The Case of the Sin City Sister

by Lynne Hinton

  “How do you run a tab?” Eve asked, thinking about the process of purchasing drinks and meals using a credit card. She was used to dealing primarily with cash at restaurants. The sisters and monks at the monestery used a credit card only for large items.

  “They just don’t cash out the card,” Daniel explained, taking a sip of his beer. “They swipe your card, but they just keep adding drinks as you order, and they don’t tally up the costs until you’re ready to go.”

  Eve nodded. It made sense to her, and as she thought about the transaction just carried out, she recalled their earlier conversation about Dorisanne and the possibility of her involvement in credit card fraud at her place of employment, at the bar at the Rio. She realized, watching the waitress who was serving them, how easy it was to get credit card numbers in that profession. She also realized that cocktail waitresses were generally serving a vulnerable population by the end of a night. Drunks were less likely to pay attention to who had their cards or for how long.

  “What’s wrong?” Daniel asked. He had been watching Eve.

  She shook her head. “I was just thinking about Dorisanne, hoping she’s okay.”

  He reached over and placed his hand on top of Eve’s. “She’s okay,” he said, sounding as reassuring as he possibly could.

  “What if this guy on the motorcycle, the one I saw at the casino last night, what if he is after her? What if Pauline knows where she is and told him? What if that’s why she was beaten? And it’s not Steve. It’s that guy and he’s after my sister.”

  Daniel squeezed her hand.

  “If he knew where she was, he wouldn’t have come back to the apartment. He would have gone right to where she was.” He sat back in his chair. “No, she didn’t tell him anything like that.”

  Eve nodded. What Daniel was saying did make sense to her. If Pauline had given him Dorisanne and Robbie’s location, he would have left the scene and not come back. She wanted to believe that was true, but it still bothered her that Pauline was so afraid for Dorisanne, that she was trying so desperately to warn her that “he” knew it was her. She thought again about Pauline’s words that the nurse had relayed: “He knows it’s you.”

  “What could she have meant?” she asked, not explaining her thoughts.

  Daniel shook his head. “I’m not following you.”

  “He knows it’s you,” she repeated. “What does that mean?”

  Daniel seemed to think about Eve’s question. He’d been told what Pauline said when she’d gotten so upset and caused the nurse to make Eve leave the room. “That he knows Dorisanne has done something, that she’s the one who committed some act that obviously angered him.” He looked up at Eve. “But we don’t know who she’s talking about. She could be talking about Steve, that it’s Steve who knows that Dorisanne was the one who got Pauline involved in something.”

  Eve shook her head. “I don’t think it’s Steve. I want it to be him. I want it to be that simple, and I want them to keep him locked up for good and away from Pauline and away from my sister, but I don’t think he did this. I think the guy from Caesar’s, the one who was at the apartments. I think it was him. And I think he’s after Dorisanne and Robbie. And I think Dorisanne has done something to make him angry enough to beat poor Pauline to get information from her. But what?” Eve wanted to know. “What could she have done?”

  The butterfly-tattooed waitress walked up to their table. “Here, I forgot to give you the card,” she said, handing the credit card back to Daniel. She smiled and glanced over to Eve. “More coffee?” she asked, and Eve stared at the credit card placed next to Daniel’s mug of beer.

  “She’s involved in the theft ring,” Eve announced.

  The waitress stepped back. “What?”

  Eve looked at her and shook her head. “No, no, not you. It’s fine. And no, no more coffee, thanks,” she responded, waiting for the young woman to leave.

  Daniel had leaned forward. “How do you know?” he asked.

  She reached into her back pocket, pulled out the small address book, and took out the small piece of paper that had fallen out earlier. She placed it on the table in front of him. It was a bar receipt. “She kept receipts. She got the numbers,” Eve said. “At the Rio, she kept the cards and copied the numbers.”

  THIRTY-SEVEN

  “If what you’re saying is true,” Daniel noted, “then her boss could have found out about it. That could be the reason she was fired.”

  “And that’s easy enough to confirm,” Eve said. “All we have to do is call him up tonight and ask him.”

  Daniel shook his head.

  “What?” she wanted to know.

  “The manager is gone, right?”

  Eve suddenly remembered the conversation they’d had at the Rio. The waitress had told them that the manager was away for a few days. “Well, we could call human resources,” she suggested.

  “That will have to wait until Monday.”

  Eve tried to think of another way to confirm her suspicions. “We could go back to the Rio and try asking around again.”

  Daniel took the receipt still on the table between them and appeared to be studying it.

  “This doesn’t really tell us anything.” He laid it back down. “There’s not a full card number on it, no personal information other than a name. I don’t see that this proves anything. I don’t see that this confirms she was stealing numbers.”

  Eve glanced down at the receipt again. Daniel was right, she knew. But she still couldn’t understand why her sister would have kept a bill from a customer. It had to be something important; it had to be a clue, she told herself.

  She drank her coffee and noticed that Daniel was once again eyeing the two men sitting at the table near the front of the bar.

  “Do you recognize those guys?” she asked.

  Daniel turned to her and smiled. “I’m not sure,” he replied. “I’ve seen them somewhere before.”

