Green Eyes in Las Vegas (13 page)

“We didn’t break up. We were never together.”

She started to say something about plenty of fish in the ocean but not enough time to waste and I let my head roll backwards. I couldn’t take any more of her dating advice, so I said, “My appointment’s here. Gotta go. I’ll see you soon.”

I hung up before she could tell me to keep my eyes open for a good man and to remember to wear nice clothes – there would be enough time for her to say all that during lunch.

***

Samantha and Cheryl came out of their rooms at about the same time. I exchanged a glance with Samantha and we went to talk to Cheryl.

“Hi
, Cheryl,” Samantha was saying when I reached her. “How’s it going?”

“Not bad.” Cheryl glanced at me with a questioning look.

I waited as Samantha introduced me and explained that I was looking into Crystal’s death. As Samantha talked, I watched Cheryl’s face.

Up close, I could tell that Cheryl was a little older than us, maybe in her
late thirties. Her expression was guarded, and the angular contours of her face made her look slightly cynical. I’d guess she was a parent, and that although she had a slim, supermodel-worthy figure and a face that looked stunning to me, she probably wasn’t allocated the lucrative night shifts, the times when big spenders came out to play.

In a year or two she’d be older than all the other strippers here, and she’d probably have to leave
The Peacock Club for one of the slightly less picky larger clubs. Or maybe by then she’d have accumulated a fortune and would retire to a beach in Costa Rica. 

“I’m sorry about your friend,” Cheryl told us when Samantha was done. “But I didn’t know her, and I need to get back to work.”

“Maybe we can chat during your break?” I asked her.

Cheryl’s glance was slightly contemptuous. “I’ve got stuff to do during my break. And I don’t want to be rude, but I didn’t know Crystal, I never work weekends and according to you she only worked one weekend a month.”

There was an undercurrent of resentment in her voice, and I knew my guess about her not getting the lucrative shifts was spot on.

“Come on
, Cheryl,” I said. “I think you know more than that.”

Cheryl rolled her eyes. “I’m going back to work. Don’t bother me.”

She began to stalk off, trying to choose which of the men to talk to.

“Cheryl,” Samantha called out after her.

A stripper wearing a “sexy nurse” outfit, sky-high red stilettos, and a vacuous expression turned around to look at us. She was wearing dark makeup, and her long blonde hair fell to her waist in big, loose curls. She looked familiar…

“Hang on,” I said, rushing up to
the blonde “nurse” before I’d sorted through my jumbled thoughts. “You’re Cheryl. Cheryl Czekanski.”

Samantha had followed me, and said, “No, her name’s Sherry.”

Sherry/Cheryl smiled at us. “Sherry’s my stripper name,” she said, and then lowered her voice to a breathy whisper. “My real name’s Cheryl, but that’s not quite as sexy.” She giggled in a strange, high-pitched voice. “Do I know you?”

I smiled and shook my head, pleased with my hunch. She was one of the beautiful blondes my Google Images search had turned up, and she’d thought we were calling out to her earlier.

“I’m Tiffany Black,” I told her. “I’m a private investigator looking in Crystal Macombe’s death.”

The smile disappeared from her face, and I knew I was onto something.

It was time to go on the offensive, so before she could think up a story, I said, “Why’d you kill her?”

Cheryl shook her head furiously. “I had nothing to do with her death.” She
moved to a quiet corner, away from the club patrons, and Samantha and I followed her.

We all stood huddled together, and Cheryl glanced from me to Samantha, who was standing there with her arms crossed, her face stony.

“That’s a big claim,” I said. “Especially when Crystal was sending you so much money each month.”

“Why would I kill her?” Cheryl looked at me, all wide-eyed innocence. I half-expected her to flip her hair to make a point.

“What was the money for?” I asked.

Beside me, I could feel the anger emanating from Samantha. I turned to look at her, and flinched when I saw her narrowed eyes and pursed lips.

Cheryl stared at us wordlessly, her lips twisted into a sulky pout. Finally, she said, “I don’t have time for this. I have to get back to work.”

She took a step forward, and Samantha immediately moved to block her path. The two glared at each other, and I saw a bouncer glancing
over at us nervously.

