I had to force myself not to roll my eyes, and somehow, I managed to smile politely. I dealt him his cards and said in a low voice, “What are you doing here? I’m not supposed to be fraternizing on the job.”
“Hit me. I thought that might be the case, but I didn’t have your phone number, and I didn’t want to ask your mother to set things up between us. I think a real man needs to take charge.”
Pearce went bust, and I dealt him cards again. “What do you want? Make it quick, I could lose my job over this.”
Okay, so maybe that last bit was an exaggeration, but I wanted to get rid of Pearce as soon as I could. Thankfully, nobody else joined our table, so Pearce was able to speak his mind.
“I want to take you out to dinner,” he said. “Of course, you know I’m not rich, so we’ll have to go Dutch, but I assume you don’t mind, given how much you’re attracted to me.”
“I’m not going out to dinner with you.”
“Well, then, I’ll have to keep visiting you at the casino till you agree.”
“I could get you thrown out for harassment.”
“But you wouldn’t, would you?”
I thought about that for a second. I didn’t want to lose my chocolate lava cake privileges, but on the other hand, I could always tell my mother that it had been a big misunderstanding.
Pearce took my silence to mean no, and he said, “How about tomorrow night? Oh, it’s already one o’clock. So tonight.”
I shook my head. “Can’t. Got work.”
“Okay, then, tomorrow night.”
“Got plans.”
“Don’t tell me you’ve got a date with someone else.”
Pearce smiled annoyingly, as though he’d just made the most hilarious of jokes, but the truth was, I did indeed have a date with Detective Ryan. But that was none of his business, and I wanted to wrap up this conversation before somebody else joined the table, so I said, “How about the day after that?”
“I can’t wait that long. How about breakfast, once your shift’s finished?”
I kept the polite smile pasted on my face, but inside, I was groaning and making angry faces. “I’ve had an exhausting shift; I can’t today,” I fibbed, but the truth was, I didn’t want to think about spending time with Pearce today.
“Breakfast tomorrow, then?”
One of the pit bosses was looking our way, and I didn’t want him coming over to make sure everything was okay, so I nodded and smiled brightly. “Sure, breakfast tomorrow after my shift.”
“What time? Where?”
My mind went blank for a few seconds, and I finally managed to say, “Nine o’clock, my apartment.”
“Wow.” Pearce looked inordinately pleased. “You don’t waste time, do you?”
“Nope.” I’d thought of a plan, but it wasn’t what Pearce was expecting. “I’ll see you then. Now go, before you get me in trouble.”
He left, but of course, he didn’t bother to tip me. That sealed the deal—he deserved what was coming his way.
Chapter Eighteen
I went over to Ian’s apartment the next morning. As I helped myself to a Pop Tart and coffee, Ian filled me in on his activities of the night before.
“I got ahold of everyone’s friends,” he said, helping himself to a Pop Tart as well. “Apparently, Irene was always very quiet and shy. She had about two or three close friends in high school, and they all told me she kept to herself. Kind of a nerd, and kind of a doormat. Irene’s friends said that she always felt like a bit of a loser, and that she let other people push her around.
“I called Emily’s friends after that. It turns out Emily had been popular in high school, but not in a mean kind of way. I called about ten of her friends, and they all said that she was nice and sweet to everyone. They said she was active in the drama club, and that she wanted to be an actress at some point, but realized before she graduated that it’s not so easy to make it in Hollywood.
“Apparently, she was quite picky about boys, and never had a boyfriend in high school. Her friends said she liked glamor and wanted to make something of herself, but wasn’t sure how. They said as far as they knew, she and her brother had always been close. The first person I called was in band, and she said that even though Emily wasn’t her friend, she’d always been very nice to her, unlike some of the other popular kids who went around making fun of the less popular ones.”
