Ms America and the Villainy in Vegas

by Diana Dempsey

  “Oh, and I saw something else, too.” Trixie gulps the dregs of her cocktail. “He’s wearing a wedding ring.”

  “Why does that not surprise me?” Shanelle asks.

  “Oh, and a third thing!” Trixie chirps. “He seemed kind of out of it.”

  “Like he’d been drinking too much?” Shanelle says.

  “Probably. Anyhoo, Happy, you were right!” Trixie leans forward. “What does it mean?”

  “It means that girl is a tramp,” my mother says.

  “We already knew she was hardly grief-stricken over Danny boy,” Shanelle says. “So this isn’t really a revelation.”

  “True,” I say. “But there’s a difference between not being grief-stricken and being ready after just two days for fresh action.”

  Shanelle shrugs. “Life goes on.”

  “Life is short,” my mother says.

  “Life means never having to say you’re sorry,” Trixie says.

  “No, that’s love,” Shanelle corrects. “Love means never having to say you’re sorry. Which is the dumbest line from a movie I think I ever heard.”

  Explaining the plotline of Love Story to my mother takes us through paying the check and getting directions to the Italian restaurant.

  We’re nearly out of the bar when I’m stunned to again see Cassidy in a chariot booth. Wrapping herself around yet another New Man. I stop dead in my stilletoed tracks.

  Trixie bumps into me then follows the line of my eyes. “Oh my Lord! What happened to the other guy she was with?” Her face takes on a stricken expression. “What if Cassidy just killed him?”

  CHAPTER TEN

  “I just rode in the elevator with that guy!” Trixie cries. “And now he could be dead!”

  He could be. It freaks me out even to think it but Trixie speaks the truth.

  After all, I do consider Cassidy a suspect in Danny’s murder. And now I’m witnessing inexplicable behavior on her part with two other men.

  “Okay. We need to strategize.” I maneuver our quartet to the wide corridor outside the Circus Maximus. There’s only one way out so if Cassidy makes a break for it, we’ll see her. In which case I may feel compelled to take her down, which I do not look forward to doing in my pearl gray rayon sheath and high heels.

  “We could call Perelli,” Shanelle says. “Tell her to send a black-and-white to find out what the hell is going on here.”

  “Who’s Perelli?” my mom and Trixie want to know.

  Shanelle explains while my mind attempts to crank past the two Roman Holidays toward clear thinking. “We don’t have enough to call Detective Perelli.” I believe this conclusion is only partially motivated by my desire to investigate first on my own. “What I want to do is confront Cassidy and demand to know what she’s up to. If I don’t get an answer I like, I can call Detective Perelli then.”

  “But what if that man is upstairs dying right now?” Trixie asks. “He could be only partly dead but getting deader by the second!”

  “Or he could be watching the ball game,” Shanelle points out.

  “I don’t even like baseball but I wish I were watching the ball game,” my mother says. “How much longer is this gonna take? Because I’m ready for dinner.”

  Shanelle makes a suggestion. “How about Mrs. Przybyszewski and I walk over to the restaurant and you two meet us there when you’re done? And if it’s gonna be a while, call my cell and we’ll go ahead and eat and you can catch up with us later.”

  I endorse that idea and so does my mother. Once they’re off, I have to restrain Trixie to keep her from barreling up to Cassidy. “Let me do the talking.”

  “Okay. You’re right.” She takes a deep breath. “You are the beauty queen sleuth, after all.”

  The sleuth who wishes she had better than a half-assed plan. Nevertheless, I boldly stride in Cassidy’s direction, Trixie behind me. I nod at New Man Number Two—who like Number One is sporting a wedding band—and address the woman in question. Her eyes bug out at the sight of me. “I would like a word with you, please. In private,” I add when she doesn’t move.

  That gets Cassidy into the corridor outside the bar. She clutches her oversize handbag against her body as revelers swerve around us.

  “Where’s the other guy?” Trixie demands. “Did you kill him?”

  I’m thinking the combination of jet lag and cocktails is hampering Trixie’s ability to be subtle.

