Nevada Rose

by Jerome Preisler

“What?”

  Warrick motioned toward the video cams. “They’ve gotta be moonlighting LVPD,” he said. “Ask them, they’ll give you reason to believe.”

  The doorman expelled a breath and raised his eyes from the badge.

  “Okay,” he said. “What can I do for you?”

  “We need Eleanor Samuels’s apartment number, and we need for you to let us into the building,” Catherine said. “Then we need for you to make sure that you don’t buzz up to let her know we’re here.”

  He studied her face for a long moment and finally aquiesced. “Unit Thirty-seven C,” he said, pushing open the inner door. “Take the first escalator to your right.”

  Catherine nodded and went through, Warrick following a step behind.

  “Yo,” the doorman said, still holding open the door.

  Warrick paused.

  “This is none of my business, okay?” the doorman said. “You didn’t even see me here when you came in.”

  Warrick removed his glasses, pretended to scan the vestibule, and nodded. “Can’t see a thing when I take these off,” he said, and turned into the lobby.

  As Catherine and Warrick would have thought, Unit 37C was on the thirty-seventh of Vista Tower’s forty-four sky-kissing floors. The nameplate insert under the doorbell button didn’t say anything about Olga Inc. Nor, Catherine noted, did it mention Jacqueline, Genevieve, Françoise, Marie-Therese, or any of Picasso’s other known lovers.

  It also didn’t list Eleanor Samuels as the apartment’s occupant.

  The nameplate was plainly and simply blank.

  Catherine rang once, then stood outside the door and listened, heard movement behind it, and waited for Eleanor to answer the bell.

  Nothing.

  Catherine rang a second time.

  Waited again.

  And heard some more quiet shuffling behind the door.

  Still no answer from Eleanor, though.

  This hardly came as a shock to the CSIs. Every indication was that Mrs. Samuels had wanted to keep her hideaway—or possibly it was her new permanent address—as private as could be. But they had not come here to stand out in the hallway because she wanted to keep secrets. They were investigating a woman’s death, and were in no mood for games or evasions.

  Catherine knocked on the door, rapping it hard with her knuckles.

  “Mrs. Samuels, we know you’re home,” she said. “This is Catherine Willows from the LVPD. I visited your husband at Seven Hills the other day.”

  She waited a third time and finally heard the clattering of the lock. Then the door opened inward about a third of the way, Eleanor Samuels appearing there in the space between the apartment and the outer hall.

  “What are you doing here?” she said, standing barefoot behind the partially open door, having changed from the skirt she’d worn outside into a pair of loose-fitting Adidas sweatpants.

  No martini glass in her hand, Catherine thought. But she’d probably have left that inside in the living room if she’d prepared one. And if not, Catherine figured she’d still been close enough with her prediction to feel satisfied with herself.

  “Mrs. Samuels, we need to talk,” she said.

  Eleanor shook her head. “I’m sorry,” she said, glancing over Catherine’s shoulder at Warrick, then back at Catherine, her face full of surprise and confusion. “I don’t…I don’t know how you found me. But this is a corporate apartment. My husband and I keep it for our more prominent patients. People who want to recuperate from surgery without drawing attention to themselves, you know. I—I just stopped in for a while to check on things and am on my way out.”

  Catherine nodded her chin down at the floor. “In your bare feet?”

  Eleanor looked at her. “You caught me while I was about to start getting dressed,” she said. “I must have fallen asleep…”

  Catherine locked eyes with her, dropped her voice several notches in volume. “We saw you come in about fifteen minutes ago,” she said. “Carrying an armload of shopping bags from Saks.”

  Eleanor looked at her for another long moment but said nothing.

  “We prefer not to embarrass you, Mrs. Samuels,” Catherine said. “We very honestly would like to avoid that if possible. But we will if you leave us no other option.”

  Eleanor’s face had suddenly turned pale. “What’s this about?” she said, an audible tremor in her voice now. “I need to know what…”

  “Mrs. Samuels, we won’t stand out here all day,” Catherine said. “What is it you intend to do?”

