A Perfect Murder in Las Vegas

by A. R. Winters

  “We have security cameras too,” said the maître d’, pointing to the cameras. “I’ll talk to the person who has access to the camera footage, and he can let you have a look.”

  “We appreciate that,” I said. “What kind of detective fiction do you like reading?”

  We spent a few minutes chatting to the maître d’, whose name turned out to be Steven, about solving crimes and the difference between fiction and reality, and then we asked him about Patrick Wells.

  “Do you know if he was here playing golf that day?” I said. “He said he’d been practicing by himself.”

  “Marjorie at reception has a list of people who booked tee times,” said Steven. “You should check with her.”

  We chatted with Steven for a few more minutes, and then we thanked him and headed over to talk to Marjorie.

  Marjorie turned out to be a pretty blonde, who went through the list of tee times for us and quickly brought up Sunday’s bookings.

  “There’s no booking here for Patrick Wells,” she said. “But he might’ve been playing with friends who booked under their name.”

  “No,” I said, “he said he was practicing by himself.”

  “Then he would’ve had to book time under his own name,” said Marjorie. “And since he hasn’t, there was no way he could’ve been at the club on Sunday.”

  Ian and I spent a few minutes watching the video of Peter and his friends having breakfast, and once we were absolutely sure that Peter’s alibi was solid, we headed back over to Patrick’s office.

  He wasn’t too pleased to see us, and when we walked into his office, he said, “I was just about to head home. What do you two want again?”

  “We went to the Northridge Golf Club,” I said. “Turns out you weren’t there playing golf on Sunday after all.”

  I’d expected Patrick to deny it, to offer up an explanation or an alternative alibi, but instead he just grunted.

  “Yeah? So what?”

  “So, where were you when Samantha died?”

  Patrick ignored us and started gathering up some files from his desk. “I was out. I don’t have to tell you where.”

  “You kind of do,” I said. “Because if I don’t know where you are, you might have just been at home with Samantha, making sure she was dead.”

  “I wasn’t home,” said Patrick. “Samantha’s death was an accident.”

  “If the cops reopen the case,” said Ian, “things won’t be looking too good for you.”

  “I’ve already told you,” snapped Patrick, shoving the files into his briefcase, “I’ve got an alibi, I just choose not to share it with you. If the cops come sniffing around, I’ll tell them where I really was. But I don’t owe you two anything, and you don’t need to know where I was.”

  Chapter Eighteen

  I was grumpy and dejected by the time I got home, and when Ian asked me if we were going to do any more sleuthing before my shift tonight, I growled at him.

  “You’re in a worse mood than usual,” said Ian. “It must be the lack of sleep.”

  “I think it was the Chinese takeout I had for lunch,” I said. “How long was that sitting in your fridge?”

  Ian shrugged. “I don’t remember exactly.”

  I groaned. “And why didn’t you tell me that?”

  “Because you didn’t ask. Besides, you had those scary, hungry eyes. I figured it was better to just let you eat it.”

  I groaned again. “I’m not feeling all that great.”

  “Don’t blame my food,” said Ian. “It’s probably because you didn’t get any sleep last night, and you’re worried about Stone, and now Patrick won’t tell us where he was on Sunday.”

  “And my mother’s going to try to set me up with some weirdo pretty soon. I can just feel it in my bones.”

  Ian brightened up suddenly. “Oh, Nanna called me. She said she’s really serious about becoming a private investigator, and to let her know when we’re going out investigating next.”

  I felt like ripping out all my hair. “You’re not about to do that. I don’t want Nanna trailing along with us.”

  “She helped us out last time.”

  I stared at Ian, my mind suddenly flooded with visions of Nanna trying to wrestle guns out of the hands of psychotic killers, and my mouth forgot how to form words.

  “You don’t look so good,” said Ian.

  I shook my head. “I’d better call in sick at the casino tonight. I might as well get some proper sleep, and then we can start investigating all fresh tomorrow morning.”

