Red Roses in Las Vegas (7 page)

“Was anything missing from Ian’s room?” I asked Sharon.

She shook her head. “The cops had already taken his computer and a bunch of stuff by the time we got to work, so even if anything was taken, we wouldn’t know.”

I nodded. “And what about red roses? D’you know if that meant something to Adam?”

Sharon gave me a puzzled look, and I said, “Those were his last words. ‘Stupid red roses.’”

Her eyes misted up again. “Sorry,” she said, “Can’t help you there.”

Ian and I exchanged a glance, and I gave Sharon my business card. “Call me if you think of anything else.”

“Will do.”

Ian and I excused ourselves, and after briefly saying goodbye to Clark and thanking him for his help once again, we found ourselves on the road heading back home.

“It’s Sharon,” Ian said as we drove along. “It’s definitely Sharon. She was sick of being passed over for the ‘bimbos,’ and she had a jealous fit and shot him in the stomach.”

“And why would she ask him to meet her at the office?” I said. “Especially when they weren’t working late or meeting clients.”

“I dunno. Maybe she faked a work emergency of some kind.”

“Ri-ight. And what about ‘I’m not giving it to you’? What could she want so badly from Adam that she’d kill him to get it?”

“Maybe ‘it’ is, you know.
You know
.” I glanced briefly at Ian just in time to see him waggle his eyebrows obscenely.

“Eww. You look so gross. Anyway, it wasn’t said in the right tone.”

“Maybe Adam was just playing hard to get.”

“No way. It was more like, ‘I’ve got this report, and I’m not giving it to you.’”

“Hmm. So it’s probably not Sharon.” Ian thought for a second. “Well then, maybe it
was
the Mafia.” He brightened. “Yep, that’s it. He knew something, got hold of something or other, and wanted to keep it.”

“Uh.” I wasn’t so sure.

“Oh, come on! You gotta admit that place seems seriously fishy. Alarms under each desk? A separate manager just for a couple of accounts? Who’s Italian?”

“I’m pretty sure that’s racist.”

Ian shook his head. “Ask your nanna’s friend. I’m pretty sure the place has links. I’d bet my life on it.”

“Well, don’t, because I don’t want a dead partner.”

Ian grinned again. “Isn’t working together great? Aren’t you glad we teamed up?”

It was pretty ok, I’d admit, but I didn’t say that out loud. Instead, I said, “It’s just for this one case. After that, I’m on my own again.”

“Pfft. You’ll change your mind, you’ll see.”

We stopped by Glenn’s place, picked Nanna up, and headed upstairs.

“Bye, Ian,” I said, when we reached his door.

His face drooped. “Really? We aren’t going anywhere else, today?” He glanced at Nanna. “Tick tock. We need to move faster, if you don’t want to end up on Death Row.”

“We’re going to Leona’s at eleven-thirty,” Nanna reminded me.

“Who’s Leona?” Ian asked.

“Adam’s mother,” said Nanna. “And a friend of mine.”

“Cool!” he said. “So I’ll join guys after a few minutes?”

I shook my head. “She just lost her son, Ian. I don’t need you there saying insensitive things.”

He looked at me, his mouth downturned, eyes large and disappointed. “We’re meant to be partners.”

“Everything else,” I promised. “Just not this one. Besides, it’s better for Nanna to go with fewer people.”

“How come?” Ian asked.

“Yeah,” Nanna said. “How come?”

I looked at Nanna disapprovingly. She really needed to start discouraging Ian more. But they were both staring at me now, so I thought fast.

“She needs to play the helpless old victim,” I said. “And if Leona sees both us, she’ll know Nanna’s got backup.”

“Hmm,” Ian said, tilting his head a little. “I suppose that makes sense.”

We left him there and headed into my condo. Once inside, I proceeded to let Nanna know just what I thought of her encouraging Ian to come along.

“Pshaw,” she said. “You need some company. A bit of socializing will do you good.”

I stared at her in shock. “I’m not
socializing
. I’m trying to save your life.”

“Please.” Nanna opened the fridge and grabbed herself a bottle of chilled water. “You’re dramatizing.”

“I am
not
.”

“Look, I spoke with my friend Steven Machhione – you know, the one I told you about? Used to work for the…” Two head jerks in quick succession. “He’s seen a lot of this kinda stuff. He said most murders don’t go on trial for a couple of weeks, at least. Most likely, you’ve got a coupla months to investigate.”

I tried not to let me jaw hit the floor. “Don’t you know that a couple of days can make a big difference? A criminal just needs a little time to cover their tracks. Most murders are solved in a week or two, or not all.”

Nanna looked at me thoughtfully, and then brightened up. “Well, I’m not stressed. I’ve got complete faith in you.”

