “Were you having an affair with Miss Tillman?” I asked.

  “Yes… no,” he replied, “I was in love with Miss Tillman, not… having an affair.” He stood and turned to us with that same hollow look in his eyes. “To say we were having an affair is trivial, demeaning, an insult to her memory, and I won’t have it.”

  “Yes, but you are also a married man, aren’t you, Mr. MacPherson?” Holt asked.

  He turned his back to us and looked out the window, at the idyllic landscape featuring an infinity pool with green water and a rose garden surrounding the pool deck, laid out with lounge chairs covered in white and blue canvas cushions.

  “Yes, I am,” he eventually said, only a whisper.

  “Does your wife know about your affair?” I asked, knowing that Holt was statistically correct when it came to the most common motive behind the murder of people involved in extramarital affairs. When jealousy and scorn collided, nothing seemed impossible, including homicide. Add money to that, and you’ve got a winner.

  “I don’t think she does,” Mr. MacPherson replied. “I’ve been discreet.”

  I searched for something to indicate he was uneasy talking about his affair and his wife in the same sentence but saw absolutely nothing. There was nothing other than grief on Mr. MacPherson’s mind; no fear, no concern, no shame.

  “Were you planning to leave your wife and start a new family?” Holt asked. His voice was tense, and I couldn’t tell why. He seemed irritated with Mr. MacPherson’s demeanor.

  “No, I wasn’t,” Mr. MacPherson replied. “I would never do that to my wife. She deserves better than to be dragged all over the tabloids because of me. Can you imagine the filth they’d print?”

  “But you knew Crystal was pregnant, didn’t you?” Holt asked.

  MacPherson closed his eyes, and a tear rolled down his check. “Yes. We were going to have the baby.”

  “I am sorry for your losses,” I said.

  “Thank you,” he replied so faintly I could barely hear him.

  “How did you and Crystal meet?” Holt asked.

  A shadow of a smile fluttered on his lips. “It was after one of my concerts at the Scala. I stopped to get a cup of coffee in the lobby café and heard this girl saying she hated my music. She spoke passionately about how classical music was doomed, finished, and people needed to freshen up. Her girlfriends spotted me and they found it amusing to let Crystal continue her negative critique, as I listened from the sideline, aghast. But when our eyes met, I stood there, mesmerized. She was the most beautiful woman I’d ever seen; I couldn’t walk away. She apologized, and then she gave me the honor of accepting an invitation to dinner, where I did my best to plead the cause of classical music.”

  “When was that?” I asked, trying to put together a timeline in my mind, wondering how soon after Crystal had started working at the Scala she’d met him. Was she targeting him? She wouldn’t be the first ambitious, beautiful girl who’d do anything to land the right sugar daddy.

  “Six months and four days ago,” he said with a sad smile that quickly vanished. “We celebrated last Saturday.”

  “Was that the last time you saw her?”

  “Yes.”

  “How about Sunday, before she died?”

  He frowned, as if wondering why I was insisting. “No. I had a concert last Sunday at the Philharmonic.”

  “Your wife, she must’ve suspected something, right?” I asked. “Women have an instinct for that kind of thing.”

  “Maybe,” he replied, “I don’t know.”

  How could someone be so unfazed about their affair being exposed to their spouse? Not something I’d seen before. I’d encountered threats with force if I were to disclose liaisons uncovered during murder investigations. I’d run into screaming, sobbing wives, imploring, groveling men, even a couple of bribe attempts, not to tell the spouse. But I’d never encountered a complete and transparent indifference.

  It was time to change the approach.

  “Do you know of anyone who might have killed Crystal? Someone with an axe to grind?”

  He stared out the window for another moment before he spoke. “She had a roommate, Roxanne.”

  “Yes,” I encouraged him.

  “The two of them got into a fight recently, and things were turning sour between them. I thought it was just girls being girls, but Crystal told me she wanted to move out of the house they shared.”

  “When was that?” I asked. Finally, a piece of information that could resemble a lead.

  “Um, about two weeks ago, I think,” he said, and I nodded, waiting for him to continue.

  But he didn’t; he stopped talking as if saying even that much had taken all the strength from him.

  “Then, what happened?” I asked gently, after exchanging a quick glance with Holt.

  “Nothing,” he replied, one bitter word carried on a long sigh filled with pain. “I offered to help, to put her in one of our corporate apartments, but she wouldn’t hear of it. She was proud, an honest girl. If only she’d listened to me.”

