Ms America and the Villainy in Vegas

by Diana Dempsey

  “I’ll tell you again what I told you before,” Detective Perelli says. “You got no gun and you got no badge. This is a dangerous situation. I don’t want to be conducting a third homicide investigation, if you get my meaning.”

  I’m glad my mother isn’t around to hear this. “I understand.”

  “Anybody snooping around, and that includes you, can get in trouble fast.”

  “Can I tell you one more thing?”

  She sets her hand on her hip. “What now?”

  I relay the details of my meeting with Samantha’s son and his crowbar and reiterate Samantha’s admission that she gave Danny access to her financial accounts.

  “Duly noted,” Detective Perelli says, and moves on. Soon a cop leads Frank away. He’s not in handcuffs but I’m pretty sure he’s on his way to the police station. It’s not a good sign when the cops want to interview you there.

  Back upstairs, I order hot tea and cookies from room service and summon Trixie and Shanelle to a confab in my room. My mother is lying on her bed with a damp towel over her eyes.

  Naturally Shanelle and Trixie are aghast to hear of this new development. “Did the cops take anybody but Frank away?” Shanelle wants to know.

  “Not that I saw. But how could Frank be so stupid as to murder Cassidy in his own place of employment? He would know the cops would home in on him.”

  “Maybe he’s not thinking clearly,” Trixie suggests.

  “I hope for Sally Anne’s sake it’s not true,” Shanelle says, “but maybe Cassidy figured out he murdered Danny and so he murdered Cassidy to shut her up.”

  We’re interrupted by the arrival of room service. Once we all have a cup of tea and a cookie, we resume.

  “Poor Cassidy. What a way to go.” I can picture it all too clearly. “Can you imagine how terrifying it would be? You get undressed, you lie down on the massage table and put your face in the little cradle, you listen to the new-age music and smell the soothing scents, you anticipate just how wonderful the massage is going to feel—”

  “—then you hear the door to the treatment room open and of course you think it’s the masseuse about to send you to seventh heaven—” Trixie says.

  “But instead,” Shanelle finishes, “you get a knife in the back.”

  “Enough already!” My mother bolts upright and casts her eye towel aside. “It’s murder, shmurder all the time! I’ve had enough.” She points an accusing finger in my direction. “Tomorrow’s Friday and you still haven’t taken me to a show. You said you’d take me to a show.”

  “That’s true, I did.” I am a lousy daughter if I have my mother in Vegas for an entire week and never once escort her to a show. “How about we go to Ziana’s matinee tomorrow?” I looked up her schedule and saw she does two shows a day on the weekends. Plus I have those backstage passes. “We can squeeze it in between rehearsal and our Sparklettes performance.”

  “I don’t care who we see or when we see them. I just want to see a show. I’m going to go sit on the balcony if all of you are going to keep talking about this murder business. Hand me some cookies,” she adds, and rises to her feet.

  I set her up on the outside lounge chair with a cup of tea as well. “I can’t get out of my mind how jittery Cassidy was,” I say when I return. “She was petrified when Shanelle and I were at her apartment, like she thought somebody was going to shoot her through her front window. And she kept saying she had a bad feeling.”

  Trixie’s expression is solemn. “Maybe she had a sixth sense what was going to happen to her.”

  “Maybe she did. And I did nothing to help her.”

  “I don’t know what you could’ve done,” Shanelle says.

  I’m not sure I do, either. We’re all quiet until I make a confession. “I keep trying to prove how smart I am by solving these crimes when I’m such a moron it didn’t even occur to me there might be a second murder.”

  “You can’t anticipate everything,” Shanelle says. “Don’t be so hard on yourself.”

  “The police seem to think the most likely suspect is Frank, anyhow,” Trixie says. “Maybe they’re the ones who made the boo boo by not arresting him before today.”

  “We don’t know that he’s been arrested. He might just be in for questioning.” With a sigh, I set down my tea. “I just thought of something else. Who’s going to take care of Cassidy’s cat?”

  “Cassidy has a cat?” Trixie asks.

  “A rescue,” Shanelle answers, and promptly gets us back on track. “Remember how when we first met Cassidy at the casino she kept saying that Danny never told her anything about anything?”

