Cat in an Alien X_Ray

by Carole Nelson Douglas

  “Not you, Morrie. It’s that Justin Bieber hair of yours.”

  Alch snorted as he rose. He did have a handsome mop of hair, but it was the iron gray of an aging Scottie dog. “I know some CIs who are pretty senior. I’ll ask around.”

  Molina nodded. “Actually, some leftover mob hit would be a nice change of pace on cases.”

  “Yeah?”

  She produced her most sardonic face and voice. “This is nothing involving crazy public relations events or … critters. Old dead guy shot execution-style. Plain as dirt.”

  “Oops. Not quite, Lieutenant.”

  Alch pointed at a shadow near the large building construction.

  Something was moving in it and vanishing.

  A rat.

  Molina raised an eyebrow over the upper sunglass rim. “Grizzly Bahr at the morgue will be glad our vic avoided being lunchmeat for the rat pack and losing any body parts that might be evidence.”

  Alch nodded. “That was a piece of luck. These empty lots attract a lot of vermin. Maybe this guy was a literal rat.”

  “A snitch, you mean?” Molina reflected. “Either that or a drug dealer or even a gambler who welched on a bet. Empty lots attract a large clientele of human vermin.”

  They backtracked in their crime-scene booties to let the tech team have its way with the body.

  Chapter 16

  Dead on Paradise

  “Guess what?” the cheery voice cackled in Temple’s ear way too early in the morning. She’d been inhaling coffee mug steam to clear her sinuses.

  “Who is this?” Brain cell number 100,030 kicked in. “Silas T., is that you?”

  “What’d you call me, chickadee? ‘Silas T.’? I like it.”

  “I don’t like ‘chickadee.’ Don’t call me that again.”

  “If you say so, Miss Barr, but whatever I call you, you are a tip-top publicity genius. You’ve done it again.”

  “Done what?”

  “Once again, a body has been found on the scene of your client’s new attraction. Hip, hip, hooray!”

  “I have found myself in a crazy phone conversation. What are you saying?”

  “Better click, click, click those fancy high heels over here to Paradise. I came by to check the site, and the authorities and their yellow ticker tape were all over the place. TV vans are lining the curb.”

  “Oh my lost ruby red slippers! I’m still in Oz. Your construction project has unearthed a corpse?”

  “Even better, the scene looks rather mobbish. Ties right in with the latest trends in Vegas hot spots. I couldn’t be happier if you had killed him yourself to make the buzz happen.”

  “Silas T. This is bad publicity. You are a bad, bad, bad client. Keep your mouth shut from now on or I’ll … I’ll do something drastic. I’ll be there ASAP.”

  Temple wished she could “click, click, click” her red-shimmer slipper heels—ballet flats for around the condo—and get back home to a day earlier, in a past where she had declined to take a ride on Farnum’s “stunt publicity” hurricane.

  Before she left the condo, she looked around for Louie, but she hadn’t seen him since he plopped on the bed a few hours earlier for an out-of-character purr-fest. He’d slipped away to some favorite condo haunt after that. Not to worry. He often knew what she was doing better than she did.

  * * *

  In record time, she and the Miata slipped into a just-right-size sloppy space left by two askew parked media vans. This was a “hot” scene, all right.

  She’d worn her sturdiest shoes, black patent leather closed-toe pumps, and crunched across the rough bare ground toward a clot of what looked like the monsters from the Alien films, but were only media men and women bearing videotape cameras high on their shoulders to focus on the victim in their midst.

  A mental mantra drummed in time to her steps. I hope it isn’t, I pray it isn’t, I can’t believe it is …

  “Here she is!” a voice from the ravening crowd of media monsters announced.

  They turned, the cameras’ mechanical eyes recording her.

  “Mr. Farnum says you told him to ‘keep mum.’ What do you know about the body that was discovered on your client’s property this morning?”

  “I’ve just arrived, and I merely advised him not to speak about a crime scene that the Metro Police are just now handling,” Temple said, not recognizing faces with a sinking feeling. She had contacts among the media, but not so much on the hard news side.

