Sleepless in Las Vegas (20 page)

Val leaned her smartphone against her nanny’s picture, the lens pointed at the guest chairs, then moved the cup of pens so it partially blocked the camera.

“Hello, Val,” Marta said as she entered and sat in a guest chair, as though they were two gal pals getting ready for a chat.

She wore a short pink summer dress with matching pink sling-back sandals. Her chestnut hair was pulled back on one side with a rhinestone-encrusted clip. As before, she had a determined look on her face, and smelled like strawberries.

“Hello, Marta.” Val made sure she said the woman’s name clearly.

Hearsay had crossed around the desk and stood next to the guest chair, his eyes glued on Marta’s face, as though daring her to make a wrong move.

“I see you have dog,” Marta said, looking uncomfortable. “He friendly?”

“No.” A lie, but Val wanted her visitor to stay on her best behavior. “I’m trying to teach him not to bite strangers.”

Marta shrank away from the dog. “His name?”

“Sweet Thang.” Probably a good idea to not give his real name, in case Marta or somebody made a link between the dog and Drake.

“Funny name.”

“Funny dog.” Val put on her best concerned face. “So, Marta, why are you here today?”

Still leaning away from the dog, Marta looked at Val. “I am so sad.”

“I’m sorry to hear that,” Val murmured.

“Oh, yes, very sad.” She sniffed, pointed a red nail at the tissue box. “Please, my dear Val, I need.”

Val pushed it toward Marta, who smiled bravely as she plucked a tissue. She pressed it to her nose and gave her head a series of sorrowful, slow shakes, as though too overwhelmed to speak.

Which gave Val a few moments to think about this situation. Call it a gut sense, but she didn’t think Marta knew Drake worked in the back office. If she did, there would be no reason to play this game.

“It is my fiance,” Val said, plucking another tissue. “He is missing.”

“Oh, no,” Val said, leaning forward, oozing concern, “what happened?”

Hearsay, either bored or sleepy, trotted to his bed and lay down.

Marta settled into a more comfortable position. “He go away. No note.” She set her purse on the desk, pulled out a fat wad of bills and set it in front of Val. “I need your help, please.” She stressed the
please
with an energetic jerk of her head.

The purse blocked the camera lens.

“Absolutely, let me take some notes.” She made a sweeping gesture to pick up her notepad, knocking the purse, which toppled over the edge of her desk, its contents clattering onto the floor.

Hearsay barked, but wasn’t interested enough to leave his bed.

“Oh, how clumsy of me!” Val said, getting up and crossing around the desk.

Crouching next to Marta, she picked up a lipstick while eyeing what else fell out. A red leather wallet. Sequined makeup bag. Keys. Cell phone. Ballpoint pen. Bottle of aspirin. Girlfriend kept a clean purse. Shame it didn’t contain items seen in private eye movies, like a matchbook with the name of a bar, a personally monogrammed lighter, a pay stub. Something to tell her Marta’s last name, address, places she frequented.

“Love your purse,” Val said, heading back to her seat. “Louis Vuitton,
very
nice.”

Marta smiled, pleased. “I get at outlet mall. Thirty percent discount.” Her purse put back together, she set it on the floor next to her chair, then returned to the grieving girlfriend act. “I last see him yesterday.”

Val picked up a pen and poised it over her notepad. “What time?”

“Two.”

“In the afternoon?”

Marta blinked. “Yes.”

“So he’s been missing—” She glanced at the grandfather clock. Four forty-five. “—almost twenty-eight hours. Have you filed a missing-person report with the police?”

“
Da.
Yes.”

That took Val by surprise, but she played it cool. “Good. Which department? I’ll call, get a copy of their report.”

“No.” Marta paused. “They say we have lovers’ spat and he be back, so no report.”

“Is that right? You had a spat?”

Marta’s eyes filled with emotion. “Yes, little one, but he always come back.”

“Where were you when you had this misunderstanding?”

“Mis…?”

“Spat.”

“We were…” She made a flourish of her hand. “Outside. In park. Forget name.”

Val noticed Marta wasn’t wearing the megasize bling she’d had on the other day, and that Drake had seemed interested in.

“You’re not wearing your engagement ring. Did you and your fiance break up during that spat?”