  Eve glanced once again in their direction. One of the men was young, looked to be barely thirty, the other was older, mid-forties, she thought. They were dressed in shirts and ties, no sport coats, and they seemed interested in only the baseball game playing on the television. They were drinking beers, and as far as she knew, they had not looked at or appeared interested in Daniel or Eve since they walked into the bar. She wondered if she and Daniel were both starting to see things that weren’t there.

  “Okay, let’s go over what we have,” she said, drinking the last of her coffee.

  Daniel leaned back in his chair, waiting for her to start.

  She nodded. “Dorisanne is missing.”

  “Yes.” Daniel rested his arms on the table and clasped his hands together.

  “We believe she left with Robbie, and Pauline and the manager of the apartments both seem to know when they left.” She closed her eyes, wanting to get the details straight. “She was fired from the Rio.”

  “But for what, we don’t know,” Daniel interjected.

  Eve opened her eyes. “Right. It could be that she missed too many shifts because of hurting her ankle or she could be stealing credit card numbers from customers.”

  Daniel blew out a breath.

  “Robbie is very likely involved in some sort of theft ring. The police knew that he had some connections with guys who are known for credit card theft. They assume he’s an active participant.” She looked at Daniel. “That is right, isn’t it?”

  Daniel didn’t remark but finally nodded.

  “So either Dorisanne knew about her husband’s activities, perhaps even participating in them with him, stealing names and numbers from her customers, and they both left town because they’ve done something to cause trouble, or she’s not involved, and she just ran away with him because he’s in trouble and told her that if he was in trouble then she was in trouble and needed to leave town as well.”

  Daniel dropped his head into his hand and rubbed his brow. Eve thought he looked tired. Had he actually had any sleep since they’d arr
ived in Las Vegas? She looked at her watch. It was after ten o’clock. They ought to call it a night, just go to bed and work on things again in the morning. But first she wanted to make sure she was clear about everything they both knew or were guessing.

  She glanced back down once more at the receipt she had found in Dorisanne’s belongings. “Okay, let’s try and see if she’s involved.” She studied every line on the bill but could see nothing that indicated Dorisanne was stealing.

  “What would implicate her in this theft ring? How would she get the numbers? It doesn’t show up on the customer’s receipt.”

  “Most of the thieves have a skimmer.”

  “A skimmer?” Eve waited for an explanation.

  Daniel placed his hands back together on the table. “It’s about the size of an ice cube and it stores information.”

  An ice cube. Eve tried to think if she had seen anything like that in Dorisanne’s nightstand drawer.

  Daniel continued. “They attach the skimmer to any credit card reader and it stores the numbers.” He reached over for his mug and took a drink of beer. “I’ve seen them attached to gas pumps, ATMs, even vending machines, anywhere people use cards.”

  They both turned to the couple at the bar who had suddenly cheered loudly. Apparently one of the teams playing on television had just scored. Eve watched as they gave each other a high five. She then noticed that the men at the front table still seemed to be glued to the same game, but they were not enthusiastic about what had just occurred. She looked again at Daniel. “What do they do with the numbers then? What good are they once the person notices that the card is being charged for purchases they didn’t make?”

  “There’s a couple of ways to make money. One is that these ringleaders gather more information from the card owners, open up new accounts, and create fraudulent cards using the stolen card owners’ information. You really only need an address, a phone number, maybe a date of birth. Or they sell the numbers to somebody who makes a lot of purchases real fast and then turns around to sell those items—all done before the theft is discovered.” He shrugged. “If Dorisanne was just gathering numbers, I would guess that somebody else was taking the numbers and buying and selling the merchandise.”

  Eve nodded. It was making sense to her, but she still couldn’t understand why Dorisanne would keep the receipt of a customer. She studied the name but did not call it out. Marcus Winters, it looked like, but she wasn’t sure. And yet it was exactly as Daniel had said. There was no complete credit number listed and no personal information written about the customer. She suddenly had a thought and pulled out the small address book, turned to the back, and began searching the names that started with a W.

  “What are you looking for?” Daniel wanted to know. “And what is that book, anyway?”

  Eve glanced up, her finger pointing to a line. “I got it at Dorisanne’s,” she confessed. “When we were looking around.”

  “You took something from the apartment?” he asked.

  “It’s in here,” she said.

  Daniel waited. He shook his head.

  “The man who signed the receipt—his phone number is in here.”

  THIRTY-EIGHT

  “So she has a receipt from a man, a customer at the Rio, whose address and phone number she kept in her address book?” Daniel asked, but he sounded more alert than he had a few minutes earlier. “Is there a credit card number also written in there?”

  Eve studied the listing and looked up. She shook her head. “Just a couple of phone numbers,” she answered.

  “I guess that’s good news,” he responded.

  “I guess. Or it could just mean that she keeps those numbers somewhere else, that it’s like you said and she uses a skimmer and has it with her.”

  Daniel nodded. He was once again watching the men at the front table.

  “Do you think they’re following us?” Eve asked when she noticed where he was looking.

