Vegas Stripped (Raven McShane Mysteries Book 2)

by Stephanie Caffrey

  Luckily, one of the gift shops inside my terminal sold underwear and socks, so I got myself some more souvenirs to go with the rest of my new wardrobe. I also bought a mini-bottle of shampoo, with the hope that I could do a quick rinse in the bathroom and get rid of some of the stench.

  The quick rinse turned into something of a production. I found one of the little, private family bathrooms and stripped down to nothing. Using some shampoo, I managed to wash the stink out of my old shirt, which I then used as a kind of washcloth to wash the kimchi slime off the rest of my body. It took at least a dozen rinses of the shirt before I had any confidence that I was no longer emitting noxious odors. I ignored a persistent knock at the door and bent my head into the sink to try to get all of my hair wet. It was a losing proposition because the faucet was too low, so I had to reprise the shirt-washcloth trick and squeeze water over my head while leaning awkwardly over the sink. This took another ten minutes, but when it was done, I felt half-okay about my aroma, but I still pitied whoever was going to sit next to me on the plane for three and a half hours. I donned my new digs and found a trash can in which to dump my stinky old clothes.

  A mostly deserted flight lounge lay at the end of one wing of my terminal, and I managed to stretch out there and nap for a few hours. Mostly I just wandered around, played with my nearly dead phone, and watched CNN until I boarded the plane at 5:45 a.m.

  For me it was just going home, but I soon realized that for everyone else on the plane it was a vacation. Despite the ungodly hour, there were lots of smiles and hopeful expressions on the other passengers' faces. The cynic in me wondered what those faces would look like on the flight back, after they'd realized it wasn't a good idea to gamble a month's salary or drink a whole bottle of tequila. My hair was a mess, and I'm sure I still smelled funny, so I wasn't in the mood to be friendly. I curled into a ball in the window seat and managed to doze off almost as soon as we got airborne.

  By some miracle we landed fifteen minutes early, and I found my car and raced home to take a much-needed shower. When I got out I found a text message from Andrew that said he was boarding a plane for Germany. I wondered if Devine had any connection to Germany or if that was just his first stop on some kind of convoluted disappearance tour. If nothing else, it was near Switzerland, where extradition would probably be tougher.

  After devouring a couple of bowls of cereal, I was tempted to take a nap but thought better of it. I decided instead to give Philippe LaGarde a call and talk things over with him. I could run things past him and get an update on Ethan's situation in the jail brawl I'd seen on CNN. Although his office wasn't open yet, I chanced a call over there. The receptionist told me to come right over.

  Philippe was waiting in the lobby when I arrived, and he wheeled himself over to greet me. "I like an early bird." He beamed.

  "Not by choice, I assure you. I just got off a plane from Chicago, and I'm going on about four hours of sleep."

  He shrugged it off and motioned me to a chair. There was nobody else around, so the lobby was as good a place as any to talk. "So what have you found out? I haven't heard from Andrew, although that's not surprising."

  "Well, that's because he's on a plane to Germany right now."

  LaGarde seemed surprised. "Hot on the tail of the real killer, I suppose?" His tone had a hint of sarcasm to it. The conventional wisdom was that Ethan was guilty as hell.

  "Actually, yes. We think so, anyway. Let me back up." I explained how Ethan's mom had become a suspect and how her boyfriend, Devine, had broken into her house while I'd been inside snooping around. Our working theory was that she'd hired Devine to kill Mickey Mayfield but then failed to pay him for some reason, so he had to break in and get the money himself, and now he was on the run. I explained what had happened in Chicago, although I left out the part about the vat of kimchi.

  LaGarde was tenting his fingers together plaintively. "You really think his mother was behind this? Isn't that a stretch?"

  "Could be. But she and Ethan were an inseparable team, and I think she felt it was some kind of biblical injustice when Mayfield got the big job instead of Ethan."

  He let out an enigmatic hmm. "And now Andrew's chasing this guy around Europe? To do what?"

