“Why do you say that?”
“She didn’t twist her face into a disgusted frown when she looked at you.”
“Oh.”
“I was beginning to get jealous.”
Mike grunted. Apparently the topic of conversation didn’t interest him.
He looked thoughtful on our walk back to the car. “So what do you think?”
“You mean, is that enough to nail Cody Masterson?”
He nodded. “If Mel’s hunch is right, Cody’s got a steady flow of tax-free cash coming in. That’s hard to give up.”
“Tax free and partner-free, too,” I added. “If Cody’s been skimming money off the top, he would have been stealing from George. If George had found out he was getting ripped off . . .” I trailed off.
Mike finished my thought. “I can’t think of a better reason for Cody to blow George’s brains out on a deserted highway. Especially if George was about to end it or turn Cody in to the cops.”
We left the racetrack parking lot and made our way back downtown to the hotel, where we checked out. Mike was quiet for most of the drive back to Vegas. I wasn’t sure if he was lost in thought or just hung over. He hadn’t said a peep about last night, and I was beginning to wonder if he even remembered our romp in the hot tub. We hit the Nevada border around four o’clock, and that seemed to rouse Mike out of his thoughts.
“This Mel guy didn’t seem too sure that Cody was actually involved in this skim business,” he said.
“Is that what you’ve been thinking about all this time?”
“No. I have a headache, that’s all. How much did I have to drink last night?”
“Not too much. A gringo margarita and a half a beer.” I didn’t mention that the half beer was probably as strong as two normal beers.
“Huh. Anyway, your problem is still the same,” he said. “Something like a skim is hard to prove. It’s a complicated process that’s all done on the inside, and you happen to have gotten yourself banned from the place.”
“Are you volunteering to help me?”
“No. I do actually have some of my own cases, you know.”
“But they’re not as much fun as working with me, are they?”
“True.” He smiled. “But let’s face it. I’ve lived in Vegas for fifteen years. I remember the FBI once spent two years proving a single case of skimming. They had informants on the inside, specially trained agents, accountants, handwriting experts, marked bills, wiretaps, and God knows what else. And you’re just you.”
“Thanks for the vote of confidence.”
“My point is, I don’t think you want to open that whole can of worms. And you don’t have to. The details of the skim aren’t that important right now, or at least that’s not what your client hired you to sniff out. That would take forever, and for you it’d be impossible. The real question is, did George Hannity find out about a skim before he was killed? And if so, was Cody involved?”
“I don’t think I’m with you all the way,” I said.
“The point is that any embezzlement operation is irrelevant unless you can show that George Hannity had actually found out about it. Otherwise there’d be no reason to kill him. So if you can show that he knew about it, and if you can show that Cody’s tied into the whole thing, that might be enough to take him down.”
I nodded. “I get it. If I find out Hannity knew nothing about it, I can drop it and focus on other things. No sense going off on a wild goose chase if I don’t have to.”
“Exactly.” Mike had a good point.
We got back to Las Vegas just in time for the tail end of rush hour, and I dropped Mike off his house. He gave me a smile and thanked me for dragging him along. But that was it. Shy Mike was back.
I got home and checked my mail. I was surprised to find a cashier’s check for $4,500 along with a copy of my retainer agreement signed by Barbara Finley, the woman from Indiana who’d called the week before. I was almost certain she’d been scared off by my hourly rates, but I was happy to be wrong. As instructed, Barbara included a note describing what she’d sniffed out about her husband’s itinerary. He’d be arriving Thursday morning on Northwest Airlines flight 903, staying at Mandalay Bay with a party of five or six, leaving Sunday. She’d also enclosed a few pictures of her husband to help me identify him. Easy work—no hassle, paid up front, nobody gets hurt. The best part was that clients like Mrs. Finley were always happiest when I had nothing interesting to report.
