“No. It was quick with no struggle.”
“Stabbed or shot?”
“Shot.”
Several blinks brought up a rush of tears. Milo handed her a tissue.
“Thank you. It really was quick?”
“Definitely, Rikki. Does that make you think of anything?”
“Like what?”
“Someone who’d do that. Walk in and shoot two people and leave without robbing them?”
“What about whatsisname, Prince Nerd-O?”
“Nothing links him to it, at this time.”
“You’re saying maybe.”
“Why would you suspect Doug?”
“Oh, c’mon. His wife was fucking another guy? A cooler guy. Men are all about wienie-wagging. They start feeling like shit, they take it out on someone.”
“Okay,” said Milo. “Any other possibilities come to mind besides Doug?”
“Like who?”
“Someone Meagin dated before she got married. A guy who scared her.”
“The only things that scared her,” said Rhonda Montel, “were in her past.”
We sat up straighter.
Milo said, “What about her past, Rikki?”
“Don’t know the details, she never said. Wouldn’t say. Didn’t want to get into it. The rest of us spoke about shit from our past, that’s what friendship is. She didn’t like it, would get all nervous, this look would come into her eyes.”
“What kind of look?”
“Like something — like someone was sneaking up behind her. She’d kind of... get closed up and if you tried to talk about it, she’d give this laugh that wasn’t funny and say what are you talking about, girls, I’m fine. But I could tell she was lying. I’m basically a lie detector — no, screw that, I’m a psychologist. My profession, you need to be a psychologist.”
Chapter 21
Bottled water that Rhonda Montel drank greedily, supplemented by an energy bar that she nibbled to oblivion, added nothing to her account.
When Milo pressed, there were no tells in her eyes or anywhere else.
He looked at me. I nodded. He stood.
“Really appreciate your help, Rikki, and sorry for the hassle. Detective Binchy will drive you back to the Waldorf.”
She said, “Forget that, too many bad vibes today. Take me to the Four Seasons, I need to clean out my head.”
Sean approached. She remained in her chair. “What about my warrants?”
Milo said, “I’ll see what I can do.”
“What does that mean? I’m all good citizen for you and you treat me like a criminal? For fucking traffic bullshit? No way, Jose, don’t want anything hanging over my head, some other Dudley Do-Right shows up and interrupts my reading.”
“I’ll do my best, Rikki.”
“What does that mean?”
“Just what I said. Here’s my card, you have a problem, call me.”
“Yeah, right.” She stood and wiggled and tossed her hair.
Sean said, “Ready, ma’am?”
“We taking a horse? You look like you ride rodeo or something. Be nice to see you in boot-cut jeans.”
“Thank you, ma’am.”
“Ma’am,” she said, as if learning a new word. “Maybe I could get used to this place. We could make it a fun place.”
After she was gone, Milo and I stayed in the interview room.
He said, “Jones. Creative. Why not go straight to Jane Doe?”
He got up, filled a coffee cup, tasted it, scowled, and set it down.
Pacing a couple of times, he returned to his chair. “Vegas call girl bags tycoon? Looks like Rikki got it wrong, sometimes you can pull off a movie-type triumph.” He rubbed his face. “With no happy ending... at least I don’t have to track down the group Meagin was with the night she picked up Doug. Guy’s sitting there with his beer and his paperwork, has no idea he got targeted by a pro.”
I said, “Meagin might have figured it for a one-night stand. Then she learned who she was dealing with and decided to stake a claim.”
“Sixty mil a year and clueless about women,” he said.
“About relationships, in general. His intelligence may be high but it’s narrow.”
“Clueless about anything except real estate.”
“When you told him about Gio he seemed genuinely surprised — stricken. I can be fooled by good acting but so far I’m not seeing him as someone with theatrical chops. When Meagin was asked about her past, she clammed up and got edgy. But she did let on to her spa friends about bad experiences with older men.”
“Someone not naive.”
I said, “She moved here from Vegas. It’s not hard to imagine.”
“Some hard-case parolee — or a casino type.”
“Or her problem stretched back prior to Vegas. She was forty-one when she died. Plenty of opportunity for a tough history.”
“Unknown suspect from an unknown place murdering a mystery woman? Gee, thanks for clarifying.”
He looked at the coffee as if reconsidering. Got to his feet and hitched his belt over his gut and said, “Okay, let’s see what we can learn about whoever she was. Beyond ‘Jones.’ ”
Keywording meagin march produced did you mean megan march?
Keywording meagin jones prompted did you mean megan jones?
He muttered, “Screw you, RoboCop, if I meant that I’d say so.” But he spent a lot of time trying the more conventional spelling only to learn that none of the women offered up by the search-engine gods was his victim.
“Expected nothing, got nothing,” he said. “I guess that’s a type of success.”
Adding las vegas to the search was unsuccessful. Shuffling combinations of ash jones exotic vegas dancer and tacking on the names of several casinos was equally futile.
I said, “Maybe she disappeared herself.”
Shrugging, he tried a slew of missing persons databases. Another adventure in failure.
Duplicating the entire process with meg pulled up tons of data, all garbage. Attempting the same on NCIC returned zero hits. But local arrests can evade the national database as can entire categories of nonviolent crimes so he phoned a homicide D at Las Vegas Metro he’d worked with named Tom Brush and asked him to check Clark County arrest records.
Seconds later, Brush said, “Nope, nothing spelled that way. I do have a Megan Jones busted for meth and simple assault a couple of years ago but she’s twenty-four years, two hundred pounds, and has facial tattoos and biker connections.”
“Not my gal. Could you try Rhonda Montel?”
“Who’s that?” said Brush.
“Known associate of my gal.”
“Hold on... okay, yup, her I’ve got, one warrant... three years old. But it’s penny-ante bullshit: traffic fines.”
Milo laughed.
Brush said, “What’s funny?”
“She did the same thing, here, Tom.”
Brush snorted. “Habitual offender, ooh, call the FBI and get a fancy-ass pro-file.”
A check of three newspaper databases pulled up nothing. Social Security records were down due to technical difficulties so he shifted to sites that scoured graveyards and funeral records across the country, moved on to county property records.
A second try at Social Security got through. Waste of time.
I said, “Her line of work, she wouldn’t need a number.”
“But why nothing before then? Teenagers working fast food get numbers.”
I said, “Maybe there was no before then.”
“Career prostitute?”
“It would fit with a scary past. What if she ran out on a pimp or a violent boyfriend, came to L.A. and went solo along with her friends?”