~ Vegas Centennial ~

An Olivia Wright Mystery

by

Lynnette Baughman

One

Monday, December 6, 2004

Las Vegas, Nevada

"She’s got one foot in the grave and the other on a banana peel," Andréa Cousteau said as she popped open her compact and checked her teeth for arugula and spinach residue. "And I’m not getting any younger either. I need the complete manuscript yesterday."

Satisfied with her teeth, my editor applied a dash of lipstick the color of brackish water to her full lips. Andréa’s name was French, but her accent was Brooklyn all the way.

"Yesterday!" she said again, punctuating the proclamation with a loud snap of the compact.

She had flown to Las Vegas from "the city so nice they named it twice" and my literary agent, Coco Jones, had flown in from the Left Coast to, as they put it, "work with me."

This was in the same spirit that Ice-pick Louie and Nasty-man Knuckles might fly in from Moline to work with a gambler behind on his debt payments. We’s got a layaway plan youse might like to know about. Get it? Lay away?

We were sitting in an ersatz outdoor café in Caesar’s Forum. The faux Mediterranean sky never changed, and the noise level never dropped. From far down the promenade I could hear the boom of Neptune’s voice as he rose on cue in his magical fountain.

Coco took off her rose-tinted sunglasses so I could feel the full wattage of her black-eyed stare. She spoke to Andréa, but her eyes were locked on mine. "I’m sure Olivia is nearly finished."

There followed a pregnant pause that I was supposed to fill with something about Fed Ex-ing copies of the manuscript to both of them in some single-digit number of days, but I just nodded and said, "Nearly." I was nearly finished with the book on Clara McNamara Kellem in the same way a twenty-foot rope ladder off the top of a fifty-foot building nearly reaches the ground.

I knew Coco wanted to practice her martial arts on me right about then, but since she was technically working for me, she leaned back and smiled at Andréa.

"What about Eileen McNamara?" Andréa persisted. "Her story’s got to be included and you haven’t even talked to her yet. As far as I can tell, Eileen getting away with murder is the high point, publicity-wise, of the McNamara family saga."

Andréa the Astute had landed with both feet right on the weakest part of my story. I was getting apprehensive on the subject of Eileen McNamara, who hadn’t returned any of my calls. I’d first gone to her house in Beverly Hills and on to her house in the Mission District of San Francisco, only to find she’d flown back to Beverly Hills then driven to Las Vegas. I’d flown back to Vegas myself that morning, barely in time for my brunch meeting with Andréa and Coco.

I had reason to be encouraged on the Eileen McNamara front, however. Her agent swore to me that Ms. McNamara would call me that evening or first thing in the morning. And this time she’d given me Eileen’s cell phone number instead of the brushoff.

"I’m going to see Eileen tomorrow," I said with more certainty than I felt. "And don’t worry about Clara’s age. Lots of people are living to one hundred these days."

"Not any editors," Andréa snapped. "Our lives are shortened by worry."

"Well, the sooner I get back to work, the sooner you can ease your worried mind. Both of you." All three of us.

Coco tucked her chin-length hair behind her ear and nodded as if I’d said something profound, but Andréa stuck to her guns.

"I have to take something back with me. If I don’t give the art department some meat, they’re going to put tits and ass on the cover and call it Vegas Secrets. Deadline for the catalog is now." She stretched out "now" like a cow mooing.

I lifted a five by seven envelope from my purse and saw I had Andréa’s rapt attention. "These are pictures of Clara in 1923 when she came out in San Francisco society, and in 1924 when she married for the first time. And this is Michael T. McNamara, Clara’s father, in 1905 or possibly 1906."

"Love her, hate him." Andréa almost fondled Clara’s debutante photo. "This will make a great cover. I can hear the art department sigh in relief already. We’ll put old muttonchops inside where he won’t scare away the buyers."

I wanted to feed her jocundity with more good news, such as I’ll be writing the final chapter this week, but it’s better not to tempt fate with rash statements. Or outright lies.

Andréa signed the charge slip and dropped her platinum card in her pocket. "You’ll e-mail a thumbnail for the catalog this afternoon?"

"By close of business New York time. To the art director."

Andréa repeated the e-mail address and we all air kissed good-bye. I strode out at a brisk pace, knowing Coco wanted to stroll out with Andréa and pitch a novel by a new client, a coming-of-age-with-fear-and-loathing opus.

While I waited for the valet to retrieve my baby blue Lexus, I checked my cell phone for messages. "You have no new messages and one old message," the electronic woman intoned. I tried Eileen McNamara’s cell phone number again, left another message.

I knew what the old message was. My main (and only) squeeze, Mace Emerick, had called from Virginia while I was on the plane, saying he’d call when he got another break from class.

"There’s a chance I’ll get back to Vegas sooner than I expected. When will you get back from California?" That was a real good news/bad news message in light of the horrendous amount of work I had to do on the book. Clara’s book. I headed south on the Las Vegas Strip, east on Harmon, then south again, winding my way to the Wickworth Tower. Clara’s place.

Clara McNamara Kellem ruled one of the four penthouse suites on the thirty-fifth floor. She appeared to have the constitution of a woman pushing eighty instead of someone soon to leave one hundred candles smoking. She was fond of stating her age and weight in tandem, "Ninety-nine, that’s the answer to both questions! Ninety-nine, soaking wet."

Clara would share her next birthday with the centennial celebration of the city of Las Vegas on May 15, 2005. And she’d be damned (her words) if her memoir wasn’t published by then.

Her memoir. That’s where I got sucked into Clara’s always-swirling drain. Having plenty of experience at writing, under my name and as a ghostwriter for others, and being a really fast transcription typist, I was a natural. As fate would have it, I even lived in Clara’s apartment building. Excuse me--Clara’s luxury condominium complex. Technically, that made her my landlady, but a raft of lawyers and business managers served as buffers.

My daughter Candace, co-owner of a very successful catering company and the only one of my kids who lived in Las Vegas, wanted to know why I took the job of listening to and transcribing the disjointed recollections of Clara Kellem. If it had been strictly a work-for-hire writing job--as I’d done before to make a living--I would have said no. I’m not a robot.

And a robot is exactly what Clara wanted when she began the project. Consequently, I did say no when first approached six months earlier. So Clara hired a sycophant, an advertising copywriter used to making stomach gas remedies sound better than sex, and together they wasted four months. Now, four months might not sound like much time to waste, but when you’re ten...nine...eight...seven months shy of your one hundredth birthday and counting--well, as the song says, The days grow short. I got another call from Clara.

I drove a hard bargain: my name under hers on the cover, joint ownership of the copyright, and fifty percent of the royalties as well as fifty percent of any subsidiary rights we could hold out of the clutch of the publisher. I still might have said no, but Mace Emerick needed to spend six weeks in Quantico, Virginia, adding some special FBI training to his already considerable portfolio of crime fighting. With Chief Detective Emerick scheduled to leave in early November, I would have time to kill. So I said yes, with two additional provisos. One, that I do research to place "her story" in context against the history of Las Vegas. Two, that I interview as many of her family members as possible to give the story flesh and blood. She agreed in late October and we got started November first.

As it turned out, the story had a lot more blood than I’d counted on.