Lucky Stiff (Lucky O'Toole Vegas Adventure Book 2)

by Deborah Coonts

  In what could only be described as an interesting effort to compete, the owners had converted the former fifties-style soda fountain by changing the decor to purple and pink with fluorescent lighting in the same color scheme. Then, they’d added a lounge—all purple and black—a beckoning cave of iniquity more reminiscent of a seventies nightclub than a place for serious sinners. One addition had been a fire pit where the flame leapt up through water. Patrons could sit on the circular couch surrounding it and watch embedded televisions when they weren’t staring into the fire.

  Of course, the hordes of local high-school kids crowding the booths out front did little to enhance the whole lounge thing. With precious few places to go in a city that catered to the over-twenty-one crowd, teens old enough to drive but too young to legally drink flocked to the Peppermill like pilgrims to Mecca. I’d done the same when I was their age.

  For all of us raised in Sin City, the Peppermill was a comfortable blast from the past, a place where one could slide into a booth, order a shake, and be serenaded by Elvis, the Beatles, the Monkees—even Herman’s Hermits—while we wallowed in memories.

  As I pushed through the glass doors, the familiar smells of hamburgers frying in their own grease, raw onions, and hot fat in the fryer rocketed me back to a simpler time. This had been a nice place to hang with friends, giggle at the first overtures of boys as they preened for my attention, and revel in the youthful assurance that the world held nothing but great things. Unlike my early impressions of the male of the species, I’d been right about my future—while perhaps not exactly as I’d planned it, life had turned out pretty great so far. I only hoped Jimmy G wouldn’t stick too large a pin in my bubble.

  Jimmie G waited in the last booth, the whole of the restaurant in front of him and no surprises behind him. He’d scrunched down low and, if I hadn’t known where to look for him, I might have missed him all together.

  “Sorry I’m late. Something came up,” I said, as I slid in across from him. A double-thick chocolate shake sat in front of me, which immediately aroused my suspicions.

  “Nothin’ to cry about.” The little man shrugged, not looking the least bit upset.

  Okay, first the shake, now, not even a veiled hint of impatience... the guy was buttering me up for sure. “What’s your angle, Mr. G?”

  As if trying to martial his thoughts, he didn’t answer right away. Instead, he stared over my shoulder as he crossed his hands on the table. They made a soft sound as he gently patted them, one on top of the other. For the first time, the realization hit me: The spry little man was probably almost as old as the Big Boss—two of a dying breed. And so much Vegas lore would pass with them—a huge loss that no one might notice. There was Mayor Goodman and his proposed Mob Museum... but that wasn’t the history of Vegas I wanted—I wanted the magic. Jimmy G and the Big Boss knew the magic.

  I took a sip of my shake and waited. Swirling the rich concoction over my tastebuds, I would have sighed with pleasure had my mouth not been full. How could a benevolent god make things so good for our souls, so bad for our health? If this were a divine test of the strength of my resolve, I would be found woefully lacking. I could live with that.

  Finally Jimmy G moved. He tilted to the side, lifting one cheek off the seat, then reached in and tugged his wallet from his pocket. He pulled out a well-fondled picture and pushed it across the table to me. His granddaughter, Gabi.

  How old was she now? Nine? Ten? I couldn’t remember and couldn’t tell from the photo. While truly magical, kids served as such harsh markers of the passage of time. It had been a year, no more, since I’d seen her but it seemed like last week. She’d been just a hardscrabble little girl then. Now, I could see the hint of the beauty she would become. Long black ringlets, olive skin, dark eyes that already held a sense of self-possession in their depths, a full mouth quick to grin—she was going to be a real ball-buster. I hoped her father and grandfather were prepared.

  I looked up at Jimmy G, but didn’t say anything. As the Big Boss had taught me, these guys get to their points in their own way, in their own time. However, this conversation had sure started down an alley I hadn’t anticipated.

  With one finger, he gently pulled the picture back then stared at it for a moment, a grin tickling his lips. “She’s not at all like her mother, you know?” His eyes held a sadness as deep and enduring as a lifetime. They lit on mine, then fluttered back to the photo. “It’s like the Creator gave Gabi not only her allotment of soft edges and feminine wiles, but the ones her mother should have gotten as well.”

