Diva Las Vegas (Book 1 in Raven McShane Series) (18 page)

He nodded.  Carlos had dug in to his fries with both hands.

“My point is, even if you don’t want to stir up the pot, that’s a luxury I can no longer afford.”

“What am I supposed to do?” Cody leaned back from the table.  “I wasn’t there, and I don’t know who killed George.”

“Suppose I believe you,” I said.  “Who else would have done it?  Who had the motive to get rid of George?”

Cody put down his fork and paused.  He chose his words carefully.  “I don’t know.  A lot of people.  George had a different vision of the place than almost everyone else.”  I wondered if it was possible to be any more vague.  “Plus,” he added, “it could have been a random act of street crime.”  It didn’t sound like even he believed that theory.  It was crap.  I decided to answer his crap with a whopper of my own.

“I know about the money,” I said suddenly.  Both Carlos and Cody looked directly at me, and I thought I detected the beginnings of a wry smile working their way across Carlos’ face.  “The money” could have meant a million things, and I just wanted to see what Cody’s reaction to the accusation would be.

“What money?” he asked.  I didn’t give him any points for originality.

“I think you know very well, Cody.  You really expect us to believe that the casino is reporting all the money it should be reporting?  I’ve heard otherwise.  And now I discover you’ve been paying piles of money to Paul Gonsalves for years.”  I decided to let Cody make the obvious connection himself.

“I have money of my own,” he said defensively.  “I get three-hundred-thousand a year as president of the casino.  My wife gets ten times that that just in dividends every year.  I don’t need to steal anything.  Paul is small potatoes.”  I’d never heard anyone under forty use the phrase “small potatoes.”  It all sounded a little artificial.

“And I suppose your wife Amy is fine with you paying this handsome young man so much money?”

He shot me a withering look.  “Very funny.”  He looked at Carlos for support, as though Carlos would take his side.  Carlos began sucking suggestively on a French fry.

“Look,” Cody continued, “obviously you’re in way over your head here.  I appreciate the fact that you have at least considered the possibility that I might be innocent.  Most people haven’t gone that far.  But I’m not interested in helping you on your little project.”  He stood up abruptly.  “You can send me the bill for lunch,” he said, and walked out.

Carlos was smiling, obviously amused.  “That is messed up,” he said.

“You think so?”

“I mean, the guy basically admits to felony bribery and then won’t help out the only person in town who doesn’t think he’s a cold-blooded killer.”

“It
is
messed up,” I agreed.  “I guess he didn’t believe me about going to the cops.”

“You going to?” Carlos asked.

“Nope.  Not yet anyways.  I need to figure out who’s after me, because it’s obviously not Cody.”  We got the check and headed back to the car.  I drove him home and Carlos’ pretty young girlfriend was peering through the door when we got back.  She waved and flashed a phony baloney smile at me.

Before he got out, Carlos coughed a loud
ahem
and started rubbing his fingers and thumb together, as though moving some invisible money back and forth.  I had planned ahead, luckily.  I caught his drift, fished a wad of bills out of my purse, and handed him close to a thousand in cash.

“Thanks,” he said simply, and went inside.

Back in my hotel room I flipped on the TV and fired up my computer.  I had some loose ends to clean up.  First, I picked out three photos of Cody and Paul Gonsalves in the pool and shrunk them down to a more manageable size.  I then attached them to an email and sent them to Jeff Katz, whose email address was on the business card Rachel had given me.  The photos weren’t conclusive evidence of anything, but they showed that Cody and Paul were obviously close friends—or more.  I explained in the email that Paul had sat on Cody’s jury and told Jeff what to do with the pictures in the event I washed up on the shores of the Colorado River.  I was sure Jeff would find the whole thing amusing.

After that I pulled up my Westlaw account and ran a real estate search on Cody’s party house.  The deed was held by a limited liability company called CAM Holdings, LLC, and I found that company registered in Delaware, with Cody A. Masterson as its principal agent and sole owner.  I figured the limited liability company was probably just an extra step to hide his property from Amy.

I then ran some internet searches on Oliver
Radbourne
, the name Cody had written down for me at lunch.  Cody had already lied to a jury and given me a bogus phone number, so there was no reason to believe he was telling me the truth about this guy.  A three-year old photo of an Oliver
Radbourne
turned up in the online archives of
Yachting
magazine.  This
Radbourne
was from London and definitely fit the bill in terms of the kind of man I expected Cody Masterson would hang out with, except that he was older than I would have thought.  Late thirties, with a receding hairline—definitely not in the same league physically as Cody himself or his pool friends, but then again he was probably much richer.  His name popped up in other publications, one of which described him as an “eligible” bachelor on the French Riviera scene in Cannes.  A company called
Radbourne
and Associates, Ltd, an architecture and design firm specializing in hotels, had a web page listing contact information for a number of individuals, including the founder, Oliver
Radbourne
.   It listed a London address and a long distance number I had no idea how to dial on my phone.

