====================== Vegas Centennial by Lynnette Baughman ====================== Copyright (c)2004 by Lynnette Baughman Wings ePress Books www.wings-press.com Mystery/Crime/Fiction --------------------------------- NOTICE: This work is copyrighted. It is licensed only for use by the original purchaser. Duplication or distribution of this work by email, floppy disk, network, paper print out, or any other method is a violation of international copyright law and subjects the violator to severe fines and/or imprisonment. --------------------------------- Clara McNamara is in a hurry to get her memoirs published before May 15, 2005. On that day Clara and the city of Las Vegas will both be 100 years old. And my editor in New York is yelling for me to finish the manuscript. Then Clara's grandson, Lyle, drops an information bomb on me. "All the McNamaras are on their best behavior these days. It's almost time to divide the Centennial Trust, you know." I've done a lot of research about the McNamaras for the book, but I've never heard of a Centennial Trust. "What's that?" "The Fort Knox of all the McNamara wealth, the dynasty trust Michael T. the first put together." "Tell me more." "Well, it's existed in one form or another since 1905, and has withstood every effort by anyone to break it up. But it will be cashed out, all the proceeds dispersed to his heirs one hundred years to the day since great-granddad McNamara bought his first dozen lots in Las Vegas and started buying land all over California." I have a head rush. "So the book I'm writing includes this whole giant story I didn't know about until now?" "I'm afraid so. It's not public record, per se, but I thought my grandmother or her lawyer would have told you." I shake my head, too stunned to ask coherent questions. I knew that the clock was ticking on the memoir project, but now it feels like Big Ben booming in my ears. * * * * _What They Are Saying About_ Vegas Centennial "Baughman scores again [in THIN DISGUISE] with Olivia Wright, a sleuth who clearly has a wealth of life experience and knows how to use it!" -- Derrickson Moore, A&E Editor, Las Cruces (NM) Sun-News, May 2001 * * * * _Wings_ Vegas Centennial An Olivia Wright Mystery by Lynnette Baughman A Wings ePress, Inc. General Fiction Mystery Novel * * * * Wings ePress, Inc. Edited by: Dianne Hamilton Copy Edited by: Cindy Vallar Senior Editor: Marilyn kapp Managing Editor: Dianne Hamilton Executive Editor: Lorraine Stephens Cover Artist: Pam Ripling All rights reserved Names, characters and incidents depicted in this book are products of the author's imagination or are used fictitously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, organizations, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental and beyond the intent of the author or the publisher. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher. Wings ePress Books www.wings-press.com Copyright (C) 2004 by Lynnette Baughman ISBN 1-59088-352-7 Published In the United States Of America May 2004 _Wings ePress Inc._ 403 Wallace Court Richmond, KY 40475 -------- _Dedication_ To Gunnar DeSantis, the best grandson of this or any other century -------- *One* Monday, December 6, 2004 _Las Vegas, Nevada_ "She's got one foot in the grave and the other on a banana peel," Andrea Cousteau said as she popped open her compact and checked her teeth for arugula and spinach residue. "And I'm not getting any younger either. I need the complete manuscript yesterday." Satisfied with her teeth, my editor applied a dash of lipstick the color of brackish water to her full lips. Andrea's name was French, but her accent was Brooklyn all the way. "Yesterday!" she said again, punctuating the proclamation with a loud snap of the compact. She had flown to Las Vegas from "the city so nice they named it twice" and my literary agent, Coco Jones, had flown in from the Left Coast to, as they put it, "work with me." This was in the same spirit that Ice-pick Louie and Nasty-man Knuckles might fly in from Moline to work with a gambler behind on his debt payments. _We's got a layaway plan youse might like to know about. Get it? Lay away?_ We were sitting in an ersatz outdoor cafe in Caesar's Forum. The faux Mediterranean sky never changed, and the noise level never dropped. From far down the promenade I could hear the boom of Neptune's voice as he rose on cue in his magical fountain. Coco took off her rose-tinted sunglasses so I could feel the full wattage of her black-eyed stare. She spoke to Andrea, but her eyes were locked on mine. "I'm sure Olivia is nearly finished." There followed a pregnant pause that I was supposed to fill with something about Fed Ex-ing copies of the manuscript to both of them in some single-digit number of days, but I just nodded and said, "Nearly." I was nearly finished with the book on Clara McNamara Kellem in the same way a twenty-foot rope ladder off the top of a fifty-foot building nearly reaches the ground. I knew Coco wanted to practice her martial arts on me right about then, but since she was technically working for me, she leaned back and smiled at Andrea. "What about Eileen McNamara?" Andrea persisted. "Her story's got to be included and you haven't even talked to her yet. As far as I can tell, Eileen getting away with murder is the high point, publicity-wise, of the McNamara family saga." Andrea the Astute had landed with both feet right on the weakest part of my story. I was getting apprehensive on the subject of Eileen McNamara, who hadn't returned any of my calls. I'd first gone to her house in Beverly Hills and on to her house in the Mission District of San Francisco, only to find she'd flown back to Beverly Hills then driven to Las Vegas. I'd flown back to Vegas myself that morning, barely in time for my brunch meeting with Andrea and Coco. I had reason to be encouraged on the Eileen McNamara front, however. Her agent swore to me that Ms. McNamara would call me that evening or first thing in the morning. And this time she'd given me Eileen's cell phone number instead of the brushoff. "I'm going to see Eileen tomorrow," I said with more certainty than I felt. "And don't worry about Clara's age. Lots of people are living to one hundred these days." "Not any editors," Andrea snapped. "Our lives are shortened by worry." "Well, the sooner I get back to work, the sooner you can ease your worried mind. Both of you." _All three of us._ Coco tucked her chin-length hair behind her ear and nodded as if I'd said something profound, but Andrea stuck to her guns. "I have to take something back with me. If I don't give the art department some meat, they're going to put tits and ass on the cover and call it _Vegas Secrets_. Deadline for the catalog is now." She stretched out "now" like a cow mooing. I lifted a five by seven envelope from my purse and saw I had Andrea's rapt attention. "These are pictures of Clara in 1923 when she came out in San Francisco society, and in 1924 when she married for the first time. And this is Michael T. McNamara, Clara's father, in 1905 or possibly 1906." "Love her, hate him." Andrea almost fondled Clara's debutante photo. "This will make a great cover. I can hear the art department sigh in relief already. We'll put old muttonchops inside where he won't scare away the buyers." I wanted to feed her jocundity with more good news, such as _I'll be writing the final chapter this week_, but it's better not to tempt fate with rash statements. Or outright lies. Andrea signed the charge slip and dropped her platinum card in her pocket. "You'll e-mail a thumbnail for the catalog this afternoon?" "By close of business New York time. To the art director." Andrea repeated the e-mail address and we all air kissed good-bye. I strode out at a brisk pace, knowing Coco wanted to stroll out with Andrea and pitch a novel by a new client, a coming-of-age-with-fear-and-loathing opus. While I waited for the valet to retrieve my baby blue Lexus, I checked my cell phone for messages. "You have no new messages and one old message," the electronic woman intoned. I tried Eileen McNamara's cell phone number again, left another message. I knew what the old message was. My main (and only) squeeze, Mace Emerick, had called from Virginia while I was on the plane, saying he'd call when he got another break from class. "There's a chance I'll get back to Vegas sooner than I expected. When will you get back from California?" That was a real good news/bad news message in light of the horrendous amount of work I had to do on the book. _Clara's book_. I headed south on the Las Vegas Strip, east on Harmon, then south again, winding my way to the Wickworth Tower. _Clara's place._ Clara McNamara Kellem ruled one of the four penthouse suites on the thirty-fifth floor. She appeared to have the constitution of a woman pushing eighty instead of someone soon to leave one hundred candles smoking. She was fond of stating her age and weight in tandem, "Ninety-nine, that's the answer to both questions! Ninety-nine, soaking wet." Clara would share her next birthday with the centennial celebration of the city of Las Vegas on May 15, 2005. And she'd be damned (her words) if her memoir wasn't published by then. Her memoir. That's where I got sucked into Clara's always-swirling drain. Having plenty of experience at writing, under my name and as a ghostwriter for others, and being a really fast transcription typist, I was a natural. As fate would have it, I even lived in Clara's apartment building. Excuse me -- Clara's luxury condominium complex. Technically, that made her my landlady, but a raft of lawyers and business managers served as buffers. My daughter Candace, co-owner of a very successful catering company and the only one of my kids who lived in Las Vegas, wanted to know why I took the job of listening to and transcribing the disjointed recollections of Clara Kellem. If it had been strictly a work-for-hire writing job -- as I'd done before to make a living -- I would have said no. I'm not a robot. And a robot is exactly what Clara wanted when she began the project. Consequently, I did say no when first approached six months earlier. So Clara hired a sycophant, an advertising copywriter used to making stomach gas remedies sound better than sex, and together they wasted four months. Now, four months might not sound like much time to waste, but when you're ten ... nine ... eight ... seven months shy of your one hundredth birthday and counting -- well, as the song says, _The days grow short_. I got another call from Clara. I drove a hard bargain: my name under hers on the cover, joint ownership of the copyright, and fifty percent of the royalties as well as fifty percent of any subsidiary rights we could hold out of the clutch of the publisher. I still might have said no, but Mace Emerick needed to spend six weeks in Quantico, Virginia, adding some special FBI training to his already considerable portfolio of crime fighting. With Chief Detective Emerick scheduled to leave in early November, I would have time to kill. So I said yes, with two additional provisos. One, that I do research to place "her story" in context against the history of Las Vegas. Two, that I interview as many of her family members as possible to give the story flesh and blood. She agreed in late October and we got started November first. As it turned out, the story had a lot more blood than I'd counted on. -------- *Two* I pulled into the entrance to the Wickworth Tower's underground garage and held my plastic card out to the laser reader. I parked, locked the car with a button on my key ring, and yanked up the handle on my carry-on suitcase. After an annoyingly long wait for the elevator, I stepped in and pressed twenty-nine. The doors closed with a gentle whoosh and a barely perceptible change in air pressure. I glanced at my image in the bronzed wall on my right and looked back at the doors, aware that any primping, even a judicious tug on my pantyhose, might be observed on a monitor by one or more of the building's security guys. Security is a good thing, but so is privacy. The company that won the security contract for the Wickworth had years of experience in casino surveillance. There are, I am sure, American embassies in war zones with fewer cameras watching the portals. So, do I feel safe in my apartment on the twenty-ninth floor? No, not really. What is building security, when you come right down to it, except a form of fashion police? They allow no one to pass who doesn't look rich. Of course they say with the swagger of authority that they only let people known to live in the building and invited guests past the lobby. They don't mention the policy of implied invitation that covers discreet call girls and anybody with skill at passing cash. Oh, then there's the service entrance. I've read enough crime reports to know that when the carpet cleaning company claims it's bonded, it means about half the employees are out on bail. And there's the fact that most murders occur at the hands of domestic partners or some such relation. At least I'm not afraid of that. I have no domestic partner, and my grown children are non-violent. Two out of three of them I actually like quite a lot. And the other one I never see. I have plenty of money, only twenty-eight percent body fat, and at fifty-one, I look about forty. Okay, forty-one. Anyway, life is good. So why do I feel a sort of gnawing anxiety? The slow elevator coughed to a stop on the tenth floor, the doors opened, and a thin man in his mid-thirties materialized in the frame as if he'd been conjured by my uneasy mind. Our eyes met, and I didn't have time to slap on a happy face. "Olivia! You're back early." There was a chiding tone to Lyle Kellem's statement and I knew he wondered if I'd been fibbing when I told him I wouldn't be back from California until December ninth. He was dressed in tight ivory bell-bottom slacks and a purple silk shirt. He had a combination of gold and silver studs in his ears, three on one side and four on the other. His blond hair had been permed recently, but his roots needed a retouch, in my old-fashioned opinion. "I finished my business and got lucky at the airport," I blurted. He pressed the button for the thirty-fifth floor and the doors closed in slow motion. He cleared his throat. "So, did you have a good trip?" "Very good," I lied, looking up as if intrigued by the numbers above the door. Actually, it wasn't Lyle I was avoiding. It was his paternal grandmother. Clara McNamara Kellem was enjoying her trip down memory lane, and waved off my looming deadline for a finished manuscript like a pesky gnat. It made me think of Penelope, slyly taking out stitches from her tapestry, playing for time against the prospect of declaring her certain widowhood and choosing a second husband. "Grand-Mom is in a grand mood today," Lyle said, sounding pretty jovial himself. "Why don't you join us for lunch? One o'clock. I'm cooking. And there's a surprise guest. Someone I know you want to meet." I was ready to say, "Thanks, no, sorry -- I've got so much to do after my trip," but wily Lyle had uttered the word I love: _surprise_. So I walked right into his friendly trap. "Who?" My first thought was Eileen McNamara, but I eliminated that instantly. She was _persona non grata_ in the McNamara family, having shot one of them fatally. As the doors opened on my floor, he waggled his finger to show I was a naughty girl to ask. "You won't know unless you come. All I will say is, he or she can fill in some large gaps in Grand-Mom's life story." I stepped off and Lyle held the door open. Before I could say no, he issued the _coup de grace_: "I'm making Carrot Ginger Soup." Words leaped unbidden to my mouth from my stomach. "One o'clock? I'll be there." In my apartment I kicked off my pumps and tossed my purse on the couch. Crossing the thick mauve carpet, I opened the drapes to let in the low winter sun. My view was to the south, toward McCarran International Airport and away from the Las Vegas Strip. I surveyed the room, totally dissatisfied with the chrome and glass dining room table and coffee table, and the mauve and pale green drapes, couch, and carpet. It looked like the lobby of an overpriced hairdresser. It didn't reflect anything about me: Olivia Wright, a woman with both good taste and money. I hadn't had the money for long, having earned it with my best-selling book, an insider's biography of a murdered movie star. Margot Farr had employed me as her ghostwriter about thirty minutes before she became a ghost. My adventures and misadventures trapping the murderers led to a lucrative book contract. I'd invested the money and rented the larger-than-necessary apartment in Wickworth Tower. I was still toying with the idea of buying the apartment as a condominium, but didn't feel sure I would stay in the Wickworth, or anywhere in Las Vegas for that matter. And until I felt rooted, I didn't want to undertake a massive interior-decorating project. I hadn't had my good taste for long, either, as evidenced by my three poor choices in husbands. At one o'clock I took the lumbering elevator to the top floor of the building, wondering what oddity Clara had in store for me. I don't have anything against eccentric old ladies. In fact, I hope to be one myself, someday. But Clara Kellem would try the patience of a saint. Concurrent with her decision to write, or, more accurately, dictate, her life story was her secret oath to clean it up, to improve on history. Had there been no public records to the contrary, I think she would have claimed she invented the electric light bulb, served as governor of Nevada, and married only once, for love. I might have believed the first two. Lyle answered the door at his grandmother's suite, wearing an apron that looked like the front of a tuxedo. I gladly took the glass of sherry he'd brought to the door. One o'clock is a little early to drink, but dealing with Clara calls for liberal interpretation of such rules. Either that or Prozac. "Is that Olivia?" Clara called in her high, reedy voice. "Tell her to come in." "All right, Lyle," I said quietly, "who else is here? Who is the surprise you teased me with?" "I expect him any minute. Come in and see Grand-Mom." If my apartment needed an interior designer, Clara's needed a good old-fashioned yard sale followed by a wash with a fire hose, then an interior designer. Everywhere my gaze fell there was too much color and bric-a-brac. I'd known people before who couldn't part with objects, but I'd never known anyone who lived to ninety-nine and a half without setting anything by a curb. The only culling was done by clumsy maids. Clara had always been inordinately fond of vases. Not flowers, which she considered a wasteful extravagance, but vases. They were everywhere. Everywhere, that is, not occupied by scrapbooks. She'd dragged more scrapbooks out since last time I was there. She said the old photos, show tickets, and newspaper clippings jogged her memory. Built-in bookshelves bowed with the weight of books, including encyclopedias that listed only forty states in the Union. Three couches and seven chairs of varying sizes and periods formed a conversation grouping so tight that people had to come and go one at a time. I counted four different designs of slipcovers that probably represented the fifties, the sixties, the seventies, and the eighties. A massive coffee table was useless for setting down so much as a demitasse, its surface devoted instead to vases and bird figurines. I wedged myself between a couch and chair to get close enough to give Clara an air kiss. "Sit down, Olivia. Right here." She gestured toward a chair on her right. I removed the scrapbook from the seat, shoved it under the coffee table, and sat. Clara's lawyer, or rather one of her lawyers, the one who handled her end of our book contract, came in from the other hallway. Rossi Mitchell was about seventy, semi-retired, and hard of hearing, but too vain to do anything about it. "Rossi," Lyle called loudly, "here's Olivia Wright. You two have met before. Now, excuse me, please. I've got to check on the veal." Rossi took a seat across from me in the conversation circle and we made nice, commenting in turn about how delicious the lunch smelled, how mild the winter was so far. "Wild?" he barked. "Wild?" "No, I said 'mild,' it's a mild winter." He said, "Umm," but still regarded me with a suspicious air. I pointed to the fireplace and said in a loud voice that I admired the arrangement of family photos Clara had placed on the mantel and walls. Three of them I'd borrowed and had professionally copied for Andrea to give to her art director. I was glad to see the originals were safely back in their frames. The hand-tinted photo of Clara as a debutante in 1923 proved that the only daughter of real estate baron Michael T. McNamara of Los Angeles had been a great beauty in her day -- beautiful and rich enough to come out in society in San Francisco. There she was, frozen in time, black hair piled on top of her head, a white formal dress, white gloves above the elbow, and a large white feather, probably ostrich, held like a fan. I walked over to the mantel to straighten that photo and the one beside it, of Michael T. McNamara in 1905, "old muttonchops," so they could catch the light. On the other end of the mantel, in a frame with a black velvet band across the upper right corner, was a portrait of Clara's only nephew. The late Michael T. McNamara III, called Trey, had enlisted in the Navy as soon as he turned eighteen, in 1943, and shipped out to the South Pacific. He looked too young in that picture to be in anything but a Boy Scout uniform. Trey had survived the war, returned to carry on the family tradition of turning money into more money, and married twice. It was a search for Trey's notorious second wife that led to my California trip. Eileen was still best known for the shooting death of Trey, her ex-husband, in 1972. The scandal had absorbed the attention of the country, especially of California, until the Patty Hearst kidnapping knocked Eileen's second trial off the front page. After her acquittal, Eileen had an enviable career as an actress and later as a model and spokesperson for a fashion and cosmetics company. Her permanent home was in Los Angeles and her second home was in San Francisco, but she traveled most of the time. _I simply have to pin her down while she's here in Las Vegas,_ I exhorted myself. _Today if possible, tomorrow at the latest._ I straightened the velvet band on Trey's photo and examined a picture of Lyle and his twin sister, Layla, in jester costumes in front of what might be a Mardi Gras float. Clara's African-American maid, an old woman with the unfortunate name of Pug, shuffled from the hall into the circle of couches with a black lacquer tray and six mugs. I took two, trying not to unbalance the tray. "Is that my eggnog?" Clara asked Pug. "Yes, ma'am." Pug moved behind the couch and Rossi slid a mug off. Pug looked around for a place to set the tray, shook her head, and turned back toward the kitchen, having downloaded just half her cargo. I held one mug steady until Clara had a good grip on the handle with her arthritic hands, then sat down with my drink. Lyle met Pug midway and took another mug. "The other two guests will be here any minute, Pug. I'll come get their eggnog when it's time." He perched on a high stool outside the conversation circle and looked down on Rossi's shiny bald spot, miming a check of his own hair in the mirrored surface. I hid my grin with my cup. "Ah, saved by the bell," Lyle hooted when the doorbell chimed, and hopped off the stool. He always seemed to be auditioning for a Noel Coward comedy. He particularly enjoyed introducing his twin sister, Layla, as his identical twin, leaving one to wonder, did she or didn't she? Or he? Rossi, who hadn't heard the doorbell, looked up, puzzled by Lyle's sudden sweep from the room. I corkscrewed in my seat to see who entered. A woman's voice and Lyle's laugh echoed from the entryway. "There's someone here who's been wanting to meet you," he said. Reentering the living room, he announced the guest with a flourish, "Olivia, here is my Great-Aunt Zinnia, Grand-Mom's eldest daughter." I rose and walked behind the couch. "What a pleasure," I said, extending my hand to a plump woman in an electric cart. Not a conventional wheelchair, it was more like a motorized scooter with a seat and a basket. In the basket rode a brown toy poodle, or maybe a very dirty white toy poodle that growled at me and showed its sulfur-colored teeth. "Now ZsaZsa, be nice," Zinnia admonished. She pinched something at the side of her glasses and the dark half circles flipped up to a horizontal position over her clear lenses like awnings. I had committed a family tree to memory and knew Zinnia's father was Ralph Cassini, Clara's first husband. Zinnia was their only child, born in late1924, which made her eighty on her last birthday. Clara had married Cassini -- an EYE-tal-i-an! -- against her father's wishes. She went on to divorce him in Reno in 1928, again defying her father. The very Catholic Michael McNamara hated Italians and never said Cassini's name without spitting, but he hated divorce even more. Clara had a gift for goading her father. He'd scarcely unclenched his jaw over One, the Italian, and Two, the Divorce, when she did it all again with Nick Bartok -- a Polack! Clara told me with relish that her father had brayed like a mule through the halls of his Los Angeles mansion, "What's next? A forkin' Chinaman?" Zinnia sniffed suspiciously at the eggnog Lyle offered, took a sip, and held the mug where ZsaZsa could dangle her tongue into the milky drink. The poodle showed more enthusiasm for eggnog than anyone else in the room did. Actually, I had liked it at first, but seeing the yellow muck on ZsaZsa's whiskers kind of put me off my feed. Lyle fretted about the unnamed guest without divulging a name. Zinnia cooed to ZsaZsa, sounding like a raven clucking over a bag of ripe garbage, and Clara sniped at Zinnia for her late arrival. The doorbell sounded again and Lyle waltzed to the door. "Olivia!" he called as he reentered the room. "Here's my cousin, Mickey McNamara." Lyle had been on target when he said the guest was someone I wanted to meet. I knew only that the fourth Michael T. McNamara lived in Florida, was a recluse, and supposedly hated women. That he'd married five times indicated that his misogyny was sporadic. Or maybe that it was progressive, each wife worse, in his eyes at least, than the one before. Mickey glanced at me without interest as Lyle shepherded him into the living room, then turned stiffly to face Clara Kellem as if called before the queen. A man of average height, he wore an all-white suit, the lapels of his shirt and the large knot of his snowy tie a bright contrast to his brown face and neck. He had the kind of overdone tan that looks sexy and rugged for a few years, then suddenly turns to old cowhide. I knew from his date of birth that he was about a year younger than me, but the years had not been kind. Kind or not, they had certainly been busy. When I drew the family tree, I had to write small and sideways to fit in his four wives, one of whom he'd married twice. After Cherry came Peaches, extending the motif of fruit with pits, then Kate, then Peaches again, and Suzi. He was presumably still married to Suzi, who was only twenty-two or twenty-three and (if pictures could be trusted) not as fine a dish as Peaches in her prime. His first three/four wives had produced no heirs, but Suzi had a lot of good years left in her. I waited outside the couches for Mickey to finish greeting his great-aunt Clara. Then Lyle presented me to his second cousin with extravagant enthusiasm. I sat down again and acted interested in my mug of yellow fluid. Over the rim of the cup I watched Mickey take a seat on the other side of Clara and incline his head toward her. He shook his head, no, to Lyle's offer of eggnog. I studied him for any family resemblance, but saw only a wider than average forehead and droopy skin below the eyebrows that hung down to the eyelids. At the top of Clara and Mickey's family tree was Michael T. McNamara, 1865-1951. On an end table sat a second photo of the patriarch, taken a few years after the one on the mantel. He'd put on a few pounds, still wore muttonchops, and had lost none of his ferocity to time. He gripped an ivory-topped cane with callused hands and glared into the camera like a man who ate photographers for lunch. Beside him stood his wife, a short, bosomy woman with white hair piled like meringue and a large cameo pinned to the neck of her lacy blouse. He was said to have worked on railroads across the West at the end of the nineteenth century, and he looked mean enough to pound in the ties with his bare hands. His progeny were Clara and Michael T., Junior. The second Michael, called Mike, died in 1950, leaving the third Michael, called Trey. Michael T. McNamara IV (Mickey) and Pegeen were Trey's children by his first wife. According to Clara, Trey found children a bore and intended to give them his time when they reached adulthood -- an unfortunate choice in his case. No sooner had his children become sixteen and eighteen years old than Trey became deceased. That was in 1972, when his second wife discharged a firearm in his direction. Their short marriage had been over for six years, but apparently Eileen had some unresolved issues. Mickey's sister, Pegeen, married but died childless, of congestive heart disease at the age of thirty-four, and Mickey also produced no heirs, at least so far. Clara's branch of the family tree was more robust, with four children she bore to three husbands and seven grandchildren. Eight if you took Zinnia at her word and counted ZsaZsa. Only Rory Kellem Castle, Clara's youngest child, was a grandmother. Having given birth to three children, Rory's odds of seeing grandchildren were better than that of her siblings and cousins. Rory's first and second sons, Brady and Case, fathered children by Rebecca and Gloria, respectively. Clara referred to her grandsons' wives only as The Jew and The Mexican, seeing no irony in her prejudice. Lunch was a gourmet's delight, offset by Clara's pique at the fish tasting "like fish" and Zinnia allowing ZsaZsa to sit on her lap and tongue-drag food off her plate. The carrot ginger soup was followed by filet of sole in a puff pastry in the shape of a fish, resting on a bed of Mornay sauce ("a whimsical presentation," in Lyle's words). A salad course of arugula, romaine, Gruyere, and almonds with balsamic vinaigrette preceded the entree, medallions of veal with baby corn, pearl onions, and caramelized potatoes. Dessert was a delicate poached pear encased in white chocolate and drizzled with raspberry syrup. A silver dish of almond biscotti passed from person to person as Lyle poured coffee. I appreciated the effort that went into each dish, especially in having each course perfect even though the meal started nearly an hour later than he'd planned. I was seated between Zinnia (with ZsaZsa) and Rossi, apparently on what Clara called his bad side, though he was pretty close to deaf on his good side, too. Conversation to either would have been a waste of breath and brain activity, so I listened in on Clara, Mickey, and Lyle. I noticed I was -- sadly -- alone in my compliments to the chef. "Eileen is nosing around like a bitch in heat," Mickey snapped. ZsaZsa dropped her veal on the tablecloth and cocked her head as if catching the canine reference. Disgust clouded Mickey's face when he said the name of his father's second wife. "I heard from Rory that Eileen plans to show up at the photo shoot next Tuesday." "That doesn't give you any right to change the appointment without asking me!" Clara chided. "I'm here to see you about it, Aunt Clara. The appointment I made for tomorrow is just tentative until you say whether you can be there or not. The faster we throw this together and get it over with, the less chance of an ugly scene with Eileen." He paused, then added in a conciliatory tone, "Rory is waiting to hear from you. She won't say a word without your approval of the appointment change." Clara gave a theatrical sigh and held out her hands, palm up. "All right. But what if Eileen gets wind of it anyway?" She shook her head to Lyle's offer of more coffee. "She won't. Rory will tell the people on your side of the family, and she's good at getting a message across. Only one on my side to tell is Suzi." Clara rolled her eyes and muttered something about Suzi, which Mickey either didn't hear or chose to ignore. I knew from experience that Clara usually referred to Suzi as the quail, short for San Quentin quail, i.e., so young when Mickey married her he could have been charged with statutory mischief. The fact that Clara had once been young and wild did nothing to increase her tolerance of youth and high spirits in others. "Shall I call Rory now?" he asked. "She's got a lot of ground to cover." "Get her on the phone. I'll talk to her in my bedroom." Clara rocked herself to a standing position and snatched her cane. Rossi, Lyle, and I stood up and Rossi and I excused ourselves, said we had to be going, and headed for the door. Mickey attended his great-aunt down the hall, Clara still muttering her aggravation at his interference in her plans. I said good-bye to Zinnia and appealed to Lyle to call me when he knew when and where the photo shoot would take place. "It's a good thing you came back early from California," he said. "You wouldn't want to miss the sweet family reunion. I'm betting we can all be in one room for thirty minutes without open warfare, but I've always been an optimist." "Maybe you should rent a metal detector," I said with a smile. "We'll only need that if Eileen gets wind of the change of our portrait appointment." He opened the door and hooked his right hand over the top, swinging it in a short arc out from his hip and back. "Eileen has such a bad reputation, and it's soooo deserved. But I can't for the life of me see why she'd want to be in the same state as Grand-Mom and Cousin Mickey, much less in the bosom of the family, as it were." "Yes, it's strange. Well anyway, thanks again for lunch. It should have been reviewed for a gourmet magazine. Four stars! But all you get is my meager applause." "ZsaZsa gave it four woofs," he said dryly. I laughed. "Pearls before swine?" "I'm afraid so. Thanks for your enthusiasm, though. Will you be home later?" I moved into the hall. "Yes, call me. I don't want to miss the photo op of the century." "A vast overstatement, I am sure, but, yes, I'll tell you where and when." I took the elevator back to my apartment on the twenty-ninth floor. My tummy was happy, but my mind roiled. _What was Eileen McNamara up to?_ -------- *Three* Eileen Jorgenson was eighteen years old when she married Michael T. McNamara III, twenty-one when she divorced him, and twenty-seven when she shot him dead. "Where did she shoot him?" My daughter, Candace Mason, lay on my couch, her tired feet elevated on a pillow. She was there when I returned from lunch at Clara's, so I filled her in on Mickey McNamara's visit. "In Los Angeles." I kicked off my shoes and wriggled out of my pantyhose. "No, I mean where did she shoot him, like, in the heart?" "In the neck. Tore out his carotid artery. He bled to death by the time he got to the hospital." "So how did she get off?" She sat up and stretched. "I'm thirsty. You want something?" "There's seltzer water and limes in the refrigerator. I'll take a glass, thanks." I sat back in my favorite armchair and propped my feet on the coffee table. As I listened to her work in the kitchen, I thought about Clara's family tree. That led to a rare and brief mental recap of my own spotty marriage/motherhood record. My first husband was Brock Willsen. A self-important prick on his best day, Brock begat Cable, heir to his father's looks, intelligence, money, and social standing. In fact, Cable was Brock's issue as much as if he'd been conceived in a glass tube and implanted in cow's womb. Which is pretty much how Brock & Son thought of me. When we divorced, it was clear that Cable belonged with his father and that the already indoctrinated boy would see me as a kidnapper if I tried to hold on to him. It's hard to explain why I married Brock Willsen, but it's easy to explain my second marriage in only one word. Rebound. After being single only seven months, I met Del Mason, a charming professor, romantic poet, world traveler by freighters and bicycle, fascinating conversationalist. Both of us were O.T.R., on the rebound. Our marriage produced Candace, who at twenty-six is gorgeous, smart, funny, a professional success -- and has a problem with men. I think her fierce need to support herself -- financially and emotionally -- has hardened her shell more than is good for her. My third child, the offspring of my third husband, airline pilot Captain Russ Vale, is sunny Valerie. She was always one of those rare kids who leave mothers asking, "What goddess am I to produce such a paragon of good humor?" I sometimes think she's destined to win the Nobel Prize for peace, and maybe for some branch of science, too. Val is enrolled in graduate school at Northwestern University. I don't see her often, but it's a healthy kind of space between us, and we phone and e-mail at least once a week. While Candace was in the kitchen, I listened to two messages on my answering machine. My friend, Patsy, was going to the gym, wondered if I wanted to meet her there, and Candace had called from her cell phone to say she was on her way over. I pressed Erase and took the tall glass from Candace. She settled back on the couch and prompted me to continue. "About Eileen and the late Trey McNamara? How did she get off? Inquiring minds want to know." "She was tried twice in Los Angeles. The first time the district attorney insisted on first-degree murder, and the jury deadlocked. Her attorney had constructed a good case for self-defense, enough for a reasonable doubt, anyway. And the DA was the kind of lawyer that makes a jury so mad they want to convict him instead of the defendant. First-degree arrogance, no chance of parole. The second trial was almost a year later. The prosecution tried for second-degree murder but made it clear they'd roll over on voluntary manslaughter. They couldn't even get that. Jury voted to acquit." "Doesn't seem to have hurt her career any," Candace observed. "Further proof, were any needed, that there's no such thing as bad publicity in Hollywood." "You're so jaded. Maybe her career is thanks to her talent." "Or maybe her acquittal was thanks to her talent. Did she take the stand? Yes? I rest my case, at least for the time being." She tugged on the strap of the nylon gym bag she'd stashed under the coffee table, unzipped the top, and took out white socks and pale blue running shoes. "I'm going to Sinbad's. Wanna go with?" I thought about my luscious lunch, turning into glucose and looking for fat cells to call home. "I wish I could, but I am a truly desperate woman. I have a book to write and an elusive woman to call every hour on the hour until I corner her. And as part of the book writing, I've got to go to the library at UNLV and finish some research on said elusive woman." Candace left to work out, then to get her nails done and dress up for a charity auction and cocktail party. The company she co-owned with Kenneth Nash, Royale Catering, had grown so much that she spent less time schlepping tablecloths and candelabras and more time in an office with Conan Boyle, whom she called Conan the Barbarian Accountant. "As if Conan is not hard-nosed enough," she'd said, "he's going to law school at night. I pity the fool who ever tries to hide money from Conan the Barbarian Lawyer. If I ever get divorced, he's gonna be my man." She'd have to get married before considering divorce, but I knew better than to bring that up. Royale was catering the auction party, but Candace was attending as a guest, for a change. She hated dating, but had given in to Louis Castle's pursuit, intending to see him once and "get on with my life." The auction was, by my careful count, their fifth date. I hadn't met Louis yet, but I knew from photos and Candace's grudging admission that he was handsome, intelligent, a talented amateur pianist, and probably wealthy thanks to being a son of Rory Kellem Castle and a grandson of Clara McNamara Kellem. I say probably because the McNamaras have been secretive about their familial wealth, starting with the first property bought by old Michael T. the first. Louis Castle had been a junior partner in Kellem Holding, the company headed by his uncle, Sean Kellem, but had recently taken a job in banking. An hour later I was hiking across the campus at University of Nevada-Las Vegas when my cell phone rang. I hoped it was Eileen McNamara or Mace, but no such luck. "Olivia, the photo shoot is on for tomorrow," Lyle told me. "It's at Aunt Rory's house in Summerlin. Two o'clock." He made sure I knew how to get there, told me I was on the guest list at the guard gate, and said, "Ciao!" I strolled into the massive new library on the campus of the University of Nevada, Las Vegas. Upstairs in the crystal-cathedral-wannabe, I switched the straight-backed chair at the library's microfilm reader for a soft, human-shaped chair I filched from a study carrel. Pretty sure it had been previously filched from an office, I hoped its true rump wouldn't be seeking it while my rump occupied it. I knew the dates of Mickey's father's death, and the dates of Eileen's two trials, but I hadn't dug into them yet. From September 1972 through June 1974, the period in question, I was in college in San Diego, and so busy falling in and out of love that I wouldn't have noticed a meteor wiping out half the population of Los Angeles, much less the death of one rich guy there. And the news equivalent of a meteor in Los Angeles, the Patty Hearst kidnapping, took place in February 1974, so the rest of 1974 and much of 1975, was a blur of Patty Hearst and Symbionese Liberation Army news. Even as self-involved as I was at age twenty, I had followed the Patty Hearst case. I slipped my pumps off under the metal desk and scrolled forward through issues of the _Los Angeles Times_ until I reached June 1972. _Michael McNamara III Dead at 47_ Michael T. McNamara III, heir to the railroad, land and financial empire built by his grandfather, died Tuesday from a single gunshot wound. With McNamara in his Windsor Hill mansion at the time of his death was his former wife, Eileen Jorgenson McNamara, and at least four servants. His two children from his first marriage, Michael T. McNamara IV, 17, and Pegeen McNamara, 16, were away at boarding school, according to police. Eileen McNamara collapsed at the scene and had to be hospitalized, says Lt. Burke Boer of the Los Angeles Police Dept. "It is unclear at this point," said Boer, "whether the wound was self-inflicted or whether someone shot Mr. McNamara. No determination can be made at this time whether the wound was accidental or intentional. We are continuing to investigate, and we will interview Mrs. McNamara as soon as possible." A neighbor told the reporter that Eileen McNamara was hysterical and had to be carried to an ambulance. "There was blood all over her," he was quoted as saying, "and she was crying real loud, but I heard her say, 'It was an accident.'" The report finished with a statement from another neighbor that he heard Ramona Aguilar, McNamara's housekeeper for ten years, tell the police she heard shouting from Mr. McNamara's den shortly before she heard one gunshot. Subsequent days had brief recaps and "No comment just now, thank you," from the lead investigator, Detective J.J. Querry, and also from a young assistant district attorney whose name I recognized. F. Harrison Fitzpatrick had gone on to bigger and better things, or at least bigger paychecks and better offices, as a defense attorney to wayward multi-millionaires and their even-more-wayward children. My cell phone vibrated and I checked the number. Pretty sure it was Mace calling, I moved quickly to the back of the stacks and pressed Talk. I only had time for, "Hi," before he blurted out, "I couldn't call before, I was catching a cab and talking to the airline. I'm at Reagan Airport, loading now, I'll be in Vegas at ten-fifteen." I wrote his flight number on the back of my hand and said I'd meet him outside the baggage area at McCarran. I called my attorney, Kemper Wilkerson, to postpone the appointment I'd made for that evening. I could put off discussing my will or some kind of trust for another week or two. As it rang through to an answering service, I recalled asking Kemper for his highly-paid-for opinion of O.S. Cadbury & Associates. I'd become a client of Cadbury because Peter Delameter (one of the associates and my personal broker) advised me on investments that would save me from losing fifty percent of my book and movie windfall to taxes. Lately, however, Peter Delameter hadn't been returning my calls. When Kemper's secretary's recorded voice said, "Please leave a message," I said I needed to cancel my seven o'clock appointment and left my cell phone number. Back at the microfilm reader I printed the pages with news of Trey McNamara's death, including his obituary, and moved on to Eileen's first trial in August 1973. Alongside a dry recounting of who was expected to testify was a box with a woman's photo and the words, "Famed crime writer to attend McNamara slaying trial." The woman, Neville Norwich, was said to be considering a book on the Trey McNamara murder. I leaned closer to study the photo. Norwich's blond hair was teased and sprayed into sleek wings that framed her face, the hair shot through with light from behind. Her eyes were overly made up, with black lines drawn out and up beyond the lower lids and wedges of eyeliner above that reminded me of a geisha. Her skin was unnaturally white and blemish free, probably thanks to Vaseline on the lens. She fingered a string of pearls, her lips parted slightly and her eyes wide as if surprised at the photographer's sudden appearance, an unlikely scenario as it was obviously a thoroughly staged portrait shot. Ah, the seventies. Norwich was said (in the article) to be in talks with Hollywood producers about her current bestseller on a grisly murder of three California coeds by two handsome football players. _Whispers and Screams_ would likely be made for television, but theatrical release was still on the table. Farrah Fawcett Majors was possibly going to star, guaranteeing a bigger budget and theatrical release. "Well," Norwich was quoted as saying, "I don't like to use the words guarantee and Hollywood in the same sentence. Let's just say business meetings are continuing." I was pretty sure Norwich had not, in fact, written about the McNamara case, but I would have to look into it. I did know Neville Norwich had grown wealthier over the ensuing decades, staying less and less with the facts of famous cases and more and more with the hype and glamour. The more beautiful the victim and the more gruesome the crime, the bigger her sales. I remembered her saying on a CBS interview that she was considering writing a novel instead of what she'd always done, true crime, and the interviewer saying, "You have critics, Ms. Norwich, who say you're already writing novels." She laughed a good old-fashioned belly laugh and said, coyly, "You and your network's news shows have critics, too, you know." I looked at my watch and gasped aloud at how long I'd been in the library. It was almost six o'clock. Pressing Print again as soon as each sheet emerged, I had a dozen sheets I'd have to tape together at home to read. I rewound the spool, searched quickly for the _Los Angeles Times_ for June 1974, when Eileen was tried again, and did a rapid and dizzying eyeball review, printing anything that looked related. Another fast and unpleasantly loud rewind and I was ready to go. My phone vibrated again. As I guessed it would be, it was Candace's number. I waited until I was outside, hiking to my car in an impossibly far lot, and called her back. "I'm outside the library, on my way home. Hey, Mace called. He's coming back tonight." There was a moment of silence on the line, then a single word. "Good." I restrained myself from commentary on her tone and asked, instead, what her plans were. "It's more like what are my new plans, my totally changed plans, my overwhelmingly adjusted plans for the next two weeks!" I knew her well enough to picture the hand gestures that punctuated her tirade. "What's the deal?" I held the phone to my ear and power-walked toward my car. At the same time I swung my head from side to side, looking for any man fool enough to snatch my purse or grab at me. I'd noticed once I left the library that I was practically the only person on the campus, and it had been dark for about two hours. Inattention is so often the mistake women make. The last mistake they make. Sometimes in elevators, or parking lots, or seemingly deserted hallways, I would feel a prickle on my skin and remind myself, aloud through clenched teeth, to Pay Attention! "The deal is this," Candace continued in the same exasperated tone, "Kenneth is going to Hawaii for two weeks! He's looking at a caterer in Honolulu we might buy out, and I'm stuck here in charge of everything -- and I do mean everything -- until he gets back!" "Starting when?" I got to my Lexus and zapped the lock with my key ring. The car bleeped a welcome and flashed its lights. Still doing my pendulum head routine and silently reciting Pay Attention, I got in and locked the doors. "Starting tomorrow! I don't know what I'm going to do. Two weddings, one golf tournament, a tennis tournament, a lawyer's banquet, and a freaking rodeo! And that's only the first week!" "Candace, calm down. I'll pitch in. We'll manage. You always worry, and it's always fine." That was an exaggeration, not the part about her always worrying, but the part about Royale Catering's events always turning out fine. I hoped she wouldn't jump in and start naming events better left unmentioned. "I've gotta go," she said with a heavy sigh. "I'm getting another call. It's probably the Pope wanting to book lunch for five thousand people on top of Hoover Dam. With the Lippizaner Stallions." My mention of Mace Emerick had skittered past her almost unnoticed. I hate to admit it, but I welcomed the reprieve. My daughter had mixed feelings about my ... hmm. What should I call Mace Emerick? "Boyfriend" is too cute for a woman my age. "My current lover," while technically correct, has a sleazy sound. And whereas I don't need to be married to be happy -- and in fact have been exactly the opposite three times -- I like the sound of fiance. Can't use it though. At least, not yet. I was eager to pick up some groceries, then have some time at home to bathe and relax and generally change gears before time to pick up Mace at the airport. Then my phone rang. "Ms. Wright, this is Kemper Wilkerson's secretary. I got your message about postponing this evening's appointment, but Mr. Wilkerson said something has come up and he needs to see you as soon as possible." "Something has come up?" My thoughts flew immediately to O.S. Cadbury & Associates. I had wanted Kemper to find out the truth, but I wanted the truth to be that Cadbury was solid as granite. Sometimes, however, the truth is not what we wish it to be, as I'd learned painfully and repeatedly. "Yes, okay. Let me see. All right, I'll be at my appointment as planned." As planned. The phrase had a certain mocking quality. As if I, and everyone else, were not just falling through life like beach balls off the back of a truck. -------- *Four* I'd skated through nine or ten yellow lights to get to my seven p.m. appointment on time, but Kemper C. Wilkerson, Esquire, was occupied. His receptionist invited me to help myself to tea or coffee and have a seat, adding that he'd be with me shortly. She had to leave to pick up her kids at daycare. "You're the last client for the day, so I'm locking the door. Mr. Wilkerson will let you out." I chose a yachting magazine from the eclectic assortment fanned out on a coffee table. The room was decorated in cherry wood, brass, and marble. The upholstery on one long couch and three wing-backed chairs was satin in a shade of green that subtly said "U.S. Mint." The drapes, too, were the color of money in large denominations. My annoyance festered at being kept waiting by someone who charged by the minute. I glanced at photos of magnificent sailboats cutting through emerald water, always with a gorgeous woman in a state of what looked to me to be orgasmic ecstasy. If I were on said sailboat on said emerald water, and the said hot Caribbean wind were ruffling my flowing tresses, I would certainly be in said state. _Mace Emerick, get your body home soon!_ Kemper Wilkerson came into the reception area from his private office, talking to someone behind him, in his office. Someone I couldn't see even by craning my neck, and I'm very, very good at that. "I'm in court tomorrow morning, but I'll be here after lunch." He returned to his office and closed the door. My attention wandered back to a Caribbean beach in the moonlight when I heard a voice outside. Kemper must have taken his client out a private exit. I could see him standing beside the gray Jaguar I'd noticed when I parked. His back was to me and the other person was not in my line of sight. I stood up and leaned toward the window, cupping my hand to block the reflection of the office in the black glass. Just then Kemper opened the car door and moved aside, leaving the woman clearly visible. Light from a streetlight illuminated her copper hair. It was Eileen McNamara! Eileen was in her late fifties, but she wore her years, and her clothes, well. On TV her hair was a reddish gold cloud that seemed to float around her pale face and eyes the color of Ireland in tourist brochures. She could sell me shampoo any day of the week. What Eileen McNamara was best known for selling, however, was western wear, primarily denim. The camera would focus on a woman, giving her horse a pat and looking out across a dusty corral. A male voice offscreen would say, "Actress Eileen McNamara, how do you look so great?" And she'd toss her hair and laugh, and sort of wag her finger at the impertinent question. "You mean at my age?" The announcer would kind of stutter, embarrassed, and she'd say, as if amused by the question but genuinely puzzled, trying hard to think of an answer. "Oh, I eat plenty of fruit and vegetables, I get plenty of sleep, exercise and fresh air." Then she'd nod to show she'd had a light bulb moment. "Oh, yes, I have the answer. Good jeans!" The camera would take in the attractive shape of her hips and legs and zero in on the label: NEVADA, and the slogan underneath, _Wear the West_. She had a coat draped over her arm, and Kemper took it, holding it open so she could slip in her arms. She was dressed in a denim skirt that came to her mid-calf, and denim high heels about two inches high. She wore a turtleneck sweater and a latticed denim vest. The coat looked like fluffy lamb's wool with a black fur collar. I grabbed the door handle, intending to dart outside and nail down a time and place for an interview, but the door was locked. I searched the top of the secretary's desk and found a key on a ring attached to a silver W. As I worked the balky deadbolt, I saw Eileen tie the belt of her coat. I managed to open the door just as she backed her gunmetal gray Jaguar XJ6 away from the building. Damn! Kemper waved as she backed out. Seeing me, he came in the front door. His face was flushed and his usually dour features seemed almost animated when he came in. "Olivia, my secretary must have forgotten to tell me you were here." He lied smoothly, a trait that didn't bother me as much as perhaps it should. As much as it would bother me if he weren't, in point of fact, my attorney. He re-locked the door and motioned to me to come into his office. I murmured, "That's all right," which didn't qualify as a lie but as a social nicety. I looked pointedly at my watch, however, to let him know that if I were paying by the minute, I damn well would count them. His office was a sumptuous combination of wood (cherry again), soft cordovan leather, and beveled glass. Shelves of law books flanked a liquor cabinet with crystal decanters. On the gleaming wood surface atop the shelves he'd placed artifacts collected on his trips to Egypt and China. "I'm going to have a glass of port. Would you care for anything? Chardonnay?" "Yes, please." He poured wine for us both and handed me a delicate crystal glass. I watched him savor the fragrance and flavor of his port as I sipped my Chardonnay. Abruptly, he turned his attention to business. "I'm afraid I don't have news you want to hear." I winced. "How bad is it? And what can I -- and you -- do about it?" "The proverbial ca-ca is about to hit the fan for O.S. Cadbury, and Peter Delameter will take a direct hit." "What's going on?" I emptied the glass of Chardonnay like a wino drinks Mogen David, strode across the room, and filled it again. "The Feds moved in today. Securities and Exchange Commission. From what I've heard, the IRS was there, too, and I think the FBI was represented. Snatched everything at Cadbury down to the mangled paperclips in the wastebaskets." My life as a rich woman flashed before my eyes. I'd have to get out of the Wickworth Tower ASAP. I almost wept with gratitude that I had put off signing a new lease and gone on a month-to-month basis. My procrastination over new furniture was another blessing. Was I psychic? No, psychic power would have kept me out of Peter Delameter's clutches. Kemper told me what he'd heard about O.S. Cadbury's investment woes. Details were hard to come by, but Kemper had another client who was, to some degree, an insider at Cadbury. She'd described a sinkhole that sounded a lot like the ENRON mess about three years earlier. Not as big, but similar in that Peter Delameter and other principals at O.S. Cadbury used money from new investors to pay old investors and continually cooked the books. "...says he'll fight, but he's nothing but talk," Kemper concluded. "Peter Delameter is his own worst enemy." "Not while I'm alive he isn't!" I took another swallow of wine and set the stemware on Kemper's desk, afraid in my present state I'd break it and owe him even more money. "Things aren't quite as bad as they seem." He settled comfortably into his leather swivel chair and crossed his legs at the ankle. He studied the light dancing in his port. _Not for you, I'm sure._ I did a quick calculation of the retainer I'd paid him and figured I had about five hours of his time coming, then I'd be on my own. Maybe I could barter. I could spend an hour of my time doing transcription for him, and in exchange he'd do five minutes of legal work for me. I wondered if it's too late for me to go to law school. "You have at least fifty K in bank CDs, and you'll probably get twenty or thirty K back from the IRS that you paid ahead in estimated taxes. That will take a while, of course." "Of course," I echoed. It was odd to think of the IRS as my salvation, but I'd cling to any hope. "Furthermore," he added emphatically, "your publisher owes you royalties. And there's still a chance that Joshua Tree will get a green light on the Margot Farr movie, and that eventually they'll pay you the back half of their option." "It's more like the back four-fifths," I grumbled. Joshua Tree Productions didn't have enough money of its own to produce apples at a roadside stand. It was always, "_Manyana_, baby." I felt like a walnut shell in the hands of a hustler. No matter which shell he turned over, there was never anything in mine. "I got a call today from Josh Cruz. He says he's getting calls from Warner and HBO. So don't give up yet, Olivia." His phone rang four times and stopped. Almost immediately his cell phone, in a charger on his desk, rang "Post Time" in bell tones. He lifted it out, checked the incoming number, and smiled. "Yeah?" His smile broadened at what he heard and he glanced at his watch. "Sure. 8:30. No, you decide. Any place is fine with me." He listened and chuckled. "How did you know I like steak? Okay. See you there." I figured it wasn't his wife, and it just didn't sound like a guy-to-guy thing. Anyway, it wasn't my business. Not that I'd ever been put off a little harmless detective work by such details as "not my business." We finished our business, which consisted mostly of him saying, "Don't worry" to me and me saying, "When will you hear something?" to him. Both questions were equally rhetorical. I got in my Lexus, which I'd had the good sense to pay cash for, and drove home. If I were to be homeless, I could at least live in my car. I pictured my baby blue Lexus parked by a shelter and me in a soup line. I'd stayed in a shelter before, and a jail cell, but both adventures were part of undercover work for the San Diego County Sheriff's Department. Knowing it was temporary made all the difference in the world. At the back entrance to Wickworth Tower I placed my card key in the slot and watched the red arm go up, drove into the underground garage, and parked as close to the elevator as I could. _Into the elevator, press twenty-nine._ I had paid first and last month's rent when I moved in, and I had to give at least thirty days notice, so I would have to call Clara Kellem's lawyer, the one who handled the Tower. I would have to pay rent for January, and could stay through February. _Merry Christmas._ I felt relief to make it to my floor without running into other building occupants, but my luck ran out when the doors opened on the twenty-ninth floor. Lyle Kellem stood there with a plate covered with plastic wrap. "Olivia! I wanted you to have this, and I just stopped by on the chance you were here. How lucky is it to run into you?" "Lyle, are you trying to fatten me up?" We walked down the hall and I unlocked my door. "Come on in." I almost gritted my teeth to keep from adding, "For one minute." "Just to put this in the refrigerator. I'm meeting friends downtown." I took the plate, heaped with veal, tiny potatoes and pearl onions. As I opened the refrigerator I remembered that I hadn't stopped at the grocery store as I'd intended. Well, Mace could have veal for a late supper. With club soda. That's all I had on hand, and his plane would be landing in about an hour and a quarter. "Thanks again for having me for lunch, Lyle. You have yet to prepare any food I don't love, but I want you to keep trying. Oh, and thanks for letting me know about the photo shoot tomorrow. I'll be there. Is everyone going to make it on such short notice?" "Oh, have no doubt about that. All the McNamaras are on their best behavior these days. Almost time to divide the trust, you know." I must have looked puzzled, because he added, "The Centennial Trust." I'd done a lot of research about the McNamaras, but I'd never heard of a Centennial Trust. "What's that?" "The Fort Knox of all the McNamara wealth, the trust Michael T. the first put together." "Tell me more." I'm sure I looked puzzled. "Well, it's existed in one form or another since 1905, and has withstood every effort by anyone to break it up," Lyle continued. "But it will be cashed out, all the proceeds dispersed to his heirs, in 2005. On May fifteenth, one hundred years to the day since great-granddad McNamara bought his first dozen lots in Las Vegas, and started buying land all over California. Except, I think Grand-Mom's lawyer, Rossi Mitchell, found a loophole. He's trying to move the date up to the first day banks are open in 2005. January fourth." I had a head rush. "So Clara's story, the book I'm writing, includes this whole giant story I didn't know about until now?" "Afraid so. I thought you'd probably come up against it already. It's not public record, _per se_, but I thought Grand-Mom, or Rossi, would tell you." I shook my head, too stunned to ask coherent questions. I'd known before that the clock was ticking on the memoir project, but now it felt like Big Ben booming in my ears. As soon as Lyle left, I took a fast shower, dressed in black slacks and a red sweater flecked with gold sparkles, and drove to the airport. I had a lot of work to do, and major financial problems to weather, but seeing Mace again took precedence. It was time to take a page from Josh Cruz and Joshua Tree Production's procrastination handbook. _Manyana, baby!