“It seems like Emily was levelheaded and smart, even in high school,” I said, chewing my Pop Tart thoughtfully. “It takes brains to realize that just because you’ve been in a couple of high school plays, it doesn’t mean you can be the next Angelina Jolie.”
Ian nodded and went on. “I called Eric’s friends after that. He’d been on the football team, and apparently, he’d been quite popular too—but in a different way from Emily. The girls had been all over him, and he’d been with a couple of them but never had a steady girlfriend. He hung out with the guys on his team. I talked to three of the guys, and they said that Eric was friendly enough, but not anyone’s best friend. Not the kind of guy you kept in touch with after high school.”
“Maybe that’s normal for a popular football player.”
“I talked to a few of the girls he’d been with, and they said he was nice, but kind of flaky.”
“He was in high school—nothing unusual about being flaky at that age.”
“That’s all I found out from their friends,” said Ian. “I asked everyone I talked to if their friend had issues with anger management, or seemed like a vindictive person, but they all said no.”
“People change after high school,” I said, disappointed that Ian’s calls had turned up nothing useful. “But still, it was worth making all these calls. Did Irene’s employers have anything interesting to say?”
“Well, they didn’t have anything new to say; everyone I talked to agreed with her classmates. They said she was a perfectly good employee, but she was easy to push around. Of course, the managers I talked to didn’t put it like that; they said that she was happy to oblige and pick up an extra shift, to take on more work than she was supposed to, if she was asked to. They said she was pretty quiet and kept to herself most of the time.”
I chewed my Pop Tart thoughtfully. “Often, it’s the quiet ones you need to be worried about. What happens when they explode?”
“I can’t even imagine Irene exploding,” said Ian. “She seems so mousy.”
“That’s true,” I said. “She does seem too timid to do anything dangerous.”
Just then, there was a loud knock on the door.
I looked at Ian, and he groaned softly. “I hate this.”
“I know,” I said. “But we need to deal with it.”
Chapter Nineteen
I looked through the peephole, sure that it would be Cecilia. As a pleasant surprise, it turned out to be Nanna, and when I opened the door, Ian leaned back in his chair and grinned broadly like a Cheshire cat.
“What are you doing here?” I asked Nanna, once she’d come inside and helped herself to a mug of coffee. “And where’s Wes?”
“Wes is downstairs, hanging out with Glenn. The two of them have big plans to bake a lot of cupcakes today, and that’s far too domestic for me. I’ve spent my whole life cooking and baking, and it’s time I did something fun.” She fixed her sharp, wise eyes on me and said, “You do want your dear old nanna to have some fun, don’t you?”
I love Nanna, but I hate how manipulative she can be at times.
“You’re really old,” said Ian, stating the obvious. “Of course you deserve to have fun. What kind of fun did you have in mind? How’s the poker playing going?”
Nanna flicked a hand dismissively. “Playing poker is all well and good, but I’ve decided that my real skills lie in snooping around. And since you guys get paid to snoop around, I figure I might as well help you out. You get the family discount, of course; no charge.”
I rolled my eyes and let my head flop back a little. “Does Mom know about this?�
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“Don’t be silly,” said Nanna. “Your mother’s always been a party pooper. Even when she was three years old, she never wanted to do anything exciting, and she was always telling me that I shouldn’t drink too much. No, your mother’s opinion is not one that we need to go and seek out.”
I shot Ian a worried look, but he seemed quite pleased that Nanna wanted to join us.
“We could have fun investigating together,” he said, beaming at Nanna and finishing off his breakfast. “Three’s a party.”
“Three is not a party,” I reminded Ian as I ate the last of my scrambled eggs. “I don’t want Nanna getting into trouble, or getting us into trouble.”
Nanna took a long sip of coffee. “When have I ever gotten you into trouble? You ought to be happy that I’m so interested in helping you out.”
“We are,” said Ian, his eyes sparkling with the possibilities that Nanna’s investigative skills with us could lead to. “We’d be happy for you to come along.”
