A Perfect Murder in Las Vegas

by A. R. Winters

  I smiled politely and nodded. “Exactly.”

  “I can’t say I was too fond of her,” said Peter. “But now that she’s dead, I realize she actually had a pretty tough life. Her husband was kind of an idiot, and I’m sure he was cheating on her; I must’ve seen him with other women. And Samantha was a smart cookie, but she didn’t have much else going on in real life. No job, no career, so she used all her energy and intelligence to work for the museum.”

  “Where you were also a board member,” I prompted.

  Peter nodded. “But I didn’t do too much work. Samantha spent a lot of time on that job. It was great for the museum, but she also used her position as an outlet for her ego.”

  “And you and Samantha disagreed on a lot of things.”

  “The difference was, Samantha took it personally, and I didn’t. Okay, so I might have thought that she was a small–minded, annoying woman, and that might’ve showed in my behavior toward her. But it wasn’t personal, not really.”

  “What did you disagree about?”

  “Mostly little things: how to run events, which museums to approach for the rotating displays, which artists to have on display.”

  “Artists, like Andrew Aarons?”

  Peter nodded. “Exactly. That was the perfect example of Samantha’s ego—she would move heaven and earth to make sure the man never displayed his work in our museum.”

  “And you didn’t agree with that?”

  “No.”

  Ian said, “Was Andrew’s art really any good? Tiffany and I went to see him, and we saw his art, but I can’t understand any of it.”

  Peter looked at me. “What did you think of it?”

  I smiled sheepishly. “I didn’t understand it either.”

  “But Tiffany told him that she liked it,” said Ian. “She said creative types are too sensitive.”

  Peter laughed. “Yeah, I’ve met my share of sensitive artists. But I don’t think Andrew was too sensitive; he was a pretty practical guy and he kept trying around at the other galleries to display his art.”

  “And you thought he was talented?”

  Andrew nodded. “His art’s kind of meaningless, but I could see it becoming very popular. He could’ve been this generation’s Andy Warhol. I imagine his art will be very valuable someday, and when that happens, it would be good to have some of his pieces hanging in the museum.”

  I nodded thoughtfully. “Andrew and Samantha never got along well. Did you ever see them arguing with each other?”

  “Once in a while. And Andrew approached the other board members personally—he was a pretty enterprising young man. He knew that Samantha was the one stopping him from displaying in the museum, and he asked us to talk to her.”

  “And did you?”

  “Some of the board members were too scared of Samantha and just ignored Andrew. But I thought the man deserved a chance, so yeah, I talked to Samantha about him. But Samantha—once she’d made up her mind, she wouldn’t change it.”

  “Did Samantha seem any different, in the days before she died?”

  Peter shook his head. “Perhaps I didn’t know her well enough, but she seemed the same to me.”

  I nodded thoughtfully, wondering if Peter could have been the one who’d sent her death threats. “Did you know that she’d been receiving scary voicemails before she died?”

  Peter shook his head no. “She never mentioned anything to me, and I don’t think she said anything to anyone else on the board.”

  “Speaking of other people on the board, what do you think about Julie Edwards?”

  Peter rolled his eyes. “That woman is worse than Samantha. In her own way, of course. She’s airheaded, silly, and petty. At least Samantha was intelligent and mean to other people. Julie’s just a completely silly, airheaded person. I think she disagreed with Samantha just for the sake of disagreeing.”

  “So she would go out of her way to make Samantha’s life more difficult?”

  Peter frowned thoughtfully. “In some ways. Those two were always trying to one–up each other. But it was hard for either of them to do, because both of them married rich men, and both of them live in the same Lake Las Vegas estate.”

  “And what about the other board members?” I said. “Or anyone else who might have hated Samantha enough to send her death threats?”

  Peter shook his head. “Nobody else I can think of. Of course, none of the other board members liked her too much, but we all appreciated how much hard work she did for the museum.”