  “We hear a dead body was recently discovered at another site where you were representing the attraction. Are you a jinx?” a tall guy with a soul patch asked.

  Someone pushed to her side. “Now, don’t you pick on the little lady.” Farnum squeezed her elbow so vigorously, she almost lost her balance on the ridged ground.

  They made quite a pair. A flashing image of him in a coral-striped seersucker suit with a yellow bow tie was emblazoned on her putt-putting brain. She’d never take on a client who wore straw boater hats again. He’d look like a carnival huckster on camera.

  “Neither myself nor my client will be giving any statements,” she said, “until we know what’s going on and have been released to comment by the police.” At the same time, she mulled how the police might just love the site’s owner and operator mouthing off to the media unsupervised.

  “And here the police are,” said a voice from on high she recognized down to her balancing toes.

  The noose of media people loosened and melted away. Temple was glad to know Molina had that effect on her newshound peers too. The woman who was tall, dark and commanding. Not fair, thought petite Temple.

  She turned and looked up. “I’m sorry. We’re sorry. They intercepted us.” Temple frowned. She knew Molina was more hands-on than most homicide lieutenants, but what about this abandoned lot was so interesting?

  Eerily, Molina was delivering an answer to that very internal question. “Mr. Farnum arrived here practically with the uniforms. A partying couple from the Cabana Club was wandering around the premises, trying ‘to see the moon.’”

  Oh. Drunk, Temple thought. It was hard to see the moon with all the high-rises and competing lights in the dark of night. At dawn it would be a drunk’s errand. The Cabana Club was an off-Strip joint where everyone partied hearty.

  Silas T. narrowed his beady little eyes up at Molina and stuck out his close-shaven chinny chin-chin. “I always rise at the first, first crack of light and I always check the site first, first, first thing. Even before breakfast. Speaking of breakfast.” He turned gallantly to Temple. “I’d be honored to buy you the tallest short stack of pancakes in Vegas, missy, for coming out so early at my call. Thanks for shooing the media people out so fast. We should make the noon news.”

  Temple rolled her eyes. She wondered if yellow bow ties were long enough strangling, but offing someone in front of the fuzz was a trifle impetuous.

  “I’ll pass on the pancakes,” she said. “So you can run along now.”

  “Yes, she will pass on the pancakes,” Molina said. “She’ll be here answering questions, but you can go.”

  “I don’t desert a lady, ma’am.”

  Molina repeated, with emphasis, “You. Can. Go.” That sent Farnum scuttling away like a Crayola-colored beetle.

  Temple glanced to where it looked like CSI: Las Vegas was filming. Detective Morrie Alch would have to substitute for silver-haired Ted Danson. Temple couldn’t spot his petite Asian partner, Merry Su. Su was such a fierce spitfire that her name always made Temple smile.

  “Nothing to smile about this morning, Miss Barr,” Molina said. “Your client is a very possible perp on this death. He’d look fishy in a desert. Fill me in fast.”

  “He is a bit eccentric, but he’s putting up a new attraction.” She nodded at the ten stories of raw construction a hundred feet away. “I had lunch with him yesterday and visited the site. Not many projects are going through these days, so I found it intriguing.”

  “What is it?”

  “U
m, that’s a secret.”

  “What?”

  “He’s been really cagey about the exact nature of the building, and this has been preliminary exploration. We haven’t signed a contract. He is staying at the Wynn,” she added, trying to peer around Molina to glimpse where the body might be.

  Molina adjusted her stance to better block the view. “Is that all the vetting you’ve done? Do you usually operate in this slipshod way?”

  “No! I mean, this isn’t slipshod. Everything that exists in Vegas, from Bugsy Siegel’s Flamingo Hotel to ex–Mayor Goodman’s Mob Museum downtown was once a crazy idea nobody thought would fly.”

  “All I see, Miss Barr, is an empty lot, the skeleton of a building under very preliminary construction, and one very dead body that’s been brought into the light of day on land your client owns. Why did he hire a PR rep at this early stage, anyway?”

  “That’s not unheard of. I’ve had only a couple meetings with him, so I’m not going to babysit him through a murder investigation. I’m not a criminal attorney, which I’ll recommend he hire.”