I glared at Ian. “Who made you my mouthpiece?”
“Don’t be like that,” said Nanna. “Now, where do we start?”
The decision seem to have been made for me, and truth be told, I didn’t really mind having Nanna tag along with us today. I wasn’t entirely sure what we’d be doing, but I’d make sure that it wasn’t anything too dangerous. I was glad that Nanna and Wes were living in Vegas for part of the year—I’d missed them when they’d been away on their honeymoon. It was worth letting Nanna tag along with us on investigations if it meant that she enjoyed living in Vegas.
“I have to get dressed first,” said Ian glumly. “I need to disguise myself so that Cecilia can’t recognize me.”
“He dressed up like a woman yesterday,” I told Nanna. “I’ve got a good picture of him on my phone.”
“That you said you wouldn’t show to anyone,” whined Ian.
I smiled and nodded. “Of course. Unless I change my mind.”
“So you’re going to wear a wig and put on some lipstick,” said Nanna. “I guess you can take the wig off before you go to talk to people.”
Ian shook his head. “I don’t look anything like a woman unless I do a whole lot of makeup. Tiffany spent ages contouring my face yesterday.”
Nanna fished around in her handbag and found a pair of oversized sunglasses. “You can wear these, they’ll hide most of your face. Add a bright lipstick, and you should be set.”
Ian turned to me. “Why didn’t we think of that yesterday?”
“See?” said Nanna. “I’m already coming up with brilliant ideas for the two of you.”
“You do have a different way of thinking,” I admitted.
Ian jammed the blond wig onto his head, draped a long scarf over his shoulders, and put on the pair of sunglasses.
He smushed his lips with dark maroon lipstick and looked at himself in the mirror. “I look good, but my lips have these darker lines running through the lipstick.”
“That’s because you’ve got dry lips,” said Nanna. “You need to wash off the lipstick, put on some Chapstick to make your lips softer, and then apply the lipstick.”
Ian followed Nanna’s instructions, with good results, and as he admired his reflection in the mirror, he said, “This woman stuff is complicated.”
Nanna nodded sagely. “It is, but sometimes it can be worth it.”
By a stroke of luck, we didn’t run into Cecilia in the hallway. I figured she might have gotten tired of waiting around for Ian, or maybe she’d met somebody else.
On a whim, I decided to drive over to Janice’s ex–husband’s house, and on the drive over, I filled Nanna in on our previous conversation with him, telling her about the strange sweepstakes that he’d apparently won.
“It sounds like a setup to me,” said Nanna.
“I was thinking I might talk to the neighbors and see if any of them got similar phone calls,” I said as Ian pulled off his wig and rubbed the lipstick off his lips. “Maybe one of the neighbors will know something interesting about David.”
“I think we should break into his house,” said Nanna calmly. “You can learn all kinds of things about a person from their house.”
I slid Nanna a wary, sidelong glance. “I don’t think we’re supposed to be breaking into people’s houses.”
“But you can,” said Ian. “You learned all about lock picking from that ex–boyfriend of yours. Why did you bother to learn all that if you didn’t want to use it at some point?”
He had a point. Perhaps, when I’d asked Jack to teach me about lock picking, I’d had plans of breaking in at the back of my mind.
We pulled up near David’s house, and I parked on the opposite side of the street. The three of us sat in the car and stared at the house, its presence suddenly full of potential and mystery.
“I don’t think we should be breaking in,” I said. “It’s illegal.”
“It’s illegal to steal stuff,” said Nanna. “And we’re doing it for a good reason. We’re snoops, and we’re supposed to be snooping around.”
“But what if he’s got an alarm set up?”
Nanna laughed shortly. “The man’s broke, going through a divorce. And look at his house. There’s no way he’d bother to set up an alarm.”
Ian and Nanna started heading toward the house, and I hurriedly followed them and locked the car behind me. As we crossed the road and headed over to David’s house, I said, “Okay. We can look through the windows, but we can’t actually break in and go inside.”