  There was a long silence, Eleanor Samuels staying put in the door to the apartment, the CSIs standing in the hallway outside, none of them showing a willingness to budge an inch.

  Looking at the determined expression on Catherine’s face, Eleanor finally relented.

  “Okay,” she said, pulling open the door. “You’d better come inside.”

  Eleanor Samuels apparently shared her husband’s affinity for fine art, and enormously expensive fine art, at that.

  Entering the living room, Catherine was struck by a huge Georgia O’Keeffe canvas on the wall, a yellow cactus flower blooming skyward against the dun-colored desert sand.

  She remained in front of the painting a moment as Warrick stepped past her for a circumspect look around.

  “Fabulous, isn’t it?” Eleanor said, moving up alongside her.

  “Yes,” Catherine said. “I’ve always wanted to visit the Ghost Ranch.”

  Eleanor gave a quick smile, but her eyes had the same uneasy look they’d had peering out at the CSIs from her doorway.

  “Have you?” she said. “I’ve made the trip and would recommend it. It gave me tingles to see the desert landscapes where O’Keeffe did so much of her work…there’s something wonderful and inspirational about her ability to capture such delicate beauty amid their harshness.”

  Catherine nodded, then turned from the canvas and scanned the room. On her right was a large red sofa. Beyond that a hallway with a dressing room at the end, its door partially open.

  She saw Warrick looking through the door and knew he’d already noticed the same things that had just caught her eye—the assortment of cosmetics on an antique vanity, the Saks shopping bags resting atop a matching armoire.

  “Did you do the decorating yourself?” she said, returning her gaze to Eleanor’s face.

  “I had help locating what I wanted,” Eleanor said. “But yes, I did, for the most part. We—Layton and I—do whatever we can to make our patients feel as comfortable as possible.”

  Catherine looked at her. Here we go again.

  “Your patients?”

  Eleanor nodded. Very briskly, the way she’d smiled. Her eyes still nervous and uneasy.

  “As common as it’s become in our society, people still aren’t sure what to expect from aesthetic surgery,” she said, almost as if by rote. “The purpose of our books and television appearances isn’t just to inform them of its benefits but spread an awareness of what to expect before opting for any procedure.” She paused. “One thing we’re very up-front about is stating that some of them can be followed by a recuperative period of several days or weeks.”

  It occurred to Catherine that Mrs. Samuels could easily have been rehearsing those lines backstage in the green room of some morning talk show. But while it was tempting to break into her little infomercial, Catherine decided instead to give her some added rope, figuring it would probably pay off to find out what her whole cock-and-bull story was going to be.

  “With so many of Layton’s clients these days being popular music stars and other personalities, we’ve become sensitive to their exceptional needs,” she rattled on. “Many of them want a postop retreat, a safe house where they can get away from the flashbulbs while they’re healing…and we provide it right here along with visiting nurses, attendants, physical therapists, and—”

  Having heard about all she could take, Catherine gave Warrick a glance signaling him to interrupt.

  “Look,” he sai
d, stepping over. “We know this place isn’t for your clients.”

  She looked at him, her eyes widening. “I don’t understand why you keep suggesting that,” she said. “I told you why I’m here. A patient recently vacated after a stay, and I just stopped in to make sure everything was in order.”

  Catherine made subtle eye contact with Warrick again. It was her turn now. Time to bring the pressure down a notch.

  “Mrs. Samuels…Eleanor,” she said. “We know you filed for a separation from your husband…”

  “And you think it had something to do with Rose Demille.”

  “Didn’t it?”

  Eleanor shrugged. “Layton told me why you came to see him at the spa,” she said. “That you questioned him about possibly having a relationship with her. I’m guessing it’s why you’re here right now. To ask if I know anything about it.”

  So at the very least, Eleanor knew her husband was suspected of being involved with another woman, Catherine thought. But forget that—based on the separation she’d initiated, she most likely knew without a doubt that he’d been having an affair. And now the woman he had been cheating with was dead. And Eleanor was covering for him.

