Oh. Drunk, Temple thought. It was hard to see the moon with all the high-rises and competing lights in the dark of night. At dawn it would be a drunk’s errand. The Cabana Club was an off-Strip joint where everyone partied hearty.
Silas T. narrowed his beady little eyes up at Molina and stuck out his close-shaven chinny chin-chin. “I always rise at the first, first crack of light and I always check the site first, first, first thing. Even before breakfast. Speaking of breakfast.” He turned gallantly to Temple. “I’d be honored to buy you the tallest short stack of pancakes in Vegas, missy, for coming out so early at my call. Thanks for shooing the media people out so fast. We should make the noon news.”
Temple rolled her eyes. She wondered if yellow bow ties were long enough strangling, but offing someone in front of the fuzz was a trifle impetuous.
“I’ll pass on the pancakes,” she said. “So you can run along now.”
“Yes, she will pass on the pancakes,” Molina said. “She’ll be here answering questions, but you can go.”
“I don’t desert a lady, ma’am.”
Molina repeated, with emphasis, “You. Can. Go.” That sent Farnum scuttling away like a Crayola-colored beetle.
Temple glanced to where it looked like CSI: Las Vegas was filming. Detective Morrie Alch would have to substitute for silver-haired Ted Danson. Temple couldn’t spot his petite Asian partner, Merry Su. Su was such a fierce spitfire that her name always made Temple smile.
“Nothing to smile about this morning, Miss Barr,” Molina said. “Your client is a very possible perp on this death. He’d look fishy in a desert. Fill me in fast.”
“He is a bit eccentric, but he’s putting up a new attraction.” She nodded at the ten stories of raw construction a hundred feet away. “I had lunch with him yesterday and visited the site. Not many projects are going through these days, so I found it intriguing.”
“What is it?”
“Um, that’s a secret.”
“What?”
“He’s been really cagey about the exact nature of the building, and this has been preliminary exploration. We haven’t signed a contract. He is staying at the Wynn,” she added, trying to peer around Molina to glimpse where the body might be.
Molina adjusted her stance to better block the view. “Is that all the vetting you’ve done? Do you usually operate in this slipshod way?”
“No! I mean, this isn’t slipshod. Everything that exists in Vegas, from Bugsy Siegel’s Flamingo Hotel to ex–Mayor Goodman’s Mob Museum downtown was once a crazy idea nobody thought would fly.”
“All I see, Miss Barr, is an empty lot, the skeleton of a building under very preliminary construction, and one very dead body that’s been brought into the light of day on land your client owns. Why did he hire a PR rep at this early stage, anyway?”
“That’s not unheard of. I’ve had only a couple meetings with him, so I’m not going to babysit him through a murder investigation. I’m not a criminal attorney, which I’ll recommend he hire.”
“And you have no insight on what he’s really doing here, except it’s a mystery?”
“Right. I’m worthless. To you.”
“No, you’re not.”
That was an amazing statement. Temple was starting to think their few brief simpatico moments lately were beginning to pay off.
“Keep the client,” Molina ordered. “And keep me informed on what he’s really up to.”
“Even if I have to eat buffet pancakes?” Temple asked, dismayed.
“Even if you have to eat dirt.”
“I am not one of your detectives,” Temple muttered to Molina’s departing khaki-covered back.
Then her eyebrows lilted with an insty-epiphany. Maybe she was. But could she betray the interests of a client? No, she should look at this as protecting the interests of a client. She just didn’t see Silas T. Farnum shutting his mouth long enough to murder someone.
Chapter 17
Short Stack
From the Wynn’s Terrace Pointe Café located near a Ferrari showroom to a Circus Circus breakfast buffet was one of those weird juxtapositions the Strip offered. The bounteous, cheap breakfast buffet was fast becoming a threatened species. Las Vegas had gotten so high-end that low-end had become a nostalgic and exotic experience.
Young children cried for Cheetos over Cheerios, rejecting healthy for salty, air-filled, and permanently dyed orange fingertips. Harried parents loaded up on sausages and bacon and hash browns. And Temple found that pancakes with butter and syrup on the side were infinitely more nutritious and less messy than anything else at the copious food islands.
Silas T. Farnum piled his plate with such noxious early-morning fare as bloody roast beef. Lotto numbers announced over the loudspeakers punctuated Temple’s interrogation … er, breakfast chat with her would-be client.
“You really handled that long drink of Aquafina with a badge this morning,” Silas T. chortled. Not many people chortled anymore, especially while eating, but Farnum did. “Not to mention witch-slapping those media people.”
“I am not a witch,” Temple growled, trying not to see his plate. Somehow it seemed very, very wrong to eat fried shrimp and fruit crepes for breakfast.
“Only a good witch, like Glinda.” Farnum seemed prone to use Wizard of Oz comparisons. “But I warn you, I am a warlock, not a wizard.”
To hear Silas T. Farnum make this declaration before 8 A.M. in the morning over a dripping forkful of kung pao scallops and pancakes was a sure appetite killer.
“What is really going on here?” she demanded, undercutting the surrounding clamor by using her best stage whisper, which made her sound hoarser than a B movie hit man. “Or I’ll walk.”
“And you do that so very well.” The slightly lascivious twinkle in his beady eyes really wasn’t forgivable in a man of his age, say eighty-two. “Especially over that uneven ground. Tell me, you’ve seen a corpse before. Do you think he was marched over all that rough ground before he was shot?”
“I didn’t see this one. He was shot?”
Silas T. patted his lips with the linen napkin. “A small tidy hole right here, where headaches begin.”
Temple put her own fingers to the knob behind her ear. Yes, that would probably do it. “Execution style. You saw that? How?”
Silas T. snickered smugly. “I’d gone over to check the site and saw the reeling young couple acting strange at a certain point on the site. They headed back to the disgusting nearby nightclub from whence they’d come. Probably to call the police and then vanish. So when I looked into what they were messing with, I saw the body.”
“And left without reporting it? That’s interfering with a crime scene! The techs will find their footprints. And yours.”
“Maybe so, but I ruffled the sand around with my shoe toe. I used to dance the soft shuffle years ago, you know, which is tap dancing on sand. I’m used to keeping my balance.”
“Don’t tell me. You were in vaudeville.”
“The club circuit, but that was more than fifty years ago, my dear. I’m a rich man now and don’t have to shuffle for anybody.”
“That won’t help you. You interfered with a crime scene. I’m not going to defend you if the police find evidence of your tampering.”
“Fine. It’s good to have such an upstanding employee. I tell you, that body was old.”
“I know he was a senior citizen.”
“That too, but it looked longtime dead, maybe buried in the desert. Nothing as juicy as features on all the prime-time forensic shows. Did you notice how the corpses got gooier, the more popular those TV shows became?”
“Yes, I did, and the perps sicker, which is why I don’t watch them.”
“Just as well you live in Las Vegas, where in real life road kill nicely toasts away to nothing.”