Furniture Fatality in Las Vegas

by A. R. Winters

  “Maybe it was because of the divorce,” suggested Ian.

  “Maybe,” said Helen. “But I don’t think having a boyfriend affects your getting divorced.”

  “And what was the fight about?”

  Helen shook her head. “I couldn’t hear too clearly, but they definitely raised their voices. All I could make out was the man saying that he wouldn’t do it, that he couldn’t.”

  “She wanted more from the relationship?”

  “Sounded that way to me,” said Helen. “But who knows, these days?”

  We seemed to have hit a dead end with Janice’s boyfriend, so I said, “What was Janice like as a person?”

  Helen shrugged. “She wasn’t much of a talker, that’s for sure. I’d see her going out to work at the furniture store every day, and then most days she’d come back soon after work. Sometimes she’d come back a bit later, so I guess she went out to have dinner, or for a quick trip to the casinos. But she wasn’t into partying late into the night, and as far as I could tell, she never came home drunk and at least she didn’t bring a new man home every day.”

  “Did you tell this to the cops?” I said.

  Helen nodded. “Sure, but I don’t think they believed me about the new boyfriend. Or maybe they did, who knows?”

  I hadn’t seen anything mentioned in Janice’s files about a new boyfriend, so I assumed that the investigating officers might have looked into it a bit and then run into a dead end quickly enough for them to give up and not want to mention it.

  “Thanks for your help,” I said, handing her one of my business cards. “Call us if you think of anything else.”

  Helen nodded. “I don’t think I’ll think of anything else. I’ve got a good memory, and I’ve already told you everything I know.”

  “And I appreciate it,” I said, trying to sound sufficiently polite and grateful. “I guess we should try to talk to the other people in the building now.”

  Helen shook her head. “Most of them will be out at this hour. There are a couple of young single women, and two couples, but they all work long hours during the day. And there’s a couple of seniors here, like me. But they mostly never even met Janice. I don’t think you’ll learn much from them.”

  Ian and I thanked her and headed on our way. She was right—the next five apartments we knocked at were empty, their residents clearly away during the day.

  The door to the sixth apartment was opened by a grizzled old man who seemed somewhere in the vicinity of a hundred years old. His blue eyes were pale with cataracts, the few wisps of hair on his head were transparent and scarce, and he bent over his walking stick and peered at Ian and me grumpily.

  “Who are you?” He said. “You don’t work for the landlord, do you?”

  “No,” I said. “We don’t work for your landlord.”

  He ignored us completely and said, “Boy! This heat! Somebody ought to do something about it.”

  I thought he was talking about God. But then he went on, “I keep telling Mr. Kaczynski that my air conditioner’s on the fritz. It’s not good for my brittle old bones to be exposed to this heat.”

  “We don’t work for your landlord,” I repeated. “We’re private investigators, looking into the death of Janice Wilkerson, who used to live in this building.”

  “Oy! Janice Wilkerson. I saw her around. Last time I saw her, my A/C was still on the fritz.”

  I nodded. “Did Janice live here for a long time?”

  “About six months now,” said the old man. “I asked if my nephew could move into her place, but Mr. Kaczynski said that Janice’s apartment is paid up for the next two weeks. The sister’s supposed to be coming around next week to collect her things. I’ve been getting her mail in the meantime, shoving it under her door. Don’t want passersby to think there’s an empty apartment in this building. It’s not safe, you hear me?”

  “I agree,” I said. “Did you know Janice well?”

  “She hardly ever said hello to me,” said the old man. “I suppose she didn’t like this heat either.”

  I nodded, and Ian and I spent another ten minutes talking to him, trying to extract any information about Janice. We didn’t learn anything new about Janice, but we did learn that air conditioners were temperamental, and refused to work on the hottest days but worked perfectly okay when the landlord came around. But if the landlord didn’t take his complaints seriously and install a new air conditioner in his apartment within the next month or so, the old man would be moving out. The Vegas heat was just too much for him, and he didn’t like how the temperature suddenly dropped at night either.

