Читать книгу Full Service Blonde - Megan Edwards - Страница 13

Chapter 5

Friday, December 16

No more than two minutes after I arrived at work, David Nussbaum appeared at my desk and said, “The Alliance for the Homeless is holding a press conference this morning.”

“I know,” I said. “Say hi to my brother for me.”

The Alliance for the Homeless is Michael’s big community project. He and his fellow board members were finally ready to announce that they had succeeded in acquiring a piece of land for a new service center across from Willow Lake, a wastewater treatment plant in the old part of Las Vegas. Tonight, they were holding something they were billing as a “gala” in a big white tent they had pitched on the property.

“You can say hi yourself,” David said. “You’re going with me.”

“What are you talking about?” I said. “I’m not going to any press conference. It’s bad enough that I have to go to the party tonight.”

“You have to come,” David said. “Chris’s orders.”

Just then, my phone rang. It was Chris Farr.

“David Nussbaum needs you to help him cover a press conference, Copper. We’re in good shape here. Get David what he needs, then you can take the rest of the day off.”

“I’ll meet you in the lobby in half an hour,” David said when Chris hung up. “The conference starts at eleven.”

It was very, very weird. Why was the arts and entertainment editor sending his Calendar Girl to hear about the plight of Las Vegas’s homeless population? And where did David Nussbaum get off ordering me around? The guy was way too pushy, and he also talked way too loud.

As we climbed into his Jeep, David said, “Copper, I really am covering the press conference, and I really do want you to come with me, but I also have something to tell you.”

Weirder and weirder, I thought. David hadn’t even put the key into the ignition.

“I had to check out a police investigation early this morning,” he said. “Down near Blue Diamond Road. A jogger found a body just before dawn. Have you heard about it?”

“What? No.”

David paused and locked his door. He reached up and adjusted his rearview mirror. Then he sighed and looked at me.

“I thought there was a chance you hadn’t, even though it was a freaking media circus. I wanted to be the one to tell you if I could.”

I stared at him.

“Who was it?” I asked.

“Victoria McKimber.”

What?

Was I hearing right? Victoria McKimber? How could she be dead? She was just riding in my car on Tuesday night. She was fine! She had plans!

“Victoria is dead?” I said. “What happened?”

“There still has to be an autopsy, but it looks like she bled to death,” David said.

Nothing was making any sense. What was Victoria even doing on Blue Diamond Road? She was supposed to be at the Beavertail.

“I’m so sorry, Copper,” David went on. “I know you were getting to know her. It’s such a shock.”

“How could she bleed to death?” I interrupted. Was she shot?”

“No, no gunshot wound, but that’s the only thing that’s clear. She might have been hit by a car, or she might have been beaten.

“God. She told me she had enemies, but—”

“They’re still trying to figure out whether she was killed where she was found or just dumped there.”

“So she was murdered?”

“Not necessarily. It could have been an accident.”

“I don’t know,” I said. “Like I said, she had enemies.”

“The police will sort it out,” David said.

“What do you think?”

“I don’t know. All we can do is give the detectives a chance to do their work.”

I didn’t say anything.

“Anyway, I really am sorry,” David said. “It’s always hard when you know a victim. And I can see you liked her.”

“I don’t know if I liked her. But I did respect her.”

:: :: ::

I was grateful that the press conference was unpleasant enough to take my mind off Victoria’s death. The Alliance for the Homeless had been trying to close the deal on its godforsaken piece of land for over a year. The property was a large desolate triangle wedged between railroad tracks and the wastewater treatment plant. The only “improvements” on the property were a warehouse with a caved-in roof and a dilapidated trailer. The police swarmed the place every few days to evict homeless men, and every so often there’d be a fistfight. You’d think the city and the county and the other powers that be would be thrilled that a nice nonprofit organization wanted to invest in a piece of land less inviting than the surface of Mars. It was crazy that they were giving Michael and his well-intentioned colleagues such a hard time, when all they wanted to do was clean up an eyesore and get some homeless people off the streets.

The press conference was held on the property, which had been spiffed up considerably for the party later that day. Sierra was one of the organizers, and she’d been complaining all week about how hard it was to cover up oily dirt. They’d had to rent at least an acre of Astroturf. Fortunately, the big white tent hid the crappy buildings pretty well, and with the forest of potted palms they’d trucked in, the whole place would look pretty decent after dark.

Things were going okay until a gadfly columnist from the Las Vegas Herald-Dispatch asked a question that made everyone in front of the microphones stop smiling.

“What happens if the deal doesn’t close?” Randolph Berman asked.

“It’s as good as closed,” said the woman standing next to Michael. She was wearing a rust-red power suit that almost exactly matched her hair. “If it weren’t, we wouldn’t be going ahead with the gala tonight.”

“Don’t you lose your funding on December 31st?”

“We aren’t losing any funding, and—”

“Let me say something,” Michael interrupted. My brother smiled beatifically and took his time before he spoke. It’s his favorite tactic for calming difficult situations.

