“That was a busy day. When did you do all that?”
“Saturday.”
My ears perk up. “Really? How far away is the Hoover Dam?”
“I don’t know. Forty miles?” He frowns. “Why? You suddenly want to go?”
“Maybe.” My mind cranks. Hans would get wiped off the suspects list if there were proof that he was at the Hoover Dam at the time of Danny’s murder.
“Less talk. More action,” he says, and plants his lips on mine.
“Hans!” I try to slow him down by pretending to be embarrassed by the nearness of the gondolier.
“He’s seen it all,” Hans declares.
Whether he has or not, the gondolier chooses this moment to launch into song. “O sole mio,” he trills, the song whose English-language version Elvis Presley made famous.
Even Hans is familiar with it, I discover, as he seems to decide that a more effective mode of foreplay might be to whisper the lyrics in my ear. “It’s now or never, come hold me tight. Kiss me, my darling. Be mine tonight …”
Hans’s hands are once again in motion. This man does more roaming than my smart phone. Now his free hand makes a bold foray north of the equator. “Tomorrow will be too late. It’s now or never,” he whispers. “My love won’t wait.”
That’s coming through loud and clear. If this is Love Austrian Style, I feel bad for the frauleins in that nation.
As our gondola slips beneath another bridge into a less traveled area of “Venice,” I am really beginning to rue the skimpy nature of my halter-style dress. Hans still has one hand high on my thigh and with the other he attempts a pincer move from the north.
Investigation or no investigation, this is more than I can take. I rocket to my feet. Hans does, too. I have a vague idea that the gondolier segues from “O Sole Mio” into a plea to sit down but I’m not sure. All I know is that when Hans reaches for me across the gondola, I give him a push in the chest, he stumbles back into the ice bucket, and, arms flailing, tumbles backward out of the gondola into the canal.
Splash! He comes up sputtering. His tortoiseshell glasses must be well-fitted, however, as they remain on his nose. The gondolier does his best to halt the gondola so Hans can hoist himself back inside, as we have continued to float some distance down the canal. We’ve got an audience now, people who are finding these antics more compelling than the wares in the shops or the pasta in their bowls. Hans embarks on a diatribe in his native German. I don’t understand a word of it but I’d guess I’m not coming off too well.
Hans spends as little time as possible back on the gondola. He grabs his man purse and screams at the gondolier to get the damn boat to the landing stairs so he can get off. The last I see of Hans Finkelmeister, murder suspect and Austrian Lothario, is his dripping exit from the Rialto Grand Canal.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
The next morning, early by any standard, Shanelle and I are sitting by the pool at the Cosmos Hotel drinking coffee out of cardboard cups. It’s a gorgeous sunshiny day. It’s not hot yet but there’s something in the air that lets you know it will be. There are a few other early birds out, mostly families with little kids who probably woke up at dawn primed for action.
“I have to tell Detective Perelli about Hans now,” I say.
“No way you can investigate him any more on your own. That man won’t come within twenty feet of you,” Shanelle points out.
“Plus she’ll be able to check out his Hoover Dam alibi. My problem is how do I tell Detective Perelli about Hans without spilling everything I know about Cassidy’s trick rolls? Once I get started on that topic, she’ll pry every last detail out of me.”
“She is a trained inquisitor.”
“I feel bad because I promised Cassidy I’d keep that whole trick-roll thing to myself so long as she ceased operations.”
“That’s a deal you never should have made, girl.”
“I know.” I have no way to confirm that Cassidy stopped her illegal activities. And even if I did, it’s not up to me to decide whether she should be held accountable for what she’s already done.
It is tricky, conducting an investigation. I both share with the authorities, and withhold. It’s not at all obvious where to draw that line.
Of course, many would argue I ought never withhold. My father the retired cop, for one. But always sharing would limit my ability to solve a case on my own. I know, I know: that’s my ego speaking.
“What time you meeting Sally Anne for breakfast?” Shanelle asks.
