Lounge Singers And Liars In Las Vegas

by A. R. Winters

  Nadia sighed, standing up wearily. “I’m glad he’s dead,” she said.

  She walked over to the counter opposite where Ian stood, the one with all her jewelry. She rifled through the drawers, found what she wanted, and pulled out a large box.

  “I wanted Roger to rot in prison,” she said. “I didn’t want him dead. But some people are so stupid. Anyway, this’ll do. Him dead is almost as good as him being in prison.”

  She pulled out a large gun from the box and pointed it at us.

  “I didn’t want Roger dead, but he is. Alicia’s already dead. Two more deaths won’t make a difference in the scheme of things.”

  “Whoa, whoa!” I held up my hands. “You don’t want to do this really, do you?”

  Nadia shrugged. “You two mean nothing to me. But you know too much. So I should just get you out of the way already.”

  “But,” Ian squeaked in a high-pitched voice, “you could go to prison for this! You could get a life sentence!”

  Nadia laughed humorlessly. “I’ve already got a life sentence. Three more months left, remember? I’ll be dead before the trial ends. I’ll never go to prison. And hey, who knows—they won’t be able to prove anything, will they? So my reputation will even stay intact.”

  I racked my brain to come up with something to stop her. “What about all the people who still idolize Roger?” I said. “You don’t want to kill us, you want u—”

  I was interrupted by the RV door swinging open wildly.

  It was Anastacia!

  She was dressed in a glamorous black gown, and her hair flowed down her back in shiny brown waves.

  She looked at me and said, “Wh—”

  Before she could finish her thought, Nadia spun around to face her and fired twice.

  The shot rang out through the RV.

  Anna screamed and fell back.

  “What!?” Nadia looked down at Anna in shock. “Who’re you?”

  Ian used Nadia’s distraction to jump forward and grab a firm hold of the gun. I joined him, and as Nadia swore and yelled loudly, we managed to pry the gun out of her hands. I found handcuffs in my bag, and Ian cuffed Nadia’s hands behind her back, while I went over to Anna, who lay on the floor of the RV, groaning in pain.

  I walked over to Anna. “What’re you doing here?”

  She groaned again and reached down under her gown—and pulled out a gun of her own.

  “You!” She yelled, pointing the gun at Nadia. “You killed Roger!”

  “He deserved to die!” Nadia yelled back. “Why do you care?”

  “Because I love him!” Anna groaned. “Roger was mine! He was supposed to be mine.”

  “You’re in shock,” I said to Anna. “You don’t mean what you’re saying. You certainly don’t want to kill Nadia.”

  I found some wipes in my bag and knelt down beside Anna.

  “This one’s a pretty bad wound,” I said, looking at her shoulder. “But this wound here on your ear’s just a flesh wound.”

  Anna groaned, tilting her head. Blood smeared her face, and I used my wipe to clean it off. As I did, her makeup came off, revealing wrinkled skin underneath.

  Behind me, Ian gasped. “Anna! That’s not your real name—you’re actually Joan!”

  I wiped under her eye, removing the thick concealer and revealing dark circles.

  “You are Joan,” I said softly. “You’re just pretending to be someone named Anastacia.”

  Joan—Anastacia—whoever she was groaned again. “I’m dying,” she moaned. “Who cares what my name is?”

  “I care,” I said quickly. “And I’m sure Roger cares. And Nadia too—who you don’t want to kill, I’m sure.”

  “I do,” she moaned. “I do want to kill her. She killed my Roger. She deserves to die.”

  “You’re really Anna,” Ian repeated, his voice full of wonder. “How’d you do it?”

  Anna glared at him. “What do you care? You men, you think you’re so smart, but you’re really little boys compared to a woman like me.”

  “Of course,” I agreed. “The men don’t know much. Women rule the world.”

  She grunted but didn’t say anything.

  “So how’d you get away with being Anna?” I asked.

  “It was easy,” she said, groaning again. “Harvey went to bed early most nights, with the help of some crushed-up sleeping pills mixed into his wine. Some nights, when I couldn’t be bothered with that, I’d tell him I was going over to stay with my mom, and he was free to roam around the city. He liked that.” She grinned at her cunning.