  “Samantha died at ten o’clock on Sunday morning,” I said slowly. “Do you remember where you were at that time?”

  Peter grinned broadly. “You mean, like my alibi? Sure, I’ve probably got the best alibi in the world. I was having breakfast with five of my golfing buddies at the Northridge Golf Club. You can ask any of my friends, or you can ask the posh maître d’ at the club.”

  I nodded, and Peter gave us the names and phone numbers of his friends.

  “Apparently Samantha’s husband was also playing golf at the club that day,” I said. “Do you remember seeing him around?”

  Peter shook his head. “The clubhouse where we were eating is kind of secluded, and if Patrick was playing by himself, I wouldn’t have noticed it. But you can always check if his name was on the list.”

  I nodded and made a mental note to stop by the club as soon as I had a moment.

  “But you know, I live in Henderson,” said Peter. “Even if I didn’t have an alibi for that morning, there was no way I could have gotten into the Lake Las Vegas estate. My name wasn’t on the list with the guard.”

  I stared at Peter, wondering how I’d overlooked that basic fact. “That’s true, to get in you either need to be a resident, or have your name on the list. We’ll get the list from the guard.”

  Peter nodded. “Well, I hope you find out what you’re looking for. I can’t say I was ever fond of Samantha, but I’d hate to think that there was some kind of foul play at work over her death.”

  Chapter Fifteen

  I had an appointment with Julie Edwards, and Ian and I drove straight over to the Lake Las Vegas estate where she lived.

  “I can’t believe we completely forgot that someone’d need to be on the list to get into the estate,” said Ian.

  “I’m beating myself up about it too. But everyone makes mistakes. I’m not sure how I overlooked this, but at least it’s not too late to find out who went to see Samantha.”

  It was past lunchtime by the time we got to the estate, and it was another gorgeous day in Vegas.

  I try not to envy people and their houses, which is especially important since I work with quite a few wealthy people. But today, I couldn’t help admiring the estate where Samantha lived. The crystal blue waters of the lake shimmered gently in the sunshine, and the dark green palm leaves glimmered like emeralds.

  I reminded myself that just because they lived in a gorgeous, expensive estate, it didn’t mean these people were happy. After all, that’s why Ian and I were here today—because one of the residents had probably gotten herself killed.

  The man working at the guard station today was a short, chubby guy with a large forehead and thinning blond hair. His skin was surprisingly pasty for someone who seemed to be outdoors most of the time, and his eyes were gray and watery.

  Ian and I stepped out of the car and walked over to the booth to talk to him.

  The man eyed us warily as we approached. “Are your names on the list?”

  I smiled brightly. “Yes, I’m Tiffany Black—here to see Julie Edwards.”

  “You didn’t have to get out of the car and walk over here,” said the man sternly as he flipped through the pages on his clipboard and scrolled down until he found my name. When he glanced up again, his gaze was grumpy and belligerent. “You can go in to see her.”

  I continued to smile brightly, but I’d met men like him before—caught up in the importance of their jobs, and constantly thinking in terms of hostilities and
people who were “out to get them.”

  “Actually,” I said, trying my best to sound friendly and non–threatening, “I’m a private investigator, and I’m investigating Samantha Wells’s death. You must’ve heard about it?”

  The man continued to look at us suspiciously. “Yeah, I’ve heard about it.”

  “Well, I was just thinking that since you work here, you probably know a lot about the residents. And about Mr. and Mrs. Wells, and their visitors.”

  The man puffed up with importance. “Yep, I know lots of stuff. And it’s all confidential.”

  “Well, we’re not after any confidential information, so don’t worry.” I tried to sound reassuring, but at the back of my mind I knew that the man wouldn’t give out any information easily. “We just need to know who might have visited Samantha on the day she died.”

  “That was a week and a half ago now,” said the man.

  My heart sunk a little. “So you don’t have the records anymore?”

