Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine. Vol. 52, No. 7 & 8, July/August 2007

I stood at my window looking down at the street below, waiting until I saw Joe drive off in his unmarked car before I went back to my closet where I’d stashed the photograph. Percentagewise, I’d been about ninety-five percent upfront with Joe. I didn’t tell him I’d taken a folded photograph from Rimmey’s inside jacket pocket. I didn’t know what it was at first. I just saw something sticking out of his pocket, and curiosity got the best of me. Once I got a look at it, however, there was no way I could turn it over to Joe.

Mira Navilone was in all her skinny glory. The only thing that adorned her were a pair of dangling diamond earrings, and one strapless spiked heel on her left foot. The two guys with her wore Halloween masks. The black guy had on a George Bush mask, and I guess for political correctness the white guy wore an Al Sharpton mask. Their positions might have been choreographed by Cirque du Soleil.

Rimmey had left the keys in the ignition, the motor running, and the driver’s side door opened. I’d taken the keys and did a quick but thorough search of the car to make sure there weren’t any other photos around before I called Metro. I gave the keys to the first cop that arrived, telling him I took the keys to prevent a passerby from seizing the opportunity and making off with the car. He gave me a short speech about tampering with evidence, then got busy with crowd control.

Risqué photos, risqué cabaret acts, even risqué slot machines are pretty much commonplace here. Aside from the various decency groups who keep trying to bury Vegas’s old tag as Sin City, I doubt too many people would care one way or the other if the photo was hung from every lamppost on the Strip. Mira wouldn’t be thought the worst for it. In some circles she might even be praised. But I knew one person who would be spitting fireballs. Belle Navilone, Mira’s grandmother.

I’d seen her temper in action a time or two. Her husband had been one of the old Vegas mob bosses. He’d taken his life as the Feds were closing in on him, or so the story goes. Belle was left with enough money, property, and businesses in her own name that the Feds hadn’t been able to touch her.

I’d first met Belle when I’d tracked down her nephew for his ex-wife. Before the whole thing was over, both the nephew and the ex-wife were dead. The culprit, Belle’s handyman slash chauffeur slash bodyguard, was also moonlighting as Mira’s lover. I’d been the one who figured the whole mess out. Since then Belle and I had developed a relationship that I would say was more than an employer-employee type of thing. But I couldn’t go as far as declaring it a friendship either.

I didn’t get back to sleep, I didn’t even try. My head was too full with Rimmey dying at my door and trying to decide what my next move should be. Destroying the photograph and pretending I’d never seen it would be one way of going, although I knew that really wouldn’t help. Rimmey dying at my door put me into this thing, whatever it was, and I was going to be in it until I found some sort of solution.

Who killed him? How did he get the photograph? Why did he come to me? Big questions with not an answer in sight. I went through two more mugs of coffee, a couple of different CDs of Motown’s Greatest Hits, and a long hot shower before I locked in on what I should do.