Chapter 13

From Heather’s place I drove directly to Michael and Sierra’s. I was glad I had warned Michael I might be late for dinner because the freeway was practically at a standstill, and there was an accident on Frank Sinatra Drive. At least no one followed me.

I pulled up in front of the vicarage a little after seven. Even though it was dark, Michael was doing a less than professional job of draping Christmas lights on the fat juniper tree next to the garage.

“Hi, Copper,” he called. “Thought I better put up a few lights for Mom and Dad. How are things with you?”

He plugged the end of the light string into an extension cord and the little tree lit up.

“Damn,” Michael said. “I could have sworn I bought the non-flashing kind.”

“You did,” I said. “There’s one bulb in there that makes all of them flash. You just have to replace it with a plain one.”

“Oh,” Michael said. He is one of the least mechanically gifted people I know. “Well, maybe later. Sierra’s got dinner ready. She made moussaka.”

I love it when Sierra feels her Greek roots. She really is a good cook.

In fact, Sierra had made enough moussakas to feed the Greek army, along with a mountain of Greek Christmas cookies. Every inch of kitchen counter was covered with cups, spoons, pots, cutting boards, powdered sugar, cookie sheets, tin foil, and parchment paper. Sierra was wearing her ratty bathrobe with an apron over it. Her hair was twisted up in one of those big plastic butterfly clips, and she had flour on her nose.

“Wow,” I said.

Sierra looked at me, and I instantly realized I was on very thin ice.

“You’ve been busy.”

“What do you expect?” Sierra said with a hefty overtone of exasperation. She wiped her hands on her apron. “Your parents get here day after tomorrow.”

Michael shot me a desperate, pleading look.

“Is there anything I can do to help?” I said, thinking I could change the sheets in the guest room or something.

“Actually,” Michael said, “There is.”

So suddenly I was roped into spending my lunch hour the next day at Sierra’s real estate office doing some PR for the Alliance for the Homeless. Michael volunteered me to update the Alliance’s website and send out an email newsletter to all the donors and supporters. Ordinarily, Julia Saxon would have done it, but she was busy trying to close the land deal and her assistant, Rachel, was off skiing in Utah. I’d have said no, but Michael said it was vital for everyone to know what was really going on with the service center project, not just what they might have read in the newspaper. The Alliance needed all the money and friends it could get right now.

:: :: ::

David wasn’t home when I got to his house. I let myself in and also helped myself to a glass of Chianti before climbing into the fold-out sofa bed in his wife’s study. I sipped my wine while reading Your Husband and Your Orgasm, one of a number of books on similar topics from the shelf over the desk. I must have dozed off, because when David knocked on my door, I almost had a heart attack.

“Sorry,” he said. “I didn’t mean to scare you.”

“It’s okay,” I said. “It’s just that I kept hearing what I thought was the garage door opening. I didn’t think you could sneak up on me.”

“Oh, yeah, that,” David said. “It’s my poltergeist. Also known as the furnace. It makes a real racket when it kicks on. Probably needs maintenance.”

In the living room, David flopped down on the sofa and kicked off his loafers.

“I am beat,” he said.

“I think I know who killed Victoria,” I said.

“Oh, really?” David said. He still sounded tired, but there was undeniable curiosity in his voice. “Do tell.”

He jumped up. “No, wait,” he said. “I’ll be right back.”

He returned with two glasses of Chianti, making me glad I had left enough in the bottle.

“Somehow I feel like I need some fortification,” he said, handing me one glass, setting the other on the coffee table, and sitting back down on the couch. He stretched, then reached for his glass. “Okay. Talk to me.”

So I did. As entertainingly as possible, I described my field trip to the Silverado RV Resort.

“That’s hardly proof, Copper,” David said when I’d finished telling him about Victoria’s window-breaking encounter with Bobby Marks. “And the only reason I can think of that Heather told you instead of the police is that she’s hoping to make Marks look guilty when there isn’t any solid evidence. One news item suggesting Bobby Marks might have murdered Victoria is all it would take for the public to convict him without a trial. He’s pretty much generally despised around here, and nobody would be sorry to see him locked up for good.”

“Why, because he likes looking at pictures of young girls?” I asked, thinking back to the clipping I’d found in Victoria’s calendar.