Marta glanced at her hand, back to Val. “No, we not break up. I leave it at jeweler’s to check its worth. If I learn he ditch me, I sell it.”

“He being Drake, your fiance.”

“Of course.”

She casually glanced out the window, next to the door. There sat Marta’s black Lexus. Too far to read the license plate.

“So,” Val said nonchalantly, “do you have any idea where he might be? Favorite bar? Casino?”

“No. He’s, what you say, home person.”

“Homebody.”

“Yes.”

“You didn’t want to tell me the kind of work he did before, but as he’s missing, it would be helpful to know where he’s employed.”

“He out of place.”

“Out of work?”

“Yes. I think you go back to Dino’s. He there a lot. People know him, maybe he tell them…”

She caught a movement out the front. Drake strode up to Marta’s Lexus, held his smartphone close to the license plate. She quickly looked at Marta, who was pushing the wad of bills toward her.

“There will be more when you find him,” she said. “You have my number. Call me. No text. I go now.”

Val glanced out the window again. No Drake. She eased out a pent-up breath.

After the Lexus pulled out of the lot, the grandfather clock chimed five times. Val sat in the guest chair and peered at her smartphone. The video ran as long as it detected motion, so she was, as they said on TV news,
live.

“My name is Val LeRoy, and I am an intern P.I. at Diamond Investigations. Today is Saturday, August 10, 2013, five p.m. The interview began approximately seventeen minutes ago. The woman in this video is Marta, and she has refused to give her last name. My mentor, Las Vegas private investigator Drake Morgan, believes Marta may be linked to a recent arson, although I do not have that address.”

She reflected on the kinds of information Jayne stated on her recorded interviews, such as the time, date, location, names of people present. In legal cases, interview tapes like this were reviewed by lawyers, judges, juries, so Val had to do this right. And cover her behind.

She moved the wad of bills so it could be seen. “I do not consent to investigating this case as it is illegal for interns to do so.” Sounded good, even if she said so herself. “I accepted this money on behalf of Drake Morgan.”

She picked up the camera, turned off the app, then jumped a little when she saw Drake.

He slouched against the wall, his shirt partially untucked, lazily blinking those gray eyes. A white plastic bag lay next to his feet.

“I didn’t want to make you nervous, so I stayed in the hall until you were finished.”

She waited. He hadn’t seen her conduct an investigative task yet on her own. Oh, she’d dug through the trash for a short while with him yesterday, but he hadn’t been there when she found the cigarette. Otherwise he only seemed to catch her bloopers, most of which had revolved around her badly—as in illegally—handling client transactions.

But this interview was different. It had been Val flying on her own, solo, relying on her memory of Jayne’s interviews, and she knew it wasn’t illegal because she had referenced that her role had been as an intern only, under the mentorship of a licensed P.I. She felt no small amount of pride that at the last minute she’d relied on her quick thinking and creativity to rig a camera on Marta and record a damning interview.

If the mountain doesn’t go to you, go to the mountain. “Did I do well with my first interview?”

Squeak, squeak.

He grinned at Hearsay on the doggie bed. “Hearsay, buddy, you like your new toy?”

She waited a few moments, listening to more squeaking and doggie-love talk. Okay, she got it. He dug Hearsay. So did she.

When he finally glanced up, she managed a smile. Maybe not the hundred-dollar variety, but at least a seventy-five.

“Hey,” she said softly.

Men, even the densest ones, could pick up on a woman’s signals as though they’d been zapped by a cattle prod. Didn’t mean they
understood
what was going on, but they definitely picked up that something was wrong, and the problem had to do with them.

He scowled. “What?”

She refused to let his coolness dampen her spirits. “Did I do well with my first interview?” she asked again.

He gave her a look as though she’d just landed in an alien spacecraft. “You want a report…on your report?”

She could argue this, get defensive, make a joke or pretend it didn’t matter, then spend the next few minutes listening to the incessant squeaking that was starting to get on her nerves, big-time.

Or she could ask for her due.

“Yes, I’d like a report.”

He made a disgruntled sound, as though he were being called on by the teacher to give a book report on a story he didn’t like.