  “What if he talked to your mom?” I asked.

  Joan’s face fell. “He’d never bother. He didn’t even listen when I’d told him she died.”

  “Ouch. I’m sorry.”

  “Don’t be. He was a jerk. He fell in love with me when I was sexy, but after we got married, he made me stop buying beauty stuff and made me wear all those frumpy clothes.” Her left eye twitched, and she went on. “I wasn’t going to give up being who I was. I became the frumpy Joan for him, but I became Anastacia for myself. Makeup, contacts, and clothes can do wonders for a woman.”

  I nodded. “I see that now. And how’d you meet Roger?”

  She smiled. “I went to one of his shows. It was easy to fall for his charm. I met him after, and he fell for me. We fell for each other.”

  “The man’s a snake!” Nadia spat out from where she was being held by Ian. “He doesn’t fall for anyone!”

  “No.” Joan’s face fell. “He doesn’t. I thought he liked me, but really, he liked playing the field. He didn’t care for me the way I cared for him.”

  “He’s a rat!” Nadia spewed. “He only loves himself.”

  “Yes,” said Joan sadly. “That’s true.” Then she brightened up. “I figured out a way, though. A way to get him to be only with me.”

  She paused, her gun-holding hand trembling. “Damn. I should’ve had something to eat this morning. I’m feeling weak.”

  I looked at her thin arms and tight dress. “I guess you starved yourself to look good for Roger.”

  “Oh, yes,” she said. “It was worth it. But now—now he’s dead!”

  She raised her gun again, and I quickly said, “What was your plan? To get Roger to yourself?”

  Joan smiled with satisfaction. “I was going to send him to jail! Then, I’d be the only one visiting him, writing to him. I’d be the only one he could possibly be with—there’d be no other women! Ever! For the rest of his life.”

  Ian nodded. “That sounds like a solid plan.”

  Joan beamed. “It was. I had it all planned out. I’d kill Harvey, then pin the blame on Roger. Who’d doubt he was innocent? Especially not after the whole Alicia thing.”

  I glanced at Nadia, but thankfully, she didn’t say anything.

  “Where does Pete come into this?” Ian asked. “Were you really dating him?”

  “Sort of,” Joan said with a grimace. “I mean, as Anna, I pretended to like him. I got him to tell me all about Harvey, then I persuaded him to kill the man. I even got him a ball peen hammer. It would be easy—he just needed to hit Harvey hard enough.”

  “Did he kill Harvey?”

  Joan groaned again. “Oh, no. The idiot. He went and hit Harvey, but he didn’t hit him hard enough. Harvey just came inside with a bleeding head.”

  Joan lowered her gun-holding arm again, and I could see her energy waning. “The idiot. Anyway, I told Harvey I’d fix him up. I mixed up a bunch of painkillers and blood thinners into his drink, and he passed out. I was hoping that’d kill him, but I wasn’t sure. So I put a plastic bag and tied it around his head, just to be sure.”

  “Wow,” said Ian. “You were really thorough.”

  Joan smiled weakly. “Yeah, well, couldn’t take a risk, could I? And I didn’t want his blood on my floor. So after that, I stripped off his clothes and put him in the bathtub. I grabbed as much ice and chilled water as I could out of the fridge. I put it all in with him.”
<
br />   “The hypothermia,” I muttered to himself. Harvey hadn’t been dead until Joan had finally put him in the bath.

  “I took off the plastic bag for a moment,” Joan muttered, almost to herself. “I said goodbye to him. Real well. And then, I put the bag back on and went off to my show.”

  I shook my head, but Joan wasn’t looking at me. She’d already closed her eyes and was breathing deeply.

  “I came home,” she said softly. “Stuffed him into a huge rolling garment carrier.”

  “That’s why the autopsy report said he had broken ribs and bones,” I muttered.

  Joan didn’t seem to hear me. “I went straight to meet Roger with that carrier. But I left it in the hallway, out of sight. Away from the cameras.”

  “And then you had some fun,” I finished for her. “When Roger went to have a shower, you got your chance and stuffed the body under his bed.”

  “Exactly,” said Joan softly. “And it all worked. So well.”