“Yes, but he also has a long and sordid history of using and dealing drugs under his brother’s protection. He killed a kid at a bus stop while driving stoned a few years ago and walked away with nothing more than a slap on the wrist. That’s not the sort of activity that brings you public adulation.”

“Well, what he did to Victoria can be checked out,” I said. “I myself saw a glass repair truck at the Beavertail, just after—”

“When were you at the Beavertail?”

“Oops.”

“You idiot!”

But he was smiling. I even got the impression David was mildly impressed that I’d tried to interview Bernice Broyhill.

Even so, he continued to discount everything I said, and he refused—or pretended to refuse—to take any of my evidence seriously.

“You’re calling Heather a liar because she’s a prostitute,” I finally said. “You’re as bad as the police. You’re as bad as all men.”

David didn’t say anything. He just stood up and headed for the stairs.

“Good night, Copper,” he said without turning around. “I’ll be leaving around eight tomorrow morning. Just so you know.”

“Wait,” I said. “There’s something else.”

David turned to look at me from the landing.

“Two guys followed me when I left work today. They rear-ended me down near the Silverado.”

David came back downstairs and made me tell him the whole story.

“Copper,” he said when I had finished, “You’ve gotta stop playing sleuth. You still don’t know who trashed your apartment, and the Beavertail’s madam took your license. She knows way too much about you. You have to assume that whatever she knows, Marks knows, too.”

“Okay, okay,” I said. “If you wanted to scare me, you’ve succeeded.”

“You don’t want a Marks as an enemy. They don’t negotiate with people they see as threats. They eliminate them.”

“I thought the mob days were over in Las Vegas.”

“Copper, I’m not joking.”

I knew he wasn’t joking. I was just saying something to drown out the hammering in my chest.

“The police aren’t incompetent, you know,” he said. “Give them a chance to do their job.”

:: :: ::

Wednesday, December 21

The day felt backward from the beginning, because I started out by going to the movie I had to review.

Toto Too was a mess. Benji Meets the Blair Witch Project would have been a more appropriate title, but that makes it sound more appealing than it was. The whole thing was a jumble of sepia-tone doggy action shot with a hand-held camera. It was so jerky, I almost needed a barf bag, and I never did figure out the story.

There were only four people in the audience, and I was the only female. After the show, a shaggy guy in a thick turtleneck sweater introduced himself as a movie reviewer for a website called “Fair Dinkum Flicks.” He was Australian, but he’d been living in Las Vegas for over ten years. He thought the movie was “brilliant,” and he liked to talk. So I let him. Afterward I could pretend I understood that the movie was a metaphor for the vicious cycle of poverty in the American South. But really, all I saw was a scruffy-looking mongrel trying to get away from the fakest-looking tornado in movie history.

“It’s supposed to look artificial,” Jake the Australian tried to convince me. “It’s not a natural disaster, don’t you see? It’s only masquerading as one. That’s the whole point. Brilliant. Brilliant!”

Maybe it was, but I still felt baffled. I was worried, too, because I had less than twenty-four hours to come up with five hundred intelligent-sounding words about it.

From the movie theater, I drove directly to Accolade Realty on Maryland Parkway, where Sierra worked. I’d never been inside, even though I’d driven by it many times. Sierra used to be a real estate agent, but she got tired of having to work evenings and weekends, even though she was supposedly good at it and made a lot of money. Her current job was “marketing coordinator,” which meant she managed the ads in newspapers and magazines, wrote newsletters, and updated the company’s website. She shouldn’t have needed my help coming up with a letter for the Alliance, but the holidays were obviously turning her into a neurotic mess, so I figured I’d give her an hour. If nothing else, I hoped it would make my brother happy.

A life-size animated Santa Claus greeted me inside the door of Accolade Realty. Next to him was a ten-foot Christmas tree so covered in ribbon, tinsel, twinkling lights, and glittery ornaments that I couldn’t tell if it was real or fake. A jazzy version of “Winter Wonderland” was playing softly, and the whole room smelled like gingerbread.