“Guys,” I said, “I don’t want either of you losing your jobs over this.” I turned to Cheryl and said, “You don’t
have
to talk to me – but if you really didn’t have anything to do with Crystal’s death, you should. Unless you
want
me to give the cops your details so you go to lockup for a few days. Your manager’ll love that.”

She glared at me and took a step back. “Fine,” she hissed. “Wha
t d’ya wanna know?”

“Why was she sending you money?”

Cheryl glanced at Samantha again, and so did I. Samantha looked like she was ready to pounce at any moment now – her cheeks were flushed, and her hands were balled up into loose fists.

“Why don’t you go back to work,” I told Samantha. “I should talk to Cheryl in private.”

Samantha shook her head. “No way. Bitch messed with my girl, maybe she killed her. I’d like to know.”

I wanted to give Samantha a good shake, but I satisfied myself with grabbing her arm and dragging her a few steps backwards with me.

Cheryl stood in the corner, watching us with wary eyes.

“Look,” I whispered, when we were out of earshot. “You need to let me do my job, ok? Maybe she knows something, but she won’t tell me if you’re there.”

Samantha stared at Cheryl for a few seconds, and then sighed. “Fine. But you need to tell me what Airhead here says.”

“Of course.”

I watched Samantha sashay away, and then I went back to Cheryl and asked, “What happened between you and Crystal?”

Cheryl studied her perfect French manicure. “I wondered why Crystal only worked one weekend a month. I figured she either had another job or a sugar daddy. One time, I overheard her talking on the phone with some guy, telling him she loved him and she was at some modeling job and she missed him.”

“So you blackmailed her.”

Cheryl shrugged. “It wasn’t really blackmail
, if you think about it. I was doing her a favor.”

“How?”

Cheryl looked at me blankly.

“How was it a favor?”

She shrugged again. “Fine. So it wasn’t a favor. But I figured the bitch could pay me a bit of cash, it’s not like she was hurting for it.”

There was a pause as Cheryl frowned and studied a nail which seemed to be chipped.

I tapped one foot, trying not to be impatient. “Then what happened?”

She looked up at me. “Huh? Oh yeah, she stopped paying up. Told me to go eff myself, and I told her I would.”

She frowned, remembering their fight, and I waited for a few seconds before prompting her. “And then?”

“I’m not as stupid as everyone here thinks,” Cheryl said. “I took some photos of Crystal on my phone and then I mailed them to her boyfriend.”

I listened to my heart thudding, wondering if I’d heard right. “You emailed her boyfriend?”

She shook her head. “No. I don’t know his email. But I knew Crystal was staying at
The P’lazzo, so I rang up and found their room number. Sent the photos by post.”

“When was this?”

Cheryl tilted her head, thinking. “Couple of days back.”

“And sending him the photos was meant to help,
how?”

She looked at me steadily, not saying anything. I could almost see the wheels in her head turning slowly, trying to remember why she’d thought it’d be a good idea.

I sighed. “Did the boyfriend get in touch with you?”

“No. He didn’t know I’d taken the photos.”

I thought back to the conversation with Max. How sad he’d seemed, how proud that Crystal would get a part and that she had values and morals. That didn’t seem like a man who’d found out that his girlfriend was a stripper. The guy must be one hell of an actor, I thought, not really wanting to believe it. Hopefully, he was still in Vegas.

“Thanks for your help,” I told Cheryl, not really meaning it. “Don’t leave town.”

The drive to The Palazzo was short but nerve-wracking; I worried I wouldn’t get to the hotel in time, and I drove like a woman possessed, trying to think of what to say if Max was still there.

I didn’t bother to stop at the front desk, and went straight up and knocked on Max’s suite. When he opened the door, I felt my body sag forward with relief.

“Max,” I said, too happy to be worried anymore. “I’m glad you’re here.”

I walked in uninvited and sat myself down on the leather sofa. It was only then that I noticed Max looked different from the last time I’d seen him. His forehead was creased, and he seemed to be moving stiffly.

“How are you?” he asked mechanically, and I smiled, ready with my polite response.

