Private Dick Casefile 01 - Lily White Rose Red

it?”
    A spasm of pain crossed his face, and for the first time, I saw how hard her death had hit him. “No, it didn’t.” I waited till the mask slipped back into place. “Don’t you have your ear to the criminal ground in Vegas? No rumors, anecdotes, bragging rights?”
    He looked startled. “Now that you mention it, no.”
    “What was Captain Woods doing here?”
    That hit a nerve. “Why shouldn’t he be here?” Mr. Hamilton snapped. “As a leading citizen of Las Vegas and a major business owner—”
    “I just thought he might be sharing some theory about the killer,” I said mildly. “He is investigating the murder, isn’t he?”
    “Oh, I see. No, he wasn’t here for that, but Woods has assured me that the police are doing all they can. He doesn’t like to leave an unsolved murder on the books.”

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    CATT FORD

    “So he does have some idea who did it,” I probed.
    “He seems to think she was seeing some man at the club where she was working. Mr. Martin says that she wasn’t.” Mr. Hamilton scowled like he wasn’t sure who to believe.
    I wondered if he knew exactly what kind of club Phil Martin was running. I was guessing not, seeing as he seemed pretty easygoing about his daughter working there.
    “So Miss Saint-Ville strolled in here one day, not knowing you’re her pop, and said, I want to walk on the wild side, can you get me a job singing in one of your henchmen’s clubs?”
    Mr. Hamilton reddened. “Not exactly. She was maddeningly complacent with me, thinking that I was just another older man who wanted to date her. She flirted with me after I made the mistake of giving her some diamond earrings for her birthday. I’d promised Lily I wouldn’t tell her until we could talk to her together, when the time was right, but it was driving me crazy. Anyway, Marguerite called me one night from the Jungle Room; she was terrified. I couldn’t go myself, so I sent a car for her.”
    “Why couldn’t you go? Too busy?” I knew I was being offensive, but I wanted to make him talk, even if he was yelling.
    Hamilton glared at me. “She’s afraid some guy is out to get her. If I send two armed goons to pick her up and bring her to me, she’ll panic, thinking she’s out of the frying pan into the fire. I mentioned Martin to her, and she found him on her own. Brownie volunteered to make sure she got there alive and trailed after her but dropped her when she made it to Topaz. I thought she’d be safe with Phil Martin.” He ended on a faintly resentful note.
    “She probably would have been, if she’d stayed put,” I said, hoping to put in a good word for my dream guy, even though he wasn’t mine and never would be.
    “She had Lily’s waywardness, but not enough knowledge of the world to keep herself safe,” Mr. Hamilton said. He rubbed his eyes wearily. “Marguerite had a thing for bad boys. It’s always the same with sweet girls like that. Sweet but stubborn.” Seemed to me she took after her old man more than he was Lily White, Rose Red: Grey Randall, Private Dick Casefile #1
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    willing to admit. “So she met some other bad boy and went out to meet him?”
    “I don’t know. She was told to stay inside the club until Phil got there to take her home, but that night she disappeared, and no one there knew to stop her. Phil regularly makes the rounds of all my clubs, you know. He would take her home last thing.”
    “Seems like she had Lily’s talent too,” I suggested. He seemed to need a chance to talk about her.
    He grabbed onto it eagerly. “She had it in spades. For Lily it was dancing. For Marguerite it was the urge to sing. You couldn’t stop her from grabbing the spotlight. It would have been like standing in front of a freight train and holding out your hand, shouting, ‘Stop!’
    Headstrong.”
    “Like you,” I murmured.
    “My kids may not have gotten my brains, but they got that.” We could argue about the brains, but what was the point? I was willing to grant that he had some, given his success in business, but his brains sure seemed to turn to water where his daughter was concerned.
    I wouldn’t be surprised if he was feeling guilty toward Lily as well, after the way he handled Marguerite’s cry for help.
    I took out a card and put it on his desk. “If you think of anything else, give me a call. I’m open twenty-four hours.” Well, I wasn’t really, I had to sleep sometime, but it sounded good, and at least my service was and they could