  After Ian and I finally managed to extract ourselves from the conversation, we knocked on a few more doors. When three doors in a row went unanswered, and I turned to Ian and said, “We can talk to one more person, and then it’ll be time to head over to visit David.”

  I knocked on the next door, and it was opened by a short, hunched–over old man who had hair coming out of his ears and his nose, but no hair on top of his head. He wore thick–rimmed glasses, and his pants were hiked up almost to his armpits.

  He blinked at us, clearly surprised to get visitors at this hour, and yelled, “Yes, dear?”

  “Hello,” I said, “I’m Tiffany, and this is Ian.”

  “Jiffy and iron?” yelled the man. “No, thank you. I don’t need any more of those fancy iron supplements.”

  I tried again. “I’m Tiffany,” I said, pointing first to myself and then to Ian, “and this is Ian.”

  The man shook his head again. “I told you already, I don’t need supplements. I buy mine in bulk from the Pharma Save.”

  “We’re here about Janice,” I yelled.

  The old man shook his head. “I only talk about that kind of thing with my doctor.”

  I looked at Ian, exasperated, and it was his turn to yell. “Janice, Janice!”

  The old man shook his head. “No, I’m not interested in playing tennis. I’m too old now.”

  I tried once again. “Did you know Janice Wilkerson?”

  “Thank you, dear, that’s very nice of you to say.”

  I looked at Ian and shrugged.

  “It was nice to meet you,” I said to the man, and then Ian and I left to go talk to David Wilkerson.

  Chapter Ten

  David Wilkerson lived in a three–bedroom house a quarter mile away from Betta Furniture. I guessed this had been the family house when he and Janice had still been married, and that he hadn’t bothered to move out.

  He turned out to be a mild–looking man dressed in tan shorts and a white T–shirt. About five feet eight, with a receding hairline, glasses, and a thin moustache.

  David didn’t seem particularly annoyed to see us when he opened the front door, and if I had to take his expression as being anything in particular, I would say that it was a mixture of exhaustion from working too hard at the office, and a vague boredom with life in general.

  We followed him into a living room that was furnished with an upholstered sofa set in blue–printed fabric.

  “I guess Janice selected the furniture,” I said as the three of us sat down. “Thanks for meeting us today.”

  David shrugged. “I’m a bit surprised, to be honest. The cops talked to me a couple of times, but they didn’t seem to think her death was anything suspicious.”

  “How long were you two married?” I said.

  “A little under five years.” David glanced down at his left hand, and I noticed he wasn’t wearing a wedding ring. “You’ll probably want to know why we got separated.”

  I nodded. “It would be helpful.”

  “I hadn’t thought the marriage was going too badly. But Janice said she was bored. A year into the marriage, she kept telling me she’d settled, that she could do better. And then she started saying that she didn’t really love me. I knew our marriage wasn’t absolutely amazing or super romantic, but first I thought that maybe she was just being Janice. You know, she was always grumpy, never really happy. Bu
t anyway, about eight months ago she got really serious about wanting to get divorced. I figured it might not be a bad idea if she was that unhappy. I mean, it’s not that I was thrilled with the marriage either, but I thought I was set for life, you know what I mean?”

  He glanced up at me, and I nodded. “I know. You could see your life going ahead in one direction.”

  “Exactly. I thought we were doing well, that we’d buy a house together, have kids, the whole shebang. But when Janice kept talking divorce, after a while, I began to think that maybe she was right. Maybe we’d both settled. The separation was a way to see if we were better off single.”

  “And were you?”

  David shrugged. “This place is a rental, and I didn’t bother to move out, in case Janice wanted to move back. But I don’t think—if she’d been alive, I don’t think we’d have gotten back together. I think we’d have ended up getting a divorce. I don’t mind being not married; living with Janice was difficult. She was controlling, and she was always mad at me, and she always controlled my expenses, even though we both earned about the same. She never wanted me to go out and do my own thing.”