“You’re no fun,” said Nanna. “But okay, we can start off with looking through the windows. What if there’s someone at home?”
“We’re not sticking around if there’s anyone inside the house: we’re going to head straight back to the car and drive home.”
The three of us went to the front door first, where I knocked loudly, waited, and then knocked again. I knocked a third time, just for good measure, but it was pretty obvious that nobody was home: there were no shadows moving around, no appliance noises, nothing.
The blinds were drawn over the windows at the front, so the three of us slunk down the narrow path by the side of the house and ended up in the postage–stamp–sized backyard.
The windows here didn’t have any blinds or curtains blocking our view, so we all huddled around the first window we came across and peered inside curiously. We were looking into what seemed like a messy bedroom, when suddenly, a woman appeared right beside us.
She must’ve been in her late fifties or early sixties, and she was tall, wide, and scary–looking. Her hair was colored a bright red, and her eyes were kohl–rimmed, self–righteous and angry.
Her voice boomed out at us. “What do the three of you think you are doing over here?”
Nanna and Ian wisely decided to keep quiet, and I said, “Who are you? David never told us about you.”
She looked at us suspiciously, only slightly appeased that I knew the name of the person who lived here. “I’m his next–door neighbor, Margie. I saw the three of you wandering around from my window. You’re not thinking about breaking in, are you? Because I’ve got the cops on speed–dial here.”
I shook my head. “No, we’re just hiding. We came to visit David, but no one answered, and then we saw that my friend’s stalker had followed us here, so we thought we’d hide out in the backyard.”
Margie looked at Ian suspiciously, and then glanced back at me. “What stalker?”
I walked over to the path by the side of the house and noticed Cecilia standing near my car, staring at it curiously. I groaned as I realized that she must’ve waited for me outside the apartment and then driven behind us over here.
I ducked back behind the house, before Cecilia could see me, and described her to Margie. “She’s been stalking my friend Ian,” I explained.
Margie craned her neck and made sure that the woman I described did actually exist. “That’s the strangest of stories,” she told me. “Why don’t you just get a restraining order?�
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“We feel kind of sorry for her. But now it’s a bit awkward, and we have to hide from her.”
“I’ll call the cops for you,” said Margie. “They can take her away, and then you three can drive back home.”
I shook my head. “You shouldn’t do that. She’s not dangerous, just annoying. If you called the cops on her, you’d just get an innocent woman in trouble.”
The woman narrowed her eyes at me. “Yes, that’s true.”
“Maybe you should go talk to her first, ask her if she’s trying to find Ian. You can describe him. And then, instead of calling the cops, you could try to get rid of her by telling her that Ian walked down to the end of the street and then turned left. Then she’ll be out of your hair, and we can all go home, no cops involved.”
“I suppose the police do have better things to do with their time,” Margie admitted. “Okay, I’ll go and talk to her.”
As soon as she was out of earshot, I turned to Nanna and hissed, “See? Snooping around and breaking and entering does get you in trouble.”
“But she’s gone now,” said Nanna, walking up to the back door. She grabbed the handle and turned it. “Would you look at that? The door wasn’t even locked. It’s not breaking and entering if we’re not breaking into anything. Come on, we should get inside before that awful woman returns. I hate busybodies like her.”
Nanna and Ian disappeared inside, and I decided that it was in my best interests to follow them.
I locked the door behind us, and we found ourselves in a small den. There was a sofa and a TV, but nothing of much interest, so we went from one room to another, peering at everything, and being careful not to mess things up too much.
Finally, we stumbled into a room that seemed to be David’s bedroom—there was a framed photo of him on his wedding day with Janice, and a desk with a laptop on one side of the room.
“We should check out his emails,” said Nanna. “A person’s email history can tell you a lot about them.”
Furniture Fatality in Las Vegas Page 9