by Dave Stanton
“Find some nickel slots.”
When I left the warm confines of the bar, a freezing rainstorm greeted me, the downpour slicing diagonally across the pavement. I zipped my coat and hustled to where the torrent was strafing my Nissan pickup. For a moment, I considered heading back east to try and beat the storm up 50. Spending more time in Sacramento meant risking major delays getting home—possibly a road closure if the storm was severe.
“Screw it,” I said. The general had hired me to do a job, and I wasn’t about to put off my work because the weather posed a potential inconvenience. What would I tell him on my progress report? Day One: it started raining so I went home. I smiled as I imagined how he’d react to that.
I pulled out a street map, marked six different locations, and connected them with the shortest possible line. It looked like a big S, but fortunately all the addresses were in the central area of Sacramento, nothing too far west.
The first address was in a residential area off Madison Avenue. It was for the home of Scott Church, one of the two men who traveled to Tahoe with Valerie.
It was a decent looking suburban home, not a bad rental pad for a twenty-three-year-old guy. I splashed up the driveway and knocked on the front door.
“Scott Church?” I said to the man who answered. Five-ten, 170, shoulder length dirty-blond hair, bloodshot eyes, jeans, tennis shoes, a black Motley Crew concert tee.
“That’s me, man, what’s up?” He smiled, his two front teeth unnaturally white compared to the others. I could smell the booze on his breath from three feet.
“My name’s Dan Reno, private investigations. I’ve been hired by the Horvachek family to look into Valerie’s death.”
“Private eye, huh? Sure, come on in, man.” I followed him to a large family room where two dudes were sprawled on couches watching football. Beer bottles and fast food wrappers covered a coffee table in the center of the room. One of the men was asleep, snoring quietly.
“Sorry about the mess. We had a party last night. Happy new year. You want a beer?”
“Thanks, but I’m trying to stay sober.”
“What a concept,” said a voice from the cushions. Six-one, skinny, stringy dark hair, swarthy and unshaven. His legs splayed, one dangling over the edge of a couch.
“Kyle, this guy’s a private eye, asking about Valerie,” Scott Church said.
“You’re Kyle Sheldon?” I said to the reclined man.
“The one and only.”
Good, I thought. Kyle Sheldon was the second man in Valerie’s group in Tahoe. A two for one deal.
“Take a seat,” Scott said. He moved a pizza box from a wooden kitchen chair.
“Thanks,” I said, mildly grateful I wasn’t invited to sit on a couch I suspected was crusty with every variety of human bodily fluids. I’d lived in places like this when I was younger.
“How did you guys know Valerie?”
Scott shrugged. “She was just a local chick who liked to party. She’d come watch our gigs sometimes. We’re in a band. Other people…”
“Other people what?” I said.
“Other People rock!” Scott and Kyle Sheldon said in concert. They high fived and grinned.
“Other People is the name of our band,” Scott said.
“Gotcha,” I said. “Scott, you were the one who went with Valerie to Vex’s?”
“Yup.”
“Did you have a relationship with her?”
“He wishes,” Kyle said.
“She was just a friend,” Scott said. “Platonic.”
“Did you go to Vex’s, Kyle?”
“No, I hooked up with Val’s friend, Christie. That was sweet.”
“Old news, Kyle. Nobody cares,” Scott said.
“Scott, tell me about what happened at Vex’s.”
“What happened? Not much, unfortunately. The place was a sausage fest.”
“How did that work out for Val?” I asked.
“Shit, every guy in the place was drooling after her.”
“Did anyone seem to be particularly persistent? Maybe paying more attention than she wanted?”
“Not that I saw. I wasn’t really paying that much attention.”
“What about the guy she eventually left with?”
“The older dude? Val took a liking to him, and they split together.”
“What time?”
“Must have been around midnight or so.”
“Did Val usually date older guys?”