I wish I had. “Speaking of Steven,” I said, “You need to call him. Let him know I want to talk to him.”

“Is it about this whole Adam thing?”

“Yes, of course it’s about this whole Adam thing! Why else would I need to talk to him?”

“I don’t know. Sounds to me like you want to take a hit out on Ian.”

“Hunh. I wish. I need him around to pay my bills.”

“You should be nicer to that sweet young man. He just wants to help.”

Sure he did. Too bad he was more liable to just mess things up. I knew that saying something to defend myself would just make Nanna go on about how nice he was and other random stuff, like that I needed to get myself some more friends. I didn’t. I just needed to solve this murder.

As we drove to Leona’s, I said, “So how was Glenn’s place?”

“Fun,” said Nanna. “He seems pretty nice. And Karma’s a lot of fun. Me and Karma are going to that male revue tonight.”

I groaned. “Please don’t tell me the details.”

“Besides,” Nanna said. “Karma gets a discount there.”

“What’d you think of Glenn?”

“He’s nice.”

“Boyfriend material nice?”

“I already have a boyfriend, sweetie. Nathan.”

Leona lived with her daughter, Natasha, in a tract home in Henderson. The house looked like every other house on that street – beige, boring and affordable. Even before I stepped inside, I knew what I’d see: the standard wall-to-wall carpet, an oldish kitchen, and quite possibly, two bedrooms and two bathrooms.

I asked Leona for a tour soon after we stepped inside, and I gave myself a pat on the back for the good guess. Leona’s daughter had tried to liven things up a bit, though, by painting one wall of her bedroom a deep red, and hanging black-framed sepia photographs of 60’s Las Vegas on them. Living with her mother in this boring house must’ve cramped her style, but Leona went on and on about what a good daughter Natasha was.

“The boys moved out as soon as they could,” she said, “But Natasha’s still with me. I don’t want to move into a nursing home while I’m still so active.”

Leona was a couple of inches taller than Nanna, but that was enough to create the impression of a much bigger person. She was skinny and wrinkled, but wider than Nanna, and her hands were as big as a man’s. She had large, grey eyes, and grey hair that she wore tied in a neat bun.

“Tell Tiffany how you moved to Vegas,” Nanna prompted, as we headed back to the living room to sit down.

The room was furnished with a dark grey sofa set surrounding a dark, wooden coffee table. There were black and white photographs on the beige walls – of people, this time. I assumed they were of Leona’s kids when they were younger, and her late husband.

“It was fate,” Leona was saying. “George and I came down for our honeymoon, and then I won a grand jackpot on the slots! I knew this place was lucky for me and I had to move down here for good. So we did!”

I looked at her in awe.

“Isn’t that a great story?” Nanna said, and I nodded in open-mouthed surprise.

“Yeah,” I said. “So you’ve been living here ever since?”

“Last forty-two years,” said Leona. “Raised all my kids and then, when George passed away, I moved down here with Natasha.”

“She works in casino security, right?”

“That’s right. Got her degree from UNLV and all. And then there’s Mike, who’s a nurse at the Spring Valley Hospital, and Adam – well, he was happy working in his finance jobs.”

She sat sadly, remembering Adam, and I waited for a moment before saying, “Can you tell me a bit about Adam? What was he like?”

She went on for a while, proud as a Crossfitter with blisters. If I were to believe her, Adam was pretty much a cross between Don Giovanni (with less chauvinism)
and Einstein (with just a slightly different hairstyle).

“I can’t believe someone up and killed him,” she said, and then turned to Nanna. “And don’t worry, I don’t believe for a second it was you. Him losing that money was just a fluke, you know, temporary. He woulda won it all back in a few days.”

“I know,” Nanna said, “That’s the only reason I yelled at him, to remind him I’m friends with you.”

I tried not to smile at Nanna, and wondered if Leona had no idea about her son’s demotion at work, and consistent bad performance. On the other hand, why would Adam worry his mother with work stuff?

“Did he get on with everyone at work?” I asked, and Leona regaled me with tales of how popular her Adam was. “His closest friends were outside of work, though. There’s Josh, who’s a cop, and Winston, who works in some office downtown, and a bunch of other boys from his high school whose names I can never remember.”

“Do you have any of their phone numbers with you?” I asked, but she shook her head.

“No, you’ll have to ask that girlfriend of his. Maybe she’ll let you look through their place, maybe he’s got an address book, somewhere.”

I doubted that – in my experience, these things don’t just fall into your lap. And even if he did have a list of names or a diary of some sort, the cops would’ve gotten their hands on it. I made a note to quiz Cynthia about Josh and Winston, and asked Leona to tell me about Cynthia.

