Murdermobile (Portland Bookmobile Mysteries) (11 page)

“Yeah, but I bet he gets great
tips,” Karen sighed, absently gazing after her car’s disappearing taillights. “I
wonder where he stuffs them.” She shivered, then pulled her attention back to
Hester.

 “Anyway, let’s just go with the
flow and have fun with this,” Karen said as they pushed through a motorized
revolving door into the casino’s floodlit foyer.

A roar of noise and glut of
fun-seekers confronted them inside. Onlookers clustered around the foyer’s
centerpiece, a simulated river rapid. Rushing water foamed around a rocking
canoe paddled by four bare-chested, war-painted young men with long braids and
rippling biceps. The lead paddler’s chiseled umber features and obsidian-black
hair suggested he might actually be from the Cold Lake tribe. The other three
looked suspiciously like moonlighting Portland State football players in tacky
wigs.

The paddlers’ apparent mission:
the rescue of a flaxen-haired “Indian maid” (a feather in her hair was the
tip-off) who amply filled a faux bobcat-skin bikini. Standing on the rocky
shore, she swooned and postured at the advances of a big black bear, snarling
and waving his paws thanks to animatronic technology pirated from Disney.

Karen, distracted for just a
moment, turned back to Hester, whose mouth hung open in stunned amazement.

“Isn’t this great? But really,
Hest, I hope you’ll ease up on this murder thing. Duffy’s just not worth the
ulcers.”

“Well, Pim IS!” a defiant Hester
shouted to be heard over the roaring water, which at that moment calmed to a
hushed ripple in response to the preprogrammed click of a microswitch. All over
the foyer, heads turned toward Hester’s ringing voice. Hester shot a poisoned look
at her friend. Karen stopped in her tracks and stared down at the
maize-and-burgundy Pendleton rug beneath their feet.

“I’m sorry. I forgot you and Pim
are so close,” Karen said into Hester’s ear.

She paused and then added, “I
suppose it hasn’t occurred to you that just maybe cranky old Pim went off her
little rocker and actually did it?” Hester folded her arms and glared, but then
had to leap aside as a molded fiberglass “log” full of screaming thrillseekers
suddenly shot from a tunnel opening in the wall above them and splashed into a
water-filled flume that fed the “river.”

Karen seemed to take no notice of
the chaos as she patted Hester’s shoulder, a little too patronizingly. “But
really, let’s try to have some laughs.”

Karen grabbed Hester by the crook
of her arm and dragged her toward the smoky gaming room, from which issued the
metallic chink-chink-chink of mechanized payoffs blended with the noise of
frenzied laughter, intoxication and back-slapping.

“I know I intend to blow the
entire three rolls of lunch-money quarters that I’ve got in my purse,” Karen
crowed. “Grab me a gimlet and show me to the slots!”

Clearly wash-and-wear would have
made more sense, Hester thought in disgust.

She leaned down to sniff her silk
blouse as she dried her hands under a blower in the ladies room, which she’d
found behind a door marked “Squaws.”

Stirred by the hot gush of air,
tobacco smell billowed up from her clothing, which for the last three hours had
sponged up inescapable clouds of smoke. That’s what I get, Hester thought
ruefully, for patronizing a facility managed by people who think “smoke-free”
means you don’t have to
pay
for your cigars.

Though the Cold Lake tribe owned
controlling interest in the casino, Hester had learned from a color brochure
she’d picked up at the change counter, the tribe had signed a management
contract with O’Hara’s Club, one of Nevada’s biggest gambling operators, with
casinos in Las Vegas, Tahoe, Reno and Atlantic City, N.J.

O’Hara’s, its clientele diluted
by the spread of casinos to reservations, Mississippi riverboats and cruise
ships, was experimenting here with its first major share in an Indian “gaming
and family-fun resort,” as the brochure called it.

“That probably explains why Cold
Lake culture is treated with such peripheral knowledge and only nodding
respect, if any,” Hester observed as she and Karen poked quarters into adjacent
slot machines. “You notice how the displays and costumes seem to blenderize
about eight different native cultures from half a dozen regions? I know from
sixth-grade social studies that the closest Indians to have worn the style of
headdress we saw on the restaurant maitre d’ was the Mohawk tribe of New York!”

Hester paused speechlessly at the
approach of a Nordic-looking young man, maybe 19. He wore black-and-white
spotted cowhide chaps. A studded denim vest flapped open to reveal a swimmer’s
pectorals and taut, washboard stomach. He smiled, looked deep into Hester’s
eyes, then reached into a bucket he was carrying and handed her a free pocket
fan. Across the red plastic fan was the message, “I got hot over the slots at COLD
LAKE CASINO.”

As the Dodge City-Adonis
disappeared around a corner, Hester caught her breath and added, “And it
explains why there are so many white-bread employees. I don’t think the Cold
Lake tribe has enough members to staff the coat-check room in this place.”

“Oh, lighten up, Hester,” Karen
said, snapping her fingers as two glowing electronic tomahawks teamed up with a
tepee on the slot machine before her. Four quarters plopped out. “Rats! I
almost got the Big Wampum.”

