A sudden breeze outside caused the shed door to slam shut. I jumped at the sound, my heart beating so hard I could feel it with my hand. The shed had no windows and the blackness engulfed me. I felt my way to where I believed the door to be, patting the wooden wall in front of me, looking for a switch that would turn on the light. The rough surface guaranteed splinters if I moved too quickly, and I gently pressed my palms on and off the wall in a pattern straight across and then down and back, until I found a metal plate with a switch. I flipped it up, but nothing happened.
I became aware of the hot air and dank smells inside the shed and fought against a wave of dizziness. I tried to remember if I’d seen a doorknob on the inside when I unlocked the door. Another few minutes of frantic patting found the metal hinges but no inside knob. From the hinges, I traced the groove that outlined the shape of where the door fit into the shed, using my fingers to feel for an inside latch or knob, and pressing my hip into the door. When I reached the hole where a knob should have been, a frisson of nerves raised goose bumps on my arms. Was I permanently locked in? Why hadn’t I taken my handbag when I went exploring? I always carried a small flashlight, matches, and a Swiss army knife for emergencies. Now I had a genuine emergency and no tools. Tools! I had the toolbox.
I turned to my right, hoping I was close to my goal, and slid my shoes along the floor so I wouldn’t trip and compound my predicament with an injury. I moved my hands out slowly, feeling in the air for the shelves I knew were there. Trying to take shallow breaths in the fetid air and inching my way forward, I knocked my hand against a shelf, raising a welt I couldn’t see. But the shelf gave me a starting point. Despite the dark, I closed my eyes, trying to envision the shelves I’d glanced over so quickly earlier. I remembered that I’d been able to look down into the toolbox, so it was below eye level. I lowered my hand to the shelf beneath the one I’d hit and tapped along its edge until I found the metal box. Using one hand to steady it, I lifted the top again and held it open while I groped inside for a crowbar, screwdriver, or hammer I could use on the stuck door.
Screwdriver in hand, I let go of the top and it dropped back in place. The heat inside the shed had become unbearable. My blouse stuck to my body and perspiration flowed down the back of my legs. Damp hair clung to my forehead. I shifted my stance to what I hoped was ninety degrees to the left. Slowly, the heat making my ears ring and my stomach rise, I felt my way again to the outlines of the door, my foot knocking into something and sending it skittering across the concrete floor. I hope that’s not a doorknob I just kicked across the room, I thought.
With one finger on the seam where the door met the casing, I wedged the flat end of the screwdriver into the groove, driving it as far as I could with the heel of my palm. I pressed against the screwdriver, but the door wouldn’t budge. I pushed on the handle of the tool while I pressed my hip into the door. Nothing. Frustrated and fearful that I’d lose consciousness in the rising temperature as the midday sun baked the roof of the shed, I rammed my hip against the door again and again, each time banging my hand against the screwdriver, only to hear the sound of tearing wood as the screwdriver splintered the wooden molding around the door.
“Help!” I screamed, pounding the wood with my fists. I took a step back and threw my left shoulder and hip into the door. It banged open and I went tumbling out, landing at the feet of Oliver Smith, whose hand was on the outside doorknob.
“Mrs. Fletcher, are you all right?” he asked as he bent down to help me up.
“Where have you been?” I asked, glaring at him and struggling to regain my equilibrium. I brushed the dust off my clothes and wiped my wet brow with a shaky hand.
“I just got back,” he said, pointing to the garage. “I heard noises inside the shed and came to investigate.”
“Why isn’t the light switch working?” I asked. “And why isn’t there a knob on the inside of the door?”
“The light works, Mrs. Fletcher,” Oliver said, stepping into the shed and pulling the short metal chain that hung next to the naked bulb. He flipped the switch by the door and the bulb lit up. “See?” He pointed to a wooden wedge on the floor, the piece I’d apparently kicked with my foot. “I always use that to prop the door open so it doesn’t slam shut on me. You know, Mrs. Fletcher, if I hadn’t come just now, you could have suffocated in here from the heat.” He walked out of the shed and closed the door. “You should be more careful nosing around when you don’t know the idiosyncrasies of the property. It could be dangerous.”