A chubby woman with overly pink cheeks and way too much red lipstick was sitting at the reception desk. She had a headset clipped on over a fuzzy Santa hat, and her sweater had a reindeer with a flashing red nose on the front. Two candles were burning on her desk next to a couple of plates of cookies, a bowl of ribbon candy, a gumdrop tree, and a snowman made of marshmallows.

“Happy holidays!” the woman said. Her phone buzzed. “One moment, please!” She punched a button.

In between a few more phone calls, I managed to sneak in my request to see Sierra. A few minutes and several more calls later, my sister-in-law emerged from behind the Christmas tree.

“Hi, Copper,” she said. “Come on back.”

She led me behind a partition where it took my eyes a second to adjust to the bright fluorescent lights illuminating dozens of desks. Most were deserted, but a few were occupied by harried-looking agents wearing headsets. The ones who weren’t actually talking were typing madly at computer terminals. Sierra guided me through the warren to a doorway on the far side.

Inside was a row of cubicles. I followed Sierra to hers, which was equipped with an L-shaped desk with a huge flat-screen computer monitor on it. The only other thing on the desk was a framed wedding picture. Michael and Sierra had gotten married at St. Andrew’s mission, even though my parents had offered to pay for a major blowout in Connecticut. Sierra had her own ideas, though, and they included a reception at the Italian-American Club.

The wedding was the reason for my first trip to Las Vegas, but I never got the chance to visit the Strip. All I saw were the red-checkered tablecloths, plastic grapevines, and plaster replicas of Michelangelo statues that the Italian-American Club used to decorate its cinder-block headquarters in an asphalt parking lot on East Sahara.

“That’s where my father would have wanted to have the party,” Sierra said. “And he’s our invisible host.” She insisted on paying for the whole thing, which included a sit-down lasagna dinner, dance music provided by a deejay she’d gone to high school with, and a strolling bouzouki player. I have to admit, it was the most enjoyable wedding I’ve ever attended. Even my parents finally broke down and partied, and my aunt got drunk enough to do the Macarena with a Cuban dude in a sequined tux.

My only other Vegas experience that time was a trip to the Liberace Museum. My dad wanted to make a pilgrimage because he felt like he’d grown up with the guy. His mother, my Grandma Mary, who died when I was ten, had been an avid lifelong fan.

“You were too little to remember how much she suffered when Liberace died,” my father said. “Mom really believed the press hounded him to an early grave—never could accept the fact that he was gay. No one could ever convince her that Lee Liberace wasn’t the innocent victim of a crash watermelon diet.”

“But didn’t Liberace himself admit that AIDS got him?” I’d asked.

“I don’t think so, but it wouldn’t have mattered if he had,” my dad said. “For my mother, being homosexual was simply not an option.”

The thing I’d liked best about the museum was the costume room. I can’t say I swooned over the framed photograph of an aging male exhibitionist prancing in a pair of Yankee Doodle hot pants, but the outfits on display were undeniably fantastic. Never have so many feathers and sequins been individually attached to so many furlongs of sumptuous fabric, and I haven’t even mentioned the rhinestones. I almost liked the guy when I read that he used to flash his megawatt grin at his audience and say, “Pardon me while I slip into something more spectacular.”

When I heard that Michael and Sierra’s neighbors Hans and Dustin had a collection of Liberace memorabilia, I wasn’t in the least surprised. I wouldn’t want that kind of kitsch myself, but there’s no better status symbol for a gay Vegas couple of a certain age. And now that I knew firsthand what it felt like to have your private space looted, I sincerely hoped they’d get their treasures back someday. I also hoped their poor macaw was still squawking somewhere.

:: :: ::

“Am I really going to be able to help you?” I asked Sierra. “I don’t know much about the Alliance.”

“I can tell you what you need to know, and it would be a huge help if you could write the letter. The office may look quiet, but I’m swamped with end-of-the-year deadlines.” Sierra turned her screen so I could see it. “I’m getting a web page set up, with pictures from the gala and the new property—”

“New property?”

“Yeah. The deal on Willow Lake—the property next to the sewage plant—can’t close in time to save our funding, but Julia has found another piece of land we can close on by December 31st. It’s actually better than Willow Lake in a lot of ways. It’s bigger, and it has a motel and two houses on it. Not to mention it doesn’t smell like a toilet whenever there’s a breeze.”