  Daniel turned back to face her. “I don’t know,” he replied. “I don’t even know if I actually saw them before.” He glanced in their direction, leaned in closer, trying to get a better look. “They just seem familiar somehow.” And then he shook his head and drank the last swallow of his beer.

  Eve studied them as well, tried to imagine if she had seen them somewhere since arriving in Vegas, but it was of no use. Even though she was certain she had recognized the guy on the motorcycle, with these two guys she was simply drawing a blank. “Maybe they’re just staying here and you saw them in the lobby or on the elevator or something.”

  Daniel nodded. “Could be,” he responded. “But I don’t think that’s it. I’ve seen them somewhere else.”

  “Maybe they’re cops; maybe they’re familiar because they look like you look when you’re following somebody.”

  Daniel didn’t respond at first, then he just shook his head.

  Eve turned her attention back to Dorisanne’s address book. As she studied the cover, a pink-and-purple paisley design, she thought she remembered seeing her sister with it before. She must have brought it home to New Mexico sometime in the last few months or years. She checked out the front inside cover to see if there was a year written somewhere. There was none, but she did find her own address written under the E’s: Eve, Our Lady of Guadalupe Abbey and Convent, and both the Pecos address and the phone number were listed.

  With a different color of ink she had added Eve’s cell number, and seeing it made Eve think about the phone call a few nights before that had gotten the Captain so upset. It made her wonder once again if it had been a real phone call and, if so, why Dorisanne made the call to the Captain and not to her. Clearly, she had her sister’s number.

  She recalled what had happened the night of Dorisanne’s contact and realized that the call in the middle of the night was the main reason she was in Vegas at all, and she thought about the sequence of events that led to her trip. She looked for the Captain’s number, but she could not find a listing. She searched under Divine, Captain, even Mom and Dad. There were no numbers listed. Of course, it wasn’t that odd, she thought; the address and the landline number were the same from when they had both been children. Surely, Dorisanne, like Eve, had all of those details memorized. Neither of them would need to write them down.

  However, Dorisanne had contacted the Captain using his new cell phone number; she hadn’t called him on the landline. And even though Eve didn’t recall giving her sister that number, she assumed Dorisanne had gotten it somehow. And yet it was not listed anywhere in this address book.

  “You look puzzled,” Daniel noted.

  “Just trying to find a number in here,” Eve responded.

  “Pauline’s?” he asked.

  Eve shook her head. “No, the Captain’s.”

  “Why would she need the home number in there? Wouldn’t she know that by heart?”

  “His new cell number,” Eve answered. “That was the number he says she called the other night. But it’s not in here.”

  Daniel didn’t respond right away.

  “I guess she could have that already added to her new contact list in her phone,” Eve said.

  “I guess,” Daniel agreed.

  There was a pause.

  “Why wouldn’t she take the book with her?” Eve wanted to know. “If it has all these contacts, why wouldn’t she want that with her?”

  Daniel considered the question. “Didn’t you say that there are lines through most of the names? Could be that she was marking them off.”

  “Maybe recording them somewhere else,” she said, as she had guessed back in the apartment when she first found the book.

  “Most people keep all that information in their phones nowadays. Maybe she was adding them to her digital contact list and didn’t need the book anymore.” Daniel seemed to think this was the answer for what Eve had found.

  “That makes some sense,” she said, flipping through the pages. “But not all of the names and numbers have a line through them. I guess th
at could just mean she didn’t want to keep them all.”

  “Could be,” Daniel agreed.

  She kept looking through all the names. There were a few that she recognized, but most of them were names she didn’t know. About half of them had a line drawn through them.

  “Your guy, the customer?” Daniel asked.

  She looked up, understood that he was asking if she had drawn a line through his name. She found the listing, glanced up again, and shook her head.

  “So either she didn’t record it or didn’t need it,” Daniel noted.

  Eve shrugged. “Maybe we should call him?”

  Daniel looked at his watch. “Sort of late,” he said.

  Eve nodded. She studied the numbers and noticed that they were both Las Vegas exchanges. She had become familiar with the 702 area code.

  “Let’s wait until the morning,” he suggested. “I think we’ve done all the damage we can do today.” He hesitated. “But we could go back to the Rio tonight if you want and see if the manager is working.”

  “No, you’re right. Misti, the waitress, said he’d be gone until next week,” Eve remembered. “Besides, I think we could both use a good night’s sleep. Maybe Pauline will be up and able to answer questions in the morning, and if so, we’ll know a lot more about everything.”

  Daniel nodded. “Okay,” he agreed. “Plus we can call the customer and see if he knows Dorisanne.”

  Eve stifled a yawn and rubbed her eyes.

  “Late hours for a nun?” Daniel smiled.

  “Late hours for anybody,” she answered. “You don’t look so bright-eyed and bushy-tailed yourself.”

  He stretched his arms above his head and gave a big yawn as well. “You’re right. Even police officers need their beauty rest. Speaking of, did you call your father today?”

  “I called him back this morning before we left for the apartments. He had left a voice-mail message for me to call him after he talked to you.” She remembered the conversation and how he was on his way to check out Mr. Salazar’s claim about gold on his property and how Caleb Alford had called the office but he had not talked to him.