“Nosing around”? An interesting way to put it, I thought. Are you trying to scare me off, Oliver? Is something hidden here you don’t want me to see? But I kept my thoughts to myself and said instead, “Thanks. I’ll keep that in mind.”
He swaggered away and I leaned against the small building that might have been my grave, grateful to breathe fresh air. Yes, Oliver, I’ll certainly keep that in mind.
Chapter Sixteen
It was tempting to give in to my shaky knees and spend the afternoon recovering, lolling poolside at the Kildare estate. But I wouldn’t let a little brush with danger force me to ignore my promise to work on Martha’s case. After another shower and change of clothes, I asked Oliver to bring the car around. If he was still disgruntled at being on tap to drive me around Las Vegas, he didn’t show it. Of course, he was by nature a taciturn young man, not given to idle chatter or even pleasant exchanges. At least he wasn’t surly or discourteous. Dressed in dark slacks, a dress shirt, and a tie, he even demonstrated a modicum of politeness toward me.
I’d learned from the police report that Bunny Kildare, a former showgirl, now worked as a cocktail waitress in the blackjack area of the Flamingo Hilton. We pulled up in front of the hotel, where a pulsating display of neon lights greeted visitors. Depicting flowers and flamingoes in pink and orange and green, it covered the facade and heralded the color scheme inside. A throwback to the heyday of Sinatra, Sammy Davis Jr., and Dean Martin, the famed Rat Pack, back when Bugsy Siegel and the mob were firmly entrenched and skimming off millions in profits from gambling revenues, the Flamingo was Las Vegas’s oldest casino-hotel. It opened the day after Christmas in 1946 and went through twenty years of renovation before becoming the shocking-pink palace it was today.
“How long will you be?” Oliver asked.
“Hard to say,” I replied. “You don’t have to wait for me if you have other things to do.”
“I don’t mind waiting,” he mumbled.
“Good. I’ll look for you here.”
Inside, the Flamingo’s dazzling atmosphere was as wild and extravagant as every other place in Las Vegas, a far cry from the elegant, exclusive establishment Bugsy Siegel had envisioned for the high rollers and socialites he’d hoped to attract. The neon décor from the front of the building was repeated around the casino, with tangerine and magenta the predominant colors, multiplied by myriad mirrors. I felt a headache coming on.
In the blackjack area, semicircular tables were filled with players of twenty-one, scrutinizing the cards and deciding whether to call for another to be dealt, or to stand pat and hope their hands came closer to the number twenty-one than the dealer’s. I asked several people, and someone pointed out Bunny. Tall and shapely with a fall of dark red hair, she stood next to one of the tables balancing a tray heavy with a variety of complimentary drinks to keep the gamblers happy and playing. She handed the glasses to the customers, started to leave, saw me, smiled, and came to where I stood.
“Hello, Jessica Fletcher,” she said pleasantly. “Would you like a cocktail?” She wore an abbreviated costume in bright pink that left little to the imagination. Bunny’s figure was nothing short of spectacular, which only made her an average member of the waitress staff. Good figures were obviously a requisite for working the Las Vegas casinos.
“How do you know who I am?” I asked.
“I recognize you. I’ve been watching the trial on television.”
“I’m sorry to bother you while you’re workin
g,” I said, “but do you think we could find some time to talk?”
“Sure,” she said, her immediate agreement surprising me. “I get a break in fifteen minutes. Can you wait?”
“Of course,” I said, looking around. “Is there anywhere we can talk privately?”
“How about out in the pool park? There’s an area where we unwind on our breaks. I’ll meet you at the entrance.”
“Good enough,” I said.
