The Case of the Sin City Sister (23 page)

Daniel leaned back in his chair, waiting for her to start.

She nodded. “Dorisanne is missing.”

“Yes.” Daniel rested his arms on the table and clasped his hands together.

“We believe she left with Robbie, and Pauline and the manager of the apartments both seem to know when they left.” She closed
her eyes, wanting to get the details straight. “She was fired from the Rio.”

“But for what, we don’t know,” Daniel interjected.

Eve opened her eyes. “Right. It could be that she missed too many shifts because of hurting her ankle or she could be stealing credit card numbers from customers.”

Daniel blew out a breath.

“Robbie is very likely involved in some sort of theft ring. The police knew that he had some connections with guys who are known for credit card theft. They assume he’s an active participant.” She looked at Daniel. “That is right, isn’t it?”

Daniel didn’t remark but finally nodded.

“So either Dorisanne knew about her husband’s activities, perhaps even participating in them with him, stealing names and numbers from her customers, and they both left town because they’ve done something to cause trouble, or she’s not involved, and she just ran away with him because he’s in trouble and told her that if he was in trouble then she was in trouble and needed to leave town as well.”

Daniel dropped his head into his hand and rubbed his brow. Eve thought he looked tired. Had he actually had any sleep since they’d arrived in Las Vegas? She looked at her watch. It was after ten o’clock. They ought to call it a night, just go to bed and work on things again in the morning. But first she wanted to make sure she was clear about everything they both knew or were guessing.

She glanced back down once more at the receipt she had found in Dorisanne’s belongings. “Okay, let’s try and see if she’s involved.” She studied every line on the bill but could see nothing that indicated Dorisanne was stealing.

“What would implicate her in this theft ring? How would she get the numbers? It doesn’t show up on the customer’s receipt.”

“Most of the thieves have a skimmer.”

“A skimmer?” Eve waited for an explanation.

Daniel placed his hands back together on the table. “It’s about the size of an ice cube and it stores information.”

An ice cube. Eve tried to think if she had seen anything like that in Dorisanne’s nightstand drawer.

Daniel continued. “They attach the skimmer to any credit card reader and it stores the numbers.” He reached over for his mug and took a drink of beer. “I’ve seen them attached to gas pumps, ATMs, even vending machines, anywhere people use cards.”

They both turned to the couple at the bar who had suddenly cheered loudly. Apparently one of the teams playing on television had just scored. Eve watched as they gave each other a high five. She then noticed that the men at the front table still seemed to be glued to the same game, but they were not enthusiastic about what had just occurred. She looked again at Daniel. “What do they do with the numbers then? What good are they once the person notices that the card is being charged for purchases they didn’t make?”

“There’s a couple of ways to make money. One is that these ringleaders gather more information from the card owners, open up new accounts, and create fraudulent cards using the stolen card owners’ information. You really only need an address, a phone number, maybe a date of birth. Or they sell the numbers to somebody who makes a lot of purchases real fast and then turns around to sell those items—all done before the theft is discovered.” He shrugged. “If Dorisanne was just gathering numbers, I would guess
that somebody else was taking the numbers and buying and selling the merchandise.”

Eve nodded. It was making sense to her, but she still couldn’t understand why Dorisanne would keep the receipt of a customer. She studied the name but did not call it out. Marcus Winters, it looked like, but she wasn’t sure. And yet it was exactly as Daniel had said. There was no complete credit number listed and no personal information written about the customer. She suddenly had a thought and pulled out the small address book, turned to the back, and began searching the names that started with a W.

“What are you looking for?” Daniel wanted to know. “And what is that book, anyway?”

Eve glanced up, her finger pointing to a line. “I got it at Dorisanne’s,” she confessed. “When we were looking around.”

“You took something from the apartment?” he asked.

“It’s in here,” she said.

Daniel waited. He shook his head.

“The man who signed the receipt—his phone number is in here.”

THIRTY-EIGHT

“So she has a receipt from a man, a customer at the Rio, whose address and phone number she kept in her address book?” Daniel asked, but he sounded more alert than he had a few minutes earlier. “Is there a credit card number also written in there?”

Eve studied the listing and looked up. She shook her head. “Just a couple of phone numbers,” she answered.

“I guess that’s good news,” he responded.

“I guess. Or it could just mean that she keeps those numbers somewhere else, that it’s like you said and she uses a skimmer and has it with her.”

Daniel nodded. He was once again watching the men at the front table.

“Do you think they’re following us?” Eve asked when she noticed where he was looking.

Daniel turned back to face her. “I don’t know,” he replied. “I don’t even know if I actually saw them before.” He glanced in their
direction, leaned in closer, trying to get a better look. “They just seem familiar somehow.” And then he shook his head and drank the last swallow of his beer.

Eve studied them as well, tried to imagine if she had seen them somewhere since arriving in Vegas, but it was of no use. Even though she was certain she had recognized the guy on the motorcycle, with these two guys she was simply drawing a blank. “Maybe they’re just staying here and you saw them in the lobby or on the elevator or something.”

Daniel nodded. “Could be,” he responded. “But I don’t think that’s it. I’ve seen them somewhere else.”

“Maybe they’re cops; maybe they’re familiar because they look like you look when you’re following somebody.”