  “Except for Pete,” I said, remembering. “He was still around, running around with the ball peen hammer.”

  “Sitting in his car watching the dry cleaners,” added Ian helpfully. “Did he know that Joan and Anastacia were the same person?”

  “Of course not,” said Joan bitterly. “No one noticed me as Joan. I was ugly, old, invisible. But Anna was sexy. Everyone loves her.”

  “But then why would Pete sit and watch the dry cleaners’?” asked Ian. “He’d probably started to put things together.”

  “That’s why you looked so shocked,” I said, remembering how wide her eyes had been when I’d told her about Pete sitting outside. “You realized Pete was putting things together.”

  “Maybe,” Joan admitted. “He was dumb, but maybe not so dumb.”

  “He might even sic the cops onto you.”

  Joan gave me a withering glance. “Pete couldn’t even kill a guy right, not even a guy who’d gotten him beaten up. I couldn’t trust him to do anything right.”

  “So you killed him,” I supplied.

  Joan stared at me blankly. “I had to. What else could I do?”

  “I don’t know,” I admitted. “I’ve never been in that position myself.”

  Joan nodded. “Yeah. It wasn’t too hard. He always did like matches. He always liked his car. He had to go… I made it easy for him…”

  Her voice trailed off, and the gun slipped from her hand.

  I grabbed it quickly, and tossed it far away from Joan and Nadia.

  “It’s time to call 911,” I announced. “Joan’s weak, but it’s mostly from shock and exhaustion. She’ll live to re-tell her story.” I glared at Nadia. “And so will we.”

  Chapter 35

  After the police and two ambulances came and rushed Nadia and Joan away, Ian and I gave our statements and then headed over to my parents’ house.

  A distraught Nanna met us at the door.

  “I’ve been calling both of you!” she complained. “You didn’t answer! It’s terrible! You’ve heard the news about Roger, haven’t you? How awful is that!?”

  “It is terrible,” I agreed. “But there’s more to it. We got the killers arrested.”

  “Oh.” Nanna pressed her lips together and shook her head as she led us to the den. “I suppose that’s that. It’s good to catch a killer, but it’d be better if Roger was still alive.”

  When we walked into the den, we found that Stone and Sally were already there, chatting with my parents and Wes.

  “Tell us all about it,” said Wes, squeezing Nanna’s shoulder sympathetically. “It’s good to see justice being done. Even if another man had to die.”

  I filled everyone in on what had happened in Nadia’s RV, leaving out the part about us breaking in.

  “So the police have Nadia and Joan,” said Nanna after I’d finished. “Poor Roger. Two women and two deaths because of him.”

  “I think Joan would’ve snapped and killed Harvey regardless,” I said. “I mean, the man was oblivious to her life while manipulating her ruthlessly.”

  Nanna made a noise that sounded like, “Meh.”

  “He doesn’t sound like a nice man,” Sally agreed. “But that’s no excuse to kill someone.”

  “And Nadia finally killed Roger,” Nanna added with a sigh. “Even if she didn’t do it herself, she made it happen. Roger was a good man. He didn’t deserve to die. And he never hid the fact that he was a ladies’ man. He never promised anyone that he’d settle down with them. Other than Alicia. And who knows what he really told her?”

  There were a few moments of silence as we all thought about it.

  And then, there was a knock at the door.

  “Who could that be?” my mom wondered. “I didn’t invite anyone else.”

  She started to get up but I motioned her down. “Sit, sit. I think Nanna should get it.”

  I smiled at Nanna, and got up to follow her. Ian joined me.

  “You didn’t get me sympathy flowers, did you?” Nanna half-grumbled. “You know I don’t like them.”

  She got to the end of the hallway and opened the door warily.

  I watched her carefully.

  First, her jaw dropped and her eyes widened in disbelief.

  Then, her eyes brightened.

  She flung open the door, squealed like a little girl, and flung herself at the man. “Roger! What’re you doing here?”

  I grinned at Roger, and he smiled back at me.

  “You’re not a ghost, are you?” Nanna went on. “You know what they say about ghosts. You can’t feel them. I’ll pinch you just to make sure you’re real.”