  “I thought at the time she was protesting too much. I really think that now. I bet she did know the nasty business Danny was into but kept trying to convince everybody otherwise because she thought claiming ignorance might save her.”

  “But it didn’t,” Trixie breathes. “I’m worried about her cat.”

  We have another round of tea and cookies as we ponder the bereaved feline’s future. “There is another possibility,” I say after a while. “That Cassidy did kill Danny and somebody else killed her.”

  “Two murderers?” Trixie looks stunned that I so casually doubled the number of homicidal perps in our midst.

  “It’s possible. Detective Perelli told me that the guy who tried to pass Danny counterfeit bills fled the state. So he couldn’t have murdered Cassidy. But he might have been the one who murdered Danny.”

  My head is spinning. Despite how much time and effort I’ve put into investigating, I do not know who shot Danny. And while I was trying to figure it out, Cassidy got stabbed. This is one of those dark moments when I worry that my crime-solving prowess on Oahu was a fluke, only a fluke, and nothing but a fluke.

  Then again, Detective Perelli hasn’t solved Danny’s murder yet, either.

  “Oh, gosh, I forgot something else.” I kneel down and grope under my bed until my fingers light upon Hans’s Mac. “I have to give this to Detective Perelli.”

  “Not so fast,” Shanelle says. “That belongs to that Austrian whatshisname, right?”

  “Cassidy gave it to me after rehearsal.” When Hans’s dastardly deadline was uppermost in my mind. Cassidy’s murder changed all that.

  “Hand it over,” Shanelle says. “Perelli can wait an hour to get it. Let’s see if I can find anything on it first.”

  “Then I really have to give it to her.”

  I hand Shanelle the laptop and collapse atop my bed with a sigh, exhausted and fired up at the same time. Cassidy didn’t always make the right choices but she sure as heck did not deserve this. Now she’s at the pearly gates awaiting judgment from the highest power.

  There’s only one thing left for me to do: try to win her justice here on earth.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

  I realize I might still do something nice for somebody today. “Sally Anne must be a basket case. I’m going to call her.”

  I hear Muzak playing in the background when Sally Anne answers her cell. “I’m at the shop crunching numbers. Otherwise they’d have to lock me in a padded room.”

  “Have you had anything to eat tonight?”

  “Can you believe I forgot?”

  “I’m coming over. With food,” I add.

  “We’ll take your mom to dinner,” Trixie offers after I hang up. “I don’t think she’s up for anything related to detective work.”

  I arrive at Crowning Glory Pageant Shoppe bearing takeout from Happy China, a purveyor of Sichuan cuisine. I’m not sure my Ohio-born and bred taste buds are going to be up to it but I remember Sally Anne telling me she loves super-spicy Asian food.

  From the outside, Crowning Glory looks like a banquet hall. Inside it’s rack after rack of rainbow-hued swimsuits and gowns, with full-length mirrors everywhere you turn, a dozen fitting rooms, and a mock pageant stage in the center of the display area, complete with klieg lights that mimic competition conditions. I have shopped in many an establishment like this over the years.
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  I find Sally Anne in her rear office hunched over paperwork, her glasses sliding down her nose. Her nostrils twitch when she gets a whiff of Happy China’s wares.

  I unload cardboard containers. “Sizzling rice soup. Crispy beef in tangerine sauce. And spicy braised shrimp.” I pile rice onto paper plates and hand Sally Anne chopsticks. She offers me bottled water, which I expect to need something fierce.

  “Have you heard from Frank?” I watch Sally Anne inhale her meal. I cannot believe how spicy it is. My face flushes and my heart pounds. I’m years from menopause—I hope—but this cuisine is like a hot flash on a plate.

  “He called from the station. He told me to prepare myself, that he’s sure they’re gonna press charges.” For a millisecond her chopsticks stop moving. “Can you believe that? That’s crazy.”

  I set down my plate. “Sally Anne, are you totally, one hundred percent sure that Frank is being completely honest with you?”

  “Not you, too!” She glares at me. “You think Frank killed Danny? Or Cassidy?”