_ -------- *Five* My cell phone rang as I inched along in the Arriving Flights stream of traffic. It was Mace. "I'm almost there." I folded down my sun visor and checked my hair in the mirror on the back. I'd only had time to blow it dry and curl the bangs under. "I'm about ten cars away from this end of the terminal." Several drivers slammed their trunks and three vans peeled away from the terminal like getaway cars, relieving the bottleneck. Way down on the right I saw Mace wave. He was still on his cell phone to me. I nosed my Lexus around an SUV the size of a garbage truck and headed toward the curb. "Listen, I can't talk to you now," I told him. "There's a handsome man waving at me and I'm going to grab him and go. I am a desperate woman." I got stuck between a Corvette and a pickup truck with assault amplifiers deafening innocent bystanders. My windows pulsed, shielding me from the worst of the vibrations. Mace zigzagged between cars to get to me, opened the back door on the passenger side and shoved his two suitcases and laptop computer onto the seat, then got in the front. I expected a quick kiss, but he surprised me with an I-mean-business lip lock. "Wow. Welcome home. If I were standing up, I'd be swept clean off my feet." "Then it's a good thing you're sitting down. If you fell over, I'd be too tired to pick you up." His face said that wasn't just idle chatter. He looked like he'd hitchhiked rather than flown from Washington. I gave what I thought was a surreptitious sniff, but he didn't get his detective badge from a cereal box. "I know, I know. 'Please stand downwind.' I did a good deed for a woman with two babies, and I paid the price." He ran his hand over his face, smelled his hand, and winced. "Actually, it could be worse. I held the one who threw up. The mother held the one with diarrhea." "Oh, I've walked into crime scenes that smelled worse. And better," I added, lowering his window two inches from the control on my side. Seeing an opening in the near-gridlock, I shot through like a stunt driver. He asked me what was new and I told him about Kenneth leaving for Honolulu and Candace having to mind the store. I was about to tell about lunch at Clara Kellem's when I noticed his breathing was a little too loud and rhythmical. I drove north from the airport, parallel to the Las Vegas Strip, and turned into the Wickworth Tower. When I stopped to use my card key in the underground parking lot, Mace woke up. The light in the elevator gave his face an iguana-colored cast, the part above his five-o'clock-yesterday shadow. For a good-looking man, Mace looked awful. Inside my apartment, he headed for the bathroom. When he handed out his odiferous sport coat, I put it on the balcony to air. "Don't you have any real soap?" he called. "I don't want to smell like lavender!" "Last drawer down on the right. Dial should do it." I didn't add what I was thinking, that a soak in five-percent Clorox solution might be a good first step. I surveyed the refrigerator, looking for enough vegetables to make a salad. I was glad to find a head of romaine, a bag of carrots, and a jar of artichoke hearts, but after I did radical surgery on the romaine to excise the dead and dying parts, I only had enough left for a garnish. I made a pot of decaf coffee and set the veal and potatoes on the counter, ready to pop in the microwave. The phone rang, but I let it go to the answering machine while I set the table. I heard my businesslike message conclude with the four most-often-heard words in the English language, "Please leave a message." "Ms. Wright? This is Detective Desi Lake of the Las Vegas Metro Police Department." It was a woman's voice. "I'd like to speak with you about an active criminal investigation in hopes you have some information..." I snatched the receiver. "Yes, Detective, I'm here. What can I help you with?" I felt awkward, knowing that her boss, the chief of detectives, was in the bathroom off my bedroom, presently naked and hopefully romantic enough to overcome severe fatigue and jet lag. "Thanks for answering, Ma'am. I have been at the scene of a homicide for the past hour, and I need to ask you some questions..." "Who? No! What? My daughter..." I was panicked right out of my mind. "What? No, please, don't be upset. This has nothing to do with any member of your family!" "Oh. Oh. Oh." I was light-headed and panting. "Ms. Wright? Are you all right?" I didn't answer, and she asked again. The speed of light has nothing on a mother who takes a phone call from a homicide detective. "I'm ... all right. Who is dead, and why are you calling me?" "I'm right outside the Wickworth Tower. I'd like to come up and talk to you." She wasn't asking, she was telling. I know the difference. I also knew there was no point asking her anything else on the phone. "All right. I'm on the twenty-ninth floor. Number 2909. I'll call down to security and tell them to send you up. Uh, give me ten minutes to be presentable." So much for romance, I thought with a sigh. So much for dinner. And so much for Mace getting the rest he so desperately needed. I put the veal back in the refrigerator and went into the bedroom. I couldn't hear the shower running, so I knocked on the door. "Come in." I opened the door a few inches to let the steam escape and so Mace could hear me better. "There's nothing I'd rather do than join you, but we have a major complication to our wet and wild reunion." "How's that?" He opened the door all the way, then vigorously rubbed a towel over his head and draped it around his shoulder. He was naked as a Greek Olympian and although he'd put on maybe ten pounds in the past two or three years, and there was more "salt" in his pepper hair than there had been even a year before, he still looked great to me. Familiarity gets an undeserved bad rap in the old "familiarity breeds..." saying. "A Detective Desi Lake is on her way up to ask me some questions about a homicide. She wouldn't say more than that on the phone. Except to say it's nobody in my family." "Toss me some briefs out of the blue suitcase, will you? How soon will she be here?" As if in answer, the doorbell rang. I grabbed the briefs and threw them to him. "Your hanging bag is in the closet." "I'll be out in sixty seconds." I used five of those sixty seconds to kiss his freshly shaved chin and his lips, then returned to the living room. Opening the door, I invited in Desi Lake. I never enjoy greeting a guest with the words, "Oh, there's a man in my bedroom," but I figure it's good to jump right in when the guest is a detective. "Mace Emerick got back in town about an hour ago, from the FBI Academy, and he's here getting cleaned up." He was there to get cleaned up and laid, but she had no need to know the sordid details. "He'll be out in a minute. Could I pour you a cup of coffee? It's decaf, but I could make regular." "Decaf is fine, thanks." She looked around the room, unable to stop detecting, I supposed. I brought three mugs of coffee to the living room on a tray, along with a small carton of half-and-half and a silver sugar bowl that needed polishing. She took a mug and said, "Black's fine, thanks." I put a generous spoonful of cream in mine and stirred. She examined my plastic tower of CDs and commented pleasantly on my apparent love of Fleetwood Mac. I surveyed Desi Lake as she surveyed my apartment. She was a good three inches taller than my five feet six inches and as muscular as a well-built man. She reminded me of the women who used to represent East Germany in the shot put before urine testing came into vogue. Must be hell finding women's clothes, I thought. Actually, her navy blazer had buttons on the right and buttonholes on the left, so she must have bought it in the men's department. Her upper torso filled out the jacket, but it was more chest than breasts. Her dark brown hair fell from a center part into a neat wedge cut. "Desi!" Mace emerged from the bedroom, smelling like Polo Sport, which he should since I gave it to him. They shook hands like hearty guys, none of this lady stuff for Desi. "I guess Olivia told you I just got back in town, feel like I got dragged across country on a sled. She offered to feed me, after I got clean enough to tolerate, and then I'm heading home to sleep for about twenty hours. What's going on?" Desi looked a little uncomfortable with the question from her boss, with me standing there. I spoke up. "Detective Lake says she needs to ask me some questions. Let's all sit down and get on with it." I handed Mace a mug of black coffee. The two of them settled on the couch and I tried to get comfortable in a stiff-sided armchair. I gave her a "go ahead" look and sipped my coffee. "I'm looking into a homicide, Ms. Wright. Were you with Kemper Wilkerson tonight?" "Kemper?" I asked in a squeak. "Was he murdered?" "No, he's all right," she said. "But in trying to establish his whereabouts this evening, we need to know if you were with him, at what time, and where." "I had a seven o'clock appointment with Kemper at his office on Fourth Street. I got there right on time. His receptionist was still there, but she left about five minutes after I arrived. Kemper was with another client. When that client left, I went in. It was about 7:30." I didn't want to admit I was so anal I knew it was 7:28, and my watch is accurate to the second. "I left about 8:30." _8:26 and a half._ "Did you see anyone else while you were there?" "Yes, I recognized Eileen McNamara. Kemper came out of his office with her and walked her out to her car. Then he called me into his office." I wanted to know what was going on, but knew I'd have to wait until Desi Lake was ready to spill the beans. It's a detective thing, something I was used to. They like to make a deal. You tell me everything, I tell you nothing. That's fair. "And as far as you know, she drove away?" I shrugged. "Her Jaguar pulled away, yeah. Then I was in Kemper's office with the door closed. When I left, he walked me out to see that I got into my car safely. It's not a good neighborhood." I refrained from pointing out that it was close to the police headquarters. "There was no sign of her Jaguar or any other car nearby." "Did Mr. Wilkerson say anything about his plans for the evening?" "Not directly to me. He got a call on his cell phone, though, and said something about meeting the person at 8:30. I think he said, 'Anyplace is fine,' then said he liked steak." "And you left at, what time did you say?" "About 8:30." I saved her the need to ask by going on. "I came back to my apartment, saw Lyle Kellem for a few minutes, changed clothes, and went to the airport to pick up Mace. What time was that?" I gave Mace a triumphant smile. He couldn't help but enjoy that my alibi (or whatever this account of my whereabouts should be called) was the chief of detectives, Las Vegas Metro PD. "10:30. You were right on time." He cocked his head toward Desi Lake. "Now, who's dead? Who, where and likely when?" "Eileen McNamara was found dead in Summerlin. Her body was beside a pond on the golf course." _Eileen McNamara, dead!_ I'd like to think my first thought was one of profound benevolence, a flash of eternal truth, like, "never send to know for whom the bell tolls; it tolls for thee." That's what I'd like to think. The truth was pure egoism, a two-part strobe of _Woe is me -- now I can't interview her_, followed by, _Well, now. Won't Andrea be astonished_? In my defense I must add that Eileen McNamara was not my friend, not even my acquaintance. Ninety-nine percent of what I knew of her was old newsprint and recent commercials. One percent was my glimpse of her in front of Kemper's office. Desi was answering Mace. "The body was still in place, face down, when I left to see Kemper Wilkerson and come here." "Was her car there?" Mace asked. "No. It hasn't been located yet. We have a lookout for it. Gray XJ6, California plates." "Eileen was making herself unpopular with the McNamaras," I blurted. "I heard at lunch at Clara McNamara's today that Eileen was threatening to show up at a big family photo shoot next Tuesday so they moved the photo shoot to tomorrow in Summerlin." "State of the body?" Mace asked. "Clothed. Expensive Western outfit. No shoes. Nice necklace, earrings, watch, ring. Not what you'd expect if it was robbery." "Purse?" Mace's fatigue was visibly lifting as he got back into harness. "Nothing yet. We found one denim high heel shoe, however, right on the edge of the parking lot, on the side closest to the body." I thought of Eileen McNamara as I'd seen her about four hours earlier. Attractive, confident, flirtatious in an off-hand, probably even automatic, way. Alive, and now -- not alive. Were the police jumping to conclusions to call it homicide? No. Unless she was strolling barefoot across a golf course in the middle of a cold December night, and dropped dead of natural causes -- or fell into a water hazard and drowned -- Eileen had come to a violent end. I hoped Mace and Desi Lake wouldn't notice the goosebumps that rose on my arms. "Who is in charge of the scene?" Mace asked. "Paul Gill. He's still at the scene. When I left, he was getting lights set up to see the whole area around the body. Like a stage." She shrugged. "Kinda funny, her being an actress." "Get him on the phone, will you?" Mace said. "I'd like to talk to him." I filled Mace's mug with coffee and set it on the table. "Are you going over there?" I hoped the answer was no, for at least two reasons. His immediate surge of energy aside, Mace was exhausted. He should have a meal and go to bed. The other reason had to do with police procedure. When Mace had been "one of the guys," he regarded the brass as ego-driven busybodies, eager to visit newsworthy crime scenes and see their badges catch the light of TV cameras. Such "help" was seen as interference by whichever detectives had caught a case, and was widely known by the acronym CHAOS. Chief Has Arrived On Scene. Like it or not, Mace was one of the brass now, and he needed to keep his hands off the detectives. Being Chief of Detectives was a lot like being a mother, in my opinion. Just when you reach the pinnacle of knowledge, when you know precisely what is the best course of action for your children (children in the broad sense -- age is irrelevant), you have to shut your mouth and back off. Mace had weeded out his department, a radical and painful change, and had put good people in charge of detecting. He saw to their continued training and insisted everyone stay sharp. But letting go of the crime scene investigation and interviews of witnesses and suspects was hard for him. "No, it's their case." Contradicting himself, he took the phone in the kitchen when Desi said she had Gill on the line and said, "What've you got there, Paul? You need any help?" A pause. "When will OMI get the body?" Another pause, then, "Are they giving you any grief?" I thought I heard a hopeful note in that question, as if a "Yes" from Paul would authorize Mace to speed out to Summerlin, Code Three, lights and sirens, and take charge. For a man asleep on his feet an hour before, he certainly appeared energized. I took his mug to him and offered Desi a second cup. Apparently the answer from Paul regarding grief from the Office of the Medical Investigator was no, because Mace shrugged and murmured, "Good, good. Glad to hear it." His face told another story, however. Some other stud -- a young stud -- was in charge, and Mace belonged in the barn. The three of us sat down again and Desi asked me to repeat what I'd told her about seeing Eileen McNamara at Kemper Wilkerson's office, and what I'd heard at Clara's lunch. Mace yawned and I realized I was worn out, too. I offered to call Desi or Paul Gill the next day (which it technically was already) if I thought of anything else. Desi, who must have slept all day and was just hitting her stride at midnight, was slow to take a hint, but finally she left. I heated the veal in the microwave and Mace ate it, chewing in his sleep, I suspect. All thought of romance was gone, from both of us. He went to bed while I loaded the dishwasher and he was nearly comatose by the time I slipped in beside him in my flannel pajamas. I was tired, but not sleepy, so I thought about names. Mace told me after Desi left that her real first name was Desiree, the absolute last name I would have guessed for the muscular detective with the deep voice and kick-ass attitude. Mace's real name was William, but by the time I met him, the nickname Mace had completely overtaken his identity. He got it as a rookie patrol officer when he'd chased a suspect (on foot) in a rural part of San Diego County. Officer Emerick got to a fence and hurdled it, only to discover a massive German Shepherd coming at him on his flank. He had pulled his mace from his belt and pivoted toward the onrushing watchdog. As he did, he stepped into a leaf-covered depression, just a few inches down, but enough to throw him off balance. As the dog lunged toward him, he sprayed the can of mace to stop the dog before he became another notch on Killer's collar. It worked, but since the wind direction was back toward him, the rookie cop went down as well -- out cold. The farmer called in on 911 that an officer was down -- which he technically was, thanks to gravity. And the combined forces of the California Highway Patrol, the San Diego County Sheriff's Department, the City of Vista and four nearby communities, and six officers from private security companies responded -- helicopters and all. When the toxic fumes cleared, "Mace" he was and Mace he would remain. At one-thirty, I slipped out of bed quietly and put on my fuzzy pink slippers, not that Mace would have noticed if I'd clomped out in combat boots. In my second bedroom, actually an office with a daybed, I turned on the computer and brought up the Clara Kellem manuscript. Finding the chapter on Trey McNamara's sudden death by gunshot, I read over what I had. Then I dug the copies of the _Los Angeles Times_ on microfilm out of a plastic book bag, smoothed them out and taped them together so the articles could be read correctly. For an hour, until I was too sleepy to hit the right keys, I typed the Eileen and Trey McNamara story into chapter sixteen. While I obeyed the Windows command to WAIT While your Computer Shuts Down, I wrote myself a note and stuck it on the screen. _Where's Eileen's Jaguar?_ I wrote on two more Post-it Notes and stuck them on the screen. _What was Eileen doing in Rory Castle's neighborhood?_ _Was she already dead when she got there?_ -------- *Six* _Tuesday, December 6_ Las Vegas was scarcely more than a wide spot in the trail when it became an instant town. I was working on the historical background of Las Vegas, painting it in like landscape behind my written portrait of Clara's family. Ever since I'd signed the contract with Clara and our publisher, I'd been gathering information and feeding it to my computer raw, without seasoning and without trimming the fat. When Mace came home from Virginia earlier than expected, I had to face the mountain of work that lay in front of me. I felt like a naughty girl, having to catch up on homework and write five term papers in two weeks. I'd gone to bed very late, but I was still up before the winter dawn on Tuesday. The only way I could make my deadline was to write like a literary whirling dervish when the phone wasn't ringing. And I was pretty sure it would start ringing by 7:00 a.m., a time that seemed to meet the minimum definition of a reasonable hour to call. As people in New York always pointed out, it was already 10:00 there and they'd been at work for hours, the implication clear that people in the Pacific Time zone were sluggards. Mace poured himself a cup of coffee and gathered his clothes by the front door, including the offensive sport coat he'd retrieved from the balcony. I told him, in briefest terms, what he'd missed me saying on the way home from the airport, that Candace was having a crisis and that I might be shanghaied to help out at some function for which Royale Catering was responsible. "I've got to stop at the dry cleaners on my way to my house," he said. "Need anything dropped off?" He wore a wheat-colored wool jacket with leather on the elbows and dark wool slacks. His tie was tan and maroon, with tiny antique pistols on it. "No, but thanks. I have stuff to pick up, but I'm going out later. I need to call Lyle Kellem and see if the photo shoot is still on, or if the demise of Eileen McNamara put a damper on the festivities." He finished his coffee and kissed me good-bye. "Let's have dinner out. Your refrigerator and mine are both suffering deprivation." "I'd like that. Oh, wait a minute. You don't have a car. You want me to drive you home?" I hoped he'd say no. I was really feeling under the gun about the book. "Thanks, no. A patrolman is taking me over." I unlocked the deadbolt and opened the door as he hoisted his suitcase and briefcase. Jack Basset, chief of security for the Wickworth Tower, was standing in the hall, waiting for the elevator. He turned his hound dog eyes toward us and gave a half salute to Mace, a half nod to me. He had a heavy beard, as usual. I sometimes wondered when he shaved, since I saw him morning, noon, and night with the same amount of beard. My theory was he thought it made him look like George Clooney. If so, he deserved credit for a rich fantasy life. "Morning, Chief," he said. "Ms. Wright." Basset spoke like he paid for a sentence by the word. I gave a brief greeting in return, dressed as I was in a bathrobe. As I locked the door again I remembered that I hadn't told Mace about my impending penury. I would tell him at dinner, and try not to admit that I wanted to choke Peter Delameter until his eyes showed a row of sevens, making bells ring and money -- MY money -- fall into a tin pan around his neck. I found some English muffins in the freezer and put them in the toaster to have with my second cup of coffee, then got back to work. I pulled up the file I'd named Early Days and continued a description of events leading up to the May 15, 1905, creation of the town of Las Vegas. The largest town in southern Nevada in 1900 was a gold mining camp called Delamar, about a hundred miles north of the Las Vegas Valley. Searchlight, sixty miles south of the valley, was coming into its own as another gold camp. Farms and ranches peppered the Eagle, Clover, Moapa and Virgin Valleys. The Las Vegas Valley had a plentiful water supply, the Las Vegas Creek, and timber in the nearby Spring Mountains. At the center of the valley was Mrs. Helen Stewart's ranch with lush orchards of figs, dates and tropical fruits. Montana Senator William Clark formed the San Pedro, Los Angeles & Salt Lake Railroad in 1900 and battled a competing line, the Oregon Short Line, part of the Union Pacific system. Clark managed to purchase the Stewart Ranch and water supply in 1902, and continued building the grade from the Nevada-Utah border south toward the Las Vegas Valley. As was common in railroading, a mobile tent settlement sprang up alongside the workers, keeping pace with the graders at the end of the track. This phenomenon of moving saloons, stores, gamblers and prostitutes, called "hell on wheels," fascinated me and I'd had to tear myself away from the research to keep moving on the book. The rails reached the Las Vegas area on October 20, 1904, and scheduled train service to the northeast began within days. There was enough hell on wheels to divide, some going on south with the rails while one tent city stayed and thrived a half-mile west of Las Vegas Ranch. The valley was a bustling crossroads (and good pickings for saloons, etc.) thanks to the newly discovered Bullfrog mining district some one hundred twenty miles northwest. Freight came in on the train from Utah and was transferred onto wagons to begin the trip to Bullfrog in stagecoaches and enormous wagon trains pulled by mules, horses, and burros. While the railroad prepared grade and laid track to connect with Los Angeles, the Las Vegas Valley turned into a speculators' battle ground. A young surveyor named J.T. McWilliams owned the tent town, which was set on an eighty-acre tract he'd purchased from the government. He called his town Las Vegas; all of it was west of the tracks except for a quarter section east of the tracks. He filed his plat with what was then Lincoln County. Meanwhile, Clark laid out a townsite east of the tracks. Both men advertised their coming towns and painted appealing pictures of the booming future in "McWilliams Las Vegas Townsite" and "Clark's Las Vegas Townsite." It was a bet with high stakes, and McWilliams thought he had an ace in the hole. The railroad's surveyors had mistakenly pounded their stakes for the Armour ice plant on the east side of the tracks -- on the small section owned by McWilliams. Instead of notifying them when he saw the stakes, he bided his time, watching construction of what was an expensive and valuable industrial plant on his land. Rail traffic between Los Angeles and Salt Lake City officially opened April 11, 1905. Parcels of land in Clark's townsite were to be sold beginning the first of May at prices marked on the town plat in the order that applications were received. Interest was running extremely high, increased by the growth of mining camps at Bullfrog and Rhyolite. In a race for supremacy and investors' money, McWilliams and Clark contracted half-page ads in the California daily papers. Maps of Clark's townsite with lot prices were posted at railroad offices from Salt Lake City to Los Angeles. Applications poured in, three times as many applications as there were lots to buy. On May 12, the railroad announced that contracts made so far were cancelled and that all money collected would be refunded. Instead of a land sale, there would be an auction. Prospective buyers could buy round-trip tickets, sixteen dollars from Los Angeles, twenty dollars from Salt Lake City. The auction would be held May 15 in Las Vegas. Purchasers of lots would get their train fare back as a rebate. The morning of May 15 about a thousand eager people gathered around a wooden platform just north of where the Union Plaza Hotel is now. As the temperature climbed well above one hundred degrees, the auction heated up as well. For choice lots near the depot, businessmen (especially from Los Angeles) bid twelve hundred dollars above scheduled prices. Because of the heat, the auction ended for the day at 3:00 p.m. By then, one hundred seventy-six lots (of the twelve hundred townsite lots) had been sold. That evening, drays and skids pulling tents and wooden houses, stores, lodging houses, and supplies raised dust clouds that hovered over the townsite. New landowners searched for the stakes that marked their property. Reports I read said that hammers and saws could be heard until late at night as buyers prepared their buildings and homes. A few merchants on Fremont Street, and saloon men in the section known as "blocks sixteen and seventeen," opened for business the next morning. "The sale of intoxicating liquors will be prohibited, except on blocks sixteen and seventeen," was decreed by J. Ross Clark, president of the Salt Lake Railroad. Ross Clark, the brother of Senator William Clark, was president of the Young Men's Christian Association in Los Angeles, and wanted Las Vegas to be a "temperance town." Outside of the area bordered by First Street, Third Street, Ogden and Stewart Streets, liquor could only be served in a hotel or with "bona fide meals." Naturally, everyone who wanted to start a saloon provided a room (or two) for rent and called it a hotel. Block sixteen quickly developed into a red-light district. I thought of how old J. Ross Clark was probably spinning in his grave at what Las Vegas had become. The auction continued May 16, and the lots left unsold after another day of fierce bidding were sold in Los Angeles and Salt Lake City. All through May, J. T. McWilliams watched the railroad company build its ice plant on his land. Late that month he revealed their blunder to railroad officials and asked for five thousand dollars for the property. They were furious at their surveyors and at him for letting the error continue, so they left him high and dry. They stopped construction on the plant and began again at another site. Loss of the ice facility was the death knell for the town McWilliams planned. Within a few months his "Las Vegas" was called Ragtown and existed only to service the transients going to and from the mining camps. I wished I had time to thoroughly research life in the new railroad town of Las Vegas. I was intrigued by descriptions of the tent homes, usually canvas stretched over a wooden frame built on top of a wooden box with three-foot walls. They commonly had a stove, a double cot, a table, one trunk, and a cupboard made of cracker boxes. Some had wooden floors, others only dirt. The countless horses, mules, and burros attracted flies that swarmed through the town. For protection against the sun, tent houses had above their canvas roofs a canvas "fly" or a board roof. The proprietor of the tent Las Vegas Hotel, built before May 15 to accommodate people there for the auction, was aghast to discover the interior temperature was one hundred twenty-eight degrees that day. He had failed to install a fly above the roof to keep the sun's direct rays off the hotel. As I typed "aghast" I looked down at the clock on the lower right hand corner of my computer, and I was aghast at the time. I saved what I'd written and called Lyle. No answer. Grabbing a pen, I scratched out a note about Eileen McNamara's death and faxed it to Andrea and Coco. Then I raced around my bedroom, tossing pajamas and slippers wherever they landed, showered, and dressed for the 2:00 p.m. photo shoot at Rory Kellem Castle's house. Even if the photo shoot were cancelled, I could use the time to interview Rory. The answering machine light was blinking, probably a call that came while I was in the shower or running the hair dryer. As I slipped into navy pumps that matched the trim on my light blue suit, I pressed Messages and listened. I grabbed a navy blue double-breasted coat from the entryway closet. "Hello, Ms. Wright. This is Suzi McNamara calling." The voice was flat. "My husband said he met you yesterday at his Great-Aunt Clara's place. I'm in Las Vegas for a few days, and I'd like to talk with you, to make sure you have what you need for Clara's book about the family. Please call me on my cell." I'd received warmer messages from my dentist's office manager. I jotted down the number on the back of an envelope and stuffed it in my purse. Thinking of how furious Mickey McNamara had appeared when he spoke about Eileen trying to bother the family, I wondered when Suzi had arrived in Vegas. And whether she, too, had been angry with Eileen McNamara. -------- *Seven* When I stepped off the elevator in the basement garage, I realized I should have stopped in the lobby to get my mail. I pressed Up and got lucky; the elevator was still there, not off on a slower-than-molasses-in-January trip to the penthouse. It rose to L, shuddered to a stop, and sat there as if giving me time to reconsider. When the doors oozed open, I was face to jowl with the ubiquitous Jack Basset. I supposed it was a good thing that he was ever present. Keeping his thumb on the pulse of Wickworth Tower. Security never sleeps. I wondered about his background. Clara McNamara, who treated nearly everyone as a lackey, spoke of Mr. Basset with respect that bordered on reverence. "Good afternoon, Ms. Wright," he said in his energy-saving monotone. "Good afternoon." We switched places and I walked quickly to the wall of mailboxes. Using my key, I opened the miniature brass door and extracted a thick wad of mail. Or at least what the U.S. Postal Service called mail. Judging from the full trash basket beside the boxes, I wasn't the only one who sorted on the spot and tossed three quarters of my mail in the garbage. I paused just long enough to tear all the credit card solicitations in half before trashing them. The much lighter pile of keepers included a postcard from Valerie saying she was going to Switzerland for Christmas with her dad. An airline pilot, Russ Vale had shown Val the world, largesse that made me jealous during the years I was a single mom, working full time and going to college at night to earn an associate's degree in criminal justice. It undoubtedly fed a reservoir of jealousy in Candace, too. While eleven-year-old Val rode horses on the beach in Spain, fifteen-year-old Candace went only as far as San Bernardino to see her dad, the poetic professor, for two weeks. As she'd said at the time, whoopee. I'd also received three envelopes from O.S. Cadbury & Associates, two that looked like statements (or, in this case, _evidence_) and a thinner one that looked more personal. There was an envelope from Joshua Tree Productions, my name scribbled in large, loopy letters. And a thick five-by-seven envelope from the Las Vegas Historical Society. I took a step toward the stairs, then turned back and snagged a large brown envelope from the trash. _Olivia Wright, you may already be a winner!_ it said in red letters. What with the financial degradation I faced thanks to Peter Delameter and O.S. Cadbury, I'd better fill out my entry and send it in. In my car, I turned on the oldies station and sang along to Marvin Gaye, sad because he'd had to hear it through the grapevine. _Honey, Honey, yeah!_ Man, they just don't write 'em like that anymore. My cell phone rang. "Mom? Did you hear about Eileen McNamara?" "I heard late last night that her body was found on a golf course, but that's all." I turned down the radio. "Louis Castle told me it wasn't far from his parents' house in Summerlin." "I'm on my way there now. A big photo shoot was scheduled, a family portrait for the book, but I don't know if that's postponed or what. I figure I can talk to Rory, at least." "She's pretty nice, at least the one time I met her. I have to go interview a new _sous-chef_ right now. Call me when you get the inside story on Eileen's murder." "Is that what they're calling it on TV? Murder, for sure?" I figured it happened too late for any details to make the newspaper. "Murder? Oh, yeah. Knife wound. Gross." "I'll call you later." I drove toward Summerlin in less-than-usual traffic, wondering what kind of mother-in-law Rory Kellem Castle would make. Candace Castle had a nice ring to it. That led to wondering what kind of mother-in-law I would make. Satisfied that I'd be a pretty good mother-in-law, I let my idle mind roam further. I would make one hell of a grandmother. But I wouldn't let anyone call me Grandma. "Nana" had a nice ring, to my way of thinking. Younger, more with it. The weather was nasty by Las Vegas standards, with a front coming. The wind out of the northwest wanted to move Vegas into Arizona, or at least as much vegetation, trash, and lawn furniture as it could grab. It found plenty of loose dirt and dried vegetation, thanks to a long, hot, and dry summer and fall. The dirty white clouds bulged downward like tent tops with fat men rolling on them. I searched on the radio until I found a news station and caught the weather report. "Winds out of the northwest at thirty miles per hour, gusting to forty. Rain expected in the Las Vegas Valley by nightfall, chance of snow at higher elevations." I hoped none of the Royale Catering events were planned as garden parties for the next few days. Following Lyle's directions, I turned into the entrance to Summerlin Canyons. The guard checked my name against his list of expected visitors and waved me through. I drove slowly to the right, around one of the golf courses. The grass was about half green, half brown, but the course still looked very good. Flags on the holes flapped madly in the wind and the poles whipped back and forth like gates on a slalom course for drunken skiers. I turned into a cul-de-sac that served as a private street for one enormous house. Number Twelve Queen's Court seemed like a perfect address for a family named Castle, but I was astonished to see, at the left end (as I faced it), a gray brick turret with a parapet. Most of the house was two stories high, but small windows in the central section (where the shake-shingle roof came to a peak) looked like there might be a partial third floor. The entire house was gray bricks flecked with maroon, except around the matching bay windows, which were bordered by lighter gray stonework. Around the massive double door the bricks were juxtaposed in a three-dimensional pattern, every other brick sticking out instead of flat against the house. The arch over the door and the wide, curved stoop were of dark red stone. To my right stretched what must be the west wing. Beyond the point where the central roof ended was an incongruously boxy part of the house. On the ground floor was a three-car garage, each door gray with a painted coat of arms and crossed swords. The front of the floor above the garages, a second story, featured six mullioned windows, gray bricks serving as the mullions between the sections of glass and each topped by an arch of stained glass. Farther to the west was another garage with five doors. On the concrete pad in front of one closed door sat a white 1955 Thunderbird. Cherry condition. Forcibly tearing my stare off the car and reciting "Thou shalt not covet" under my breath, I mounted the three steps to the front door. The bell was hard to find, covered by ivy. Before I rang it, though, the door opened and a woman and two men stepped onto the stoop, which was large enough the four of us could have danced the "Boot Scootin' Boogie." Paul Gill and Desi Lake stepped to one side and looked back to a petite woman I knew to be Rory Castle. She wore gray wool slacks, black boots, and a white sweater with candy canes appliqued all over it. She looked like she was in her late forties, but I knew she was fifty-seven. The red hair that showed up sporadically across the McNamara family looked very good on Rory, especially with her blue-green eyes. I noticed she had tiny jeweled candy canes as earrings. Paul nodded to me. "Olivia. How are you?" I gave him a nod and turned to Rory. "Mrs. Castle, hello, I'm Olivia Wright. Lyle Kellem invited me to be here for your family portrait session." She extended her hand warily, then seemed to remember who I was. "Yes, of course, how are you?" The detectives thanked Rory for her time and headed for their car. A particularly vicious gust of wind made the heavy oak door bang open and Rory invited me in. "I heard it might actually snow," she said as she closed the door behind us. "Rain at the least here in the valley sometime later today," I responded. "They say snow is likely in the mountains." To my left I saw a living room decorated in gingham, quilts, and tole paintings. The floor was white pine. The effect was overwhelming Americana. I half expected to see the Country Bears appear on a rotating stage and sing "Rocky Top." "Is Lyle here? I thought this was the time set for the family portrait." "It was, but finding a woman murdered a few hundred yards from the back of my property pretty much postponed everything." She was clearly annoyed that the murdered woman was so rude as to be found anywhere near her lovely home. "We'll get together for the photo sometime in the next few days." "Do you know who found the body?" "No. It was last night, not real late, but I'd already gone to bed. My brother Sean had stopped over for a while earlier in the evening, and I was tired, so I went to bed. Later our next door neighbor called and said the police were out on the golf course, that they were setting up portable lights and making a big fuss. I looked out the window in the upstairs bedroom, but I couldn't see anything. I went back downstairs to make some tea, and a policeman came to the door to ask if I'd seen or heard anything unusual between 7:00 p.m. and then. I hadn't. So that was that. I went back to bed. Would you like a cup of tea? I have water boiling in the kitchen." "Thanks, yes, that would be nice." Her kitchen was just an average-sized kitchen, which is to say, small for the size of the house. I wondered how she brought up three sons there, then remembered that Rory and her husband, David Castle, had moved to Summerlin after the last son, Louis, had left for college. David was chief financial officer for a chain of hotels and spent a great deal of time traveling. "That's a beautiful car out front, the Thunderbird," I said. She poured the boiling water into a teapot that looked too old and valuable to use and added a tea egg, then covered it with a cozy. "Yes, thanks. It's my favorite of all our cars." She said it the way I might say, "It's my favorite of all my ballpoint pens." I followed her to the dining room, which had three walls of pale, silvery gray and one, the wall with a fireplace, was a stunning shade of red I would call garnet. The fireplace and mantel were both wood and painted the color of the wall. Nothing rested on the mantel. The only ornamentation was above the fireplace, a portrait of a beautiful woman sitting in a gilt chair, one hand in her lap and the other fingering a gold and ruby necklace at her throat. It was unquestionably a portrait of Clara McNamara. She was breathtaking. I thought Clara was a beauty in the debutante photo on her mantel, but this portrait showed Clara in the full bloom of womanhood. The style of painting was very formal, almost classic. It could have been three hundred years old, except for the fashion. The gunmetal gray afternoon dress had the padded shoulders and peplum of the late 1940's when Clara would have been about forty-two or forty-three. The full skirt held its stiff shape like a fan around her, and down the front of the skirt was an inset of maroon ruffles. She wore a felt and satin hat of gray, white, and maroon, with a veil that draped down an inch just because it could, not because anyone actually used veils, and her eyes seemed to say, "Don't ever bet against me." "It's my mother, of course. Painted the year after I was born." "It's magnificent," I said, hoping my compliment wasn't too much. Rory smiled approvingly. "I'm glad you're doing Mother's book. How is it coming along?" Before she pointed out how little time I had left for research and writing, I said, "Very well. I have quite a few chapters done, and I'm knitting them together. But I need to interview more family members to round it out. And, frankly, the murder of Eileen McNamara must be included. In order to wrap this up I've got to talk to people who know what's going on with the investigation." I steeled myself for her argument, but just then the doorbell rang. "Please have a seat," she said, a little stiffly. "I'll be right back." I could hear Lyle's voice and someone else's. They came in, exclaiming how cold it was. Lyle rounded the corner and said, "Olivia, I saw your car. Please forgive me for not calling you. It's been a zoo ever since you-know-who turned up you-know-how on the first hole. Oh, Olivia, I want you to meet Suzi McNamara, the fifth wife of my second cousin, Mickey." I stood and shook hands with a young bombshell with piercing violet eyes and a cap of dark black hair smooth as a bowling ball. She was probably a size one. "Sorry about my cold hand," she said. If her eyes and voice and the set of her mouth were any indication, her hand might be the warmest part of her. She removed her white cashmere coat, with a collar and lapels of some poor animal I didn't want to identify, and draped it over a chair further down the long table. Her dark green wool dress was simple and showed her figure and her expensive necklace and earrings to advantage. Rory took English bone china cups and saucers out of a tall cabinet that matched the table, set out a sugar bowl and small silver spoons. She poured for the three of us. I noticed Suzi didn't touch hers. "How is your grandmother taking the news of Eileen's death?" I asked Lyle. "As well as can be expected," he said somberly, then added with a wicked grin, "She's too old to dance, you know." Rory laughed. I didn't expect to find a chapter of the Eileen McNamara fan club at Number Twelve Queen's Court, but I was surprised by the open hostility. "Has Mickey called?" Suzi asked Rory. "I left my cell phone at the hotel." "I talked to him while the detectives were here. He said he'd talk to them at his lawyer's office at three. He'll probably be tied up until five, at least that's my guess." "Damn it! He was supposed to track down Peter Delameter today." Suzi was mightily annoyed. She rose and left the room. "My second-cousin-in-law is having a bad day," Lyle explained. "Mickey let her have a lot of money -- she won't say how much -- to open her own brokerage account, and she had the colossal bad luck to let Peter Delameter get his grimy mitts on it." As he opened a tin of Scotch shortbread from Harrods and offered them to me and to Rory, he went on with his story. "Go ahead, ask me for my theory about the murder," Lyle said. He looked like he should have a cigarette in a holder, blowing smoke rings while languishing on a chaise lounge. "I think Grand-Mom did it. Somehow she sneaked out, met Eileen at the first hole, and plunged a dagger into her cold, cold heart. After all, if the police get wise to her, all she has to do is confess and agree to life in prison. Not a bad deal in her case." Rory drew herself up. "My mother would never plunge a dagger into anyone. She might hire someone, though. Lyle," she said in a singsong, "do you have anything you need to get off your chest?" He looked thoughtful. "No ... Yes ... No ... Well, no. I'd have to have a conscience before I could have a guilty conscience." "Just because I'm not writing things down doesn't mean I'm not putting this in the book," I observed. "Oh, please, Olivia, don't reveal the heart of darkness that beats in the bosom of the McNamara family. We're good people, mostly. Well, maybe half of us." "But which half?" I wondered aloud. Suzi returned, her lips tight with anger. "That asshole Peter Delameter! Nobody can find him. I don't even think the FBI knows where he is." "Oh, the FBI," Lyle snapped, "if you deal with them, you have to keep reminding them." He gestured broadly to make his point. "...Ass, elbow, ass, elbow." He sighed. "Suzi, dear, it's only money. And think about it this way, Peter Delameter ripped off so many people at least you're in good company. Cadbury's bankruptcy hearings will be just like hell. All your favorite people will be there." A gust of wind rattled the windowpanes in the bay window and Rory jumped up. "Lyle, do me a favor, please. Put my T-Bird in the garage. The key and the garage opener are in it." "Sure, Rory. Olivia, would you like to come along and see what we call, in our modest way, the David Castle Auto Collection? Or, when David's away, the Rory Castle Auto Collection." "I'd love to." I would have loved it more if it hadn't been about twenty degrees with the wind-chill factor. Rory walked us to the front door and I retrieved my coat from the living room. She opened the door enough for us to step out, then quickly closed it against the blowing sand. The temperature must have dropped ten degrees in the short time I'd been inside. I pulled my coat close around my neck, thinking of the warm neck scarves that sat, unused, on the shelf of my closet. Mixed with the sand was snow, not common in Las Vegas, tiny stinging grains of corn snow that came at us not from above but parallel to the ground, then swirled and came back for another shot, just in case they'd missed any exposed flesh on the first pass. I had a sudden vision of Kenneth Nash, Candace's partner, reading over financial reports on the Honolulu catering business while lounging in the sun. If I were Kenneth, I'd read v-e-r-y s-l-o-w-l-y. Lyle opened the passenger door of the museum-quality T-Bird and I slid in. He got in the driver's side, swore when he banged his knee, and let the seat back about a foot. Rory was only about five feet three inches. "Let's take her out for a spin," he said. Backing up suddenly, he spun the wheel with one hand and shot out of the driveway, lapped the road around the golf course, then continued past Rory's house another three quarters of the lap. He stopped in the nearly deserted parking lot of the country club, in sight of what I guessed, by the shreds of yellow crime scene tape flapping between wire posts set more or less in a square, to be the first hole of Queen's Canyons Golf Course. One lone patrolman, the guy who'd lost whatever bet had been made, stood by the tape, trying to keep his back to the wind, but getting outflanked by gusts that assaulted from every direction. An unmarked police car pulled up beside us and Desi Lake stepped out, wearing a leather bomber jacket over a black pantsuit. Regretfully, I rolled my window down about four inches and felt the wind burst into my face. "Ms. Wright, Mr. Kellem." By the way she failed to identify herself to Lyle, I was sure they'd talked before. "Do you know whether Eileen McNamara ever went inside Rory Castle's house?" "I'd have no way of knowing that, Detective. As I told you this morning, I haven't heard Eileen's name mentioned in years, not until my cousin said yesterday that she was planning to attend our family photo shoot next Tuesday. You'd have to ask Rory and Mickey about it." "Okay, thanks. Well, I'd better take a thermos of coffee to the officer before he gets totally freeze-dried and blows away. Have a nice day." As she leaned into her car and grabbed a quart thermos, Lyle backed up. He pulled out of the lot and returned to Rory's. I took the garage opener from under my seat as he asked, and pressed the button. The door on the left of the separate garage, the door closest to the house and its attached three-car garage, folded up into the ceiling. We pulled in, got out of the car, and Lyle pushed a button on a wall panel to close the door. It felt good to get out of the wind. In fact, I thought, it felt unusually pleasant for a garage. I looked at Lyle and he read my mind. "Yeah, it's heated. Actually, it's climate controlled. These babies deserve nothing but the best. Come on." I followed him on a three-foot-wide strip of carpet that ran down the center of the double-deep garage. Ten cars faced each other in rows of five. Behind the back row was a long wooden workbench with tools hanging in crisp precision on pegs behind it. The place was cleaner than a hospital. At the far end of the showroom ("garage" just didn't do it justice), the end that was on the far right as I'd seen the building from the parking pad, was a 1934 twelve-cylinder coupe sport Packard. I could say that with certainly not because I carry encyclopedic knowledge of cars in my head, but because a brass sign rested on a small display space rather like a music stand. I oooh-ed and aaah-ed, an easy feat, since I was stunned with disbelief at the beauty before my wondering eyes. Across from the coupe was another Packard, an "833 cabriolet of 1931." The next pair were Pontiacs: a 1928 six-cylinder Landau Sedan with four doors and the two-door 1933 cabriolet sport, V-8. "This is the oldest car in the collection," Lyle said, standing in front of a Cadillac 55 landaulet coupe built in 1917. "David is taking it to an auction. I don't know what he wants to buy instead." Across from that one was another Cadillac, a maroon and black 1932 towncar with a private compartment for the passengers behind a driver. A scrolled back top could be pulled over the driver in case of rain. The plaque said the "452" was the world's first V-16 production car. An Auburn V-12 Speedster from 1932 faced another convertible, a 1935 Cord 810, designed by Gordon Buehrig. Both were buffed to a mirror-shine. We were back then to the '55 Thunderbird, which rested across from a 1958 T-Bird with double headlights under modest fins. I'd never seen the two models that close and could see how much wider the later model was. "Are their every-day cars in the other garage?" I asked. "Yeah. Aunt Rory usually drives a Mercedes sedan and David has a Range Rover and a Ferrari." "Just something to tool around town in," I murmured. "We'd better get back," he said. "Yes, I think so. But let me ask you a question first. How can I find out more about the Centennial Trust?" He was silent for a minute. Finally he seemed to have decided on an answer. "My dad, Sean, is in charge of it, or at least the most in charge after Grand-Mom. Come over to my dad's house tonight and I'll bring up the subject." He gave me directions and we agreed he'd check with Sean first to be sure he'd be home and then he'd call me to confirm. I would just have to work dinner with Mace around the opportunity to learn about the trust. He opened a side door on the side of the private showroom closest to the house. I looked back one more time at the gleaming works of engineering art. Then something on the floor caught my eye. Something blue under the grill of the 1955 Thunderbird. I bent down to get a closer look. Lyle came back from the door and bent down beside me. "What's that? A shoe?" He reached out to pick it up, but I stopped his hand in midair. "Don't touch it. It might not be important, or it might. Last night when I saw Eileen at my attorney's office, around 7:30, she was wearing denim high heels just like that. I'd better give Detective Gill a call." Especially considering the shoe had visible smears of something dark and brownish-red. "Aunt Rory is not going to like this," he proclaimed, rising to his feet. "I can't help that." I pulled out my cell phone and speed-dialed the non-emergency number for the Las Vegas Metro PD. -------- *Eight* When Detectives Gill and Lake returned to Number Twelve Queen's Court, photographed the shoe and placed it in a paper evidence bag, Rory Castle gave me a look that said, _Guess who's not coming to dinner?