  “And you have no insight on what he’s really doing here, except it’s a mystery?”

  “Right. I’m worthless. To you.”

  “No, you’re not.”

  That was an amazing statement. Temple was starting to think their few brief simpatico moments lately were beginning to pay off.

  “Keep the client,” Molina ordered. “And keep me informed on what he’s really up to.”

  “Even if I have to eat buffet pancakes?” Temple asked, dismayed.

  “Even if you have to eat dirt.”

  “I am not one of your detectives,” Temple muttered to Molina’s departing khaki-covered back.

  Then her eyebrows lilted with an insty-epiphany. Maybe she was. But could she betray the interests of a client? No, she should look at this as protecting the interests of a client. She just didn’t see Silas T. Farnum shutting his mouth long enough to murder someone.

  Chapter 17

  Short Stack

  From the Wynn’s Terrace Pointe Café located near a Ferrari showroom to a Circus Circus breakfast buffet was one of those weird juxtapositions the Strip offered. The bounteous, cheap breakfast buffet was fast becoming a threatened species. Las Vegas had gotten so high-end that low-end had become a nostalgic and exotic experience.

  Young children cried for Cheetos over Cheerios, rejecting healthy for salty, air-filled, and permanently dyed orange fingertips. Harried parents loaded up on sausages and bacon and hash browns. And Temple found that pancakes with butter and syrup on the side were infinitely more nutritious and less messy than anything else at the copious food islands.

  Silas T. Farnum piled his plate with such noxious early-morning fare as bloody roast beef. Lotto numbers announced over the loudspeakers punctuated Temple’s interrogation … er, breakfast chat with her would-be client.

  “You really handled that long drink of Aquafina with a badge this morning,” Silas T. chortled. Not many people chortled anymore, especially while eating, but Farnum did. “Not to mention witch-slapping those media people.”

  “I am not a witch,” Temple growled, trying not to see his plate. Somehow it seemed very, very wrong to eat fried shrimp and fruit crepes for breakfast.

  “Only a good witch, like Glinda.” Farnum seemed prone to use Wizard of Oz comparisons. “But I warn you, I am a warlock, not a wizard.”

  To hear Silas T. Farnum make this declaration before 8 A.M. in the morning over a dripping forkful of kung pao scallops and pancakes was a sure appetite killer.

  “What is really going on here?” she demanded, undercutting the surrounding clamor by using her best stage whisper, which made her sound hoarser than a B movie hit man. “Or I’ll walk.”

  “And you do that so very well.” The slightly lascivious twinkle in his beady eyes really wasn’t forgivable in a man of his age, say eighty-two. “Especially over that uneven ground. Tell me, you’ve seen a corpse before. Do you think he was marched over all that rough ground before he was shot?”

  “I didn’t see this one. He was shot?”

  Silas T. patted his lips with the linen napkin. “A small tidy hole right here, where headaches begin.”

  Temple put her own fingers to the knob behind her ear. Yes, that would probably do it. “Execution style. You saw that? How?”

  Silas T. snickered smugly. “I’d gone over to check the site and saw the reeling young couple acting strange at a certain point on the site. They headed back to the disgusting nearby nightclub from whence they’d come. Probably to call the police and then vanish. So when I looked into what they were messing with, I saw the body.”

  “And left without reporting it? That’s interfering with a crime scene! The techs will find their footprints. And yours.”

  “Maybe so, but I ruffled the sand around with my shoe toe. I used to dance the soft shuffle years ago, you know, which is tap dancing on sand. I’m used to keeping my balance.”

  “Don’t tell me. You were in vaudeville.”

  “The club circuit, but that was more than fifty years ago, my dear. I’m a rich man now and don’t have to shuffle for anybody.”

  “That won’t help you. You interfered with a crime scene. I’m not going to defend you if the police find evidence of your tampering.”

  “Fine. It’s good to have such an upstanding employee. I tell you, that body was old.”

  “I know he was a senior citizen.”

  “That too, but it looked longtime dead, maybe buried in the desert. Nothing as juicy as features on all the prime-time forensic shows. Did you notice how the corpses got gooier, the more popular those TV shows became?”