I glance at my watch. “In ten minutes. She wanted to meet here because she’s picking up Frank at the spa afterward for Danny’s funeral. I wish you didn’t have that conference call so you could join us.”
“Me, too. That dang bank. They make me work like fifty weeks a year. Even when they give me leave to spend an entire week in Vegas.”
We both laugh. Shanelle does I.T. for a bank, and like my employer—an energy company back in Cleveland where I’m a personal assistant to a senior executive—they’re wonderfully accommodating about her Ms. America commitments. Not that I, too, don’t sometimes have work to do when I’m on the road for the pageant. I also have to keep up with my course work. I am endlessly working toward my B.A.
“That bank would probably go under if it weren’t for you, Shanelle.”
“You got that right.”
“Okay.” I heave myself to my feet. “See you at rehearsal if not before.”
On my way into the hotel, I get a text from Jason. Vegas bound, baby …
I smile and text him back. Hurray!
The prospect of seeing my husband in just a few days puts a bounce in my step as I enter the restaurant Sally Anne suggested we try. It has a feature few eateries can boast.
“Would you like to sit close to or far from the lion cage?” the hostess asks Sally Anne and me.
“Close to,” Sally Anne tells her. Then she turns to me. “What the hell.”
Since I, too, am game, the hostess leads us to a table overlooking a cage enclosed by plexiglass. Three lionesses are inside along with a trio of trainers. We’re on a mezzanine level above the beasts and iron bars create a partial ceiling over the cage as well, but there’s a question I must ask. “They can’t jump up here, can they?”
“No,” the hostess assures me. “But we will throw you out if you toss anything down into the cage. Or if we see you leaning over.”
“There’s no danger of that.” Plenty of signs warn against both those behaviors.
“What are they being fed now?” Sally Anne wants to know. From our vantage point we can see the trainers hand-feeding the lionesses.
“They eat six to fifteen pounds of horseflesh six days a week,” the hostess informs us. “Then on the seventh day they fast to cleanse their systems.”
“I never got into the system-cleansing thing,” Sally Anne confesses after the hostess has departed. “I can’t fast for a whole day unless I’m facing a colonoscopy.”
Since I rarely find a discussion of gastrointestinal cleansing conducive to dining, I don’t engage on the topic. “So how are you, Sally Anne?” I ask instead. “Really.”
She sets down her menu and sighs heavily. “How much have I told you about my mother?”
“Just that she’s in a special-needs facility. Which is why she couldn’t come to the rehearsal dinner or the wedding.”
“She’s got Alzheimer’s. I don’t know how many years it is that I go to see her and she doesn’t know who the heck I am. Most of the time she thinks I’m her sister Alice who’s been dead twenty years. Still I go every darn week.”
“Good for you. I bet whether she recognizes you or not, it makes a big difference in her life to see you.”
Sally Anne shrugs. “I tell myself that but honestly I don’t know. Anyhow, when I go to tell her about Frank and me, I swear to you”—Sally Anne chokes up and I grab her hand across the table—“I swear to you, when I tell her I’m getting married, she comes out of it. She calls me Sally Anne, s
he says I never thought I’d live to see your big day but here it is, she says I got to meet this Frankie.”
Sally Anne lets go of my hand to rummage in her handbag for a tissue. She’s in black from head to toe as she’ll go from here to Danny’s funeral. Her tears are making her mascara run. A server comes by and pours us coffee but knows enough not to interrupt. Sally Anne sniffles and swipes a few times and eventually continues. “So how am I supposed to tell my mother the wedding’s off?”
“I don’t think it’s really off, Sally Anne, I bet Frank is just—”
“It’s off. He told me so last night.”
“In so many words?”
“He said he’s not good enough for me. That’s a load of crap if I ever heard one. But he said the fact that we had that problem at the wedding—”
I’m thinking that problem is a mild euphemism for Danny’s murder.
“—means we’re not supposed to get married. He says that was a sign. He tells me to keep the ring but I am telling you that even if he wanted it back, I wouldn’t give it to him. Because sure as shootin’, I’m not giving up yet.”