Scott smirked and nodded his head at me as if ready to share an important revelation. “She was dating a friend of mine just recently. A good guy. But on the side she was boning three different dudes. When my friend caught on, he asked why she was such a slut. She said she was tired of slumming it and was hooking up with a guy with a real job and a convertible Corvette.”
“Was your friend pissed?”
“Naw. He knew what she was all about before they went out.”
“He just wanted to get laid. He didn’t care,” Kyle added.
“Is your friend Max?” I said, hoping I remembered the right name from the general’s file.
“Yeah,” Scott said. “He’ll tell you about her.”
“What else can you tell me about her?”
“I need another beer. You sure you don’t want one?”
“I’m sure, but thanks for asking.”
Scott left and came back with a bottle of Bud. He took a long swig and said, “Valerie just had attitude coming out her ass. She could be a lot of fun, but I think she figured her big tits and nice ass would get her a free ride. Basically, she was pretty much a bitch.”
“And,” Kyle said, not taking his eyes from the television, “Max said she was a dead fuck with a box like the Grand Canyon.”
“How long have you guys known her?”
“A year,” Scott said. “Maybe a little less.”
“What did she do for money?”
“Mostly waitressing. I don’t know where. She never kept a job for long. She said she was considering a strip joint, where she could make good bucks working one or two nights a week.”
“Okay. Scott, what time did you leave Vex’s?”
“Around 12:30, I think. I walked back to Harrahs.”
“That’s right,” Kyle said. “I remember because Christie went back to her room when he showed up.”
“Did you guys go anywhere after that?”
They shook their heads. “Just went to sleep,” Scott said.
On the TV, a player ran a kickoff back for a touchdown.
“Any idea why anyone would want to harm Valerie Horvachek?” I said.
The men thought about it for a moment, then they both said, “No.”
• • •
Outside, the rain had slackened to a drizzle. I got in my truck and took the solid state recorder from my shirt pocket and hit stop. Another marvel of modern technology. Smaller than a pack of cigarettes, it ran on its own battery and could reliably record and store twenty hours of conversation. Later I’d download the data to my PC and run a program that would transcribe the content.
A mile down the road, I found the address for Max Caselle in an apartment complex on Fair Oaks Boulevard. I knocked on the door of the first story unit, staying dry under the balcony jutting from the unit above. I heard footfalls and waited, staring into the door viewer and trying for a friendly expression.
The door opened the couple inches the security chain would allow.
“Can I help you?” Five foot seven, glasses, dark hair.
“I hope so,” I said. I handed him a card.
“This is about Valerie?”
“Yes, it is.”
He released the chain. “Come on in.”
His apartment was tidy, the kitchen table clear except for neatly stacked sections of the Sacramento Bee. On a coffee table in the main room sat an open textbook and a laptop computer. We sat while he studied my card. His hair was straight, medium length, face shaved, sideburns just below the ears. Thic
k-rimmed glasses, a silver earring, a goatee. An edgy, modern guy.
“What would you like to know?” he said.
“Who killed her.”
His eyes met mine, then he scratched his head. “Yeah, no kidding. You have any ideas?”
“Not yet. Do you?”
“No. Listen, I met her maybe two months ago. She came on to me at a party, a hot chick like that, then asked if she could move in here.”
“Just like that?”
“Yeah. She needed a place to stay, and once she found out I had my own place, she just flat out asked to move in.”
“Was she going to pay rent?”
Max laughed dryly. “Valerie? Not a chance. The chick was broke, man.”
“When did she move out? Or did she?”
“About two weeks ago I gave her the boot.”
“What for?”
“She was running around, having sex with whoever. It didn’t surprise me, but I wasn’t going to let her stay here if she was like that.”
“Did you like her?”
He thought about that for a second. “She was all right. Not somebody I’d be interested in long term, if that’s what you mean.”
I was tempted to ask him if he let her hang around just so he could get laid occasionally. But I’d already drawn that conclusion, and I didn’t want to put him on the spot.