I called my cell phone operator to ask for help dialing the international number, and the operator put me through directly.  I felt like June Cleaver. 
Radbourne
was not in —the office was closed, the receptionist said—but she could take a message.  I left my name and number but didn’t expect a speedy callback.

After that I opened up my bookkeeping program and began trying to reconstruct how I’d spent my time on the case over the last several days.  I had gotten sloppy about keeping records in the past, which always meant it was harder to collect on an invoice at the end of a job.  Maybe Carlos had the right idea, I thought: only take cash, payable right away or at most within a few days.  After about an hour of reconstructing the past week, I finished my calculations and hoped Rachel wouldn’t mind paying me the $13,900 in fees and expenses I had racked up so far.  Assuming she could eventually afford it, that is.  All in all, I think I had earned it.  The Flamingo suite and my intimate relationship with its mini-bar were another matter.

Jeff called me while I was in the shower and ended his message with the instruction that I should call him back if I was still alive.  Funny guy.  Jeff wanted to see how I was doing and offered to take me out for dinner.  I was still a little wary of his motives, but he’d been behaving himself very well lately.  I told him I was dancing later and he could come in for a freebie.  I didn’t want to go to dinner with him, but I looked forward to running things past him and getting his legal take on things.

I got lost in the casino for a few hours to let the maids clean my suite.  Talk about an expensive afternoon.  The video poker gods were not with me, and the craps table wasn’t much better.  This is why I don’t gamble very often.  If I weren’t staying on Jeff’s VIP account, I think the hotel would comp me my suite for a week based on my losses that day alone.  When I got back to my room I ordered takeout curry from my favorite Indian place.  The skinny Indian delivery boy recognized me and gave me a funny look, probably confused about why I was staying in a hotel when I lived in a condo across the street.  But, as usual, he didn’t say a word to me.

I floundered around for awhile after dinner and got to Cougar’s early.  I didn’t really feel like dancing, but I knew it would take my mind off things.  It proved to be even slower than usual for a Tuesday night in July, and I spent more time on stage than I had in months.  The wad of singles I earned dancing on stage wouldn’t put a dent in what I’d lost at the tables that afternoon.  I even put on my tallest pair of hooker heels, but they didn’t seem to help.

Things picked up around nine-thirty when some elderly Japanese men arrived.  From experience, I knew they tended to prefer blondes—their image of the perfect American woman was Pamela Anderson, circa 1996.  But Mr. Takada took a shine to me and had me on his lap for a good half-hour.  I think I outweighed him by twenty pounds.  I probably cut off the circulation to his legs, but he didn’t seem to mind.

The Japanese left by 10:30 and I pondered leaving early.  That was the nice thing about being an independent contractor: I could lay myself off anytime I felt like it.  But soon enough an attractive sandy haired guy in his late twenties approached me while I was walking back from the locker room for one last go-round on stage.

“How much for a lap dance?”

“For you?”  I gave him a once-over and smiled.  “Half price.  Twenty bucks.”

“Actually it’s for a friend of mine.  It’s his birthday.  Here’s a hundred.”  He flashed a tight smile and pressed a hundred into my palm.  “He’s with another girl back there already.  They’re just finishing up.”  He seemed a little nervous, but that was nothing unusual.  A lot of guys weren’t comfortable talking to women at all, much less nearly naked women in four-inch stilettos.

I was disappointed that the cute guy didn’t want a dance, but work was work.  I put the money in my hidden pocket and headed over to the back room.  Mandy was the only girl dancing back there.  She was a real professional, a stunning blonde who would have been a Victoria’s Secret model except for the fact that she was only five-foot-four.  She was perched on the lap of a guy in dark gray slacks and nice looking dress shoes.  He was facing away from me and seemed to be enjoying having Mandy’s 34-C’s in his face.  I caught her eye.  She nodded and flashed me a one-minute sign with her hand.

Mandy climbed off the man exactly a minute later.  He tipped her and she patted his head affectionately when she left.  Easy money.  She must have told him I was on my way because he didn’t move.  He sat rigid in the chair like a boy about to get a
hair cut
.

I walked over and stood next to him.  “Tonight must be your lucky night,” I said, resting my hand on his shoulder.  I moved in front of him to face him and began to pull off my flimsy top.  It was then that I looked down at his face for the first time.  He was about forty-five, with bushy brown hair and a mustache straight out of the seventies.  There was a long gash on the left side of his face, and his left eye was swollen.  I inhaled sharply and froze.  He was staring back at me with murderous eyes, and I froze and couldn’t shake his glassy eyed glare.  It was the Brawny man.  I screamed.