“I don’t think you should. Frank is really upset about his nephew being murdered and who can blame him?” I’m going through a phase where I don’t think Frank shot Danny. Unfortunately, those phases have a way of not lasting.
“Not only that.” Sally Anne lowers her voice. “That broad Roxanne Perelli? She came around to his apartment again last night. I was there. I saw her.”
I wonder what Detective Perelli knows that I don’t. She is doing a lot of sniffing around Frank. “Do you know what she wanted?”
“To talk to Frank one-on-one. So I go in the kitchen and pretend to read a magazine. But I heard every last word.” Sally Anne’s prodigious chest heaves in agitation. “She has the nerve to accuse my Frankie of lying about where he was right before the wedding! She says to him, you say you were at this apartment until you departed for the Cosmos Hotel but I have cause to think differently. Those are the exact words she says to him. ‘Cause to think differently.’ ”
I can imagine what Detective Perelli is thinking. Why is Frank Richter failing to provide an honest accounting of his pre-wedding whereabouts? And if he’s lying about one thing, might he not be lying about another?
Of course, it’s also possible she has no proof of anything and is merely fishing. Nevertheless, given that I hope that the man Sally Anne loves and still wants to marry is not a murderer, this is worrisome new information.
“Frank stuck to his guns, though,” Sally Anne says. “At which point Perelli says to him, and I quote, ‘You would be wise to reconsider.’ And, ‘I am keeping an eye on you.’ ” Sally Anne shakes her head. “As if anybody could think that Frank would kill anybody, let alone Danny! He spent decades of his life helping that kid.”
I glance down in the cage and am amazed to see a trainer playing tug of war with a lioness. “Sally Anne, do you have any idea what Frank meant when he said he’s not good enough for you?”
“I know exactly what he meant! He meant the gambling.”
So she knows about that. I decide to play dumb, which I’m awfully good at. “Frank gambles?”
“He used to have a problem with it. Big time. But not anymore. He went through the whole program. Gamblers Anonymous, twelve steps, the whole nine yards.”
“So he stopped gambling?”
“Gave it up cold turkey.”
I am not a happy camper to hear Sally Anne say this. I drop the subject and pick up my menu, though by now my appetite is shot. I am flat-out dejected by the time I go upstairs to collect my mother, who declared the prior night she would forego the morning session at the Liberace Museum to attend today’s rehearsal.
I find her still in her nightgown, a light blue flannel number with white collar and cuffs. She’s sitting up in bed watching a talk show. “Mom, get dressed! We need to leave in five minutes.”
“I’m not going.”
“Why not? Did you decide you’d rather go to the Liberace Museum after all?”
“I’m not going there, either.”
It’s clear my mother is even more depressed than I am. As if to hammer home the point, she’s not even couponing, though for her TV-watching and coupon-clipping go together like kielbasa and pickles.
I perch on her bed. She looks tiny under the covers and her hair is squished on one side. “What’s wrong?”
She won’t meet my eyes. “Your father has a floozy woman.”
So she found out. I’ll kill Rachel if that’s how. “What makes you think that?”
“He told me so himself. I called your house to talk to Rachel and he picked up the phone.” My daughter will answer no telephone save her own cell, a generational truth my mother cannot grasp. “Did you know?” Now she’s looking at me.
It’s been years since I could lie to her. “Yes.”
She’s so bummed she can’t even summon the energy to castigate me for keeping this bombshell news to myself. “She owns that Nail Fest place on Rocky River Road.”
“I never go there.” I don’t add, Even though it looks nice. And they have Margarita Fridays. “My friend Rhonda knows somebody who got a fungus there.” That’s only sort of true. I like Rhonda but she’s not a reliable source of information.
My mother harrumphs but without vigor. Then, “Not even once did I have a job outside the home.”
I rub her arm. “That’s because you had a big job inside the home, taking care of Pop and me. And you did a bang-up job.”
She says nothing but I can tell what she’s thinking. If I did such a great job, how come you got pregnant at 17 and Lou’s not my husband anymore? “What if he marries her?” she asks me.