  Catherine wondered how best to draw her out. She was used to taking all sorts of different approaches with all sorts of different people and got the sense that Eleanor Samuels might be receptive to a soft touch.

  “It’s embarrassing…humiliating to be betrayed by someone you love,” she said. “I can appreciate what you’re feeling.”

  Eleanor stared at her. “Can you?” she said, her tone at once angry and defensive. “Can you, really?”

  Catherine nodded, maintaining eye contact. Preparing to share what she would rather not be sharing. To meet this total stranger’s deceptiveness with a painful truth in order to work some sort of connection somewhere.

  “Yes, I can,” she said. “I’ve been there myself. Trust me. And I know that whatever reason you’ve got for covering up for your husband is only bound to hurt you in the long run.”

  They stood looking at each other in the middle of the room, neither of them saying anything, Eleanor’s lower lip beginning to tremble the way it had when she’d come to answer the door.

  “Let’s start over, talk right here,” Catherine said. Calm, calm. Sugar to Warrick’s spice, Gannon to his Friday. Or maybe just one woman to another. Trust me. “We’d rather not have to do this in an interrogation room at police headquarters…you don’t need that. But we do want a clear picture of what’s going on here.”

  Eleanor finally motioned Catherine and Warrick toward the sofa, waiting for them to lower themselves onto its cushions before she sat down at the other end, her back pressing against the armrest.

  Catherine looked at Eleanor. Waited. Giving her thoughts and emotions an opportunity to thread their way through the silence.

  “It isn’t what you think,” Eleanor finally said. She produced a humorless chuckle. “Well, the part about my husband and Rose Demille is…it would be ridiculous for me to go on denying it. I’m sure you have your sources of information. But you’re wrong as far as my reason for trying to keep our separation secret.”

  Catherine waited some more. She could practically feel Warrick thinking along with her, recalling what they had discussed in her office back at headquarters.

  “It was a business decision, wasn’t it?” she said. Not tiptoeing around here, coming right out with it. “You wanted to guard your image.”

  “Protect it, yes.” Eleanor was nodding. “We have an obligation. Not only to ourselves but to the franchise. The staffers we employ, the publishers who’ve invested in our books, the cosmetics companies that pay for our endorsements, and the ordinary people who’ve seen us on television and come to trust our advice for improving their lives.”

  How altruistic, Catherine thought. Not a word about keeping the millions of dollars they made from all those book deals, patients, and endorsements flowing into their corporate accounts. It was amazing Eleanor didn’t sprout wings and a halo and go soaring up toward the pearly gates.

  “About your husband and Rose Demille,” she said, wanting to get the conversation back on point. “When did you first find out about them?”

  Eleanor took a deep breath. “There’s a thin line between suspicion and knowing,” she said. “If you’ve really had a similar experience in your life, I shouldn’t have to explain. Layton went through the stages. The evasiveness. The excuses for spending time away from home. The nights he was supposed to be at meetings that didn’t exist.”

  “And then getting careless,” Catherine said.

  Eleanor nodded. “Leaving a note from her in his sport coat. Storing her number on his cell phone, charging gifts to our joint credit-card account. There comes a time when the signs stack up so high it’s impossible to avoid toppling them over. I’ve wondered if perhaps they’re deliberately left out around you. So he can be relieved of the burden of having to tell you the truth. So that he can pretend he wants to make things right…leave it to you to say good-bye because he can’t work up the nerve.”

  Catherine was aware of Eleanor using the disassociative you, a subconscious mechanism that allowed people to talk about their deepest personal wounds with a greater degree of remove. Work for the LVPD as long as she had, listen to as many stories as she had, and it was you, you, you, dozens of them for every I.

  “Do I understand that you confronted your husband about his relationship with Rose Demille?” she asked.

  Eleanor shook her head. “Eventually,” she said. “At first, I kept things to myself. I knew their togetherness would have been fleeting.”

  “How could you have been so sure?”

  Eleanor shrugged. “That woman, she was the type who would always be looking to upgrade,” she said. A bitter edge to her words now. “Rose Demille is dead, and I know I must sound coldhearted. But it’s the simple reality.”