  “So you were kind of happy about the divorce,” said Ian.

  David shrugged. “I wasn’t really sure how I felt. I kind of like living by myself again. I miss Janice a bit, but we used to fight a lot.”

  “What did you fight about?”

  David shook his head. “Nothing serious. Janice was always nagging me to do things; why hadn’t I taken the trash out already, why hadn’t I unloaded the dishwasher, that kind of thing.”

  I nodded, trying to decipher how I felt about David. Usually, whenever someone is killed, the spouse is the first suspect. But David seemed to have run out of particularly passionate feelings about Janice, and he didn’t seem to have any motive for wanting to see her dead. “And how would the divorce finances have been handled?”

  “We’d always had separate accounts,” said David. “We weren’t rich enough to have assets that needed splitting up or anything. And Janice and I weren’t greedy about each other’s money. I guess ours would’ve been one of the only friendly divorces in the history of divorce.”

  “What about alimony?”

  David shook his head. “I talked to a lawyer who was pretty sure I wouldn’t have to pay it. Janice and I weren’t married for too long, and we earned about the same, so there was no reason for me to support her.”

  “I guess you were sorry to hear when Janice died, then,” said Ian.

  David nodded. “Shocked, mostly. It’s strange, once you’ve been separated and decided to get divorced. I feel like I’ve lost a close friend, not my wife. The whole thing is quite strange.”

  “Did Janice have some kind of life insurance?”

  David looked confused for a split second, and then he smiled wryly. “You mean, something that might make me want to kill her? No. We didn’t have kids, so neither of us saw the point in getting insurance.”

  I nodded, remembering that the police report hadn’t mentioned anything about life insurance either.

  “Did you see Janice regularly after you got separated?” Ian said.

  “We met once a week for dinner or coffee,” said David. “I called her every Saturday to see how she was doing. But it was like catching up with an old friend. And there wasn’t even much to catch up on. Our lives were the same old, same old.”

  “Do you know if she had a boyfriend?” I said, watching him carefully.

  David shook his head. “We were free to date other people, but Janice told me she didn’t have a love life, and that she wanted to be single for a while. I felt the same way—I went out on one date with a woman I met at a bar, but I don’t think I’m ready to start dating again.”

  I nodded, convinced that he didn’t know about Janice’s new boyfriend. “Perhaps she lied about her love life. Maybe she didn’t want you being jealous or unhappy that she’d moved on.”

  David laughed shortly. “Janice was far too blunt to consider my feelings that way. No, if she’d had a boyfriend, she’d have told me.”

  I frowned to myself and Ian said, “Are you sure about that?”

  “Positive,” said David, without an ounce of doubt in his voice.

  I wasn’t sure that David knew the truth about Janice’s love life, so I said, “Where were you on Sunday night?”

  “I was home,” said David, frowning at the memory. “The strangest thing happened. I got a call on Saturday night from someone at the electric company, telling me that I’d won a free house makeover. I figured, why not? They were going to provide me with all–new furniture for my living room, dining room and one bedroom, and it was all because I’d been using their electricity. Some kind of automatic sweepstakes. They said I needed to be home on Sunday night from seven o’clock to midnight, and an interior designer would come around and have a look at my place to decide what kind of furniture I should get. So I stayed up till one in the morning, but nobody came by. I even got in touch with the electric company, but they said they didn’t have any sweepstakes like that, and that I hadn’t won any prize after all.”

  I narrowed my eyes thoughtfully. “That’s odd.”

  David shrugged. “I figured it was maybe one of those radio station prank calls—you know, the kind that calls you and says all kinds of crazy stuff to see how you react. Or maybe it was just kids being silly.”

  Or maybe, I thought to myself, it was someone who killed Janice, and wanted to make sure that David had no alibi for Janice’s time of death.

  I was about to thank him and head out, when Ian said, “This place must be expensive to rent all by yourself.”