“Probably not a problem recording her in the office, although a sharp defense attorney will claim invasion of privacy, which could throw the interview out the window, especially as you recorded without her permission. What else…you didn’t ask her pertinent questions, such as her address or last name—”

“Last time I talked to her, she refused to give those!”

“Yeah, yeah, I know, but it would have been helpful to have asked again during this interview. Let’s see…knocking her purse off the desk…let’s see, a savvy defense lawyer can easily claim trespass, because you knocked over her purse and then inventoried its contents, as well as violated her privacy.”

“But…I didn’t find anything.”

He shrugged. “It isn’t about what you didn’t find, Val, it’s about how you
tried
to find it, which reflects badly on you. Oh, and there were some problems with your wrap-up, which we can go over later.” He straightened, glanced at the time on the grandfather clock. “Ready to go? Said we’d be there by six.”

She fiddled with things on her desk, not wanting him to see her embarrassment. How pathetic, scrounging for a pat on the head.

“Did you take Hearsay out for a break this afternoon?” he asked.

“No.”

“Should’ve. Take it you’ve never owned a dog.”

“Just cats.”

“I’ll take him outside through the back—not a good idea for me to be seen coming or going from Diamond Investigations’ main entrance anymore. He’ll stay in my office while we’re at dinner. I’ll put out food and water.”

“Hearsay was such a good boy during the interview.” She would show Drake how to give a
real
compliment. “Watched Marta for a moment or two, then went back to his doggie bed. Didn’t even chew on his squeaky toy. A real team player.”

“Yeah,” he said, warmth infusing his voice, “he’s a champ. I’ll be back to pick him up as soon as we’re done with dinner.”

Which meant she’d be driving Drake back here. Val LeRoy, Beck and Call Taxi Service.

He gestured to the white plastic bag at his feet. “Mind putting that bag in your car? It’s not heavy, just a few small cameras I’m taking to my mom’s.”

Make that Taxi and Moving Service.

“Pick me up in the parking lot behind Al’s Bail Bonds down the street. Be there in ten.” He gave a low whistle to Hearsay. “C’mon, buddy, time to do your business.”

As the dog got up and yawned, Drake picked up the doggie bed. The two of them disappeared down the hallway. A moment later, she heard the connecting door close with a click, followed by the grating of a bolt lock sliding into place.

Good grief. What did he think she was going to do? Tear after him, throw open his door and violate his privacy?

She put the wad of bills into her desk drawer and locked it. Then picked up her purse and the plastic bag, turned off the lights and exited Diamond Investigations.

Small pools of heat shimmered on the asphalt. Air was so thick, it took extra energy just to breathe. After setting the bag in the backseat, she started the engine, cranked up the air-conditioning and put her face in front of it, entertaining the fantasy of breezing right past Al’s Bail Bonds with a little toodle-loo wave to Drake I’m-the-Man Morgan.

Let him see what it feels like to hit your mark, or try to anyway, and have someone blow right past it.

* * *

D
RAKE
STOOD
IN
the parking lot behind Al’s Bail Bonds, a square of cracked, buckling asphalt with scrawny cholla cactus around the perimeter. There was no Al, a fact he’d learned after the real owner, a hefty, far-side-of-sixty woman named Mallory, had hired him to run several locates. Her pool of clients mostly came from jails, which provided phone books to inmates but no computers, and A came before M, hence the Al in the business name.

There were no cars in the lot, but then, Mallory was rarely at the office anymore.
Time for me to retire while I can still smell the roses,
she’d told him, puffing on one of her nonstop cigarettes.

He checked the time on his smartphone for the third time. Five thirty-seven. He told Val to be here in ten minutes, which would have been five-thirty, and she was late. Diamond Investigations was less than a block away—what was taking her so long?

He mopped his brow and closed the app he’d been monitoring on his phone. Thumbing through the saved phone numbers on his phone, he found Val’s and punched it. As it started to ring, her rental Honda sped into the lot, lurched over a warped section of asphalt and pitched to a stop thirty feet away.

The entire lot was empty and she couldn’t park closer? With a disgruntled shake of his head, he walked to the passenger door and tugged on the hot metal handle.

Locked.

He glowered at her through the window.

She gave a sorry-about-that shrug and perused the dashboard, tapping a finger against her bottom lip.