  Warm and soft were not two adjectives anyone would use to describe Glinda Lovato, Gabi’s mother and Jimmy G’s daughter. In fact, most of the appropriate adjectives that sprang to mind weren’t exactly complimentary, so I said nothing. The truth of the matter was, I knew Glinda by reputation only. Through the years I’d had a few minor social skirmishes with her, but nothing of any consequence and nothing unusual for two rather opinionated females.

  The only real feeling I had for her was pity—pity because her husband’s philandering provided the meat of many a joke about town.

  “This little one . . .” Jimmy G touched the photo, “... is the apple of her father’s eye. She has that man so hornswaggled. Everybody knows it, but the poor schnook has no clue.” Jimmy smiled at the thought.

  The picture he’d painted gave me warm fuzzies—I, too, was pretty partial to that special bond between fathers and daughters.

  “You know she’s not Daniel’s real daughter?” Jimmy crinkled his brow as he continued examining his granddaughter’s smiling face.

  The product of Glinda’s first marital misadventure, Gabi had been only one year old when her mother had married Daniel. “Just because she’s not his biological child, doesn’t mean she’s not his real daughter, Jimmy.”

  For an instant, his eyes met mine. “Outta everyone, I knew you’d get it.” He flashed me a sad smile that faded like a childhood memory, leaving only a hint of the good times. “The kid would be lost without him, you know? I don’t even want to think about her life if something happened to Daniel.”

  “Jimmy, what’s going to happen to Daniel?”

  His hand shot across the table, grabbing mine in a viselike grip. Like an electric shock, his intensity, his emotion coursed between us where our flesh met. “I love him like a son, you know.” His voice was raw as his eyes filled with tears. “Glinda... she’s so cold, so harsh—not the daughter a man hopes for. Daniel takes care of me... and Gabi.”

  “Jimmy, tell me about Daniel.”

  “Word on the street says he was into that oddsmaker big.”

  “Numbers Neidermeyer?”

  He nodded once.

  “So she was running an illegal book,” I said. It wasn’t a question; I already knew the answer. “How big?”

  “Six figures big.”

  I made a noise my mother and her manners never would have approved of. “That’s ridiculous. Daniel’s been the district attorney for what? Twenty-five years? All that time he’s been so clean he squeaked.”

  “I’m tellin’ ya, the street don’t lie.” The little man still gripped my hand so hard my fingers were going numb. “Word is he’s in for 500K, maybe more.”

  From the looks of him, Jimmy clearly believed what he was telling me. The problem was, the whole thing sounded fantastical, like the script for a bad Al Pacino movie. “Okay, for argument’s sake, let’s assume you’re right.” I extracted my hand from his death grip and rubbed it to reestablish blood flow. “Why now? Why, after all these years, would he do something as stupid and self-destructive as not only placing action with an illegal book, but compounding his problem by allowing himself to get in deep?”

  Jimmy, his hands in his lap, his eyes downcast, seemed to shrink into himself as he shook his head. “People do stupid stuff, you know?”

  “Maybe so, but DAs with everything to lose and nothing to gain usually don’t self-destruct—at least not quite so spectacularly. And not a
fter twenty-five years on the job.” I pointed to the photo. “And not with a nine-year-old daughter in need of raising.”

  A group of kids caught my eye—laughing, the boys teased the girls who blushed, but bantered back. None of them could be older than sixteen or seventeen—such an innocent age, but one filled with self-doubt and angst. I wouldn’t trade problems and emotions with any of those youngsters, not even with Jimmy’s little stink bomb. However, I wouldn’t mind trading skin tone.

  “Lucky, girl. Help me. Help Daniel.” Jimmy G’s voice was just above a whisper.

  I noticed Jimmy didn’t tell me I owed him, which technically I didn’t—yet. He just asked, friend to friend—the swine. He knew better than I did, nobody turns down a friend in need.

  “You got anything to go on?” I asked.

  “I can give you a line on Scully Winter.”

