Stripped (12 page)

“I think so,” Serena admitted. “He seems to think so, too. I’m trying not to screw it up.”

Walling, who knew some of Serena’s history, nodded thoughtfully. “Well, I appreciate your coming up here. Can you tell me more about this receipt you found?”

Serena gave Walling a quick summary of the hit-and-run in which Peter Hale had been killed and told him about their discovery of Lawrence Busby’s car in the parking lot of the Meadows Mall. “The receipt was under die driver’s seat,” she said.

“No line yet on who stole the car?”

Serena shook her head.

“Shame. This could all mean nothing, but it smells funny. That receipt of yours was from a little convenience store less than five miles away. About two hours after those half-dozen Krispy Kreme doughnuts got sold, a woman was murdered at this ranch. Then the receipt shows up in a stolen car used in a hit-and-run in Las Vegas.”

“I don’t like it.”

“No, neither do I.”

“So what happened here?” Serena asked, inclining her head toward the ranch house.

Walling tugged at his mustache and then removed the fedora. He smoothed his carefully trimmed gray hair.

“Brutal killing. We don’t get cases like this very often. Albert Ford came home from a golf game and found the front door open and his wife lying in the foyer. Clean cut across the carotid. Near as we can tell, she opened the door, and the perp dropped her right there. Bloody mess.”

“Motive?”

“We don’t have one,” Walling said. “Nothing was taken from the house. It doesn’t look like he even went inside.”

“And no witnesses?”

Walling shrugged and gestured at the empty landscape. “Out here? Not many neighbors. The road dead-ends to the east. We haven’t found anybody who saw a thing.”

“What do we know about the woman who was killed?”

“Salt of the earth,” Walling said. “Both of them. The Fords are multi-generation Reno residents. Both retired. Albert Ford bred horses for decades and sold out a few years ago. His wife Alice was a schoolteacher—third grade. She put in thirty-five years and retired around the same time that Al unloaded the horses.”

Serena shook her head. “A third-grade schoolteacher?”

“Exactly. It makes no sense.”

“And Al is in the clear?”

Walling nodded. “His golfing buddies gave him an alibi. Alice had been dead for several hours when he found her.”

“They have kids?”

“Four. All grown. The youngest is in her early thirties.”

“Any of them in Las Vegas?” Serena asked.

“No, two in Los Angeles, one in Boise, one in Anchorage. All clean. Alice has a brother in Reno, but that’s it within the state. Al’s the only one left in his family.”

“I don’t suppose the brother is mobbed up,” Serena said.

Walling laughed. “Retired director of an adoption agency. He’s in a retirement home now.”

“So we have a twelve-year-old boy run down by a car and a retired schoolteacher with her throat cut,” Serena said. “Nothing similar about the MO, nothing similar about the location. The only thing we have to tie the cases together is a few doughnuts. Maybe we’re just blowing smoke here, Jay.”

“Except both vies do have something in common,” Walling said.

“Oh?”

“We can’t find a reason why anyone would want to kill them.”

Rex Terrell was thirty minutes late.

It was fiveo’clock, and Stride and Amanda had a booth in the corner at Battista’s, underneath a wall of vintage celebrity photos that spanned the decades. They had already shooed away the accordionist, who was ready to serenade them, and turned down the house wine that came with dinner, but they had finally agreed to accept two bowls of penne with meat sauce, on the house.

Terrell had picked the place, which was on a side street behind the Barbary Coast. “Real Vegas,” he said. “A landmark.”

Stride had Terrell’s number from MJ’s answering machine, and he had finally reached him in the middle of the afternoon. It turned out that Rex Terrell was a freelance writer who did gossipy features for entertainment magazines, including
LV
. Stride wanted to know what Terrell had told MJ Lane about his father and the Sheherezade.

They waited impatiently. Amanda stabbed a few noodles with her fork.

“So what’s it like in Minnesota?” she asked.

Stride smiled. “Are you thinking of moving?”

“Who knows? I know how this sounds, but I wouldn’t mind living somewhere a little less strange. Bobby and I have talked about getting out.” She added, “It would be nice to be someplace where not everybody knew, too, know what I mean? My little secret, that is.”

Stride nodded. “Minnesota is cold.”

“Cold? Is that news? Here’s a hint, Stride, that white stuff that hangs around up there for six months? That’s called snow.”