Daniel didn’t respond at first, then he just shook his head.

Eve turned her attention back to Dorisanne’s address book. As she studied the cover, a pink-and-purple paisley design, she thought she remembered seeing her sister with it before. She must have brought it home to New Mexico sometime in the last few months or years. She checked out the front inside cover to see if there was a year written somewhere. There was none, but she did find her own address written under the E’s:
Eve, Our Lady of Guadalupe Abbey and Convent
, and both the Pecos address and the phone number were listed.

With a different color of ink she had added Eve’s cell number, and seeing it made Eve think about the phone call a few nights before that had gotten the Captain so upset. It made her wonder once again if it had been a real phone call and, if so, why Dorisanne made the call to the Captain and not to her. Clearly, she had her sister’s number.

She recalled what had happened the night of Dorisanne’s contact and realized that the call in the middle of the night was the main reason she was in Vegas at all, and she thought about the sequence of events that led to her trip. She looked for the Captain’s number, but she could not find a listing. She searched under Divine, Captain, even Mom and Dad. There were no numbers listed. Of course, it wasn’t that odd, she thought; the address and the landline number were the same from when they had both been children. Surely, Dorisanne, like Eve, had all of those details memorized. Neither of them would need to write them down.

However, Dorisanne had contacted the Captain using his new cell phone number; she hadn’t called him on the landline. And even though Eve didn’t recall giving her sister that number, she assumed Dorisanne had gotten it somehow. And yet it was not listed anywhere in this address book.

“You look puzzled,” Daniel noted.

“Just trying to find a number in here,” Eve responded.

“Pauline’s?” he asked.

Eve shook her head. “No, the Captain’s.”

“Why would she need the home number in there? Wouldn’t she know that by heart?”

“His new cell number,” Eve answered. “That was the number he says she called the other night. But it’s not in here.”

Daniel didn’t respond right away.

“I guess she could have that already added to her new contact list in her phone,” Eve said.

“I guess,” Daniel agreed.

There was a pause.

“Why wouldn’t she take the book with her?” Eve wanted to know. “If it has all these contacts, why wouldn’t she want that with her?”

Daniel considered the question. “Didn’t you say that there are lines through most of the names? Could be that she was marking them off.”

“Maybe recording them somewhere else,” she said, as she had guessed back in the apartment when she first found the book.

“Most people keep all that information in their phones nowadays. Maybe she was adding them to her digital contact list and didn’t need the book anymore.” Daniel seemed to think this was the answer for what Eve had found.

“That makes some sense,” she said, flipping through the pages. “But not all of the names and numbers have a line through them. I guess that could just mean she didn’t want to keep them all.”

“Could be,” Daniel agreed.

She kept looking through all the names. There were a few that she recognized, but most of them were names she didn’t know. About half of them had a line drawn through them.

“Your guy, the customer?” Daniel asked.

She looked up, understood that he was asking if she had drawn a line through his name. She found the listing, glanced up again, and shook her head.

“So either she didn’t record it or didn’t need it,” Daniel noted.

Eve shrugged. “Maybe we should call him?”

Daniel looked at his watch. “Sort of late,” he said.

Eve nodded. She studied the numbers and noticed that they were both Las Vegas exchanges. She had become familiar with the 702 area code.

“Let’s wait until the morning,” he suggested. “I think we’ve done all the damage we can do today.” He hesitated. “But we could go back to the Rio tonight if you want and see if the manager is working.”

“No, you’re right. Misti, the waitress, said he’d be gone until next week,” Eve remembered. “Besides, I think we could both use a good night’s sleep. Maybe Pauline will be up and able to answer questions in the morning, and if so, we’ll know a lot more about everything.”

Daniel nodded. “Okay,” he agreed. “Plus we can call the customer and see if he knows Dorisanne.”

Eve stifled a yawn and rubbed her eyes.

“Late hours for a nun?” Daniel smiled.

“Late hours for anybody,” she answered. “You don’t look so bright-eyed and bushy-tailed yourself.”

He stretched his arms above his head and gave a big yawn as well. “You’re right. Even police officers need their beauty rest. Speaking of, did you call your father today?”

“I called him back this morning before we left for the apartments. He had left a voice-mail message for me to call him after he talked to you.” She remembered the conversation and how he was on his way to check out Mr. Salazar’s claim about gold on his property and how Caleb Alford had called the office but he had not talked to him.

“I only talked to him for a minute when I was on my way to talk to James. Had he heard from anybody?”

“You mean Dorisanne? Had she called again?”

“Yeah,” he replied.

Eve shook her head. “There was a call,” she answered. “From here, but if it was Dorisanne, she didn’t leave a message.”

Daniel nodded.

They watched as the young couple sitting at the bar drank the last of their drinks, paid the bill, and headed out. The two men at the front table each had another beer served to them, and Eve thought about Daniel’s uneasy feeling that he had seen them before. She glanced over and he was still watching them intently.

THIRTY-NINE

Once again, sleep did not come easily. Eve tossed and turned, trying first to find a comfortable position on one side and then switching to the other, then flat on her back. She tried fluffing up her pillow, using one and then two and then one again, yanking on and off the covers, pulling them over her head, folding them under her arms, but nothing seemed to help.