Electra sat on her vintage cocoa-colored couch with the fringe border along the floor and Karma out of sight beneath it.
“Nothing resembling what the creeps wanted,” Temple said. “Have you considered that we might have to search every storage locker for it, and never find it? Why didn’t you tell me your cat was kidnapped?”
“I can’t understand how anyone knew about her. I don’t advertise I have her, really,” Electra said, pleating her voluminous muumuu skirt into folds. “She’s so shy. I provide her asylum.”
“From what? Crooks like those nappers?”
“From overstimulation. I think she’s a psychic magnet.”
Temple gave up. “Well, she is beautiful. It’s too bad the Lust ‘n’ Lace gang, when arrested, didn’t fess up like crooks on TV and blab about what Jay Edgar had that was worth killing for.” Temple moved another insurance document to its proper pile. “J. E. didn’t seem so bad, from what I saw of him.”
“He wasn’t.” Electra pursed her lips. “He just had a weakness other people liked to exploit. You know…” Her voice broke.
Temple got up to sit beside her. “What is it?”
“He didn’t tell them what they wanted. He…died. I can’t help but think, in some way, that paper he wanted to save, whatever it was, was meant for me, for my golden years. He’d already left me all the real estate he had, except the house for Diane, which was really sweet. Oh, Temple, I wish I hadn’t cussed him out before he died. Why can’t we know these things before we rant and rave?”
“We’re not all Karma,” Temple said, hugging Electra’s plump shoulders. “And even the police can’t always solve these cases. It’s really not procedure for Molina to want to meet us at the building. Are you up to going back?”
“What about you, Temple? You nearly toppled down the stairs racing to my rescue. You were so cute in your little slippers with your curls and tote bag bouncing, coming on like Bruce Lee if he were a girl.”
Temple shut her eyes. So much about that description was so wrong, but if Electra needed to think anything but crazy fear and rage had motivated her, fine.
“You know,” Electra said, “watching Matt ram my old Probe into the doors and up the stairs like he was General Patton was worth the angst. Those would-be cat-torturing rats went white as sheets. We really taught them not to mess with the Circle Ritz.”
“Right.” Temple stood up and grinned. “Let’s find out what Molina is doing to them dirty rats. She wouldn’t have asked to meet us on site unless she has some info to torture us with.”
In ten minutes they were standing inside the old building, gazing at the ruined lower stairs. The chandelier was gone after the police had photographed and fingerprinted it once again.
All five-foot-eleven of Molina came in through the open double doors, wearing one of her khaki pantsuits, loafers, with a badge on her belt, not around her neck, since this was not a “live” crime scene.
“Good morning, ladies. I hope, Mrs. Lark, revisiting this site is not too much of stressor for you.”
That was Molina, Temple thought, using words like “stressor”.
“I’m not a ‘Mrs.’ Lark. Lark is my maiden name. Luckily, I kept it all through my legal life.”
“What’s happening to the creeps who stressed her?” Temple asked.
Molina moved toward them in casual, sweeping strides that nearly matched her almost six-foot height. A smile kissed her lips and immediately left for the coast.
“Legally, we don’t have much evidence besides kidnapping, extortion, and animal abuse to charge them with. The real question is what they wanted so badly that it involved so many for so little apparent profit.”
Molina looked at the top of the stairs, to the absence of the shabby but spectacular chandelier. She regarded Electra with sympathy.
“Ms. Lark. I have to tell you that your ex-husband’s murder is an open case. There’s no doubt he was brought to Vegas by Nemo and his associates because they wanted to get something out of him.”
Electra looked up, and sighed at the emptiness.
“There’s no doubt,” Molina said, “that they bound him, and later you, over the drop from the chandelier to threaten you both into divulging what they wanted. But. We can’t prove it was murder in his case.”
She came closer to Electra. “The threat to you was nasty, but hardly homicidal. As for Jay Dyson, they were rougher with him. I don’t doubt the rope was around his neck. Poised over the staircase, he was a desperate man. He had not yet given them what they wanted.”
Molina sighed. “Dyson dead was of no use to extortionists. He could have accidentally swung off the edge, by his struggles. Maybe he managed to do it himself, to stop them from getting what they wanted. From getting what he wanted to go to you.”
“Oh, my Lord,” Electra said. “I’d rather believe it was an accident by all parties present, than that Jay would sacrifice his life to keep something for me.”
“That’s very possible,” Molina said. “Your ex-husband had lost his business. If he still had something of enormous value, perhaps the act of keeping it became an obsession and he couldn’t give it up to anyone else. That would explain why you don’t have any idea what it was and nothing significant is mentioned in the will. He was obsessively overprotective of it, and no one will ever find it.”
Electra nodded. “Jay was stubborn.”
“Well, darn it,” Temple said, stretching to her full five-foot-three height in her heels, which made Molina look down at Temple’s smartly shod feet and lift her eyebrows. “Then what are we meeting for?”
“That was just one speculative scenario.” Molina’s smile was broad. “Leave it to our fine Metro patrol officers. They recognized the call to this address and pointed us to their report about the same site a few days ago.”
“Report?” Temple, uneasy, switched her weight from one foot to the other. “Just the other day or so?”
“Just the other night,” Molina said. “Local residents complained of a large number of vehicles coming and going, using their on-street parking places and even No Parking zones. And making a lot of noise. Not a crucial call. By the time the patrol car got here, the block party was over, but there were signs a pop-up casino had been plugged onto the lot.”
“A pop-up casino? Never heard of it.” Temple couldn’t help sounding dubious. Her job was to know Las Vegas venues pretty thoroughly.
Even Molina’s sensible loafers must have hurt to stand on. She took a stroll around the area in front of the stairs and changed the subject. “This is a huge place, Ms. Lark. What are you going to do with it?”
Electra followed her, nervously. “I…we have plans. Something in the retail and restaurant line.”
“Ambitious,” Molina said, nodding. She turned suddenly to Temple. “What do you think a pop-up casino you’ve never heard of is?”
“Portable, of course. Temporary,” Temple said. “Reminds me of the food truck movement. Would be like those parking-lot small circuses that churches sponsor for fund-raising. Would operate for a limited time. Would have to be nonprofit, though. Gaming is strictly regulated in Las Vegas.”
“A-minus,” Molina said, offering Temple a triple-folded website printout from her blazer pocket.
Temple scanned it. A company offered week-long insty-casinos where gamers were paid in prizes and any profits went to good causes. Portable booths and tents housed gaming equipment, so the experience “felt” like real casino gambling, but wasn’t.
“What was the minus for?” Temple asked Molina.
“You were warm but not hot when you analyzed what a pop-up casino would be.”
“Temple’s ideas are always hot,” Electra said, scanning the pages Temple handed her. “She was right on the money about this company.”