I’d intended to go directly to the pool park area, but the musical sounds of the casino and the clink of coins hitting metal lured me to a vacant slot machine on my way. I dug out four quarters from my purse, inserted three, and pulled the handle. Bells clanged and forty quarters emptied into the metal trough. Startled and thrilled that my “magic touch” had worked again, I debated whether to take my winnings to a cashier to exchange them for a ten-dollar bill, or to put them back into the machine and see if I could build on my profit. I opted for the latter, and in a matter of minutes the forty quarters, as well as my original four, were gone.
So much for my magic fingers, I thought. That’ll teach me. I left the machine and found the entrance to the fifteen-acre pool park in which myriad pools were connected by water slides. Bunny arrived a minute later and led me past a waterfall to a walled-off area where dozens of staff members lounged at pink wrought-iron tables. We found an empty one with a large market umbrella to shade us from the sun’s rays. The heat was actually relaxing after the cold climate inside the casino.
“Soft drink, iced tea, lemonade?” Bunny asked. “We can’t have alcohol while we’re on duty.”
“Lemonade would be fine,” I said.
She disappeared behind a partition, returning with two tall glasses of lemonade—pink, of course.
“It must be tiring being on your feet all day,” I said, “especially wearing those high heels.”
She smiled and blew away a wisp of red hair that had fallen over her forehead. “The higher the heels, the better the tips,” she said lightly. “Why did you want to see me?”
“I don’t know whether or not you’re aware that I’ve joined Martha’s defense team.”
“Sure. Beth Karas mentioned it on Court TV.”
I nodded. “I’m trying to help clear Martha of Victor’s murder and thought you might know something that would help me.”
She screwed up her pretty face in thought. “I can’t imagine what, but if I can help Martha, I’d like to.”
I thought, too, before saying, “I find it unusual that a former wife would be sympathetic to a current wife.”
“I don’t have any reason to dislike Martha,” she said flatly. She slipped off one patent leather stiletto and then the other and, crossing her long legs, bounced one foot up and down. “She’s been very nice to me. That’s more than I can say about the other two.”
“Daria and Cindy?”
“Uh-huh. I met Victor right after his divorce from Daria. I think it was a rebound kind of romance, you know what I mean? He was alone for the first time in years and he missed his kid, although why I’ll never know. Miss Spoiled Princess, you could call her. And so was Daria He once told me that after Daria had Jane, she wouldn’t give him the time of day. In bed, that is. That was never a problem with us—when Victor was home. He used to travel a lot. Anyway, I guess when we met it was a vulnerable time for him. That’s what he told me, anyway. Daria used to use the kid to bamboozle him out of more and more money. Plus, she had me investigated and told him a nasty story about me, the bitch. It wasn’t true, but for a while there, it put a strain between us.” Bunny sucked on her straw, highlighting the cheekbones on her lovely face and lowering the level of lemonade in her glass by half.
“And Cindy?”
“As far as I’m concerned, Cindy stole Victor from me.” Her foot bounced faster, a barometer of her irritation. “She’s a liar, Jessica, a conniving, sneaky liar. Oh, she can be Miss Charm in person, but don’t turn your back.”
Her assessment of Cindy wasn’t far off my own impression of Victor’s third wife.
“Cindy likes to stir things up, you know what I mean? She’ll tell one person one story and tell another person a completely different story. It depends on what she’s trying to get. She was Miss Refinement for Victor, Miss Culture Vulture, talking to him about art and stuff like that. He was really snowed. I like art as much as the next person, you know? But I don’t know a lot of names of artists and such. Anyway, he must’ve thought he’d met a real society dame, but in the end, she was just after his money.”
Having declared her feelings about the other Mrs. Kildares, and seemingly satisfied that she had, she sat back in her pink metal web chair and nodded emphatically. It was a little disconcerting being there with her. She constantly shifted her posture to keep her sizable bosom within the confines of her skimpy uniform, obviously an ongoing challenge.
“When you were married to Victor, did you become involved in any of his business dealings?” I asked.