  He paused a little, and I gave him time to collect his thoughts. By the turmoil in his features, he had more to say.

  “She wanted her own place, and I respected that,” he eventually added, still staring out the window. He turned and approached us, looking first at me, then at Holt with pleading eyes, wringing his hands clutched in front of his chest. “It was her, Roxanne, I know it was her. Only I can’t prove it.”

  I touched his forearm gently. “It’s not your job to prove anything, Mr. MacPherson, it’s ours.”

  “Okay,” he whispered, “but do you believe me?”

  I didn’t know what to believe. Roxanne didn’t seem like the type to hire a contract killer, but she had been untruthful more than once. She definitely had something to hide.

  “We will follow this lead diligently, Mr. MacPherson, I can promise you that. Do you know what it was the girls fought about?”

  He looked away and to the left for a brief second, then touched his ear in passing, quickly. He was about to tell a lie, the first one I could spot on the day’s repertoire of answers.

  “Something to do with Roxanne’s boyfriend, I believe.”

  “Was there, um, jealousy?” I asked, treading lightly.

  “No, none of that. But you’ll have to ask Roxanne about their argument.”

  I looked at Holt, who’d stayed unusually silent during the interview, then turned to MacPherson again. “One more thing, Mr. MacPherson. We might have to ask your wife a few questions,” I said, as gently as I could. “We don’t want to create issues for you, but this is a murder investigation. I hope you’ll understand.”

  He shrugged, completely unfazed. “She’s at the office all day today. Do what you have to do. Please find who killed my Crystal and make them pay.”

  “We will, Mr. MacPherson,” Holt said, but the man was back in his seat by the window, staring outside.

  We let ourselves out of the study without another word, and the butler was quick to appear and escort us to the exit.

  Something didn’t add up. Irked by our lack of progress, I tied my hair in a loose knot as soon as I got inside the SUV and let out a groan filled with half-articulated oaths.

  “What’s on your mind?” Holt asked, turning from the MacPherson driveway onto the cozy street.

  “It’s like we entered a parallel universe or something,” I blurted. “You can’t bloody have billions of dollars, affairs, and pregnant eighteen-year-old mistresses all mashed-up together and see this level of indifference, of absolutely no emotional response. This isn’t human. It can’t be real.”

  “Maybe we didn’t speak with the right human, that’s all,” Holt replied.

  “You mean, the scorned wife?”

  “Yeah, let’s see if she’s just as calm about her husband having an affair. I seriously doubt that.”
<
br />   36

  Tennis

  “You were tense in there,” I mentioned, the moment Holt set the vehicle in motion. “What was that about?”

  “Something’s bothering me with this entire arrangement,” he replied, after mulling it over for a moment. “You have this girl, Crystal, smart, pretty, determined, and she finds herself a rich boyfriend just like that? These people are jaded by women’s attention; they don’t fall in love that easily, you know, and risk jeopardizing what they have.”

  “Are you saying it can’t happen?” I reacted, a little surprised by his perception.

  “I wasn’t finished yet,” he said with a quick chuckle. “I was about to say, now that you see just how improbable that is, go ahead and multiply it by two, because another loaded, married man in his forties was having some kind of deal going on with the same eighteen-year-old dancer. She was beautiful, okay, but what the hell?”

  He had a point, a big one, blooming right before our eyes in the form of an emerging pattern. My Scotland Yard instructor would’ve said, “Two data points don’t establish a pattern,” but there was something going on with that girl’s life that we needed to uncover, and fast.

  “Roxanne might be able to shed some light,” I said. “We should speak with her again. MacPherson’s accusation was quite interesting,” I said, unwrapping a protein bar. “Want some?”

  “Uh-huh,” he said, turning his face slightly toward me without taking his eyes off the road.

  I broke the bar in half and held a piece out for him. Instead of grabbing it with his hand, he bit into it with a satisfied groan.

  “This is Vegas,” he continued. “When I see stuff like this, I can’t help thinking she was an escort of sorts. Maybe Roxanne is our best lead yet; they might’ve been in it together.”

  “I’m thinking of that pro who killed Erika at the morgue,” I said. “Someone hired him, and I don’t think that’s Roxanne; I just don’t see it happening. But I can think of at least two people who wouldn’t hesitate to pay for murder.”