  The next morning, I woke up feeling much better. The only problem was, I had no breakfast at home. I considered making a quick drive to the grocery store and buying something that resembled an adult breakfast—milk, cereal, maybe even eggs and some oil with which to fry them up. But that seem like too much work. Instead, I went over to Ian’s apartment and woke him up.

  “What?” said Ian when he saw me. His hair was rumpled, and he was in his fire truck—print pj’s. “Is the building on fire?”

  “No, it’s breakfast time. Do you have any food?”

  “Cereal,” mumbled Ian, and then he stomped off in the direction of his bathroom.

  I heard the water running, and Snowflake blinked her eyes open slowly, stared at me from her comfy cat bed, stretched, and came to rub herself against my legs.

  I tickled her between the ears and started to go through Ian’s cabinets. It was almost a shock to me that Ian had a better–stocked pantry than I—while my cupboards were almost as bare as those of the lady in the nursery rhyme, Ian’s were filled with Pop Tarts, chocolate chip cookies, and Fruit Loops.

  I put the box of Fruit Loops on the countertop and opened his fridge, looking for milk. There wasn’t any.

  Snowflake clung to one of my legs, and I looked down at her sympathetically. “I guess you’re hungry, too?”

  She looked up at me superciliously, as though I were a particularly stupid human who didn’t understand the needs of a kitten. So I looked through Ian’s cabinets some more until I found a packet of cat food, and poured some out into Snowflake’s bowl. Just as Snowflake went to attack her food, Ian emerged, having clearly taken a shower and changed into clean clothes.

  “Where’s your milk carton?” I said.

  “I don’t have any.”

  “I thought you said you had cereal.”

  Ian pointed to the box sitting on the countertop.

  “But you need milk to have cereal.”

  Ian shook his head. “It’s Fruit Loops. You can have it by itself. Cereal for breakfast.”

  I looked at him doubtfully. That didn’t sound particularly healthy, or adultlike. On the other hand, his concept of breakfast made me feel a bit better about my own lack of adultness.

  Since I preferred eating dry Fruit Loops to driving over to the grocery store, I found us two bowls and poured out cereal for the two of us.

  “Nanna called last night after you’d gone to bed,” said Ian.

  I looked at him suspiciously. “What did she want?”

  Ian had the same expression on his face as Snowflake did the day I caught her eating my vanilla cupcake. “She said she’s coming over this morning. She’ll help us out with our investigation.”

  I glared at Ian over my bowl. “And it never occurred to you to say no?”

  “She didn’t really seem to be in the discussion kind of mood. Besides, I thought she might be fun to have around. Your nanna’s a hoot.”

  I felt myself going cross–eyed. Nanna might be a hoot, but I couldn’t risk some crazy murderer jumping out and trying to kill her. My mother would blame me for that, and rightly so. I would probably be cut off from family dinners for the rest of my life, and then I’d really have to learn to cook.

  Before I could say anything else, there was a knock on Ian’s door, and Nanna walked in. “I knocked on Tiffany’s door,” she explained, “and when nobody answered, I figured you’d both be here.”

  Nanna was dressed in what look
ed like faux–leather track pants and a white knit three–button shirt. She’d jammed a baseball cap onto her head and was wearing fake aviator sunglasses.

  I had to admit, she looked pretty stylish.

  “I can see you’re admiring my threads,” said Nanna. “I’ve picked up all kinds of fashion tips during my honeymoon. Traveling around the country, you get to learn so much. Besides, I figured this would be a practical outfit for chasing down murderers.”

  “You do look great,” I admitted, “but you can’t come investigating with us.”

  “You sound just like your mother,” said Nanna. “And here I was, thinking that I should try to convince her not to set you up on a blind date.”

  I felt a buzzing between my ears. Nanna definitely knew how to bargain, and I felt like I was being asked to choose between the devil and the deep blue sea. In the end, I chose the devil—or at least, I chose my crazy grandmother.

  “Fine,” I said. “But you have to tell Mom, no blind dates. Ever. And you can’t jump out at suspects, and if somebody ever pulls a gun on us, you have to duck behind Ian.”

