Motion for Murder (32 page)

"I'll call you." I kissed Rachel on the head as I got up to leave. If there was something odd about ditching an old friend so I could dance naked in front of a room full of glorified dentists, it escaped me.

CHAPTER TWO

I woke up late the next day in a strange mood. I made coffee and treated myself to a midday breakfast of bacon and peanut butter M&M's on my balcony overlooking the Strip. The orthodontists had been very kind to me, as expected, but in the light of day Rachel's troubles had me more than a little worried. Up until now the few jobs I'd taken had involved insurance cheats and men married to suspicious wives. I was pretty wet behind the ears, and even Rachel had admitted I wasn't exactly her first choice in private detectives. And Cody Masterson, the guy she wanted to sue, was part of a big time casino family. It made sense that no other detectives wanted to touch this case. Detectives work
for
casinos, not against them. So why was I even thinking about it? Because Rachel had asked me to and I was a sucker for a girl in trouble.

It was still odd to think of myself as a detective. After a decade of taking my clothes off, I had begun to identify myself more and more as an exotic dancer. I had made big-girl decisions like buying a condo and building an IRA on the assumption that my income from stripping would continue to fund my lifestyle. In short, I was no longer a girl who stripped. I was a stripper. And that was scary.

It was never supposed to be like that. Back in college, I applied to work at Cougar's on a lark with a girlfriend of mine. Once I got over my initial shyness, I started making real money. It was paying for college I rationalized, so what was the harm? Wads of twenty-dollar bills are kind of hard to walk away from. And then my niece, Elena, got sick. Her dad had left the scene long ago, and her mom didn't have insurance. Leukemia is expensive, it turns out. At first my sister didn't want my money—she had an inkling of where it came from—but after awhile there was no other option. So for three years I funded about half the cost of Elena's treatments, working with the hospital to get through it. Elena never had any clue, and never will.

Rationalization is the second-strongest human impulse. Once Elena got better, I told myself that it was time to earn back all the money I had spent on her medical care. And then the economy and the stock market crashed. Where was I supposed to find a respectable job now? The years ticked by, and nothing changed. There was always a ready excuse to keep stripping.

But it was time to move on. Months earlier, I had been scared straight. While doing my power shopping through Target, I had run into a woman I used to dance with. She was barely recognizable. About forty-five, Janine wore the haggard look of someone who had spent half her life in smoky bars. A zombified shell of a woman. During our brief and awkward chat, she seemed to be trying to convince me, and herself, that her life was a productive and enjoyable one. It was anything but. Her family shunned her, and she had been through a string of failed relationships with increasingly skuzzy men. Janine was my wake-up call, the slap upside the head telling me it was time to change. And
fast
.

The first step in helping Rachel was to talk to Jeff Katz, the lawyer. It was not a reunion I was looking forward to. I'd danced for him once or twice a week for three years before he decided to ask me out about a year ago. I hadn't been on a decent date in ages, so I foolishly said yes, in violation of club policy and common sense. After dessert I kissed him on the cheek and whispered in his ear that I wasn't going to sleep with him. He reacted like a wounded puppy, and since then I've felt awkward around him. It wasn't that I felt bad about not sleeping with him, but I did feel a pang of guilt about ordering dessert. After that "date" our relationship gradually returned to its refreshingly simple ways. I would take his forty dollars, lead him into a back room, and then I'd take my clothes off and squirm around on his lap for a few minutes. I much preferred it that way, and I think he did too.

I put off calling the number on Jeff's business card for most of the day. By four o'clock, I had rationalized not calling him at all. It was Monday, and Jeff usually came into the club on Mondays. I'd probably see him at work. On my turf.

It was still about 90 degrees at eight that evening, so I gave myself some extra time to walk the six blocks from my apartment to Cougar's, which was a block off the Strip near the Bally's casino. I got myself together and headed out on stage to dance with Amanda, one of the few redheaded dancers who worked at Cougar's. It was early and still half-empty, so I had no trouble spotting Jeff sitting next to one of the catwalks off the main stage.