The sun was creeping lower and lower, and after the long road trip all I wanted to do was open a bottle of champagne and lounge on my balcony to watch the Strip light up at night. Actually, what I really wanted was for Mike to join me in the hot tub in the pool downstairs, but it seemed like he only put out after tequila. I made a solemn resolution to get him drunk more often.
In a rare moment of genius I came up with a way to be lazy and get some work done at the same time. I could call Rachel. We hadn’t talked much about my progress so far. Probably because I hadn’t made any progress. I picked up the phone and dialed her cell number.
“How’d you like to come over for some champagne? We can order food and watch the Strip light up from my balcony.”
“Um, okay. What’s the occasion?”
“Just want to talk a little about the case.” I cringed, unable to believe my own fib. I fessed up. “Actually, it’s really just an excuse to open some bubbly.”
She laughed. “You need an excuse? Just give me your address and I’ll get there in a half hour.”
That gave me enough time to dig out a few bottles I had stashed away underneath my bed. One for the freezer, one for the fridge. I was glad Rachel was joining me. We’d been great friends five years ago, but things had changed when she married George. But even after George was killed Rachel didn’t make any efforts to restart our friendship. I supposed that once you were admitted to high society, there wasn’t much reason to rekindle old friendships with commoner like me.
Rachel was on time. It was still over 90 degrees outside, and she was dressed for it. She wore casual athletic shorts, sandals, and a thin brown zip-up cotton top. When we got outside to my balcony, she removed the top. She knew I was checking her out, so she made a little display out of it by swinging her top around above her head. She was pushing forty, but she looked fantastic in the skimpy red bra she wore underneath. The washed-out Rachel I’d seen at Cougar’s a week earlier was gone.
“You look great,” I said. “Every time I see you, I think I should have gone with C’s. Mine are too big.”
“That’s crap and you know it,” she said, smiling. “By the way, your valet guy is gorgeous! He can park my car anytime.”
“Must be Tommy. Working late.”
She smiled lasciviously. “Yum! Now where’s this champagne you promised?”
I got out a couple glasses and poured from the bottle that had been in the freezer. It wasn’t quite cold enough yet, but we didn’t care. We clinked glasses, took healthy gulps, and settled into the two reclining deck chairs on my balcony. The giant fake hot air balloon outside the Paris casino was beginning to glow a deep blue.
“I was in San Diego the last two days,” I said. “Finally found Mel Block.”
“So he’s still alive?”
“Yeah, but not for long. He’s got a nice pad in La Jolla and a little waif who acts as his maid. Anyway, he has a theory that some insiders might have been skimming profits from the casino.”
“When?”
“He thought it’s been going on for awhile, but he was short on details. More of a hunch kind of thing. He just knows they’ve been paying him an awful lot of money for no apparent reason. He thinks it’s so he keeps his mouth shut.”
“Wow,” she muttered.
“So George never mentioned anything about this? He wasn’t suspicious that someone was ripping him off from the inside?”
Rachel thought about it for a second. “Not that I remember. He would have gone through the roof, though. As hard as he wo
rked for that place—and his dad, too—to think that someone would be stealing from him is pretty scary. Especially if it was his brother-in-law.”
“No doubt.” We’d managed to polish off our champagne in less than five minutes. I poured us fresh glasses.
“So does Mel think Cody was involved in this?”
“He wasn’t sure, but he thought it was possible. So you’re sure George never mentioned anything about this?”
“Yeah, I’m sure. I would remember something like that. If they were stealing from George, they were stealing from me!”
“Good point,” I said.
“I suppose you might try talking to Amy herself. I never really talked about business with George, but he and his sister were pretty tight. She might have known if something was up.”
I refilled my glass again. “That will be a fun conversation. Hi, I’m wondering if your husband was stealing from the casino and murdered your brother when he found out. Can we talk?”
“Yeah, I guess I hadn’t thought about it that way,” Rachel said.
“Anyway, it’s too nice a night to talk about business. But I think now I can officially deduct the champagne as a business expense.”