  “Hey!” said Ian. “Why me? Why can’t she duck behind you?”

  I looked at him steadily. “Because you’re the one who never told her no.”

  “Don’t blame him,” said Nanna. “I’m very persuasive.”

  I glared at her. “I can see that.”

  “Where are we going today, anyway?” said Nanna. “Do you have a plan? Ian was telling me he’s got some wigs. Maybe we could wear disguises.”

  “There’s no need for disguises,” I said. “We’re going to go to Carmela’s neighborhood and try to find out what bodega she was at on Sunday morning. I’ve got a photo of her, and we can show that around.”

  Nanna said, “We can split up. Then we can cover more ground, quicker.”

  I looked at her hesitantly. She did have a point. “Okay, but it’s not the safest of neighborhoods. We’ll form teams of two. You can come with me, and Ian can go by himself.”

  “No offense,” said Nanna, “but you seem kind of in a bad mood. I’d rather go with Ian.”

  Ian beamed proudly. “I am the more fun person to go with. Good choice.”

  I wasn’t in the mood to argue over who would get to work with Nanna. I figured it was too early for the lowlifes to be up to much mischief, and Ian could take care of Nanna for once.

  The three of us drove over to Balzar Avenue, and I pulled up a map on my smartphone, trying to find where the bodegas might be. In the end, we decided to walk. We divvied up the streets between us and planned to meet back at the car. Nanna and Ian headed off in one direction, and I headed off in the other.

  I asked around at all the bodegas, 7–Elevens, and convenience stores that I could find along my way, but nobody remembered seeing Carmela. When I got back to the car, it turned out that Ian and Nanna’d had similar luck.

  “Maybe nobody remembers her,” said Ian. “Doesn’t mean she wasn’t here.”

  “It doesn’t look that way,” I said. “I asked everywhere if they had special enchilada sauce, but nobody did.”

  “We asked that too,” said Ian. “No luck.”

  “I think Carmela was making the whole thing up. We should talk to her.”

  We sat in the car while I called Carmela and asked if I could come over to talk to her.

  “No,” she said. “Patrick just gave me the rest of the day off. I’m going to head down to the Strip and try my luck at the slot machines.”

  “We really have to talk to you,” I said. “It’s important.”

  “Well, it’s not going to happen today,” Carmela said, and then she hung up.

  “I don’t think she’s feeling particularly cooperative,” I told Ian and Nanna.

  Chapter Nineteen

  “So, now what?” said Nanna. “I didn’t go to all this trouble today for nothing. I told Wes he was spending the day with Glenn, I told your mother I was spending the day with my old friends, and I put together this detective outfit. I don’t want this outfit to go to waste.”

  “You can wear it when you play poker,” said Ian.

  “The tourists’ll get scared off,” said Nanna. “When I play poker, I need to wear a sparkly tracksuit like all the other oldies. It’s all about blending in.”

  Nanna and Ian looked at me, waiting for me to say something profound.

  When I just stared back at them, Nanna said, “Who’s the top suspect right now?”

  “Well,” I said thoughtfully, “it would have to be Patrick Wells. He won’t tell us where he was on Sunday morning, and he and his wife were unhappy together. Now that she’s dead, he can move on with his life, and he doesn’t even need to deal with the divorce settlement.”

  “But he was really insistent that he does have a good alibi,” said Ian. “It’s just that he won’t tell us what it is.”

  “Then let’s go talk to him,” said Nanna. “Maybe we can trick him into telling us his alibi somehow.”

  I glanced at my watch. “It’s too early to try to talk to him; he’ll just be at work.”

  “Maybe we should follow him around,” said Ian. “That helped on some of your other cases.”

  I shook my head. “He’ll be at work all day—we don’t have anywhere to follow him to.”

  “Maybe after he leaves work,” said Nanna. “Maybe he’ll go over to see his new girlfriend.”

  I looked at her, amused. “How can you be so sure he’s already got a new girlfriend?”