_ To make things worse, my daughter and Rory's youngest son drove up right about the time another officer arrived and handed Gill the search warrant he'd requested. I thought wrapping the garage with crime scene tape was a bit overdone, since all I'd found was a shoe, not human body parts. No one asked for my opinion, however. "Mom?" Candace said, an inquiry pregnant with meaning. I fell back on an old police procedure, the first thing I learned at the San Diego County Sheriff's Department. "I can't say anything, sorry." Louis Castle kept saying, "What's going on?" to me, to the police, and, in a louder voice, to his mother. Rory had put on a ski parka and a neck scarf by then. She walked over to the sidewalk, far enough away from the three of us that Louis understood that he alone was to approach her. Candace was as welcome as I was, which was not at all. We watched Louis and Rory bend their heads and consult. Every once in a while Rory would gesture toward the house, or the garage, or me, or in the direction of the golf course. He handed her his cell phone and she dialed, repeating the hand gestures to whoever was on the phone. She snapped the phone closed and Louis walked with her over to Paul Gill. A single TV station truck pulled into the cul-de-sac and a cameraman shouldered his heavy tool. Somebody connected to the station probably lived in Summerlin and told the guard to let them in. The corn snow changed to big wet flakes that sought my hair and bare neck as a good place to melt. My teeth started chattering. An unmarked car pulled up behind my Lexus. I turned around in time to see Mace step out. He wore a dark brown Burberry coat and a brown and white neck scarf. "Candace, how are you?" he asked as he tugged the scarf out of his coat and wrapped it around my neck. "I'm okay. Welcome back to Vegas. I guess Mom thought up a special homecoming for you, huh?" He looked blank, so she added, "Evidence in a murder case. Your favorite things." Through my still-chattering teeth I sang, "Raindrops on corpses and blood drops on kittens..." Candace sighed, a suffering sigh, and said, "Well, this is a lot of fun, but I need to get to work. And my car is at my office." I gave her my keys. "Just leave it at your office. I'll get it later." She turned without saying, "Call me later," or "I'll call you later," as one of us always seemed to say. "Get out of the wind in my car," Mace said. "I'll just be a minute." I watched him approach the crime scene tape and talk to Desi. He gestured back to me and Desi nodded. I hoped that meant I was on my way to a good hot bath. "I still haven't been to the grocery store," I said on the elevator at the Wickworth Tower. Mace put his arm around me and I tilted my head up for a kiss. "We'll go out to eat later. I'm in the mood for a steak, thick and rare." Stabbing a knife into bloody meat didn't appeal to me right then. "Uh, good." I was sure I could find something less confrontational on the menu. Maybe hot soup. Feeling had returned to my extremities by the time we got to my apartment, but I headed for the bathtub anyway. I was mentally reviewing my closet, remembering that in addition to not going to the grocery store I had not gone to the dry cleaners. How long, I wondered, until they sold my unclaimed garments? Vegas was funny that way. It wasn't _transience_ that surprised, it was _permanence_. Attempts by long-timers to act haughty, equating their grandfathers coming for the auction of 1905 to having ancestors on the _Mayflower_, met a wall of indifference. Money was the only yardstick of worth, not time in place. Which led me to think about the Centennial Trust. It was painfully obvious that Lyle's father might not be eager to meet me and dish the family secrets after I'd brought the police and Live-at-Five News to his sister Rory's door. _However_, I thought, _however..._ The ninety-nine-and-a-half-year-old matriarch had a contract with me to jointly produce a book, on the bookstore shelves in living color before May 15, 2005. Eileen's murder would move it out of the queue of manuscripts where I was already writing (and living) on borrowed time, and place it in the category of _instant books._ That's the publishing equivalent of a papal dispensation. Which meant I had roughly three weeks to finish the first draft and another three weeks to revise and polish. So somebody in the McNamara family had better cough up the facts of what might be one of the biggest private fortunes in America. And my "however" had a "part two," a real ass-kicker. The McNamaras might want to shove me out the door since I'd embarrassed them by discovering a piece of evidence in Rory and David Castle's glorified warehouse, but I needed the money the book would bring in. Maybe I'd started as a well-to-do dilettante, but thanks to Peter S.O.B. Delameter, _I needed money_. On my side I had skill as a writer, experience as an investigator, and the tenacity of a wolverine. I was, in short, hungry, and I wouldn't take "Butt Out" for an answer. My water was tepid, and my inner dialogue reminded me that I was hungry in more ways than one. Food was one, yes. But food could wait. I stepped out of the tub, spritzed a little White Linen on my neck, wrapped myself in a fluffy towel right from the towel warmer, and went to find Mace. He was in my bed, wearing nothing but a sheet and a big smile. He held out a glass of wine and turned back a corner of the sheet. "Has anybody ever told you you're easy, Mace Emerick?" "Yes, but I don't think this is the time to explore that particular block of Memory Lane." "I've missed you." I dropped the towel and scurried under the sheet. "You say you missed me, but I'm a detective. I don't believe everything I hear," he said, his voice kind of husky as he nuzzled my neck. "You have to prove it." So I did. -------- *Nine* "You're wheedling," Mace said to me, his arms folded over his chest in the classic "Not Now, Not Ever" stance. The waitress at our favorite steakhouse, William B's inside the Stardust, set a sizzling platter in front of him and a pasta dish in front of me. "I'm not wheedling, nor am I inveigling. I'm not even coaxing. I'm just inquiring. Simply suggesting that we put our heads together. Scratch each other's back. One hand washes the other." I nodded to the waitress to bring me another glass of cabernet sauvignon. "You're barking up the wrong tree." He sliced his filet mignon and blood dripped from his fork. "I'm not the detective in charge of the case. I'm the guy in charge of the detectives." "Oh, I see. You're the guy who catches the _blame_ if anything goes wrong. Am I right?" "The boss. The honcho. The chief. That would be me." He almost swooned as he slowly chewed and swallowed his first bite of steak. "I can't remember the last time I sat down to a fine meal. Virginia is a blur of burgers-in-sacks in my memory." "You haven't told me why you came home early." I pointed surreptitiously at my chin to show him he had steak juice on his. He wiped it. "Nothing left to learn?" He ignored my question and I concentrated on my pasta for a while, knowing better than to interrupt a carnivore at his feed. I'm not a vegetarian, but I don't eat much red meat, and nothing as red as Mace's steak. The pause gave me time to chew over our conversation to that point. Over our salads and my first glass of wine Mace had told me he'd been "elected" to solve the whole department's manpower problems by streamlining the process of screening applicants for the force and the police academy. At the same time, he would have to find out why good men and women left the department for other jobs. "Well," he said as he slathered butter on his second roll, "I already know why they leave. What I have to do is change it, stop the drain on our human resources." The chief of police made it clear to Mace that he'd never have more help for the detective bureau and the criminal investigation lab until he helped resolve the department's overall problems. "I was elected by the oldest trick in the book," he added with a sniff. "I was _in absentia_." I figured that's why he'd left Virginia early. He had to come back to Las Vegas in self-defense. I watched him butter a third roll and decided the time had come to tell him my worries about money, how O.S. Cadbury was invaded by the SEC, IRS and the FBI. The whole sordid story was unfolding in the press. "The O.S. in O.S. Cadbury stands for Off Shore," one angry investor was quoted as saying. "Peter Delameter could not be reached for comment," according to the Associated Press. Mace hadn't seen any newspapers on his first day back on the job, so I gave him the short version, adding how much I had personally invested. "Cadbury looked solid as a rock," I said, hating to talk about it. The house of cards was yet another ENRON-type scandal, with Cadbury's accounting firm swearing on a stack of Bibles that every penny was safe. I finished my unsavory story by reminding him of Candace's catering crisis and that I'd be helping her at least a little in the next week or so. "Between working for Candace and working on Clara's book, at least I won't have time to obsess on Cadbury and Delameter, the scumbags of the week." Mace reached across the table and took my free hand in both of his. "It's going to be all right." I nodded, hoping he was right. Then we'd gotten back to discussing the murder of Eileen McNamara and I suggested we share information. Okay, so maybe I _was_ wheedling. While he ate his steak, in a state of rapture, I looked around the restaurant, not expecting to see anyone I knew. Las Vegas was like a humongous clothes dryer, where a million socks swirl endlessly, trying but failing to pair up. And the number of socks was continually increasing. To my surprise, I did recognize someone across the room. Kemper Wilkerson, my lawyer, was leaning toward another man, intense in their conversation. An attractive woman with blond ringlets and tendrils tumbling around her long, elegant neck was rising from her seat at the table behind Kemper. She looked to be about thirty-five, tall and slender like a model. I recognized her dress as a Versace, not much material on the top, and not much on the bottom. She wore it without benefit of a bra, but I had to admit she didn't need any more benefits than she already had. Her dinner companion held her chair and helped her on with what appeared to be a sable coat that he lifted from a third chair. He looked old enough to be her father, but he wasn't looking down the front of her dress like he was her father. She noticed Kemper and stopped at his table. He looked up and smiled, wiped his mouth, and stood. He kissed her cheek and shook hands with her companion, then gestured to his dinner partner, who also rose and performed the greeting ritual. The second man wore a western-styled suit, a string tie like an old-time gambler, and well-scuffed boots. He looked like the kind of man who was closely acquainted with Mace's steak while it was still on the hoof. He had a bushy white mustache and eyebrows that might be bird nests glued to his face. He had twice the hair in his mustache and eyebrows that he had on the rest of his head. I guessed him to be about seventy. His face and neck looked like thin leather soaked in cherry juice, but the top of his head was white. He probably worked outdoors a lot and kept his hat on. A farmer's tan instead of a golfer's tan. "Mace, over to your left, no -- further back that way, do you know who those people are? The man in the three-piece suit is my attorney, Kemper Wilkerson." I could tell his suit was expensive, no surprise as much as he charged. _Nice to see my money out having a good time._ Mace did his subtle police perusal of the room, missing nothing. In particular, I was sure he missed nothing of the blonde swan in the sable coat. He caught the waitress's eye and ordered coffee for both of us, then turned back to me. "The man with the blonde is Sean Kellem." I was, for once, speechless. Sean Kellem was precisely the man I wanted to meet, the elder of Clara's two children by the late Kib Kellem and the father of Lyle and Layla. Lyle had been planning to take me to meet Sean until I spotted the denim shoe with the suspicious stain. I wasn't speechless for long. As Kellem and the blonde said good-bye to Kemper and eyebrow-man, I told Mace I was going to the ladies' room. I stood just as the sable coat floated past our table, brushing my shoulder, and I forced eye contact with Sean Kellem, immediately irritated that I hadn't recognized him without asking Mace. He looked a lot like Lyle. "Mr. Kellem? How nice to see you. I'm Olivia Wright." He was polite, almost courtly. I like that in a man. He extended his hand and gave mine a warm shake, holding it a few seconds longer than necessary. "Yes, of course. My mother has told me how much she's enjoying your attention to her little project." Well, so much for polite. _Jerk!_ He moved on, caught up with the blonde, and went out the door into the casino. I went to the restroom then returned to the table. I could tell Mace had enjoyed my discomfiture at Sean's mention of Clara's "little project." We finished our coffee, watched Kemper and the man in the string tie leave, and followed them out the door. The change from the quiet restaurant to the garish casino was jarring. "Buster! You old son of a bitch! What are you doin' in town?" A skinny man in a cowboy shirt and dusty jeans limped over to Kemper and his dinner companion, whose name was apparently "Buster." The skinny man was so bowlegged I could watch traffic go by behind him by looking at his knees. He slapped Buster on the shoulder and a puff of dust rose from the spot. We strolled up a ramp and had just glanced into the lounge to see who was singing when Mace's cell phone rang. He looked at the number in the digital display and pressed Talk. "Chief Emerick. What? Just a minute." I followed him to a hallway away from so much noise. "Say it again?" He swore under his breath. "No, Paul, I'm sorry as hell. Sure, you've got to go. You'll never forgive yourself if you're not there. Take all the time you need. Desi Lake can handle this, and I'll wade in, too." He listened. "Tonight's fine, yeah. I'll meet you at Homicide and you can hand everything off to me and Desi." He snapped the phone closed. "Paul Gill's mother is dying of cancer. It's metastasized to the liver and pancreas. He's got to go to upstate New York. I'll drop you at your place, then I've got to go to the Homicide Bureau and get up to speed on the Eileen McNamara case." I noticed he didn't sound too devastated by being needed on the case. More like Br'er Rabbit and the briar patch. "I thought you said you were buried with work, that the police department is so short-handed you can't get anybody trained and promoted to detective because everybody is needed on the street." "Yeah. And your point is?" He'd started toward the exit to the parking lot and I had to hurry to keep up. "No point. Just wondering how you'll manage to process the hundred applications for patrolman you told me are on your desk." "Oh, crap. I forgot about that." He stopped suddenly and I bumped into him. "Somebody else will have to do it, that's all." He kept walking, stopping only to hold the glass door open for me. We didn't have far to walk to his Ford, one of the advantages of being a cop. He closed my door and got in on his side of the Crown Victoria, his eyes straight ahead and his shoulders squared. I knew that look. I called it "locked and loaded." The tumblers in his brain were clicking into place. He was heading into orbit around a murder case, and it would take major hardware to pry him out. "Hire me!" I blurted. "What?" He blurted right back. I tried to keep my gaze straight ahead, but I had to sneak a peek sideways. His eyes must have been opened pretty wide to show that much white. "I'm serious. Neither Desi Lake nor you know thing one about Eileen McNamara and the whole bizarre family. I, on the other hand, have already invested hours in studying her two trials for the murder of her previous husband, Trey McNamara. And I have memorized the family tree. Have you ever heard of the Centennial Trust?" I could tell he hadn't. "If Mickey McNamara and the rest of Clara's clan have nothing to do with Eileen's murder, the quickest way to eliminate them is to put a badge on me." He said nothing, but his mouth was shaped like No. "You've done it before," I reminded him. It was his unorthodox hiring of me in the Margot Farr murder that caused us both to nearly be ruined and dead, so probably the reminder wasn't going to help my cause. "You are sleeping with the chief of detectives." "Well, whoop-de-doo. People sleep with other people all the time. What are you head of, the morality police? Ever heard of consenting adults?" "You ever heard of sexual harassment?" "Okay, hire me and I won't sleep with you any more!" "Now that is sexual harassment!" he countered. "And furthermore, you don't have any time to be a freelance cop, experience or not, which I will admit -- under duress -- that you have plenty of." He paused and I knew what he'd say next, that I'd learned from the best, namely from him. "And you did, after all, learn from the best. Far be it from me to denigrate your qualifications." "Is that a word you learned in Virginia? Denigrate?" "Yes, that is the kind of word used by federal law enforcement officers. And stop changing the subject." "The subject is me working on a murder investigation that is high profile and which will come back and bite you in the butt if you screw around and talk about sexual harassment all night." I was pretty sure he was thinking it over. I just sat, waited, and noticed that instead of driving toward my place, he was heading toward police headquarters. "You can tell Desi Lake and me what you know about Eileen's McNamara's past," he said at last. "If there's something there that looks promising, I'll consider hiring you on a part-time, temporary basis." I considered taking a hard line about the information I'd acquired, but decided to let it go. The better part of valor was, as always, discretion. -------- *Ten* We drove to the homicide bureau, an unmarked executive office park in the sixty-seven hundred block of West Charleston. Mace had space there as well as downtown at headquarters. Paul Gill met us at the entrance, holding a large brown envelope and a manila folder. He said he'd reached Desi at her gym and she was on her way. Paul and I processed like acolytes behind Mace down the central aisle. He gave a priestly blessing to the right, then the left, then the right. I felt remiss not having an incense pot to swing. There were more women in the department than when I'd last worked there. I didn't know any of them, and very few of the men, having been pretty much out of sight when I worked on the Margot Farr murder. Most of my time there I was in a cubicle transcribing tapes she'd dictated, or out on interviews with Mace. In his office, a corner room with two glass walls, Mace examined the piles of paper on his desk with disgust. Paul closed the plastic blinds about half way to give us a little privacy. "I'm sorry about your mother," Mace said. "Thanks, Chief. She's such a rock. Wouldn't let on how bad it was getting." Desi arrived, hair still damp from a shower. Her gray A-line skirt and matching blazer, large to accommodate her biceps, were crisp. I thought of her name, Desiree, and tried to imagine her as a little girl playing with dolls. G.I. Joe was the closest I could get. "Let's get to it, folks," Mace said as he restacked piles of paper to make one shaky tower, then moved it to the floor against the wall. Paul opened the manila folder, handed it to Mace, and took out the contents of the big envelope. Color photos of a fully clothed woman, face down on dry grass, and location photos showing how far away were the street, the water hazard, and the golf club restaurant. There was a close-up of a street sign, the nearest cross streets, and a distance shot from the street sign back toward the crime scene. "She was found with her head in the water, right here," Paul explained. "The greenskeeper who found her," he consulted his notes, "Dick White, pulled her by the ankles up onto the grass, you can see the drag marks here. He checked her for a pulse. There was no question she was dead, so he did nothing else to disturb the body and the scene, just called 911. The call came in at 22:10. Ten after ten," he added, for my benefit. "What was a groundskeeper doing on the course at 10:00 p.m.?" Mace asked. "He had to replace a defective part in the sprinkler system before morning. He says it came by Fed Ex in the late afternoon, but he was tied up across town until about nine." Desi picked up the narrative. "The victim was wearing a denim skirt, blue turtleneck sweater, and denim vest. As you see here, the vest was wet all the way to her waist. She had on pantyhose, but no shoes. One blue cloth shoe, right foot, was found in the parking lot of the golf club, the edge of the lot closest to the location of the body." She pointed to a photo of a high-heel shoe in the foreground and the body, lit by a portable floodlight, some distance away. The next photo was closer to the shoe, showing a circle about ten feet in diameter, then a close-up of the shoe. "We noticed what might be blood inside the shoe and here on the right side, the outer side," Desi went on. "The next two photos are ultra-close-ups of those areas, and of the heel, which has a clot of mud and grass." "My sketch has the measurements," Paul added. "The shoe was three hundred seventeen feet from the body and two hundred nineteen feet from the front door of the golf club. The club closed at 9:00 p.m. that night, its usual schedule on Mondays in winter. The restaurant is busy all other nights of the week, especially with the holiday parties." "Was the bar open until nine that night?" Mace asked. He passed Paul's detailed sketch across to me and I noticed the body was to the north of the shoe and the golf club restaurant was northeast of it. The measurement between the body and the front door of the club completed the triangle. "The weather was so bad they weren't making enough money to pay the electric bill," Paul answered, "so the manager let the bartender close up early. His cash register was locked at 8:45. The manager locked the front door and went home at five minutes after nine. His name is Ernst Uber. I typed up my interview with him; it's in the folder. There's a copy here of the statement from Mr. White, the greenskeeper, handwritten notes from the officer in charge of the scene, Reggie Katz, and a list of physical evidence transported to the lab. We haven't got anything back yet, except that the blood on the shoe in David Castle's garage and the shoe found in the parking lot match for type." "Did you find a purse?" I asked. "No. There was an American Express card in the name of Eileen McNamara in the right hand pocket of the skirt, and two twenty dollar bills. The club manager, Mr. Uber, came as soon as we called him, and he positively identified the victim. She'd been in the bar around 1:00 p.m. with a woman whose name he didn't know. He'd recognized Eileen from her TV ads for Nevada Wear. The two women sat at a table as far from the bar as possible, and had two wine spritzers each. Uber took us in the building, opened the cash register, and checked the receipts. She'd paid the bill with the same American Express card we found on the victim." "Did you find a coat? When I saw her right before 7:30 she had on a beautiful gray lamb's wool coat with black fur collar." Paul and Desi both shook their heads. "So," Mace interjected, "no coat, no purse, shoes at two locations, both far from the body. What about shoe impressions around the body?" "Those pictures are in another envelope," Paul said. "We found six prints of the greenskeeper's shoes, in the wet grass beside the water hazard, and under her torso and legs, deep at the heel print, as you'd expect for a man to drag a heavy weight three feet up a slight embankment from the pond. We also found one excellent impression of a man's dress shoe, left foot, in the wet grass just eighteen inches from the water. Mace nodded. "Have you done any calculations of the probable size and weight?" "No, but Desi..." Paul's cell phone rang and he looked at the incoming number. "Excuse me, please. It's my sister." He stepped outside and closed the door. "What do you know about the woman seen with the victim at 1:00 p.m.?" Mace sat down behind his desk and motioned to Desi and me to get comfortable. "Mr. Uber's description was pretty good," Desi said, consulting her pocket notebook. "I think he fell in love just a little bit. He said she was tall, about his height, which is five feet ten, blond hair with little curlicues hanging down, like Nicole Kidman in that movie with the can-can dancers, a neck like Audrey Hepburn, wore her clothes like a model or maybe a showgirl. Age, he guessed about thirty, maybe thirty-five." The woman with Eileen McNamara sounded a lot like the woman we'd seen at the Stardust, the one who stopped to say something to Kemper Wilkerson as she left. On the other hand, women who looked like Ernst Uber had described were everywhere in Las Vegas. Paul came back into Mace's office. "That's all I can think of. You have the medical examiner's report. I could still -- " Mace interrupted and put out his hand. "You get going. I don't know what to say..." "That's okay. I appreciate getting the time off." Desi and I wished him the best, which wasn't saying much considering his mother's condition. We stood in silence for about ten seconds that seemed much longer. "Okay, team," Mace said at last. "Let's get to work." As if on cue, his desk phone and cell phone rang at the same time. One call was the chief of police, wanting to know how the investigation was coming along and were we close to arresting anyone. The other call, which I took while Mace spoke soothing words to his boss, was Rory and David McNamara's lawyer, an aggressive criminal attorney, threatening to sue the police for damage to his clients' property by overzealous crime lab techs, whom he persisted in calling "vandals." Desi returned all the photos to the big envelope and the other papers to the manila folder and said she'd be at her desk if we needed to talk to her. Mace lifted the tower of papers back onto his desk. "Two thirds of this mess are applications for entry-level police work." I recalled what he'd declared so forcefully as we left the Stardust, that somebody else would have to deal with it. "Do you think you can get anybody else to take it off your hands?" "Only in my dreams. Which I guess I'll skip tonight in order to wade through some of this." "You want me to help you?" _Say no!_ "Of course I do. Tell you what, you take half of these to Paul's desk, and separate the possibles from the impossibles, and bring me the possibles. Then you can read Eileen McNamara's autopsy report." "You know your problem? You're too good to your help." "That can change," he said ominously. "If you want to see your pillow before dawn, you'd best get busy." I opened my mouth to argue, then remembered I'd actually asked for the job. And I really, really wanted to read the autopsy report. I took the stack of applications he held out to me, turned, and opened the door. "It's 10:30. I'll see you at midnight." As I followed his directions to an empty cubicle, I thought with longing of my pillow. -------- *Eleven* _Wednesday, December 8_ By the time I got my head on my pillow, at 2:00 a.m. on Wednesday, I was too wired to sleep. The autopsy photos might as well have been projected in living color on my bedroom ceiling. The victim was described as "a fifty-nine-year-old female, sixty-nine inches, one hundred twenty-six pounds; reddish-brown hair, not colored by chemicals, eyes -- green, general health -- excellent." There was no water in her lungs. She was dead before someone dumped her in the pond on the golf course at Queen's Canyons Country Club. Cause of death was pretty easy to determine. She'd been stabbed in the chest, a single stab wound with a serrated knife blade, one and one-quarter inch wide and at least six inches long. The entry wound was below her heart, into her lung, then leveraged upward to slice the heart muscle, too. So far the murder weapon had not been found. The amount of blood on the ground beneath her body could not account for how much she had to have lost in such a violent thrust. Indication was that she'd been fatally stabbed somewhere else, then brought to the country club. She'd suffered a severe, but not fatal, blow to her head, so she was probably unconscious before she was stabbed. There were cuts and abrasions on her legs, through her pantyhose. Two thorns were still embedded in her right shin, physical evidence that might show where she'd been between the time I saw her leave Wilkerson's office, at 7:28, and when the greenskeeper found her body and called 911. As autopsy photos go, this one wasn't bad. The body was fresh. I'd seen far worse in forensic classes, bodies brutalized and violated. Some of the worst were those undiscovered for days or weeks. Blowflies lay their eggs within minutes of death, if the body is outside, and the progression from eggs to larvae to pupae is enough to nauseate anyone. While the fly larvae are working from the outside in, putrefaction is working from the inside out. Bacteria grow with no resistance, multiply exponentially, and distend the tissues to grotesque sizes and shapes before leaking out. Finally, fatigue beat my racing mind into submission and I slept from about 3:00 a.m. until the alarm went off at 7:30. _How had I gotten home?_ Oh yes, Mace had driven me to the office of Royale Catering, located in an industrial park that looked like oversized storage lockers, so I could reclaim my car. Then he'd followed me to the entrance to the parking garage at Wickworth Tower. He'd been too tired to come upstairs, which was fine with me. Now I wanted to stand under the shower for a half-hour, but I forced myself to hurry. My weapons skills were rusty, and I hoped to have time to practice at the indoor firing range, just in case Mace said I needed to qualify and carry a gun. I mean carry a gun officially. I did have a concealed weapons permit for the rare occasions that I carried my Beretta .22-caliber semiautomatic pistol. My suits in three shades of gray and two shades of blue were stashed in plastic bags in the closet of my guestroom. I chose charcoal with a straight skirt that came to the middle of my kneecap and took it back to my room. A silk turtleneck in pale yellow looked good; small gold hoop earrings, black pumps, black purse. Black cashmere overcoat. Ready for business! In the parking garage I removed my overcoat and tossed it into the backseat. That's when I noticed the mail I'd thrown unopened on the back seat on my way to Rory Castle's house. There was the postcard from Valerie, making me again feel just a wee bit sorry for myself that she'd be in Switzerland for Christmas. I used my car key to slice open the three envelopes from O.S. Cadbury & Associates. Two were what I expected, quarterly statements (late again) on my two accounts, both showing my money saying bye-bye. The third one looked more personal. "Dear Ms. Wright..." It was from Peter Delameter, the man I thought of as my financial rapist. I scanned his letter, noting the use of "sorry" five times. I ground my teeth when I read how Cadbury had suffered a "temporary setback." Something like having one's head held under water until the bubbles stop coming up is a temporary setback. The closest I'd ever get to my money would be to fly to the Cayman Islands and sit on a park bench outside Primero Banco or wherever the hell Peter and his crooked cronies had stashed the cash. Peter said he'd be in touch and not to worry. _Yeah._ The letter from Joshua Tree Productions was better news, not enough to come close to balancing the stinking news from O.S. Cadbury, but good news, anyway. Josh Cruz said he'd called my lawyer (as Kemper Wilkerson told me he had) to say he was fielding calls from Warner and HBO on the possible Margot Farr movie. Josh was doing another draft of the screenplay, would have it done by Christmas, would appreciate my opinion. "I truly believe we'll have the green light on the project by mid-January and the minute their check clears the bank I'll have a check cut for your option." He went on to praise my patience and my talent and say what a success the project was sure to be. What Josh Cruz and his tiny Joshua Tree Productions lacked in power and influence they made up for in enthusiasm. Not that you could pay for a decaf latte, or anything else, with enthusiasm, but I'm the kind of person who believes Peter Pan can fly. I wanted to see a Hollywood green light as much for Josh's future as my own. I didn't open the thick five by seven envelope from the Las Vegas Historical Society. I knew it would be full of facts and figures that would require time and attention as I worked on my McNamara book. I drove downtown and circled the blocks near the police department until I found a parking meter, then phoned Desi Lake. She met me at the front door of the police department and escorted me upstairs, explaining that Chief Emerick had met with his boss, Chief of Police Sasso, and outlined his manpower problem. Sasso knew my qualifications and agreed to hire me as a temporary special assistant. I would report to Sasso's deputy, a crime lab specialist named Autrey. At least, that's how it would be on my paperwork. Autrey was away from Las Vegas for the next two weeks, so I was "on loan" to the detective bureau. The convoluted arrangement was to protect my reputation, Mace's reputation, and the department. We sat in a cubicle Desi time-shared with Paul Gill and two other detectives when any of them needed to work downtown. I told her what I'd learned about Eileen's two trials for the murder of Trey McNamara and agreed to track down the principals to see if any unfinished business in that case might tie in to Eileen's murder in Las Vegas. Our cell phones rang in tandem and I walked into the coffee area to answer mine. I scarcely had time to say "Hi" before Candace snapped at me about not calling her back the night before. "I didn't get home until 2:00 a.m. and I wasn't about to call and wake you up." "Well, apparently you're not a total pariah with the McNamara family." "How's that?" I stifled a yawn. "They're doing the family portrait today at two, at Nicole and Ed Monte's house in Lake Las Vegas. Clara wants you there. Louis invited me to go out there with him, then have a late lunch or early supper. Unfortunately, I can't go. It's nice to be invited, though." "Well," I said, surprised at the news. Clara must have come down hard on Rory to get me included again. Nicole Bartok Monte was Clara's daughter by Nick Bartok, the gentleman of Polish descent Clara married after divorcing the gentleman of Italian descent. Candace gave me directions and said she had to go. "I have the Trial Lawyers Association Banquet tonight, a little sit-down affair for five hundred members of the California and Nevada Bars and their guests. Remember, I told you?" She may have, but I didn't recall, and I wasn't paying a lot of attention then -- until she said, "So you'll be able to help serve?" Excuses raced through my mind, none of them good enough, I felt sure, in her eyes. Moms are held to a higher standard than employees. I remembered saying I would "help" with her catering crises, but I wasn't an employee of the police department when I'd said it. "Let me get this down," I said, returning to the cubicle to find scratch paper. "Uh, time and place?" She gave an exasperated sigh and rattled off the information, then asked if I still had the black and white server's outfit that I'd used before. I had seen it in the closet with my suits, dry cleaned and ready to go. "Yes, it's ready." As an afterthought I asked, "What's on the menu?" "Goose." Cooked goose. Figures. I jumped into my plan of work and covered a lot of ground quickly. I had about ten calls out to Los Angeles, to police, the district attorney's office, and the last known phone numbers of three witnesses in the case of Trey McNamara's sudden death. I was entering information on my laptop about who might have a number for Trey's housekeeper, Ramona Aguilar, when the phone rang. "This is Olivia Wright." There was silence for a long moment. "May I help you?" I asked. "I was given this number -- " a woman began and then stopped. "Uh ... is there a detective there by the name of Gill?" "He was called away. I'm helping out with his cases." Actually, I was involved with only one case, but "cases" sounded better. "What can I do for you?" "I read in the paper, I mean I heard about it being in the paper ... I think..." She seemed to be gathering nerve to speak. "About Eileen McNamara." "Yes, do you have any information about the murder of Ms. McNamara?" "Not ... not about that exactly. But what about ... a funeral?" "Are you related to Ms. McNamara?" I knew police had failed to find any next of kin to notify. Except for her maiden name and that she'd moved to California from Albuquerque, New Mexico, nobody knew much about Eileen Jorgenson McNamara. "Yes," she said softly. "I'm her only sister. Sandy." It was difficult to get her to say anything about herself, even her last name, but she finally sighed and said, yes, that she was Sandy Jorgenson. She absolutely refused to come to police headquarters, and she didn't want to say where she was, except to say she was "in Vegas." I checked the electronic box connected to the phone on the desk and made a note of the location of Sandy's phone. She was calling from a pay phone downtown. Not the shiny, lights overhead on a canopy part of downtown, but the sad side of the city, the edge of a corridor of crime and violence that rivaled that of any city in the country. "Ms. Jorgenson, we need your help. You don't want whoever murdered your sister to get away with it, do you?" She was silent long enough that I wasn't sure she was still on the line. "No. I don't want that," she said at last. "I'd like to meet you somewhere, anywhere that you say, and we could have a cup of coffee and talk about it. I don't know where you are, of course. I'm downtown -- " "I know where the police station is," she said. I waited, let her think about it. "Okay," she said softly, "you know where Esperanza is?" I didn't answer right away, trying to think of a street named Esperanza. "Casa Esperanza," she said. "On St. Louis." "Yes, I know where it is." I'd been to the House of Hope on Thanksgiving Day as a volunteer, serving dinner and handing out small gifts to battered or otherwise desperate women and their children. Three or four churches had collected and wrapped cloth bags of shampoo and other toiletries for the mothers, new pillows for the children, and hand towels and washcloths for anyone who wanted them. I wondered if Sandy Jorgenson was one of the women I'd seen across the serving table, most of them old before their time. Having talked her into meeting me, I was sweating the time. I couldn't miss the photo shoot at 2:00 p.m., and that was way the hell and gone out Lake Mead Boulevard on the way to Lake Mead. And I couldn't be any later than 4:45 to the Bar Association dinner at the new Oasis Convention Center on West Flamingo beyond Decatur. Old school friends of Kenneth Nash built the Oasis as an alternative to the giant convention centers in Las Vegas, the kind where you needed a road map, a shuttle bus, and an electric cart to even get to the section where your display or event was located. The owners of the Oasis had built a symbiotic relationship with Royale Catering and both companies had grown exponentially. Luckily, Sandy preferred sooner rather than later. I almost sighed aloud in relief when she said, "Okay. I could meet you in an hour at Esperanza. I'll watch for you." "Thanks, Sandy. And I am really sorry about your sister. We are going to find out who did this, and we're going to send that person to prison." As I spoke I typed an email about her to Mace, copy to Desi. She gave a derisive laugh. "Yeah, right." -------- *Twelve* "So this is the whole shooting match?" Desi squeezed into a chair in the cubicle and rested her muscular forearms on her thighs as she studied the hand-drawn family tree I'd drawn. She read aloud as she followed the lines down with one finger. "The first Michael had two kids, Clara and Michael, Junior." "Yes, then Clara married three times and had four children. Zinnia is eighty, never married. Lives here in Vegas. Nicole Bartok Monte also lives in Vegas, with her husband Ed. They have two grown children, Nicky and Natalie. With her third husband, Kib Kellem, Clara had Sean and Rory." Desi nodded. "And they have kids?" "Sean Kellem is sixty-four, divorced, and the father of Lyle and Layla, twins, age thirty-one. Rory Castle is fifty-seven. She has three sons, Brady, Case, and Louis. Two grandchildren by Brady and Case. You met Louis yesterday." I looked at my watch and went on. "Meanwhile, the second Michael McNamara begat the third, called Trey, who died of a gunshot wound in his Los Angeles mansion at age forty-seven. He had two wives, Helen, who was the mother of his two children, and Eileen. He was not married at the time of his death." She tacked the sheet up on the inside wall of the cubicle. "Did you reach any of those people who worked on the Trey McNamara death?" I handed her an extra copy of the news stories on Trey's death and Eileen's two trials. "I talked to J.J. Querry, the detective in charge of the case. He's retired now, of course, but he kept a set of his notes on all his favorite cases and Eileen McNamara met the criteria. His first statements to the press said Eileen had collapsed at the scene and had to be taken to a hospital. It never came out in the paper, nor did it come out at either trial, that in the ambulance she claimed to two paramedics that another woman was in Trey McNamara's study that night. Then she dropped it, would never admit to having said it. Querry told me he kept expecting it to come up again, maybe an insanity plea. He said his real bet was a multiple personality defense. When it never came up, he figured she had just lied in the ambulance, trying different stories on for size. The other people in the house apparently said no one else was there." "Anybody else talk to you?" "I called F. Harrison Fitzpatrick, the assistant DA on the case, but I haven't gotten past his gatekeeper yet. The executive administrator for Fitzpatrick, Fassel and Rice says he's out of town until next Monday." I looked at my notes. "Oh, yeah. I haven't reached the housekeeper yet, but I have a good lead on how to find her. Ramona Aguilar was twenty-seven years old at the time of Trey's death. She started working for him part time shortly after his divorce from Helen in 1962, so she was there all through the brief Trey and Eileen marriage. She worked full time for him after their divorce, which was in 1966." "Is she still in Los Angeles?" Desi asked. She appeared to suffer from claustrophobia in the cubicle, and I couldn't blame her. She had to be more at home forcing bad ass street killers to the pavement than talking theory with me. "I think so. Look, I've got to get all the way to Lake Las Vegas by two o'clock, so this is going to have to wait. I'll tell Mickey McNamara that you and Mace -- uh, Chief Emerick -- want to talk to him. When did the chief say to schedule it?" I asked. "Seven o'clock. Have him call me to set the place. I'll be available by phone all afternoon." She stood, a little stiff from the cramped seating space. "See you later." My cell phone rang. "Hello?" I sorted through my purse with one hand, looking for a pack of peanut butter and crackers I'd seen there the day before. It was Mace. "When was the last time you saw Peter Delameter?" "I don't know. About two weeks ago. I didn't talk to him, I just saw him at a Red Cross Gala, acting like a big shot." I found the package of crackers, which had been mashed into subatomic particles. I tossed it in the trash. "Why?" "Because we got an anonymous tip that his body is beginning to smell." I thought about that. "Any idea where?" "In 'a mine' was all the tipster would say." "Tipster? Male or female?" "I don't know." He sounded weary. "Voice was disguised, caller ID was blocked." I looked at my watch and my eyes bugged out. I didn't have a minute to spare in order to meet Sandy Jorgenson at Esperanza. I would have less than an hour to talk to her, then I'd have to drive like a maniac all the way to Lake Las Vegas. I sighed. "Well, I don't think Peter's dead. I think he's in the Cayman Islands or Venezuela, laughing his head off at the fools who fell for his lies." I paused. "What do you think?" "Umm ... I don't know. I'm going to listen to the tape of the call for starters. You'd better hurry if you've got to go all the way to the lake." He added to call him after I saw the woman who claimed to be Eileen's sister. Five minutes later I was in my car, and five minutes after that I pulled into the parking lot of Esperanza, avoiding deep chuckholes and six children who cared not a whit for my convenience or their safety. As I locked my car and walked briskly to the door marked "OFF CE," I thought about what Mace had told me about his anonymous tipster. Well, if Peter Delameter is dead, I thought, it's a good bet that maggots will leave him alone. _Professional courtesy._ -------- *Thirteen* I was hungry until I reached the screen door to the office of the shelter. The odor of rancid cooking oil barged through the ragged screen and assaulted my nose. If the universe could be described in terms of food odors, Lyle Kellem's kitchen was at one end, named "heaven," and the kitchen in the office of Esperanza was at the other end. "Yeah!" called a woman's voice after I knocked a second time. "Hang on!" About thirty feet away an old German Shepherd lay in a strip of sunshine between the stucco wall and the muddy parking lot. The rain and snow flurries that seemed so powerful the day before had given up and moved northeast. The dog raised his head and barked at me, then struggled to get up. His hindquarters balked at his brain's command to "Look smart, soldier," and after what had to be a painful attempt to get up, he settled for rolling over and fixing his rheumy eyes on me. _They also serve who only lie in wait,_ he seemed to say. "Yeah? What can I do for you?" A woman with straight black hair almost to her waist opened the screen door and came out. It was cold enough to make my teeth chatter even though I was wearing an overcoat, but she wore a cotton T-shirt, polyester Bermuda shorts, and flip-flop sandals. Between the bottom of the T-shirt and the top of her shorts, a roll of fat ringed her wide body. The shirt declared her love for dogs. "I'm looking for Sandy Jorgenson." She lit a long skinny cigarette, the kind that glamorous women in tennis whites used to smoke when they dated Marlboro men. "I'm here," a voice called to my right, beyond the Dog Formerly Known as Killer. "You goin' tonight?" The woman from the office smiled at Sandy and blew smoke downwind of me. "Nah, I got some business to take care of." Sandy gestured toward me with her chin. "I might go, I get back in time. When you goin'?" "Harley's comin' over after the fights. Guess I'll go then." She slipped one foot out of a flip-flop and pressed it against the stucco behind her. "Come by later, anyway." She gave me a nod and went back inside. Another wave of ghastly odor escaped before she shut the wooden door. "Let's go to Denny's," Sandy said. "Nowhere here to talk." Denny's was just down the street, easy walking distance, but I didn't want to leave my car at the shelter. It might as well have the words "Steal Me" stenciled on the side. Denny's didn't look like safety city, either, but I managed to park where I could watch my Lexus. Sandy Jorgenson looked a lot like Eileen McNamara, or like Eileen would have looked had she been addicted to crystal meth and/or cocaine. Sandy wasn't thin; she was emaciated. I ordered a breakfast big enough for a mule train driver for each of us. I'd only have time for a few bites by the time the platters arrived, but I hoped Sandy would stay and eat. And eat and eat. I explained my time problem and apologized. She nodded and got to the point. "Eileen is -- was -- my big sister. When she got married to Trey, she was eighteen and I was fifteen. I lived with them, but I wasn't around all the time. Trey bought me a car. I was at the beach a lot." She looked wistful. I did the math. Sandy was fifty-six, but I had the impression a much younger woman inhabited the body of Sandy Jorgenson. It was a phenomenon I'd seen a lot in alcoholics and drug addicts when I worked for the San Diego County Sheriff's Department. It was as if the mind got stuck at the age where addiction took over. When the parents or spouse of a forty-year-old alcoholic referred to him as a kid, I could see their point. I put a dollop of cream in my coffee and watched the color change as I stirred. "Do you know -- or can you guess -- why Trey and Eileen were married such a short time?" "Yeah. I know, all right. It was 'cause of me." I watched her add three spoonfuls of sugar to her coffee and taste it. She added another spoonful, stirred, and continued. "Trey was a very sexy man. I don't mean he was sexy like you look at pictures of Brad Pitt and say, 'Oh, sexy.' I mean Trey wanted to have sex every day. He'd say he had to get laid 'every day of the week and twice on Sunday,' but it was even more often than that. I know he was balling Eileen every night, she told me so, but he was doing me, too. Said he married a package deal. It didn't bother me. People like Eileen make sex out to be a big damn deal. But Trey got what he wanted, Eileen got what she wanted, and I got what I wanted." "Which was?" "I'll give you a hint." She sat up, angled one shoulder toward me, and pursed her chapped lips. For a moment I saw, like a shadow, the same expression Eileen had used in her Nevada Wear commercials. "What I got was red, two doors, topless, and its initials were Corvette." The waitress arrived, plates lining her right arm from the wrist to the shoulder. She downloaded them, steaming plates of pancakes, scrambled eggs, sausages, bacon, grits, and biscuits in red-eye gravy. "You need any ketchup?" "You got any Tabasco sauce?" Sandy asked. "Sure thing. I'll get you some more coffee, too. You go on and enjoy your breakfast now." She returned in a few seconds with the sauce and the coffee. I told her I couldn't stay long, and would she please bring the check. "Sure thing," she said again. "Did Eileen know about you and Trey?" I ate some eggs. "Eileen didn't know as much about men as I did. She was all, 'Some day my prince will come,' you know? When she caught Trey and me doing it in the front seat of his car, me on top the way he liked, she liked to have a cow. Acted like she was my mother or something. Acted like she was gonna spank me and take away my toy car or something. 'Like hell you are!' That's what I said." "So she divorced him?" I asked. Sandy nodded and chewed thoughtfully on a slice of bacon. "They settled their little problem and I moved into his bedroom. Trey got what he needed, and I got what I needed." She described it matter-of-factly, the way a businesswoman with a Harvard MBA might recount a deal struck over white wine at Spago's as a "win-win proposition." But the fact was, Sandy wasn't a businesswoman. She was a skinny, middle-aged woman staying in a shelter that took people for a maximum of one month. Win-win had nothing to do with her life, and it had been so for a long, long time. "Look, all this has got exactly nothing to do with me. Eileen was murdered, and I just want to see to it she gets buried and that the motherfucker who killed her gets what's coming to him. That's all I care about." "That's what I care about, too." She rested her bony elbows beside her plate and pressed a handful of napkins to her eyes. "I don't wanna talk about it any more now, okay? You're a nice lady, but you don't know nothing about it." I took a few bites of pancake and picked up the bill. I thought of leaving the tip on the table, but I didn't trust Sandy to leave it there. "Sandy, the lead detective on Eileen's case, a female officer named Detective Lake, needs very badly to talk to you. We can do it downtown at police headquarters, or here. You choose." When a person has no choice, it's a good idea to let them think they do. By saying she could choose where to talk to Desi Lake, I skipped over the idea that she could choose not to talk at all. She said nothing, so I stood, put my purse strap over my shoulder, and dialed my cell phone. "Detective? This is Olivia. I'm at a restaurant near Casa Esperanza with Sandy Jorgenson. Before I leave I want to be sure you two connect." I handed the phone to Sandy. I could tell from Sandy's answers that Desi was calming her down and winning her cooperation. At last she said, "All right, tonight. But I'm going out for a while and I don't know exactly when I'll be back. I can call you." She paused to listen. "Okay, okay. I'm in room 109. Around the corner from the office. Yeah. See you." She handed the phone back to me. "Desi, you still there?" "When will you be done tonight?" I could leave the banquet as soon as dessert and coffee were served. No, as soon as the main course was served. Candace would have to get other wait staff to cover dessert service. "Eight-thirty," I said. I seemed to have a gift for arranging things so I wouldn't have a five-minute leeway all day and all night. That reminded me that I was due about twenty miles away in fifteen minutes. And I had to pee. "Call me at eight to confirm and I'll tell you where to meet me," Desi said. "This will go better if you're with me when I interview her." "Okay, good." I stopped at the restroom, then paid for breakfast. I caught the eye of the waitress and handed her a generous tip. "I think my friend could use some more coffee," I said. I went back to the table and spoke gently to Sandy. "I'll see you tonight, along with Detective Lake." She looked straight ahead, not lifting her eyes to mine. "Yeah. There's stuff I gotta tell you. Important stuff. Like -- " She paused and I asked, "Like what, Sandy?" "Like why my sister killed Trey McNamara." -------- *Fourteen* I drove up the ramp to Interstate 515 South and launched my Lexus into traffic. Soon I was going eighty, eighty-five miles per hour, which is to say, moving right along with traffic. The highway gradually climbed toward the rim of the valley where one would go left toward Boulder City and Hoover Dam, or right to shoot south toward Searchlight and Laughlin. Before I started the real climb out of the Vegas Valley bowl, at the part of Henderson clustered along I-515, I headed east on Highway 147, a.k.a. Lake Mead Boulevard. I was driving so fast I had to brake hard to make the turn at the grand entrance to Lake Las Vegas Resort. The guard walked around my car, wrote down my license number, asked my name, asked to see my driver's license, slowly compared my license photo to my face, and (even slower) checked my name against his list of approved visitors. I was about to suggest he check the VIN engraved on the axle of my car when he handed me a blue and white placard that said _Visitor_ in big black letters and, under that in grease pencil, the date. I was approved for December 8 only, and I had clearly better be out of town by midnight, or else. I hadn't been to Lake Las Vegas for about six months, and construction must have gone on day and night in the intervening time. The Hyatt Regency Hotel sat like a palace on the shore, and all around it luxury homes had blossomed, each surrounded by full-grown palm trees. I understood where the lake came from, although the engineering and financial feat that made somebody's crazy dreams come true was beyond my comprehension. The resort's lake was formed by pumping Lake Mead water to the highest elevation of the resort, letting it water all the emerald golf courses and flow into Lake Las Vegas. Having served a select subsection of humanity in this extraordinary manner, the water passed by the earthen dam at a carefully controlled rate, and continued in a picturesque stream toward Lake Mead. I guess it was the way God would have done it if He'd played golf. I looked over at the map the guard had reluctantly given me and found the road to the home of Ed and Nicole Monte in Hillside Estates. I recognized it first by the two dozen cars that crowded the quadruple-wide side driveway, the curved driveway that looped under a _porte cochere,_ and the avenue-wide street along the edge of the property. I parked on a steep slope behind Rory Castle's 1955 Thunderbird and cut my wheels into the curb. I paused long enough to apply lipstick and run a brush through my hair. I started to remove my Beretta from my purse in order to lock it in the glove compartment, but changed my mind. Someone in the bosom of the McNamara family might be the adder that stung Eileen. As I hurried up the street and driveway, past four BMW's, five Mercedes, and a Lincoln Towncar parked directly in front of the entrance, I wondered who paid for the extravagant California Mission showpiece in front of me. Did Ed Monte come from a family with money, or did he invent, manufacture, sell goods, or otherwise develop his own fortune? Or did he get rich the old-fashioned way, by marrying money? If the money behind the mansion was Nicole's, how much was she worth in total? I needed to know a whole lot more about the foundations and branches of the McNamara fortune. They'd never been a very public family. So far as I knew they didn't get their pictures taken with politicians. I'd have to get Clara to talk more about that, and quickly. The time to talk about debutante balls and touring automobiles was over. I'd seen the lavish display of wealth belonging to Rory and David Castle. Was David rich enough to own a collection of antique and vintage automobiles _before_ he married a granddaughter of Michael T. McNamara? What about the other children of Clara McNamara Cassini Bartok Kellem? And what about the only living heir to Michael T. McNamara II? The steps up to the carved double door went up in three half circles. The top step was so close to the door that I was uncomfortable, so I rang the bell and took a step backward and down. I could hear laughter from inside and thought perhaps I would have to ring again, but then I heard spike heels coming toward me on what must be a hardwood floor. The parquet of the entryway floor was the first thing I noticed when the door opened. It formed a river of blinding light that led straight out the other end of the hallway into the southwestern sky and the winter sun. I blinked a few times, then looked up into the face of the woman I'd seen the night before at the Stardust's steakhouse, William B's. She'd been on the arm of Lyle's father, Sean Kellem. "Yes?" she said. "I'm Olivia Wright. I apologize for being late. I'm here to observe the photo shoot." "Come in." "Thank you." "You can hang your coat in there." She pointed to a closet, but made no move to help me. I squeezed my black cashmere coat in amongst two dozen other coats and turned back to see her giving my charcoal gray suit a thorough examination and a fashion grade of C minus. "Follow me, please. The family is in the solarium." I gave her outfit, a coral silk dress worn with pearl choker and earrings, an A plus, but I gave her a D minus for manners. She should have introduced herself at the door. Her blond hair was caught up in back in a precise French braid, no ringlets and tendrils as she'd worn the night before. I marveled again at her elegant neck and the grace in her walk, as if she'd learned to move on a runway in Paris. The family was arranged on and around a small dais draped in white. Clara and Mickey sat like royalty on chairs on a platform about four feet off the floor. Another platform about one foot below that arced around it like a riser for a small choir, but wide enough to accommodate a chair to Clara's right and another to Mickey's left. Five X's in masking tape on the central platform, in front of Clara and Mickey's feet, were the subject of the photographer's instructions to several people sitting on a couch and chaise lounge across the room. In the middle of the room his assistants, three so far as I could tell, were constantly adjusting portable reflectors that looked like home movie screens. They were all intent on reading light meters and murmuring numbers to each other, then moving the reflectors to the left three millimeters, back one millimeter, and taking new readings of the light. I could see the constantly changing natural light in the solarium frustrated them. Still, it had the potential of being a truly magnificent portrait. Lyle rose from the couch and greeted me. "Did you know I'm going to be an uncle?" he whispered. "Layla's partner, Madonna, is due the end of March." He caught the eye of a young woman in a turquoise sari across the room and smiled. "Congratulations. It's a lucky baby to have such an uncle." I looked at the people already placed and getting tired of standing still. I caught Clara's eye and mouthed Hello. "Lyle, who is the lady who showed me in? Over there, in the coral dress." "Oh, that's Peaches, the second and fourth wife of Mickey, Suzi's predecessor. She's hoping to become my stepmother." He rolled his eyes. "She's not in this picture, but don't bet against her for the next reunion." Suzi walked in from a hallway, patting her black hair to keep the ends turned under and said, "How much longer?" "Good question," one of the photographer's assistants muttered. "All right, everybody, let me have your attention, please," the photographer said, twisting his long ponytail around one finger. "Let's get Zinnia on the chair by Grand-Mom and Suzi into place by Mickey." To me it sounded glaringly rude for him to address them so informally. I was surprised Clara didn't stab him with her icy glare and say, "It's Mrs. Kellem to you, sonny boy." The three assistants were pressed into service getting Zinnia up two steps and lowered into the chair. ZsaZsa bit one of them as he tried to hand her up to her mommy. "Didn't draw blood," Zinnia snapped without even looking at the wound. The man gave a meaningful glare to the photographer and strode out of the room, probably to look for a bathroom. Suzi took Mickey's hand and climbed gingerly