I was still screaming when I turned to flee.  I got nowhere.  He grabbed onto my forearm and held me with a vise grip.  There was no wriggling out of that grasp this time, and I didn’t have a Corona bottle to use as a weapon.  Even in my panic, I wondered what he was thinking.  Security would jump on him within ten seconds.  And then I saw the knife in his left hand.  It wasn’t just any knife, either: it was an 8” hunting knife with an elongated point.  I didn’t see his arm move until it was almost too late.  At the last instant I managed to duck enough that the blade missed my throat and cut into my shoulder.  I shrieked as it sliced through muscle and soft tissue.  Tears welled up in my eyes, but I wasn’t going to give him a second swing at me.  I stomped down and, somehow, landed true on his right foot.  My stiletto heel must have punched right through his leather shoe because he let out a loud snarl and let go of my arm.  I ran.

Two security guys raced in past me as I fled of the back room.  I watched the scene unfold.  My attacker was obviously in pain, but he wasn’t down.  He was limping quickly towards the fire exit, but the security guys managed to drag him to the ground before he got out. 
DeShawn
, a six-four former BYU lineman, belted him clean in the face, and Brawny man’s head hit hard against the floor.  I wasn’t in the mood to watch the rest of it.

I ran downstairs to the locker room and grabbed my things.  I found some paper towels and cleaned up my shoulder.  It hurt like a bitch but it looked better than I would have thought.  It stopped bleeding with a little pressure, so I crumpled up some paper towels and taped them over my wound with some giant band-aids.

There was no way I was going to finish my shift.  They had found me at home, and now at work.  I began wondering if I was even safe at the Flamingo.  The fire alarm had gone off for a few seconds when the Brawny man tried to open the fire exit, and in their drunken state a lot of the customers seemed panicked.  I found Carlos at the front doors trying to calm people down.  Once the dancers got back on stage, things slowly got back to normal and the customers went back to their seats.

I tapped Carlos on the shoulder.  “Want to take me home?”

He raised his eyebrows.  “I’ve been waiting years for you to ask me that.”

I shot him a look.  “Seriously.  I need to get out of here.  That guy tried to kill me.  Again.”

He put on his serious face.  “Okay.  It’s not too busy.”

“Don’t bother punching out.  Let’s just go,” I said.

He nodded.  He said something to the other bouncer and took my arm to lead me out.  It was a little heavy-handed, but it was comforting all the same.

“Let’s take your car,” I said.

We climbed into his black Mustang and he gunned it up the Strip.  Halfway home, my cell phone rang.

“Raven?”  The man’s voice was frantic.

 “Yes.  Who’s this?”

“Cody Masterson,” he said, out of breath.  “I’m in an ambulance on my way to the hospital.”

“What happened?”  I was wondering why he was calling me, of all people.

“Car accident,” he said, before correcting himself.  “Well, that’s the thing.  The truck came right at me.  I was driving home right near my house, on Rampart Boulevard, and there’s no median strip or anything.”  He was breathing heavily, and his mouth couldn’t get the words out fast enough.  “And the guy comes across the lane in this truck —it was like a dump truck or something—and swerves right into me.”

“Are you okay?”  I asked.  I was having a hard time forcing my mind to focus on something other than my own pressing problems.

“My car flipped over when I swerved.  I think I hit a fire hydrant, but the airbag kicked in.  My arm feels broken, though.  It got caught and turned around by the seatbelt when I flipped.”

“Okay.  And you think this was on purpose.”

“I don’t know how else to take it.  The guy rammed right into me and then sped off.  Someone must have seen me talking to you.  Anyway, if I’m right, they won’t stop until they finish me off.  You have any friends with guns?”

I laughed grimly.  “What about the cops?”

He paused.  “I think we need to talk.  You were right—I haven’t been completely honest with you.  I’m not exactly free to talk right now, though.”

I imagined there was at least one paramedic in the a back of the ambulance with him.  “What hospital are you going to?”

“Spring Valley,” he said.

“Okay.  Tell them to admit you under a John Doe name,” I said, and hung up.  I wasn’t sure they could do that, but it sounded like a good idea.  No sense making it easy to find him if someone was really trying to kill him.  “We’ll be there in fifteen minutes.”

Carlos overheard the “we” part and shot me a pained look.

“That was Cody Masterson.”

“Holy . . .”

“Exactly.  He was in a car accident that he thinks was no accident.”

“And?” he asked.

“How’d you like to drive me to Spring Valley Hospital?”

He could tell it wasn’t really a question.  He got into the right lane and turned up Tropicana.  We drove in silence for a few minutes and then I explained what Cody had told me.

“You have a gun on you?” I asked.

He sighed for effect.

“Just for deterrence purposes,” I said.  “No one’s getting shot.”

“I don’t have my big gun, but I’ve got my Glock in the trunk.  Only a couple rounds in it, though.”

“Good enough.”