“It’s OK, I’m having fun in an
odd, really cheap way, if I don’t think about it too hard or inhale deeply,”
Hester replied, furiously waving her fan as a man with a Willie Nelson beard
and Lyle Lovett hair ambled past, blowing cigarillo smoke from the side of his
mouth.

“Well, I’ve still got half a roll
of quarters and I don’t intend to leave yet because any moment now I’m going to
be rolling in untold wealth, and Lord knows I wouldn’t complain,” Karen said,
weariness edging her voice.

 Her eyes darted up and down the
rows of slot machines as she slurped the last piece of ice from her empty
glass. “Where in the name of all that is good and sacred is a cocktail
waitress?”

“I’ll do some tracking for fresh
sign and see if I can flush one out for you, Kimo Sabe,” Hester said with a
salute. She sidled up to Karen and whispered in her ear, “But faithful Tonto
here is
driving the Teri June-mobile home tonight, my dear.”

Karen stuck out her tongue and
waved Hester away. “Fine. Go. Please, I’m dying here.”

Hester wandered away from the
slot machines and stepped around a crowd of craps players that seemed
disproportionately peopled by women with bouffant hair-dos. Then, objective in
sight, she made a beeline across the casino in pursuit of a retreating cocktail
waitress in a Pocahontas mini-skirt.

“Oh, miss! Excuse me? Miss! Say,
could I get – Oh, hell!” The waitress, toting a tray mounded with dirty glasses
and overflowing ash trays, pushed her toe against a swinging door and
disappeared as nimbly as Alice’s white rabbit.

Just as Hester started to turn
away, the door opened again. She turned back with a whirl. “Oh, miss – ”

Coming through the door, just
beyond a small knot of laughing baccarat players, wasn’t a waitress but a group
of men. What caught Hester’s attention was the look of the two in front, both
sporting beautifully draped Armani suits in that expensive, sheeny material
she’d only ever seen in pricey boutiques on her trip to Rome. Each wore exotic,
sculpted sunglasses. Sunglasses in Oregon in February? At night?

“Who are these characters?”
Hester whispered.

Speaking with them as they moved
into the room were two Cold Lake tribal leaders, one old and craggy faced,
wearing dressy Levis, a white shirt, striped tie and neatly cropped hair topped
by a feather-trimmed Stetson. Hester recognized him from the casino brochure.

The other, Hester realized with
interest, was the tribe’s young lawyer, about whom she’d just read a write-up
in Willamette World, Portland’s tabloid weekly. The paper said Tony Madras was
a Lewis and Clark law school grad with a taste for sushi, racehorses and
Lamborghinis. His business acumen was largely credited for the tribe’s new
prosperity, though he had just skated around an indictment for misappropriating
federal low-income housing funds that helped build a cousin’s mini-mansion up
near Hood River, Hester recalled.

Strong cheekbones highlighted his
features of chiseled bronze. Perfect teeth flashed as he spoke. Black braids
hanging down the back of an open-collared, red silk shirt touched the waist of
his glove-tight, black leather pants.

Bringing up the rear was a fifth
man. He wore a dark olive suit, obviously European and expensive. His eyes hid
behind Ray-Bans. Hester didn’t notice him at first, he so diligently tried to
blend with the group. But even the most casual observer would have quickly
concluded from his awkward manner that he was somehow an outsider.

Hester’s intake of breath hissed
audibly through her teeth, the recognition came as such a jolt.

The fifth man was Paul Kenyon.

“And when did
you
start
shopping at Mario’s?” Hester whispered, recognizing on his slim frame the wares
of Portland’s toniest purveyor of clothing-from-the-Continent.

Beneath the suit’s narrow lapels
were satiny ivory pleats of an art-deco tuxedo shirt, bound at the collar by
strings of a bolo tie with a gaudy, hand-tooled silver buffalo-head clasp,
complete with turquoise eyes.

That buffalo is familiar, at
least, Hester thought. She’d noticed it during a few of Paul’s bookmobile
visits and had marveled how she’d “never seen anything quite like it.”

But, dark glasses aside, even the
bolo worked with the avant-garde, urban-Western look Paul sported with
surprising panache, Hester observed in wonder.

Then her hand flew to her chest,
as a piercing glint of light flashed from Kenyon’s left earlobe.

“Oh my sainted aunt, is that a
diamond? That’s amazing!” she said aloud. Turning from a blackjack table next
to Hester, a heavy, horse-faced woman in a flowered fuchsia-and-chartreuse
cocktail dress held her left hand aloft and waggled a tiny engagement ring. “Thank
you!” she tittered.

Startled, Hester recovered
quickly enough to pat the woman’s shoulder and chirp, “You must be so excited!”
Then she sidled away to stand behind a totem-pole planter. From here she could
peek unobserved at Paul’s entourage.

Smiling and talking, the men
skirted the edge of the large hall, then turned and disappeared through another
door, this one heavy, carved mahogany. It bore a large brass sign: “PRIVATE. By
reservation only.” A stern young Cold Lake man with loose and flowing black hair
and a tight, dark suit pulled the door closed and stood outside it with his
arms crossed.