to her perch. She wore an elegant suit, a slim skirt of scarlet wool and a jacket that looked like tapestry trimmed in the same fabric as the skirt. "All right, Lyle and the rest of you, take your places. Keep looking toward me. Over here, please, Suzi." They gradually settled into a tableau of family harmony. With one last adjustment to the reflectors, the photographer began snapping. Before each shot he'd call a word of instruction to his subjects. _Put your hand on his shoulder, look down and to your right, look up and straight at me, no, the chin a little bit to the right, now look straight at me._ There were twenty people in the portrait, Mickey and Suzi representing his "half" of the family, and Clara, her four children, their two spouses, seven grandchildren, two spouses of grandchildren, and her two great-grandchildren. Rory had her brood gathered around her like a sub-kingdom. In fact, her family comprised seven of the total twenty. Louis looked handsome in a dark suit and red tie. Peaches McNamara stood off to the side where she could maintain eye contact with Sean Kellem. My impression the night before, that he was much older than she, was less obvious in daylight. Peaches was in her late thirties, maybe even forty, and Sean was sixty-four. In Hollywood she'd be considered too old for him. Also keeping vigil from the sidelines was Layla's partner. Madonna couldn't be in the family portrait (I knew what Clara thought of their relationship), but she'd have the last laugh on Clara when Layla legally adopted "their" baby. That thought brought me back to wondering about the Centennial Trust. Would half of it be Mickey's? Was Peaches smiling so provocatively at Sean as a way to get back in the family and get at least some of the pie? I wondered if she'd ever known Eileen. No, of course not. Social occasions do not exist where one meets the woman who would have been one's step-mother-in-law had she not fatally shot one's father-in-law. She probably knew Helen, though. Clara told me that Mickey was never very close to his mother. Age twelve when Trey and Helen divorced, Mickey had been away at school in Connecticut and had never really lived at home since. I wondered what had become of Helen. I'd heard that she'd taken the death of her daughter, Pegeen, very hard. That was in 1990 when Pegeen was thirty-four. The photo shoot ended at last and a uniformed maid told Ms. Monte that the buffet was laid in the dining room. "Olivia," Clara called as Lyle and Mickey helped her down the steps. "I brought a scrapbook you must see. I thought it was lost, but a woman from the Historical Society called to say they had it. Lyle, you go get it for us." She took my arm and we led the others to the dining room. "Would you like me to fix a plate for you?" I asked as we filed past a sumptuous display of food. At the center was a salmon about thirty inches long, covered in paper-thin slices of cucumber overlapped to look like scales. "No, you come in the living room with me. Louis will get me a plate, won't you?" "I'd be happy to, Grand-Mom. And shall I get a plate for you, Ms. Wright?" "Thank you, yes. A little salmon and crackers, and brie. And fruit." The maid asked us what we would like to drink, adding that Mr. Monte had some champagne he thought we would enjoy. "I'll have coffee," Clara said. "I'd like a flute of champagne, and a tall glass of iced tea, no sugar," I said. Clara pointed to a loveseat where Suzi sat, looking lovely as always. "We'll sit here," Clara said, and Suzi scuttled to another seat. It was rude of Clara, but I was used to her peremptory challenges. "If you can't sit where you want to when you're ninety-nine, when can you?" was how she put it to me one day over a plate of filled cookies. As if to ratify her declaration of independence, she bit into several cookies to look for her favorite filling and left them on the plate. "Don't like cherry filling," she'd said with an emphatic nod. "Don't have to eat things I don't like." It was three-thirty. I'd have to leave in under an hour to be at the Oasis when Candace told the wait staff to report. I was getting a headache worrying that Clara would start on one of her marathon trips down memory lane. Lyle brought the massive scrapbook and placed it on a coffee table in front of the loveseat. I sipped champagne and hoped my anxiety about the time wasn't written on my face. "This was Trey with his first wife," she said. "I never did know why he married her, but she was sure better than the second one. The one who killed him. Who do you think killed her?" Clara asked me. I sensed conversation dwindle and imagined everyone leaning toward me like that commercial for E.F. Hutton. "Actually, I can't speculate. I've been hired by the Las Vegas Police Department to help investigate the murder." Where there had been dwindling conversation a moment before, there was stony silence now. Rory was the first to speak. "So, if my lawyer wants to know when your police department will clean up the mess they left in my house and garage, he can call you?" I started to say the lawyer should call Mace Emerick, Chief of the Detective Bureau, but decided, what the heck? "Yes, he or she can call me. And anyone who has any information to contribute to the investigation can call, too." I rattled off the direct line to my assigned desk and my cell phone number. I turned to Clara and lowered my voice to ask if I could see the scrapbook the next day at her apartment. "I'll be prepared to take notes, and I have more chapters for you to read, too." "I suppose so. I'm ready to go now, anyway. This whole shebang has worn me out." Lyle materialized at my elbow and removed the scrapbook. Moving the coffee table back two feet, he helped Clara to her feet. "Your car is right outside the front door, Grand-Mom. I'll ride along and see you upstairs." I looked around the room, noting hostility in several pairs of eyes. I thanked Nicole Monte for including me (not that she'd had any choice when Clara decreed that I'd be there), and thanked Ed Monte for the excellent champagne. Then I made a hasty exit behind Clara and Lyle. As I unlocked my car I noticed the mailbox of the house down the hill from Nicole and Ed Monte. The house was barely visible down a long driveway, but the name on the mailbox gave me a jolt. The name on the box was Peter Delameter. -------- *Fifteen* Beside the mailbox was a For Sale sign. I locked the car again and started walking down the driveway toward the house. It was similar to the Monte's house though not as lavish, a California Mission in white stucco with dull-red tiled roof. It had been constructed on a shelf of reclaimed desert land below the Monte's house and the driveway and entryway were probably visible from their solarium. Small leafy palm trees bordered the drive. As I got close I could see through a metal gate to the backyard pool. There were no cars, and no sound. I walked up on the porch that shaded the front door and rang the doorbell. I noticed a lockbox on the door with the tag of the same realtor whose sign I saw in the yard. Bartok Realty. Maybe that's how Nicole Bartok Monte came to be so rich. But I thought it was odd that I'd never noticed signs for Bartok around the city before. I heard footsteps behind me and turned. Ed Monte had apparently used a path from his house down to Peter's house. "Can I help you?" Ed Monte's words were polite, but the tone had an undercurrent of menace. "I saw the name on the mailbox," I said. "Peter Delameter invested some money for me. I thought I'd talk to him about it." "He's not here." I nodded. "Who is the realtor? At Bartok?" "I am." "I didn't know anyone in the McNamara's extended family was in the real estate business. I should include that in Clara's book." His stance softened a little at my mention of the book. "My wife's father, Nick Bartok, is the founder of Bartok Realty. It was a natural choice, since his wife, Clara, was the daughter of one of the first men to purchase land in Las Vegas." "I see. Well, Ed, if I made you an offer on the house, how would you reach Peter Delameter?" "You can't afford it." Ed Monte was hands down the worst realtor I'd ever met. "You know, you might be wrong about that." He might be right, too. Thanks to Peter Delameter, I probably didn't have enough to buy a storage shed in Lake Las Vegas. "I don't think so." He might be a lousy realtor, but he had to be one hell of a poker player. "Thanks for your time." I turned and walked back to my car, unlocked it, and left without looking back. I knew he watched me all the way. I dialed the office for Royale Catering on my speed dial. Conan Boyle answered the phone. "Conan, this is Olivia Wright -- " "Candace is on her way to the Oasis," he said. "Right, I thought so. But you're the man I want to talk to. I need a favor, some information about a business in Las Vegas." Conan was a boring man, but a regular encyclopedia when it came to business. As he'd said once, in an attempt at levity, "I was born to crunch numbers." I told him what little I knew of Bartok Realty. Conan was really good at checking out credit ratings of individuals and businesses, a skill he applied before Royale Catering put thousands of dollars of upfront money into events. It was his wizardry that made sure money was safely in escrow before events. He'd learned to be particularly cautious with movie companies and huge entertainment events. "Is there a Mrs. Delameter?" he asked. "She could sell the property, probably has a power of attorney." I remembered Candace had mentioned dealing with Peter's wife for a charity ball. Happy Delameter had the mistaken idea that Candace and her large staff wanted to contribute to her charity by working twice as hard for half as much as they'd make elsewhere. "Yes, he has a wife. A registered barracuda." "I have some ideas. I'll check around." "Thanks, Conan." I gave him my cell phone number. I was about to say good-bye when I had another thought. "Conan, have you ever heard of the McNamara Centennial Trust?" "Umm, no. It's in Nevada, I presume?" "Nevada or California. Michael T. McNamara the first set it up nearly a hundred years ago." I heard a horn blare and an SUV the size of a motor home swerved around me. "I've got to go. Traffic's bad. Please call me when you know something." We said good-bye and I headed west on the I-215 loop. I'd gone about two miles when my phone rang. "Hello?" "It's me, Patsy. What are you doing?" It had only been two days since I'd gotten my friend Patsy's message inviting me to go exercise at Sinbad's Gym, but it seemed like two weeks. "I'm on my way to help Candace with a banquet. Nevada and California Bar Association." "If you find any rich, handsome, and unattached lawyers, let me know. Find me one who looks like he plays tennis. All the lawyers I know look like albino manatees." "I thought you were involved with the hockey player from Canada." "Not a player, he's an owner. Such a great guy. Married, but nobody's perfect. Anyway, he had to go to Montreal for a month." "I'm sure _my_ lawyer is rich. He's got plenty of my money, anyway. Kemper Wilkerson. I don't know about his state of attachment." I thought of him with Eileen McNamara Monday night, outside his office. More than just polite. A man can help a woman on with a coat and be totally impersonal about it. Or he can look like he wants to lean forward a little and make circles on her neck with his tongue. That's the way Kemper looked at Eileen as he draped her lamb's wool coat on her shoulders. It was probably just charm he'd polished during years of helping women clients through difficult events like divorce and widowhood, but he was certainly slathering the attention on Eileen. "Isn't that a nightmare about that woman murdered on the golf course?" I agreed it was a nightmare and said I had to get off the phone before I got in a wreck. "I'll call you this weekend." Luckily, the Wickworth Tower was right on my way across the valley. I parked on the street while I went upstairs and changed into my black slacks, white shirt, black vest and bow tie. Twenty-five minutes later I was saying a quick hello to the other waitpersons hired by Royale Catering for the bar association event and laughing at lawyer jokes. One of Candace's best workers, Melanie Tripp, gave us instructions and we flew into action like a choreographed dance routine. Melanie handed me the seating chart for the head table and a sheaf of place cards as well as a dozen copies of the evening's program. "Put these out on the table, please, Olivia. And hold on to the chart, because you'll be serving that table and there are food preferences noted." I took a tray of salads with me to save steps. As soon as I'd placed a salad in the ready-to-eat position, I worked on the place cards. When I read F. Harrison Fitzpatrick, I almost dropped it in a china boat of vinaigrette. The prosecutor in Eileen McNamara's trials? I placed the card where the chart said it should be, to the right of the central microphone as one looked out toward the audience. I opened the program and read his name again. Keynote Speaker: F. Harrison Fitzpatrick, Esquire. His talk was titled, "Criminal Law in California and Nevada: Time for a Fresh Perspective." A brief biographical note showed he was the founding partner of Fitzpatrick, Fassel, and Rice in Los Angeles. He'd come to criminal defense work after a distinguished career in the Office of the District Attorney for the City and County of Los Angeles. I finished tucking programs beside each place card and went to the kitchen for pitchers of water. Melanie called me to help a new employee, who was falling behind the others in preparing her stations. When I finished all I needed to do in the prep stage, I moved through the kitchen and along the service halls that bordered the banquet rooms and meeting rooms of the Oasis Convention Center. When I found the doors to the cocktail reception for the bar association members and guests, I took the head table instruction sheet out of my pocket and folded it neatly three times, then once more for good measure. I looked around and found an ice bucket, filled it, and carried it to the large bar on one side of the room. Two smaller satellite bars at the ends of the rectangular room kept everyone well oiled with the finest liquor money could buy. As soon as I set the bucket down behind the bar, I zeroed in on a man leaving a circle of other men and heading toward the bar. I approached him from the side, sort of a flanking maneuver. "Excuse me, sir," I said, clutching the folded paper where he'd see it. "Could you direct me to F. Harrison Fitzpatrick? I have to deliver a message." He was glad to oblige. "The gentleman with the black hair, right over there. Tall fellow, you see who I mean?" "Thank you very much, sir." I moved through the crowd, smelling Jack Daniels here, Johnnie Walker there, and Wild Turkey everywhere in between. "Mr. Fitzpatrick? I'm so sorry to interrupt, but I have a message for you." This time I didn't show the paper. "The gentleman with the message is just over here. He said it's very important." He looked puzzled, but shrugged and excused himself from the quartet of pudgy, balding men who had been hanging on his every word. They did, in fact, look like albino manatees. I opened the closest door that led through the portable wall into a smaller (and empty) meeting room beyond. That it was empty alarmed Fitzpatrick. "Where is he?" he said. "The gentleman with the important question is Mace Emerick, Chief of Detectives with the Las Vegas Metro Police Department. He couldn't get here before the banquet starts, so he asked me to ask the question for him." Before he could say, "You? A banquet server? I don't think so!" I barged on with my practiced speech. "I'm helping serve tonight as a favor to the owner of the catering company, but I'm also working with Chief Emerick on a homicide. You probably heard that Eileen McNamara was found dead Monday night?" He relaxed a little. I was relieved to see he had a full tumbler of amber liquid. That might buy me a minute. "Yes. I read what little was in the papers. And a shoe worn by the victim was found in the garage of a member of the McNamara's extended family, is that right?" "That's right. We're trying to chase down what happened the night her ex-husband, Trey McNamara, was shot, in 1972. You were the prosecutor." "Reminding me of cases I lost is not the best way to win my cooperation," he said with a wry smile. "But, yes. I had the case." "Did you know she had a younger sister, Sandy, and that it's possible Trey McNamara had sexual relations with Sandy during and after Eileen's marriage to Trey?" "Oh, yes, I was well aware of that. Sandy had disappeared into the drug subculture a good two years before Trey was shot and Eileen was arrested. We never talked to her. Do you know if she's still alive?" "Yes, alive, still an addict, and staying at a shelter in Las Vegas. Did Trey find other young girls attractive?" "Umm, yes. He was a sexual predator, in my opinion. That never came out at the trials. It wasn't in the best interests of the prosecution to paint the victim as a monster, and Eileen McNamara wouldn't let her defense attorney bring it up either. In the end, she got off, I think, by convincing the jury, in some visceral way, that she was too classy to kill anyone. The facts didn't support self-defense, but the jury wanted to believe her. Sometimes that's all it takes." I opened my mouth to ask another question and he said quickly and firmly, "I have to get back. Keynote speakers are like the groom at a wedding. He's not the star of the show, but everyone notices if he's missing." "Thank you, sir." I walked over and opened the door, then stood back a step as he walked through. Without thinking much about it, I blurted, "Do you think anyone in the McNamara family carries such a grudge that he -- or she -- would kill Eileen?" He looked back at me, framed by the doorway, then took a half step toward me. "If I were a detective, I'd ask this question: Where was Helen McNamara that night?" I watched him turn and wave at the four men he'd already talked to, then join a circle of young denizens of the bar association. Helen and Trey McNamara had been divorced for ten years before he was fatally shot. What could Helen have against Eileen? Then I remembered. Trey and Helen divorced in 1962, and he married Eileen, who was only eighteen and drop dead gorgeous, in 1963. It was unproven, but certainly possible, that Trey's attraction to Eileen was the reason for the divorce. But how had Trey's death affected Helen, aside from leaving her teenaged children without a father? She was not close to her son, just to her daughter, Pegeen. Did his death cut off financial support for Helen in some way? Or had she believed they would get back together after he and Eileen divorced, and his death shattered her dreams of a future together? I had a lot to learn about the "other side" of the McNamara family, starting with, Where is the first Mrs. Michael T. McNamara III? That line of questions didn't look very promising to me. By now Helen was what, about seventy-four years old? Sheesh! Talk about your grudges. -------- *Sixteen* As soon as we'd served the entrees to the tables and cleared salad plates, replenished the breadbaskets and water glasses, and directed cocktail servers to tables where more wine or liquor was requested, I took a breather and checked my phone. As I expected, there was a message from Desi Lake. I returned her call. "What's your ETA?" she asked. "I've been driving past the shelter, and I don't like the looks of the crowd out front." I estimated my time of arrival at Casa Esperanza at nothing under one hour, even if I just grabbed my suit, shoes, and makeup bag and wore my serving outfit. I told Desi that, and she said nothing for a long moment. "I'm going to pick Sandy up before we lose her, if she's not gone already. I'll leave you a message where to meet us." I found Melanie Tripp and said I had to leave in fifteen minutes. She told me to put the dessert on trays and she'd serve my tables. Being the boss's mother does have its advantages. As I headed up Decatur Boulevard my phone rang and I grabbed it. "Yes?" "It's Desi. I can't find Sandy. A 'Big Bertha' in the office says she rode off on a bike with somebody named Harley, about an hour ago." I swore under my breath. "What kind of bike?" "A Hog. Black with red trim. Almost new. 'Bout fifty mirrors on the handlebars, she says. Big woman is really pissed. Seems she thought Harley was coming to get her, not Sandy. Guys!" she added with a laugh, "What 'cha gonna do?" "I'm on my way, still dressed like an Emperor Penguin. Where do you want me to go? And don't say the city zoo." She gave it some thought. "Meet me at headquarters, downtown." "Got it. Twenty minutes, maybe fifteen." I felt worry, even dread, about Sandy's disappearance. An addict could fall down a hole in Vegas and never come up again. I called Mace and voiced my fear for Sandy. "It's no accident that she's in Vegas the same time as her sister gets murdered," I said. "I think she's a material witness, and I also think she needs protection. From herself, if not someone else." "I'll go in at shift change, talk to the patrol officers. Somebody probably knows Harley." I recalled something the woman in the shelter office had said. "What fights are going on tonight? A woman at the shelter said something about Harley coming over after the fights." "I'll check. Anything else?" I told him what Fitzpatrick had asked, about where was Helen McNamara the night Eileen was murdered. "She's about seventy-four," I added. "I no longer see little old ladies as harmless. This job strips away your bias. Anyone, any age, can be a murderer." "Yeah, that's the truth." I added that I was on my way to meet Desi. We hung up and I turned all my attention to worrying about Sandy. There was something fragile about her. How had it ended between her and Trey McNamara? Did she leave him? Or did he tire of her and want someone younger? Like a message from another planet, a question popped into my head. Why didn't Neville Norwich write a book about Eileen McNamara's murder trials? I knew that many true crime writers, Ann Rule for one, would only write about a murder case when someone was convicted, thereby avoiding lawsuits from painting an innocent person (in the eyes of the law) as a murderer. So maybe Norwich invested her time in the Trey McNamara scandal, but dropped it when Eileen was acquitted. I wondered where Norwich was. I hadn't heard of her publishing any books since, oh, maybe 1990. I parked in the "Police Only" lot behind headquarters and placed a placard on my dashboard to show I had a right to be there. I noticed I still had a visitor's placard from Lake Las Vegas. At the bottom was the name and phone number of the security company for the area. Basset Security. Jack Basset, President. _Small world._ I showed my identification at the front desk and went upstairs, carrying my suit skirt and jacket over my arm and my black pumps in a string bag. My voicemail had no call from Sandy Jorgenson. My intercom buzzed and I jumped in surprise. "You're back," Mace stated. "Look in the center drawer of your desk." I lifted the lid of the red box and saw a black leather billfold. Inside was a gold badge of Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department. "Oh, Mace, you do care," I sputtered. "It's temporary." He sounded grouchy. "Let's take a ride. Meet me out front in five minutes." "But, Desi -- " "Desi is at a hit and run. She said to tell you." I used four minutes to change into my suit and pumps and apply lipstick. I rolled up my black pants, white shirt, and black vest and stuffed them in the string bag on top of my low-heeled work shoes. Seeing a crowd at the elevator, I took the stairs to save time. I stood in front of the huge building and looked around as I patted my suit jacket to feel the billfold-badge inside. Mace pulled up to the curb in his unmarked Crown Vic and leaned across to open the door for me. "Your friend Sandy has a rap sheet," he said. When Mace was working, he had no time for wasted words like, "Hi." I snapped my seat belt into place and waited. "She goes by Charlene Jorgenson, Carol Johnson, Sandy Jordan, Sandy McNamara, and three or four variations on those. She's a paperhanger. Bad checks, forgery -- lousy forgery. Not quite crayons on a 'certified check,' but almost as bad. She's wanted for questioning in a meth lab explosion in Albuquerque and the murder of a dealer in Phoenix. Indications are she's been a mule, carrying cocaine in from Juarez. Tried a scam in a casino in Laughlin. Basically, the girl next door." I thought of a few things to say, none of them very cop-like. I wondered if she'd seen me as a gullible fool and enjoyed giving me the story about her dear deceased sister and how she wanted her properly buried. Did Trey McNamara's sexual appetite and money lead her to a life of drugs and crime or was that a lie, too? The fax machine in Mace's car beeped twice and a sheet of paper oozed out. He snatched it, looked at it, and handed it to me. "Is that her?" The sad face had a black card with white numbers under it, and the words, Albuquerque, NM, under the numbers. She had bags under her eyes and a swollen cheek. Her hair was stringy. "That's her," I said at last. "It was easy to ID the biker. Harley is a local. Never made the big time, just hangs around with Hell's Angels, runs errands. I don't know how he came to possess the Hog he drives. Seems out of his league, but you never know." I looked at the police photo of Sandy again. "Where are we going?" "To talk to Mickey McNamara and his lovely wife, Suzi. Now that the family portrait is done, he says he's in a hurry to get back to Florida. We're meeting them at the Sahara." He pulled in a couple minutes later and showed his badge to the valet parking attendant, who waved him to a restricted parking area. "We won't be long," he said with a little wave as we passed the valet parking stand. Inside, he stopped to talk to a security guard, who handed him his radio. He spoke to the chief on duty to let him know he was "in the neighborhood." We made our way across the casino, detouring around a group of women wearing "Biloxi Bowler Babes" T-shirts. They seemed to be divided into a pro-show faction and a pro-dinner faction. "We can eat after the show," an attractive woman with big hair argued. "They serve meals twenty-four hours in Vegas, for cryin' out loud! But showtime is showtime." Mickey and Suzi were at a table in the back of the Sahara Steakhouse. I wondered if Mace was doing a culinary critique of beef in Vegas, and the Sahara was only number two on his list of eateries. Mickey rose about halfway to shake Mace's hand, then mine. Suzi held out her hand as if to show us her rings (very impressive!) and gave us each a limp shake. Mickey looked at his watch (also an impressive piece of jewelry). Mace held my chair and caught the waiter's eye. "Coffee, please." He looked at Mickey, who shook his head. "Two. You want anything else, Olivia? A salad or something?" I shook my head no. "Bring me a New York Strip, rare, baked potato with the works. Skip the salad, just bring lots of rolls." He pulled his chair out and sat at an angle so he could cross his feet at the ankles. Then he took out his notepad and looked at Mickey. I did the same. "How well did you know Eileen McNamara?" Mace asked. Mickey looked like he could use a quick Heimlich maneuver. "I didn't know her at all! I knew of her that's for sure. I knew she was a teenage whore bitch who broke up my parents' marriage. And I know she got away with murdering my father!" I wrote "whore bitch" and under it, "murderer." Mace asked them where they were Monday between 6:00 p.m. and midnight and made a point of writing it down carefully. Looked like they had good alibis. Dinner at the Hyatt Regency in Lake Las Vegas with Nicole and Ed Monte and coffee at the Montes' house. "We were making plans for the photo shoot the next day at Rory's house. That was fouled up by the police finding Eileen's body on the golf course." He made it sound like the height of inconsiderate behavior on the part of the police. "I have no idea what Eileen was doing there." I wouldn't call being dumped as a dead body as "doing" anything. "Did you tell Clara Kellem Monday afternoon that Eileen was 'nosing around like a bitch in heat'?" I asked. Mickey sliced me into lunchmeat with his eyes. "At a private luncheon, and I emphasize 'private', I spoke of a family matter." He continued to glare at me. I was pretty sure I wouldn't be lunching _en famille_ with the McNamaras any more. "Did you consider Eileen McNamara part of the family, then?" Mace did "naive" well; he also did "bumbler" well. But he was at his best when the part called for bone-chilling menace. I wondered if he'd have occasion to menace anyone present. Except for the poor cow, which arrived just then. "I most certainly did not!" Mickey spat the words out one at a time. "My cousin Rory warned me that Eileen was planning to show up at our photo shoot, which was scheduled for next Monday. We were going to do it at the country club down the street from Rory. But we decided to move it up to the next day, Tuesday, at Rory's house." Mace troweled butter and sour cream into the steaming center of his potato. "I think you have some questions, don't you, Olivia?" he asked, then turned his attention to his grilled cadaver of cow. "How much time do you spend in Las Vegas, Mr. McNamara?" "As little as possible. I come two or three times a year to see my Great-aunt Clara, and my four cousins, Clara's children." Clara's children were actually first cousins of Mickey's father, Trey, which made them all Mickey's first cousins once removed, a distinction necessary in my book but not in conversation. "And you, Ms. McNamara?" "Oh, call me Suzi." I saw Mickey shoot her a disapproving look. I was sure he'd been raised not to be too familiar with the help. She avoided his eyes and smiled at us, a big smile for Mace, a little smile for me. "I just married into this crazy family. I don't know nuthin'!" A lot of families are crazy, I thought, but they don't stab each other. I gave that a second thought and had to admit lots of people in families were doing exactly that. Shoot, stab, strangle, torch, drown, and poison. Like the song says, "We always hurt the ones we love." That's why we have shelters for battered women and their traumatized children. I pressed for details of their last three trips to Las Vegas. Mickey wanted me to believe he couldn't remember being in Vegas in six, maybe eight months before the current trip. "Suzi and I got here Monday morning, around ten o'clock. You can check with the airline." "Thank you, I will. Which airline and from what city?" "Delta, out of Miami." "And you had connections in where, Atlanta?" He tried to stare me down, finally snapping, "Yes." "You didn't mention seeing your mother when you're in town. Does she live here or somewhere else? I can't think of her name," I lied. "My mother lives outside of Las Vegas on a ranch. Her name is Helen McNamara. She remarried, but she keeps the name McNamara. For convenience, I suppose." "Where is the ranch?" I persisted. "And who did she marry?" "Are all these personal questions necessary?" he sputtered to Mace as if a man would be his ally against this intrusive woman. Mace was in an alternate universe, communing with the spirit of the cow or something, so Mickey turned back to me in disgust. "Well, are they?" I tried to give the impression of seriously considering his question, then smiled. "Yes." I paused and turned the page on my notepad. "Where is the ranch?" "It's not a very big ranch," he said with a scowl. "Okay, where is your mother's ranchette?" "Out Blue Diamond Road, Highway 160, go west, past Highway 159 where it goes to Red Rocks, go another eight or nine miles on 160. Nice looking ranch house with big trees off to the left, against the mountains. Sign on the road by the mailbox says 'Hot Rocks Ranch'." He looked at his watch, even held it out so I could read the numbers, though what that proved I couldn't guess. "I have to be somewhere." He amended it. "My wife and I have to be somewhere. I've told you everything I know." "And we appreciate your time," Mace said, mopping up steak blood with a forkful of potato. "Olivia, is that all you need to ask?" "Just two more questions." "Good grief!" Mickey snarled. "What?" "Who did your mother marry?" "Buster Eckles." Buster wasn't a name I heard much, but I recalled hearing it just the night before at the Stardust. I wanted to ask if his mother's husband was about seventy, bald, deep leathery farmer's tan, with a bushy white mustache and eyebrows that looked like bird's nests, but I had promised only two more questions. "Okay, thanks. Last question: Who is in charge of the McNamara Centennial Trust?" A split second later I was drenched in iced tea, not just a glass but a whole pitcher that Mickey McNamara knocked over as he stood, red-faced with anger and shaking his fist at me. As Mace and the waiter shoved wads of linen napkins into my hands, and Suzi shot away from the table to avoid getting anything on her clothes, I heard Mickey's answer. "Kiss my ass and call my lawyer!" -------- *Seventeen* An hour or so later I emerged from my bathroom in a pale blue bathrobe and a towel wrapped around my hair. Mace handed me a mug of coffee. "Decaf, I hope." He nodded. "You want to get dressed and go get your car?" "Do I want to leave my nice, warm apartment and go out in twenty-eight degree weather, wind chill factor twenty degrees, just to get a car? Not to mention doing it with wet hair." "I'll take that as a no. You want me to get Desi to swing by and pick you up in the morning?" "No, I want you to take off your clothes, all of them, now, and get in my bed. In the morning you can drive me to headquarters and I'll get my car." "Is this what they call foreplay?" "It's as close to foreplay as you're going to get." I turned off the lights in the living room, snatched a magazine from his hands, and threw it hard across the room. "I was reading that," he said as he watched it sail over the back of the couch. "And now you're not." "This is a side of you I've never seen before." I put my hands on my hips. "There is no side of me you haven't seen." He smiled. "That's true. I concede." He held out his hand and tugged on my robe. "C'mere." I moved close enough to be folded in his arms. Then I felt an up and down movement, sort of shaking, and I pulled away. "Damn it, you're laughing!" "I just ... I keep thinking about ... Mickey and the iced tea ... You were so..." He gave up any effort (if there even was any effort) to keep from laughing. "Kiss my ass..." "I wish I could join in the general merriment, but it's not quite so funny when it's your own lap. You should have arrested him. Charged him with assault with a staining fluid or something." "I was gonna do that, but I couldn't think of the police code for it." He was gone again, helpless with laughter. Finally he stopped, wiped his eyes, and said, "I forgot how much fun it is to work with you, Olivia." "Yeah, I think you're suffering memory loss in other ways, too." He kissed me softly, then harder. "Hold on, I think it's coming back to me." I walked into my bedroom with Mace following like a shadow. Sometimes it's too hard to stay mad. When my alarm went off at 5:30 Thursday morning, Mace was already in the shower. I groped in the dark to find my robe and slippers and went to make coffee. I got another gray wool suit out of the guestroom closet, ticked that I would have to get the other one dry-cleaned again after one wearing. I'd been so angry with Mickey McNamara the night before. Still was, in fact. Mickey had marched out in a huff with Suzi in his wake, leaving me the subject of stares from the other diners as I patted, sopped, and wiped my drenched suit. I even had iced tea in my underpants. Then Mace had the nerve to say, "Well, I think that went pretty well, don't you?" and I almost committed assault-with-a-fork on a peace officer. Would have, too, but his reflexes are still pretty good. I wriggled into pantyhose and got dressed before he finished in the bathroom. "There's coffee in the kitchen. And rolls," I called as I moved into the bathroom to apply makeup. En route to the parking garage we stopped in the lobby to pick up my mail. I reminded Mace of the parking placard I'd lifted from Lake Las Vegas and that it said Basset Security was in charge out there. "Maybe the head of Basset Security can shed some light on the whereabouts of Peter Delameter, or at least tell us when he was last seen at Lake Las Vegas." He knocked on the door marked Security. While I checked my box, I watched Mace out of the corner of my eye. When a uniformed guard opened it, Mace greeted him in a friendly, casual way, drawing out his badge from his coat pocket. I strolled over to them as I sorted my mail and peered into the room. A wall of television monitors gave a black-and-white look at hallways, elevators, and entrances. A magazine was open on a small desk to pictures of duck hunters and Labrador Retrievers. "I've got a friend starting up a business, lots of valuable high tech stuff, you know," Mace said, "and he asked me to recommend a security company. Well, I thought of Basset right away. Is Jack here?" "No, sir, Mr. Basset's out of town. He'll be calling in around noon. You want me to have him call you?" He tucked his thumbs into his belt, sucked in his gut, and pulled his pants up to his waistline. "How long do you expect him to be out of town?" "I think he's returning tonight, sir." Mace took a leather business card holder out of his coat and gave a card to the guard. "Ask him to give me a call when he gets back." "I'll do that. Have a nice day, sir." He nodded to me as well. "You, too, ma'am." Desi called on my cell as soon as we got in Mace's car. "You on your way in?" "Yeah. Rolling as we speak." "Chief's not here yet," she said with a yawn. "Not there yet? Why that lazy bag o' bones! Probably dragging his sorry ass out of some nice, hard-working woman's bed..." "Let me talk to him, please." Mace put my little cell phone against his ear and gave a theatrical sigh. "This is the chief. What's going on?" I listened to his end of the conversation and guessed at Desi's end. She'd had a hideous night. People who usually shot each other on Friday nights wanted to get a jump on the weekend and shot each other on Wednesday night. Apparently this was done to leave their weekend free for pre-holiday robbery. Any joking ended when Mace asked, "How old was she? And her little brother?" He listened. "Shit!" He listened again. "Sure, Desi. Sleep as long as you can. No, what time do you have to be in court? Well, four hours of sleep is better than nothing. Yeah, we'll hold off the enemy 'til you get in. Call me from the courthouse. I might stop over there. Yeah, later." He handed the phone back to me. "Call Sergeant Byrd, would you? He's at extension 2323." When I had the sergeant on the line, I handed the phone to Mace. We were just a block from headquarters. "Birdie? I'm on my way in now. Has anything come up on Sandy Jorgenson? Or that biker, Harley?" He looked over at me and shook his head. "Will you talk to the day shift for me? Thanks. See you in a little while." Mace pulled up in front of headquarters instead of driving into the private parking lot. "I'll see you later. I'm going over to the medical examiner to observe autopsies on two kids." As I stepped out on the sidewalk, he added, "Don't go to that ranch without an officer." I nodded. Knowing that Desi would be out most if not all day, and that with the department so shorthanded I couldn't find someone else to go with me, I doubted I could track down Helen and her husband Buster until the next day. Upstairs at my desk while I booted up my computer I checked my voicemail. No messages. I felt confused about the Eileen McNamara murder case, like I was walking in a maze. I kept marking X at turns, but somebody was erasing my marks so I could make the same mistake again and again. I turned to the computer and created a new file: McNamara's Band. Tuning out the noise around me, I let my fingers do the talking. _Eileen McNamara_. I typed what I knew about her life. _Tried twice for murder of Trey McNamara. Hung jury, then acquittal. Where is her gunmetal gray Jaguar XJ6, California plates? Where is her coat? Purse? Who was she having lunch with at the country club Monday?_ I opened the manila folder Paul left on his desk for us and re-read the bar manager's description. Ernst Uber said she was "about five feet ten, blond hair with little curlicues hanging down; long neck. About thirty or thirty-five years old." I didn't take the age estimate too seriously, though. Men usually underestimated the age of attractive older women as if to say, "Somebody who looks that good _must_ be under thirty-five." I left some room and typed the next entry. _Sandy Jorgenson. How much (if anything) of what she told me is true? And where was she Monday night? Where is she now?_ _Helen McNamara. Motive? Opportunity?_ _Buster Eckles_. The name rang a bell, but I couldn't place it. I wrote down: _When did he marry Helen? What does he do for money? Was he having dinner with Kemper Wilkerson at the Stardust Tuesday night?_ _Kemper Wilkerson. Why was Eileen in his office the evening she was murdered?_ _Mickey McNamara. Motive to kill Eileen? Alibi: at Lake Las Vegas with Suzi and Nicole and Ed Monte. Check on that!!!_ _Ed Monte. Something nasty about him. Connected to Peter Delameter._ _Rory Castle. Where was her husband, David, on Monday night? Eileen's shoe found in garage full of valuable cars. Body found on golf course in same area._ I looked at the list and wondered again about Ed Monte. Although it didn't logically fit on my McNamara list, I typed in: _Peter Delameter. Selling house. Who represents him if he's incommunicado? His wife? Where is he?_ I didn't type it, but I was thinking, _And where is my money?_ I searched through everything we had on Eileen McNamara again. Before she'd married Trey McNamara, at age eighteen, she'd lived in Albuquerque, graduated from La Cueva High School, prom queen, starred in theater productions. She'd done TV commercials from the time she was six years old. Her mother took her to Los Angeles for two months every year until she was ten. At age ten the jobs dried up. She was too old to be cute, too young to play vixens in situation comedies. Girls don't have sex until they're a mature twelve years old on TV. She got a few lucrative commercials and work in music videos from fifteen to seventeen, then she moved to LA alone and tried to get work in daytime dramas, the soaps. After she married Trey, she quit looking for jobs. Divorced at nineteen, she did some fringe work in TV, enough to get by, but nothing remarkable. A magazine article said her mother died of breast cancer when Eileen was thirty-eight and her father died four years later -- no mention of the cause. She was asked if she had other family and said, "Yes, one sister. Mom let me name her when she was born -- I was three -- and I chose Sandy. She's always been glad I didn't name her Pookie. I saved that name for our poor dog." That was all. No mention of Sandy growing up, nothing about following her sister to Hollywood or choosing instead to stay in New Mexico and live a more conventional life. My cell phone rang. "This is Olivia." "Hi, this is Conan. I'm having loads of fun tracking Bartok Realty and the McNamara Centennial Trust. The first one is easy, the second one is a tough nut to crack." "Okay, tell me about Bartok." I opened my McNamara's Band file again. "Bartok Realty incorporated in Clark County in 1969. The principals were Nicholas Bartok and his daughter, Nicole Bartok. Since that time Nicole married Edward Monte in 1971 and Nicholas Bartok died in 1979. Monte had a real estate broker's license, issued in Clark County in 1969. Nicole's license lapsed in 1985 and she left it alone. Ed Monte has kept his up to date, but it's hard to see why. Bartok Realty has apparently never advertised and rarely buys or sells anything. They're not even in the Yellow Pages." "Employees?" "None. Their daughter, Natalie Monte, became a partner last year, but she doesn't have a license to sell real estate in Nevada." I typed in the information under Ed Monte as fast as Conan told it to me. "What about the McNamara trust?" I felt a little guilt at using Conan's time, but comforted my conscience with the thought that he could use what he learned in law school. He was silent. "I don't want to toss my guesses out there yet. I could be way off. I'll keep digging and call you later. It's not a testamentary trust, I can tell you that. It wasn't part of old Michael McNamara's will. Have you ever heard of the rule against perpetuities?" "No." The phone on what served as my desk rang and I had to tell Conan I'd talk to him later. "Homicide. This is Olivia Wright." "This is Happy Delameter. Mrs. Peter Delameter. I'm terribly worried about my husband. I think something has happened to him. I want to file a missing person's report." "Of course, ma'am. Please stay on the line just a moment while I get a detective to talk to you." As I spoke I jotted down the incoming phone number and the phone's location. Rather than take a chance on disconnecting her on the complicated phone system, I set the receiver down and looked in cubicle after cubicle. I found four detectives in the office, but two were on the phone and two were in conference with individuals. Then I got lucky. Mace walked in. I explained what was going on and he took the call in my cubicle. "This is Chief Emerick, ma'am. I'm the head of the detective bureau. What makes you think your husband is a missing person?" A spouse had a tough task to make police look for a "missing" spouse, since an adult is free to go and come as he or she wishes. That fact worked against a spouse who had come to harm at the hands of the spouse or domestic partner. The neighbors, in-laws, fellow workers could say someone had gone missing, but if the individual who lived with that person, especially a spouse, said, "Oh, she decided to get away for a while," there was darned little the police could do. From what Mace was saying, I gathered that Peter Delameter and his wife had moved out of their house and put it up for sale. They'd been living in a townhouse in Green Valley for a month. But her husband had gone out Sunday about 11:00 p.m., saying he had an errand, and he'd never returned. He took no luggage. "I agree, ma'am, this is a cause for concern. You did the right thing to call. He might walk back in tonight and you'll have a big laugh, but I think we'd better come over and take your statement, get started, see if anybody's seen him." He wrote down her address and said he'd be there in an hour. I looked over his shoulder and saw that he'd written down the color and make of Delameter's car. "Another missing Jaguar?" I asked. "Yeah. Not a standard color, either. 'Midnight blue with gold trim' was how she put it. She doesn't know the license number, but I can get that." "My guess would be a vanity plate. Something like RIPOFF." "Ah, that's why you'll never be a master criminal. He'd choose something like TRUSTME. Hey, I've got to return a call in my office. Fifteen minutes. Then we'll go to Green Valley." I used the time to find out what I could about Buster Eckles. Fifteen minutes goes a long way on a computer. I discovered his real name was Robert Eckles, and that he'd legally changed it from Robert Eckelstein in 1994. I knew then why Eckles sounded familiar to me. As Robert Eckelstein he'd married Pegeen McNamara, Mickey's sister. They didn't have any children, and Pegeen died of congestive heart disease in 1990. Pegeen had been twenty-eight when they'd married in 1984 and Eckelstein had been fifty-four. That made him sixty when Pegeen died, and seventy-four now. I pulled up his driver's license photo. As I'd more than half expected, Robert "Buster" Eckles was the man I'd seen dining with Kemper Wilkerson at the Stardust. Four years after Pegeen died, Buster married her mother, Helen McNamara, who was within a year of his own age. Helen had kept the name McNamara. I saw that they paid property taxes on about thirty parcels of land in Clark County, all billed to a rural postal route box, but I didn't have time to find their current physical address or the locations of their land parcels. On our way to Green Valley, a golf-oriented community in the south-central part of the Vegas Valley, I told Mace what I'd learned about Buster and Helen McNamara. He nodded when I reminded him of the man we'd seen eating with Kemper Wilkerson. "He looked older than seventy-four," Mace said, distracted. Knowing he'd gone to an autopsy for a child, possibly two children, I didn't ask any questions. If he wanted to tell me about it, he would. And I hoped he wouldn't. "He probably worked outside a lot." I made a mental note to use more sun block. It was the first chance I had to tell him about my chat with F. Harrison Fitzpatrick, the former Los Angeles assistant district attorney. I mentioned how he'd happened to be the keynote speaker at the bar association banquet the night before, and I repeated his odd question, "Where was Helen McNamara that night?" But I pretty much glossed over how I'd drawn Fitzpatrick aside to talk to me. Don't ask, don't tell, that's my motto. Well, okay, my motto is: Ask, ask, ask, ask, ask, and never tell. We pulled up in front of what Happy Delameter called a "little townhome." It was three stories, white stucco with blue tiled roof. "Will you get a load of this dump?" I muttered. "If she wrings her hands and says things are so tough that they had to sell their Manhattan apartment and their yacht, you'd better be prepared to stop me." He'd heard enough of my investment woes to take me seriously. "Olivia, just keep reminding yourself, it's only money." "If she's wearing any of my money around her neck in the form of jewelry, I'll be thinking, 'It's only bones and cartilage.'" "You need help." "Yes, I do, and if my money were in my bank, instead of in Peter and Happy Delameter's _banco_, I could afford to get the help I need. What kind of an alias is 'Happy,' anyway? What was her maiden name, Birthday?" "The name on her driver's license is Frances. She prefers to be called 'Happy.'" "I'd prefer to be happy, too," I muttered as he rang the doorbell. I looked around at the flowerbeds of winterized rose bushes and brown grass. The air temperature hadn't been more than three degrees below freezing, even though the wind and brief periods of sleet earlier in the week made it feel bitterly cold. The door opened with a pop, probably breaking a seal that kept the cold out in the winter and the cold in all summer. "Chief Emerick, thank you for coming! I'm Happy Delameter." Mace shook her hand and introduced me. Instead of a perfunctory shake she grasped my hand and held on. "I'm so glad to meet you." She was about thirty-five, medium height, with a flawless complexion and a figure that could only come from a combination of good genes and hard work. She wore a beige linen dress with a full skirt and a wide matching belt. The cowl collar framed her face, and her face framed hazel eyes flecked with gold. She wore tiny gold hoop earrings and an enamel rose brooch. "Please, come in and sit down. I have coffee ready." We followed her to a room that ran the width of the townhouse across its back. Large windows, about six feet square, each bordered by redwood, faced the golf course. The southern exposure pulled in the winter sun and warmed the humid air. All around the room were tiered tables and shelves displaying roughly fifty plants and potted flowers. Baskets of fuschia and bougainvillea hung by chains from ceiling hooks and seemed to preen like cats in the sunshine. Narrow rectangular windows below the picture windows were rolled open slightly to ventilate the room. She poured coffee from a ceramic carafe into three mugs and gestured toward the sugar and cream. I took a little cream. Mace and Happy took theirs black. Black and strong, I noted when I tasted mine. Whew! Mace nodded to me and I pulled out a notepad. As soon as my pen touched paper he started firing questions to Happy. When was the last time she saw her husband? What was he wearing? What was he driving? When did she start to worry, that is, when was he overdue to return home? I jotted her answers in my modified shorthand. Her version of events was that Peter Delameter played golf Sunday afternoon and came home right after sunset, excited about having met a man with connections at Pebble Beach. The man, Slim Scudder, invited Peter to go along for a four-day golf trip to Carmel, California. On one of those days they would play Pebble Beach. "I tried to pin down when the four-day trip would be," she said. "I didn't press him for an exact itinerary, just would it be in a week, or two weeks, or next summer, you know? I've always been good at planning around things, but I have to know what I'm planning around." Mace asked if Peter did much traveling for business or for leisure. Happy cocked her head to one side and looked at the ceiling. "He's usually gone on business about ten days a month, two or three days of meetings. But every time he possibly can he'll add a day on for golf. He's never had an occasion to do business in Scotland, but I think that's his goal in life, to make a two-day business trip to Scotland and add about two weeks on Scottish links." Mace urged her to continue. "You said he came home Sunday about sunset?" "Yes. He was in a great mood; I'd have to say he was almost ecstatic about the prospect of playing Pebble Beach. He's been awfully depressed lately, about trouble at O.S. Cadbury ... I'm sure you read the papers, so I don't have to go into details." I read the papers, all right, I felt like saying ... the papers I get marked Account Balance. I felt Mace's eyes on my face and kept taking notes. "How long did his good mood last?" Mace helped himself to a second cup of coffee. "Not long. As I said, I tried to find out when the trip would be. But that upset him." "Upset him? In what way?" "He acted annoyed with me, as if I were doubting that his new 'friend' Slim would come through." Mace raised his eyebrows. "You say the word like you had reason to think Slim wasn't really a friend." "Maybe I do. Maybe I said it that way Sunday night and that's why Peter got upset. It just seemed to be too good to be true, you know? Peter's had a very bad time lately, in business, and we had to put our house in Lake Las Vegas up for sale." She thought about it a moment. "If he'd come home with the Carmel golf trip announcement two or three months ago, I wouldn't have given it another thought. But frankly, Chief Emerick, offers like that come with big, thick strings attached, and I guess I was thinking, 'What does Peter have that Slim wants?' And I didn't see much there." "Let's go back to the first question, ma'am. When was the last time you saw your husband?" "Sunday night, a few minutes after eleven. We'd had supper, and Peter went to his office to make some calls and, I guess, do some work on the computer. I picked up the phone in the kitchen once and heard the computer noise. We just have one phone line here. We rented the place as is. The furniture, even the plants, belong to the landlord. Anyway, I was watching the news at eleven and he came out, said he was going to the store to get some cigarettes. He drove off in his Jaguar and never came back. I haven't heard anything from him." Happy was visibly distraught, clutching her hands to her chest, one fist inside the other. When she spoke again, it was in a high, girlish voice. "You have to find him!" "We will find him, Mrs. Delameter," I said in what I hoped was a soothing voice. "Has your husband ever said anything about going to a mine?" Mace asked. "Maybe about a friend who owns or works at some kind of mine?" "No. He's never said anything to me about a mine. Why do you ask?" "Just a thought, it's probably nothing. Is it all right with you if we look around in his office? You say he was in there right before he left Sunday?" "Yes, that's right." "Have you, or anyone else, used his computer since then?" Mace asked. Again she answered quickly. "No. I have a desktop computer of my own, with my own email account, and he uses the laptop. It's in his office, turned off and closed." "Mrs. Delameter, who is handling your house in Lake Las Vegas?" "Ed Monte. He's our neighbor there and an old friend." "I was at the Montes' home yesterday and noticed the For Sale sign on your house," I said. "How much are you asking, and have you had any offers?" "I think Peter and Nick settled on an asking price of nine hundred thousand dollars. It's a small lot for the area." "Any offers?" "Nothing we took seriously. Ed said he got a written offer for a half million, but that's ridiculous for the lake area. We have a good view." Mace nodded and rose to his feet. "I'd appreciate it if you'd show me your husband's office." "This way." She led us to a spiral staircase and we followed her up, Mace bringing up the rear. She opened a door on the second floor. "This is Peter's office, and our bedroom and bath are across the hall." "Where is your computer, Mrs. Delameter?" I asked. "I have a little space off the kitchen, a tiny office. I could use more room, especially file drawers, but that's all we have here." Mace looked around the office while I sat down at the computer. Both of us put on thin latex gloves. I turned on the computer and pulled up his Word documents. The last four files he'd worked in were letters to Ed Monte, Kemper Wilkerson, a woman in the Securities and Exchange Commission, and his administrative assistant, a Ms. Casteneda. The letter to Monte was short, just a note about a house offer they'd apparently discussed on the phone. "Get it in writing and let's get this deal done!" he said. To my great surprise, I saw my name in his letter to Kemper Wilkerson. He said he couldn't answer Kemper's questions about my investments just yet, but hoped to have something concrete soon. He tap-danced around the SEC, saying he couldn't meet them as they requested until he had a chance to meet with his lawyer. And he told Ms. Casteneda that of course he'd be glad to write a recommendation for her. A check of his computer fax file showed he'd faxed all four letters directly from his computer. The time log showed he'd sent them the previous Friday; the last one, to Bartok Realty, went shortly before 9:00 p.m. I went into his e-mail account and did a quick survey of traffic in and out. The last few sent and read were dated December fifth. Sunday. I saw that his laptop was connected to a laser printer, so I printed out the last ten messages received and sent, then logged on. About the time the e-mail came through, Mace's cell phone rang. He looked at the phone number before he answered it. "Emerick here. What've you got, Desi?" I scanned the list of messages. Some I could tell were the same pitiful junk I got all the time -- requests for me to go into business with someone in Nigeria so they could retrieve a trunk full of gold in Canada, offers to increase the length of my penis by three to five inches, and so on. I clicked on one from a "JJorgenson" and just had time to read the words, "Eileen is dead," before Mace said, "Excuse us a moment, please," and closed the door to the office with Happy Delameter on the outside. I forwarded the message to my computer and told the laptop to print one copy. Then I looked up at Mace. "Desi, I'll call you from the car. Have the exact directions for me, from Green Valley." "What's up?" He bent down and spoke softly. "A man's body has been found. In a mine. Let's go." -------- *Eighteen* Mace reached out his window and slapped the bubble light on top of his unmarked cruiser. I propped his cell phone against my ear with my shoulder while I clumsily rearranged the map he kept in his glove compartment and examined the roads that led west to the Spring Mountains. "Desi? Go ahead. We're on Green Valley Parkway, heading north." "Take Warm Springs Road west to the Strip, go south a few blocks, pick up Blue Diamond Road, and head west again. Turn south when