“That’s not what I mean,” Stride said. “I don’t care about the weather. I used to live right on the shore of Lake Superior. I’d watch the big ore freighters come and go from my porch”

“So why’d you leave?” Amanda asked.

He hesitated, wondering how much to say, and then realized he was still doing it. Being a Minnesotan, locking everything away. “I began to realize it was a cold place. Minnesotans are hard to get to know. They don’t let you inside. You won’t find nicer people any where, but you can live with them for decades and never really know them on the inside, where it counts. They don’t open up.”

“That sounds a lot like Serena,” Amanda said.

Stride shook his head. “Don’t get me wrong. I’m that way, too. And yeah, that’s Serena. But we’ve been able to get to each other in a way that no one else did. I found out I liked it. So to me, that was worth moving for.”

“But you miss Minnesota,” Amanda said.

“Sure I do.”

“What about Vegas? If it’s too strange for me, I can’t imagine what you think of it.”

Stride let his eyes wander around the restaurant. Terrell was right. This was Vegas in all its kitschy, bitchy glory. He thought about Walker calling the city immoral and about executives like Gerard Plante at the Oasis calmly manipulating his guests. But then there were the mountains and the blue waters of Lake Mead. And Serena. And something irresistible and terrible about all of it together.

He looked up, and fortunately, he didn’t have to answer.

Rex Terrell was waving at them as he crossed the restaurant, his other arm draped around the back of the maftre d’. He wore a lime green shirt, untucked, over expensive black silk slacks. His blond hair was gelled, sticking up in jagged spikes, and he wore narrow black sunglasses. He was about thirty years old, of medium height, and muscular. He carried a lowball glass with a coppery drink that sloshed over the side as he approached.

“Rex Terrell,” he said, jutting out his hand. “And you’re detectives? What a trip. A real murder investigation. This is so
CSI
.”

Stride shook his hand, which was moist, and introduced himself. Amanda did the same.

“Amanda Gillen?” Rex stripped off his sunglasses and leaned into her face. “Oh my
gawd
, I know you. What delicious headlines. ‘Metro Sexual: Pre-Op Cop Says Her ‘Equipment’ Is No Big Deal.’” He giggled, spilling more of his drink. “Remember that one?”

“Fuck off,” Amanda said.

Terrell sat down and picked up a fork. He plucked a mouthful of pasta from Amanda’s bowl. “Oh, no, no, I loved it! Your lawsuit? I was with you all the way. I cheered when you won. And look at you, you are so hot! Tranny is definitely the new gay.”

Stride saw the ice in Amanda’s eyes. She was holding a glass of water with such force that he thought the glass would shatter in her hand. “You’re poking the bear, Rex,” he told him.

Terrell blathered on. “Listen, honey, how about an article in
LV
? We could do a photo spread with it. I don’t mean chicks with dicks, not that kind of thing, although wouldn’t
that
drive up our numbers! But very tasteful, very erotic, cleavage, maybe a bulge in the right place. I’m talking artistic here.”

Amanda grabbed Terrell’s jaw and clenched it until he shut up. She yanked his face toward her. “Focus, Rex. Listen carefully. I am not a freak show. I am not a circus performer. I’m Amanda. I may be a little different from most people, but all I want to do is lead an ordinary life. What I don’t want is people invading my privacy. So leave me alone, or the operation that I chose not to get, I’m going to give to you right now with a butter knife. Got it?”

She pushed Terrell away, and he rubbed his jaw. “Ow, ow, ow.” He looked at Stride. “She’s a pistol. But I like that, I really do:’

“Maybe we can get down to business,” Stride said.

“Oh, absolutely. I smell a story here. MJ murdered? I want the dirt.”

Stride shook his head. “No story, Rex. This is off, off, off the record, and the conversation goes one way. You tell us what you know about MJ.”

“Start by telling us where you were on Saturday night,” Amanda added.

“You think
I
killed him? How exciting. But no. David and I got to Gipsy at ten, and we were there, like, all night.” He winked at Amanda. “
You
can call David and check if you’d like, but not your partner here, because David has a teensy weakness for the strong, silent type.”

“MJ,” Stride repeated.

“Well, what can I tell you?”

“How did you meet?” Stride asked.

“He called me after the story appeared. Very upset. But who can blame him for that, right? I mean, if it was my father?”

“What story?” Amanda asked.