“He won’t,” I hear myself say, though I can’t stop him. I can yell at him and I can throttle him but I can’t stop him. And really, he has every right to remarry if he wants to, though couldn’t he at least be more sensitive about the timing of all this? Honestly.
My mother looks so heartbroken I grab her in a hug. We’re both sniffling by the time I let her go. She must be feeling slightly better because she says, “And one more thing. I’m not on board with you trying to solve the murder of that thug who stood up at Sally Anne’s almost wedding. I know it worked out for you on Oahu but I also know things happened on that island you never told me about.”
That’s true. I experienced a few dangerous run-ins whose details I keep to myself. “Don’t worry. I’m not taking any undue risks.”
“You can say that all you want but I know that chasing after a homicidal perp is dangerous.” I gather from her deftness with such language that my mother is catching the occasional primetime cop show. “I lost your father and I can’t lose you, too,” she adds, which launches us into a second round of teary hugs.
Eventually I realize I’ll be seriously late to rehearsal unless I hustle. I stand up. “Come on, mom. You’ll feel better if you get out. You’ll enjoy rehearsal. And after lunch I’ll go with you to the Liberace Museum. I do want to see that costume collection. How many did you say he had? Two hundred?”
“Four hundred. Made out of ostrich feathers, white fox, sable, scallop shells, sequins, rhinestones, mink, and chinchilla.” She recites the list without gusto.
“The Sparklettes would love to meet you and you’d enjoy chatting with them.”
“What do I have to say that anybody wants to hear?”
I cajole all the while I’m changing into my rehearsal clothes but she won’t budge. In the end I’m forced to kiss her powdery cheek and leave her again alone.
Even though I’m so late, I call Detective Perelli. I’m relieved to get her voicemail as I can fill her in on Hans without getting quizzed about how I know what I know.
“We have to do something to buck up my mom,” I tell Trixie and Shanelle as trainer Elaine begins warm-up by lining us up along the barre. We start with demi-plies, which require turning your feet out and bending your knees while keeping your heels on the ground.
That last is the hard part. For us non-ballerinas, it’s pretty much impossible to lower oneself more than a few inches.
“Maybe she’ll go with us later when I give Samantha her Tarot card reading,” Trixie says. “Do you know that Tarot is the most popular tool in the West for spiritual introspection? I learned that this morning.”
“When she practiced on me, though,” Shanelle pipes up, “she told me that a lack of self-esteem is hampering my ability to be successful. As if.”
“I only said that because I didn’t understand reversed cards!” Trixie executes such a good demi-plie she earns a compliment from Elaine. “This whole Tarot thing is way more complicated than you’d think.”
So is the next element of warm-up: the battement tendu. “Balanchine considered this the most important exercise in all of ballet,” Elaine informs us.
Basically it’s sliding out one foot until only the toes touch the floor and then sliding it back, all while extending one arm at shoulder height and lightly touching the barre with the opposite hand for balance. In constant peril of falling over, I am more clutching than touching.
“This is important for learning to move the foot quickly and gracefully while maintaining placement,” Elaine says.
My muscles are trembling with exertion by the time we even begin our kick drills.
Several hours, one ice bath, and a thousand calories of post-rehearsal food later, Trixie, Shanelle, and I meander past the spa and see that Frank is manning the reception desk. “Even though Danny’s funeral was just this morning?” Trixie murmurs.
“Some people feel better if they maintain their routines,” Shanelle observes.
“Do you want to see if he’ll let us in the cryogenic chamber?” I ask Trixie.
She shakes her head. “I wish I could. But the Tarot cards are calling my name.”
Frank does allow me into the chamber again, with one other female client, and again I feel fabulous upon emerging. “Thank you so much,” I call to him as he lumbers back toward reception.
“Any time.” Either he’s built up a resistance to the therapy or he is so morose that even a massive endorphin surge can’t lift his spirits.
Ms America and the Villainy in Vegas Page 11