you get to Highway 161." "Wait a minute, I don't see it. I see Highway 159 to Red Rocks." "Couple miles farther out. Immediately before Mountain Springs Summit." "I see it." I repeated the first part to Mace. "Then go south toward Goodsprings. Go one and nine-tenths miles and take the dirt road to your right. You'll wind and climb up toward the mountains. The road is a bitch. The mine is back in a box canyon, not on the way to anywhere." "How did anybody find the body?" "Old guy, a Mr. Yale, lives in a trailer about halfway between the highway and the mine. He says he's seen more traffic on that road in the last four days than he's seen in ten years. Got him wondering, so he hiked up there. He could see the vultures. He got close enough to see it wasn't a burro or a cow like he thought. So he went back to his trailer, got his truck, then drove into Goodsprings to report it." "We'll see you in a few minutes," I said. Mace made the turn from the Strip onto Blue Diamond Road and sped up. I gave him the rest of the directions and called into the detective bureau, then handed the phone to Mace. "It's Sergeant Sprague." He gave the sergeant a quick description of his whereabouts, adding that I had been with him on a missing person report and was with him in the car. "Detective Lake is there and criminalists are on the way." I watched the desert view open up as the billboards gave up on enticing us to turn around and enjoy cheap buffets and loose slots. "How come Desi took the call?" I asked. "I thought she was in court all afternoon." "The court date was postponed. She was at headquarters when the call came in. She took a rookie detective with her. Guy named Ving Nguyen." I looked quickly through the twenty-odd sheets of paper I'd printed on Peter Delameter's laser printer and put the message from JJorgenson on top. "It was in Peter's new e-mails. Retrieved today, by me. Came in December eighth, yesterday. It says, 'I just found out that Eileen is dead. I'm coming to Vegas, and I'm going to find out who killed her. If you had anything to do with it, you'd better hope you are dead and buried in ten places before I get my hands on you.' Whew! Who the heck is J. Jorgenson?" Mace shrugged. "Don't know. But that reminds me, we still haven't found the grieving sister of the late Eileen Jorgenson McNamara." "I'll check with Sergeant Sprague." I called, but Sprague said no one had located Sandy Jorgenson. "That must be Mr. Yale's trailer," Mace said. A wizened man and a Border Collie walked out of a lean-to storage shed. The man put up his hand to keep flying sand out of his eyes and Mace slowed down to keep from throwing up so much dirt. "Given a choice of living here or in Hell," I said, "I'd have to think a lot about it." Mace waved to the gentleman, who removed his cap and pointed it down the road, as if to say we were headed the right way. Mace increased our speed to twenty-five, which seemed like racing on that road. The only sections not made of tough washboard were made of deep ruts. "Don't put your t-t-tongue between your t-t-teeth," I managed to say. The car bucked along the road another three or four miles until we spotted a conglomeration of vehicles. "Here they are," Mace said, slowing to a crawl so we wouldn't asphyxiate the crime scene personnel with swirling red sand. About a hundred yards from the scene, he parked beside Desi's cruiser, topped with a bubble light just like Mace's. A crime scene van, smallest of three sizes available in the department, was right in front of Desi's car. We gave the sand a minute to settle, then stepped out. Although it was only three o'clock, the sun had already set behind the dry mountain to our west. The sky was cloudless, but so pale you only said "blue sky" out of habit. The air temperature thermometer in Mace's car said it was forty-three degrees, but it felt colder in the shade. Something black caught my eye. I shivered when I recognized vultures. The deceased used to be a man, but now he was carrion. Crows moved up to rocks that bordered the mine opening, to show the vultures they weren't scared of us. We approached slowly, our eyes studying the ground. "Where is everybody?" Mace asked Desi. At the same time he shook hands with Detective Nguyen. "Seventeen car pileup on the old Henderson Highway. _Beaucoup_ injuries, one fatality. This is Patrol Officer Estefan. He's the OIC." We all shook hands. I knew that as officer in charge of the crime scene it would be Estefan's job to log all evidence collected and see to its safe transport to the crime lab. "I think you know Criminalists Williams and Yarnell," Desi concluded. "Good to see you again, Chief," Williams said. Around his neck hung a black Nikon and a small leather bag for lenses. Yarnell shook our hands and nodded. The vultures flapped their wings and the crows clacked their beaks while muttering dark incantations. I saw two crows hop to the yellow ribbon that marked the edge of the crime scene, then hop back a few yards when Yarnell said, "Get out of here, go on!" and waved his arms. The crows cawed a threat at him and opened their wings, but moved back about six inches. "That is so Vegas," Williams said. "Nothing uglier than a delay in the cheap buffet line." "Who's in charge at the pileup?" Mace asked. Desi handed him a clipboard and he stepped away to use his phone. Desi had apparently given the OIC and criminalists a convincing rundown of my credentials because Estefan had me sign in to enter the crime scene, at 3:14 p.m., and Williams pointed out where I could walk to approach the body. "I did a video of the scene according to procedures," Williams said. "Sound on to record date, place, and case number, and who I am, of course, then sound off. Then I started with the thirty-five millimeter, took three rolls of film already. I got sharp pictures of the location from every angle, and the body -- same thing. We've got one excellent shoeprint, left foot, out there by number five and a partial of a right shoe by number eleven." I looked where he pointed to yellow plastic evidence markers. "What do you want me to do?" I asked as I snapped on plastic gloves. "Let's shoot the body first and look for trace evidence. Then you can help me get another batch of photos of the shoeprints," Williams said. "After that I'll mix the goo and we'll get a casting." He handed me a pair of paper slippers and I put them on, setting my pumps outside the crime scene barrier. I stepped gingerly toward the body. It appeared by size and clothing to be a man. He was lying face down, fully clothed in what appeared to be an expensive sport coat, slacks, and dark brown shoes. Yarnell stood about five feet from the body, sketching the scene. He looked at a compass, down at the body, and back at the compass, then wrote something on the sketch. The head lay toward the mouth of an excavation in the side of the hill. Old timbers looked like they'd grown weary of framing the mine entrance and had partially collapsed. Near the body I bent as low as I could, careful not to touch a knee to the ground, and looked at a mass of dried blood on the back of his head. "Any sign of the weapon?" I asked Yarnell. "There are a lot of rocks around here, but nothing seems to have been disturbed. There was a little rain and sleet Tuesday night, and the dirt on the rocks and all around them looks like it's been there a long while. Raindrops are spaced evenly across the area. That chunk of timber looks suspicious by size and location. It was probably handy to the killer, if indeed the murder happened here. I don't see any trace evidence on it, but we're going to bag it just in case." Williams stepped beside me and handed me a large flashlight. "Hold this please. Aim it toward the side of his head so I can get plenty of contrast." I did as he asked and he leaned in with a macro lens for close-up shots of the area of the wound. "Any identification on him?" "There might be some in the front of his sport coat. Nothing in the back pockets," Williams said. To Yarnell he called, "I have another hour of work here, a little less if we're lucky. Go ahead and call the OMI." "You want me to do that?" Desi called. "Yeah, thanks." Yarnell continued to draw, rotating the clipboard back and forth. "I'll note the time of your call," Estefan said. I continued to work with Williams to get photos of the body and the footprints, then to make castings with dental stone. First, I sprayed the dusty footprint with Aqua Net hairspray, then sprayed again with a mist of WD40. Williams poured in the liquid. As soon as the goo dried and we turned over the red rectangle, we could read the word "Rockport." The impression was detailed enough that the lab would quickly pull up the exact model of the shoe, and imperfections in the shoe surface caused by wear would tie some suspect to the scene. Or at least they'd tie him or her to the scene if we could find the actual shoes. I heard Mace tell Nguyen to drive down to the highway and guide the team from the Office of the Medical Investigator to the scene. I bagged the fourteen-inch section of timber and two rocks that were pointed enough to use as head-bashers. It seemed like only a few minutes had elapsed since Desi called the OMI, but it was an hour and five minutes. A boxy van the size of an ambulance bounced up the dirt road and parked in front of the crime scene van. The driver jumped out in the cloud of dust and called out the time of arrival on scene to the OIC. I braced for a blast of sand in my eyes, but for once the wind carried it away. Our clothes and skin, and that of the dead man's, had a fine layer of grit. Williams brought the medical techs up to speed and they signed in on Estefan's roster, then approached the body. I recognized Dr. Gale Rodgers. She nodded to Yarnell and to me, then took a double take. "Olivia Wright, isn't it?" I nodded and said, "Nice to see you again." A gust of wind snatched sand from the ground and whirled it in a dust devil, a poor man's tornado, and left us coughing and wiping our eyes. Goosebumps popped out on my legs, clad only in pantyhose. "A cold front's coming through," Dr. Rodgers said. "I called the weather station to get the temperatures near here for the past four days, and the meteorologist said we'll get snow out of the coming front. One to three inches in the valley, six to eight on Mount Charleston." Located roughly thirty miles north-northwest of us and listed just shy of twelve thousand feet elevation, Charleston was the tallest mountain in southern Nevada. Dr. Rodgers and her two assistants put the man's hands and feet, shoes still on, in paper sacks held in place by rubber bands. "All right, roll him slowly to his right side and stop. Let's get photos of his front side immediately." I moved to my left a few steps so I could watch the procedure. The face was a swollen purple mass from pooled blood, and a clot of white stuff stuck to the forehead. The ears were gone, probably chewed off by rodents. "Calliphoridae," Dr. Rodgers said, "first and second stage larvae. Bottle, please." One assistant held the torso at ninety degrees to the ground and the other handed her specimen collection bottles one at a time and labeling them as she directed. "This is the oldest maggot I see so far," she said. Louder, so the detectives could hear, she said, "The body's limp, so death was probably more than thirty-six hours ago. Figuring time of death might be harder thanks to the cold." To the three of us closer to the body she added, "Or it might be easier. It looks like eggs were laid twice, so we have to find two times since he was whacked that temperatures got above fifty degrees, even for a little while. The cold temperature will have to be factored in all the way." She looked over at the assistant holding the body and turning his face away from the hideous smell that rose like a cloud to assault all of us. "Whew! Thank goodness it's not ninety degrees. Roll him the rest of the way over." A puddle of tarry muck lay where the victim's face had been. Dr. Rodgers patted down the pants and coat and removed a wallet from the inside left coat pocket. "If this is his ID, we are looking at the human remains of one Peter P. Delameter." She examined the photo and cocked her head to take a look at what was left of his face. "Can't say for sure." "He's been reported missing by his wife," Mace called. "We just took the report before Desi called with word a body was found." "Who found it?" Rodgers asked. Desi told her about Mr. Yale and checked her notebook. "The old guy at the trailer two miles back?" "That's him. Call came in at 1:15." Rodgers walked over and handed the wallet to Nguyen. "How you liking your new job?" "Detective work I like, ma'am. I mean, Doctor. The smell of bodies, well, I don't see how I'll ever get used to that," he said. He dropped the wallet in a plastic baggie and wrote on the side with a grease pencil. "Well, you've got job security anyway," she said with a heavy sigh. "No sign of a slowdown in homicides, eh?" One of her assistants called to her that he'd tagged the body. I saw the plastic bracelet tight on Delameter's left wrist. "Go on and bag him," she called. To Williams she added, "I'd like to have all the sand from under the body, about half an inch deep. Separate it into bags by location, of course." "Yes, ma'am. Anything else?" "I don't see any pupae around the body to indicate any maggots went through a complete larvae cycle, but take another look, please." Mace took a call and handed the phone to Dr. Rodgers. "From the wreck scene on the Henderson Highway." "Dr. Rodgers, who's this?" She listened and shook her head in disgust. "How many dead?" a pause, then, "What the hell was that?" A pause, then, "Oh shit. Here's Chief Emerick. You'd better break the news to him yourself." "Emerick here. What's going on?" He listened and echoed Dr. Rodgers. "Oh shit." From what I could tell, a detective investigating a drunk driver in the middle of the pileup on the highway was hit by another car and thrown thirty feet. That driver was also drunk. The detective was alive, but had a wickedly broken leg and quite possibly he'd suffered life-threatening internal injuries. He was being moved to a stretcher at that moment. "I'll meet you at the hospital," Mace said, and took off at a run for his car. I sprinted after him to remove my purse and the sheets of paper I'd printed out at Delameter's house. "What about Happy Delameter?" I called as he slammed his door and turned the key in the ignition. The question earned another "Oh shit." "Okay, you and Desi wrap this up with the criminalists. Then go see Mrs. Delameter. Explain that we're not sure -- oh, you know what to say. Get the dental records. Seal his office, have Desi put out a BOLO on the Jaguar." He leaned out the window and yelled to Detective Nguyen to come with him. The dust from Mace's car had scarcely settled by the time the OMI van lurched down the road. It was a few minutes after 6:00 p.m. and pitch-dark except for the lights around the crime scene. An hour later, when we cleared the scene, the wind had picked up to a steady blow from the northwest. No sign of precipitation; I wondered if the weather report was wrong. Desi turned on the radio, but couldn't find a weather report. She called the U.S. Weather Bureau and talked to a meteorologist who was always eager to help detectives. He was sort of a crime junkie, watched every forensic show he could catch on TV (or could tape for later viewing), and he was willing to testify at trials. "He says the Gulf Stream is splitting over the Sierra Nevada. We won't get the main part of the storm, but if this starts to spin and becomes a cut-off low, we could get even more snow than predicted earlier. He'll have more data in an hour," Desi told me. She turned on the overhead light to look at her watch and jot a few last observations in her notebook. Williams and Yarnell waved as they drove off, and Estefan did the same. "Let's go see Mrs. Delameter," I said, rubbing my eyes. My cheeks felt like fine sandpaper, and I thought idly that some women pay lots of money to have their faces abraded, for cosmetic reasons. I got mine for free. In fact, I was earning a salary. Desi waited to let the dust clear before we started down the road. She took a drink from her water bottle and offered me the remaining three or four ounces. I drank it gratefully. She turned off the overhead light and started the engine. We wobbled from rut to rut and bounced on washboard until we got in sight of Mr. Yale's trailer. To our surprise, he appeared in our headlights from the desert on the other side of the road and stood in the road, waving both arms at us. We stopped and he came up to the window on my side. I opened the power window in time to hear him say, "Another one!" "What did you say?" I asked. He licked his dry lips and pointed toward the desert. "I found another body!" -------- *Nineteen* Desi slammed the gearshift into Park and set the hazard lights. We tumbled out, snatched flashlights from the trunk, and followed Mr. Yale and his dog into the desert. My pantyhose were in shreds inside of three minutes, and I'd already had to stop twice to empty sand out of my pumps. The dog, a female Border Collie named Ratchet, led the parade, turning every once in a while to see what was holding us up. You could almost hear her thinking, _Humans! What you gonna do? Can't live with 'em, can't open the dogfood can without 'em._ Ratchet stopped, sniffed the air, and turned east, toward the lights of the city reflecting off building clouds. About ten more minutes of our stop-and-go walking, and Ratchet disappeared from sight. "It's down in an arroyo," Mr. Yale said, "that's where Ratchet went." We got close to the edge of a dry arroyo bed and I made one step too many. The side caved in and I dropped about eight feet, landing flat on my back with a whump sound and a girlish shriek that I was ashamed to admit came from my mouth. I'd dropped my flashlight on the way down and both my shoes were gone, too. "It's over this way!" Yale said. "It's a woman!" I scrambled around, feeling for my flashlight, which would have been easier to find had it not turned off. I found one shoe, then the metal of the flashlight. Desi and Mr. Yale had moved upstream alongside the arroyo (or the direction that would have been upstream if there were water). I heard them deciding what path to take down to the arroyo bed, having already determined that my way offered no advantage save speed. I banged on the side of my flashlight and it came on. I shone it around in an arc until I spotted two bright spots, the reflection of Ratchet's eyes. "Good dog!" She led me partway across the arroyo and lay down flat with her head on her front paws. I moved the circle of light out in front of Ratchet. That's where I found Sandy Jorgenson. "Over here!" I called to Desi and Mr. Yale, who had descended without mishap to the dry streambed. I heard a moaning sound I thought was Ratchet, but saw that she was silently staring at the woman, her head cocked quizzically. "Sandy?" I dropped to my knees and grabbed for her arm. I felt a thready pulse. "Sandy! Hold on, girl, we're going to get you some help." To Desi I yelled, "She's alive!" Without rolling her over, I looked up and down her body for any sign of bleeding. I'd just felt her arms and legs when Desi half-fell to the ground beside me. "I don't think any bones are broken." "Wa ... water," Sandy mumbled. "So thirsty." Mr. Yale got there in time to hear that and unstrapped his canvas canteen holder from his web belt. I guessed you didn't get to be an old man in the desert without learning to carry water everywhere, every time, no exceptions. Sandy lifted herself a few inches onto her right elbow. I held the canteen to her lips and she swallowed greedily. "Not too fast," I said, more because I'd always heard people say that in the movies than from any sincere conviction that to guzzle might be a bad thing for her body. My words made no difference, anyway. She drank like a freshman at a fraternity party, stopping only because the canteen was empty. "What happened? How did you get here?" I looked at her face in the light and saw a huge purple bruise on her forehead. "Did somebody slug you?" Instead of answering, she looked at me and cocked her head like Ratchet. "How did you get here?" "That's not important. How did _you_ get here?" Ratchet whined a little and licked Sandy's chin. It might have been a sign of empathy, or maybe there was a drop of water and Ratchet, a good desert dweller, didn't want it to go to waste. "I was ... I was with Harley, on his bike." "Where's Harley now?" I asked. "What day is this?" "Thursday." Thursday must have sounded like thirsty. "I want more water. So thirsty." She sat up all the way, then put her hand to her head. "Oh, that hurts." "I think we'd better take her to the hospital," Desi said, handing me her flashlight. "Let's get you on your feet." She said "Let's" like it was a joint effort, but with her muscles, Desi needed no help from Mr. Yale or me. Or from Sandy, for that matter. Desi put her hands gently under Sandy's arms and got her to a standing position. One quick movement and she was in front of Sandy, who fell forward against her. Holding on to Sandy's ribcage, Desi raised her off the ground in a modified fireman's carry. "Let's go." On our way back across the arroyo I found my other shoe. We walked parallel to the arroyo bank until we found a good spot, climbed out, and struck out across the desert toward the cruiser. I was glad to know all the rattlesnakes were asleep. While Desi put Sandy in the car and called in our situation to dispatch, I filled Desi's water bottle at Mr. Yale's spigot and gave her more to drink. Desi's phone rang and she looked at the number. "It's Chief Emerick," she called over her shoulder to me, then cleared her throat. "Detective Lake here. Yes, Chief, that's right. We're still out in the desert, about two miles from the homicide scene. That's right. We've got her. She needs to get to a hospital. Yes, I understand. Affirmative. Yes, sir, thanks. And Chief, how is the officer who was hit by the car?" She listened and sighed. "I'll stop there later tonight, try to get a statement when he's out of surgery." She said, "Yes, sir," again and hung up. "Chief Emerick is going right over to Mrs. Delameter's house to notify her. You two got your seatbelts on?" Desi called as she turned the key in the ignition. "We're ready," I answered. "Hit it!" She did just that, and we took off. We discovered that ruts and chuckholes that were hideous at twenty miles per hour weren't so bad at forty. I guess we only hit half as many. Once we got on the blacktop and could actually hear each other, I continued to question Sandy. She continued to drink water from Desi's bottle and moan about her sore head, but gradually her story came out. Wednesday night she'd gone for a ride with Harley on his beautiful Harley motorcycle. They'd gone out to Lake Mead and he'd opened up the bike to show what it could do. Then about nine or ten they'd gone to a biker bar on the south end of the Strip. They drank some beer and some tequila shots, and a man started talking to them, seemed to know a lot about motorcycles, talked about having a Indian himself. "I think he said it was a Indian," she said, sounding like she might drop off to sleep in a heartbeat. She couldn't remember anyone hitting her in the head and thought she'd fallen on a sharp rock. "Sandy! Stay awake, you hear me? You have to tell me what happened to Harley." "No, he said he had a Indian, an old bike called a Indian. Not a Harley. Harley has a Harley." "The man who said he had an Indian, what else did he say?" "He said he could get us some good stuff, black tar, and we followed him." "On foot?" I asked. "Or on the Harley?" She thought about it. "He was in a black Camaro. Or blue, dark blue. We followed him. We were on a Indian." "What were you riding on?" I asked. "Say that again for me." "We were riding on a Harley, but it was very, very cold out. I didn't have leathers on. I was freezing." "What happened then?" "We followed him, and he went a long way, I was freezing. We came closer to the mountains, the ones on the westside, not by the lake. The other direction. Oh, my head hurts." "We'll be at the hospital in five minutes, Sandy. You're going to be fine. Did you get any heroin?" She didn't answer for a minute. "He said he'd get us some good stuff and show us his motorcycle, but we stopped way up in the hills, and he pulled a gun on us. What for? I don't know what for. We didn't have but a hundred dollars, and we were gonna give it to him for the good stuff. We were gonna pay." She looked at my face as she emphasized, "We were gonna pay," as if seeking my approval, my agreement that acquiring black tar heroin was a good thing if one were doing it in a businesslike way. "You said he pulled a gun on you. Do you know his name?" "Johnny I think. Or just John. Something like that." She drained the water bottle. "What happened when he pulled the gun on you?" "Harley hit him." "What did Harley hit him with? His fist?" "No, with a chain. Harley doesn't let people fuck with him. He knocked him down with a chain, and we got on the bike and took off." "Where is Harley now?" I asked. We were pulling up to the emergency entrance of Valley Medical Center. "Tell me, come on, where is Harley now?" "He had to go to Mexico. I was too cold. So he dropped me on the highway where we saw a trailer house. I was gonna go over there and call you, I really was. I still had your phone number in my pocket." Desi came around and opened the back door. As she unbuckled Sandy's seat belt and prepared to lift her out of the car, I persisted with my questions. "Why didn't you call me, Sandy?" "The dogs. There were big dogs at the trailer and they chased me off. I kept walking and walking, and I couldn't get any place where there was a phone. And I kept being thirsty and cold, so I just slept a while and then I walked some more." "Okay, Sandy, the doctors here are going to take good care of you," Desi said. Sandy looked like a rag doll as Desi tugged her out of the car and lifted her in her arms. I hurried ahead to open the door, but it slid open automatically. We did what was necessary to get Sandy admitted for observation overnight, then called Mace and gave a quick version of our desert adventures with the sister of the murdered Eileen McNamara. He said to wait until a patrol officer got there to keep Sandy in and anyone else out. We got a large plastic bag for her clothes. As we bagged them as evidence, I felt in the pockets and held up what I found. "Five one hundred dollar bills." "What did she say, that she and Harley only had a hundred dollars?" "That's what she said all right," I said with a shrug. As soon as we could leave, Desi took me downtown to pick up my car. I didn't even go upstairs, just drove home. Half asleep, I parked in the basement, stopped in the lobby to pick up my mail, and went to my apartment. I stripped in the bathroom, cringing as I heard the sand from my clothes and especially from my shoes hit the floor. What a mess I'd have to clean up in the morning. I took a good look at my wool suit and swore aloud, realizing I'd have to take another one-day wonder to the dry cleaners. At that rate, I'd be in hock to the cleaners for my whole first paycheck before I got it. I took a long shower, washing and rinsing my hair three times before I was sure I'd gotten all the sand out of it. Wearing my favorite bathrobe, I microwaved a pasta dinner. While it cooked, I checked my phone for messages. "Olivia, this is Clara Kellem. You said yesterday that you would come today to see the scrapbook I found. What time are you coming?" That call came at 11:00 a.m. Three more calls from Clara, each more irate, came at approximately 2:00, 4:00, and 7:00 p.m. I looked at my watch, surprised to see it was only 8:30 p.m. I called Clara, said if it wasn't too late for her that I could come up in half an hour. She said yes, making her annoyance with me perfectly clear. I poured a glass of the Cabernet Sauvignon Mace had opened the night before and put my steaming dinner on a placemat. While I ate my pasta and chicken, I hurriedly sorted my mail, tearing and tossing most of it in the wastebasket. With my purse and the papers I'd printed at Peter Delameter's house I'd brought up the still-unopened brown envelope from Las Vegas Historical Society. I poured a second glass of wine and slit the envelope open with a steak knife. It was copies I had requested of newspapers from Los Angeles and Salt Lake City during the weeks preceding the May 15, 1905, auction of the town that would be Las Vegas. I looked over the ads placed by J. T. McWilliams promoting his land for homes and businesses with the claim, The Only Part of Las Vegas Where You Can Buy a Lot, And Get An Absolutely Clear Title to It, Right Now and bigger ads placed by the railroad company for Clark's Las Vegas Townsite. An article dated May 8, 1905, by a traveling Los Angeles Times reporter said about five hundred "rapacious speculators" were already on hand, waiting for the land to be thrown open. What really caught my eye, however, was an unrelated article. "Gold Stolen from Railroad" told of a bold theft by two armed gunmen of a train station in Winfield, Colorado. Located at the summit of the Colorado Springs and Cripple Creek District Railroad, known as the Short Line, the station was at the center of Winfield Stratton's gold empire. Stratton, the article noted, had died in 1902. The town of Winfield, named for Stratton, was the headquarters of the Stratton Cripple Creek Mining and Development Company. Representatives of the CS&CCD refused to say exactly how much gold was taken from the safe at the train station, but reports were the value of the gold was "in excess of fifty thousand dollars." Also stolen was an undetermined amount of diamond jewelry being shipped to a jeweler in Cripple Creek. I put on a dark blue velour warm up suit and tennis shoes, and wrapped my still damp hair in a turban. I made sure my door was locked, then took the elevator to the thirty-fifth floor. Pug let me in and said, "Miz Clara is in the living room. There's a pot of tea on the dining room table if you want any." "Thank you." I greeted Clara and apologized profusely for not being there earlier. I mentioned nothing of what I had been doing instead. Clara looked ready for bed in a pink nightgown and blue chenille robe and had a red crocheted afghan tucked around her feet all the way up to her waist. "I'm looking forward to seeing the scrapbook," I said. "How did you say it turned up?" "Oh some fool woman at the Historical Society borrowed it about thirty years ago and never returned it. Now that they're looking for stories about the town's pioneers, for the Centennial next May, they came across it. They wanted to keep it, you know, but I said, 'Absolutely not!' and they delivered it Tuesday." I had barely had time to glance at the book at Nicole Monte's house after the family portrait session. Turning the fragile pages, I was quickly engrossed in the photos. "Didn't you say this is Trey with his first wife, Helen?" She squinted and adjusted the crookneck lamp over her shoulder. "That's right. Looks like this was taken in the late fifties. Oh, see here's another picture, the same time, and there's Pegeen." She thought about it and went on, "Pegeen was born in 1956, so this must have been about 1958. I liked Helen then." "Then?" I prompted. It sounded to me like there was a story behind her remark. "Well, she was goody-goody back then, perfect wife, perfect mother, butter wouldn't melt in her mouth, but of course, that didn't last." "It didn't?" "Noooo. She was just a slut. That's all I have to say. Bad medicine." She turned the page and showed me more pictures of Pegeen and her brother, Mickey. I gently extracted a loose photo tucked in between the pages. On the back was penciled "1928," predating the pictures of Pegeen by thirty years. "Who is this?" She squinted, then gave up and lifted her glasses to her face. "Well, my word. That's my brother, Mike, with little Trey." She was silent, studying the face of her brother, dead since 1950. "He looked exactly like my father. If Mike had grown mutton chops, you'd swear that was Michael T. himself." It was my turn to squint. I walked over to the mantel and carefully lifted the photo of the family patriarch, Michael T. McNamara. In the light of Clara's lamp I set the photo of Mike beside his father. "He is the spitting image." She let her glasses fall to her bosom, held by a black elastic band attached to the earpieces. She closed her eyes. I gently took the scrapbook back onto my lap and kept looking. There was a large photo of the five grandchildren and Clara's father. A handwritten caption said the picture was on the lawn of the Broadmoor Hotel in Colorado Springs, 1948. Michael McNamara was smaller than he'd seemed in other photos, but then he had to be eighty-three. He sat at the center in a chair, holding an ivory-topped cane and still looking fierce enough to eat the photographer, or at the very least to beat him into submission with his cane. Zinnia and Trey, both in their twenties, stood beside him. Zinnia was a muscular, robust-looking woman who reminded me of posters for Rosie the Riveter. One teenaged girl, who must be Nicole Bartok, sat on the grass at the old man's feet. Beside her were a boy and a toddler in a sundress, Sean Kellem and his little sister, Rory. Clara began to snore softly. I finished leafing through the photos and set the book on the coffee table, on top of three other scrapbooks. I picked up the portrait of Michael T. "himself" in his prime. Wondering if the date might be on the back, I used my thumbnail to free the black leather on the back and slide it out of the frame. A yellowed newspaper clipping fell into my lap. I examined the back of the photo, which was stamped Sharp of Colorado Springs, Fine Photography Since 1888. Barely readable in pencil beneath the stamp was "1905." I set the frame down on my lap and picked up the clipping. Slowly, trying not to tear it, I unfolded what was clearly a page from the _Los Angeles Times_. Dated May 8, 1905, it was part of the same page as I'd just seen courtesy of the Las Vegas Historical Society. Along one side was about one-sixth of the ad I'd seen for Clark's Las Vegas Townsite. At the center, as if it were far more interesting than the coming auction for a new town, was the article "Gold Stolen from Railroad." -------- *Twenty* I'd cleared the messages on my answering machine before I went upstairs to see Clara, but the light was blinking again. "Olivia, this is Conan. It's 9:45 Thursday night, and I'm leaving the campus in a few minutes. I have some interesting information about the McNamara Trust. I guess you're not home tonight, so call me tomorrow. I'll be at Royale all day." I pulled my address book out of my purse and called his cell. He'd called just five minutes before I got back from Clara's, so I might still catch him. "Conan, this is Olivia." He said my place was right on his way home, and I said I'd call downstairs to have him admitted. I cleaned up my supper dishes (meaning I tossed the paper box in the garbage and put the fork in the sink) and put the whistling teakettle on to boil. When Conan rang the bell, I met him at the door with a mug of hot cocoa. "That looks good. Did you know it's snowing?" "No. Is it sticking?" "Not yet," he said, taking off his peacoat. "But the weather report says it will. That should get people in the mood to shop for Christmas." "Something had better get me in the mood pretty soon," I sighed. I did a quick count of shopping days until Christmas and added silently that something had better get me in the mood to finish the McNamara book, too. I hoped Conan's research would do it. I sat on the couch and tucked my bare feet under a throw pillow. I gestured to Conan to make himself comfortable. I asked a couple of obligatory questions about his law classes and what had he heard from Kenneth Nash in Hawaii, about Kenneth possibly buying the catering company in Honolulu. Then I got to the point. "What about the trust?" He explained the difference between a testamentary trust and a living trust. A trust set up as part of a "last will and testament" would take effect at the death of the person with the money, land, or business. He'd found a copy of Michael T. McNamara's probated will, and it was nothing out of the ordinary. "He left his estate to his daughter, Clara, and his son, Michael T. the second. There was very little in the estate, just a couple houses -- one in Las Vegas and one in Los Angeles -- and a bank account. He left it to them _per stirpes_, so if one or both of them died before he did, his or her half would be shared by his or her children. As it happened, Michael the second did predecease him, by a year, and Michael the third, Trey, and Pegeen inherited half the estate. But as I said, that wasn't much." "Then how did they all get so rich?" "Ah, that's where it gets interesting," he said. "Independent of his will, Michael T. the first set up a revocable _inter vivos_ trust. Since there is no requirement to record a living trust, it can remain secret. Only the beneficiaries of such a trust are entitled to a copy of the trust agreement on the death of the trustor." "If it's secret, how can we find out anything about it?" I wondered aloud. "Theoretically, we can't. But thanks to some wizardry with the federal tax number that had to be requested and assigned to the McNamara Centennial Revocable Trust Agreement after Michael the first died, a lot of information is available. First, I found that it dates from 1905, when it was just the McNamara Trust. In December, 1934, Michael had to dissolve and remake his trust." "Why December 1934?" "Because the government's new inheritance taxes took effect in January 1935, and could have taken as much as seventy percent of his estate. A lot of rich people changed their trust agreements then. John D. Rockefeller, for example." "How can you tell if Michael McNamara was rich?" "The same way you can tell if a tree is a peach or a pear. Watch for the fruit. He left diddly squat where the government could find it -- and thereby tax the hell out of it. But over the years he and his children came up with millions to buy land that is worth maybe a hundred million today. All within the confines and protection of the trust. Eventually a reckoning will come with the federal government for taxes, but all the years of avoiding taxes, legally and probably through some hidden means, is how the fortune grew." I uncurled my feet from beneath me and worked a crick out of my ankles. Rising stiffly, I shuffled into the kitchen to make more hot cocoa. "Lyle Kellem told me the trust is to be divided in 2005," I said when I returned. Conan nodded. "It's what's called a 'dynasty trust.' It's a generation-skipping trust that's designed to skip several generations. As each child passes away, his share is held in trust for his children, then grandchildren. They're usually written so as to be flexible, allowing each generation to take income and principal as needed. Remember I mentioned the rule against perpetuities?" I nodded. "Most states prohibit trusts that go more than three generations. In old common law people could set up trusts to last until the last person in a group died. The person used like that didn't even have to be included in the trust -- he was sort of an hourglass. Very strange bedfellows. If someone wanted to set up a dynasty trust now to last three or four generations, he'd probably set it up in South Dakota, which has the most liberal laws." My eyelids must have been slowly sinking, because Conan said, "I can tell this is more than you wanted to know -- " "No, I'm interested..." I began, but I think I slurred my words. I was approaching exhaustion. "Hey, it's all right. The important thing is, yes, it's called the Centennial Trust and it expires in 2005." "But you said it was set up in 1934." "Technically, yes. But to old Michael T., it began when he first set it up, in 1905. From all I can find that's when he bought the land in Las Vegas for thirty thousand dollars, an investment that made him his first million, and his second, and so on. Where he got that money I don't know. There's no sign he was anything but a common laborer on the Cripple Creek Railroad before that." I snapped myself wide-awake. "What did you say?" "That he was a common laborer?" "On what railroad?" "Cripple Creek, I think I read." "The Colorado Springs and Cripple Creek District Railroad? Known as the Short Line?" "That sounds right. Why?" I said nothing for a long moment, but my mind was chugging up a steep grade. "Because..." I paused again. My "train of thought" crested the hill and I could see a verdant valley below. "Because I have a wild guess about where Michael T. McNamara came up with enough money to spend thirty thousand dollars at the 1905 auction." -------- *Twenty-one* _Friday, December 10_ Friday morning I woke to utter silence. I guess the wind and traffic were so pervasive I didn't even notice them until they were gone. I stepped into slippers and pulled on my warm fleece robe. To preserve the silence I turned off my alarm before it could split the air. I padded into the living room and pulled open the curtain about six inches. The sight was breathtaking! Snow covered everything and continued to fall -- fat wet flakes that joined the earth and the sky into a white continuum. I stared at McCarran Airport for three or four minutes, finally realizing no planes were taking off. Five or six white plumes moved down a runway like synchronized water skiers at Cypress Gardens. I wondered at the sight, still half asleep, then recognized snowplows at work. A snow day, I thought as I spooned ground vanilla bean coffee into the coffeemaker and savored the aroma. No school, no obligations, just coffee and a warm bathrobe. Wouldn't it be nice if that were so? A moratorium on crime, a suspension of all deadlines. Sorry, we could all say. Can't deal with homicide, and robbery, and rape, and abductions. Gotta take the little kids sledding. Snow day, you know. Rare event in the high desert of Nevada. A treasure. Reality was just the opposite, of course. Every man jack in the LVMPD and State Police would be called in to deal with the car wrecks. I took my coffee laced with half-and-half to my guest bedroom and surveyed the closet. Nothing looked appealing in light of the weather. I found a warm pantsuit in my bedroom closet and pulled shoes out of the bottom until I found my only pair of lined boots. No sooner had I dressed and applied makeup than my phone rang. It was Desi Lake. She gave me the update on the officer hit by the car on the Henderson Highway (broken fibia, ruptured spleen, punctured lung, but in stable condition after surgery) and on Sandy Jorgenson (resting well and being treated for dehydration and hypothermia). Mr. Yale and Ratchet had found her in the nick of time. "I think I'll get myself a dog," I said. "Am I missing something here?" Desi asked. She couldn't see my answer, which was just a shrug. I'm taking a snow day, I wanted to say, but didn't. "When will OMI do the autopsy on Peter Delameter?" "This morning. Ving Nguyen is going to attend. I think we'll have something to work with by two o'clock." "Do you still want to go with me to see Kemper Wilkerson?" "I'm ready to roll as soon as you are. I called, and the only time we can see him is early. His secretary says he's due in court at ten o'clock." "Early," I said with a heavy sigh. "That would be now." "Yep. Time to punch the old clock." "Funny, I feel like the old clock is punching me. I'll meet you at his office in thirty minutes." I wanted to talk to Mace, but I didn't want to be the one who woke him up. I drank a second cup of coffee, ate some raisin toast, and headed down to the parking garage. The elevator settled in the basement and took its sweet time about opening, as usual. When it did, I stepped forward, looking down, and ran right into Jack Basset, who also had his eyes on his feet. "Oh!" we said in unison. "Sorry!" Once I looked up at his face I must have stared, because he mumbled, "Fender bender." I noticed he had a butterfly bandage on his forehead, over a lump the color of a plum. _Fender bender, my ass._ Looked like a good time at a bad bar to me. I got to Kemper's office about a minute ahead of Desi Lake. We locked our car doors and made it up his steps with caution. "You'd think a lawyer of all people would get the ice off his damn steps!" I said. Maybe that's how Jack Bassett banged up his face. Fell on icy steps and hit a doorknob with his eye. Not the kind of accident a manly chief of security would admit. Kemper's secretary showed us right in and we said no thanks to her offer of coffee. Desi got right down to questions about the last time Kemper had seen Eileen McNamara, and who had he met for dinner Monday night, what time, and where. Then she segued neatly into questions about his relationship (or, as he preferred to call it, his association) with Peter Delameter. We were just getting to some juicy stuff about how Peter had been his client, and how he was "reluctant" to violate attorney-client privilege, when we heard raised voices in the waiting room. Desi was on her feet, one hand on her gun, and suggested Kemper open the door and see who was yelling at his secretary. She motioned to me to stand clear of the door as she did. "John!" Kemper was surprised, if not shocked, to see John in his waiting room. "What are you doing here?" "I want to know who murdered my mother! And I'm going to the police today. You're not doing shit about it!" "Calm down, John, I have someone in my office and I'm sure you don't want to air your family's laundry in front of them." _Goody, goody!_ I just love it when people air their family's laundry in front of me. _Especially if it's dirty laundry._ Desi stepped into the doorway behind Kemper and said, "I can save you the trouble of going to the police." When Kemper turned a little, she edged past him and extended her powerful right hand to John. "I'm Detective Desi Lake, Las Vegas Metro Police Department." She could say that in such a friendly way that you thought you had a new best friend. Kemper stepped back between them, an awkward bit of footwork. "Detective, this gentleman is a client of mine and I need to speak with him alone. If you and Ms. Wright will please excuse us, I'll be glad to meet with you later." Desi ignored Kemper. "And your name, sir?" "You don't have to talk to her." Kemper adjusted the knot on his tie. "John Jorgenson." By this time I got a good look at him. He looked to be about six feet two or three inches, but he hunched his shoulders forward. Mid-thirties, thick reddish-brown hair needed a cut, unkempt curly beard. He wore an old tweed jacket with frayed leather patches on the elbows and bell-bottomed pants that broke about two inches above his ankles. He looked like he'd selected his clothes on his way out of a burning building. "What relation are you to Eileen?" I asked. "And to Sandy?" "Why don't we sit down, get comfortable?" Desi suggested. Kemper kept adjusting his tie. "Eileen is my legal mother," said John Jorgenson. "And Sandy, I am told, is my biological mother." "That is not their business," Kemper said, glaring at his client. Like realizing a headache has lifted, I noticed my attitude problem was no longer a problem. I turned to Kemper, solicitous of his schedule. "Didn't you say you need to be in court, Kemper? Detective Lake and I will be glad to stay here and have coffee with Mr. Jorgenson. Or, for that matter, we could go somewhere and have breakfast. Have you eaten, John? May I call you John?" Kemper, looking apoplectic, told his secretary to have Phillip somebody stand in for him at the hearing in Judge Kennedy's court and to ask for a postponement until next week, then turned on his heel and said, "Let's talk in my office." "You know, Kemper, coffee sounds good after all," I said. "Desi? John?" they both nodded yes. Kemper poured three mugs of coffee and set them on the two low tables that sat between the three visitors' chairs. "John, Sandy Jorgenson called me about disposition of Eileen McNamara's body," I said. "But if you are Eileen's son, that decision is yours. Wouldn't you agree with that Kemper?" "Of course." Desi fixed Kemper with a glare that could ignite paper. "I'm sure the chief of the detective bureau will agree with me, Mr. Wilkerson, that if you had knowledge of Eileen McNamara's next of kin, you should have shared that with us when we spoke Monday night." Desi sat taller and Kemper seemed to shrink into his chair. "I needed to talk with my client first." I leaned toward John. "How did you find out about Eileen's death?" I could tell he appreciated the concern in my voice. "On television! I was in Los Angeles. I didn't hear about it until Wednesday. I don't have a TV of my own. I saw it in a bar." "That must have been awfully hard on you. If the police had any idea that Eileen had a son, they would have reached you before they released the name to the press. Are you her only child?" "Yes. She wanted me raised out of the glare of publicity. Especially because the press would be merciless if they found out my mother was her sister and my father was Trey McNamara." I looked at Desi, hoping she had a question, because I was speechless. "Do you have any kind of relationship with Sandy?" she asked. "The reason I ask is, she is in the hospital, suffering from dehydration and hypothermia. She'll be all right, though." "No, I don't have a relationship with my biological mother. She's a drug addict." I could tell by his disgust that John Jorgenson saw Sandy's addiction as the bottom line, the worst thing he could say about her. But if what Mace said about Sandy's criminal record was true, "drug addict" was the good news. "John," Kemper said as he stood up, "please step into the outer office with me. I must advise you about something before you go any further with these people." John broke eye contact with Desi and followed Kemper out the door. Kemper shut it firmly. "What do you think?" I asked. "I'm trained to think everyone is lying about everything all the time. That said, I think his story is plausible. From what you said about Trey McNamara and Sandy, she certainly could have had a baby, and she wouldn't have been anybody's first choice for a mother." "Do you think he knows anything about Eileen's murder?" She shrugged. "I don't think he's going to talk to us any more this morning after Mr. Wilkerson gets through with him, so we might as well plan our next move." Her phone rang. "Detective Lake. Yes, Chief. Good, thanks for letting me know. Olivia is with me. We're at Kemper Wilkerson's office." To me she said, "Chief says the trace evidence results on Eileen McNamara and the preliminary autopsy results on Peter Delameter are back." She then gave him a sixty-second summary of John Jorgenson's story, then said we would go pick up the results and call him later. She was right about Jorgenson going silent, so we found out where he was staying and wrote down his cell phone number. Then we drove downtown in separate cars. I parked behind the headquarters building and met Desi outside the gate. Nguyen met us at the OMI. The autopsy report on Delameter showed he died of blunt force trauma to his head. Two blows with a sharp object fractured the skull; a third blow was fatal. Postmortem interval was about seventy hours before the time his body was found. That would place the murder between 6:00 and 11:00 p.m. Monday night. Dr. Rodgers came out of an autopsy room while Desi and I were still reading the Delameter report. She snapped off her gloves and dropped them in a wastebasket marked Biological Material, Hazard. "Something I didn't put on the preliminary report that you'll want to know about." She looked at the three of us over the top of half-moon glasses. "I'm writing it up as soon as I get cleaned up and I'll fax it over to you. There was a hole in his skull approximately one millimeter in diameter where something metallic and heavy broke through. It had to be fairly sharp to cause a hole rather than just fractures that ran in several directions at once. I found metallic residue in the blood matter in his hair. I won't know what metal it was until we put it through an emissions spectrometer." Our visit to Trace Evidence at the police crime lab yielded two more important pieces of evidence. Both of Eileen's shoes had her blood on the inside, as we expected, and both had trace amounts of gold dust on the bottoms. No latent fingerprints were found on the shoes. No blood was found on the floor of Rory Castle's garage; trace amounts of gold dust were found on that floor where the shoe lay, but nowhere else. We swung by Valley Medical Center to see how Sandy was doing. A young nurse's aide was changing the sheet and said Sandy was in the bathroom. "She's feeling better," the aide said, "and she got a shower. That'll be good for her. She's still a little wobbly, though." Sandy emerged, holding on to the door to steady herself. "Sandy, how are you feeling?" I asked. "Oh, better, I guess." Getting back to the bed took concentrated effort. The aide lowered it so she could get on it more easily, then Sandy raised it with the control, adjusted the head of the bed to about a forty-degree angle, and settled back against her pillow. The aide left. Desi asked the questions again about how Sandy had ended up in the desert for approximately twenty hours. Sandy's answers matched what she'd said the night before. "There's something else we need to know, Sandy," I said. "Did you ever have a baby?" She was slow to answer, raising and lowering the head of her bed a few degrees. At last she met my eyes. "Yes. I had one baby. Born in Los Angeles. I put him up for adoption." She rang for a nurse. "Was Trey McNamara the father?" Her face reddened as if she might cry. "Yes, I'm pretty sure." "And did your sister adopt the baby?" Desi asked. "Yeah. She did. I'm tired now." A nurse came into the room "What do you need?" Sandy pulled her blanket up higher. "You said to call you when I was ready to have that IV thing back in after my shower." "How was that shower, you feel better?" The nurse examined the IV drip machine. "We've got to be going, Sandy," Desi said. "We'll talk to you later. You just rest now, okay?" When we stepped into the hall, Desi got a phone call. She repeated the directions for my benefit. "Drive out Rampart Boulevard, north toward Cheyenne. Garcia Nursing Home, we've got it." "What's up?" I asked on our way to the elevator. "Eileen McNamara's gray Jaguar has been found. It's parked behind Garcia Nursing Home." -------- *Twenty-two* It was still snowing softly when we left Kemper's office, but by the time we left the medical investigator's office pale sunshine was wearing holes through the clouds along the south and east sides of the valley. Soon all that would remain of the December tenth snowstorm would be mud and memories. A young African-American man in an Oakland Raiders jacket was shoveling the walkway in front of Garcia Nursing Home. "Wait just a minute," he called when we stepped out of Desi's car. We stood at the bottom of the wide driveway and watched him run downhill with the shovel tight against the concrete, effectively plowing a path about two feet wide. Then he stepped aside so we could use the path. "Thanks," Desi called. "We appreciate it." Instead of ascending the driveway, she strolled over to the young man and showed him her badge. "We've been looking for a gray Jaguar," she said, "and we got a call that a Mr. Hershel Washington found it out in back of this nursing home. Do you know anything about that?" "Yes, ma'am, I'm Hershel Washington. I saw it Tuesday when I came to work, that was 6:00 a.m., and it was still there when I left. Same thing Thursday, and today, you know? 