  "I didn't ask him. But we don't have enough to nail him yet, so it wasn't like we could just pick up the phone and have the FBI stop him at the airport."

  "I see," he said. "What else have we got?"

  "Well, I'm also going to look at Mayfield's financial situation. I talked to his aunt, and she said he was being hounded by loan sharks."

  LaGarde nodded approvingly. "That's useful, even though it probably doesn't mean anything. They'd want to keep him alive, right? He's never going to pay off his debts if he's six feet under."

  "Right. There's also the young girls. We figure we can suggest to the jury that maybe a father or brother got revenge for what Mayfield was doing."

  LaGarde grimaced ever so slightly. "That's a little thin though, don't you think?"

  I nodded. "No doubt. But we're just painting a picture here, a picture of someone who probably had a lot of enemies. If Ethan doesn't want to point the finger at his mother, we've got to have something else as a backup."

  "True," he said. "Anything else?"

  I thought for a second. "Well, Ethan actually hired me to find out how Mayfield got the job in the first place. He was convinced there was something shady about the whole thing. So there could be something there that we're missing."

  LaGarde considered it. "But again, even if that's true, why would Mayfield end up dead?"

  "Right. But it's part of the image, remember? When we first met, you told me that the victim is the bad guy. We're trying to show the jury that the victim was no angel and that he was involved in all sorts of bad things, and let them run with it. Let them think about all the different people who might have a motive to kill him."

  "Good point. Still, if you really think the mother's behind this, I think Ethan's got to come out and say so."

  I nodded. "Me too. But that's not our call right now. I'm just going to get as much dirt as I can right now and then let Ethan and his lawyer make the decision later in the week."

  "You going to keep me posted?"

  "Of course." I smiled and patted his hand affectionately. For some reason I liked the old dog, even though I knew he was entertaining impure thoughts behind his kindly smile.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

  I had a choice: hunt down the relatives of girls who might have been abused by Mickey Mayfield, or try to figure out how he got the job at the Copacabana. The latter option seemed less unpleasant. Mayfield himself wasn't around anymore, of course, but his manager was. Since he was the one who had told the cops that he'd overheard Ethan threaten Mayfield, I wasn't sure if the manager would talk to me at all. But it was worth a shot.

  Rick Rubicon (if that was his real name) ran a talent firm just off the Strip, on the north end near the Riviera. According to his website, he had a diverse clientele, including Elvis impersonators, ventriloquists, comics, and even celebrity strippers. I had never known anyone who'd worked with him, but there was nothing unusual about that.

  I got my car and drove up to his office, which was located on the top floor of a building housing a Cantonese restaurant and a pawn shop. A sign on his door read Will Return and showed a clock pointing vaguely at 11:00. It was already 11:25, so I didn't put much stock in the clock. I decided to head downstairs, where I found a window seat in the Chinese restaurant and ordered a cup of green tea.

  Nobody came or went for a solid half hour, which was fine with me. I was savoring the alone time and the relative calm of the restaurant before the lunch rush hit. As I finished off my tea, I pondered ordering lunch, but at that moment a tall man in sunglasses and a sport coat passed the window. I stood up and peered out at an angle, and sure enough, he was opening the door to the upstairs office. I left a few bucks on the table and left.

  He was still fiddling with the lock
when I opened the downstairs door. He looked down the stairs at me with a confused expression and then took his sunglasses off to get a better look.

  "Hi," I called up the stairs. "I don't have an appointment. I wonder if you'd have a minute or two to talk about Mickey Mayfield."

  "They said you'd be coming," he said with resignation.

  "They?" I had climbed the stairs two at a time and was now face-to-face with him on the landing outside his office.

  "The DA's office. I'm one of the star witnesses, supposedly, so they said Longoria's people would have a right to talk to me. I assume you're with the defense."

  "Yes, I'm an investigator."

  He opened the door and led me in to a small waiting room that smelled faintly of cheap sweetened cigars.

  "Sorry if you were waiting long," he said. "I put that sign on the door at night. It's really just a guess as to when I'll roll in the next morning."

