The Case of the Sin City Sister (12 page)

“Huh.” Eve was surprised. Suddenly, she thought of the man who had hired the two of them, the man from Virginia who was hoping to find out how his great-grandfather had died, what had happened to him that prevented him from ever returning to his family. She wondered how he would take this bit of news, and she wondered how the Captain planned to tell him.

“I’m going to let you break the news,” he said as if he had read her mind. “When you get back from Vegas, you can tell him his
great-grandfather was a polygamist. I figure you’d be the better one to offer that bit of information than me.”

“What makes you think that?” She turned to look at Daniel, who was watching the road and eating.

“You should be able to figure out how to wrap it up nice. That’s what you religious people seem to know how to do real good. Wrap up the bad news in a nice package and make it sound not so bad.”

Eve shook her head. “I’ll tell him when I get home,” she said. “In the meantime, you need to call Epi Salazar and find out what he wants us to do about finding that gold. He’s still trying to hire you, and I told him you’d call him today. It sounds like there might be more than gold buried out there, so be careful.”

“Right,” the Captain noted. “I’ll drive over there later and talk to him in person.”

“Okay.”

“How far have you gotten?” he wanted to know.

Eve dropped the phone away from her mouth. “He wants to know how far we’ve driven,” she said to Daniel.

“Tell him we’re in Gallup,” Daniel replied. He dusted off the crumbs from the front of his legs and held out the bag to Eve, offering some of his trail mix.

She shook her head. “Gal—”

“I heard him,” Jackson interrupted her. “Call me when you get to Nevada,” he said, and then, before she could reply, he hung up.

She looked at the cell phone in her hand. “Well, it doesn’t appear as if the cell phone has improved his telephone manners.”

Daniel laughed. “Made him talk louder,” he commented.

“There’s that,” she said.

“So the old miner had two families.” Daniel had overheard the report. “Hey, can you hand me a soda from the cooler?”

“Looks like it.” Eve closed the phone and placed it in her pocket before bending down to open the cooler at her feet. She took out a drink and handed it to Daniel. “He thinks I should be the one to tell his great-grandson,” she added.

“Heard that too,” he said, popping the top and taking a swallow.

He turned to face her. “You up for that?”

Eve shrugged. “I don’t know,” she answered. And then she studied him. “How about you? How do you break that kind of bad news?”

He placed the drink in the holder near the console and turned back to face the road. “You mean the kind of bad news that says your family member, your loved one, isn’t the person you thought he was? You talking about that bit of bad news?”

“Yeah.”

He shook his head. “Just the facts, ma’am,” he answered and smiled. “Just tell them the facts.”

Eve hoped there was more advice coming. And there was.

“They usually don’t believe it at first, want to see the proof. So then you show them the arrest warrants or the explicit photographs or the confession document, whatever you got, and then they usually ask that you leave them alone.”

“And do you?” she asked, curious about this police procedure.

“Sometimes, I mean I do if I can. But sometimes if you’re up against a deadline, you have to ask them some questions. ‘When did you see him last? Do you know where he is? Did you have any idea about this behavior?’ That kind of thing. But yeah, mostly I
try to give them a day to sit with the bad news and then come back with the questions. But it’s hard,” he admitted. “Nobody likes to know they’ve been duped.”

“Duped,” she repeated. “That’s a nice way to put it.”

“How would you put it?” he asked.

“Betrayed, lied to, deceived . . .”

“Duped doesn’t sting as much,” he noted.

Eve nodded. She thought about the client from Virginia. Mr. Alford had never expressed a great loyalty for his long-lost family member, but she figured he hadn’t thought the worst about him either. Even if he was a few generations removed, the news that his great-grandfather had left his young wife and soon-to-be-born son, moved to another state, waited a brief time, and then married again, was not news anyone would want to hear.

“What do you think about that?” she asked.

“About what?”

“About having a second family, about never getting a divorce, never breaking things off with the original family, but just starting up all over again as if you were single, as if you didn’t have another wife and child?”

Daniel reached up and pulled on the shoulder strap of his seat belt. “It happens more often than you think,” he responded. “People can pretend a lot of things about themselves—that they’re single, that they’re in love for the first time, that they’re faithful, that they won’t get caught. I’ve been doing police business a long time, and I’ve seen people make choices I can’t figure out for the life of me. Maybe your boy got out here and learned things about himself he never got to know back home. Maybe he realized he wasn’t really
the guy he thought he was and he didn’t want to face it so he just started over. Maybe he got away from his mama and daddy and the childhood sweetheart he’d married and realized that all he really wanted was to get out of the South, not to start a family and run a farm, not even to mine for treasures; maybe all he really wanted was just to get away.”

Eve turned away from him and faced ahead. Something about what Daniel said rang true and felt somehow a little too familiar. She gazed out the window. The New Mexico sky was bright blue with only a few clouds moving across the horizon. The hills were a bit more green because of the recent rain, and she drew in a deep breath, watching the land she loved, the desert, as they sped past.

NINETEEN

“Two rooms,” she heard Daniel telling the clerk at the front desk. “And it’s Divine,” he said, pronouncing her name correctly. “Not Divine,” the way it was usually voiced. Eve was standing in the small lobby looking out the window in the direction of what Daniel had told her was “the Strip.” There was a small sitting area near the counter with an overstuffed sofa, two chairs, and a long table situated in the center. The lobby appeared to have been recently renovated and painted, the walls were bright and without blemish, and the furniture showed no wear.