She was very complimentary, but ironically, most of what she told me jibed with what Sharon, Adam’s co-worker, had told me. Cynthia was gorgeous, intelligent and ambitious, Leona said, but she wasn’t a very good cook, and had crashed her car thrice in the last year.

“What about Mike?” I asked. “What’s he like?”

Leona said that Mike really cared about people and humanity and was pretty much Florence Nightingale reincarnated. His wife, Claire, was fabulous, too – she was a senator, and the daughter of one of the richest men in Vegas, Joe Stephanopoulis. They were a lovely couple, and even though they lived on the other side of town, in Summerlin, they visited her all the time.

After what seemed like ten hours, I figured I’d asked enough questions and learnt about as much as I ever would from Leona. I grabbed Natasha’s, Mike’s and Claire’s numbers from her, gave her my card, and asked her to tell them that I’d like to speak with them as soon as I could.

“I’ll call them straight away,” Leona said with a sad smile as she waved goodbye. “I want as much as you do to find out who did this to my son.”

I arrived back at my condo with Nanna and threw my purse onto the sofa as she closed the door behind us.
I barely had any time to reflect on our meeting with Leona, when my phone started buzzing. I dug through my purse, sifting through all the things I carry around with me on a regular basis, and managed to find my phone before it stopped vibrating.

“Hello?”

It turned out to be Leona.

“I’ve told all of them—Natasha, Mike and Claire—to expect your call,” she said. “Good luck with the investigation.”

As soon as I hung up, there was a knock on the door.

“I heard you and Nanna chatting in the corridor,” said Ian, “So I knew you were back. How’d it go?”

“Not great,” I said. “You didn’t miss anything.”

“Yeah,” added Nanna. “Leona thinks all her kids are sainted.”

“Gee,” said Ian. “I wish my parents thought that way about me. But nooo. They think I’m a big loser who sits on his ass all day and doesn’t even have a career or anything. They always wanted me to do amazing things.” He brightened up. “But now that I’m a private investigator, helping out innocent people and all that, maybe they’ll think I’m ok.”

I looked at him doubtfully and said, “Uh-huh, sure.”

In my experience, parents who expect “amazing things” from their kids are never happy unless the kid turns out to be an amazingly successful doctor who’s discovered the cure for cancer, or turns into a self-made multi-billionaire entrepreneur. Preferably, an amazingly talented doctor who’s discovered the cure for cancer, and is a self-made multi-billionaire entrepreneur at the weekends.

“What’s for lunch?” Nanna asked. “I haven’t made anything. Do you want me to bake something? Or do you want to go to McDonald’s again?”

“I love McDonald’s!” said Ian, turning to me. “How about it?”

“I don’t know,” I said to Nanna. “I’m a bit worried about your cholesterol.”

She flicked a hand. “Pshaw! My cholesterol’s fine.” And then she looked at me carefully. “Why are you even worrying about it? Have you been talking to your mother, again?”

I shrugged. “She worries about you.”

“Too much.” Nanna crossed her arms against her chest. “The woman doesn’t know to keep her nose out of my medical charts. That stuff’s supposed to be private. I could sue her. Anyway,” she said, smiling again, “If you’re worried about my health, we could mix it up a little. Variety’s supposed to be good for you – how about KFC today?”

“Yeah, KFC’s great!” said Ian.

“I don’t know.” I hardly ever go to KFC. But then again, Nanna was my
guest
, so it’s like I had an obligation to feed her what she wanted, so I shrugged. “Sure, why not.”

***

After an hour, the three of us returned to my condo, bellies stuffed full of ridiculous amounts of fried chicken. Minutes later, my phone buzzed; it seemed as though my crossing the threshold was some kind of cue for people to call me.

It turned out to be Natasha, Adam’s sister.

“My mother gave me your number,” she said. “And I know you’d like to talk to me, so I was wondering if you’d like to stop by at around six? My shift ends then.”

“Perfect,” I said, “That’s just a bit before my shift starts, so I’ll see you then.”

“Downstairs in Casino Venezia?  How about in The Bellissimo Café?”

“Sounds good.”

We hung up and I turned to Ian. “We’re going to talk to Adam’s sister at six. Why don’t you come by at a quarter to?”

“Ok,” he said. “What’re you doing till then? Anything I can help with?”

“I’m taking a nap,” I told him. “You can help out by doing some research on Claire Bitzer. She’s a state senator, so you should find lots of dirt on her online. And see if you can find out anything on Adam’s girlfriend, Cynthia Pruttley. She works at Petite Bijou Designs or something, so maybe you can find something on their website.”

“Aye-aye, captain.” Ian gave me a mock salute and headed off, and I headed toward the bedroom, wondering just what the evening would reveal.