'Cause of the snow, and the way it's parked, across two spaces, I could tell it hadn't moved. I talked to Mr. Albert, he's the manager of the home, and he went out to look at it. He tried the front door, and it wasn't locked. He didn't say to me if he found anything inside, but he called the police and he told me to stay away from it." "Had you ever seen it in this area before?" "No, ma'am. Nobody lives here got a car. Don't drive anymore, you know? And nobody works here drives a Jaguar, you hear what I'm saying?" Desi smiled and nodded. "How do you get to work, Hershel?" "Sometimes I catch a ride, or else I come on the bus." Desi thanked him again and complimented him on being observant. Then we walked up the slippery driveway and into the nursing facility. On our left was a room marked Administration. Desi knocked. Mr. Albert took us through the building to a back door marked "Fire Exit Only." Using a key to unlock it, he bypassed the system that would set off an internal alarm system if anyone pressed the bar to go out. It could be opened at any time by pressure, he explained, but they had to have a way to know if any of their confused residents were wandering outside. "I opened the front door of the Jaguar," he said as we picked our way across the snowy parking lot, "and snow fell from the roof onto the seat. I brushed it out, but some probably melted. Then I sat down on the seat and opened the console. That's where I found the credit card receipts that said, 'Eileen McNamara.' Of course I'd heard about her being murdered, so I put them back in the console and called the police." Desi put on latex gloves and opened the driver's door. Crouching, she examined the floor and the seat, then opened the console and read the credit card receipts, put them back, and closed the console. "We'll need to get your fingerprints, sir." "Of course," he said. "I'm going to have crime scene technicians here soon; they'll search the area around the car for anything belonging to Ms. McNamara." She stepped back and surveyed the Jaguar and the parking lot. "When are those dumpsters emptied?" "Fridays, early in the morning. I think they're late today, because of the snow." "We'll need to call the waste disposal company and hold off the trash pickup until we get a chance to look in the dumpster. I wonder, could you ask Hershel to come back here and make sure the truck doesn't come before we get that squared away?" He nodded, asked what else he could do to help. "We need to talk to your staff," I said, "to see if anyone saw Ms. McNamara here Monday, or prior to Monday, for that matter. And we'll need to see who lives and works here, to see if she might have been visiting a resident, or an employee." He resisted for a while, citing privacy concerns, and Desi said we appreciated residents' right to privacy. Finally she prevailed, saying we would look at nothing without his help and permission. I sat down in a corner of his small office and examined a list of residents. Most meant nothing to me, but one name stuck out. Neville Norwich, famous author of true crime books. Mr. Albert said she'd been a resident for almost a year. "When she first came to us, she was physically healthy, but so confused she couldn't function safely in a home setting. Dementia. She couldn't live alone, and her daughter couldn't provide the kind of care she needed. So she moved here. I have to say although she's generally in good health, her muscle tone is poor. We give her all the therapy we can, but she walks only a little now, with a shuffle, and rarely knows who she is." Desi reached the waste disposal company and went outside to work with the crime scene techs. With Mr. Albert by my side, I interviewed the day staff on scene and phoned the night staff plus two members of the day staff who had that day, Friday, off. Not surprisingly, none of the nine people answered. I left messages on the six answering machines I reached and circled numbers of three without machines that I'd need to call again. "Ms. Wright?" I looked up from the list of residents to see what Mr. Albert wanted. "Mrs. Norwich's daughter is here. I thought you might want to meet her." "Thank you, I do." I followed him down the hall, through a set of double doors with a sign that said "These doors MUST remain closed." Women and a few men lined the halls, most of them in wheelchairs. They stared into space and mumbled. I jumped when a man's bony fingers grabbed my arm with surprising strength and asked me, "Where's Millie?" An attendant came out of the room across the hall with her arms full of sheets. She dropped the sheets and peeled his fingers off me, speaking in a soothing voice, saying, "Millie will come later, Bob. She always comes on Fridays at lunchtime." Hershel Washington came out of another room with a golden retriever on a leash. They crossed the hall and I heard Hershel saying, "Look who's come to see you, Miz Cathy. Here's Tandy." I looked in to see Tandy sitting with his head in the lap of a sad old woman in a wheelchair. "Tandy's a therapy dog," Mr. Albert said. "Comes twice a week. Does a lot of good for the residents." "I'm going to get a dog," I said impulsively. "Maybe a Border Collie." I liked retrievers, too. Maybe I should get a German Shepherd and train him as a guard dog. I'd always been interested in search and rescue dogs. I wonder if I could make time for the training that involves. Mr. Albert knocked on the door of room 189. "Ms. Neville, sorry to bother you," he said as the door opened. A beautiful woman in a pale blue wool suit looked me up and down. She didn't seem too impressed. Mr. Albert apologized again for the imposition, this time adding, "This is Ms. Wright. She needs to ask you a couple questions." I introduced myself and she responded. "Glynnis Norwich." She was tall, about five feet ten, with light brunette hair that she wore swept up, held off her neck with a tortoiseshell clasp, but loose enough that a few curls dangled free. She met the description Ernst Uber had given us about the woman who ate lunch with Eileen McNamara on Monday at the country club near Rory Castle's house. I remembered he'd said she had blond hair with "little curlicues hanging down, like Nicole Kidman in that movie with the can-can dancers." Probably half the people who saw Glynnis would describe her as a brunette and half would describe her as a blonde. I realized when I saw Glynnis Norwich that I'd pretty much assumed Peaches McNamara was both the woman who dined with Sean Kellem at the Stardust and the woman who'd lunched with Eileen McNamara several hours before she was murdered. But it might have been the woman standing in front of me. It was Uber's description of an elegant neck and tendrils of hair that threw me off. Both Peaches and Glynnis had necks made to model fine jewelry. Both were tall, slender like models, in the general vicinity of thirty-five years old. Their hair and eyes were such that you'd never mistake one woman for the other, but I could see how verbal descriptions would be similar. Peaches had blue eyes with a little tilt, and high arched eyebrows. Her makeup had a little sheen to it, giving her a luminous quality. Glynnis had brown eyes, thicker eyebrows, and wore makeup with a more matte finish. She was a natural beauty, but didn't try to draw the eye the way Peaches did. She pointedly did not invite us in. I could hear someone calling her name from the room. "My mother is easily upset," she said, "and this is not a good time for me to talk." I apologized for the intrusion, but said it was urgent that we speak to her about Eileen McNamara. Had she known the lady? An old woman tried to shove Glynnis aside and come out of the room, but Glynnis firmly led her back to bed. From the hall I listened to her calming tone. "I'll take you home tomorrow, Mother. Tomorrow. Today you stay here and do what the lady says to do." Mr. Albert stretched out his hand and closed the door. Back in his office I called the detective bureau on my cell phone and asked for the address, phone number, and automobile information for Glynnis Norwich. I spelled the first name three ways. Her address was in the Red Rock Country Club area on the western edge of Summerlin and the eastern edge of Red Rock Canyon Park. There was no car registered to her, but I asked the sergeant to check Neville Norwich. I listened to the clack of keys and a background hum of voices. "Yes, here's something. Boulder City address." He read off the address and the license number. "It's a 2002 Range Rover, white." Desi came in, rubbing her cold hands together. "They've got the Jag on a trailer. They'll process it back at the lab." I told her what had transpired with Glynnis Norwich. My phone rang. I didn't recognize the number, but could tell it was local. "Hello. This is Olivia Wright." "Ms. Wright, this is Ramona Aguilar. I was told you were trying to reach me." For a moment I drew a blank, then I remembered. She had been the housekeeper for Trey McNamara. For about ten years, until his death. I thanked her for calling and she made it clear she had no time to spare. If I had any questions for her, I should stop by the Bellagio in the next hour and a half. She had already checked out and would be catching the twelve-fifteen airport limousine. I said I'd be right over, and she said she'd wait for me in the formal indoor garden at the center of the resort. "I'm wearing a black fur hat," she'd added. Desi and I walked outside. She wanted to talk to Glynnis Norwich, but conceded that we'd pressed Mr. Albert's hospitality as far as we could. "Let's track her down after lunch," Desi said. "I'll drop you at headquarters so you can pick up your car." "Thanks, but I have to get to the Bellagio right away. Maybe I should get a cab." "You have any idea how long it takes to get a cab out here? This is not the money run," she said with a laugh. I looked at her and she looked back at me. "A cab!" I said. "Okay, I'll drive you to the Bellagio while you call cab companies. See if anybody picked up a fare way out here Monday night." "I'll try all those night employees again, too. Somebody might have called a cab for Eileen. I think it's more likely she left with someone else, though." "If she was here at all," Desi added. "Anybody could have left her car here before 6:00 a.m. Tuesday." As we pulled away I looked around for a white Range Rover, but didn't see it. My calls to employees got me nowhere, but Vegas Cabs took a call from Garcia Nursing Home Monday at 7:45, picked up a fare at 8:20. It would take some time to reach the driver and see where he dropped off the rider. Desi pulled up to the front of the Bellagio and I all but sprinted thorough to the ornate garden. I spotted Ramona Aguilar by her black fur hat and the highly annoyed way she looked at her watch. "Ms. Aguilar," I panted, "thank you for calling me back." Ramona Aguilar was a matronly woman in a black polyester pant suit and gray wool coat. Her hat was an imitation Russian style with dyed rabbit fur. A cloth flap descended a little below the hat on one side and I guessed the flaps could cover her ears in seriously cold weather. She scooted over a few inches and I sat beside her on the carved stone bench. The garden would have been a lovely place for quiet contemplation, but it was full of people snapping shots of each other and making plans for the evening in voices suited well to stage performance. "As I'm sure you know, Ms. Aguilar," I said, still panting, "Eileen McNamara was found murdered on Monday night. As part of the investigation, I'm trying to find out more about the death of Trey McNamara." "I told the police everything I knew when it happened in 1972. And I testified at both trials. I'm sure I don't have anything more to say." "Did you tell the police about Sandy Jorgenson?" I persisted. "About what was going on between Mr. McNamara and Sandy when she was fifteen years old?" "That was none of my business and it didn't have anything to do with what happened to Mr. McNamara." "How can you be sure? Did you know Sandy had a baby and Eileen adopted him?" "I don't think it was Mr. McNamara's baby. What Sandy did or didn't do was none of my business." I thought about her reaction. On a hunch I asked, "Was Sandy at Mr. McNamara's house the night he was shot?" I could see by the look on her face that she hadn't expected the question. And she didn't have an answer ready. "Not when he got shot. She'd already left." "You didn't tell the police that. You never mentioned Sandy Jorgenson." She said nothing, just looked around at the cross section of America that traveled through the Bellagio as if part of a giant snake that wound down the Strip and through every casino. "Was Sandy there when you heard the yelling in Trey McNamara's study?" "No," she answered, but I saw that she'd hesitated a moment. "How did Sandy leave? The house was pretty isolated up on Windsor Hill. Did she have her Corvette?" "I don't know. I guess she did. She had been coming over a lot, trying to get money from Mr. McNamara. I'd heard him tell her not to come back." "What about Eileen? Did she go see him often?" "No, not at all. I hadn't seen her for more than two years, maybe even three years, then a few days before that she came in. They yelled a lot, and she left. I thought she was gone for good, but then she came back, that night, and for some reason he got his gun out -- " "Was it Trey's gun that fired the fatal bullet?" "Yes. He kept it locked in his desk. I don't know why he got it out that night." Or why someone else got it out that night, I thought. She stood. "I have to catch a plane back to Los Angeles." I stood, too. "How long have you been in Las Vegas?" "Just since Tuesday afternoon. The lady I work for got married today. She wanted me here to help her get ready. They left on a honeymoon and I'm going back to get her house ready." I wrote down her employer's name and how to reach Ramona, but I didn't think she could add any more clarity to the fuzzy picture of what happened between Trey and Eileen and her younger sister right before he was shot. I walked her out to the taxi stand and was going to catch a cab myself, but I got a call from Candace. I told her I was without wheels at the Bellagio and she offered to join me for lunch, then take me to get my car. Over a pizza and Pepsi, I told Candace about Peter Delameter's body and finding Sandy Jorgenson about two miles away. When I mentioned having met Glynnis Norwich, Candace looked surprised. "Neville Norwich's daughter?" "Yes. Why, do you know Glynnis?" "I wouldn't say I 'know' her. Kenneth and I used to do parties for her mother. She had a truly magnificent house in Boulder City. Great view of Lake Mead. Glynnis came to two or three parties. I think she lives in Los Angeles." "Apparently she's got a house in Summerlin now. Why do so many Californians move to Vegas?" Candace shrugged. "For the same price as a bungalow in Los Angeles or San Francisco, you could buy a mansion here. Or at least you could a few years ago." "When was the last party you did for her mother?" She thought about it. "A good two years ago. I heard that Neville was diagnosed with Alzheimer's Disease. She sold her house, or maybe her daughter sold it." "It's an odd thing, but when I looked up information about the death of Trey McNamara, I read that Neville Norwich was attending Eileen's trials and was planning to write a book about it. I don't remember any book like that, do you?" "I'm sure she didn't. I've read everything Neville ever published. Remember 'Whispers and Screams,' the one about the coeds in Florida that they made a movie of?" She shivered. "That was so gruesome. But, of course, gruesome sells, and Neville Norwich made a ton of money, and she threw big splashy parties, and she paid Royale Catering, and I guess that makes me the indirect beneficiary of a dozen or so grisly murders, huh?" I thought about the murder of Margot Farr, and how my wealth -- ephemeral though it proved to be -- was a direct result of that crime. "Why do you suppose Neville didn't write about the Trey McNamara case?" I wondered aloud. Candace signaled the waitress that we'd like a refill on our Pepsis. "Maybe somebody bought her off. But more likely another case came along that had more blood and guts." She thought about it. "What year was the Eileen McNamara trial?" "The first one was in August 1973 and the second one was in June of 1974." "Well, I don't know, but I'll bet if you look at news from 1974, you'll find some other case that grabbed Neville's attention." "The biggest thing in the news was the Patty Hearst kidnapping, but Neville didn't write about that either," I said. "Something else then. Anyway, I've got to get back to the office. Conan is faxing our offer to the quarterhorse people. That could be the biggest event we've ever catered." "When?" "Two years from now. Almost two years. We have contracts for events as far ahead as four years." "What about Hawaii?" She shrugged. "I won't know for another week. Kenneth says it's a family business and they're too busy fighting for top dog to agree on a selling price. Come on, I'll take you to get your car." "You go ahead back to work. I'd rather relax a while and get a cab later." She looked doubtful. "Are you sure? Well, okay, I'll see you later. Call me!" After she left I paid the bill, finished my Pepsi, and strolled through the casino. My mind was on Neville Norwich and the book she didn't write about Eileen McNamara. I couldn't imagine Eileen buying Neville off. She might have threatened to sue for libel, though, if Neville made her look like a murderer when she'd been acquitted. If I'd been in Eileen's shoes, that's what I would have done. Or maybe the McNamara family paid Neville off. If she had information about Trey's proclivity for very young girls, she could cause them immense pain and humiliation. How much would they have had to pay her? A clanging bell and sirens six feet away jolted me out of my wandering thoughts. A woman in an I Love NY T-shirt was jumping up and down like a cheerleader, hugging one man, then a second man, then jumping again. The siren was coming from the center of a bank of slot machines, and the words PROGRESSIVE SLOTS -- JACKPOT flashed in red over and over. Beneath JACKPOT was a number in red dots, the kind that changed constantly as people fed dollars into the linked machines. The number, also blinking, was $3,407,223. Almost three and a half million dollars. "Mary Lou! You won the whole damn thing!" said a man who couldn't seem to lift his lower jaw off his chest. I stood still, having by chance a front row viewpoint of the ecstatic woman's pivotal moment, the moment she went from I Love NY to I Love Las Vegas, from woman in a T-shirt to rich woman in any damn thing she wanted to wear. Guards stepped forward and gently widened the circle around the woman. Casino executives gathered, and the exuberant Mary Lou hugged each of them, then the cocktail waitress, then the first two men she'd hugged. "Where are you from?" one of the executive asked. "Tulsa, Oklahoma. Oh, my God, oh my God! Wait 'til I call my sister! Oh, my God!" She spelled her whole name and an exec repeated it into his hand-held radio. With miraculous speed, another executive showed up with a stiff plastic rectangle about six feet long and three feet wide. It was a blow-up of a check. With a video camera rolling, the exec used a grease pencil to put Mary Lou's name after "Pay to the order of" and the crowd called out the numbers as he placed them on the check. "Three ... million ... four ... hundred ... seven ... thousand, two ... hundred ... twenty ... three dollars!" A cheer went up and Mary Lou began jumping again. She posed with each executive beside the check as a casino photographer snapped photos. People began to drift away, but I was mesmerized. I watched, thinking about advice I could give this happy stranger, things I'd learned the hard way about money and how it can come fast and get away just as fast. _Hey, girlfriend!_ I almost laughed aloud at my ridiculous fantasy conversation. She wouldn't have listened to a word I said. I sighed and looked up at the splendors of Italy transported to the middle of an American desert. Then another man in a dark suit came. "Mary Lou," he said in an authoritative voice. "We have to take care of this right away. Sorry, Uncle Sam wants his cut." She looked bewildered, but gave him her social security number. He filled in the top two lines of a tax form. "Sorry, but this is required on every big jackpot," he said. "The government takes their money before you get yours." He went on to say she should come to his office and he'd explain how much she would really get. _And it won't be any three million dollars, girlfriend!_ The government. Uncle Sam, always there with his hand out. Death and taxes. It had been my attempt to keep the government out of my pocket that had led me to Peter Delameter and O.S. Cadbury. Mary Lou followed the men in suits and the crowd broke up. I continued to move, slowly, against the crowd, toward the front entrance to the Bellagio. Avoiding taxes was on Michael T. McNamara's mind, too. I wished I could see a copy of his Centennial Trust. Who might have such a thing? Michael's son, Michael II, and his son, Trey, were dead. Mickey McNamara might have Michael II's copy. And then there was the other original beneficiary. Clara McNamara (Cassini, Bartok) Kellem. At ninety-nine and a half, she was closer to death than taxes. Maybe she'd tell the tale. -------- *Twenty-three* Any thought of calling on Clara Kellem had to go on the shelf, however. By the time I settled into a taxi, in front of the Bellagio, Desi had called and Mace was on the line. Desi told me a trace amount of gold dust was found on the driver's floor mat in Eileen's Jaguar. And the taxi driver who picked her up at the Garcia Nursing Home Monday at 8:00 p.m., plus or minus five minutes, took her to the Wickworth Tower. "What?" I'd said, incredulous. I tried to remember what time I'd arrived home. I'd left Kemper's office at 8:30, and I went straight home. I'd meant to stop at the dry cleaners and the grocery store, but my mind was on getting ready to pick up Mace at the airport, so I drove to the Wickworth, parked, and went upstairs. I hadn't even stopped in the lobby to get my mail. "She left the nursing home at eight; she got to the Wickworth about twenty minutes later. The cab driver used the freeway and said there was no traffic to speak of." I adjusted my thinking. "I was on my way there. As soon as I got home I was showering, hurrying to pick up Mace at the airport. Do you think she could have been trying to see Clara? I can't imagine Clara letting her come." "I guess we have to find out A, who else lives there and B, did security let her in or turn her away," Desi replied. I said I'd get my car and go to the Wickworth to question the security guards. I'd moved up in the taxi line when the phone rang again. Mace said Peter Delameter's dark blue Jaguar had been found at the airport in long-term parking. And, yes, something sparkled suspiciously on the floor mat of the driver's side. I got in a taxi and told the driver the address of police headquarters. "Jaguars and gold," I said to Mace, "they're getting common as dirt around here." We agreed we'd try to clear the decks by seven o'clock and meet at Viva Zapata. At headquarters I went upstairs to check for messages. Nothing. I turned on the computer and watched it boot up. _Time to step back and think. Concentrate_. I felt like I'd been playing the card game Concentration, where you lay out a deck of cards (and two jokers) on a grid nine cards down, six across. Two players turn over two cards at a time, fast. If they match, both color and number or face card, you take them and get another turn. If they don't, you turn them face down. Fast. Next turn, next turn, next turn, trying all the time to remember, Where was that red queen? Where was that black seven? I found I had a lot of facts (or statements that might, in fact, be lies) that I'd looked at once and turned face down. I hadn't been looking hard enough for patterns. I let my stream of consciousness control my fingers and discovered I'd typed three names. _Neville Norwich. Glynnis Norwich. Peaches McNamara._ Neville Norwich, famous crime author, was paired in some unknown way with the Eileen McNamara trials in 1973 and 1974. Eileen had lunch at the Queen's Canyon CC on Monday, hours before her death, with a woman who looked like Neville's daughter, Glynnis. The description we heard of the woman at the country club also matched Peaches McNamara. _Eileen's Jaguar found behind nursing home where Neville Norwich lived_. I added the word _dementia._ I skipped down a few lines and typed what I knew about Peter Delameter, the time he left Green Valley, probable time of the murder, that his Jaguar was left at the airport parking lot. _Jag left -- _w_hen? By whom?_ I went back up the page with the up arrow and added three more lines under the line about Eileen's Jaguar. _Eileen's floor mat, driver's side, showed traces of gold dust._ Her shoes showed traces of gold dust. _One shoe was found in detached garage belonging to David and Rory Castle._ I thought about the locations and looked around my borrowed desk until I found a map. Smoothing it out, I tacked it to the side of my cubicle. Then I rummaged until I found a handful of highlighting pens. The only two not dried out were neon pink and neon chartreuse. I circled all the related locations I could think of on the west side of the valley: Garcia Nursing Home, Rory Castle's home, the country club where Eileen ate lunch and its golf course, where her body was found. I added Glynnis Norwich's address for good measure. They were all fairly close together. At the far-left bottom of the map I made an X with a pen and circled it with pink. Peter Delameter's body, at an abandoned mine off Blue Diamond Road. Next I circled Nicole and Ed Monte's house and Peter and Happy Delameter's house, next door to each other in Lake Las Vegas, and on the far-right bottom of the map. I used the chartreuse green around Happy Delameter's townhouse in Green Valley and pink around the Wickworth Tower. Idly, I circled the pink with green and the green with pink. My home looked like a psychedelic target. I looked back at the screen at the pithy statements of ... Truth? Or lies? Or honest errors? Best at this point not to label, just let the list form. Something was missing. It might be worthless, or even worse than worthless -- it might be misleading. But it belonged on the list. I leaned back in the chair and rotated a quarter turn to my right, toward the map. People walked back and forth behind me, talking, teasing, arguing. I felt like they could be on a TV screen for all they had to do with me. Then I felt someone watching me. I turned the chair back to the computer and looked over at what people in the cubicle world call, euphemistically, a "door." "Hi," Mace said. He had his wallet out and was looking at whatever bills he had on hand. Apparently satisfied, he slapped the leather closed and shoved it in his back pants pocket. "Let's go get something to eat. I'm starved." "Would this be a late lunch or an early supper?" "Call it anything, just so it's steak." _Steak._ I sat up straight. _Steak._ That's what was missing on the list. The man at William B's Steakhouse Tuesday night. Buster Eckles, widower of Trey McNamara's daughter, Pegeen, and current husband of Trey's first wife, Helen McNamara. I leaned closer to the map and traced Blue Diamond Road with my finger. We'd gone out Blue Diamond past the road to Red Rocks, on to Mountain Springs Summit, elevation 5,493 feet. We'd turned south on Highway 161 toward Goodsprings and gone, by Mace's odometer and Desi's directions, one and nine-tenths mile to a dirt road to our right. Something like four miles up that cowpath we'd come to the scene of Peter Delameter's homicide. With Mace watching silently, I gave the pink neon treatment to our route to the crime scene. Then I gave the chartreuse treatment to the route Mickey had given us to his mother's ranchette. The green overlapped the pink out Blue Diamond Road as far as the turnoff to Goodsprings, then the green line went about six or seven miles farther, still on Blue Diamond, to my next X and a pink circle. The X for Peter Delameter's body and the X for Buster and Helen's ranch were only a few miles apart. It was rough terrain, across the Spring Mountains in the general vicinity of Spring Mountain Ranch State Park. "Let's go see good old Buster's home on the range," I said. Seeing the look on Mace's face, I relented. "Right after we ride Old Paint over to the chuckhouse and eat us some little dogies." -------- *Twenty-four* "You keep eating like that and I'm going to have to take a refresher course in CPR," I said. We were seated at the same table at William B's inside the Stardust where we'd eaten Tuesday night. I shuffled romaine around my plate with my fork, looking for any anchovies I'd missed. "I'm on a high protein diet," he said with a satisfied sigh. "Gee, do you think?" Our cell phones rang in tandem. Mace answered his, said, "I'll call you back on a land line," and walked out the door to the casino. In the dim light I couldn't see the number on my phone. "Hello?" "This is Glynnis Norwich. Mr. Albert gave me your number. I'm calling to apologize that I was unable to talk with you this morning." "I understand, Ms. Norwich. Mr. Albert explained your mother's..." I looked for a word, "...her confusion. But as I said this morning, I'm with the homicide bureau of the Las Vegas Metro Police Department, and we are trying to learn everything we can about Eileen McNamara, particularly when and why she came to Las Vegas and who she saw on December sixth." She paused as if sorting through words and choosing hers carefully. "It's a terrible thing, I mean that someone, anyone, would murder Eileen. I didn't know her well, just in the most casual way, but I did see her on December sixth." She paused, but I said nothing, waiting for more information. "We had lunch at a country club, just a casual get-together." I noticed it was the second time in three sentences that she'd used the word casual. "Did you see or talk to her again after your luncheon?" "No. That was the last time, at lunch." I asked her for her home phone and cell phone numbers and wrote them down. "What would be a good time tomorrow to talk?" "I don't have anything else to tell you. Eileen invited me to meet her for lunch at Queen's Canyon. She had recently heard how ill my mother is, and they were friends, or at least acquaintances, years ago, so she was just being kind to me." I ignored her statement that she had nothing else to tell me. It was a lie. I knew it; she knew it. "Would you prefer to come to police headquarters, or meet me at the restaurant at Queen's Canyon? Detective Lake and I have a lot of interviews to conduct tomorrow, but we can adjust our schedule to accommodate you between two o'clock and five o'clock." I could tell she wanted to act huffy, but that's so hard to carry out on a phone. You need a steely glare and a raised chin and crossed arms. Huffy is all in the body. She said nothing, so I went on, "I'm sitting here with the chief of detectives and he just said he needs me from two to three-thirty. So would you prefer four o'clock at police headquarters or five o'clock at the country club?" "All right, five o'clock at the country club," she said with unmistakable regret. "Good-bye." I told the waiter I'd like a cup of decaf, then gave Desi a quick call to get the Glynnis Norwich interview on her schedule. "I'm glad you called," Desi yawned. "I've talked to the night staff at Garcia Nursing Home and I also reached the three daytime employees that were off today. They lock the front door at 9:00 p.m. Anybody coming after nine has to ring the night bell and be let in by the night desk attendant. From four until about eight, they usually get a few visitors in, but the section Mrs. Norwich is in, for dementia patients, only gets about five visitors a week, Glynnis Norwich being one of the most regular." "Did Glynnis go in Monday afternoon or evening?" "She came in about six, fed her mother some yogurt she got from the kitchen, and left around seven. She made a point of telling at least two people on the staff that she was going right to the airport, that she had to catch a flight to Los Angeles and she'd be back in a couple days, so please give her mother some extra attention. And, no, nobody saw Eileen McNamara that night. They would know because even before the front door is locked it's the only entrance. All other doors are on an alarm system." I saw Mace returning to the table and asked Desi to stand by. The waiter said something to Mace and he looked at his watch, then shook his head. The waiter followed him to our table and set the black leather bill holder on it. Mace looked at the amount, put some money inside, and handed it back, saying, "Thanks, again. Delicious, as always." "It's Desi," I said. "You need to talk to her?" He nodded and took the phone, told Desi to get some sleep. "I know I'm not your mother. I outrank your mother. Get some sleep. Ten-four." Handing the phone back, he said, "Let's go visit Mr. and Mrs. Buster Eckles." The weather had cleared during the afternoon, but a secondary cold front was coming in behind the low-pressure system that brought the snow. Heavy rain was due any time before morning, the remnants of a tropical storm that caused extensive flooding on the Mexican coast just north of Mazatlan, diminished over land, went back out over the Sea of Cortez to pick up moisture, then charged north through Arizona. Predictions were that we could get fifty percent of the year's average rainfall in the next two days. The Friday night traffic was hideous, as always. The highways feed in tourists for the weekends, money clutched in their hands like combustible fuel looking for a place to burn. Friday, the tenth of December was no exception. We made good time on I-15 south to Blue Diamond Road. I'd phoned the ranch as we left the Stardust and yes, they were home. "It's a good thing they turned on the lights," I said as we searched for a dirt road with a gate. "It's darker than the inside of a cow out here." Apparently inspired by thoughts of the inside of a cow, Mace belched. "Excuse me." He pulled up to the gate and I got out, lifted the circle of wire and watched him drive through. Gate closed, I turned to walk beside the car. In the dark I stepped off the hard-packed road and sank my right foot into a mudhole. An extremely cold mudhole. When he saw my shoe and foot encased in black goo, he put the car in park and came around to my side. Reaching under the seat, he pulled out a roll of paper towels and helped me clean up as best I could. I kept making yuck noises as I managed to transfer about half the mud from my foot to my hands. "Can't take you anywhere," he muttered, then laughed. Alone. As we stood at the door, listening to a belltone inside and the barking of a dog that wanted very much to come separate us into unidentifiable body parts, I pulled my wet foot out of my shoe and wiped more mud on the welcome mat. The man with the birds' nest for eyebrows answered the door and ordered Vestie to sit and stay. "You must be Chief Emerick. I'm Buster Eckles." They shook hands and I did the same, one eye on Vestie, an indescribably ugly dog who was making "Why I oughta..." rumbles deep in his throat. To make sure I got the message, he opened his jaws and snapped them shut. Pit bull crossed with God-knows-what. A woman I recognized from pictures as Helen McNamara joined us as she asked Buster, "For God's sake close the door. Were you born in a barn?" "Matter of fact I was born in a barn. You got a problem with that?" I could tell it was a much-used comedy routine. "Thanks for seeing us," Mace said. "We won't stay long, just need to ask you a few questions." I apologized for the mud on my foot and Helen directed me to a bathroom off the kitchen. I did my best to clean up the shoe without getting it wetter than it already was. Then I peeled off my pantyhose and threw them away. When I returned, the three of them were sitting at the kitchen table. The kitchen appliances were so old they'd be thought of as "retro." A cast iron frying pan sat on the stove with a black Dutch oven beside it. Helen had a rather retro look, too. She wore old jeans, cowboy boots, a flannel shirt, and a faded red handkerchief tied around her neck. Like Buster, she had deeply tanned skin on her face and neck, the only skin showing. Her blue eyes seemed even bluer against her dark tan. "I never knew Eileen," Helen was saying. "Since I was the dumped older wife, nothing better than the mother of his children, I wasn't likely to be friendly to my teenage replacement." "About Trey McNamara," I said, "we've heard a rumor that he was involved sexually with at least one girl under sixteen. Does that sound true to you, from what you knew of him?" "Trey did like young girls," Helen said. "He liked to have them around his place on Windsor Hill, the Los Angeles estate he bought after divorcing me. I guess he thought he was Hugh Hefner running a bunny house. It got so bad I couldn't let Pegeen go over there." "When you and Trey McNamara got a divorce, did he provide well for you?" "Hell, no. I guess you know about the McNamara Trust? Practically every dime he owned was tied up in the Trust, so he could claim poverty and get away with it. His house, his cars, everything was held in the Trust. I heard the second Mrs. Trey McNamara didn't come out any better than I did." "What about his children? Did he provide money for their care before he died?" "As little as possible. The Trust paid the bills for their prep schools. When he died, they were eighteen and sixteen. I thought they'd inherit a lot, but he left everything tied up in the Trust. Pegeen was an heiress on paper, but except for her college being paid for, she was broke, same as me. Mickey knew a lot more about the Trust, and he always seemed to have everything he wanted. Pegeen would probably be rich next year, when the Trust is dissolved, but..." Buster shrugged and wiggled his eyebrows up and down. "Hey, if I had some ham, I could have some ham and eggs, if I had some eggs." And if Trey hadn't "dumped" Helen, she'd be rich next year, and if Pegeen hadn't died, Buster would be rich next year. The big event on the McNamaras' horizon offered nothing to Helen and Buster. Had it meant anything to Eileen? Was that why she'd come to Las Vegas? I remembered how angry Mickey McNamara was at Clara's luncheon on Monday. Mace leaned forward to rest his forearms on his thighs. "Can you tell us anything about Trey's will?" "Nothing to tell," Helen answered. "He left everything to our two children with the bank holding on to Pegeen's half until she was eighteen, but it was next to nothing. Everything of real value was in the Trust." Mace nodded. "Do you ranch out here? Looks pretty dry." Catching sight of my wet foot and pantsuit, he smiled and added, "Most of the time." Buster nodded his agreement. "Yeah, dry. But we've got a deep well. I don't know if you could see out beyond the barn, we've got a good windmill. Got ten horses of our own and we take in boarders. Got six now." Mace scratched his chin. "Did you see or talk to Eileen McNamara before she came to Las Vegas, this past Monday, or after she arrived?" They shook their heads, no. "Did you know Eileen has a son, John Jorgenson?" I noticed how their eyes met before Buster spoke. "We've heard a rumor to that effect, but it's got nothing to do with us." "Have you seen or talked to your son, Mickey, while he's been here, ma'am?" "We talked on the phone a couple times, but he's been busy." We said good-bye and Buster walked us to the door, keeping Vestie back so we could leave with all our appendages intact. As soon as Buster closed the door, Mace said, "Give me your shoe." "It's all right -- " "Just do it!" he snapped. I shrugged and slipped off the probably ruined blue pump, and he slipped his arm around my waist. Six good hops and we were to the unmarked Crown Victoria. He unlocked the door and I slid in. He set the shoe gently on the back seat, upside down, and got in the driver seat. A few minutes later, after he'd opened and closed the gate and pulled onto the highway, he pulled off to the shoulder and turned on the overhead light. Leaning toward the back seat, he flipped open his suitcase of basic crime scene paraphernalia and took out a paper bag about six inches square. Opening it with his left hand, he dropped my shoe in, labeled it, and sealed the bag. "What's going on?" "When I leaned over and looked at the floor, I noticed your wet, sticky shoe was picking up something off their floor. Something that looks suspiciously like what was found on Eileen McNamara's shoes and floor mat." "Gold dust?" I asked incredulously. "All that glitters may not be gold, but I still want this checked out at the lab. And, furthermore, the call I got while we were at the Stardust was from the crime lab. Exactly the same gold dust that was on the bottom of Eileen's shoes was found at another crime scene." "What? Where?" "On Peter Delameter's shoes." -------- *Twenty-five* I picked up my car at headquarters and drove home. Another hot bath, another hot cocoa. And on the floor another outfit to take to the dry cleaners, resting beside one blue shoe. I turned on my computer and read over the last chapter of the book project I'd finished, and set up the material from the Historical Society on a flat rack at eye level. Putting thoughts of two murders out of my mind, I wrote a draft for another chapter, and printed it out to look at over breakfast when, hopefully, my brain would be in better operating condition. I checked my home e-mail, answered a note from my daughter Valerie, who was packing for her trip to Switzerland with her dad, and logged on to the police computer to check my e-mail there. I was surprised to find a message marked "Fw," then realized it was the message from "JJorgenson" that I'd forwarded from Peter Delameter's laptop to my computer at the P.D. It came to Delameter's computer on Wednesday, December eighth, and read: "I just found out that Eileen is dead. I'm coming to Vegas, and I'm going to find out who killed her. If you had anything to do with it, you'd better hope you are dead and buried before I get my hands on you." I took the printed emails from a zippered pocket of my purse and smoothed them out. I also took out the list I'd typed at the P.D., the stream of consciousness "apparent facts" about Eileen McNamara and a second sheet of "apparent facts" about Peter Delameter. Then I rinsed out my cup and got down a wineglass, poured myself some pinot noir, and tried to clear my mind. Like erasing a blackboard, there was a lot of residue that just wouldn't go away, but it was the best I could do without hypnosis. Then I took a look at the papers. Of the last ten e-mail messages received on Peter's laptop before he disappeared, four were advertisements. I pulled those from the printouts and put them aside. The other six included two from Ed Monte at Bartok Realty about the percentage of commission Bartok wanted, one from Slim Scudder saying he'd let Peter know what his friend at Pebble Beach said. Kemper Wilkerson said he'd be tied up Monday and couldn't play golf. Two messages were from Rossi Mitchell, one of Clara McNamara's attorneys, dated December third and fifth. On Friday the third he said, "Sean wants a meeting with you no later than Monday and he requested me to be present. Please let me know your schedule and if your attorney will attend." The second message from Rossi, on Sunday, said, "Thank you for your prompt reply. Monday 10 a.m. will be good for Sean and myself. We'll see you then at Kellem Holdings." I then went to the last ten messages sent from Peter's laptop. Three were to Bartok Realty regarding the commission. To Kemper and Slim he sent a few words about playing golf. The messages to Rossi Mitchell were more interesting. On December first he said, "I got your letter but I've misplaced it. I will answer soon." On December second he said, "Found your letter. Can't understand why Sean is so shook. We have plenty of time." There were two messages on December third. "I don't see what the rush is, but I'll be glad to meet with Sean and talk this through. Let me know what his schedule looks like. I may be going out of town soon." Second message that day simply said, "California, business and pleasure. Date not firm yet. Monday I'm free to meet with Sean." And the last message to Rossi, which was also the last message Peter sent from his computer, on December fifth, said, "See you tomorrow, 10 a.m. Kemper Wilkerson will be there with me." I yawned and stretched, wishing I could be hypnotized and told, "When you awake, you will be very smart. You will see connections that lie beneath the surface." I turned off the desk light and said aloud, "You will see connections..." Such as? Such as, why did Eileen's adopted son write a threatening note to Peter Delameter? -------- *Twenty-six* _Saturday, December 11_ The phone woke me just after nine Saturday. Lyle reminded me I'd accepted an invitation, about a month before, to "elevenses" at Clara's. I recognized it as another of Lyle's Briticisms. Ever since he'd spent a month "in the U.K.," he'd been prone to say elevenses (instead of brunch), chaps (instead of men or guys), and toss in mention of "the Royals" whenever possible. I knew right away I had another time problem. Desi and I were planning to pick up Sandy at the hospital. I called her and suggested she pick up Sandy and bring her to my place. "Maybe she'll relax, talk better." She agreed to bring her at 12:30. _Relief!_ I opened the wrapper on a new pair of pantyhose and finished dressing. I wore a cranberry raw silk suit with higher-than-usual black patent leather heels and felt oh-so-elegant. One might say dressed fit to kill, were one not employed by the homicide department of a major city. I gave Mace a quick call to ask if he'd gotten my blue shoe to the crime lab. "How long do you think it will be until they know what's on it? Besides mud and cow poop." "Technically, it's horse shit." "Such a fine distinction. When?" "Oh, they insisted they're backed up, but I think my animal magnetism is working miracles with the lady in charge, and I'm hoping to have an answer by close of business today." "How long would it have been otherwise?" "Close of business today." "So, you wanna go to bed with me?" "I thought you just got up." "Sometime after close of business?" "Sometime way after. Way way after." "Okay, you romantic fool. I'll call you after we interview Sandy and Glynnis." I rang the bell at Clara's apartment at eleven sharp while rehearsing in my mind how I would get out of there by 12:25. As soon as I looked at the buffet table, I knew that whatever time I left, I'd be five pounds heavier. Eggs Florentine, tamale corncakes, shrimp-stuffed brioche, and Black Forest crepes. To drink, mimosas, followed by Viennese mocha. "Lyle, if I died and went to heaven, I'd wake up on the thirty-fifth floor of the Wickworth Tower, and you'd be there with a spatula." "Olivia, you are too kind." Clara was dressed for the occasion in black velvet slacks, a white sweater with small red ribbons woven through in three stripes and tied off in bows, and a three-strand pearl choker. "Doesn't Grand-Mom look like a present?" Lyle said fondly. More amazing than the food and how lovely Clara looked was the change in her apartment. Three-quarters of the furniture and the clutter were gone, the remaining two couches spaced wide apart, and a perfectly beautiful Christmas tree reached the ceiling. It was done in shades of pink, red, and white, with large satin bows and draping tinsel. I was speechless. Everything I thought of saying sounded like I was comparing the room to its former ghastly condition. It was like trying to compliment a woman on her weight loss; no matter how you did it, she knew you were thinking of how fat she was before. "I love the way you've decorated for Christmas," I said. And I hoped to goodness she'd leave the mess wherever they'd hauled it. "It was all Lyle and Suzi's idea," Clara said. "You don't think it looks too bare?" "No, it's perfect. I don't think I ever appreciated before how beautiful the fireplace is. Did you have it custom made?" I walked over and felt the marble. The only two photos on the mantel were the very old picture of Clara's father at approximately age forty, and Clara at eighteen, her debutante picture. Lyle excused himself to answer the door. Mickey and Suzi arrived, placed their large umbrella in the corner of the entryway, and Suzi kissed Clara. They acknowledged my presence and we nattered about the weather. The low-pressure system predicted to arrive by then had slowed to a crawl over Arizona and wouldn't douse Las Vegas until Sunday. It might even veer east toward New Mexico and snub Las Vegas entirely. In the meantime, light rain was a good reason to break out the umbrellas. Inside Clara's apartment, the low pressure arrived with Mickey. Clara was downright frosty, and I noticed Mickey stayed across the room from her. Lyle announced brunch and seated Clara at her massive dining room table. While Lyle served Clara, Mickey, Suzi, and I surveyed the buffet and took a little of this, a _soupcon_ of that. The Black Forest crepes were pure ambrosia. The bell rang and Lyle went to the door. Peeping out the hole, he cackled, "It's Aunt Zinnia. And her little dog, too." Zinnia and ZsaZsa came in the door in the motorized seat they'd shared before. They wore matching collars with, I swear to God, battery-operated lights. I owned a pair of battery-operated Christmas earrings, but after about twenty seconds across the table from Zinnia I made a solemn vow to smash them with a hammer lest I ever got so drunk I might wear them again. Nicole and Ed Monte were next to arrive, then Rory and David Castle. Rory apologized that her middle son Case and his wife wouldn't be able to attend. Sean Kellem came in with Peaches, who was exquisitely dressed in a peach-colored silk jersey, a shirtwaist bodice, and flared skirt. She was like a flamingo among the pigeons. Suzi, defending her status as Mickey's current wife, looked like she'd like to rip the jersey off Peaches, braid a rope three stories long, and use it to dangle Peaches out the thirty-fifth floor window. I knew something of ex-wives, being one myself. Okay, being three myself. But I'd never felt the rapture Peaches must have felt as she upstaged the most junior Mrs. Mickey McNamara. Peaches had eighteen years on little Suzi, but when it came to sex appeal, she was a four-alarm fire and Suzi was working with wet wood and a butane lighter. Sean was basking in the glow, and I couldn't help wondering, wicked woman that I am, if good old Sean, at sixty-four, was enough for Peaches. She'd married Mickey twice. Did she wonder if the third time would be the charm? I sipped champagne and orange juice and watched the four of them measure each other for shrouds. If Peaches wanted money, Mickey stood to inherit more than Sean. Sean was one of four children of Clara's, but Mickey was the only son of the only son of the only son. Suddenly I choked on the bubbles, sputtered, and gratefully accepted a napkin from Lyle. _Did Mickey know about John Jorgenson?_ Was John really the son of Trey McNamara, and would he therefore be in line to inherit one-quarter of the McNamara Trust? I needed to talk to Conan Boyle. But I'd been so busy! It was like watching a circus. While I was glued to Peter Delameter's crime scene in ring number two, elephants were dancing in ring number one, and somebody was riding a motorcycle through a circle of flaming oil in ring number three. Motorcycle? Damn! What about the man who (according to Sandy) lured Harley and her into the desert Tuesday night? Nicky Monte and his sister Natalie arrived at the same time as Brady Castle and his wife, Gloria. Five minutes later, as if in response to my unspoken question, my daughter came in with Louis Castle. Candace was simply beautiful in a cocktail dress, a floral layer of lavender chiffon that floated over a solid layer of plum crepe. "Mom, look at my earrings. Louis couldn't wait until Christmas to give me his present." "They're beautiful," I said as she turned her head to show how the amethyst and diamonds sparkled. "Louis, your taste in jewelry is exceeded only by your taste in women." He surprised me by blushing -- or whatever you call it when a man gets a red face. I took a look at my watch and knew I had to make a quick exit and get back to my apartment before Desi arrived with Sandy Jorgenson. Before I had to make an excuse for leaving so early, I saw that Clara was rising from her chair with Lyle's help. "Grand-Mom is feeling tired," he said to me. "Clara, thank you for having me. Shall I come see you tomorrow?" She waved her free hand in a vague motion and leaned more heavily on Lyle on her left. I stepped quickly to her right side and held out my arm, bent at the elbow and stiffened. She clutched my forearm and the three of us walked slowly down the hall. I went as far as the side of her bed, keeping my arm stiff until she settled on the bed and let go. Rory and Nicole were right behind us, full of advice on her need for rest. "Let's get these shoes off, Mom," Rory was saying as I left the bedroom. In the hall I thanked Lyle for the great meal and left by the front door. Desi Lake and Sandy Jorgenson got off the elevator on the twenty-ninth floor just as I emerged from the stairwell, having walked down from the thirty-fifth. Sandy was as white as whipped cream and it looked like Desi was holding her upright. I covered the steps to my door in no time flat and unlocked it. "Come on in." As soon as I locked it behind them, I turned expectantly. "What's wrong?" Desi directed Sandy to a chair and lowered her slowly. "We were standing in the elevator in the lobby, waiting for the doors to close, when Sandy spotted a man walking into the building. He was carrying a briefcase and looking down." "It was John," Sandy said. "John Jorgenson?" I asked. "No! The John who said he'd sell me and Harley some heroin, but then he drove all over the stinkin' valley and then he pulled a fuckin' gun on us." "And he's in the lobby of this building?" I thought about calling the cops, but then I remembered -- we _were_ the cops. "He's got a swollen eye where Harley hit him with the chain, looks like half a pound of Spam, and a bandage on his forehead," Sandy continued. "John?" I repeated, puzzled. Then I remembered Jack Basset's face and his mumbled fairy tale about a fender bender. Jack was usually short for John. "Did he see you?" Desi answered for her. "She jumped to the side of the elevator like she'd seen a live rattler. He looked over, but I'm sure all he could see was me as the door closed." I thought about the video surveillance cameras all over. "Desi, give me a hand with coffee, would you?" As I measured the French roast into Mr. Coffee, I told Desi about the cameras and the monitors in the guards' office. And about Jack Basset's face. I went on, thinking aloud, "If Sandy was telling the truth about some guy luring Harley and her all over with a promise of selling them black tar heroin, and if she's telling the truth about the guy, maybe named John, pulling a gun on them out in the desert -- " "It might have been the director of security at your building," Desi finished. "And if he looked at the monitor picture of the elevator or the hall of the twenty-ninth floor, he knows she's here." "That's about the size of it." I watched the coffee drip into the glass carafe and steam hiss up from the basket with the ground coffee. "On another subject, you'll be glad to know -- the lab report on the shoes is back and it ties the murders together. The glitter on Eileen's shoes, Peter's shoes, the floor mats of both their cars, and your blue shoe is all dust of high purity gold. And it said 'with a high degree of certainty' that they are from the same source." "What about the metal around Peter's head wound?" "Emission spectroscopy shows that's also gold, but it contains impurities and is not from the same source as the gold dust." Desi took a pint carton of half-and-half and a sugar bowl into the living room, then came back for two cups of steaming coffee. I followed with my cup and spoons. With a disarming smile on her face, Desi sat down and turned to Sandy. "We have been able to trace your sister's movements on Monday, but we still have a few crucial holes to fill in. We know she left Los Angeles very early Monday morning and drove her Jaguar to Las Vegas. We know she traveled alone, and we know she made a lot of calls on her cell phone on the way. Do you know why Eileen came to Las Vegas?" "I don't have a clue." "Were any of those calls to you?" I asked. "No. I don't have a cell phone or anything." "When was the last time you saw Eileen?" Desi was still her new best friend, but showed she could be firm, too. Sandy bit a fingernail and examined it. "More than a month ago, I know that for sure. September, maybe." My turn for a question. "When was the last time you saw John Jorgenson?" She sighed like the weight of the world was on her puny shoulders. "He hates my guts -- why would I try to see him, so he could piss on me? Forget it. Eileen didn't want him to be around me, ever, and the truth is -- that's okay. Just because I gave birth, that's not so important. Eileen was always good to him. Except he was spoiled, everybody says. A grown-up spoiled brat. She had to keep telling him to get a job, then get another job, then another job. I heard that from other people. She didn't want me to know maybe she wasn't the hotshot mother she thought she'd be, you know what I mean?" "Do you know any of Trey McNamara's relatives?" Desi asked in a half-interested way. "How about Sean Kellem?" Sandy jumped a little at the mention of Sean. "I don't think so. No, I'm sure I don't know him. I've just heard his name. I think Kellem is the last name of that real old lady, the one that's almost one hundred." "Sean Kellem is one of the sons of Clara Kellem," I said. "He's an older gentleman. He's the head of a company called Kellem Holdings." She shook her head. "No, I don't know him." "How about Rory Castle?" Desi offered. "No. Never heard of him." "What about Peter Delameter? He was found dead this week. Did you ever meet him or hear people talk about him?" I asked. "I think Eileen thought he was a bad influence on John. I know he took John to Caesar's Palace about a month ago, and Eileen was spitting nails." "You saw her then?" I asked. She hunched her shoulders and held her hands out, palms up. "No. I talked to her on the phone. One of the rare times! About a month ago I got a ride from Long Beach with a friend and I went to Eileen's house. I'd been seeing her on TV all the time, showing her pretty butt in those lame commercials." She mimicked her sister, "Oh, I have the answer, good jeans!" She licked her finger and touched it to her thigh, making a hissing noise to show how hot she was. I laughed and so did Desi. Sandy smiled and for a moment I could see the spirited beauty she must have been in her teen years. Before Trey McNamara. "But you said you didn't see her?" I asked. "I got a ride to her place in Beverly Hills. What a fuckin' mansion. Well, she wasn't there, just a housekeeper was there, and she wouldn't let me in. I made myself at home out by the pool and she called Eileen. I guess Eileen was on location shooting another commercial. Out by the ocean. But she told the housekeeper to let me stay in the guest cottage as long as I wanted." She looked wistful. "That was a sweet deal. Cute little place out beyond the pool, like a big dollhouse." "How long did you stay?" Desi asked. "And when did you talk to her on the phone?" "I stayed a week, maybe it was ten days. Life in paradise got boring with her gone the whole time. She called me on the phone in the guesthouse after I'd been there three or four days. It was kind of like when we used to be real sisters, you know what I mean?" Her eyes glistened and she sniffed. "Anyway, we just talked. And she didn't want to talk about John, I could tell. But finally she told me he was gambling and he'd lost his job. Of course, I knew that, and that it wasn't just one job either, but I didn't say anything. 