  “Yes, I did, and the perps sicker, which is why I don’t watch them.”

  “Just as well you live in Las Vegas, where in real life road kill nicely toasts away to nothing.”

  Temple pushed her plate away. “So what secret will that building reveal when it’s done? If the discovered corpse doesn’t queer all your crazy secret plans?”

  “A surprise.”

  “Mr. Farnum, I cannot work with such an uncooperative client.”

  “You’ll see,” he said, sitting back against the leatherette booth and untucking his napkin from the neck of his shirt. “And sooner than you think. I promise I’ll give you the big reveal once the police are through with the site. And that won’t take long. There can’t be much trace evidence.”

  “None of that will matter if I quit.”

  She got up from the table and stomped away through the crowds of couples with children.

  “I’m paying for breakfast,” he called after her.

  You bet he was.

  Chapter 18

  Law and Order: Crimeshoppers

  Temple hadn’t managed to eat much for her breakfast with Farnum, and something was eating at her. She decided to risk a good chewing-out.

  “I need to talk to you,” Temple told the phone at noon when Molina answered with a bark of her surname and department.

  “Aren’t you doing that right now, unfortunately?”

  “I mean … I need a … a meet.”

  “A … meet. Like mobspeak. Get thee to a Mob Museum downtown or at the Tropicana on the Strip … or back to your Chunnel of Crime.”

  “Not mine. I just publicized the opening of the attraction.”

  “You supervised the opening of a funky old underground walk-in safe and unveiled its freshly dead body, which is now on my unsolved case roster.”

  “Oh, that old dead body. I need to talk to you about the new one. The one on Paradise.”

  The line remained silent for three beats. “You have information?”

  “I feel obligated to clear the owner of the new construction in the area.”

  “No, no, no.”

  “Yes, yes, yes. May I come in to your office now?”

  “No! I may want you to keep an eye on this guy, but I’m not some Web site you can look up on a search function any darn time you pl
ease. I don’t want you here.”

  Temple wondered why. Was Molina implying Temple wasn’t presentable enough for your average homicide office?

  “Still, I’m feeling generous about you today,” Molina was saying. “God knows why. I can do lunch in … forty-five minutes.”

  “That would be fun.”

  “Not what I had in mind.”

  “Where?”

  “Actually, I don’t know.” Molina’s voice faded in and out as if she was looking around for someone to consult.

  Temple would love to see inside the freshly built Metro Police facility and homicide unit, but she sensed her prey slipping away for a lack of ideas.

  “Hey, the Premium Outlets–North mall is right near you. It has Stuart Weitzman and Cole Haan and Steve Madden shoes—and Adidas. And clothes from Calvin Klein and Ed Hardy and Hugo Boss and even a St. John Outlet to die for.”

  “I don’t know any of those men.”

  Hopeless, Temple thought. “And a Chico’s,” she added. They had clothes for older and larger women.

  “A Mexican restaurant? That’ll do.”

  “No,” Temple admitted, “clothes again. But there is China Pantry and Great Steak. It’s mall food court eating, so you wouldn’t be trapped by having a server.”

  “Oh, I’d be trapped, all right. I’ll take the steak.”

  “Great. There’s a north parking garage. When you enter the mall, take the Mountain Court down to the Tree Court. You hang a left and go past Juicy Couture, where you get to the Earth Court. The food places are between the Earth and Star Courts.”

  “Are you even speaking English now? Is this place a maze for tarot readings or some other New Age nonsense?”

  “It’s a nature theme. Relax. We had fun shopping for the reality TV Teen Queen show.”

  “You and Mariah had fun. I had overtime supervisory duty.”

  “Just sayin’. The new Metro Police building is right on top of some major retail at super prices.”

  “What I’m saying is you’ll be paying for lunch and bringing me into that froufrou environment.”

  That ended their conversation, but Temple was not displeased. They’d actually had cocktails together in the Oasis Hotel Casablanca Bar after the literal “killer” dance competition that almost did in Matt. So Temple felt she was making inroads on C. R. Molina’s no-frills life and work style.