Like most men, Jeff wasn't particularly attractive, but he wasn't exactly ugly, either. He had the comfortably puffy body of a celebrity chef and facial hair that wasn't officially a beard but wasn't just unshaven stubble either. His black hair was thinning a little on top, and he tended to overdress for the occasion.

After our set I walked out to the floor to find Jeff. I was wearing a black thong and a tiny pink bikini top with Velcro fasteners, and Jeff smiled broadly at me when he spotted me walking in his direction.

"Hey, did you see who just left?" he asked.

I gave him my best smile. "No I didn't, honey."

"JaMarcus Collingsworth. He was an all pro last year for the Browns."

"Sorry I missed him," I said, truthfully. NFL guys tended to throw money around to impress people. That always puzzled me, because their salaries were public information. We all know how many millions they make, so why the need to flash it around?

"He's a pass rusher. Very small for the defensive line, but he had like twelve sacks last year. He was on my fantasy team." He beamed proudly at his display of useless information.

"Hmm," I muttered. I realized I had actually danced for JaMarcus the night before, but I hadn't believed his story that he was a defensive lineman in the NFL. I just kept taking his twenties.

"JaMarcus
is
very small," I said. "Surprisingly so."

Jeff raised an eyebrow at my double entendre.

"In my job you learn intimate things about men that you don't necessarily want to know." No wonder JaMarcus had been trying to distract me with all those twenties last night. I could tell through his pants that the poor man was hung like a toy poodle.

"You danced for him?"

I nodded. "He was in here last night, too."

"At least he's got good taste in women," Jeff said approvingly.

I smiled coquettishly and began twirling my black hair with my index finger. That was my polite attempt to stifle all this small talk and get things rolling. I grasped Jeff's arms, hauled him up from his chair with both hands, and led him into the back room.

We had the room almost to ourselves. The back room was more dimly lit than the stage area and had a number of nooks and corners furnished with leather couches and overstuffed chairs. My friend Carlos, one of the bouncers, was leaning against the wall doing his best to look menacing. He nodded stiffly at me, and his eyes flickered over my body momentarily before resuming their glazed-over stare. It was nice to have security back there, but sometimes Carlos could be a little rough with customers he thought were getting too friendly with me. Not exactly a great climate for tips.

I led Jeff to his usual chair in the far corner, where it was quiet enough to talk. The couches and bigger chairs were more comfortable for lounging, but Jeff knew better. Like a lot of regulars, he preferred a chair narrow enough to allow me to swing my legs around his middle to straddle him completely. I would get to that in a minute. I began the tease by pushing Jeff gently into the chair. I stood facing him and leaned over to rub his neck and shoulders while he inevitably gaped at my chest. As usual, he was smiling like a little boy on Christmas morning. While I rubbed his shoulders, I leaned slowly into his face. As I rubbed deeper I could feel his hot breath on my chest. I figured it was the perfect time to get some straight answers.

"Before we get too hot and heavy," I said softly, "can I ask you a couple of questions?"

He reluctantly came up for air. "Uh, of course." He would have said anything at that point. I eased his forehead back into my chest.

I continued rubbing his neck while I whispered in his ear, "How do you know Rachel Hannity?"

His head resurfaced again, his hair now slightly mussed. "What? I know her, yes. I do some estate work for her. Why?" He was babbling.

"She wants me to do a job for her. Something involving Cody Masterson."

Jeff had been skeptical about my becoming a private detective. He shot me a quizzical look.

 "Anyway, Rachel is in trouble. She says you're going to help her sue Cody, but you need someone to dig up some new dirt. Something the cops didn't have the first time around during the murder trial. Is that about the gist of it?"

"You hit the high points, yeah."

"So is there anything you haven't told Rachel about this?" I asked.

He frowned. "Like what?"

"Well, you and I both get paid by the hour. Sometimes we tell people only the things they want to hear. It's only natural."

Jeff's eyes had found my chest again, but he did his best to answer my question. "You probably know that nobody's ever done well for themselves by taking on an old line casino family like those people."