  “I know how these rich, pompous old men think,” said Nanna. “If he was unhappy in his marriage, he was probably having an affair with someone.”

  I nodded contemplatively. “That makes sense. Maybe we can follow him after work.”

  “What do we do in the meantime?” said Nanna. “Who’s your next suspect?”

  “It would have to be Julie Edwards,” I said. “I can’t imagine her actually trying to kill Samantha, but she’s bored and she hated her. I think she might’ve had to do something with the death threats Samantha was getting; perhaps she made them as a prank. Or maybe it’s something else—Julie just gives off the vibe that she’s hiding something.”

  “But we can’t force her to tell us anything,” said Ian. “She seems like a real secretive type.”

  “Maybe she called Samantha from her cell phone,” said Nanna, “and left her those threatening messages. If we could access her phone logs, we might be able to coerce her into admitting the truth.”

  “I could find out from Elwood if he’s got any records about what time Samantha got the death threats,” I said hesitantly. “But it would be hard to prove anything, even with the logs.”

  “You don’t have to prove anything,” said Nanna, tapping her nose. “Life’s all about bluffing.”

  “You would say that,” I said. “You think life is just one big poker game.”

  “That’s better than thinking life’s one big tragedy. Come on, let’s go see if we can find Julie Edwards’s phone logs.”

  I looked at Nanna suspiciously. “You don’t still have that UFED phone hacking device on you, do you?”

  Nanna smiled deviously. “I told you I came prepared!”

  Ian and I exchanged a glance. The UFED was an expensive hacking device that Nanna borrowed off her friend’s son who worked in telecommunications security. It was a small object, the size of a fridge magnet, that, when placed on top of a phone, could retrieve all the call and text logs.

  “Julie seems like a smart person,” I said. “We might not be able to convince her to hand over her phone.”

  “Where there’s a will, there’s a way,” said Nanna. “I was able to hack into a phone last time, wasn’t I? Let’s go see this Julie, and I’ll do my best to hack into her phone.”

  “I’m not sure you should be hacking into things,” I said seriously. “Mom won’t be happy when she hears about this.”

  “Your mother doesn’t need to hear about any of this,” said Nanna. “Remember, when I go home toda
y, I’ll tell her not to set you up on a blind date.”

  “Come on, Tiffany,” said Ian, “let’s just go and try to hack into Julie’s cell phone. I’m sure we’ll be able to find out something interesting. We’re not going anywhere by just talking to people.”

  I rolled my eyes and sighed. Nanna and Ian together were a force to be reckoned with, and they worried me sometimes. What was even more worrying was that, a lot of the time, their ideas seemed to make good sense.

  I called Julie and told her we wanted to come over to talk to her in a few minutes, and could she put our names on the list with the guard?

  “Sure,” said Julie. “I’ll see you soon.”

  I pulled up in front of Julie’s mansion, just in time to see a Porsche Cayenne backing out of her garage. I jumped out of my car, raced onto the road, and dashed in front of the Cayenne, waving my arms furiously.

  Julie stopped the car and waited for me to come around to the driver’s side, where I tapped on her window, indicating she should roll it down.

  “Where are you going?” I said. “I thought we were going to talk to you.”

  “Something came up and I needed to leave.”

  I looked at her incredulously. “You didn’t even leave me a message, or let me know that you wouldn’t be home.”

  Julie shrugged. “I knew you’d figure it out once you got here.”

  I looked at her in annoyance. “But we’d really like to talk to you.”

  Julie rolled her eyes. “Like I said, something came up. I have to go.”

  Before I could stop her, she drove off, and I gawked after her car in dismay.

  When I got back to my car, I stared at Ian and Nanna’s inquisitive faces.

  “She just left,” I said. “No apologies, no explanations.”

  “That does seem rather suspicious to me,” said Nanna.

  “I think she was just being silly and inconsiderate,” I said. I slumped back against my seat. “There goes our plan to hack into her phone.” And just when I’d started to think that hacking into someone’s phone might not be such a bad idea after all.