The clerk was wearing a blue blazer and a red tie, and suddenly Eve felt a bit underdressed. She looked down at the outfit she had been wearing most days since leaving the monastery, old jeans and a long-sleeved Western shirt. She noticed the mud on her boots and looked around, hoping she hadn’t tracked dirt onto the clean tan carpet. She wondered if she should have just worn her habit, if wearing the jeans and snap-button shirt didn’t set her apart even
more than the long robes. She still felt so unaccustomed to the ways of the world.

She turned back to the view out the window. It was late, and yet there were so many neon flashing lights you couldn’t even tell that night had fallen. On the way to the hotel, Daniel had driven right through it all, giving her a close look at the entertainment center of the town. It was like nothing she had ever seen. She knew Daniel drove that way just so he could watch her jaws drop.

Dorisanne had sent pictures and Eve had certainly heard lots of stories, but Las Vegas was bigger and brighter and more of everything than Eve had ever imagined. It was like an amusement park or the midway at the New Mexico State Fair, only flashier and bolder. She stood at the hotel lobby window and remembered a conversation with her sister in which she had asked her what it was that she liked about the gambling town set down in the middle of the desert, why it was she had chosen it for her home.

Dorisanne, back in New Mexico for some holiday or short vacation, had thought about the question, and then her face had softened into a big grin. “It’s just so wide open,” she had answered Eve. “There’s nothing that you can’t find or do or try. It’s like anything’s possible there.”

And according to what Daniel had explained as they arrived at the outskirts of the city, over the last ten years it had only gotten wider. She turned just as he was heading in her direction.

“You want to grab something to eat?” he asked.

“I want to go to her apartment,” Eve answered. She was antsy after the long trip, and even though she was tired, she didn’t want
to prolong her search. The city was bigger and probably more dangerous than she had imagined.

Daniel nodded. “Okay, let’s put our bags in the room and we’ll head out,” he said. He handed her a key.

Eve looked at the thin card, not sure if she knew how to use it, but she didn’t worry because she figured Daniel would help her get into her room. She was glad that he had come with her. Now that she was in Las Vegas, she understood that she would never have been able to navigate such a place on her own.

She followed him out to the car, stood at the trunk, and when it was opened, pulled out her small duffel bag, sliding the strap across her shoulder. She watched Daniel as he yanked out his large suitcase and set it next to him.

“You need some help with that?” she asked, teasing him.

“Funny girl,” he replied, shutting the trunk. “This way.” And he headed back into the lobby and over to the elevators, pushed the button, and held the door while Eve walked in. He moved in behind her and reached in front of her, hitting the button for the top floor. She looked at him with raised eyebrows.

“What?” he asked.

“You must come here more than you say,” she answered. “Top floor?”

“The manager has a soft spot for police officers. She likes to take care of me.” He winked.

Eve smiled. “I don’t really need to hear anything else.”

The doors opened and Daniel led her to her room. He took the key from her, and she was able to see how the key slid into the lock. When it opened and she walked in, she couldn’t help herself,
she dropped her bag at the same time her mouth fell wide open. “Are you sure this is just for one person?” she asked as Daniel came in and stood beside her. There was a huge king-size bed with a dozen pillows meticulously placed near the headboard, a long narrow chest of drawers with a flat-screen television situated on top, and a large desk and rolling office chair near the window. She saw the open door to the bathroom and could see from the door that it was bigger than the one all the nuns shared at the monastery.

“I’ll be right next door,” he replied, smiling, seeming to enjoy Eve’s first response to their lodging. “We have adjoining rooms,” he explained. He walked over and opened the curtains, and the flashing lights from the Strip poured through the window. “Great view,” he said as he walked back to the door. “Just let me throw my bag in and freshen up and I’ll be ready to go.”

Eve felt her head nod up and down. She was still in a state of shock over the size of the hotel room and the glare of the city below her. She heard the door close behind her, but suddenly, all she could hear was her sister’s voice.

“It’s so beautiful, Eve,” Dorisanne had told her after she first arrived in Vegas. She had called the convent and Eve had answered. “It’s like a party all the time, a glorious, spectacular grown-ups’ party twenty-four hours a day.”

Eve moved closer to the window as she recalled the conversation she’d had with Dorisanne just after she had relocated to Nevada. Eve had recently taken her final vows and had been received as a nun in full standing as a member of the community. Just as her sister had fallen in love with Vegas, she was in love with Pecos and Our Lady of Guadalupe Abbey.

“Do people want to be at a party all the time?” she had asked, knowing that she couldn’t imagine life without order, without silence and prayer and quiet worship.

Dorisanne laughed. “You’ve been brainwashed by those monks,” she replied. “Most people, yes,” she answered. “Most people want to think that their lives are exciting and brilliant and something that they have to stay awake for. Most people want their lives to be like this. Vegas is amazing. It twinkles and shines all the time.”

Eve had thought about what her sister was saying. She thought about Dorisanne and how she had always been drawn to things that were bright and flashy. Since she was a little girl she had loved the lights of the stage. This discovery had occurred at a very young age when their mother had taken her two daughters to a show at a concert hall in Albuquerque. It was some kind of a Disney production about a princess; Eve didn’t recall the details. She did remember, however, that there were fancy costumes and big dance numbers, and while Eve ended up sleeping through most of the performances or trying to read the entire program, her little sister had come to life.

She stood on her seat the entire time, oohing and ahhing over every singer and dancer. As soon as the houselights went down and the curtains were raised, it was easy to see that Dorisanne was hooked. And from that point on, she made sure that she was signed up for every dance class they offered in Cerrillos and Madrid, even making the Captain drive her to Santa Fe when she was old enough to take classes at a dance studio that held elaborate recitals at the end of every year.