“No,” she answered, drawing on the straw and draining her lemonade with a loud gurgle. “Victor was always pretty secretive about his business. At least he was with me. I don’t think he thought I was smart enough to understand, although he never said that to me.” She laughed. “It was just as well,” she added. “I really wasn’t interested in what he did.”
“Were you friends with his business partners?”
Another laugh. “No. I mean, I knew them. I knew Tony a little.”
“What about Tony?”
“What do you mean?”
“Did Tony and Victor get along? Were there any bad feelings between them?”
She shrugged, then said, “I don’t think Tony dared to get mad at Victor. He owed him big-time.”
“I thought they were equal partners.”
“In some things, but not all. Tony had invested in a business deal without Victor. Just on his own. Thought he’d make a big score. You know, like some gamblers. But the guys he was in with weren’t straight and left him holding the bag. Tony almost went to jail, lost all his money, didn’t have two cents to rub together, and owed big bucks.”
“What happened to keep him out of jail?”
“Victor happened. He rode in like the cavalry to save Tony’s hide.”
“Tony must have been very grateful.”
“Sure. But I think he was embarrassed, too—you know what I mean?—to have to have Victor rescue him.”
“What about Henry Quint?”
“Henry? Why would you want to know about Henry? He’s just an employee,” she said. “He’s all right, I guess, harmless enough, likes to imitate the big guys. But I don’t think he’s smart enough, or has the guts to do anything on his own. Tony and Victor spoke, Henry jumped. And then he made Pearl carry out their instructions. She’s like most of the secretaries I’ve known. The business could never run without her.” She glanced at an expensive jewel-encrusted watch on her tanned, slender wrist. “I’d better get back,” she said, adjusting herself again into the confining wires of her uniform’s built-in bra. She wedged her feet back into her high heels. “Sorry I can’t stay longer.”
“That’s quite all right,” I said, standing.
“Chappy is the one you should talk to,” she said, taking another loud sip of what was left of her lemonade. “He was Victor’s go-to guy.” She stepped close to me and pressed an index finger against the side of her nose. “I think Chappy is connected, if you know what I mean,” she whispered.
“Thanks for using your break to speak with me,” I said as we walked together to the door that led back into the Flamingo. “I imagine you treasure your time off.”
“It’s a double-edged sword,” she said. “I love getting off my feet, but if I’m not on the casino floor, I’m not getting tips.” She opened the door and I felt a blast of the cool air-conditioning as we entered. “You never know when some high roller will show up and start betting wildly, big bucks, thousands a hand at the table. I had one last week. Told me to ke
ep bringing him bourbon on the rocks, the best kind, single-barrel or single-something. Every time I brought him a drink, he gave me a hundred-dollar chip.”
“A profitable day for you.”
“But never enough of them. Of course, the more he drank, the sloppier he got at the table, making bad decisions and losing his shirt. Gamblers shouldn’t drink, but the casino wants them to. That’s why the drinks are free as long as you’re gambling.”
“I understand,” I said. “Thanks again for your time. Oh, Bunny, by the way, did you know Victor left you a million dollars in his will?”
She’d taken a few steps from me, but my words stopped her as though they’d reached out and physically turned her around. She leaned forward—please don’t let her fall out of her uniform, I thought—and said, “Would you repeat that, please?”
“Tony is the executor of Victor’s will. He told me Victor provided for each of his ex-wives—you, Daria, and Cindy. Once the estate is settled, you’ll receive a million dollars.”
For a moment, it looked as though she might cry.
“You didn’t know?” I asked.
She shook her head, her red hair swinging from side to side. “I knew he left me something—some lawyer called months ago—but he never told me how much. Are you sure?”
I nodded.
“I can’t believe it. Oh, my God. I can sure use it. Now I can pay off that creep and get him off my back. I could even retire with a stake like that.” She closed the gap between us, and asked, “What’s holding up settlement of the estate?”
You Bet Your Life Page 17