“What did she do for money?” I asked.
“She had a few restaurant jobs, but she’d work a couple shifts then quit.”
“Must have been hard for her to make ends meet.”
“Yeah, she was always scrambling for cash. She mentioned she was thinking of becoming a stripper, soaking desperate chumps out of their paychecks. That’s how she put it.”
“So you let her stay for free.”
“Sure. I didn’t mind the company, at least not at first.”
“And then?”
“We had a minor romance going on, but that ended pretty quick. Then she’d just show up to crash, do laundry, or chill out.”
“Sounds like she was using you.”
“No doubt. So I told her to hit the road.”
“Did the whole thing piss you off?”
He smiled. “I’m not that dumb. I mean, I knew how it was going to end. She had some major issues.”
“Like what?”
He blew out his breath “Where to start? She split from her folks’ pad because she wanted to live by her own rules, which was basically, Valerie does what whatever she wants and if you don’t like it, tough shit.”
“Not exactly the ideal roommate, huh?”
“Yeah, she was pretty self-centered. But she had moments when was mellow and not bad to be around.”
“How about drugs? Was she into coke or crank?”
“Sure, when she could get it. But she usually resorted to bumming it off people.”
“Like from a guy in a convertible Corvette?”
“Who?”
“I heard something about her seeing a guy driving a Corvette.”
“Oh. She mentioned that once, but I thought she was probably lying. Half of the stuff she said was bullshit.”
I looked out his window and saw water spilling over a clogged gutter. The gray afternoon was growing darker.
“Why anyone would want to kill her?” I said.
“You got me. I mean, she may have been a bitch, but no one would kill her for that.”
“Where were you December 23rd and 24th, Max?”
“What, you think I’m a suspect?”
“Are you?”
He shook his head. “I was here on the 23rd and at my parent’s house all day Christmas Eve. I got ten witnesses that can verify it.”
“Okay.”
“Too bad Valerie wasn’t with her parents for Christmas, huh?”
I thanked him and gave him my card and asked him to call if he thought of anything that might help. He shook my hand and said, “No problem.”
I drove off through the showery gloom. For the first time I felt a real pang of sympathy for Valerie’s parents, who were probably wondering what they did wrong to produce such a troubled daughter. At twenty-two, Valerie seemed like an angry teenager acting out her emotions. But that was putting it politely. It would have been just as easy to say she was a selfish, manipulating bitch looking for a free pass. She didn’t seem to be very good at it, though. A young, sexy woman can do all right if she plays her cards right, but from what I’d heard, Valerie was scraping by.
Still, I was somewhat surprised that none of the men, including her former boyfriend, if he could be called that, expressed any grief she had died. And these were the people she meant to spend Christmas with, two of them anyway. Pretty sad.
I almost missed the next turn, my tires spraying a shower of water as I jerked the wheel into a residential neighborhood about a mile from the general’s house. Wide streets, big houses on big lots, BMWs and Range Rovers in the driveways. Posh, money-class suburbia.
Christie Tedford was the name of the young woman who had traveled to Tahoe with Valerie. The address I had for her was to a house at the end of a curved stone walkway lined with birch trees, the canopy thick enough to keep me dry as I walked to the door. I rang the chimes and waited until a woman with silver hair and a dour expression answered.
“Hello, ma’am,” I said, offering my card. She read it and looked me over. She was old enough to be Christie’s grandmother. But her eyes were hard and defiant and showed no concession to age.
“The Horvachek family has hired me to investigate their daughter’s murder,” I said quietly.
“How does this have anything to do with me?” she said, the syllables dripping with emphasis—an uppity socialite talking down to the help.
“It doesn’t, ma’am. But I would like to speak to Christie Tedford if I could. Is she your daughter?”
“You needn’t concern yourself with Christie. She’s spoken to the police.”
“I’m sure she has.”
“So she’s already put this behind her.”