'He's breaking my heart,' she said. And I remember she said he'd gone to Caesar's Palace with some jerk named Peter Delameter." My phone rang and I answered it in the kitchen. Mace said he'd received the report on the gold from the crime lab, the same one Desi told me about. I told him what Sandy had just told us about John Jorgenson possibly having a gambling problem, a money problem, and a Peter Delameter problem. "I'm close to the Strip right now," he said. He sounded tired. "I'll swing over and talk to the people at Caesar's. Did she mention his game of choice?" "Hold on a minute. I'll ask." I set the phone on the counter and leaned into the living room. "Sandy, can you remember if Eileen said anything about what kind of gambling John likes? People usually have a preference." She scratched her right shoulder with her left hand and thought about the question. "I think Eileen said he was throwing his life away every time he threw the dice. So I guess that means craps." I nodded and passed the information on. Mace said he'd go see the chief of security at Caesar's Palace and talk to the pit bosses. "He's thirty-seven years old, about six feet two inches tall, on the thin side of medium build, bad posture, and when I saw him, he looked like he'd dressed in the dark in a closet full of ugly clothes. Scruffy red beard. Men who grow a beard like his, shouldn't." "You gonna be there a while? I'll call you from Caesar's." "That's good, yeah. But there's another problem." I told him about Sandy thinking she'd seen the man who called himself "John" in the lobby of my building. "It was Jack Basset. And he has a shiner plus what could be a chain laceration at eye level. Matches what she said Harley did to their overly friendly bar acquaintance out in the desert." "I don't like that story," he said. "Even on a scale of one to ten for weird coincidences, that one ranks twenty. Why did Harley go to that bar? Why did they follow the guy? And why was Sandy only a few miles from where Peter Delameter's body was found? It smells, Olivia." "I agree. It also smells that every time we turn around Kemper Wilkerson, Esquire, has his finger in the pie. He was advising Delameter, and Eileen, and John Jorgenson. He was friendly with Sean Kellem at the Stardust the other night, and he was having dinner with Buster Eckles, who smells bad independent of Kemper." "Ah, you just don't like guys who marry their mothers-in-law. I'm pulling in to Caesar's, gotta go. I'll be on my beeper. Try to find out how Sandy and Harley really met the mysterious stranger in the smallest, most obscure bar on the Strip." "Will do." I carried the glass coffeepot into the living room and poured the remainder in Desi's and Sandy's cups. "Sandy," I said, "it occurs to me that for a woman who was looking to buy heroin three days ago, you have remarkably few signs of withdrawal. And no tracks." Her nose tissues looked fairly healthy, too. "What do you mean?" "I mean let's not waste any more time with bullshit about you and Harley just happening to pick that gin joint to wander into. Who told you to be there?" "Nobody told me..." "Your sister was brutally murdered, and you probably can help us find the murderer. Now cut the crap. Who told you to go to that bar?" She didn't answer, but I could tell she was on the verge of telling us something important. Finally she set her full cup back on the coffee table. "Okay. I called Sean Kellem Wednesday. I said I might go to the police and say he had something to do with Eileen being murdered. I didn't really know anything, I was just guessing. He said he was sorry to hear about Eileen's death, that it was a terrible thing, blah, blah, and he had nothing to do with it. And he said he didn't want his family dragged into another scandal. He asked where I was staying, and I didn't tell him, but he said, 'You're at Esperanza Shelter.' Caller ID, I guess, but it freaked me out. And he said to wait there and he'd have a friend bring me some money so I could get a hotel room and get my hair done and stuff, and I was going to need some help with the funeral expenses, he'd see what he could do. And I said I have a friend who could give me a ride to meet his friend somewhere. I didn't want anybody coming to the shelter, you know?" She bit another fingernail down to the quick. "And he said, that's good, and he gave me the address of a little bar, the Paradise Club, said to be there at nine o'clock that night. He said the guy named John, medium height, might be late, he couldn't say exactly when he'd get there, but to be there at nine and wait. So Harley took me, and we met the man I saw downstairs, and he gave us some money. And we had some drinks, and we talked about stuff, and we said we wanted to buy some methamphetamine, and he said to follow him, that he had a friend in the business." "How much money did he give you?" Desi asked. Sandy put her face in her hands and rubbed her eyes hard. She looked up. "He gave me six hundred dollars. I gave Harley a hundred." My eyes met Desi's over Sandy's head. It looked like Sandy was telling the truth this time. "Where did you go and what happened?" Desi asked softly. "We rode out west toward the desert. I was freezing to death. I didn't have any idea we'd be going all over the fuckin' valley. But finally we get off the highway and go on a dirt road, seemed like ten miles. I was freezing my ass off." "What was the man driving?" I asked. She seemed to look into the distance, thinking. "A Camaro," she said decisively. "A black or dark blue Camaro. With spoilers on the back." "Then what happened?" Desi asked. "We got to a mine. I mean he said it was a mine. And I'm not the smartest cookie in the box, you know what I mean? But I knew we were in trouble. Harley did, too, and he went to turn around in the soft sand, but it was hard to get back on the hard-packed dirt road once we got off. And this guy gets out of his car and comes over by us, the bike is spinning its wheels and throwing dirt up, and the son of a bitch pulls a fuckin' gun out and tells us to get off the bike. Harley said to me, kinda quiet, 'Hold on, don't get off, we're leaving,' and he pulled a chain out of somewhere and he whacked the guy across the face and man we were out of there!" We sat in silence, Sandy breathing hard and rubbing her hands together until they were red. "So we went down the dirt road to the highway and went a few miles, then we saw a house, I mean a double-wide trailer with lights back off the highway, and Harley told me to get off and go there for help, but he had to get the hell out of Dodge, that he was going to Mexico." "Did you go to the mobile home for help?" I asked. "No. I was going to, but a pack of dogs came out and scared me, so I kept walking. Places were way, way far apart, and they all had dogs. I walked all the next day, but I was so thirsty, and I got all mixed up. Maybe I went in circles. I don't know. And then you found me." She stood up. "Where's the bathroom?" I was glad I had a guest bathroom that had no medications in it. "First door on your left in the hall." "What are we going to do with her?" I asked. "She's not safe from herself, and she's sure as hell not safe from Jake Basset, who probably knows she's in the building." Desi thought about it. "I know a place she can stay. It's a shelter where we take women in trouble, not Esperanza. One that doesn't even have a name. Only the police know about it. If we can get her out of here, I can take her there. But you say there are surveillance cameras all over the place?" I nodded, thinking. "She's my height." "That is the only thing you have in common." "It might be enough." I went into my bedroom and started tossing clothes on the bed. Desi and Sandy stepped in, looking at me with questions in their eyes. "It's time to play dress up, girlfriends." I held up a pair of slacks to Sandy's waist. "No, something dressier. Here, put on these pantyhose." "You're kidding," Sandy said. "No, I'm not. If you're wearing my good shoes, you need to wear pantyhose." Reluctantly, she pulled her brown sweater over her head and took off her turtleneck. Her bra was a dingy gray atrocity. "I'm thinking," I said, "if you're going to walk like me, you should feel well dressed from the skin out." I pulled out some Vanity Fair lingerie and tossed it to Sandy. "We've got no time to waste on modesty. Hurry." The doorbell rang. "While I get that, you get this nice wool outfit on her, Desi, and start helping her with make up." "This isn't going to work," Desi said. "In summer it wouldn't work. In winter, thanks to coats and hats, it will work." I looked through the peephole and saw Candace and Louis. "Come in." "We can't stay," she said. "We just thought we'd say hello-good-bye on our way downstairs. Don't you just love the way Mrs. Kellem's apartment looks now?" "Yes, right." I didn't want to sound impatient, but I didn't have time to discuss Clara's apartment make over. "Candace, Louis, I need a favor. It's not much, but it's important. I want you to take a woman down in the elevator with you, acting like she's me, and take her in your car to Candace's place." Desi came out of the bedroom. "Detective Desi Lake, this is my daughter, Candace, and her good friend, Louis Castle." They shook hands and I explained to Desi what I wanted to do. "Then you leave in about ten minutes and go pick up our friend at Candace's apartment." To Candace I added, "I think it's best if I don't introduce her by name to you. She's our friend, that's all. I don't know if the surveillance cameras have any sound capability, but call her "Mom" just in case." Candace looked on the verge of objecting, so I added, "There is a person who has access to the surveillance monitors who might want to hurt our friend. You wouldn't want that to happen, would you?" "Of course not," she sighed. "How soon will she be ready?" "Two minutes," I said. "I'll be right back." Either Sandy had a hidden talent as a make-up artist or Desi did. I didn't know which was less likely. Anyway, Sandy looked good. I pulled a faux fur hat out of my closet and tugged it down over her ears, put my second best coat on her, and wrapped a wool scarf around her neck for extra warmth and extra coverage of identifying features on her face. "The cameras are all up high, so keep looking slightly down. Don't talk. If somebody gets on the elevator or sees you in the lobby and speaks to you, let Candace do the talking." In the living room I gave the same instructions to Candace. "If somebody talks to her, say, 'My mom has laryngitis.'" I noticed Louis roll his eyes just a little, but Candace saw it, too, and sighed. "She's not crazy, she's my mother." Ten minutes later I had my apartment back to myself and wondered how long that would last. The phone rang as if to fill up the silence, the way a baby cries when you get into bed. It was Mace. "Didn't you say John Jorgenson was in Los Angeles and heard about Eileen's death on TV?" "I didn't say he was there. I said he said he was there. Not the same thing at all." I thought about what Desi said about detective work. Assume that everyone is lying about everything all the time. "He was gambling at Caesar's on Monday with Peter Delameter. Caught on tape. They both lost a lot. Casino execs tell me Peter is a regular and he's down two hundred K. You and Desi getting Sandy to talk has been a very good lead. I know now where Peter went when he left his not-so-happy wife in not-so-green valley. He went to meet Slim Scudder at Caesar's -- remember, his 'let's go to Pebble Beach' friend? They drank and gambled and drank and drank, and Peter got a room at Caesar's. Stayed in his room from 5:00 a.m. until noon. Then he left -- I don't know yet where he went -- then he came back and met up with John Jorgenson. More drinks, more craps. They both left a few minutes after six, busted. That's all I've got for now." "In his e-mails I found out he was scheduled to meet with Sean Kellem and Rossi Mitchell at Kellem Holdings on Monday morning. And get this -- he was to be accompanied by his lawyer, Kemper Wilkerson. Is that a kick, or what?" "Wilkerson is everywhere, isn't he?" he said thoughtfully. I told him about Clara's party, and how stunning Peaches McNamara looked. "Not as stunning as my daughter, but a babe, nevertheless." "Hey, did you go interview the guards at your building about seeing Eileen McNamara there Monday night? I see in Desi's notes that the cab driver says he picked her up at Garcia Nursing Home at eight, give or take five minutes, drove her to Wickworth Tower, arriving about twenty minutes later. Did she get in to see anybody who lives there?" I had intended to come check on that when I left the Bellagio, when? Yesterday? Instead I'd gone back to the police department to get my car, and I'd gone upstairs, and thirty or forty other things happened instead. "I don't know. I didn't get a chance to check. And now, for two reasons, I can't." I explained how anyone watching the monitors hooked to the surveillance cameras would have seen "Olivia Wright" leave with her daughter. The other reason was that I was due in thirty minutes at Queen's Canyon Country Club to interview Glynnis Norwich. "So how are you going to get there? Your building doesn't have a fire escape." I thought about that. "How far away are you?" "Not far." "Can you be here in, say, ten minutes and keep all the guards' eyes off the monitors?" He laughed. "Easy-schmeasy. I'm on my way now. You want me to call when I walk in?" "Yeah, on my cell. Just let it ring twice and hang up." "You are a devious woman." "I'm sure you mean that as a compliment." "What else?" -------- *Twenty-seven* Thirty minutes later I pulled my Lexus into a parking space at Queen's Canyon Country Club beside a white 2002 Range Rover I knew to be registered to Glynnis's mother, Neville Norwich. I applied lipstick and combed my hair, which was flat from the heavy scarf I'd worn to partially cover my face. Right before I walked in the front door, my cell phone rang. It was Mace. "Eileen went to the Wickworth Tower, all right," he said with no preamble. "She arrived by taxi at 8:20. She didn't go inside, however. As soon as she stepped out of the cab, a man and woman waiting inside went out and spoke to her, pointed toward a black Lincoln Towncar parked in a handicap zone, and the three of them walked over and got in the back seat. It pulled away immediately." "Could you tell who the man and woman were?" "Oh, yeah! The couple we saw in the steakhouse at the Stardust. Sean Kellem and the radiantly lovely Peaches McNamara. How 'bout them apples?" "Is Desi on it?" "Like wrinkles on raisins." "I'm at the country club. I'll call you in an hour or so." Just then I saw Glynnis Norwich come out of the restroom and walk into the cocktail lounge. Every eye of every man in the room watched her, too. I was struck again with the similarity between Glynnis and Peaches. From the back only the hair color differed, light blond for Peaches and light brunette for Glynnis. They both carried their height proudly, like models. Self-consciously, I improved my posture and followed her into the bar. We sat at a table the size of a large pizza in the corner and commented on the weather until a waif with large eyes and too much makeup, wearing a black leotard and jungle print wrap-around skirt, said, "What can I get you ladies?" "I'll have a Manhattan, up," Glynnis said. "I'd like a margarita, lime, frozen, salt on the edge." "You got it." We watched her stroll to the bar and talk to the bartender. Ernst Uber, the manager, walked in from the restaurant and placed a sign about their special, Prime Rib, on an easel. As soon as the waitress brought our drinks, I turned to Glynnis. "How is your mother?" I saw a flash of anger in her eyes and her tone was rigid and icy. "My mother, who is only sixty-two years old, is in pretty good physical health, but her mind is so far gone she thinks I'm her older sister, Rhonda, a woman who actually died ten years ago. Her life stinks, and as a result, my life stinks! Any other questions about my mother?" "I'll restrict my questions to Eileen McNamara's last days and her death. Any information about what was her state of mind and why she was in Las Vegas would be helpful." "When she called me, Monday morning, she said she was driving into Vegas from Los Angeles. She asked me to meet her for lunch, here, one o'clock. She didn't indicate what was on her mind." She spoke as if she'd rehearsed the speech. "I was only slightly acquainted with her, but I knew my mother had been fond of her -- God alone knows why. Mother always said Eileen had 'class' and that Trey McNamara was scum." "Why did Eileen want to see you? If your relationship was as casual as you say it was, why call you from the highway on what must have been a pretty fast trip, and ask you to meet her?" "I don't know. She was distraught about her son and his gambling, which had zero to do with me, I never met him. But she seemed concerned about whether my mother had enough money, or something. It was none of her business. Really, the whole 'meet for lunch' thing was completely inexplicable to me. She was old enough to be my mother, and I guess she was friends with my mother, but I didn't need or want her interest in my finances." "Judging by the success of her books, your mother probably has a substantial estate." "That's right. I am managing everything, of course, and I'm doing all right." "Garcia Nursing Home seems to be an excellent care facility," I said tentatively. "Yes, it's the best. She's well cared for. She's been there a year now." "I'm sure it's very expensive, especially with your mother being only in her early sixties." "Yes, it's expensive, and it's none of your business, or anybody else's!" She was about to hit the ceiling fan and fly off in ten directions. "Ms. Norwich, I can see that you are under a tremendous strain, and I apologize if I've been insensitive. You're right, it's none of my business. But please try to see where I'm coming from. Anything Eileen McNamara said or did during her last nine hours on earth is police business. Now, why don't we enjoy our drinks and see if we can start over again with more civility?" My cell phone rang. I looked at the number. It was from Mace and he'd added our signal for urgent to his number. "Please excuse me. I'll just be a moment." I walked to the quiet end of the bar, still in sight of Glynnis. I wouldn't have been surprised if she'd bolted. "Yes, Mace? What's up?" "You're with Glynnis Norwich now?" "Yes." "I just found out Peter Delameter didn't stay alone at Caesar's Palace Sunday night. The pit boss recognized Glynnis. They've been there together before, on six or eight occasions. When his luck was better and his line of credit was good, Delameter was comped to a room. Usually Glynnis was with him." I said nothing, trying to absorb the ramifications. "Mace, are you in the mood for prime rib?" "That's like asking if I'm in the mood for sex." "That was going to be my next question. If you can come out here in the next half-hour or so, I'll buy you a slab of beef, lightly toasted. But right now I've got to get back to an unpleasant conversation. Happy hour this is not." As I said it, I felt sorrier for Happy Delameter. "I'll be there. Go work your magic with Ms. Norwich." I didn't think that endorsement would stand up, judging by how our interview had gone so far, but I waded back in for another try, asking the waitress on my way for a cherry Coke. "Okay, Ms. Norwich, this social chat has just taken a turn for the antisocial." She looked nervous, maybe even shocked. "You don't want to talk about Eileen McNamara, but I'm afraid you're going to have to. And you are going to have to answer a lot of questions about Peter Delameter, too. You are in the unenviable position of being one of the last people who saw Eileen and Peter alive. And you've been evasive, to put it mildly." "How..." she began, followed by silence. "A lot of people in casino gambling knew Peter very well, and naturally they noticed an attractive woman, not his wife, at his side and going to his room. You might as well have rented billboard space. Don't apply for a job as a spy." Tears welled in her eyes and trickled down her face, but that kind of thing has never worked on me. Probably because it's never worked _for_ me. "Peter and I had an affair, and it was a dreadful mistake. It's over -- " "You got that right!" "I mean it was over before he was murdered. I don't know anything about his murder." I shook my head slowly. "Problem is, Glynnis, when a love affair is over, only two people know it for sure, and one of you is dead. If I were in your shoes, I'd be talking to a lawyer." It was way out of left field, but I gave it a shot. "Would that be Kemper Wilkerson?" "Who?" "Kemper Wilkerson. I keep coming across his name." "I don't know him." She dabbed at her eyes with her cocktail napkin and took a few deep breaths. She spoke so softly I wasn't sure I heard her correctly. "I can't afford a ... I mean, never mind." For the first time, I wondered if Glynnis was as well off as she'd insisted she was. "Peter Delameter took a lot of people down with him," I mused aloud. Glynnis looked at me over her damp napkin, not sure what I was getting at. "I mean financially," I added. "He ripped me off, too." She gave up dabbing at her runny nose and gave a big sniff. "He hurt a lot of people." I just nodded. "So, Glynnis, when was the last time you saw Peter?" She didn't volunteer to answer, so I went on. "Everything that happens in a casino is watched by eye in the sky cameras. And hotel hallways are watched for suspicious activity, too. If you lie, if you deliberately leave out important information, it will come back to haunt you." She said nothing. I pressed on. "I think you're making a mistake." "I was in Los Angeles Monday night. I have the ticket to prove I flew there Monday evening, and I was with other people all the time. I came back Friday morning, right before I saw you at the nursing home." "You've got your alibi down pat, don't you? Sounds so good I think someone helped you with it. Get out of town and don't come back until Peter's body is found." "That's your opinion," she said haughtily. "You're right, it is. Do you suppose that if you say, 'I don't want to talk,' that homicide detectives just go away? Have you ever heard of a grand jury?" Again she sat in stony silence. Mace slipped into the seat across from us and ordered a Tecate and lime. The table had looked small before. Now it looked like doll furniture. I noticed out of the corner of my eye that Glynnis had perked up a little and was making an effort to get the mascara off her cheeks. "I'm Chief Mace Emerick, homicide." He shook her hand and added, "Will you join us for dinner? Maybe have some prime rib? I like to see a woman appreciate fine protein." "So, Chief," I interrupted, "I can't wait to hear how the movies are at Caesar's." "Grainy, lousy color. Lots of repetition and boring shots of people shuffling along like pod people, but then you get some exciting scenes, worth waiting for. The drama of the craps table when someone is losing his proverbial shirt, the clutches and clenches of lovers in the hallway, trying to get their room key to work when they're too drunk to put it in arrow side down. All in all, better than what I've seen in theaters lately. But maybe that's just me." "So, you got a warrant?" I asked. "Oh, yeah." He waved his hand to say that's so easy. "Practically automatic in a case like this. But those people at Caesar's, I just can't say enough about their cooperation. And memories!" He rolled his eyes. "I'll just put it this way. Very detailed memories." Glynnis picked up her purse and stood. In order for her to leave the corner one of us had to get up. Neither Mace nor I moved. "What do you want?" she asked through clenched teeth. Mace took his time and drank some more beer. In slow motion, Glynnis sat down on the edge of her chair. He set his beer bottle on a napkin and scooted his chair a couple inches closer to hers. He kept his voice low, but every word was clear. "What we want, Ms. Norwich, is the name of the person or persons who killed Eileen McNamara and Peter Delameter on six December. You were out of town, I checked the airline. But I am sure you can help us as to motive. And that would help us as to suspects." "I haven't got anything to say. Peter and I had an affair. That's not against the law. I hardly knew Eileen McNamara. Now I have to go." This time Mace stood and let her squeeze out of her spot in the corner. "I'll see you tomorrow, Ms. Norwich," he said cheerfully. "Why?" "Somebody from homicide will be in touch. They'll even give you a ride down to headquarters. That'll be better than here, anyway. We have the recording equipment all set up. This is, you know, informal. I'll see you tomorrow. Would ten o'clock be good, or is eleven better?" Her superb posture disappeared. "Of the two, eleven is better. I presume you know my address?" He nodded. I rose, too, and we watched Glynnis leave. I went to the restroom while he paid our bar bill and I met him in the restaurant. "Glynnis is in this up to her runny mascara," I said. "I've got Desi working on the money trail. I think Peter worked his magic act -- making money disappear -- on the fortune formerly known as Neville Norwich's." "Oh, no! No wonder Glynnis is as brittle as spun sugar. She must be panicked about her mother's medical care." I recalled her surprising reaction when I'd said she should hire a lawyer. "No wonder she started to say she couldn't afford a lawyer." He nodded and studied the menu as if there were some question what he would order. "I have no theory about who wanted Eileen dead," I said. "But with Peter, the question is: _Of all the people who wanted him dead, who got there first?"_ -------- *Twenty-eight* _Sunday, December 12_ Sunday morning I woke up at five, but I was wide-awake, full of energy. I carefully pulled my covers back, trying not to awaken Mace. In my robe and slippers, I turned on just the light over the stove and made a pot of hazelnut coffee. While the precious, life-sustaining fluid dripped into the glass pot, I moved to the still-dark living room and opened the drapes about four inches. It was still clear, but the wind was whipping flags and signs. Looked like it was nasty cold, too. I turned on the TV, keeping the sound very low, and checked on the weather report. After about eight commercials, the weatherman (wearing a polar bear suit, don't ask me why) stood in front of a huge map of the southwest. "The storm that was coming at us from the south like a freight train got derailed in Arizona, but it's back on track now, so hold on to your hats and find your umbrellas, 'cause you've got a ticket to ride!" That was the cue for six more commercials. At last the bear was back, giving details of the area of low-pressure from the Gulf, tattered remnants of a tropical storm that started in the Pacific Ocean south of Acapulco and ricocheted all over the place. A ridge of high pressure over Nevada stalled its progress north, but the high pressure was weakening, and the rain, possibly mixed with snow, was moving in. We should see clouds by mid-morning, light rain by mid-afternoon, and heavy rain by evening. He read the joke of the day, sent in by a humor-challenged viewer in Pahrump: "If you were walking in the woods, and a bear chased you, and you started running, and you saw a church, and the door was open, would you run inside? You would? What, you'd go to church with a bear behind?" As I turned it to mute, I could hear that Mace was up. I got out the eggs and milk and set them aside while I chopped some ham, onion, and bell pepper. I beat the eggs with a little milk and poured it in a hot skillet. By the time I poured the coffee, the omelet was ready for its filling. By the time Mace came in and gave me an excellent good morning kiss, the omelet was ready for folding and the toast was ready to butter. Mace turned the TV sound back on to see the news and caught a glimpse of the weatherman. "Why is he wearing a polar bear suit?" "Because his chicken suit is at the cleaners." "You've been sending him jokes, haven't you?" "And you're one of his devoted fans, aren't you? You probably tape it when you have to be gone, just so you won't miss the joke of the day." "Ha, ha. Actually, I'm a fan of the redheaded reporter, Katrina Mondragon. Besides being easy on the eye, she's smart and funny. I think she's destined for bigger markets than Vegas." As we sat down to our omelets, Katrina came on the screen. It was obviously a taped segment, done in daylight. After a few seconds, the word Saturday appeared at the bottom left of the screen. She wore a teal coat and tan neckscarf. The wind whipped her hair without mercy. "I'm standing on the golf course of the Queen's Canyon Country Club on the west side of Las Vegas. Last Monday night this bucolic setting was the gruesome scene of a brutal homicide." "Bucolic? I didn't know they let people say bucolic on TV," Mace said. "Shh." I turned the sound up. "I'm here with Whitney Jones, public information officer for Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department. Whitney, what can you tell us about the investigation into the death of actress Eileen McNamara?" Whitney had her medium-length hair pinned back by clips. She had an air of authority and had earned the grudging respect of the media. If a question could be answered, she'd try hard to get the answer, but if it was out of bounds, she was firm in her "Sorry" statement. She'd also earned the even more grudging respect of the police for whom she spoke. "The investigation is continuing, Katrina, and we are following some good leads, but that's all I can say at this point." "Do you know any more about how a shoe, apparently belonging to Eileen McNamara, ended up in a garage belonging to Rory Kellem Castle?" She held a large black microphone in front of Whitney. "I can confirm that two shoes were found, one in the parking lot not far from the body, and one as you say in the Castle family's detached garage, approximately one-eighth of a mile from the crime scene. The shoes appear to be a match, and there was blood on both of them. We are awaiting DNA analysis to see whose blood that is, and if, in fact, Eileen McNamara wore the shoes." "Whitney, most of our viewers remember that Eileen McNamara was tried twice in the 1970's for the death of her former husband, Trey McNamara," Katrina said as she pulled her scarf away from her mouth. "Is there anything to the rumor that members of the McNamara family were angry that Eileen McNamara came to Las Vegas, and that they think she came to disrupt a family reunion?" "That's too much assumption and rumor for me, Katrina. Let's wait and let the investigation show what's what, shall we?" "Is it true that hours before her brutal murder, Eileen McNamara had lunch with Glynnis Norwich, the daughter of famous crime writer Neville Norwich?" "We have information that they were seen lunching together. Ms. Norwich is cooperating fully with the investigation." "Thank you, Whitney. This is Katrina Mondragon, reporting live from Queen's Canyon Country Club." "I wonder who told Katrina that Eileen and Glynnis met for lunch," I said. "Ernst Uber, maybe, but why would he want to draw attention to his club being a place where somebody was murdered?" "You know what they say. No such thing as bad publicity." He carried the plates to the sink and ran water on them. "Can you be ready to leave in twenty minutes with me, or do you want to take your car?" "That's mighty confident talk for a man who's wearing a bathrobe." He placed his hands on his hips. "Twenty minutes, flat. Including shave and shower." "Whatever. I'm taking my car anyway." He made it out the door as he'd claimed he would, in twenty minutes flat. I loaded the dishwasher, put in a load of laundry, got dressed in the next-to-last wool pantsuit I could find, and I still made it out the door in thirty-five minutes. I parked downtown at 6:20 a.m. Mace had called people the night before, saying to be in the large conference room at headquarters at 7:00 a.m. for a brainstorming session on both Eileen McNamara and Peter Delameter. Conan Boyle was to meet me there at nine so we could examine the financial morass left by Peter Delameter and the amazing, but largely secret, fortune, the McNamara Centennial Trust, that seemed to undergird everything that family had done for one hundred years. Once Conan got his law degree, he'd be a natural for the FBI, especially for forensic accounting, tracking, and prosecuting white collar criminals -- the Peter Delameters of the world who take people's life savings under the guise of making investments, while they're actually putting it into a yacht in the Cayman Islands or on a green felt table in the form of thousand-dollar chips. Glynnis Norwich was to come in at eleven, but Mace hadn't decided exactly who would question her or how. He had a feeling, which I shared, that Glynnis was a pivotal point in both investigations, and we didn't want to screw anything up. Homicide was pretty quiet at 6:55 a.m. I saw Desi Lake at one end of the room, steering a portable white board with balky wheels toward the conference room. Ving Nguyen was eating a donut and sipping coffee while reading notes on the bulletin board. I set some papers in my cubicle and walked into the conference room. Mace and a patrol officer were placing folding chairs in front of two large white boards. The two criminalists who worked the Delameter homicide came in with Ving, all three of them chowing down on donuts. Williams and Yarnell spotted me and walked over to shake hands. Five uniformed officers came into the conference room and we all shook hands, but I couldn't remember all the names. The one woman was easy to remember, set apart by being a woman and by being a Native American. Quickrunner Manyfarms was half the size of the men officers, but one of them, a square-jawed man who must have played halfback in college ball, said to Williams, "Sure she's twice as fast as we are, but it's a trick. She doesn't get any wind resistance." "Okay, everybody," Mace called. "It's 7:00 a.m. Let's get started." There was a mad dash to the coffeepot, then everyone found a seat. I sat in the front row with Manyfarms, who said I could call her Runner. Mace welcomed the detectives and criminalists and urged everyone to speak up if he felt puzzled. "Especially if you see a connection and you think, oh that's so obvious, he already knows that. Go ahead and speak up." "And remember," he went on, "this room is quiet on a Sunday morning because most of the citizens who acted on their aggression issues this weekend did it last night and are asleep in jail, and the officers who put them there are asleep at home. In other words, it's a temporary lull. Let's use it to make progress on these two very difficult cases." He looked over at me. "Ms. Wright, would you please show us that map you've been marking up?" He handed Desi a large sheet of paper. "Desi, please put this information on the left board." I attached the map to the far left of one white board and Desi taped up a list printed in large font size. The heading was "EILEEN McNAMARA -- Monday." Lunch at country club 1:00 p.m. with Glynnis Norwich. Leaves Wilkerson's law office in silver Jag at 7:28 p.m. Her cell phone gets call from Glynnis's cell, 7:40 p.m. Parks behind Garcia Nursing Home, 7:55 p.m. (witness at GNH). Her cell phone gets call from Glynnis's cell 7:59 p.m. She walks around to front of GNH and gets in taxi. Arrives at Wickworth Tower, 8:20 p.m. Gets out of cab (seen on video). Sean Kellem & Peaches McN come out of WT, direct Eileen to Lincoln Towncar. Sean, Peaches & Eileen get in 8:25 p.m.; Towncar leaves. Rory Castle says Sean and Peaches came to her house for visit 8:45-10:00 p.m. Eileen hit on head, stabbed. WHERE? Time of death: Dr. says 9:00-9:30 p.m. Greenskeeper finds Eileen's body on first hole, near CC restaurant, 10:06 p.m. One shoe found in parking lot of country club. Traces of blood and gold dust X Other shoe -- in vintage car garage at Rory's house; blood and gold dust X Gold dust X found on floormat of Eileen's silver Jag Mace explained that "gold dust X" referred to samples that matched each other. As he spoke he taped up another computer-generated list in large font under the name "PETER DELAMETER." In the list of facts known about Peter's disappearance and the discovery of his body, I noticed that he died of a blow to the head with a metal object and that flecks of gold were found in the head wound. His shoes and the floormat of his Jaguar showed signs of gold dust X. "You'll note that Helen McNamara and husband Buster Eckles have a ranch near the old mine," Mace said. "In addition, Ms. Wright and I found suspicious sparkling substance on their floor, and the lab shows that is also 'gold dust X.'" I remembered the question posed by F. Harrison Fitzpatrick, the last thing he said to me at the bar association banquet Wednesday night_. If I were a detective, I'd ask this question: Where was Helen McNamara that night?_ "Any questions so far?" Mace asked. Runner raised her hand. "What about the gold in the male victim's head wound?" "Good question," Mace answered. "It is not from the same source as the dust. It shows significant impurities. It will take a while before that report is complete." Estefan asked how far apart the scene of the Delameter murder was from the Hot Rocks Ranch. "Don't know. And that's a question we have to answer. Desi, I want you to find a judge this morning, take the preliminary tests on the gold dust and show we have probable connection between the ranch house and two murder victims. Get a warrant, get a horse trailer with two horses, and take four officers with you. Execute a search on the ranch and document the distance and time from the ranch to the abandoned mine by car, by horse, and by foot. Use the road and the most direct cross-country route. Collect samples of weeds and anything else that looks significant. Take a GPS. Officer Manyfarms?" "Yes, sir?" "I think I remember from your application that you know a lot about horses. Is that right?" "Yes, sir." "Good. You go with Detective Lake. Also, Officer Smythe, you'll be on the team." The halfback said, "Yes, sir." "I really appreciate Criminalists Williams and Yarnell volunteering to help with this. You'll be on Detective Lake's team." "Yes, Chief," they said in unison. Mace looked across the room to the window. "Take rain gear. I think you'd better get started now, there's a lot to do." Something occurred to me. "Chief?" "Yes?" "I'm wondering if Detective Lake could make an educated guess on where she and I found Sandy Jorgenson Thursday night and see how far that would be to the murder scene and to the ranch. The arroyo's got to be running now, but she could probably get a feel for the distance in the daylight." "Good idea." Desi nodded to Mace and her team of five walked to the window, where I could see her setting out the plan. "We have a lot of evidence," Mace went on, "but when it comes to motive, it's a crap shoot. In fact, craps may have a lot to do with the motive in the Delameter murder." He gave a quick rundown of Peter's whereabouts from the time of his "disappearance" from his house in Green Valley until his body was found. "I've seen the tapes at Caesar's and I've been promised a warrant tomorrow to hold onto them as evidence." He looked at the lists and scratched his chin. "Ms. Wright, we have Delameter's laptop computer and printer here. I want you to work with the department's best computer evidence guy, Sergeant Jermanski, to document everything you can. E-mail, financial matters, personal notes, faxes. Everything. The sergeant will be here at noon, after he takes his family to church. I think you have a civilian coming in, too, is that right?" "Yes, Chief. Conan Boyle is a CPA and law student who has taken an interest in some of the intrigue in the McNamara family. I think his help will be invaluable." "I will expect an invoice for his time. I don't like to go to court and be questioned about volunteers." "I understand." "Not that it has to be a big invoice, however." That got a laugh. "Okay, Detective Nguyen and Patrol Officer Fisher. Find John Jorgenson, bring him in for questioning." He went on to explain the relationship between Eileen, John, Sandy, and Trey McNamara. Mace looked at his watch. "Ving, do your best to find Jorgenson and get him in the building before eleven o'clock. If that's not possible, let it go for a while. I need you here to help me question Glynnis Norwich." He pointed to her name at the top of both lists. He nodded to the other two patrol officers. "Razinski and Sandoval, you're going to work here under my direction. We've got a lot of loose ends to tie off before we can even begin to guess who killed these two individuals." "Yes, sir," they both said. "Ms. Wright, I need motives. Okay, let's get busy. Leave these lists up all day so you get familiar with the cases. Add notes as you get information." "Chief," I said as Razinski and Sandoval took a closer look at the lists, "one quick question. What's this about 'Eileen's cell phone gets calls from Glynnis's cell, at 7:40 p.m. and again at 7:59'?" "The report of Glynnis's cell phone for the past seven days was slapped into my hand as I walked in this morning. I picked out what at first blush looks like the most important calls. Of course, I had to word it the way I did so we're not making assumptions and then building a house of cards on shaky ground." I saw what he was driving at. The phone bill records that a call was made and answered, number to a number. Could have been another person on either end. Or both ends. "That's going to make her visit here so interesting. I wish I could listen." "I need you on the computer junk. Use that little room beside evidence. After Conan leaves, I mean." He turned his attention to Razinski and Sandoval. I had a half-hour before Conan would show up, so I went to my desk and checked my messages. Two had come in on Saturday. Happy Delameter asked if we had any information about her husband's case yet. And Kemper Wilkerson said to please call him, that he had remembered something that Eileen was worried about Monday night. He left his home number. That call I returned immediately. As I waited for his phone message to tell me how important my call was, I reminded myself what a polished liar he was and how he had not contacted the police about Eileen's son, John Jorgenson, being her next of kin. When the beep followed "please leave a message," I said, "Kemper, this is Olivia, returning your call. Pick up, please." Then I waited. Sure enough, his real voice answered. To his cheerful, "How are you?" I gave a one-word answer, "Busy." He took the hint. "I'll get right to the point. As you know, the police questioned me around 11:00 p.m. Monday at my home. They'd found Eileen's body about ten and my business card was in the pocket of her skirt. I answered their questions, but I was groggy. They'd awakened me from a sound sleep. Also, I was shocked at the terrible news. I told them Eileen had been my client for some personal matters and that ninety percent of our contact had been by phone from her home in Los Angeles or from wherever she was on location for photographic work. But she happened to be in Las Vegas and she'd come to see me at my office. As I said, I was in a state of shock when they told me the news, thinking about how I'd talked to her -- " "What was Eileen worried about Monday night, Kemper?" "She had a simple will leaving her house in Los Angeles and her savings to her son, John Jorgenson. I'd drawn it up for her about five years ago. But she was worried that he'd gotten into trouble, gambling debts that might take every cent of her estate. So she wanted me to write a living trust for her that would supersede her will." "Had you done so?" "I was working on it, but a trust agreement isn't an instant print-out, fill in the blanks. I had to consult her on several points. I hoped to have it ready for her to sign on December tenth, two days ago. Then she got into a state of high anxiety and wanted it ready Tuesday the seventh." "When did she tell you to accelerate the work on the document?" He cleared his throat. "Monday morning about 8:00 a.m. She called my home, left her cell phone number and said she was on her way to Las Vegas, driving from Los Angeles. I called her back approximately half an hour later to see what she needed. It was, as you put it, to accelerate work on the trust agreement. Unfortunately, I had a full day of appointments scheduled for Monday, some with other attorneys and judges that couldn't be changed. I said for her to come to my office at 5:45 or six and I would try to have a draft. We could work on the draft and I'd stay as late as it took to have it ready Tuesday." _I'd stay as late as it took..._ One had to admire such dedication. Or rather, one would admire it if that one were not me. "Did something happen at your meeting with her, Monday evening, to make the Tuesday signing not so urgent? To take the time pressure off?" "Well, no. That didn't change. She was still in a state of high anxiety." "But you didn't stay late to work on it, did you?" "I don't understand -- " "Monday night. She left, I came in for my appointment, you took a call and arranged, with no apparent anxiety as to the time, to meet someone for dinner at 8:30. By 11:00 p.m. you were home in bed. How much time did you spend on the trust document Monday night?" "I don't think I like your tone, Olivia. And I certainly don't like or agree with your implication. I called you at the police department to help with the investigation, but I can see that was a waste of time. I know the district attorney personally and I'm going to call him about this." "I think that's an excellent idea, Kemper. He knows you are being questioned by police in a homicide, so I'm sure he'd be delighted to hear from you. He'll record your call and send it right over to the chief of the detective bureau, and we'll bring you in for questioning. You might want to start lining up a good attorney." "Olivia, what you have said is ludicrous. I'm trying to help you, and you throw accusations around. Now, I'm not going to call the district attorney," he said in a conciliatory tone. I couldn't resist. "Oh, thank you, Kemper. Thank you. I was so scared." He ignored my sarcasm. "I think John Jorgenson's gambling cronies, the people who wanted to collect on his debts, I think one or more of them killed Eileen before she could protect her assets from attachment." I resisted the urge to point out Eileen could have protected her assets if he'd worked faster. "How do you suppose anybody knew she was planning to protect her estate from John's gambling debts? Did John know?" "No. Eileen didn't want him to know about it until the trust was set up." "He would have been furious," I said. "Which makes me wonder, Kemper, how he could be your client? His mother was your client, and she was working to keep money out of his hands." "Not exactly. She was trying to keep money out of the hands of his debtors." "What did she think they'd do when they got stiffed? Laugh at their folly in lending money to him? Kemper, if I were the mother of a young man who'd run up -- how much? hundreds of thousands of dollars? -- in gambling debts, and I cut off his only way of paying those debts, I would know without a doubt I was signing his death certificate." "I know what you're saying," he sighed. "It's a mess." "So how could you not inform John Jorgenson, if he was your client?' His pause told me I'd found his Achilles' heel. "He was not my client prior to the death of Eileen Jorgenson. He hired me when I tracked him down and told him of his mother's death. He already knew by then. As he told you, he'd heard it on television." I thought of the fat retainer I'd paid Kemper Wilkerson, Esquire, up front, before he spent five minutes of his precious time working on my book contract with Clara Kellem. "Kemper, what the hell did he retain you with? A twenty-dollar chip from Caesar's Palace?" "That's confidential," he sniffed. I let that statement sit on the phone wire like a thirty-pound vulture. "If you have any specific theories on hit men working for gambling interests, anyone who might have fatally stabbed Eileen, I'd like to hear them. I'll take it for truth that you didn't tell John Jorgenson. More likely Eileen, or you, let it slip to someone else, or someone listened to her cell phone conversations. That would not be difficult." I saw Conan come in with a visitor badge on, waved to him, and ended my conversation with Kemper. "Let me get this note on the board, then I'm all yours." Conan followed me to the show-and-tell Mace had set up and read the lists as I wrote on the white board, in tiny letters: _EM plan -- sign trust Tuesday, keep her $$ away from John J's gambling debts. Killed to prevent signing trust? Did J.J. find out? Was EM's cell phone monitored?_ "Strange coincidence that Eileen was trying to sign a trust agreement," Conan said. "Why's that?" "Because Clara Kellem set up a trust in 1973. All four of her children live in houses paid for and owned by the Clara Kellem Revocable Living Trust. The Wickworth Towers is owned by the trust. And the trust also owns all the cars in the so-called Rory and David Kellem auto collection." I stared, open-mouthed in wonder. "How did you find that?" "You opened the door when you asked me to find out about Bartok Realty and its principals, Nicole Bartok Monte and her husband, Ed. I found out Bartok Realty handled all property purchases for the trust, purchases conducted on a strictly cash basis. Those people are in a world of trouble with the IRS." It's death _and_ taxes, I thought. It's not an either-or question. In fact, it's not a question at all. -------- *Twenty-nine* How could I ever have thought Conan Boyle was boring? I wondered about that as I took a two-minute bathroom break. I recalled the day I'd seen Conan at the office of Royale Catering with a printout of a time-and-motion study taped to every available vertical surface. He'd looked up at me, shoved his glasses back up to the bridge of his nose, and with the flair for adventure of, say, Austin Powers, he'd said, "I was born to crunch numbers." When he showed me the meticulous work he'd done on the two McNamara trusts, I said, "You are too young for me to marry, Conan, but I'd like to adopt you." "Flattering, I'm sure, but my admiration for Candace is such that I don't want to be her brother. If you get my drift." Again my mouth dropped open. I hauled it up like a drawbridge and said, "Let's get to work." Using the computer printer that handled big sheets of paper, the one Mace had used to print the Eileen McNamara and Peter Delameter lists, Conan printed out the McNamara family tree. Then he printed out how much money Clara's trust spent between 1973 and 1975. On houses for her four children and ten vintage autos, she'd spent a little over $1.5 million. She'd bought the Wickworth Tower for $1.1 million at a bankruptcy auction. "The land alone is worth more than that on today's market!" I said. "Your surprise at any of this tells me why Clara Kellem is rich and you're not." "Peter Delameter had a hand in my situation, but go on, I'm listening." Each of Clara's kids moved up to fancier houses as the city expanded and their gift homes increased in value. Bartok Realty handled everything. David and Rory Castle handled dozens of sales and trades of the original ten vintage autos, until they'd turned two hundred thousand into somewhere in the neighborhood of two million dollars worth of automobiles. "The ten cars you saw at Rory's house are only one-third of their collection. Well, a third in number, more than half in value." He taped up another sheet, a printout of autos registered to the Clara Kellem trust. "The Wickworth Tower has been an expensive property to maintain," he continued, "but compared to its value in the Las Vegas market today, she bought it for chump change." "But why was the trust so busy buying things from 1973 to 1975? That makes no sense to me." "Ask yourself, what happened in 1972?" He looked pretty smug, but I couldn't fault him for that. He'd accomplished miracles in information gathering in a few days. "1972?" I thought about it. "Trey McNamara died." "We have a winner, ladies and gentlemen! Trey died, and who handled his estate?" "I don't know, but Helen McNamara said his estate had almost nothing in it. Everything was tied up in the McNamara Centennial Trust." "And who handled the Centennial Trust?" he asked. "My understanding is that Michael T. McNamara left everything, through the trust, to Clara and her brother, Mike, and through them _per stirpes_ to their children. Since Mike died, his son Trey was Clara's partner in managing the trust." "Aha! But Trey died when his son and daughter were only eighteen and sixteen. And he left no widow, just two ex-wives. So his sister was his executrix, and she had sole control of the Centennial Trust until Mickey was twenty-one." "And you think Clara raided the Centennial Trust to set up her own trust? It has a certain mother-hen kind of charm. Why should her children each get one-eighth of the Centennial Trust while Mickey and Pegeen each got one-quarter share. Is that it?" "Especially since she was seventy years old in 1975 and Mickey was a snot-nosed kid of twenty-one. So she just did some equity equalization work while she had the keys to the treasure chest." "Treasure chest?" "I'm speaking figuratively," he said. "What about when Mickey was twenty-one and started sharing responsibility for the Centennial Trust? Wouldn't he have known that the assets had plunged?" "Apparently she was good at concealing the value all along." "How much do you think is in the Centennial Trust now?" I asked. "That's a big unknown. I can't see any way on earth it could have as much in it as Clara took out between 1973 and 1975. That was an astronomical amount of money at that time. Doing a search on real estate appraisals and real estate taxes, and a search for insurance on the antique and vintage cars, I come up with a value of the Clara Kellem trust at twenty-six million dollars. And that doesn't count what the Wickworth Tower is really worth today. It's possible if everything were liquidated today at absolutely top dollar, she'd be looking at one million dollars. Of course, she'd be looking at it over the shoulders of the IRS. So liquidation is not going to happen." "Thinking like a lawyer instead of a CPA, what do you think John Jorgenson stood to gain by proving he was the son of Trey McNamara?" "One-fourth of the Centennial Trust." "He wasn't acknowledged in Trey McNamara's will," I argued. "Doesn't matter. Any child of any child of any child of Michael T. McNamara, Senior, was an heir." "So would he have to prove by DNA testing that Trey fathered him?" "Lacking any incontrovertible documentation of the fact by Trey, yes. DNA it is." I saw Glynnis Norwich being escorted into the detective bureau by a uniformed officer. Mace came out to shake her hand and get her a cup of coffee. Eleven o'clock. And Sergeant Jermanski would be in sometime after noon to work with me on Peter Delameter's computer. "Conan, could you assemble this on my computer as a report? So I could give copies to Chief Emerick and the other detectives working the case?" "Sure. I've got the charts and a lot of the other stuff I printed on a disk. I'll put it on your computer and add notes on what we talked about." "You're a peach," I said. "Damn!" "Huh?' I sat down and lowered my voice. "A critical factor in the murder of Eileen McNamara is this: Eileen was seen Monday night getting into a limo with Sean Kellem, one of Clara's sons, and Peaches McNamara, the two-time ex-wife of Mickey McNamara. Peaches is romantically involved with Sean. In fact, his son Lyle told me she wants to become his stepmother. But I've been so involved in fifty other aspects of the case I haven't had time to find out something that we absolutely have to know. And you are just the person, through the miracle of your fingers on a computer keyboard, to find the answers." Conan grinned. "With a lead in like that, how could I say no? What do you absolutely have to know?" I took a deep breath. "I need to know: What kind of name is Peaches? What's her real name, her maiden name? And what the hell is she after?" -------- *Thirty* The room adjoining the interview room where Mace and Nguyen were about to question Glynnis Norwich had two rows of six chairs and a video camera in a metal sling, attached to the ceiling but only about seven feet above the floor. The lens was semi-permanently fixed on the interview room with the point of view of a professional basketball player, offering a big improvement over most of the taped interviews I'd seen. In those, the camera was so high you got about ten percent of facial expressions and you learned way more than you wanted to about male pattern baldness among police officers. Using the double door entrance to keep out light, I crept quietly into the second row of chairs behind two of Mace's detectives-in-training, Razinski and Sandoval. Four other detectives I knew slightly nodded to me. They'd apparently come into work, heard about the interview, and wanted to watch. Our room was supposedly soundproof, but I didn't want to test it, so I said nothing. Our purported reason to be watching through the special mirror was so the witness (or suspect, or whoever was in a recorded interview) wouldn't see us. My reason to be thankful for the anonymity of the mirror was that Mace couldn't see me. He'd made it ninety-nine percent clear that I had too much work to do to observe the interview with Glynnis. But in my book, that one percent was a wide margin. Glynnis looked like she needed a handy barf bag. Mace draped her raincoat over an extra chair off to the side and set a mug of coffee in front of each of them. Ving brought one in for himself. The message was clear: Get comfortable, Glynnis. We have all day. Mace started with easy questions, things we'd already asked her at the country club. When he got to how much contact she'd had with Eileen on Monday, the day of the murder, he cut to the chase. "Why did you call Eileen's cell phone at 7:40 p.m. and again at 7:59 p.m. Monday?" "What?" "Perhaps it's confusing to consider both calls at one time. Let's talk about the first call. You called Eileen on her cell phone at 7:40 p.m. You were using your cell phone to make the call. Does that help you recall? That was approximately one hundred minutes before Eileen was stabbed to death." Glynnis definitely needed a barf bag. To demonstrate his empathy, Mace rose, brought a wastebasket over to the table, and placed it strategically near Glynnis. He moved the box of facial tissues closer where she could reach it. "Please answer the question, Ms. Norwich. I have people out in the driving rain and mud getting answers, and the least I can do here in a clean, well-lighted place, is get answers, too. If you tell the truth, my answers and their answers will match. That would be a good thing. So, why did you call Eileen on her cell phone at 7:40 p.m. the evening of her murder?" "I asked her to meet me at the Garcia Nursing Home." She spoke too softly and he asked her to repeat her answer. She did. "Were you at the nursing home when you made the call?" "No." "Were you en route to the nursing home when you made the call?" "No." "Were you, in fact, en route to McCarran International Airport when you made the call?" "Yes." "You were catching a plane to Los Angeles?" "Yes." "Did you tell her you would meet her inside the nursing home?" "I don't know exactly. I guess so. I said I'd meet her." He thought about that. "You called her nineteen minutes later, roughly the time it would take her to drive from her first location, by that I mean where she was at 7:40, to Garcia Nursing Home. You probably thought she would get to the nursing home soon and that she would be looking for you. But you weren't there. So what did you tell Eileen McNamara at 7:59 p.m.?" She didn't answer. He repeated the question. "I told her something came up, that I was delayed. I said I'd sent a cab to the nursing home, that it was probably already there, and for her to tell the cab driver to take her to Wickworth Tower. I said Sean Kellem would meet us there." Mace nodded, as if he had expected the story she told. "This was Sean's idea, wasn't it? I can't see you leading Eileen around Las Vegas at night with some cloak and dagger story." "Yes. It was Sean's idea. He told me to do it and to get on a plane to Los Angeles. I had no knowledge of anything he planned to do, and I have no knowledge of anything that anybody did after I made the second phone call. I never, in my wildest dreams, thought anyone would hurt Eileen." "That somebody 'hurt Eileen' is a gross understatement," he said softly. "Approximately sixty minutes after your second phone call, a person or persons hit her on the head with a blunt object, fracturing her skull and rendering her unconscious. Approximately fifteen minutes later, a person or persons stabbed her in the chest with a serrated, six-inch knife and waited while about one-third of the blood in her body poured out through the open wound. Then the person moved her to the golf course and dumped her body like garbage on the grass. Why did Sean Kellem want Eileen delivered by taxi to Wickworth Tower?" "I don't know." "Ms. Norwich, I have a lot of experience with homicide. You don't. So I'll tell you something. Listen carefully, please." She looked up, holding a tissue over her mouth and nose. Her eyes were red and swollen. "You say you don't know what Sean Kellem was up to, that you don't know what he was planning to do once Eileen arrived at the Wickworth Tower. I believe you. But here's the thing. He had something on you, some power over you to get you to do his set-up work. And whether that was a little secret or a big, nasty secret that he knew about you, he set you up. And you Glynnis. She kept vomiting until all she had was the dry heaves. "I hate it when that happens," Razinski said. "Sucks to be her," Sandoval added. It was five minutes until noon. I couldn't stay any longer. Glynnis hadn't been asked yet about how she came to be spending Sunday night at Caesar's Palace with a man who was brutally murdered about twenty-four hours later. Sucks to be her, all right. Sucks even more to be her friend or lover. -------- *Thirty-one* Things started coming together around the time the lightning storm hit, about five o'clock. At first, that seemed like a good thing. Somebody asked me later to describe the events of that night and the next morning, and the analogy that popped into my mind was canoeing. We had followed the clues-that-might-be-facts in the two murders downstream, but we'd unknowingly veered off into a swamp. The only way to get back in the river was to paddle upstream as far as we could row, and then portage across a sandbar to the true riverbed. We'd managed that, and just had time to feel that we were running with the current, a great feeling, when we saw that the canyon narrowed, and we heard roaring and booming up ahead. And somebody said, _Oh shit, it's a waterfall._ I'd made a quick trip to Clara's apartment and got back at 3:45, before the rain hit. All the way I'd watched black clouds build ominously along the western rim of the valley. Desi and her crew got back at four, soaked to the skin and smelling like horse sweat and fresh manure. Anyone who didn't really need to work Sunday night said, "Well, let's call it a day," and made for the doors. And anyone who needed to work, but had an option of where to do it, followed them out. In minutes we were down to Mace, Ving, Desi, two criminalists, five patrol officers, Conan Boyle, who was beginning to feel at home, and me. As if nature had just been toying with us before, there was a flash of lightning and two seconds later a resounding crack of thunder, and hail the size of Cocoa Puffs poured out of the sky. Williams held up his hands in supplication and cried out in a high, squeaky voice, "Why, Lord, why?" And Yarnell boomed the punch line, "Because ... You piss me off!" "Well," Mace said, "the good news is we don't have to share the pizza with the guys who just took off. Razinski, Sandoval, your mission is the retrieve the pizza at the front desk before anybody pulls the old 'gotta do a search' routine.' As soon as we eat, it's dog and pony time." "Please, no ponies," Desi said. "I'll never