Terrell clapped a hand to his heart. “Best thing I’ve published in
LV
. I was sure I was going to get death threats, but not a one. I’m disappointed. But I named names, and no one else did. Two big names in particular. Walker Lane and Boni Fisso.”

Stride remembered. There was an issue of
LV
magazine on MJ’s nightstand, underneath the newspaper story about the implosion.

“What was the story about?” Stride asked.

“It was called ‘The Dirty Secret of the Sheherezade.’ Does that give you a clue?”

“MJ called his father a murderer” Stride said. “Is that what you said in your story?”

“He is. Scandalous, isn’t it?”

“We talked to Walker Lane. He says you were putting ideas in MJ’s head.”

“You talked to Walker? And he mentioned
me
! Oh, now that is too much. I wondered if he would hear about it. Walker Lane telling people about Rex Terrell. God, David is going to flip over this.”

Stride and Amanda shared an exasperated glance.

“Tell us about the story,” Stride said. ‘The short version, please.”

Terrell nodded. His drink was empty, and he waved the glass in his hand at a waitress.

“The Sheherezade was Boni Fisso’s first big place,” he said. “Now,
that
was Vegas. The real stuff. Like Battista’s here. Authentic. I mean, look around most bars in town now, it’s all fake. You got your celebrity photos there, sure, but its all Tara Reid and Lindsay Lohan, and ten years from now, people will look at them and go, ‘Who’s that?’ Sinatra, he was authentic. Alan King. Rose Marie.”

“Rex,” Stride said, through gritted teeth.

“I mean, I’m a Vegas baby,” Terrell continued. “How rare is that? Born and raised. I’m authentic. These days, everyone is from California.”

Amanda picked up a butter knife and began slapping it against her hand. Terrell blanched.

“All right, all right. For you, I’ll leave out the good parts. Back in 1967, the Sheherezade was
the
hot place in the city. Right up there with the Sands. Part of the buzz on the joint was its showroom, see? They had an amazing dancer. Amira Luz. Spanish beauty, dark hair, spitfire. Absolutely a sex machine, and I am not lying. She did a nude dance that filled the seats, SRO every night. I mean, in those days, there were plenty of boobies jiggling onstage, but it was all chorus line stuff, deathly dull. Amira did a flamenco number and stripped down like a thousand-dollar call girl. H-o-t.”

“So?” Stride asked.

Terrell leaned forward and whispered, “So one hot July night, they found Amira at the bottom of the pool in the high roller’s suite on the roof of the Sheherezade. Someone had bashed her skull in.”

“And you think it was Walker Lane?”

“Absolutely. Everyone knew back then, but no one was going to say a word, not in
those
days.” Terrell twisted his index and middle fingers together. “Boni Fisso and Walker Lane were like this. Walker was Boni’s whale. He was there at the casino every weekend. Staying in that very same high roller’s suite where Amira was killed. He was a party boy, couldn’t get enough of Vegas, liked rubbing shoulders with the mob.”

“That doesn’t mean anything,” Amanda said.

Terrell put on a look of faux astonishment. “Oh now, don’t play innocent with me. I talked to people Who saw Walker in the casino that weekend, but the official word is, he wasn’t in town. He wasn’t in the suite. I mean, come on. Walker was a horny little dog. He wanted to hump Amira’s leg and move up to her fur. People told me he was obsessed with her, and Amira wasn’t interested. Turned him down flat. But Walker wasn’t about to hear the word ‘no’ from some Spanish stripper. Crack, pow.”

“Apparently, the police didn’t think so,” Stride said. “Walker was never arrested.”

Terrell sighed dramatically. “The police? This was 1967, Detective. You don’t think Boni could make the police go away? Puh-leez. The detective in charge of the case was Nick Humphrey, and Nicky was in Boni’s pocket. Everyone knew it. So Boni spirited Walker out of town. I mean, the man did a Roman Polanski and left the whole fucking country. And Nicky looked the other way. A murder in a high roller’s suite, for heaven’s sake? How easy should that be? But all the police could come up with is that some fan climbed down into the garden from the maintenance area of the roof and killed her.”

“What was Amira doing in the suite?” Amanda asked.

“The story was, she had seduced a key out of one of the desk clerks, and she liked to go up there for a nude swim after her shows, when the suite wasn’t occupied. Again, that was the official word. I mean, as if.”