Carole Douglas - Cat in a Zebra Zoot Suit

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.”

“Not quite. There’s another, much more serious kind of pop-up casino because of a quirk in Vegas gaming laws.” She challenged Temple with another question. “Have you ever heard of a nightclub called the Zoot Suit Choo-Choo Club?”

Temple and Electra exchanged guilty looks.

“Um, yeah,” Temple said. “Kinda.”

Molina’s foot stamped the floor. “Right here in this building, under us. That’s where it was until it became the other murder site in this place, only it happened decades ago. Another outre hanging, this one by a zoot suit cat chain.”

“The history of that time period,” Temple said, her eyes narrowed, “has been quashed and forgotten. Past racist issues are unflattering to what the Strip was before it integrated for its own commercial good.”

Molina looked contemplative. “The mob remembers.” She took another turn around the huge area and looked up to where the ceiling was empty.

Every one of them pictured the murderous chandelier.

“ Someone in the mob remembers,” Molina said. “Remembers both the earlier murder by chandelier and the fact that the Zoot Suit Choo-Choo Club had a golden asset, a gambling license. A license that lasts forever, if every two years the site is used as a live gambling establishment.”

“Is that’s how the Moulin Rouge kept going for all the decades when it closed after eight months in nineteen fifty-five?” Temple asked.

Molina nodded. “So you are clued in. It changed hands, and the license with it. Nobody could make a go of the site because it was so far from the Strip. In order to keep its gaming license, the casino ‘opens’ once every two years with a temporary on-site trailer, like the one you’ve got parked outside.” She glanced at Electra.

“I may not own that RV,” Electra said.

“Nemo and company can reclaim it. They and others before them have kept that Zebra Zoot Suit Choo-Choo Club pop-up casino schedule going with the aid of ‘unnamed’ financial backers,” Molina said. “They have photographic proof. If you could find the actual paper license in the next two years, Ms. Lark, you would own a prize the Strip conglomerates would love to snap up.”

“And Nemo and company won’t do jail time?” Temple asked. She wondered if the “others before them” had killed Jumping Jack Robinson over the gaming license too.

“Not much, unless I get more evidence in Dyson’s death.” Molina turned and walked out the new sturdy double doors. “New security doors installed in the back too?”

Electra nodded.

“Good.” Molina grinned. “That ought to keep out ‘the vagrants and feral cats’ for a while. Ms. Barr sure knows how to spin a press release.”

Temple managed to smile as sweetly as a good hostess escorting a guest to the door.

“By the way,” Molina said before walking over to Detective Alch leaning against a white Crown Victoria in the parking lot. “You and Mr. Devine seem to have forged a more perfect partnership. You’ve even lured him into investigative action as well as an impressive martial arts display.”

Temple wasn’t sure what Molina meant, but there was some snark in there somewhere.

“Should I be looking for a wedding invitation?” the lieutenant inquired.

Temple snorted.

“Out-of-state trip to see the family, huh?” Molina said. “Speaking of which, it seems Mr. Kinsella has folded his tent and moved on.”

Temple shrugged. “I really don’t know where he is.”

“I do know,” Molina said, coming Great White Shark closer with her electric-blue eyes and white-toothed smile. “I know that the first time I interviewed you after you came to Vegas and Kinsella had gone missing at the same time a body turned up and fell down onto a craps table at the Goliath Hotel…I know you gave me that very same answer to the very same question.

“And look how that turned out.”

44

Instant Redial

That night Temple hesitated over answering her bedside cell phone. She was wide awake at nearly midnight and thinking of tuning in to the first part of Matt’s show. Maybe he’d give her a quick “good night” call before going on the air.

She glanced at the lit screen. No, not Matt calling. Not a familiar number. Foreign.