  “It’s possible.” I say it as gently as I can. “You didn’t know him that well before you got engaged. He could have kept things from you.” In fact, I know he has. He’s still gambling, despite what he’s led Sally Anne to believe.

  “If anybody had secrets, it’s that Danny. That Perelli broad should be investigating his past.”

  “I’m sure she is.” I chug from my bottled water. “You’re sure you don’t know anything about his past?”

  Sally Anne loads her plate a second time. “All I know is that Danny was the type who’d get into trouble. You could just tell. He wanted money but didn’t want to work for it. Lazy son of a pup, just like his father. Always on the lookout for some get-rich-quick scheme.”

  Blackmailing falls into that category. So does embezzling. And trick rolls. Danny Richter’s Get Rich Quick trifecta.

  “He was the kind who didn’t plan for the future,” Sally Anne goes on. “But the future has a way of sneaking up on you whether you plan for it or not. Before you know it, it slaps you upside the head and says, I’m here!”

  “So, so true.”

  “Frank’s nothing like Danny,” Sally Anne says.

  “If they were so different, why did Frank ask Danny to be his best man?”

  “Because it would be a slap in Danny’s face if he didn’t! He is his nephew, after all.” She glowers at me again. “I can’t believe I’m hearing this kind of talk from you.”

  “Sally Anne, as your friend I want to believe the best of Frank. But—”

  “No buts! You’ll never convince me that Frank would kill anybody. Not Danny, not Cassidy, not anybody. Once I get him past this craziness that I’m too good for him, our wedding is gonna be back on.”

  Not if Frank is in a jail cell. “You won’t even consider—”

  “The only thing I’ll consider is changing the appetizers at the reception from shrimp egg rolls to crab-stuffed mushrooms. That’s it.” I’m about to open my mouth again when she says, “If you really are my friend, you’ll drop it.” I throw up my hands and Sally Anne pokes her nose into the remaining Happy China paper bag. She pulls out a fortune cookie and hands the bag to me. “Open yours first.”

  I’m happy to oblige but not until I check my cell, which is buzzing from new texts. One is from Shanelle. Call me, call me, call me! The other is from Detective Perelli. FYI Finkelmeister alibi for this afternoon checks out. Still steer clear.

  So Hans did not kill Danny or Cassidy. Still, he’s trying to blackmail me.

  On to the matter at hand. I crack open my fortune cookie. “ ‘Your talents will be recognized and suitably rewarded,’ ” I read. Nice, but no way it refers to my half-assed detective work. “Now you, Sally Anne.”

  Sally Anne Gibbons is the only person I’ve ever seen eat her cookie before unfurling her fortune. She frowns as she reads it. “ ‘You are about to embark on a journey.’ ”

  I watch her. “You don’t like that idea?”

  She crumples up the fortune. “Happy, if there’s one thing I’m worried about when it comes to Frank, it’s that he’ll skip town. And if he does, I’m goin’ after him.”

  Soon after Sally Anne makes that worrisome remark, I take my leave of her and return to the Cosmos.

  “I got here as fast as I could,” I tell Shanelle as she pulls me into the room she shares with Trixie. She’s wearing a U-neck pink and white striped sleep shirt, which goes nicely with the clay mask on her face. A mask-less Trixie is atop her bed in a similar purple number with a flounce at the V neck and the hem.

  “You want to see this but you don’t want to see this.” Trixie scrunches her nose. “I mean, yuck.”

  Shanelle leads me to the desk on which Hans’s laptop is perched. “Prepare yourself. I cued it up to, shall we say, the good part.”

  Trixie joins us as a video begins to play. It shows a man and a woman in what looks like a hotel room, on the bed, going at it hot and heavy. They’re darn close to naked. The camera never moves and there’s no audio save for the couple.

  “Is this a porno?” I ask. “It’s weird there’s no music.”

  The man rears up and flops onto his back.

  “No!” I cry, shielding my eyes. I am seeing things I do not care to see and hope I soon forget.

  “Is that Hans?” Trixie wants to know.

  “It sure the heck is!” Even without his tortoiseshell glasses I recognize him.