  * * *

  APOLLO’S chariot had traversed the sky leaving only the lights of the Strip to hold the darkness at bay by the time Jimmy G and I had said our farewells. On my return trip to the Babylon, I didn’t hurry. Like a rat in a cage, I was a creature of the air-conditioned world, rarely allowed to escape into the cool night air of the high desert. Adopting the same ambling gait of the crowds idling up and down the sidewalks, I soaked up their energy. In desperate need of an attitude adjustment, I tried to see Vegas through their eyes.

  Fifteen minutes of moving with the crowd gave me the smile I had lost. Two buff young studs had asked for my number, which did wonders for my ego, if not for theirs when I turned them down. I’d learned the words to the fight song for some university in Texas, and I’d narrowly escaped wearing the dregs of one inebriated fellow’s strawberry daiquiri, which he informed me I could buy by the gallon at a casino at the southern end of the Strip. From all appearances, he’d gone back for seconds... maybe thirds. I smiled at the couples holding hands as they watched the fountains at the Bellagio dance in time to the music.

  Vegas was magic—and it was my job to keep it so.

  And if our fearless district attorney had gone ‘round the bend and tossed Ms. Neidermeyer into the fish tank over a gambling debt? We’d do what we always did: We’d throw him a hell of a send-off party on his way to the slammer.

  That farewell gathering might even be better than usual—nobody in Vegas was going to miss Numbers Neidermeyer.

  My smile dimmed a bit as I bid adieu to my drunken escorts and marched up the drive to the Babylon and back into the real world. Maybe no one would mourn Ms. Neidermeyer, but a whole city would miss District Attorney Daniel Lovato. And I shivered at the welcoming committee he would find in the State Pen—he or his office was responsible for almost all of its current residents.

  Jimmy G was right about the word on the street usually being accurate. But I just didn’t get it. I must be missing something—I kept adding two and two and getting zero. For the umpteenth time, I went over the facts as I knew them: the illegal bookmaking operation, Numbers expertise in the fight game, Daniel naked in the laundry room, Daniel and the missus in the same room with the soon to be deceased, Jeremy’s angry confrontation with the same future corpse, word on the street giving Daniel a possible motive... not much, and not nearly enough.

  So far, all three of them, the Lovatos and Jeremy, had opportunity, but so far Daniel was the only one with a motive—unsubstantiated, but a motive nonetheless.

  What were the three things the cops always looked for? Motive, opportunity... what was the other?

  So far afield from my normal areas of expertise, I’d made it through the front doors, up the stairs, and to the door of my office before the third element hit me—means! Absent evidence to the contrary and with precious little to go on, we all, myself included, had been operating under the assumption that the sharks had done the dirty deed. But what if they hadn’t? What if Numbers was the former Ms. Neidermeyer by the time she hit the water?

  I burst through the door and came to a halt in front of Miss Patterson, who resolutely manned her desk even though the day had fled and night was gaining momentum. If she was startled by my arrival, she didn’t show it. In fact, she looked dead on her feet. I pointed to her. “Call Romeo. If he’s close, I’d like to see him.”

  Miss P nodded and reached for her phone.

  “And I need to see or talk to Jeremy, pronto.”

  “He’s asleep on your couch,” Miss P said. Using one finger, she traced down her list of important numbers. When she’d found what she wanted, her finger stopped, holding her place on the list. Then she stuffed the receiver to her ear, using her shoulder to hold it there, and dialed with her free hand. Finally she glanced up at me. “He hadn’t had any sleep to speak of, but he was intent on waiting until you got back. Something about a hot trail gone cold?”

  Not what I wanted to hear, but I’d be damned before I let my fearless assistant see my deflation. “Put Romeo through when you get him on the line. Then I want you to scrape your hunk off my couch, after I talk to him of course, and both of you go home.” I turned and tiptoed into my office.

  As promised, the Beautiful Jeremy Whitlock was indeed fast asleep on my couch—all 6 feet plus a few inches and 225 well-muscled pounds of him.

  I eased myself around him and into my desk chair, then leaned back and enjoyed the view. If my thoughts weren’t lascivious—which they weren’t—then no harm, no foul, right? Besides, I felt I deserved a moment of eye candy—the day had served up precious little to enjoy so far—if I excluded Dane.

  And a moment was all I got. The phone rang. I jumped. Jeremy bolted to a seated position.

  Miss Patterson’s calm voice announced, “Detective Romeo, line one.”