  "How did you know I was waiting?"

  He smiled. "Saw you in the window downstairs. So how can I help you? I've got an appointment in a few minutes, so maybe we can wrap this up quickly."

  He hadn't offered me a seat, but I took one anyway, making it awkward for him to continue standing. "For starters, I'm not really as interested in the threat you say you heard Ethan make."

  "I did hear him make it," he protested.

  "Sorry, I didn't mean anything by that." Talk about getting off on the wrong foot. "What I meant was, I'm actually more interested in finding out how Mayfield got the job in the first place than I am in the threat you heard."

  He perked up. "What's that got to do with anything?"

  "Well, we think it might have something to do with why he was killed."

  "You mean, because Longoria was jealous?"

  I smiled. "Frankly, yes, it could end up being that way. We just want to, you know, understand how it all came about, because—"

  "Because no one with any taste would have hired Mayfield on his own merits, you mean?"

  I shrugged. "If you want to put it that way."

  Rick Rubicon sat back in his chair. He was about fifty, with a full head of wavy black hair and a glossy, overly tanned face. A Hollywood reject, probably, making do managing B-list types in the desert. "To be honest, I don't know how it happened. But I had the same thought you did. Why Mickey Mayfield? A second-rate prop comic playing in a hall where the average ticket had been blue-haired geezers. It didn't add up. That crowd wanted a crooner, someone to sing the old songs, not some loudmouth punk. They would have killed with your boy. So to speak." He smirked at his unfortunate little joke.

  "So who did the hiring? It wasn't like they put up a want ad and took applications."

  "Guy named Bob Weber. He's run the entertainment there for years. Old-school guy. Got some problems, I think. But who doesn't?"

  "What kind of problems?" I asked.

  "Not sure exactly, but this is like his third or fourth casino job in the last few years. In this town, it's either drugs, girls, booze, or dice. You pick."

  I nodded. Or all of the above, I thought. "So did you approach him, or did he come to you?"

  Rick smiled. "That was the thing. Weber came to us. We never even put our name in the hat, you know, since we figured this was Longoria's job for the asking. But when we got the chance, we jumped. It was a six-month contract for a hundred grand a month, plus a cut of the gate and drinks. You don't say no to that, even if it doesn't feel quite right, you know?"

  "No, you don't. Did you ever ask Weber why they picked Mayfield?"

  He shook his head. "Never got around to it, honestly. Don't look a gift horse and all that."

  I smiled. "All right, I'll get out of your hair. You have this Bob Weber's card by any chance?"

  He thought for a few seconds and stood up. "Probably. Just a sec." He went back into his office and returned a minute later with the business card. "Here you go. Keep it."

  "Thanks. I'll let myself out."

  CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

  I wasn't sure what kind of hours a casino's director of entertainment would work. It didn't seem like a nine-to-five kind of thing, but I called the number on Bob Weber's business card just in case. He was just beginning a lunch meeting, the receptionist said. That was promising. I might not get to see him for a while, but I wouldn't have to wait until nine o'clock at night, either.

  I went home to take a nap and then headed south toward the Copacabana around 4:30, my car's thermometer reading a balmy 121 degrees as it crawled along the black pavement in rush hour. I kept hoping the country would switch to Celsius just to give us folks in the desert a moral victory. Forty-nine degrees just sounds a hell of a lot better than one twenty-one, or whatever it was.

  I let the casino valet take my car and then waded through the Copa's casino floor until I found the almost-hidden sign reading Corporate, which led me to an unglamorous glass double door, behind which was a steel desk and a gap-toothed security guard named Reggie. He wasn't used to having unannounced visitors, but the words "murder investigation" got him to make a few phone calls on my behalf. After about five minutes, a wispy blonde with hair straight out of 1985 came down to fetch me and led me up a creaking elevator to the fourth floor.

  Middle-aged, tall, and rail-thin, Bob Weber was a bundle of chain-smoking, nervous energy. His office was large, with oak paneling, and had windows on two walls, but it hadn't seen a decorator's touch in decades. Weber could barely hold still long enough to shake my hand, and he didn't offer me a chair. I took the hint and got straight to the point.

