Private Dick Casefile 01 - Lily White Rose Red

glistening in the moonlight. My hips thrust wildly as I came, and I moaned his name.
    After taking a few minutes to calm down, I fished in the car for the hideous tie Lily had threatened to throw out. I wiped my hand on the tie and zipped up. I dropped the wet tie on the ground and got back in the car. I heaved in a deep breath and turned the motor over, checking both ways before I headed for my apartment, leaving the evidence of my evening’s activities behind.
    Guess I owed Artie a new tie even though I hadn’t gotten blood on it. And I was still going to have to go back to interview Miss Tina.

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    Chapter 5: I Meet Mr. X

    I GUESS I needed that. I turned in early and slept like the dead till morning. While the morning fog was lifting and the coffee was perking, I realized I had a lot to think about. Who was Mr. X? Why would Phil Martin hire Marguerite Saint-Ville to oblige him? Who killed her? Was it Jazz Morgan after all or somebody else? What did Reggie know about this that he still wasn’t telling me? What else had Lily left out?
    And why had I allowed myself to put the moves on Mr. Big?
    I could have gotten him to talk another way. No fooling myself, things would be a lot simpler if I’d just controlled myself. For one thing, I didn’t want to believe it was Mr. Big who sent those cards signed with a B, but there were a lot of reasons a man could kill. Like blackmail. If Margie found out about him and threatened to go canary on him, maybe he could have been desperate enough to strangle her, but then why send flowers before she even knew he ran a queer club?
    Okay, back to the case. There were things I needed to know. I called my service and found out that Charlie had called the previous day, saying she’d found something she wanted me to see, and Lily had also called that morning.
    Charlie or Lily? Research or action?
    A lot of private dicks prefer action, exciting car chases, sniffing out clues, shining bright lights in people’s eyes and barking questions at them. Of course, most of them can’t read. I’m a different kind of dick. I’ve always been good at research, among other things, and I could have been a scientist if the inclination took me that way. And with Charlie to do the legwork, it shaved hours off research time for me, not that I was going to tell her that.
    I opted for the library first. Mrs. Fielding steered me to the crime Lily White, Rose Red: Grey Randall, Private Dick Casefile #1
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    section, where I found Charlie immersed in some book.
    “Boning up?”
    “If I’m going to help you track down a murderer, I might as well familiarize myself with the criminal mind,” she said, pushing up her glasses.
    I tried not to laugh, but if a crook could have seen her, sitting on the floor in her slacks and ugly brown cardigan, I don’t think she would have struck too much fear in his heart. Tactfully, I asked, “So what have you got for me?”
    She took my hand and stood up, shelving the book without looking. “I think you’ll be interested in what I found out about your client.”
    “Okay, lay it on me.”
    Charlie led the way to the basement, and I was impressed when I saw how much stuff she had laid out on a long table. The library had only just started microfilming the current periodicals, so she’d gone into the archives to find magazines and newspapers. I whistled to show how impressed I was.
    “You deserve the new Austen set,” I said.
    She grinned smugly. “Wait’ll you see this.” She led me to the head of the table and handed me a pair of white cotton gloves, pulling on a pair herself.
    Twenty years ago, Vegas was a smaller town with fewer watering holes. But even then, good-looking dancers were hoofing it for the guys working the mines and ranches. Silver and gambling were the only news in Vegas back then, that and the dames. Men came here to forget and live it up, with gambling, booze, and broads.
    And the people who lived here, well, all that mattered was what was happening here: who was killing who, who was fucking who, who lost money and most importantly, who won it.
    About twenty years back, Charlie found the first piece of evidence I needed. The rise of Lily McIntyre was news, first buried in the back pages, and then she earned front-page status as she became a headliner. Her rise to stardom was marked by fewer and fewer clothes.

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    She was a looker, all right. She may have been correct, she might have had a bit of an edge on