“Happy to help,” she said. “Can you deduct Chinese food too?” Her eyelids were getting a little droopy. I had forgotten what a lightweight she was.
“I don’t see why not.” I went inside to get a menu, and we decided on the Happy Family Special, which seemed to come with two helpings of every kind of fried meat I could imagine.
It was still hot outside, and we sat like steamed dumplings as we waited for our food and watched the daylight fade to black. Rachel was well past her limit for champagne.
She turned to look at me suddenly. “You getting any these days?”
“Any what?” I asked.
She smiled mischievously.
“What are you, in high school?” I laughed.
She frowned. “I take that as a ‘no.’”
“Actually, I should thank you. My little San Diego trip gave me an excuse to get out of town with this guy I kind of work with.”
“Do tell.” She turned her recliner a few degrees to face me.
“Well, he’s kind of shy. Mike’s his name. Actually, he’s supposed to be supervising my work during my first year as an investigator.”
“So . . . he’s ugly?”
I chuckled. “Not even close. You should see his abs. Anyway, he’s a Mormon, and like I said, he’s kind of shy.”
“So the answer is, ‘no, you’re not getting any.’” Rachel made a face.
“Not exactly. After a couple of drinks, Mike turned into a beast.”
“I thought Mormons don’t drink,” she said.
“Just like Catholics never miss church on Sundays.”
“So you got him drunk?” She pretended to be shocked.
“It was worth it,” I said. “And the guy’s like thirty-five. He’s a big boy. A very big boy, actually.” An X-rated image of a dripping wet naked Mike popped into my head.
She raised her eyebrows. “So are you guys an item?”
“An item? Who says that anymore?” I chuckled. “No, I doubt it. He didn’t even kiss me goodbye when I dropped him off at home.”
“Wow,” she said. We sat in silence for a minute. “So how drunk did you get this poor young man?”
I thought about it for a second. “He was pretty tanked, I guess. Why?”
“Well, are you sure he remembers sleeping with you? That happened to me once when I was in college. Guy got me drunk and apparently we had a lot of fun that I will never remember. He was offended when I barely said ‘hi’ to him the next day.”
“That only happened once?”
She shot me a dirty look.
“I suppose it’s possible,” I said. “Mike never mentioned it today and he acted almost like nothing had happened.” That would explain a lot, I thought. I poured off the rest of the bottle right before our Happy Family special arrived. It made us very happy indeed, but we both developed a food coma and passed out watching a Lifetime movie.
Chapter 11
The morning news said we had finally been granted a reprieve from the weather, with high temperatures only expected to reach the low 90's. The downside was that I had no more excuses for avoiding my daily jog. I toughed it up and got my jogging clothes on. I ran west from my apartment, away from the Strip into a maze of strip malls, warehouses and the occasional pawn shop. The first half of the jog was a blissful escape. I thought about everything and nothing at the same time. But reality hit me when I turned to head back. I was nowhere in this case. I had learned almost nothing about the Outpost casino except that its head of security was an asshole with sharp fingernails. The only lead I had was what Mel Block had told me at the Del Mar racetrack, but how was I supposed to learn anything about a skim operation if I couldn’t even get inside the place?
Rachel said it might be worth talking with Amy Masterson, her former sister-in-law. I had poured cold water on that idea. It didn’t take a genius to guess that Amy wouldn’t be in any kind of a mood to help anyone trying to prove her husband was a murderer. And I would be willing to bet that word had already gotten out that I had been sniffing around about Cody Masterson.
As I cooled down from my jog, a growing temptation was building in me to pawn the problem off on Mike. He had tried to look busy earlier in the week, but I could tell he wasn’t exactly swamped in his own work. It was the dead of summer, and a lot of the insurance people he worked for were probably on vacation. Plus, it might give me an opportunity to get him drunk again.