  "Thank you for seeing me," I began, muffling a cough. The cigarette smoke was hanging in the air like a San Francisco fog. "I'm working for Ethan Longoria, and he had a few unanswered questions about Mickey Mayfield. We're hoping you can help."

  "Questions? Such as?" He was pacing back and forth like a caged tiger, a half-spent Marlboro perched in his lip.

  "Such as, how was it that he got the job here in the first place? Ethan was kind of convinced that the job was his, you know, and then out of the blue it goes to Mayfield."

  Weber's face took on a grimace of annoyance. "That again? What's that got to do with anything at this point?"

  "You said 'again'? Has the question come up before?"

  He smiled. "Yeah. From my boss, for one."

  "Why was he asking about it?"

  "Same as you. It was a kind of outside-the-box move. Everyone thought it would be Ethan, but I had a different idea. Nothing more to it than that."

  "I talked to Mayfield's manager, and he said you came to him with the idea."

  "Right. I thought it all through myself."

  I was trying to be polite, but he wasn't giving me the truth. "So did it work out? I mean, until he was killed, of course."

  Weber shrugged. "It was a work in progress."

  "I've heard the place was only half-sold, and a lot of that was promos and two-for-one tickets."

  "Like I said, we had to build an audience first. Who knows where it would have gone?" Weber was looking at the clock, which made me think he usually quit around five, and now I was eating into his free time.

  I still wasn't buying it. Ethan was right—there was more to the story. "So let's say, hypothetically, that it didn't work out. Mayfield is alive and still not drawing crowds after six months or a year. What happens then?"

  He stopped his pacing for a split second. "I haven't thought that far ahead. And now it doesn't matter. Look, if you don't mind, I need to get—" He stopped midsentence and looked me over. "You don't have a gun, do you?"

  My eyebrows shot up. "Um, no. Why?"

  He was silent a minute. "It's just—never mind. You're not with the police, right?"

  "Right."

  "I assume you're working with Andrew LaGarde."

  "Um, yes." I wondered how he knew that.

  He snuffed out his cigarette, leaned against his desk, and put his face in his hands. "This just isn't a good time," he said meekly. "Sorry, you've caught me in a bad spot. I apol
ogize if I've been rude."

  "Not at all." He seemed like he was about to have a nervous breakdown. But why was he asking if I had a gun? I felt sorry for the guy. "Can I help with anything?"

  His voice was soft, helpless. "I, uh—I asked for an extension, but they didn't get back to me, so—"

  "An extension?"

  He sighed and then flashed a thin smile at me. "Look, I've been lying to you. You know that. I'll come clean if you do me a little favor here."

  "Such as?"

  "I could use a ride home."

  That wasn't what I was expecting. "Uh, sure. Where do you live?"

  "Summerlin. Not too far, although the traffic at this hour can be a little rough." He started gathering a few papers together and logged himself out of his work computer. He whooshed me to the door and guided us down to the casino floor. I flagged the valet, and my car appeared out front in a matter of minutes. Weber had stopped pacing and was leaning up against a pillar, trying to be inconspicuous. I began to wonder what I had gotten myself into.

  We hopped into my Audi, and he told me it would be quicker to go south to the Beltway and then swing back around to the north and west. He was silent for the first half of the trip, lost in some kind of reverie, so I decided to prompt him.

  "Your end of the bargain was to spill the beans."

  He shook himself out of his daze. "Yeah, I know. I'll give you the quick and dirty. Basically, I'm in way over my head. It's to the point where the weekly vig is more than my salary. It's embarrassing, but that's how it is."

  Vig was Vegas-speak for interest. That would explain his nervousness and all the pacing, but I wasn't catching what that had to do with Mayfield.

  Weber picked up the story from there. "Anyways, it turned out that Mickey and I used the same loan shark people. They're out of Reno, so they charged a little less, but they've been branching out in Vegas and do a pretty good business."