  Jeremy looked at me as I reached for the phone as if I had just been teleported from Mars. I watched him regain his surroundings then punched the button for the appropriate line.

  “Romeo? Wherefore art thou?” I said, very pleased with myself.

  With not even a chuckle, he gave me his location—two blocks away, which wasn’t as close as it sounded given the traffic building on the strip. I guess he didn’t think I was as cute as I thought I was.

  “I need to ask you some questions. Should we do it over the phone or do you want to come by? Twenty minutes? Yeah, I’ll be here.” I nodded, which was stupid, but a habit. “Okay, make it thirty. See you then. Thanks.” I cradled the phone, then looked at Jeremy.

  Before I could drop a bon mot, he started in. “I’m sorry about racking on your couch. I was out of petrol.” He ran a hand through his hair and shot me a dimple or two.

  “Someone once told me a sofa in a woman’s office was an invitation.” I announced with a straight face. “Ever since, I’ve been leaving my office unlocked, hoping I’d catch a handsome guy.”

  “Sort of a casting couch in reverse?” he bantered back, joining the game. “Have much luck?”

  “Not really. In fact, you’re my first, but you’ve given me hope.”

  With a groan, Jeremy pushed himself to his feet, took two steps, then sagged into a chair across from me. He looked beat—unbelievably gorgeous, but beat. “Well, it’s just a suggestion, mind you, but if you lose the wall of windows behind the couch, you might have more success.”

  “Good point.” With a toe, I pulled out the bottom desk drawer then put both feet on it as I leaned back in my chair and shut my eyes. “I hear you don’t have good news.”

  “Don’t know whether it’s good or bad. I haven’t a clue what to make of it, actually. I’ve never run up against this before.”

  “Why don’t you just start at the beginning?”

  “Okay. I was skip-tracing the name you gave me, Shelley-Lynne Makepeace. She lived in New Jersey as your guy said, with her grandmother—.”

  “Grandmother? What about her parents?” My eyes still closed, I put my hands behind my head and let Jeremy’s story wash over me.

  “I couldn’t find any mention of her parents, but I did find an uncle.”

  “Alive?”

  “Am
azingly enough, alive and kicking, and willing to talk, although I don’t think he told me everything he knew.” Jeremy’s voice held a glimmer of hope. “I couldn’t get him to open up about the father. But Shelly-Lynne’s mother died when Shelly-Lynne was twelve. All he would tell me was her name was Mary Swearingen. Apparently Makepeace was the grandmother’s second husband’s name. Swearingen was the first husband, Shelly-Lynne’s grandfather, who is dead, by the way, along with the grandmother and her second husband.”

  “Convenient.” The way my luck was running, I’d better look twice before I crossed any streets and think seriously before making a commitment to green bananas. Maybe I should try a fortuneteller... “Did the uncle have anything else to offer?”

  “He told me if I could find anything on the mother it would make pretty interesting reading.” Jeremy stopped.

  Dropping my arms, I raised my head and looked at him. “And?”

  “I found her files, but apparently I didn’t have the right clearances.”

  “What?” I shifted my feet to the floor and my butt to the edge of the chair, leaning toward him—he had my full attention now. “Clearances?”

  “Apparently the FBI holds the key to the gate. They have sealed her files.”

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  THE FBI? Time stopped. My brain function ground to a halt.

  And they make solving murders look so easy on television.

  Miss Patterson appeared in my doorway, interrupting my feeble attempts to marshal my scattered thoughts. “Did you know Jordan Marsh is on his way?” “What?”

  Miss Patterson tapped her pencil on her clipboard in irritation. “He’s not on my list. How could you have overlooked telling me about him?”

  An old friend, Jordan Marsh was a Hollywood icon and, if you believed the tabloids, the last of the red-hot lovers. We had bonded when his star was ascending and he’d made a rather embarrassing choice while booked into one of the Big Boss’s lesser properties. I’d swept it under the rug, preserving his reputation. Jordan had continued on to bigger and better things and somehow I had ended up with a lifetime membership in the Jordan Marsh Fan and Functionary Club. He had the annoying habit of turning up unannounced, and at the worst possible time. At least the man was consistent.