  “Not on my clipboard,” said the man. “But we upload all the logs digitally. So I could access it from my iPad.”

  “Great!” said Ian. “Could you look at your iPad and let us know who came to visit her?”

  The man stared down at us, obviously proud of himself. “I could. But I won’t. Like I said, all this information is confidential.”

  “I know it’s confidential,” I said. “And I’m sure I could convince the police to reopen the investigation, and they’d get a warrant and have you look for that stuff. But it would be a hassle for your security company—especially when you could just let us know who came to visit her, right now.”

  The man shook his head and smirked. “I’ll wait till you get a warrant.”

  “Look,” said Ian, “Tiffany’s a great investigator. She’s solved all kinds of cases. Why don’t you give us the list now, and we’ll owe you one? If you ever think your partner’s cheating on you, or your cousin comes to visit you in Vegas and goes missing, we’ll work for you for free. If someone’s making your life difficult, we’ll take care of it.”

  The man crossed his arms over his chest. “I’ve got no need for that kind of stuff.”

  “You don’t have any need at the moment,” said Ian. “But everyone we’ve worked for, their lives were going just perfectly. Until something terrible happened. Everyone has trouble sometimes. And when that happens, would you rather have a private investigator in your corner, or fight things out all alone?”

  For the first time, I saw a crack in the man’s veneer of confidence. He looked at Ian and me hesitantly, and finally he said, “What did you say your name was again?”

  I fished a business card out of my bag and handed it over to him. “I’ll owe you one. Whatever you need, I promise.”

  The man read over my card and nodded his head. “You better not forget me. My name’s Warren Martyn.”

  He left Ian and me, pulled an iPad off a shelf in the booth, and scrolled through it. “Here we are,” he said. “The Sunday Mrs. Wells died. She didn’t have any visitors that day.”

  Ian and I stared at him in dismay. “No visitors at all?”

  Warren shook his head. “Nope. Nobody.”

  “What about the night before?” I said. It was absurd to think that somebody might have snuck into the complex and managed to hide out overnight, but stranger things have happened.

  “The housekeeper came over in the morning and left in the afternoon. The maid and chef arrived at midday and left at four o’clock. Mr. and Mrs. Wells went out in the evening and returned around ten p.m. No other visitors or activities.”

  Ian and I stood around, looking dejected.

  “What about Julie?” I knew I was grasping at straws, but perhaps she was involved somehow. “Who came to visit her that day?”

  The guard flipped through the list and gave us a list of guests—Julie must’ve been entertaining that morning. “Plus, the housekeeper and her chef,” he added.

  “No one else?”

  “Nope,” he said. “Any other guest lists you wanted to look at?”

  Ian and I shook our heads no and looked at each other glumly.

  “That’s not what you wanted to hear,” said Warren.

  “No,” I admitted. “But I stand by our promise. Anytime you need my help, give me a call.”

  Ian and I headed back to the car, too disappointed to talk, and drove over to Julie’s house.

  Julie’s house was gorgeous, and I knew it was just as big and sprawling as Samantha’s. Her housekeeper led us through a marble foyer to a formal living room and closed the door behind us. A few minutes later, Julie Edwards appeared.

  She was a youngish woman in her mid–thirties, with long, straight black hair that was highlighted with light brown streaks. Her eyes were heavily mascaraed, and she looked too skinny to have eaten anything within the last week.

  Ian and I introduced ourselves, and Julie smiled politely.

  As we all sat down again, she said, “What a terrible thing about Samantha. You can never be too careful during an earthquake.”

  “Actually,” I said, “we’re looking into her death because were worried that it might not just have been due to the earthquake. Did you know that she was receiving death threats before she died?”

  Julie raised one hand to her heart and looked at us in dramatic shock. “Oh no! How horrible. Who were they from?”

  She was a terrible actress, and I resisted the urge to roll my eyes. “We’re not sure. But we’re looking into it.”

  “And you don’t think—you don’t think they were from somebody she knew?”