“Mr. Berman,” he said after a long minute. “It’s true that the final documents haven’t been executed, but this has been a complex transaction. Everything will be finalized tomorrow, and the Alliance for the Homeless will at last be able to—”

“But Reverend Black—”

Michael has always hated being called Reverend, but he didn’t let it ruffle him. He just started talking again in his Sermon on the Mount voice.

“We are grateful to all of you for joining us here this morning, and we’re looking forward to an even happier day when we open our new service center’s doors. Now, if you’ll join me in prayer—”

He pulled it off. Michael actually made Randy Berman shut up. The only sad part was that the stories in tomorrow’s papers, including David’s, wouldn’t be about the Alliance’s altruistic plans, but rather about all the legal and financial troubles.

“I have to write about it, Copper,” David said as we left in his Jeep. “The land isn’t theirs, and it’s true that the matching grant money disappears at the end of the year. That’s not much more than a week away, if you subtract holidays and weekends. The deal was supposed to close over a month ago, and it still hasn’t. I’m sorry, but that’s—”

“I know. You don’t have to tell me. That’s the story.”

And then, damn it, I cried. I don’t even know why. I didn’t give a rat’s ass about the Alliance for the Homeless, and I hardly knew Victoria. I couldn’t believe it, but I also couldn’t help it. I sat there snuffling, and I didn’t even have a Kleenex.

“Cleopatra must die.”

I didn’t mean to say it out loud, but the words popped out.

“What?” David asked.

“Oh, nothing,” I said, still sniffling. “It was just the name of my—no really, nothing.” But I’d said too much. David was staring at me.

“‘Cleopatra Must Die’ was the title of my senior thesis.”

“That sounds like a history topic. I thought you majored in English.”

“I did. It was about—do you really want to hear this?”

“I do.”

“Cleopatra, Joan of Arc, Antigone—strong women … ”

“Who die,” David finished.

I nodded. “I tried to make the case that as literary characters, they’re killed off to maintain the status quo.”

“I guess they are,” David said. “Uppity women, all of them.”

“Yeah, I admit it. It was a feminist rant, and I’m not even sure I proved my point, but—”

“Victoria.”

Fresh tears sprang to my eyes. I nodded, unable to speak.

“You’re right,” David said. “She was trying to disturb the status quo.”

“And she’s dead,” I said. “Just like she would have been in a play by George Bernard Shaw.”

We just sat there for a minute or two.

When I finally stopped hiccupping, David said, “Have you ever been to the Art House?”

“No,” I said, but I knew about it. The Art House is a trendy downtown restaurant favored by people who work for the city and county.

“Want to grab a bite to eat?” David asked, and I readily agreed.

I felt better as soon as I walked inside. The lunch rush hadn’t begun, and the hostess told us to sit wherever we liked. David ushered me to a booth in the corner. A big framed print of Marilyn Monroe trying to keep her dress from flying up hung over the table. Another dead woman, I thought, but I refused to let it bother me. It was time to pull myself together and act like a grownup.

“What do you want to drink?”

“Iced tea,” I said. Later, when I took a sip, I realized he’d ordered the “Long Island” kind.

“You don’t have to drink it,” David said, “but I thought you could use it.”

He was right, even though it was only 11:30.

:: :: ::

At home, I was immediately tempted to zone out on beer and DVDs. I wished I didn’t have to go to the gala, but I had promised Michael and Sierra I’d play handmaiden to the celebrity guest. It was going to be Wayne Newton, but he had cancelled a week earlier. His replacement was a Cuban singer-comedian-dancer named Mirandela, and I was supposed to hold her pink guitar while she struck a photogenic pose with a decorated shovel.

God! I couldn’t help wondering why I wasn’t teaching kindergarten in Connecticut.

That always works. Whenever I picture myself wearing a denim smock and asking a roomful of five-year-olds whether they have to go “Number One or Number Two,” I come to my senses. Victoria’s demise had been a shock, but I had to get used to things like sudden death if I was going to make it as a journalist.

Limiting myself to one pale ale, I started organizing all the stuff in the box Victoria had given me. It didn’t take long to think she really might have been a victim of foul play. American Beauty’s executives and attorneys had been trying very hard to shut Victoria up. There were several cease and desist orders in one of the folders, and a restraining order requiring her to stay away from American Beauty headquarters. Newspaper articles quoting American Beauty representatives accused Victoria of pandering and illegal solicitation—an obvious smear campaign. All that effort had to be expensive. Killing her and making it look like an accident would be an effective and permanent way to silence her.

I also discovered that Victoria was in an ongoing feud with the owner of the Beavertail Ranch, a guy named Kent Freeman. He had made it clear in a couple of terse memos that he didn’t like the kind of publicity Victoria was generating for the brothel, and he had even threatened to bar her from working there. What if his next step had been to dispatch someone to take care of things?

The more I read, the more I realized that I should still write Victoria’s story. It was the least I could do for her, I thought, but I knew that was only partly true. Victoria deserved an advocate, but I was also thinking about my journalism career. Truth be told, Victoria’s story might well be more compelling now that she was dead.

Except I needed to know more, and that meant I had to find out how to reach Heather, the woman I had met at the Sekhmet Temple. She’d not only be able to answer my questions, but she’d have good reason to want to know what really happened to her business partner.