  “I’ve got a housemate,” said David. “At first, I wanted to rent out the place on Airbnb. But I figured I might get in trouble with my landlord, and besides, it’s too far from the Strip to be attractive to tourists. So now I share the place with this young guy who works at a casino restaurant. His shift’s usually from four to twelve, which is why he’s not here right now.”

  Ian and I asked him a few more questions—did Janice have any enemies that he knew of, and had she been acting odd lately? But David said she didn’t have any enemies, or any particularly close friends, and that she’d been acting the same as usual. So we thanked him for his time, and then I handed him my business card and headed back out.

  “Do you want to head over to Betta Furniture now?” said Ian. “Maybe the shifts have changed over.”

  “We’re supposed to go over to my parents for an early dinner,” I reminded him. “It’ll be good to check out their new house. And Nanna and her new husband, Wes, will have moved in.”

  Chapter Eleven

  By the time Ian and I got to my parents’ house, we had almost forgotten about crazy Cecilia.

  “This is really nice,” Ian said as we followed our parents through the tour of the house. “Very modern. Light and airy.”

  I nodded and murmured something noncommittal. It was a nice house, even though it was a bit further north than my parents’ previous house. But the truth was, I wasn’t used to it—I had been over to the other house so many times, and that’s what felt like home. I missed the old place. This place felt too new—I could almost smell the fresh paint, and the bright, modern vibe wasn’t something that I associated with my boring old parents.

  “There’s only two bedrooms upstairs, and one bathroom,” said my mom, “but there’s the whole in–law–suite downstairs. So that makes up for it.”

  “I guess more people are living in complicated family situations these days,” I said. “Or maybe people want to rent out a couple of rooms to earn money on those house–sharing websites.”

  “I told your mother she could rent out the rooms when Wes and I aren’t here,” said Nanna as we all trooped back into the dining room. All our old furnishings were in here—the dining table, the prints on the wall, the floral curtains—but the room was bigger, and the light was different. I knew this was my parents’ house, and it would be my se
cond home pretty soon, but in the meantime, it was a place I wasn’t quite used to. “I told her she could make some extra money,” Nanna went on, “but she’s too old–fashioned to think about it.”

  “You don’t know what kind of people are out there,” my mom said. “Look at Tiffany’s work. She’s always meeting people who seem nice, but then they turn out to be crazy killers.”

  “That’s true,” I said, “but most of these house–sharing websites have pretty good ways of keeping the crazies out.”

  My mother shook her head disapprovingly. “This house is cheaper than our last place, and I guess you’re right, I’m not quite that modern yet. Nothing wrong with being a bit traditional.”

  The table was set, but the food hadn’t been served yet.

  “Would you like some help bringing things in?” I asked my mother, but she smiled mysteriously and shook her head.

  “I’m still waiting on some things,” she said.

  I glanced at Nanna, but she shrugged, giving me a “don’t ask me, I don’t know anything” look.

  I asked Wes how his family back in Indiana was doing, and we chatted about how he and Nanna were doing as seminomadic newlyweds.

  “I really appreciate your parents moving to a new house just for us,” said Wes. “This new setup works well for us. Gwenda and I keep offering to pay some money as rent, but your mother won’t have it.”

  My mother rolled her eyes. “I don’t even want to hear about it, Wes. I’m just happy the two of you are spending half your time in Vegas. And since we’ve made some money by selling the old house, it’s okay for now.”

  “Do you have any new cases you’re working on?” said Nanna.

  I nodded and told them quickly about Janice, and the fact that her death might have just been an accident.

  “You need to trust your instincts,” said Nanna. “Wasn’t that last case you investigated also ruled an accident by the cops? The one with the socialite who died in the earthquake?”

  I nodded. “That’s why I’m investigating. When Ian and I went to check out Betta Furniture for the first time, something just felt off. I couldn’t imagine Janice going into the storeroom all by herself when no one was around.”