  “It was really easy to find this,” Shanelle says. “He doesn’t have his laptop password-protected.”

  “And this isn’t even the only video like this that Shanelle found,” Trixie says. “This guy Hans is really into taping things.”

  I point at the screen. “He must tape all this stuff with that damn man purse of his that has the lipstick camera built in!”

  “In this case,” Shanelle says, “apparently he wanted to record for posterity his encounter with a Vegas hooker.”

  “Are you kidding me? She’s a hooker?”

  “There’s a long negotiation before they get cracking. Trust me. She’s a hooker.”

  So Hans is a blackmailer, a black-eye giver, and a hooker hirer. Charming fellow.

  “Shanelle also found out where he works and where he lives and what his wife’s name is,” Trixie says.

  “I wrote all that down.” Shanelle hands me notes along with three thumb drives. “I took the liberty of recording copies of his award-winning performances.”

  I fist bump her. “This is fabulous! No way Hans will release that video of me once he knows I’ve got all this.” I take a deep breath. “I am so relieved, Shanelle. I don’t know how to thank you.”

  “I am only too happy to help give that creep his comeuppance.” Her grin fades. She sprints for the bathroom. “Dang, I gotta get this mask off before it dries.”

  “She didn’t find anything on Danny or Cassidy,” Trixie says. “She looked.”

  “It turns out that Hans is cleared on that front,” I say, and relay what Detective Perelli texted me earlier. I glance at my watch. We three queens may be zonked but the night is young for Vegas revelers. I review Shanelle’s notes, then lay two of the thumb drives beside Hans’s laptop and hold onto one. “I’ll be back,” I tell Trixie and Shanelle in my best Arnold Schwarzenegger voice and make for the bar on the Cosmos’s top floor.

  I pay the cover and push through a raucous horde into the darkest bar I’ve ever seen. Maybe Detective Perelli has night vision goggles because I don’t know how else she found Hans in here. From the ceiling glow blob-shaped lights in deep pink and purple neon, and all around, through floor-to-ceiling windows, the lights of the Strip wink from five hundred feet below. A relentless beat pulses from hidden speakers.

  I troll the crowd feeling very underdressed in my tank dress. That’s not usually the case for me. A blond server in a white sequin thong bikini asks what’s my pleasure.

  “Anything so long as it’s tall and cold,” I tell her.

  An
other round of the club later, I luck out and spy Hans among a bunch of men leering at a nearly nude pole dancer. He’s dressed for the convention center in a white shirt and black pants but his flushed face screams he’s been off duty for hours. One arm is draped over a brunette whose heavy hand with makeup and silver peekaboo mini dress make me think she’s a working girl, if you get my meaning.

  I edge closer and hear Hans speaking German with two of the other men. Good. Maybe they’re coworkers from his native Austria.

  I set my drink on a nearby table, then insinuate myself between Hans and Miss Silver Dress. “Sorry, sweetheart. Dibs,” I tell her, right before I skim my hand down Hans’s torso all the way to his belt buckle. He almost jumps out of his skin with astonishment. I hear drunken whoops from his Austrian posse.

  I give him the treatment for a few more seconds, then step back, toss my hair, and lick my lips. I do this with enough gusto that even in this crowd I draw an audience. “I’ve been thinking about that deal you offered me, Hans.” I’m in the mood to mimic voices so I give him my best Marilyn Monroe. “The deal where the two of us go up to your hotel room.”

  “Yeah?” He’s grinning. His brown eyes shine behind his tortoiseshell frames. His buddies shout the sort of encouragement I’d understand in any language.

  “I know I wouldn’t be the first girl you’d take up there. But I might be the first you don’t have to pay.”

  Hans’s grin droops.

  “I bet the little lady you’re with on this videotape cost you a bundle.” I make a show of holding a thumb drive high above my head, then hand it off to one of Hans’s entourage. “Don’t worry if he loses it. I’ve got plenty of copies. Not only that, I know exactly where to send them,” and I rattle off the names of his wife and his employer.

  As I grab my drink I have the pleasure of watching panic contort Hans’s features. “This’ll help you chill out,” I predict, then aim my tall, cold drink at his crotch.