“Where is it?” I asked.

“North Las Vegas. Probably not quite as good a location as the other one, but more potential. It’s nearly twice the acreage.” Sierra opened another page on her screen that had pictures of an old blue-stucco one-story building with a faded sign proclaiming it to be the Bluebird Motel, and another sign that said “Daily-Weekly-Monthly.” At least it didn’t say “Hourly.”

“What’s even better is that Julia has gotten the sellers of the new property to throw in a $300,000 donation to the Alliance to seal the deal,” Sierra continued. “With that money and the existing buildings, we’ll be open for business at least a year sooner than we would have at Willow Lake. She’s really been amazing.”

Sierra gave me a few other details, and while she worked on the page layout, I banged out a letter on my laptop that I hoped would convince the Alliance’s friends and donors that the new arrangement was a gift from God. Fortunately, Sierra was happy with my work.

“That’s perfect, Copper,” she said after she read it. “Thank you.”

“Let me know if there’s anything else I can do,” I said, hoping desperately that there wasn’t. It was already one o’clock, and Chris had to be wondering where I was.

“I can take care of the rest,” Sierra said. “Thanks for saving my afternoon. What are you doing for dinner?”

Dinner. I hadn’t given it a thought.

“Don’t count on me,” I said. “I’m going to have to work late.”

“We miss you, you know,” Sierra said, and she actually sounded almost sincere.

“Uh, I miss you, too,” I said, sounding far less so. “Everything will be a lot easier after the holidays.”

Sierra sighed. “I don’t even have a Christmas tree yet. I’ve never waited this long, and I just don’t know when—”

“I’ll get one,” I said.

“Really? That would be great.”

“Yeah,” I said, already regretting it. “I’ll do it tonight, but I don’t know when I’ll get there.”

“Anytime’s okay,” Sierra said. “And I made eggnog.” She kind of almost put her arm around me. “And thanks again for your help.”

As I wended my way back through the warren of desks in the big room, I thought about what it must be like to have my parents as in-laws. Not wonderful, I was thinking as I bade the lady at the front desk farewell in between “One moment, pleases.” My mother is too nosy, and my father is not particularly good at two-way conversation. A bloodhound and a sermonizer. Suddenly I was almost glad my apartment was still a mess. My mother would probably stay away, and I wouldn’t have to hide the items in my medicine cabinet that suggest I’m not a virgin.

For no obvious reason, traffic was terrible. I was about to turn on my radio when I realized I could extract Victoria’s tape recorder from my shoulder bag on the passenger seat. Thinking I might glean something new from her conversation with the American Beauty dudes after talking to Heather, I switched it on.

It took a second for me to remember that I hadn’t rewound the tape since I’d first listened to it, but before I could reach the switch, a new set of voices cut in.

“… not sure about—” a man’s voice said.

“We’re golden, Jaz,” a woman’s voice interrupted. “The Alliance will go for the Bluebird property to save their funding, and we can close it by the end of the year. There’s nothing to keep us from closing on the Willow Lake site in January. No problem. It’s all clean.”

The voice sounded familiar, but I didn’t place it until a man’s voice said, “Okay, Julie. But that reverend still seems like a loose cannon to me.”

Julie! No wonder the voice was familiar. It belonged to Julia Saxon.

“He’s taken care of,” Julia said, and she laughed. “Isn’t it great to have God on our side?” She laughed again, and I could hear two men laughing along with her.

“Oh, and Johnny—” Julia said.

The tape ran out, and the recorder clicked off. I sat there at the corner of Maryland Parkway and Sahara, waiting for the light to change and trying to decipher the conversation I had just heard. Whatever it was, it didn’t sound good. And what was it doing on Victoria’s recorder? Then I remembered. Julia had loaned the recorder to Victoria. Victoria must have recorded over a tape Julia had used before, but a little bit of Julia’s conversation was still there.

I played the tape three more times on my way to The Light. By the time I pulled into the parking lot, I figured I knew these facts for sure: Julia Saxon had talked to two men named Jaz and Johnny about the Alliance’s real estate deal, and my brother had been “taken care of,” whatever that meant.