He had his back to me, and I watched as he began to open a desk drawer.

I rose to my feet automatically. I was sure that Max was reaching for a gun and I fumbled for my bag, trying to undo the zip as quickly as possible.

Time slowed down. The room seemed really bright, and I couldn’t hear any noise from outside. Why wasn’t I carrying my gun today? I watched Max reach into the drawer and grab something, and there was my hand, inside my bag, wrapping around the bottle of pepper spray. Not that pepper spray would win a gunfight.

“My friend St—” I began, as Max turned around.

He wasn’t holding a gun. There was a big white envelope in his hand, and I let my sentence hang in the air, unfinished.

“What about him?” Max said.

“Um,
Stone, right,” I babbled. Max didn’t seem to want to kill me, but it might be a good idea to tell him the lie I’d just thought of. “He’s waiting for me downstairs, we’re meant to go somewhere after this.”

My words didn’t seem to register with Max – his eyes looked
dull and lifeless. “I got this in the mail today.”

He handed the envelope over to me, and I opened it and pulled out the photos of Crystal. They were low-resolution, blown up, and unflattering. There was Crystal dancing on a pole, and there she was leaning over some guy’s table. There weren’t any pictures of her actually giving a
lap dance, but there were a few pictures of happy-looking men following a topless, flirtatiously smiling Crystal. Looking at the pictures, I felt a little sick myself, and I could understand why Max was now sitting on the sofa, head in his hands.

“Why didn’t she tell me?” he said. “If she needed money, I’d have been happy to pay. I guess she had her own sense of pride.”

He looked up at me, his eyes silently pleading me to tell him something worth listening to.

“Uh,” I said.

It’s an act,
I told myself, but I didn’t believe that. Max looked so forlorn and dejected; I couldn’t help but feel sorry for him.

“You know she was ambitious,” I told him. “She probably wanted to earn her own money.”

“But she could’ve told me. I could’ve gotten her a job as a secretary somewhere.”

But then she wouldn’t have been able to spend
all her days chasing auditions. Being a weekend-stripper was a time-honored tradition among starlets, surely everyone in Hollywood knew that? But Max was just another clueless male.

“When did you get these?” I asked.

“A few minutes ago. I got a call from the front desk, so I went down, thinking it’d be business papers, but…”

I looked at the envelope. It was addressed to
The Plassoo Casino, and I could imagine the postal workers scratching their heads over where it needed taking to.

I took a deep breath and sat down beside Max.

“Did you know about it?” he asked me, and I nodded.

“I’m sorry. I was told to keep it a secret.”

“Does everybody know? Am I the last to find out? I really believed her, that she was doing modeling work. I feel like such an idiot.”

“You’re not an idiot. And nobody else knows, just me and Samantha. And I only know because Samantha told me.”

He nodded unhappily, and I excused myself and headed down to the lobby. I needed a few minutes alone, and I needed to figure out how to validate or disprove what Max had just told me. I wandered down the hallway to the gift shops, where I watched the tourists poring over fancy dresses and over-priced watches. Cameras blinked, high up on the ceiling, and I knew that if I could just get into the surveillance room with its fancy monitors, I could check the footage to see if Max had really gotten his mail today.

But that would involve calling in a favor from Stone, and
I didn’t want to do that. I found myself wandering back to the front desk, and the idea came to me.

Why hadn’t I thought of this earlier? That’s the problem with technology, I told myself, it makes you ignore real human beings. Oh no. That sound
ed like something Karma would say.

The man at the front desk was tall, thin and bespectacled. His name tag
read “Geoff,” and I went up to him and smiled.

He smiled back politely. “What can I do for you?”

“Did you just get an envelope addressed to The Plassoo Hotel?” I asked. “My friend just showed it to me and – was that for real?”

I half-frowned, half-smiled like I couldn’t believe it, and Geoff chuckled. “Yeah. Just came in. Some people, huh?”

“Yeah,” I said. “Some people.”

I made my way slowly back to Max’s room, thinking about his ignorance. But if he had nothing to do with Crystal’s death, I was back to square one. Who could’ve possibly wanted Crystal to die?