  “What the hell business is it of yours?” Cassidy steps away, still clasping her handbag tightly against her. “Who are you, anyway? Some crazed stalker who’s following me into elevators and bars?”

  “This is my good friend Trixie Barnett, the reigning Ms. Congeniality,” I say, noting that Cassidy did not respond to Trixie’s accusation of murder with an emphatic no. “And I want an answer to that question myself. What happened to that guy you went upstairs with? Why are you with another guy now? Why, less than two days after your boyfriend got murdered, are you hooking up with every man in sight?”

  She juts her chin and looks everywhere but at my face. Finally, “I’m not telling you a damn thing,” she says, and spins away.

  Happy Pennington will not let Miss Leopard Print Dress get away with that. I grab her arm and lay on my cryotherapy-strengthened grip. “You are going to tell me everything because I have got Homicide Detective Roxanne Perelli on speed dial. If you do not spill what’s going on with you, I am going to call her and say there may be a second murder victim in as many days on the Las Vegas Strip. And I happen to know that a certain cocktail waitress was pretty cozy with both of them.”

  That gets her attention. She starts looking more scared than belligerent. “I did not kill Danny! I did not kill Robert, either!”

  “Robert is the guy upstairs?” I ask.

  “He’s fine. He’s just … sleeping.” Again she tries to twist away from me and repeats the odd clutching of her handbag.

  It strikes me that the bag is unusually large for her outfit. I point to it with my free hand. “What have you got in there?”

  Trixie interrupts. “I was thinking in the elevator that that purse is totally the wrong size for evening.” Then she grabs my arm. “Oh my Lord, Happy! Maybe she’s got the murder weapon in there!”

  “There is no murder weapon, you twit!” Cassidy says.

  “Then what is in that bag that you’re so worried about?” I wait a beat but she doesn’t say anything so I showily pull my cell phone out of my appropriately-sized handbag. “You give me no choice,” I declare. I don’t really have Detective Perelli on speed dial but I punch one button and put the phone to my ear. “It’s ringing,” I pronounce, and Cassidy caves.

  “All right, all right, hang up!” She stamps her foot. “Damn! I knew I shouldn’t have tried to do two in one night!”

  I leap to the obvious conclusion and I can tell from her gasp that Trixie does, too.

  “Not that!” She glares at us. “I need to sit down.”

  Since I am a firm believer that confessions go better when the accused is off her high heels, we regroup on a fainting couch next to a statue of a nude man hurling a discus. It’s a trifle distracting.

  “I do trick rolls, okay?” Cassidy says. “Danny got me into them.”

  “What are trick rolls?” Trixie asks.

  I spare Cassidy the humiliation of answering. “It’s when you lure somebody with the promise of a sexual favor but what you actually do is drug and rob them.” Now I understand the Restoril in Cassidy’s medicine cabinet. She uses it to tranquilize her prey. No doubt some of it is flowing at this very moment through New Man Number One’s bloodstream, which is why Trixie reported he seemed “kind of out of it” in the elevator. I point to Cassidy’s outsized handbag, now resting at her feet. “Do you have stuff that belongs to Robert in there?”

  She looks away. “Yeah. His watch and his wallet.”

  “You have to get those back to him.”

  Cassidy just shakes her head.

  “So what do you mean Danny got
you into this?”

  “It’s a way to make money, okay? Which some of us could really use.” She throws me a snide look. Little does she know that before I claimed my Ms. America winnings, I was in much the same financial straits she’s in. “Only problem now is I don’t have anybody to fence the stuff for me.”

  “Danny used to do that for you?”

  “For a while. Before he stopped.”

  “Why did he stop?”

  She looks away and goes silent.

  I try a different tack. “Is this why you were so petrified when Shanelle and I were at your apartment? You’re afraid somebody will come around to take back what you stole?”

  She says nothing for a while, then, “Something like that.”

  Trixie pipes up. She’s been quiet. My bet is she’s cowed by this rare intersection with criminality. “Aren’t you sort of in trouble with the police over this trick roll stuff?”