I showered quickly and hit the internet. I had no idea where a jet-set couple like Amy and Cody Masterson might live—a palatial suburban mansion? Lake Las Vegas? A penthouse condo on the Strip? I guessed that they were not listed in the phonebook, and I was right. The two were hardly a publicity-shy couple, though, so I figured their home would have been in the newspaper at some point.
I searched the Review-Journal’s website for any stories mentioning their house. Nada. The Mastersons hadn’t hosted any charity galas or political fundraisers, apparently. I decided I might as well pay for the information. Rachel hadn’t said anything about money, and I hadn’t felt like bringing it up. But I assumed if things worked out she’d pay me a small fortune without me having to ask. I had a Westlaw account, and with that online service you could uncover all sorts of legal information about real estate—deeds, easements, title transfers, or even overdue property taxes. Plugging in a search for AMY MASTERSON didn’t produce any hits, but when I used her maiden name, AMY HANNITY, I found three records. The first hit showed that she had purchased a $755,000 house in the east side of town about eight years ago. The second record, five years later, told me she sold that house for a nifty $400,000 profit, and the third hit revealed that she’d plowed that money into a property assessed at $2.6 million on Champion Hills Lane in the western suburb of Spring Valley, about ten miles away from the Strip. I wondered how much the street’s pretentious name added to the purchase price.
I wrote down the address and phoned Mike. He didn’t sound too thrilled with the idea.
“If anything, you’re supposed to be working for me,” he said. I wondered if he was a little sensitive about the whole thing. He was the one with the experience, but I was the one working the big case while he chased down small-time deadbeats who were faking neck injuries. I decided to become a damsel in distress.
“I just don’t know where else to turn,” I said. “I’m toxic. They won’t let me in that casino, and everyone connected with it probably knows I’m trying to bring Cody down.”
Mike gave me his silent routine.
“I’ve already done the hard part,” I said.
“Meaning what?”
“I found out where she lives.”
He snorted. “What exactly am I supposed to do? Ring the doorbell and ask, ‘Did your husband do it?’”
I explained what I wanted to know, which was
whether she or her brother had any idea that someone inside the casino was ripping them off.
“I guess that makes sense,” he said. “If I come in asking whether her brother knew they were being stolen from, it’s not quite as bad as asking if her husband’s a murderer.”
“Right. All I want to know is if George suspected any kind of embezzlement before he was killed. She might actually be interested in finding out someone thinks they’re being ripped off. If Cody was involved, it’s very possible that she has no idea about it.”
“And I can bill this?” Mike asked.
“Of course!” I laughed. That didn’t mean he’d be paid for it, but I didn’t mention that little detail. “I figure she might be home right now actually. It’s only ten. How about it?”
“You’re driving?”
“Whatever it takes. I’ll just hide in the car when we get there.”
I called down to the valet to get my car. When I got downstairs, Tommy was bent over my car polishing the hood. No one seemed to be watching, so I allowed myself ten seconds to admire the view. At what point, I wondered, did I officially become a dirty old woman?
I headed downtown to pick up Mike at his office, and then we headed west on Vegas Drive, which formed a T with a street called Rampart Boulevard.
“Nice neighborhood,” Mike said. “They don’t mess around out here.”
Rampart Boulevard lived up to its name. An imposing twelve-foot stone wall ran the entire length of the street, basically giving the finger to the outside world and anyone who didn’t belong there.
“Nothing subtle about that wall,” I said. “Gotta keep the riffraff away.”
Mike chuckled. “Riffraff like us.”
I had worked at a few private events in homes in this neighborhood—birthday and bachelor parties, mostly—but I wasn’t about to let Mike know that. I drove south along the wall for a few blocks and found the entrance to the subdivision. Summerlin, as the entire community was known, was an upscale development consisting mainly of condos and mansions, and several of the neighborhoods were gated. For some reason, this wasn’t one of them.
Diva Las Vegas (Book 1 in Raven McShane Series) Page 8