  Before he could sidestep, Nanna pinched him—hard!

  Roger flinched and reddened slightly.

  Nanna smiled. The excitement in her eyes was replaced with contentment.

  “Yep, you’re real enough.” And then she realized what she’d done. “Oops. Wouldn’t have done that if I hadn’t thought you were a ghost. So I suppose it’s good I thought you might be a spirit.”

  I twisted my lips and shrugged at Roger. Hard to argue with Nanna’s reasoning.

  We all headed back into the den, where we were met with shocked gasps, and happy hugs all around.

  “What happened?” Sally asked. “How’re you alive?”

  “You’re not a ghost, are you?” asked my mom.

  “No!” Roger’s answer came out as a yelp, and he quickly sat down in a chair in the far corner. “I’m real. I just never died.”

  After everyone got over their shock, they turned to me and Ian.

  Ian shrugged. “I didn’t know about it.”

  “It was a plan.” I looked at Stone, and he quirked a corner of his mouth up at me. “I knew I needed to nail the killer, but they’d gotten away with a tricky murder and they’d managed to get past cameras and stay under police radar—so I pulled out a few big guns.”

  “I called in a favor,” I admitted, trying not to blush. “I called someone with contacts in the force.”

  Stone was looking at me seriously. He could hazard a guess as to who my contact was.

  “They put out the fake report that Roger was dead,” I went on. “The killer had wanted Roger to go to jail and take the fall for a crime he hadn’t committed. I didn’t know why they wanted that, but I knew that if it seemed like Roger had been killed, then they’d be disappointed. That’s why I made sure that Nadia took the blame. Ian and I went into Nadia’s RV to wait for the killer.”

  “It was a trap!” Ian announced, parroting one of his favorite lines from Star Wars.

  I nodded. “It was. Except we also found out that Nadia killed Alicia! But it all worked out in the end, with Joan admitting to everything that’d happened.”

  “And now the cops have a confession and Roger’s off the hook,” Ian added. “We did it.”

  “You sure did,” Roger said, eyeing Nanna warily. “I’m alive and free, and what’s more, I might have a record deal coming! Now that there’s proof I didn’t kill Alicia, I think my career will
build up again. I won’t be a young pop star, but maybe I could be one of those older rock stars. Like Bono, or Bon Jovi.”

  “You’re better than Bon Jovi,” said Nanna fanning herself with one hand. “Much better. I’d pick you any day.”

  “Thanks?” said Roger hesitantly. And then he smiled. “I hope the rest of the world thinks so.”

  Just then, my phone buzzed, and I went into the dining room to answer, leaving the rest of the group chatting happily.

  “This is Susan Hartley,” said the brusque voice on the other end. “I’m in Vegas, and we’ve sorted things out about my mother. She’s being cremated tomorrow.”

  “I’m glad you were able to come,” I said. “How’s James?”

  “Over the moon,” Susan said, sounding slightly bitter. “We found Mom’s will, and she left her house to my son! Can you believe it?”

  “That was nice of her,” I said. “Is James going to move in for good?”

  “I think so. He says he’ll work as a doorman here—apparently they make six figures a year! He says that’ll be enough to be able to give his son and Julie a good life.”

  There was silence for a few seconds. I said, “How are you feeling about it all that?”

  “I’m not sure,” Susan admitted. “I’ve always thought of James as a little boy. But he’s not. He’s a man. I suppose I should be proud of him for adopting a baby, but maybe this Julie’s just using him.”

  “Maybe,” I agreed. “But maybe not. Have you met her?”

  “Not yet. But if James is serious about raising this kid, he’ll need my help. I’m thinking of moving to Vegas, too. It’s always good if Grandma’s around.”

  Smiling to myself, I agreed. We chatted a few more minutes, and then I hung up, reminding her that I was always a phone call away if she needed anything.

  Chapter 36

  The next day, I’d just finished up a shift at the casino and was heading home at three in the morning.

  I was taking my usual shortcut home, through the alley behind the Cosmo Hotel. As usual, the streetlights didn’t seem to be working properly and I passed a few pools of pitch-black darkness.

  So much had happened in this alley.