“Oh, Pauly, what are you up to?”
Hester murmured, licking her lips. “So this is your night to visit the Indian
children, hmmm?”

Hester sucked in her cheeks. Resolutely,
she strode toward the mahogany door and tapped the shoulder of a nearby keno
operator. He turned, raising bushy red eyebrows and fixing watery blue eyes on
Hester. A name tag on his buffalo-skin caftan said, “How! I’m Eldon.”

“Excuse me, I just saw a, uh,
friend of mine go in there, and I was just curious what’s, um, inside...”

Eldon stared stonily. From
beneath a green visor, wild hair with streaks of orange and gray spilled into a
pony tail. Age spots mixed with faded freckles across his leathery jowls.

“Heh, heh.” Hester tried her best
5,000-watt smile. “I mean, look Eldon, I didn’t want to bother him, but we need
to get back to Portland ... Uh, you see, I just got a phone call from my
babysitter and, it’s terrible, you see, the baby has a fever. It’s 105! And
she’s only two days old!”

Hester winced. The watery eyes
stared, unblinking.

Oh well, in for a dime, in for a
dollar, Hester thought. With her fruitiest come-hither look, she tossed her
strawberry locks and batted her eyelashes. Eldon, unmoved, picked up a
smoldering cigarillo and took a long suck. Hester watched as no smoke came back
out.

“Great, I’m flirting like Elly
Mae Clampett, but G. Gordon Liddy here isn’t falling for it for a second,”
Hester groaned to herself.

Wait – in for a dollar? Had she
learned nothing from reading all those Dashiell Hammetts? Maybe you really
could buy information from these people!

Hester frantically dug in her
purse. Finally she pulled out her hand, fingers twined around all that was left
from her gambling spree. Opening her palm, she looked down at a lone Susan B.
Anthony dollar she’d gotten in change from a post-office vending machine. She
looked up again. Eldon, moving no other muscles in his face, winked at her.
Hester closed her eyes in disgust and wished that she were anywhere else.

Cheeks burning, Hester turned
away and almost collided with a cigarette vendor.

The woman touched Hester’s arm to
steady her.

“Careful, honey. No luck with old
Eldon, huh?” she cooed. “I couldn’t help but notice. He’s a tough old fart. Can
I point you to the powder room or something?”

About Hester’s age, she seemed to
be wearing only leather fringe – lots of it, mostly hanging from her plump,
alabaster breasts. Tan leather hot pants and moccasins completed the outfit.
Beneath a French knot of chestnut hair, a tray laden with Kools hung from
straps around her shoulders. A name tag said “Deanna.”

“Oh, thank you,” Hester sighed. “Actually
I was just wondering – what’s behind the door?” She nodded past the keno
counter.

“Oh, us peons call it the High
Rollers Lounge,” the cigarette girl said with a wry smile. “It’s a plush little
room where the fat cats play. Just poker, usually, but some pretty big stakes.”

She looked around the room, then
waved Hester closer. Obviously relishing a chance to conspire, Deanna continued
in a whispered hiss.

“Now don’t get me in trouble for
telling you this, but they’re trying something really weird and new in there,
too. You’ve probably heard about these virtual-reality computer things? You
know, games and stuff that are like 3-D, complete with some kind of headsets
that you wear? Well, they’ve got that in there. Just got it working a couple
days ago. Had to hire some computer geek from Portland to work out the bugs. He
told ’em he could have it running in two weeks, and it’s been more like three
months! But I hear it’s working now. You can go in there and play what they
call VR Poker.”

“Wow,” Hester whispered.

“How it works, see, is you put on
one of the headsets and through some sort of fancy Internet hookup you can be
in a poker game with somebody in Vegas! Or for fun, they have like different
programs with projections of Wild West gamblers. One of the cooks told me you
put this thing on your head and it’s just like you’re playing Texas Hold’em
with Bret Maverick or Doc Holliday, characters like that.’’

 “That is wonderful!” Hester
gushed.

“You bet it is, honey. O’Hara’s
is testing the system here and in Vegas, but they aren’t really talking about
it yet. It’s practically the first set-up of its kind in the world! I tell you,
it’s going to put
this
place on the map! But mum’s the word!”

“Hey. Thanks for rescuing me.”

She reached to grasp Deanna’s
hand in thanks and realized too late that the Susan B. Anthony dollar still
stuck to her palm. Hester looked down at it, then shrugged with a sheepish look
at Deanna. Hester reached to deposit the coin in the cigarette tray’s tips cup.

Deanna laughed and blocked
Hester’s hand. “No, honey, you better hold on to that,” she said as she
strolled away. “You might need to make a phone call or something.”

Hester was intrigued with the
thought of Paul as virtual-reality doctor. It had to be him, with all those
Friday night visits! Was he really that good? Headsets and high-rollers? This
she had to see.

Hester eyeballed the mahogany
door and its guard as she scurried from the center of the room to points on
each side of the door. “Right there, that’s the best view,” she muttered, and
headed for the roulette wheel.