I shrugged. I remembered that Cody Masterson was Rachel's brother-in-law for a short time. Like Rachel, he had married into the Hannity clan, owners of an outdated Strip casino called The Outpost.

"I'm not too worried about that," I said. "If things don't work out, I have a pretty lucrative gig to fall back on."

Jeff gestured to my bikini, which was still clinging to my chest. "Speaking of which…"

I held up one finger. "So you think she can win?"

"Anything can happen," he said. "Look, if you're asking if I'm just stringing her along to get some billable hours, it's not like that. She hasn't even paid me yet, now that I think about it. With some new evidence, we can convince a jury that the guy did it, and that he owes your friend about fifty million bucks for killing her husband."

That was good enough for me. I leaned in to whisper in Jeff's ear. "Enough talk." I undid the Velcro on my bikini top. As usual, he watched me as though he'd never seen a naked woman before. I enjoyed that about Jeff: his lust was unconditional.

CHAPTER THREE

The next day I slept in until one and made myself a tuna melt, which was about the most complicated meal I ever allowed myself to prepare. My women's magazines were always prattling on about the need to add more fish to my diet, and I tried hard to ignore a nagging doubt that the combination of mayonnaise and cheddar cheese would counteract any health benefits coming from the tuna. I decided I didn't care.

With the morning officially shot, I elected to spend the afternoon enjoying the cool re-circulated air in my condo and diving into the details of how the Cody Masterson murder case had played out in court. Apart from what Rachel and Jeff had told me, which was almost nothing, I remembered exactly two things about the case: Masterson was guilty as hell, and he was better looking than any man should be allowed to be. I had recently discovered that for twenty dollars a year, the
Las Vegas
Review-Journal
lets you search and browse through old stories on its website, and I figured that would provide a good start. Too good, it turned out. My initial search for the name Cody Masterson turned up 189 hits, which was too much for me to read in this lifetime. I scrolled past several pre-murder society page stories and focused in on reports about the murder, Cody's indictment, and the lead-up to trial.

There wasn't a lot to it. Three summers ago, George Hannity had been shot through the head at close range in what appeared to be a botched carjacking near a posh suburb ten miles east of downtown Las Vegas. All signs suggested that Hannity had been driving his convertible Mercedes SL-55 to his home when, at a deserted stoplight, someone pulled up, either in a car or on foot, and tried to wrest control of his car. Hannity was shot and killed, but the police speculated that something had spooked the carjacker and caused him to flee the scene without taking the Mercedes. No immediate suspects emerged, and the case looked destined to remain unsolved.

The murder of a young casino owner like George Hannity generated a slew of news stories, most of them under the byline of a writer named Leslie Trondheim. Her early reports focused on the increase in violent crime that had accompanied the area's rampant population growth in recent years. Other stories focused on the family tragedy. Hannity was only in his mid-thirties, had been married to Rachel (who was artfully described by the reporter as a "former entertainer") for three years, and he controlled thirty percent of an old, yet profitable, casino. All signs pointed to a long career as a wealthy businessman and community leader. One article mentioned him as part of a syndicate that was trying to bring a Major League Baseball franchise to town.

As I was scrolling through the stories, my computer flashed a warning that the website would log me out in another five minutes. I hadn't realized it, but I had been online for almost two hours. I was getting antsy, anyway. I was quickly learning that I wasn't cut out for this part of the job. I wanted to be on my feet and talking to people, not staring at a bunch of electrons on a screen in a lonely apartment. I logged out and pulled up the newspaper's public homepage, where I clicked on the contacts link.

I dialed the city desk number and the receptionist put me right through to Leslie Trondheim herself. She sounded polite but impatient. I introduced myself as a private investigator and asked whether she remembered working on the Masterson murder case.

"Of course," she said shortly. Stupid question. It was like asking Dan Rather if he remembered covering the Kennedy assassination.

"I wonder if you'd have a half hour sometime to talk about the case with me," I said.