  “Nah.” Cassidy gives a dismissive way of her hand. “Nobody reports it. They’re embarrassed. They’d rather just take their losses. Plus they’re afraid it’ll get back to their wives.” She pauses, then, “But now—”

  “You’ve got to be worried the cops are watching you now,” I say. “Because of Danny’s murder.”

  “I told you I didn’t kill him!”

  I have only Cassidy’s word on that. “And you’ve got all those stolen goods in your apartment. Like that TV and that Tiffany handbag—”

  “I told you those were gifts from Danny! Why don’t you believe me?”

  She doesn’t seem to understand that after these bombshell revelations, her credibility is not exactly sky high.

  “There is stuff I have to get rid of, though,” she goes on. “Like the stuff I got from Hans.”

  “Hans? He’s another trick you rolled?” I am impressed by my newfound ease with criminal lingo.

  “He’s the one who gave Danny the black eye. I rolled him Friday and he saw me the next morning with Danny. I knew it was a mistake to roll somebody at the Cosmos! Man, was he ticked off.”

  I frown. So Frank steered me wrong when he told me Danny got the shiner from a mishap lifting weights. If this guy Hans really was to blame, either Frank was lying to me or Danny had lied to Frank.

  Still, I feel bad for Danny. He gets slugged in the morning and takes a slug in the afternoon. “Just how mad was Hans?” I ask Cassidy.

  “I lifted more than the usual stuff from him. Like his Mac.” She shivers. “He was spitting bullets.”

  Interesting choice of phrase given that Danny was shot to death that very afternoon.

  “So Hans didn’t go to the cops, either?” Trixie asks.

  Cassidy shakes her head. “He’s married for one thing. And after he punches Danny, he says to me, That’s payback. He’s Austrian, you know,” she adds. “He sounds exactly like Arnold Schwarzenegger.”

  “So this guy Hans is staying at the Cosmos. Do you know his last name?” I’m thinking there can be only one Hans at my hotel, huge as it is. But I am concerned about the damage to my reputation if I make an inquiry of this nature at the front desk. There’s this man I’m trying to track down. I only know his first name …

  “I don’t do last names,” Cassidy says.

  Figures. “Do you know anything else about him?”

  “He’s in town for some convention.”

  “Do you know which one?”

  “One of the big ones at the convention center.”

  Helpful. “But he’s still in Vegas? His convention isn’t over yet?”

  “It just got started. He came in early ‘cause he had to fly such a long way.”

  Good. That means I have time to play with.

  My mind is working. I want to know more about Hans, just like I want to know more about Samantha St. James. And, actually, more about Frank. And Cassidy. With all this sleuthing ahead, it’ll be tricky fitting the Sparklettes rehearsals and cryotherapy treatments into my days. Not to mention spending time with my mom.

  Which reminds me. She and Shanelle have been at the Italian restaurant for a while now.

  I plot and plan briefly with Trixie. Once she scampers away—after a parting glance of disapproval at the Lady in Leopard Print—I point at Cassidy’s laden handbag. “I want you to hand over whatever tranquilizing drugs you’ve got in there.” I don’t simply say, Hand over the Restoril. I don’t want to admit I snooped in her medicine cabinet and saw it.

  Cassidy hems and haws but eventually hands it over. I’m glad because although I can’t stop her from continuing this fraudulent scheme of hers, I can make it harder.

  “And now we are going to the front desk and you are going to give them all the stuff you took from Robert and say he left it in your room and you want to get it back to him.”

  “I can’t. I don’t know his last name.”

  “You know his room number.” I hoist my cell phone in the air. “Speed dial?” I remind her.

  “It’s not fair!” She sounds like Rachel now. “I could do everything you want and you could still call the cops.”

  That’s true. In fact I’m pondering whether to call Detective Perelli. After all, she may not know about this Hans character and he could prove a fine lead.

  It is on occasions like these when my investigative heart wars with my inclination to be an upstanding, crime-reporting citizen.

  Usually the latter wins. But not always.

  “I’ll tell you what,” I say to Cassidy. “You do something for me and I won’t call Detective Perelli.”