Maybe it meant nothing. I wanted it to mean nothing, if only because I had work to do, a movie review to write, and now a freaking Christmas tree to buy. Not to mention parents and boyfriend arriving. Damn! How much more could happen before I melted, vaporized, or exploded?

Fortunately, when I got to The Light, Chris was still out for lunch. He’d left me a note with a list of calls about New Year’s Eve parties to make before five but otherwise, I was relieved to find, I could work on my movie review.

All I really wanted to say about Toto Too was “It’s awful,” but somehow I managed to crank out five hundred words of semi-praise by relying heavily on the exegesis Jake the Australian had provided. I gave the thing three boxes of popcorn—Dazzle’s cute rating symbol—and shot the review off to Chris. He had stopped in to say hello on his way back to his office, and I was pretty sure his long lunch had been lubricated with something a little more potent than Diet Coke. His cheeks were usually pink, but this afternoon they were downright rosy.

I was in the middle of my last call when Chris materialized once again in front of my desk. He wasn’t smiling.

“Copper,” he said. “Did you like the movie?”

“I don’t know,” I said.

“What do you mean, you don’t know? Did you watch it?”

“Yes.”

“Well?”

“It sucked.”

“So what’s with your review?”

“I thought I might be wrong. I thought maybe I didn’t understand it. This other guy was saying—”

“Copper.”

“Yeah?”

“If it sucked, you have a professional obligation to say so.”

I looked at Chris.

“Rewrite,” he said. “And this time, the emperor is naked, okay?”

The last thing I needed was to write another five hundred words, but it was my own fault. It was also a lot easier to fill a page when I was telling the truth, and I used Chris’s own reference to the emperor’s new clothes to make my point. I was taken in for a while, I said, but after an hour, it was impossible to keep imagining a velvet robe when you were staring at a big bare pockmarked butt. I reduced my rating to one bag of popcorn. I could have gone for the turkey award, reserved for the worst of the worst, but I decided I kind of enjoyed the scene where the tornado ripped a bouncy house out from under a backyard birthday party.

The building cleared out a lot at five, and by the time I finished writing it was nearly seven. Unless there was a major media event, the whole place was usually deserted by then except for security dudes and the cleaning brigade. I’d only stayed that late a couple of times since I started working at The Light. I didn’t like it much. The lights were half off, the temperature was ten degrees cooler, and I couldn’t shake the feeling that I was being watched.

Maybe it was because I was being watched. I’d been surfing the Web trying to figure out where to buy a Christmas tree when I looked up to see Ed Bramlett. The bastard had sneaked up on me.

“What do you want?” I asked. I knew I sounded rude, but I was justified.

“Your brother’s involved with that land deal, isn’t he?” Ed said.

“Yeah,” I said cautiously. “If you mean the property the Alliance for the Homeless is buying.”

“That’s the one.” Ed said. “He should watch his ass.”

I stared at him. I didn’t know what to say.

“Good old Julie’s chowing down again,” Ed said.

“Julie?”

“Julie Saxon.”

Julie. That’s what they called her on the tape.

“She goes by Julia.”

Ed laughed, then started coughing. He kept coughing. He doubled over and coughed some more. It got so bad I finally got up and offered him my chair. He refused in between coughs so wracking I was afraid he might eject a piece of lung onto the carpet. When the paroxysms finally subsided, I sat back down.

“Are you okay?” I asked, but it was obvious he wasn’t. His face was gray, and as I looked at him, I realized he had shrunk since I first met him back in the spring. He was almost skeletal.

“Oh, yeah. Julia. To those who didn’t know her when.” He hacked a few more times.

“How long have you known her?”

“Long enough to call her Julie Big-Below. Her last name was Bigelow until she landed her first husband.”

“Look, I have work to do—”

“Just tell your brother to watch his backside,” Ed said. “He’s swimming with some great whites.”

Coughing and hacking, Ed moved off down the hall.

That was creepy enough to make me leave. I didn’t like getting a second indication that Julia Saxon might be bad news, and I didn’t like hearing about it from a gross old pervert like Ed Bramlett. And I really didn’t like having him cough near me. He looked sick enough to have SARS. And what was he doing hanging around so late at The Light? If I had been feeling paranoid, I might have thought he was stalking me. Since I wasn’t, I figured he just didn’t have another life.