walk again as it is." "Manyfarms," Mace said, "I've heard of your exploits on your noble steed, and I'm recommending you for a field commission in the cavalry." "Uh, thank you, sir." While we fought good-naturedly over the pizza, we made no mention of the two murder cases that had brought us together on a cold and nasty Sunday evening. But the cases were all we thought about. Ving got a black garbage bag and collected the detritus of our meal. Conan wiped his hands thoroughly on napkins and set up his laptop on a side of the room close to an electrical outlet and a phone jack. He'd told me on our way into the room that he had some ideas he wanted to keep working on. Mace had moved the white boards apart and rigged up a wire between them, enduring the predictable jibes about airing his dirty laundry in public, and don't they pay him enough to buy a dryer, and let's hang a sheet over the wire and show movies. Mace crossed his arms and faced us. "It's time for oral reports, boys and girls, and you will be graded on presentation, so let's zip those flies and speak up. Desi?" Desi stood and shuffled to the front, trying not to let the inside of her legs touch each other. She nodded at Mace as he took a seat. "Jerry Smythe has drawn a large sketch of the area we investigated. Jerry?" Smythe tore some sheets out of an easel-size pad and brought them up. Using strips of tape like clothespins, he hung his sketches for display. "Why don't you point while I explain this, Jerry?" "What we've got here," Desi continued, "is a map to the Hot Rocks Ranch, home of Buster Eckles and Helen McNamara, and a map to the abandoned mine where the male homicide victim was found. Off the map on your right is Interstate 15. This straight line going almost due west is Highway 160. It's called Blue Diamond Road as far as the intersection with Highway 159." She pointed to a spot where a road snaked north from Highway 160. "From this intersection the name Blue Diamond Road goes to Highway 159, which goes to Spring Mountain State Park, Blue Diamond, and Red Rocks Canyon Park, all of them tucked up against the east-facing slopes of the Spring Mountains." She cleared her throat. "But never mind that area north of 160. Continuing west on 160, it's 2.5 miles to Mountain Springs Summit, elevation 5,493 feet. It's another 6.1 miles to Hot Rocks Ranch, for a total distance of 8.6 miles." She took a drink of soda and continued. "Go back to the summit. Right here, one-tenth of a mile shy of the summit, on the east side, is a narrow two-lane road designated Highway 161. It goes south to the community of Goodsprings, then on to join I-15 at the town of Jean. We took 161 south from 160 a distance of 1.9 miles, turned right -- that would be west -- on a dirt road that has been properly designated a bitch -- and wound up the hills. Our road distance was a hair less than four miles. Actual distance by GPS is 3.1 miles." Denny Fisher asked about time for the distance. "On the dirt road? Twenty minutes in the rain with a horse trailer. Not the ideal way to travel. Now, you see that by driving west from Highway 161, we were heading in the general direction of Hot Rocks Ranch. We took GPS readings at both locations." Jerry drew a dotted line from MINE to RANCH. The map now looked like a trapezoid. Desi went on. "It's 3.5 true miles between the two points, but we figured it was twice that far on the rough terrain by horseback." "You've got the topo maps?" Mace asked Denny. "Yes, sir. Right here in this tube." "What else can you tell us?" Mace probed. "There was a lot of horse traffic between Hot Rocks Ranch and the mine," Desi said. "Even in the rain we could see horseshoe tracks in some places and lots of manure, some very old, some more recent." "Thanks. Good report," Mace said. "Have a seat." Desi walked to an armchair off to the side and tried to sit, but had to settle for lowering her butt onto the chair with her weight on her arms, knees slightly bent, and then stretching both legs out so they wouldn't touch. Somebody behind me, I think it was Yarnell, said Desi deserved a medal for valor, "the Purple Thigh." "We've got a lot of ground to cover, literally and figuratively," Mace said. "Desi, did you see and talk to anyone at either location?" "Yes, Chief. Buster Eckles and his wife, Helen McNamara, both aged seventy-four, met us at the door of the ranch house. We produced our search warrant and went inside. Williams and Yarnell took samples of suspicious shiny dust in a dozen locations of the house. Williams?" "Chief, the dust was particularly prevalent around a large oak window seat. We got Mr. Eckles to move the piles of newspapers and magazines off the seat so we could open it. There were five blankets, each in a plastic bag and tied closed. That was all. We took the blankets out, photographed the window seat open and closed, and took samples of dust inside and in front of it. It had the characteristics of the gold dust we have been seeing on shoes and floor mats in the two homicide cases." "Anything else?" Desi shook her head. "All right, then, let's move on. Ving, let's hear how your interview with John Jorgenson went." "Sure, Chief." Ving took a drink of his Dr. Pepper and stepped up to the front. He passed around six eight-by-ten photos of John taken that afternoon in the interview room. They were snapshots done from several angles, with him standing and sitting. In one shot John stood next to Ving, so we could judge his height and weight. He began with the basics, John Jorgenson's age, birth mother, adoption by Eileen. He said John was unemployed, a frequent Vegas gambler, and deeply in debt to the casinos. "I'll skip over the fifty-five minutes of lies he told us and get to the five minutes of truth. Times are approximate." He cleared his throat. "John Jorgenson flew to Las Vegas from LAX on Southwest Airlines on Sunday, December fifth. At approximately 2:00 p.m. he checked into the Starry Skies Motel five blocks east of the Strip, and slept the rest of the day. At 10:00 p.m. he walked to a bar in that neighborhood and had three or four beers. At midnight he walked to Caesar's Palace where he met Peter Delameter (an individual he already knew) and played craps until about 4:00 a.m. Peter helped him get a line of credit. During that time, a woman he knew as Glynnis (no last name) came to Caesar's and tried to get Peter to stop gambling. When Peter and Glynnis checked into a room at Caesar's, Mr. Jorgenson went back to the Starry Skies Motel and slept until noon. "At 2:00 p.m. Monday he returned to Caesar's to sit in the Sports Book and drink beer until 4:00 p.m. At that time, his mother, Eileen McNamara, arrived and confronted him about his gambling. They had an argument. She said 'bad things' about Peter Delameter. She told John she'd bought him a ticket on Southwest Airlines to go back to Los Angeles, departing at 7:00p.m., that he could get the itinerary he would need at the airport, and she gave him thirty dollars for taxi fare and a meal. She left Caesar's Palace about 4:30 p.m." He paused to write 4:30 on the white board. "Instead of going to the airport, he stayed at Caesar's and played craps. While he was at the table, Peter Delameter joined him. About 6:00 p.m. Peter was paged and left the game. He did not return. "Jorgenson played another hour, went to the Sports Book for another hour, drank more beer, and went to his motel around nine to sleep. The next day, Tuesday, he heard on television that Eileen McNamara had been murdered the night before, and he took a flight to Los Angeles. On Friday, December tenth, he heard that Peter Delameter's body had been found, and he returned to Las Vegas, going directly to the office of his mother's attorney, Kemper Wilkerson, where he met Detective Lake and Ms. Wright. "As you know, Chief Emerick has been in touch with security at Caesar's Palace, and we checked with them regarding Mr. Jorgenson's story. A woman matching Eileen McNamara's description was seen in the Sports Book between 4:00 and 5:00 p.m. Peter Delameter was, in fact, paged to a phone call at ten minutes after six, then he left Caesar's. He went outside and got in a dark Camaro, seen on surveillance camera, but fuzzy. Mr. Jorgenson left the casino at 8:30 p.m., also seen on camera." Ving looked around the room to be sure we were listening. "Jorgenson has no solid alibi for the time Eileen McNamara was murdered." Mace stood again. "Olivia, please give us a very quick rundown on your phone conversation with Kemper Wilkerson." I stood and raced through the pertinent points of Kemper's story, that Eileen had wanted Kemper to write a living trust for her that would supersede her will. She called him Monday, 8:00 a.m., from her cell phone, saying she was driving to Las Vegas at that time, and she wanted the trust ready for her signature on Tuesday, December seventh. He couldn't do it that fast. She drove her gray Jaguar to his office that evening (exact time unknown) and left there at 7:28. I looked at my notes and added, "Kemper's theory is that the gaming concerns, possibly illegal entities, wanted Eileen killed before she could sign the trust and stop their cash cow, namely John Jorgenson's inheritance from his mother, from paying out. He didn't tell anyone about the will and the trust, but someone could have found out." Conan looked from his laptop and nodded. He had been doing something on the computer throughout all the reports, but I felt sure he hadn't missed a thing. I sat down and Mace took my place. "Glynnis Norwich gave us a statement today." He gave a thumbnail sketch of who she was and how she was connected to the two cases. Since I'd had to leave the viewing room less than halfway through her interview, I was eager to hear what she'd finally said. "Glynnis was Peter Delameter's lover for the past six months. The affair began when he was a big player in the investment world. You're probably all aware of the history of that fiasco and how many millions he ripped off from investors. One of those investors was Glynnis herself. She entrusted her mother's estate, worth approximately one million dollars, to Delameter, who lost the money, probably gambling. Glynnis's mother is in a nursing home with Alzheimer's and needs expensive care for the remainder of her life, which could be a long time. Glynnis now has no way to pay for her mother's medical care, and she is extremely distraught. She hated Delameter for what he'd done to her and her mother." He looked at his notes. "Glynnis had lunch with Eileen McNamara on Monday at Queen's Canyon Country Club. According to Glynnis, Eileen said that when she arrived in Las Vegas, late that morning, she had gone directly to Kellem Holdings and confronted Sean Kellem about her son's paternity. She said that she did not have to rely on DNA tests, as she had a document signed by Trey McNamara, a legal adoption paper. Whether John was Trey's biological son or not, the adoption made John Jorgenson Trey's son, and as such he was entitled to one-quarter of the McNamara Centennial Trust. "Eileen went on to tell Glynnis that she knew it took two keys to access 'the box in the bank,' and that she had a copy of Trey's key, a copy she'd made without his knowledge when she was married to him. Eileen said she was sure Sean Kellem had Clara's key, that he had been handling Clara's side of the Centennial Trust for several years. I need to add here that if Eileen knew that for a fact, it's not clear how she knew. Perhaps it was a guess, or perhaps it was widely known." He took a drink of coffee. "Continuing with Glynnis's story about what Eileen told her, Eileen tried to make a deal with Sean Kellem to get some of John Jorgenson's share from 'the box in the bank' early so she could protect it within a trust she was drawing up. In return, she would not make a claim at the time the trust was actually distributed. Her reasoning was that gambling interests were lending her son huge sums of money because they had found out (through John himself) that he was an heir to a big fortune. So they would take all his money as soon as he inherited it. That's why she wanted it protected under her trust agreement. "At that point, Sean Kellem revealed that Peter Delameter was one of the people who had learned about the Centennial Trust thanks to the big mouth of Eileen's son, and that Delameter was actively blackmailing Sean over the tax ramifications of the trust. Apparently the McNamara family would owe the federal government tens of millions of dollars in taxes and penalties if their shenanigans were made known, and there could even be prison time involved. "Sean Kellem said he had to think over Eileen's request for some cash and gold from the box in the bank and he would meet her sometime that evening. "Since Delameter's public disclosure of the Centennial Trust could wipe out the money Eileen expected her son to receive, she hated Delameter, too." Mace paused to be sure he had everyone's attention, but he needn't have bothered. We were spellbound. "Over their sandwiches, the two women hatched a plan to kill Peter Delameter." Again he looked at his notes. "Monday afternoon after Eileen and Glynnis went their own ways, Sean Kellem called Glynnis and said he had to see her immediately. She went to Kellem Holdings. He had placed a listening device in the pocket of Eileen's coat when she came that morning, and he knew every detail of their plan to murder Peter Delameter. "Sean threatens to reveal her involvement unless she does what he tells her to do. If she does go along, he'll see that she has an ironclad alibi for Peter's death." He paused to let that sink in, then continued. "What Sean required Glynnis to do was to call Eileen and get her to meet her at the Garcia Nursing Home, then to call again and tell Eileen to leave her car there at the nursing home and take the taxi out front. Glynnis made the two calls from the airport and got on a plane to Los Angeles. She was shocked to hear the next day that Eileen had been murdered. She swears she had no knowledge of any plot to harm Eileen McNamara. She stayed in Los Angeles, with strong alibis for every hour of every day, until early Friday morning. When she heard on television that Peter Delameter's body was found, she came back to Las Vegas. That morning she was at Garcia Nursing Home when Desi and Olivia came to call. Beyond the vague plan she and Eileen cooked up to kill Delameter, she has no knowledge of who killed him, where, or why." "Chief?" Ving asked. "What about Delameter's wife? She says he left Sunday night and she reported him missing Thursday about noon. She had a motive to kill him, as well." "Go on." "If she found out about his affair with Glynnis, she might have reacted with jealous rage. Then there's always possible rage over the financial bind they were in. His legal defense would probably take every penny they had. Then there's the old standby motive. We need to find out if she expected to get an insurance settlement if he died." "Good point. Let's keep that up here on the board, too," Mace said. We took a ten-minute break and Conan set up his laptop and a portable home movie screen for a Power Point presentation. He proceeded to give everyone a quick look at the information he'd dug up on the Centennial Trust and Clara's clever diversion of capital from 1973 to 1975 to form her Clara McNamara Living Trust, all for the benefit of her side of the McNamara family instead of her late brother's side. The Centennial Trust address hadn't changed over the many years of its existence, but the name of the bank at that address had changed six times. Michael T. McNamara's name was on the cornerstone of the original building as a charter member and director of "First Industrial and Mining Bank of Las Vegas." "Essentially," Conan explained, "the bank was a massive vault, and the bank building was built, torn down, rebuilt, expanded, modernized, and rebuilt, and the name of the institution changed every time it was bought out or merged, but the vault stayed put. Other, more modern vaults were added, too. We think Michael McNamara, Clara's father, had a very large box in the vault from the first day the bank opened, and that the cash and gold in it were what he used to buy land over a period of years and build his fortune." I added what I'd learned from my visit to Clara that afternoon, that she'd insisted Sean Kellem and Mickey McNamara take her to the bank Friday afternoon to look in the box. "The two of them, as representatives of the two sides of the family, have the only keys," I said. "Or, at least, she thinks those are the only keys. It's possible, as Mace said, that Eileen McNamara managed to copy Trey's key, the one that is now Mickey's key. Anyway, the box is empty. There is no longer any cash or gold in the McNamara Centennial Trust. Mickey was furious. He can't prove that his great-aunt Clara took something from the box before he was twenty-one, that would be during the three years she managed Trey's estate and had both keys, but he knew there was a lot in the box last time he looked. So somebody has taken gold and cash out of the box in the last six months. "The bank manager produced the record of who has signed in to access the box. It was always two people at a time, for the last ten years always Sean and Mickey together. Until December first, eleven days ago. Sean signed in alone and left carrying two very large and obviously very heavy briefcases. The manager recalled an 'older woman' waiting for him outside the gated area. She took one of the briefcases and the two of them left the building." I paused to let that sink in. "Clara told me today that she's been trying and trying to think who the older woman could be. If the manager said just 'a woman,' she would have bet it was Peaches. 'Sean and Peaches are thicker than thieves,' is how Clara put it. Her best guess was Eileen, although I don't think anyone over twenty-five would describe her as an 'older woman.'" "How old was the bank manager?" Desi asked dryly. "Good point. I'll have to find that out. We'll go see him tomorrow and get a detailed description. We'll take a photo of Eileen, too." Conan said, "I've got some things to add here, some things I've tracked down today thanks to the wonder of the Internet and access to public records. I may have accidentally strayed to some personal records, but let's skip over that for the time being." He advanced his presentation to a screen with one word. PEACHES. "Who is Peaches McNamara? I would love to give you the long version, maybe add some background music and graphics, but it's almost midnight. So here's the condensed-soup version. "Peaches McNamara was born Veronica Vaughan in 1964 in Las Vegas. She was born to Vivian Vaughan, an unmarried woman. Father was listed on the birth certificate as Robert Ecklestein." "Buster!" I shouted, then apologized for my interruption. "Yes, her father was the man now known as Buster Eckles, husband of Helen McNamara, ex-wife of the late Trey McNamara." "The older woman!" I shouted again. "What?" Mace asked. "Helen could be the older woman who went to the bank with Sean. He needed two keys, remember, and if Eileen could make a copy of Trey's key while she was married to him, why couldn't Helen have done the same?" Mace nodded. "Not bad. Let's put that on the board with a question mark." "Side note of interest I'll just slip in here," Conan said. "Veronica, a.k.a. Peaches, McNamara and Sean Kellem were married at Las Vegas City Hall on December first." "Were Peaches and her father on good terms?" I asked. "And would she have had reason to cooperate with her father and his wife?" Conan shrugged. "I can't answer that. But we know Sean had to have an accomplice, somebody with Mickey's key or a duplicate." My cell phone rang. It was Candace. "Mom?" She sounded frantic. "I'm at Clara Kellem's place, at the Wickworth, with Louis. Clara had a heart attack, at least that's what it looks like, and paramedics are taking her to the hospital right now." I asked which hospital and said I'd meet them there. "Candace, wait. Who was with her when it happened?" "That's what we can't understand, Mom. She keeps saying, 'It was Helen!' over and over. As far as we can tell, Sean came for an hour, left by ten o'clock and Clara went to bed. It was Pug who called 911. We were here only because I had to pick up my beige evening dress at your place. You picked it up for me, remember?" "Yes. And then I kept forgetting to give it to you." "We were in the lobby, ready to leave, when the ambulance pulled up." "I'll see you in a few minutes. Candace, you be sure Louis rides in the ambulance with his grandmother! She needs her family now." I wondered how much her family had done to put her in the state she was in, but the words were still true. She needed her family. -------- *Thirty-two* Mace sent everyone home to get some sleep for what little remained of the night, with the proviso that they'd be back at 7:00 a.m. Monday, then he and I went to Valley Medical Center. The only people in the waiting room, besides Candace and Louis Castle, were his mother, Rory Castle, and her cousin, Nicole Monte. They both looked at me with disdain and went back to their magazines. What was it Sean Kellem had said to me when I met him at the steakhouse at the Stardust? "My mother told me how much she's enjoying your attention to her little project." Was that how the whole family saw the book I was writing? As Clara's "little project"? At least Louis and Candace were glad I'd come. We went to a coffee machine on another floor and they told me all they knew, which wasn't any more than Candace told me over the phone. Clara seemed to be having chest pains, Pug called for paramedics, and Louis and Candace heard her saying, over and over, "It was Helen!" Mace found us and chatted with Louis about Clara, then the two of us found a quiet spot to sit and talk. Louis and Candace rejoined his mother and aunt. "I'm having chest pains myself," I said, "but it's not my heart. I recognize an anxiety attack when I have one." "What are you so anxious about?" "I can't help but feel we're missing something, and that we don't have time to waste." We sat quietly, holding hands but each miles away, going over the clues we'd just spent so many man-hours extracting and assimilating. "Peaches is Sean's wife," Mace said. "And she's Buster's daughter." "There was gold dust in Buster and Helen's ranch house." "And gold dust on the shoes of both murder victims," I added. "I can believe that Sean wanted Eileen dead," Mace said slowly. "While she was playing Let's Make a Deal and waving her copy of Trey's key around, he already knew the box in the vault was empty. It had probably been empty since he and an 'older woman' made a visit to the bank on December first." "His wedding day. Maybe it was a wedding present." "Maybe it was a quid pro quo." He rubbed the scratchy beard that had appeared since he'd shaved -- how long ago? Almost twenty hours ago. "Well," I said slowly, "I can believe Sean wanted Peter dead." "Everybody wanted Peter dead," Mace said. "Well, yes, that's true. But I have an ironclad alibi." "Which is?" "I can't think of it right now, but if you'll tell me again the time of Peter's death, I'll prove I was somewhere else." "Based on the fly larvae, temperature, etc., Dr. Rodgers says Peter died Monday between 6:00 and 11:00 p.m. He was hit on the head with a sharp metallic object made of gold, lead, and trace impurities. Whoever did it hit him three separate times, each blow fracturing the skull, and the third one penetrating into brain tissue and killing him." "Oh, yeah. I've got alibis galore. And Eileen is off the hook. She was being struck in the head and stabbed between nine and nine-thirty. Too far to travel in the available time." "Okay, Eileen didn't do it, but someone else, a single individual, could have killed both of them." "It's possible. Instead of calling him (or her) a serial killer, I guess it would be a 'sequential killer.' Who do you like for it? Glynnis?" "Nah. Glynnis would have thrown up at a murder scene. She would throw up at a picture of a murder scene." "John Jorgenson?" "Maybe. He certainly stood to gain from Eileen's death." "We've got to find out where Sandy was Monday night." "True. But here's something that keeps bothering me. Who drove the black Lincoln Towncar from Wickworth Tower to Rory Castle's house? And did Eileen go inside with Sean and Peaches? Or did she wait in the car?" "Or did she go into the garage to see the fancy cars and drop a denim shoe when someone hit her in the head?" "Someone meaning Sean, or Peaches, or Rory, or someone else they don't say was there that night." He yawned. "Or someone who had driven her there and who was ready to take her limp body away?" He thought about that. "We can't tell on the grainy tape, outside in poor light, who was in the Towncar. Just that Eileen got out of a cab, and Sean and Peaches came outside and steered her to the limo." "I don't think Sandy or John figure into this scenario." I thought some more and sat up straighter. "But speaking of Sandy, she says Jack Basset was the man who lured her and Harley out to the far west side of town on Wednesday night. And Basset's face looks very much like someone hit him with a chain. Okay, then. He's my choice for limo driver and murderer of Eileen." He cocked his head to one side. "What about Peter Delameter?" I gave a theatrical sigh. "Do I have to solve all the murders in Clark County by myself?" "I don't think Desi, who rode her legs raw to measure the distance between Buster's ranch and the mine, would agree that you're working alone." "Okay, I'll admit I've had some help. Maybe Peter committed suicide." "By hitting himself in the head three times?" "It was a crime of passion. Let's go see how Clara is doing." I must have swayed a little as I stood. "Hey, are you all right?" "I'm fine. Tired, but who isn't?" When we got to the waiting room, Candace met us at the door. "Mom, Clara wants to talk to you." I thought nothing Clara did would surprise me, but that did. "How is she doing? What does the doctor say?" "He said they'll keep her comfortable tonight and run tests tomorrow. What they always say. Just tell the nurse at the big desk inside the double doors that the doctor said you could go in for ten minutes." Clara looked a lot worse than I expected her to. She had an IV tube in, of course, but the plastic tubing that carries oxygen looked so end stage to me. She made a gentle patting motion beside her and I walked up close to the bed. "Clara, I'm so sorry to hear about your heart. The doctors here will take good care of you." She waved her hand, clearly annoyed with me. "Helen is getting away. Stop her!" "Where is she going?" She tried to talk, but had to catch her breath. "Helen and Buster are taking my father's gold and cash. They're going to Mexico! Stop them!" "Clara, I'm trying to find out who killed Eileen and who killed Peter Delameter. Did Helen and Buster have anything to do with murder?" She inhaled slowly and exhaled even more slowly. Then she shrugged, a minimalist shrug that was all in her eyes and one hand turned up in a _Who knows?_ kind of gesture. "Sean is going to the ranch. I'm afraid..." Another long pause for inhale, exhale, and inhale enough breath to carry her words. "They will kill him. They only want the money. Stop Helen!" she pleaded. "Do you think they're leaving tonight?" She nodded as vigorously as she could, which wasn't much. "Tonight. Yes." "Are they driving to Mexico?" My thoughts darted ahead to calling the Border Patrol at Nogales. "No. Buster has a plane." "Ma'am," the nurse said to me, "Mrs. Kellem has to rest now. You can come back in the morning." Clara skewered me with her eyes and said one more time, "Stop them!" In the waiting room I said a few words to Louis and kissed Candace on the cheek. "Mace, we have to go." I tugged on his arm for emphasis. On our way to the car I told him what Clara had said. Standing by the car, Mace reached in to get his radio microphone. "Dispatch, this is Chief Emerick. What detectives are on tonight?" He listened to the response and shook his head. "Call Detectives Ving Nguyen and Desi Lake. Tell them I said, 'Suit up for the big game and drive to the entrance to Hot Rocks Ranch.' Have them call me when they're rolling. Activate the SWAT. I'll call you back in five minutes with directions. One more thing, get hold of Officer Quickrunner Manyfarms. Tell her to get out here immediately, vest and all. Ten-four." He unlocked the trunk and put on a bulletproof vest, checked his shotgun, and said, "You can ride along, but you're not getting out of the car. If you have a problem with that, get a cab." "What the hell are you talking about?" "You are not certified with a weapon, Olivia. Even with that purse ballast you call a gun. Damn thing wouldn't stop a housecat at fifty yards. I want you to come because I need you on the radio. But if you get out of the car, your presence could cost an officer his life. Do you understand? Totally?" He was right. He knew it, I knew it. But I could make a difference as support for the team. "I'm in. Your rules." "Wear this." He tossed me a vest so heavy it almost knocked me over. He strapped on a wide webbed belt, shoved a magazine in his Glock pistol and seated it in a hip holster, and strapped extra magazines onto his belt in black nylon holders. Another belt was ready to wear with thermal imaging goggles, night vision goggles, binoculars, two knives in sheaths, and more bullets in cartridges. He strapped it on below the first belt and made sure his gun was accessible. In less than five minutes, we were rolling. I had the map ready to give directions to the SWAT commander. Mace talked to Lieutenant Bergauer and explained what we might find. "The trouble is, Lieutenant, we don't know how long a lead these people have. They could have cleared the ranch, driven to the airport, and rented a jet for all we know. Or they could be packing gold into suitcases while one, or more, victim lies bleeding. I'm going to put Olivia Wright on to give you road directions. Detective Desi Lake will be on board any minute and she's got the handheld GPS she used out there today." "Lieutenant? This is Olivia Wright." I read off the directions and described the ranch, the driveway, the front yard, where the stables sat in relation to the house. "Detective Lake will have the layout of the house." We signed off for the time being. I'd just set the mike in its holder when the radio crackled. "Chief, this is Dispatch." "Go ahead," Mace said. "We have a 911 call from a female, location Hot Rocks Ranch. Hold on, please." We said nothing as we pulled onto I-15 southbound. Mace stuck the bubble light on top of the car and hit the siren. "Chief, the female says her husband has been shot inside the ranch house. Male victim, Mickey McNamara. Then the female screamed and that's all. The call was terminated at her end. We have rescue rolling." "Dispatch, I don't want paramedics going in until the SWAT team says it's safe. Have the ambulance wait on Highway 160 at the entrance to Hot Rocks Ranch. Did you copy our directions to the SWAT?" "Yes, sir. We've got the location." I looked at my watch. In a few minutes it would be 3:00 a.m. "Ten-four." To me he said, "Plan A is to stop them at the ranch. If we're too late, Plan B is to stop them before they get airborne. I've got some sectionals in a web bag behind your seat. Find the airfields. I don't think they'll head for McCarran or Henderson." "We have to know where he keeps his plane." I undid my seatbelt, took a flashlight out of the glove compartment, and corkscrewed around to sort through an unholy assortment of maps. "What does it look like?" "It'll say Las Vegas Sectional Aeronautical Chart. It's just a folded map, shades of brown." "I got it." I turned around, put my belt back on, and refolded the map, looking for Las Vegas so I could get my bearings. The paper was about two feet wide and almost five feet long, with a map on both sides. "Okay, here's Vegas. It's a yellow blob surrounded by circles that make it look like a target." Within the farthest ring was Mount Potosi RCO at the eight o'clock position. "What's RCO?" "Remote Control Outlet. Has it got a frequency?" "It says 122.35 Reno" "That's the frequency. First call Dispatch and get them looking for airplane registration to Buster -- what's his real name? -- and see if they can tell us where he keeps it. Then get them to find the phone number for Reno Air Traffic Control and see if I can talk to them on my radio." "Hold that thought. I'll get Dispatch." I took care of that, then told Mace to go on. "Now, look for airfields. They'll be purple circles, solid purple with a dash for the runway if it's paved, purple circle around an R if it's private." I had to blink to focus on the tiny print as we drove. I used the flashlight instead of an overhead since it got more light where I needed it. "Okay, I'm looking in every direction from Hot Rocks Ranch. I see Calvada Meadows, it has a private strip and the kind you said means paved." I checked the legend for distance. "It's about twenty-five nautical miles northwest. There's both private and paved at Heritage, about twelve nautical miles due south. No, the private one is called Heritage. The paved, public one is called Sky Ranch. What's a purple circle with nothing inside it?" "A dirt field, or grass." "There's one of those about ten miles due west of Hot Rocks. It looks like it would be easier to drive to. It says Ranch." "Anything else?" "Here's one at Jean. It has two paved runways and it's public. It would be about ten miles on the ground east to the Goodsprings Highway turnoff, then maybe twenty more miles." A call back from dispatch told us Jean was the most likely field. Robert Eckles had a Cessna 206, and he kept it in a hangar at Jean. Dispatch had reached Reno ATF and said Eckles had not filed a flight plan with them. The weather was for level three thunderstorms until 3:00 a.m., strong cells south of Las Vegas, then gradual clearing from the west. "Ask Dispatch to fax us the specs on the Cessna 206 and find somebody we can talk to if necessary." He looked in his rearview mirror. "We're leading a parade." I scrunched down in my seat to see in my side-view mirror. Funny how flashing red lights behind us was a comforting sight. We were first to the ranch driveway. The gate stood open. Cutting all our lights, we banged and bounced down the dirt road and came to a stop about forty yards short of the wide front porch. The place was totally dark. Even the light on the phone pole was out. Also without lights to protect their drivers' night vision, four cars came to a fast stop in the mud behind us. "Chief, this is Dispatch." "Go ahead." "Officer Manyfarms said to tell you she's on her way in her private vehicle. ETA five minutes." "Thanks, Dispatch, good job." To me he added, "What does the woman do, sleep in her uniform?" "For once you got lucky. She lives in Blue Diamond." He took over the radio, working strategy with Lieutenant Bergauer and his SWAT people. "Sit tight, Chief," Bergauer said. "My people are moving into position now." "I hate to 'sit tight,'" Mace snarled to me. "I always want to be the first one to jump out of a helicopter, guns hot." I stifled a laugh, but noticed I was shivering, and I wasn't particularly cold. Bergauer hailed the house on his megaphone, called for everyone inside to come onto the porch, hands in the air, and nobody would get hurt. "We have the house surrounded." "That's my favorite thing to say!" Mace fumed. "'Hands in the air, we've got you surrounded.' What the hell am I doing as a chief if I don't get to say 'hands in the air'? Huh?" "I think you have control issues to address, Mace. Can we talk about this later?" He rolled his window down and we sat in silence. A minute went by. Bergauer repeated his everybody out speech and we waited again. "Leader," said a low voice on the shared radio channel, "this is D1 and D2. We're on the back porch. I see two thermal sources in this area of the house. No sound." "Roger that, D. A, B, and C, move up and report." "Chief Emerick, this is Dispatch." "Go ahead." "Be advised, Detective Lake and Officer Manyfarms have arrived at your scene. They are parked behind the SWAT cars. And the ambulance is on Highway 160, outside the entrance to your scene." "Roger, Dispatch. Direct Lake and Manyfarms to our frequency." "Roger, Chief." "Leader, this is A1 and A2. No thermals this end." B team and C team reported the same. "D1, go in with night goggles on. D2, no goggles. Everybody else stand by." Two clicks on the mike was the only reply. "Why only one with goggles?" I whispered. "Image intensifiers are great in the dark, but if somebody flips a switch, the sudden light will bloom and temporarily blind the officer. His backup will still be able to see." "Leader, D2. We found two individuals. The female is tied up. Male is lying on floor, not conscious." I held my breath. The next sound we heard was a woman scream. "Leader, D1. It's okay. The female hates to have duct tape removed in a hurry." A pause, then, "She says they are alone in the house. Goggles off. I'm turning the lights on. One, two, three." "What is the condition of the male?" Bergauer asked. "Leader, D2 here. He has a gunshot wound to the upper left shoulder. He is breathing but unconscious and shocky. The female says he is her husband, Mickey McNamara." "EMT's are on the way in," Bergauer responded. "Find out where the shooter or shooters went." "Roger, Leader." A pause. "Female Suzi McNamara says three individuals left on horses about twenty minutes ago. Two females, one male. She says they said, 'Buster's at the mine.'" "Lieutenant," Mace burst in on the channel. "Detective Lake can lead you to the mine by road. I suggest Officer Manyfarms and I follow the suspects on horseback." "You've got horses in your car, Chief? Man, you guys are good!" Bergauer laughed. "We know where the stable is, Lieutenant. And Manyfarms knows which end of a horse is the head. I know which end is the ass. Together we can do this." "You got a handheld radio? I'd rather not shoot you when you ride into sight." "Roger that. We'll stay in touch. Let's go, Runner. Desi, hit the road." In about ten seconds flat I was alone in the car watching EMT's run past me with a stretcher, going toward the ranch house. The SWAT team inside turned on the front porch light as they tumbled out. With muttered curses about the "friggin' mud" they ran beside Mace's car and piled into their vehicles. At the same time, Runner whizzed by, headed for the stables where Mace was. Cars were turning around and forming a caravan as Desi called out the coordinates of the mine. I moved to the driver's seat, tugged it forward about six inches, and followed the cars toward the turnoff onto Highway 161. The only vehicles left were the ambulance and Runner's Mustang with its racing wild horse on the hood. Good choice. Just then the fax began feeding out a sheet, and another. I remembered asking for the specs to a Cessna 206. "Chief, this is Dispatch." I picked up the mike. "Dispatch, this is Olivia Wright in Chief Emerick's vehicle. The chief is mounting a horse." I thought I heard a snicker. "Chief Emerick and Officer Manyfarms are on horseback," I snapped. Another snicker. "Yes, ma'am. Roger that. We have an experienced Cessna pilot, Sky DeRosier, standing by to answer questions." I said nothing, and the dispatcher reminded me. "Did you copy that, Ms. Wright?" "Roger, Dispatch. Put him on, please." "This is Sky DeRosier. What do you need to know?" "Hi, this is Olivia Wright. How many people does a Cessna 206 hold?" "Depends on the weight. Your people tell me he might be taking off from Jean with some gold and cash, and there might be a pilot and three passengers. My guess is he'll take just enough fuel to get to a secondary stop. Fuel is heavy. How big are the people, do you know?" "Two men, about one hundred eighty pounds each, two females, about one hundred twenty pounds each." "Okay, six hundred pounds of people, four hundred pounds of fuel, one hundred eighty pounds of cargo in the back -- " "Why one-eighty?" "That's the floor limit in the hold. That leaves only two hundred pounds of cargo, and they'd have to carry it on their laps. That's not much when you're weighing gold. How much cargo do you think they're trying to get out of here?" "Sorry, I don't have a clue. Please stand by." I turned right behind the speeding convoy. I could hear Desi giving the SWAT team a description of the area surrounding the abandoned mine. We proceeded 1.9 miles south in no time flat and turned right again. The road that sent up a wall of dust behind us on Thursday night was now a morass of mud. We slowed to a crawl in a line behind Desi. Two miles in I saw a light on in Mr. Yale's trailer and stopped. I didn't want him getting curious and getting in the way of people with weapons. "Mr. Yale?" I knocked on his door and identified myself. A line of light appeared as he opened his door cautiously. His eyes and nose showed at my eye level, and Ratchet's nose stuck out through the crack. Restricted by the opening, she couldn't give the tough bark she would have liked, so she settled for a threatening growl deep in her throat. "What do you want?" the old man said. "We've got a problem up this road -- " "What do you want me for?" His growl sounded like Ratchet's. "I want to make sure you stay inside with your door locked, sir. There are people up this canyon who shot a man at a ranch. A SWAT team is going after them. Might be some fast traffic coming down the canyon." I couldn't resist adding, "Ratchet, good dog! It's me." I held my hand out, palm down, and she sniffed me through the opening. "Good girl! Good dog! I have to go now. Sorry to disturb you, Mr. Yale." I got back in the car and listened to the radio traffic. The officers were still moving cautiously into the canyon. I turned up the heat and adjusted the volume on the radio. All that was left for me, I figured, was to follow everybody out of the canyon to the jail, and go for donuts. "There's no car here," somebody said. "I saw three horses when we drove up, but they got spooked and took off, reins on the ground." "Here comes Chief Emerick and Runner on horseback," Desi said. She spoke quietly, right into her mike. I could tell she didn't like the way things were going, way up in a box canyon in the pitch dark. I could hear chatter from a distance, picked up in somebody's microphone, but I couldn't make out any words. Then I heard the lieutenant. Like Desi, his voice was low. "Nobody passed us on our way in from Hot Rocks Ranch. Could they have ridden here, got in a vehicle with this guy Buster, and made it to the Highway 160 intersection before we got there? If they did, and they headed east, we wouldn't have seen them." What he was describing was Highway 160 as the top of a T, and wondering if Buster -- with or without passengers -- had made it to the intersection before the first police car did. If he had, and he'd sped off to the east, he could have been out of sight by the time the cops got to the intersection and turned south. More chatter. I could hear Mace's voice and a horse whinny. "Their horses are heading back to the ranch," he said. "It's possible that Helen, Sean, and Peaches got here and found out Buster left before they got here. They could be on foot, hidden anywhere on this hillside or farther up the canyon. Let's keep our lights off." "Good idea," Bergauer said softly. "Team, get your night vision goggles on. Deploy, four teams. Chief, you and the officer get behind me, please." "Okay, we're on foot, walking toward the mine. We've got our horses with us," Mace said. "Easy now," Runner said soothingly. There were long minutes of silence. I was just about to turn around and drive toward Jean when I heard, "Shit, lookout!" "Goggles off. Let's go. Into the cars!" "Desi, wait. We'll ride with you!" Mace called. I heard him shout, "Hyaw! Hyaw! Go," and a snapping noise. I guessed he was sending his and Runner's horses on their way. About ten seconds later, lights coming right at me almost blinded me. A Chevy Suburban went by, heading east, and a loud splat of mud covered my windshield. I hit my lights and my windshield wipers and turned around, backing twice to keep from getting stuck in the deeper mud off the road. A minute later I saw the taillights of the Suburban far ahead of me. As the road swerved and dropped, rose again, and dropped, I'd see them and lose them. I stepped even harder on the gas pedal. I caught sight of the taillights, still far ahead, as the car reached the highway and turned right. "Dispatch, this is Olivia. I'm heading east out of the canyon in pursuit of a Chevy Suburban. I saw at least two individuals in the Chevy. Hold on. I'm turning south now on Highway 161, toward Goodsprings. I think he's probably headed for the airfield at Jean." Bergauer broke in. "We copy that, Dispatch. We have her in sight. Don't you have a bubble light, lead car?" "Yes, but I can't remember how to turn it on!" "Red button, low on your left," Mace barked. "Oh, yeah. Got it." I hit the siren, too, for good measure. "Dispatch, I am Code Three. Hot damn! I repeat, I am Code Three in pursuit of a Chevy Suburban. Hey, Chief, if I get there first, what is it I'm supposed to say, 'Hands in the air, we've got you surrounded?'" "If you get there first, you stay in the damn car!" he snarled into the radio. "What's that, Chief? You're breaking up." I'd always wanted to say that. "This is Dispatch. Chopper is en route to your location. He is adjusting, heading instead toward the Jean airport. ETA twelve minutes." "Roger, Dispatch. Keep us advised," Bergauer said. "Dispatch, can you put the Cessna guy back on?" I asked. "Roger that. Here he is." "This is Sky DeRosier." "This is Olivia again. What does the Jean airport look like?" "One mile south of the town. Elevation 2,832 feet. Two runways. 2L and 20R, six hundred feet long. Has lights that a pilot can click on with his microphone." "This is Chopper One. How many clicks for light?' "Three clicks in three seconds for low intensity, five in five for medium intensity and seven clicks in five seconds for high intensity," DeRosier answered. "Hey, I'm thinking about the weight of gold," I said. "Oh, sorry, Dispatch, this is Olivia again. I sort of wonder if Buster is planning to take three passengers. Somebody may have to follow the Suburban back out of the airport." I didn't add, but I was thinking, we might need another ambulance pretty soon. No honor among thieves, as the saying goes. "Who do you think he'll leave?" Mace asked. "This is Dispatch. The male gunshot victim, Mickey McNamara, regained consciousness in the ambulance and stated to police that his cousin, Sean Kellem, stole a great deal of gold from a family bank box and that he has been selling gold and sending the proceeds to an offshore bank. The victim says his cousin is trying to get to South America with 'Peaches.' Am I missing something?" "Peaches is his new wife," I said. "Okay, if he sold most of the gold and transferred funds, I don't think they have such a weight problem. My guess is all four of them are taking the two-oh-six out of here. I see the lights of the chopper." The Suburban had made a sharp right and an equally sharp left and disappeared. I slowed and scanned the area. I could see a chain link fence, but it took me a minute to find the gate. It was closed, but not chained, so I rammed it at a ninety-degree angle. "I'm in! Follow me, boys!" Mace was gonna kill me later. And if there were any cops on the jury, he was gonna walk. The lights on the runway blasted on at what had to be high intensity and I could make out a single engine plane pulling away from the hangar area. Left behind was a Chevy Suburban with its lights on and four doors still open. The plane taxied out on Runway 2L and started its takeoff roll. As the Cessna lifted off, the chopper changed direction and was right on his tail. I could hear the chopper pilot talking to Sky DeRosier, who was taking off from Henderson Field in a matching Cessna. Difference was, he had more fuel and no passengers. Time was all on his side. Buster and his wife, daughter, and son-in-law were going down, figuratively if not literally. I looked up to see Mace storming across the tarmac toward me. I rolled down my window. "Hey," I said, "I never got out of the car!" "Get out of the car!" Some people are never satisfied. -------- *Thirty-three* _May 15, 2005_ On her one hundredth birthday, Clara McNamara Kellem was somewhere near the middle of the long parade down Fremont Avenue. Her small figure was almost lost in the 1928 6-cylinder Pontiac Landau sedan, but I could see her waving. She had been tactfully uninvited from riding with the governor of Nevada when the shady wild-west history of her father's fortune was exposed in a prize-winning series of stories in the _Las Vegas Review Journal_. Conan Boyle gave them some help in tracking down the three train station robberies -- never solved -- that he guessed Michael T. McNamara had carried out in 1904 and 1905. With his ill-gotten gains, he'd bought land, and sold and bought and sold and bought, building his fortune while hiding the process in his Centennial Trust. The people who would benefit most in the long run were the family's lawyers and the IRS, who were wrangling over who owed what to whom. That might take another century to settle. Mace and I walked ahead to the end of the parade route, where the governor and mayor would board a steam train for photo ops. They would then descend to the sounds of an old-fashioned brass band and lead a herd of dignitaries to a rickety auctioneer's stand in a parking lot north of the Union Plaza Hotel, cleared of cars for the occasion. Women in long dresses, with parasols, and men in straw hats and derby hats, strutted. About twenty kids had trained for goodness-knows-how-long to ride antique bicycles with huge front wheels and many more kids rolled hoops. All of them were dressed in knickers and caps. It was as hot and bright as records showed the 1905 auction had been. The difference was we could walk fifty yards and stand in blissful comfort in refrigerated air. "A frosty glass of beer sounds good to me," Mace said. "Wait, I want to watch the auction." Like a well-rehearsed play, which it was, the mayor welcomed the governor and the citizens of Las Vegas. "How does it feel to be one hundred years old?" he boomed and got a good laugh and applause in return. The reenactment of the auction proceeded. Three lots at the northeast corner of Main and Fremont Streets went for $1750. Predictably, there were catcalls from the crowd, "I'll give you two thousand with the property just like it is!" Lots between Main and First Streets, fronting on Fremont, went for eight hundred fifty dollars, eight hundred dollars, and seven hundred fifty dollars. "I'd like to get a little place on Block 16," Mace said. "Retire young." "Me, too." "I thought you already did retire young." "Yeah, once. And then Peter Delameter made me go back to work." "Oh, right, for about a week. Some deal. Come on, let's get to a bar before all these people make a break for it. There's a bottle of Henry Weinhard Private Reserve with my name on it." "Your name is Henry Weinhard?" "I was speaking figuratively. Like saying, 'I'm dying of thirst.' Which will be the literal truth if we don't get to the bar before these bozos." We headed east, making slow progress as more people crowded from the parade route into the parking lot to get a glimpse of the auction. "I feel like a salmon swimming upstream -- in a sea of sweat," Mace muttered. "What a vivid word picture that paints," I said. "Turn right at the fence. We can make it faster one street over." Ten minutes later we leaned against a slot machine and Mace fed nickels in while we alternately drank the beer and held the wet bottle to our foreheads. "Why would anybody use their life savings to buy a lot in this Godforsaken desert?" he mused. "It was a bet, just like happened in all the mining towns and crossroads that haven't had a soul alive in them for almost as long as Vegas has thrived. The West is full of them." He thought about it, got five more dollars' worth of nickels, and continued to feed the one-armed bandit. "So, what are your plans for the next centennial?" "Why, you looking for a date already?" "Can't hurt to ask. You think you'll stay retired this time?" I thought about it. "With my half of the royalties from Clara's book, and more believable promises from Joshua Tree Productions that the Margot Farr book will really and truly be made into a movie? Yes, I'll stay retired. In fact, hell, yes." "You gonna stay in Vegas, see how the next hundred years goes?" "Yes, but I'm going to make some changes to make my life more fun. First, I'm getting out of Wickworth Tower, but you already knew that. The contractor says my house in Boulder City will be finished the end of June." I loved the view of the lake. "What else?' "I'm getting a motorboat for water-skiing. And I'm getting a dog." "You've been saying that for months." "I know, but it's not the kind of thing one should rush into. I've been visiting the pound, and I've fallen in love with a little red-haired puppy. Actually, I've just seen pictures so far. The mother is an AKC registered Irish Setter, and the father is unknown. The owners of Champion Belle Marie the Fourth were not happy to see the little mixed breed puppies and they're bringing them all to the pound in a week, as soon as they're weaned. The owners consider their purebred was taken against her will by some mongrel, but I like to think it was love. Anyway, the puppies are adorable. I'm sure my puppy will like Lake Mead as much as I will. Desi helped me find her, so in Desi's honor I've named her Lucy." The auction must have ended, because every available square foot of space in the casino had four feet in it. "Let's get out of here," Mace said. "I love humanity, it's people I can't stand. At least, not this many at once." "Mom!" someone called loudly. Two hundred women turned their heads in answer. "Oops," Candace laughed. "That was funny." She was holding onto Louis's arm as he edged closer to me. "I just wanted to say hi." Mace and Louis shook hands without being able to move their arms. I felt a sharp elbow in my back. "Sorry. Oh, Olivia, hi there." Kenneth, Candace's partner, shook hands all around and invited us all to his place for drinks and hors d'oeuvres later. He and Candace had decided not to buy the company in Hawaii and to concentrate on building Royale Catering in Vegas instead. "Too much family trouble," Kenneth had said about the Honolulu catering company. "Reminds me of the McNamaras. Shudder!" I was still mired in the McNamara family drama, answering questions in interviews since the book came out the first week in April. Buster, Helen, Sean, and Peaches had scurried to rat each other out, no two stories alike, but they could all agree on one thing: Jack Basset had killed Eileen McNamara. He'd hit her in the head with a heavy flashlight while she waited inside Rory's fancy garage for Sean and Peaches to take her inside for an important discussion of the deal Eileen had offered, and which she thought would get her son away from his debtors. Jack Basset then took her to the desert, stabbed her, and took her body, with a lot less blood in it, in the trunk of the Towncar to the golf course. Then he'd gone back to pick up Sean and Peaches, who were calmly finalizing their joint alibi with Rory. Rory, I hasten to add, knew nothing of why they were there and what Jack Basset was up to. I'm inclined to think well of Rory, looking ahead to a day (probably far in the future) when we might be joint grandmothers. Eileen was a loving mother, but she wasn't thinking clearly about what the result would be of John Jorgenson not having any way to pay his enormous gambling debts. He'd inherited his mother's estate, and Caesar's Palace and about half his bookies were satisfied with that. But others were waiting for him to inherit under his great-grandfather's trust. In January, when the McNamara Centennial Trust was dissolved, he got his share, but it turned out to be one-quarter of the debt owed to the IRS. No one had seen him since the first of February. Sandy was a graduate of a fine drug rehab facility, and was getting a late start on a decent life. Mace and I ate at Denny's on Fremont Street whenever we were in the neighborhood and always left her a fat tip. Mickey recovered from his wound and went home to Florida with Suzi, but she left him when it turned out that he owed the federal government twice as much as he had. Nicole and Ed Monte had to sell their house in Lake Las Vegas and go to work as "real" realtors. Rory and David Castle cut a pretty good deal, keeping their house in Summerlin and giving half of their thirty cars to the government for auction. Glynnis Norwich recovered about half of her mother's lost money by suing Happy Delameter. She put it in certificates of deposit to make sure there would be enough money to keep her mother safe and secure at Garcia Nursing Home. Kemper Wilkerson, Esquire, handled Glynnis's lawsuit for free, which was so out of character I wondered if he had a fatal illness or something. Be that as it may, I changed lawyers, finding a nice young woman who knew all about literary and entertainment contracts. We were talking about setting up the Olivia Wright Living Trust, which made a certain amount of fiscal sense, but I was dragging my feet. Of Kemper, who didn't suffer any ill effects of doing a piss-poor job of handling Eileen's affairs, Mace said, "Lawyers are just like cats. They always land jelly side up." Jack Basset was a fugitive from justice, charged with the murders of Eileen McNamara and Peter Delameter. As best we can piece it together, he called Peter at Caesar's Palace that Monday about 6:00 p.m., the call we knew had drawn Peter, the would-be blackmailer, away from the casino. Jack took him to the Hot Rocks Ranch and showed him some of the gold Sean had delivered from his family's box in the bank vault. Thinking he would help Jack get more from their temporary hiding place, a strongbox hidden in the abandoned mine, Peter rode over there with him. Jack took the opportunity to hit him three times in the head with -- of all things -- a ceremonial gold railroad spike that old Michael T. McNamara had stolen from the safe at Winfield, Colorado. I hope to live long enough to testify against Jack Basset, but wouldn't bet on it. With Jack out of the way, probably in South America where Sean wanted to be, the district attorney is having a hell of a time getting charges to stick to Sean and/or Peaches and/or Buster and/or Helen. That whole thing is another bet I won't make or take. And, finally, Clara McNamara Kellem will live out her life in comfort in a penthouse suite at the Wickworth Tower, after which it will be sold and the proceeds split by lawyers and the government. Not only does crime not pay, but it can leave you owing your soul to the company store. Mace and I moved back onto Fremont Street and wandered toward the police station where our cars were parked. He had the day off and, as always when he took time off, he was antsy. "I don't know what to do with myself this afternoon," he said. "How 'bout we go over to your place and you put yourself in my capable hands?" "Are you sure I'm not after you for your money?" he said with a sly smile. "Umm. That, too. We'll talk later. First let's go for a swim." "Let's go for a swim later." "I thought we were going to talk later." "Umm." He kissed my neck. "That, too." -------- _Meet Lynnette Baughman_ Lynnette Baughman is the author of four mysteries set in New Mexico and Nevada. She's working on a romance set in her new home state of Washington. She lives on the Olympic Peninsula. Visit the author's web site: www.vegascentennial.net _VISIT OUR WEBSITE_ FOR THE FULL INVENTORY _OF QUALITY BOOKS_: www.wings-press.com Quality trade paperbacks and downloads in multiple formats, in genres ranging from light romantic comedy to general fiction and horror. Wings has something for every reader's taste. Visit the website, then bookmark it. We add new titles each month! ----------------------- Visit www.wings-press.com for information on additional titles by this and other authors.