  She eyes me with deep suspicion. “What do you want me to do?”

  I lay out my request, which has two components.

  “I could do that,” she says.

  I hold out my hand. “Then we have a deal.”

  We shake on it. I am a tad worried that striking a bargain with Cassidy the Trick Roller moves my moral compass off due north. But I decide that homicide investigation requires compromise of all sorts.

  Cassidy grumbles throughout the long march to the Brutus Palace reception desk. “This is humiliating to have to tell them that some guy left these things in my room.”

  “This is Vegas.” I almost add “baby” in homage to Sally Anne. “It’s the sort of thing they hear all the time.”

  I part from Cassidy after witnessing her relinquish her booty, then reconnoiter with my mom, Shanelle, and Trixie back at my room at the Cosmos. Delectable aromas are in the air. I nose inside the takeout bag they’ve brought back from the restaurant.

  “I got two things for us to share,” Trixie tells me. “Pizza with sundried tomatoes, artichoke hearts, and Kalamata olives, and tagliatelle with porcini mushroom sauce.”

  Shanelle pipes up. “Trixie is of the mind that we should carbo load for our rehearsals.”

  I am only too willing to embrace that philosophy.

  Once we’ve reviewed the evening’s discoveries—which are intriguing, indeed—Trixie wants to know who is my number one suspect in the murder of Danny Richter.

  I don’t know which of my current crop of contenders—Frank, Cassidy, Samantha, or the mysterious Hans—to put at the top of my list. And now there’s Detective Perelli’s elusive possibility: the man who tried to give Danny counterfeit bills.

  One thing I do know: today’s investigation has proved fruitful.

  I can hardly wait for what tomorrow might bring.

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  I text Rachel the next morning when I know she’s not in class. Instead of texting me back, she calls.

  “You will not believe what happened last night,” she says.

  I prepare myself not to believe. “What?”

  “Grandpa had that hookup of his stay over.” Pause. “In the guest room.” Pause. “With him.”

  I don’t want to believe it. That much is true.

  “What are you going to do about it?” Rachel demands.

  “I’m not sure.” It’s not as if the man is doing anything illegal. Immoral? That we could debate. I’ll tell you
one thing. This behavior does not jibe with the code I’m trying to instill in my daughter. And since it’s my house, it’s my rules.

  “If you’re okay with it,” Rachel says, “you should let Ryan stay overnight in my room.”

  “Nice try.”

  “I am so not okay with it. I think it’s disgusting.” She hesitates, then, “Plus I feel bad for Grandma.”

  I do, too. “I want to talk about this with your father.”

  “Good. He won’t like it, either.”

  Jason and I communicate via text. What do we know about this woman? Jason wants to know, which makes me think he’s worried about theft. Not that we have all that much to steal at our house. I take my tiara with me when I travel.

  I share my meager knowledge with Jason.

  I don’t like it, he informs me, as Rachel predicted. I’m calling him.

  I embark on my day confident that my husband will read my father the riot act. I’m not sure it’s rational but it’s what I want to see happen. I plan to call him as well.

  As planned, Cassidy meets me outside the Las Vegas Convention Center, which is immense. “One of my rolls told me it’s like three million square feet,” she says.

  I wonder how many of these “rolls” Cassidy has to her name.

  “Did you bring it?” I ask her.

  She dips into the same handbag she was toting twelve hours before and extracts a lovely crystal bowl adorned with etchings of ocean creatures like sea horses and starfish.

  “Wow. This is beautiful.” I don’t ask where Cassidy got it. So long as it didn’t originate with Samantha St. James, it will serve the purpose for which I intend it. Since I had the forethought to carry my patent leather shopper with goldtone hardware, the bowl fits comfortably inside.

  “I bet you haven’t called your reality-show contact yet,” Cassidy says. It’s fair to describe her tone as snide.

  “For your information, I checked in with her Sunday night.” As I say this, the soulful brown eyes of one Mario Suave come to mind. I decide it’s a victory of sorts that I didn’t think about him even once yesterday. “Why do you want to be on a reality show so much anyway?”