  I tried to keep the annoyance out of my voice. “We’re looking into it. Were you and Samantha particularly close?”

  I could see Julie trying to judge how much of the truth to tell us. “I would see Samantha all the time at the museum, and sometimes we’d run into each other when we went to the gym. Of course, we had different personal trainers, and different styles of working out.”

  “Did you two get along well?”

  Julie looked off thoughtfully to one side. “To tell the truth, no, not really. We disagreed about how to run things at the museum. And you know how things are—sometimes she’d take offense at something I said, when I hadn’t meant to offend her at all. And sometimes she’d be particularly rude to me for no reason, so I wouldn’t be too happy with her that day.”

  “Yes,” I said, trying to set her at ease, “I heard a lot of people disliked Samantha. They thought she was mean and egotistical.”

  Julie laughed. “I don’t know whether she was mean on purpose, but maybe she was at times. She liked to be in control all the time, and she thought everything revolved around her. I guess that’s what people mean when they call her egotistical. Everything she did was about herself. She did annoy me sometimes.”

  “And what did you think about her husband, Patrick?”

  Julie pursed her lips together, and I could see she was trying to think of a polite way to phrase her opinion. “I didn’t like him,” she admitted finally. “I didn’t like Samantha, and perhaps she and her husband deserved each other. He was kind of annoying, and arrogant. I heard rumors from other women that he was cheating on Samantha, but I’m not sure about that.”

  “And you’re married too, aren’t you?” I said. “Do you have any children?”

  Julie looked at me contemplatively. “I’ve been married for eight years. My husband’s a decent guy, but he travels a lot. I’d like to have children, but I don’t have any yet.”

  Something about the way she talked about her marriage made me feel sorry for her. “Where does your husband travel to?”

  “All around. He has to travel for business, and he has projects in different countries and states. He asks me to go with him, but I don’t like traveling. I want to settle down and raise a family. I’m not sure I imagined this was how my marriage would turn out. But I’m still young, and either things will work out, or I can move on.”

  I looked at Julie
sympathetically. “I’m sure things will get better soon.”

  “Does your husband know you’re so unhappy?” said Ian, clearly feeling sorry for Julie as well.

  Julie shrugged. “I’ve tried to talk to him a couple of times, but he’s so busy with work. I’m not sure he even listens to me when I talk.”

  I was a little surprised at Julie pouring her guts out to us—clearly, this was not stuff she talked about with other people. On the one hand, I could understand that she felt the urge to confide in someone who wasn’t a part of her social circle and could never spread rumors about her or try to bring her down. On the other hand, the cynical part of me wondered if Julie was just trying to get us to feel sympathetic for her because she did indeed have something to do with Samantha’s death.

  “One of the other members on the museum board also didn’t get along with Samantha,” I said, trying to get the conversation back on track. “What do you think about Peter Ross?”

  Julie made a face. “That self–righteous, pompous ass! Just because he runs an investment firm, he thinks he’s so great. He thinks women aren’t intelligent because they stay home all day—how can we not be intelligent? We managed to marry good, wealthy husbands, and we run the social scene here in Vegas.”

  “So you don’t like him?”

  Julie squinted thoughtfully. “I guess he has some redeeming qualities. He wasn’t scared to stand up to Samantha, not like the other board members. And he knew artistic talent when he saw it.”

  “Like Andrew, the artist Samantha had a vendetta against.”

  Julie nodded. “Poor Andrew. I thought his work was mesmerizing, but Samantha was out to destroy him, all because he insulted her one time. The poor guy went around to all of us board members, making us talk to Samantha on his behalf. He’s talented and hard–working, and I didn’t see why Samantha should have ruined his life.”

  “So you talked to Samantha on his behalf as well?”

  Julie nodded. “But that didn’t do any good. I told Andrew that he was better off trying to break into the New York scene. He’s so talented, I figured he’d be able to succeed one way or the other.”