  Catherine looked at her. “How did your husband take it when you stopped trying to wait out the affair and told him what you knew?”

  “There was everything you would expect from him. A round or two of weak denials and then the obligatory apologies for his lies.” Eleanor produced another harsh approximation of a laugh. “It’s the nature of the male species, all those guilty ‘I’m sorrys’ and admissions of responsibility. They’re just superficial twitches. Like the knee-jerk reflex. They have nothing to do with conscience or a genuine sense of right and wrong.”

  Catherine didn’t have to look at Warrick to know exactly what he was thinking. She remembered his jaundiced reaction when she’d told him about Eleanor and Layton hooking up within months after her first husband—and his medical partner—died of a coronary. His unsubtle suggestion that Eleanor and her second spouse might have gotten warm and cozy with each other before Carl’s demise. Finally, she could not help but recall the personal skid Warrick had taken not so very long ago, after discovering his own wife—now his ex—had been fooling around with another man. Ask his opinion of which sex was more inclined toward marital infidelity, and he would insist that cheating and deception were the nature of the human species, male and female, all aboard.

  “Did Layton give any indication he’d break things off with Rose?” Catherine said now, snapping her full attention back to Samuels’s wife.

  “No,” she said. “She really had him hooked. Even when she was out clubbing with that baseball player…the one they say was with her the night she died.”

  “So seeing them step out together in public didn’t bother your husband?”

  “You’d have to ask him,” Eleanor said. “Certainly, he was able to accept it. I remember Layton practically laughing off a gossip-magazine article about Rose and the ballplayer.”

  “And you didn’t wonder why?”

  Eleanor shook her head. “If so, I didn’t ask him about it,” she said. “What was its bearing on my situation? Certainly, he was able to accept her other dalliances. Once during an argument, Layton even told me
he’d found a ‘soul mate’ in her…” Eleanor let her voice trail and gave one of her small, weary shrugs. “Don’t you hate that term, Ms. Willows? Don’t you just despise it?”

  Catherine felt that might be putting it a touch too strongly, though she easily might have agreed that it was one of the more starry-eyed, adolescent New Age terms that had entered the popular language in recent times.

  Right now, however, she wasn’t inclined to offer that or any other opinion to Eleanor Samuels. Instead, she was thinking that she and Warrick had already extracted a good amount of information from her, at least for the present, and that they had better refrain from getting greedy and quit while they were ahead of the game.

  She shot Warrick a communicative glance, and they rose from the sofa, Catherine thanking Mrs. Samuels for her time and cooperation before the CSIs let her show them across the living room and out of the apartment.

  As they stepped back out into the hall, Eleanor hesitated for the briefest of moments before shutting her door behind them, standing there in the entry almost as she had when they’d arrived.

  “Ms. Willows?” she said in a hushed voice.

  Catherine paused, looked around at her.

  “This charade I’ve been carrying on…it hasn’t been one of my shining moments,” Eleanor said. “I just want you to know I’m aware of that.”

  Catherine gave a slight nod but did not comment. She simply had no idea what to say to her.

  And then Eleanor closed and locked the door. Over and out. Catherine stood there a moment, not moving, staring at the blank nameplate below the doorbell, before she finally took a deep breath and turned away from it, joining Warrick as he strode down the hallway to the elevators.

  Not quite forty-eight hours after their first drive over to the Sunderland Trailer Court, Sara and Grissom were heading back there on the barely passable, flood-ruined roads east of downtown Vegas, feeling their vertebrae jolt increasingly and alarmingly out of whack with every chunk of potholed, washed-out, and by turns collapsed and heaved-up blacktop they had somehow to find a way to traverse.

  What made this evening’s return trip very different for them—besides its grievously compounding toll on their spines and Gris’s shock absorbers as they rattled along—was the fact that they were now armed with search warrants for Charlie and Adam Belcher’s respective mobile homes and also that they were being escorted by a couple of LVPD patrol cars just in case Gloria Belcher launched into another certifiably hysterical performance of the type she’d put on last time around.