The Snow groupie had been found dead in a Dumpster at the hotel’s rear the morning after my jaunt to the Inferno. She’d been strangled. Her image flashed into my mind’s eye, a harmless-looking middle-aged woman, really, except for the fanatic’s mania in her eyes and voice.
The hotel security cameras had recorded everything, including shots of this very woman looking green when Snow had come on to me. Cameras had also recorded our fight over the hairpins later and my obvious rebuff. The police theory was she’d come after a lock of my hair later and I’d killed her. Groupies could be annoying, but the police scenario did presume a certain element of self-defense on my part.
Perry had picked up on that immediately, ace attorney that he was in book and on film. When he drove me home in his black fifties Caddy convertible that felt like Dolly’s love match, I told him I’d finished my evening at the Inferno breaking and entering the executive offices. He frowned impressively.
“Pleading innocence by virtue of being occupied in another crime is not a viable defense. Miss, er, Delilah Street. Also, from your own testimony, you left the office in plenty of time to commit mayhem elsewhere.”
“Didn’t the hotel cameras capture the body being Dumpstered?”
“A good question. No. A black batlike shape covered the lens for several minutes that early morning.”
“Should they be looking for a vampire?”
“Perhaps. The neck was not marked by a ligature, or tooth marks, it was mauled. It would be impossible to tell if a vampire bite was involved. You, of course, are not a vampire?”
I showed my pearly whites, blunt and even. “Not to my knowledge. In fact, I have a deep aversion to vampires.”
“Doesn’t everyone?”
“Not vamp tramps and Snow groupies.”
“You think this woman could have had an opportunity to approach this ‘Snow’ person after you left his office, and he killed her?”
Was Snow a killer? I didn’t know. What did I know . . . ?
“The woman was demented,” I said. “All those Snow fans are. You should see them claw each other in the mosh pit to be one of the so-called lucky few he bends down to kiss.”
“On the mouth?”
“Yeah!”
I recalled how Snow rose after each extended smooch and placed his palm on the latest conquest’s forehead like a televangelist to push her back into the crowd. How the woman fell, senseless, into a buoying mass of her sister fanatics. And then disappeared beneath the swell of clamoring wannabe recipients of what they called the Brimstone Kiss.
“Those mosh-pit women clot like those spawning fish called grunion,” I said. “Someone could disappear in their midst and never been seen again until—”
“The Dumpster.”
“Exactly.”
“I’ve seen the security film the police confiscated,” Perry said. “You don’t look dressed to kill.”
“What?”
“The woman was strangled. It took force. The killer would have been marked, or disarranged. The police haven’t gotten a warrant for your rented clothes, but Della tells me that Déjà-Vous says that you have them.”
“You want them?”
“I have access to private labs. Better we know any damaging evidence first.”
“Be my guest.” I brought him inside and gave him the big white box when we got to my cottage. A silver bracelet slid down my wrist with the gesture of surrender, a bangle of pink cubic zirconias. Snow was so predictably partial to pink. Until now, I’d had no idea he could add jewels to my silver gewgaws. Hmm.
“Meanwhile,” Perry said before leaving, “don’t speak to the press. Call me if the police approach you for any reason. And let my office do the investigating.”
I nodded twice, but sat the fence on the third condition.
“Don’t worry about a thing, Delilah. From what you’ve told me that detective is the one in trouble.”
There was one thing I wasn’t going to tell Perry Mason or anyone else, because it might make me very unconvincing: that I’d glimpsed an apparition of a woman in my hallway mirror the night before the little green delivery elf and Detective Haskell had barged into my cottage this morning. But the more I thought about it, the more I recalled about that apparition of a woman. Woman? She had been a girl and she’d worn blue velvet with a sweetheart neckline. At least the bodice was blue velvet. The long skirt and short petal-shaped sleeves were blue taffeta. Definitely a late-forties get-up.
Her hair had been light brown, pulled up and puffed out at the sides to resemble the the sixteenth century heart-shaped headdress seen in portraits of Mary Queen of Scots. She’d been as doomed as that beheaded queen of Scotland, but she was a child of the 1940s, every detail screamed that. She was the dead body from Sunset Park, sure as God made little green cacti, and she was dressed exactly as I’d known she had been clothed.
How did I know this? I’d sensed some of it the day when Ric and I had met and melded dowsing for the dead . . . with mental medium tricks . . . with passion by proxy.
Yet it shook me all over again, to see her standing in my hall mirror. Details I’d sensed when Ric and I found her—wrist corsage, sterling silver heart locket at her throat, beseeching baby eyes, everything—had reassembled whole in my own hallway. Had even replaced my own reflection. She couldn’t have been more than seventeen and was about to be mowed down like Bambi’s mother.
Somehow, I understood she came here because her spirit knew I was trying to identify her, but the vivid memory of an apparition wasn’t evidence I could use with others, except Ric. I felt angry and helpless. And I knew from her lost, plaintive eyes that she had just felt helpless, which made me even angrier.
So. What solid facts did I have? I had the information I’d copied off the microfilm reader, and I had the testimony of the ghost in my mirror, mute for the moment, but plenty eloquent anyway. I was free to keep investigating for now. My lawyer (I did kinda like that term) had said the police evidence against me was only circumstantial, but a black hair had been found on one of the three Déjà-Vous hairpins and I knew DNA testing would prove it was mine, although it would take time.
Thank God.
Perry Mason took the dress box. I thanked him profusely for all his help and eyed Quicksilver, hanging back by the oleander bushes bordering the estate fence. He’d been keeping up with a lot of Detroit steel today.
I pushed the code to open the gate for Mr. Mason to drive out. As soon as his car’s shark-sharp tail fins had vanished, Quick was at my side, slurping my hands and growling in alternate rhythm.
“I know. Our hands and paws were tied, boy, but it’s over.”
I had a brain-splitting migraine, my wrists and shoulders were sore, and my soul was soiled.
Otherwise, I’d come out of the ordeal pretty well.
When we walked back into the cottage, Godfrey was waiting. He must have used the rear kitchen door.
“Welcome back, Miss. Mr. Nightwine has ordered dinner in for you. Not to worry, it’s from the Bellagio. Medallions of beef for you and a fine steak, very rare, for Master Quicksilver, as well as a soup bone from the Paris hotel. My master also left this written message and bade me not to keep you from your recuperation.”
Godfrey refused to stay for thanks, but bowed his way out immediately.
Quicksilver sat salivating over his napkin-covered silver tray, so I wafted off the linen and let him have at it in the kitchen.
Godfrey had left the other tray, bearing a single white rose in a sterling silver vase, on the breakfast table. The mellow Las Vegas dusk was tinting my window rose-gold. I pulled a damask napkin off a nouvelle cuisine feast of tender beef and garlic mashed potatoes to die for and chocolate mousse, but read the note before I ate.
My Dear Miss Street,
Godfrey has left, along with these culinary offerings, a tape of the recent events in the cottage I have allowed you to use. A copy of said scene rests in my private safe. Any trace of these events has been erased from the streaming tape in my central security system. No one will ever see or know of these distressing events save you or I. I am only keeping a record for prosecution purposes, should the need arise and should you wish to pursue such a course. I am most distressed that the authorities in any form should violate my property and your rights in this brutish fashion. All of my resources are at your command should you decide to proceed against this creature in any manner.
Your devoted servant,
Hector Nightwine
Okay. I sniffled a little with my dinner, which was superb and didn’t move unless I did it.