“I’m sure we’d all like to put this behind us, but until whoever murdered Valerie—”
“Perhaps I’ve not made myself clear. Christie will not be speaking with you.”
“And why not?”
“I don’t owe you an answer, and I have other things to do. Good day.” With that, she shut the door in my face.
“Thanks for your time,” I muttered. I spun on my heel and walked back through the trees to my truck. Crotchety wench must have been having a bad day. If Christie was anything like Valerie, that might explain it. Not that it was an excuse to be rude.
It was 3:00 P.M., about two hours of daylight left. Driving the hundred miles over the snowy pass back home would be dicey, especially at night. There were three addresses left on my list. One was a medical center downtown, where the court had ordered Valerie to attend drug and alcohol counseling. The other two were her most recent employers: a TGI Friday’s restaurant and a strip joint called the Suave Gentlemen’s Club. Being New Year’s Day, I assumed the counselor Valerie had seen would not be in. And I wasn’t too eager to burn time visiting a restaurant where she may have worked only a few days. The strip club seemed more promising.
The Suave was conveniently located right off the freeway. It was a rectangular stucco structure that probably had once been home to a less conspicuous business. A red-carpeted walkway under a green awning led to an opaque glass door. Above the doorway was a black sign with glittery pink letters, and above that a billboard rose thirty feet into the wet sky. Sexy Dancers for the Discerning Gentleman, it claimed. The advertisement was visible to everyone driving on the freeway.
Judging by the number of cars in the parking lot, the billboard was doing its job. I parked and trotted fifty feet through the steady rain, huddled in my ski jacket. In the parking spot nearest the entrance was a black convertible Corvette, a newer model. I paused for a second, then scrawled the license plate number on the back of one of my cards.
&n
bsp; A bouncer standing at a podium inside the door said, “Ten dollar cover.” I paid him, he stamped my hand, and I waded into the dark place.
The seats along the rail of an elevated runway were all taken. A brunette in giant platform heels and a g-string was grabbing her ankles and shaking her ass. The men at the rail, none of whom looked like discerning gentlemen, waved dollar bills and drank and talked and stared. Dance music boomed from speakers hanging from the ceiling.
I sat at a table away from the stage. Behind me, the walls were lined with booths, where strippers lap-danced for twenty bucks a pop.
A waitress approached, no heels, hair tied back, figure hidden by her clothes—probably a dancer pulling a waitress shift. “You get one free drink with your cover,” she shouted.
“Black coffee,” I yelled back. “Do you know Valerie Horvachek?”
“Who?”
She left and I looked around for who might be in charge. There was no shortage of security. Big dudes everywhere in black polo shirts with pink emblems. No shortage of strippers either—probably thirty or so patrolling the room.
I got up and took a walk. I went past a door labeled VIP Room. A great marketing ploy, luring men into a back room under the guise they were big shots. As far as the strippers were concerned, the only thing important about the VIPs was how much they were willing to spend for a quick blow job.
I stopped at the men’s room, and while taking a leak I could hear a tapping sound coming from a stall—someone chopping coke with a credit card on the toilet tank lid. I went back out and headed across the joint to a side bar, dodging girls trying to entice me into a booth.
The bar, like others I’d seen at strip clubs, was removed from the main action, tucked in a less noisy corner that offered no convenient view of the dancers. It was a small bar, six stools. It was small because customers rarely occupied the seats. Instead, it served as a place for employees to relax during breaks.
Two bouncers sat watching a basketball game on TV. Next to them, a frumpy, middle-aged woman was consoling a stripper who looked like she’d been crying. The seat next to the dancer was empty, and the last stool at the bar was taken by a burly man with a shaved head and a beard. He wore a black leather vest over a white T-shirt, his forearms scrolled with tattoos.
I sat in the single empty seat, feeling about as welcome as a pork chop at a Jewish wedding. The dancer shot me an unhappy glance and showed me her back, while the burly guy glared at me as if I was one word away from a good ass stomping.