Chapter 3
My first stop is the Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department where a detective I knew from the old days is in charge of kidnapping investigations and has, so far, succeeded in keeping this thing quiet, not that easy in this town. Ms. Tamblyn told me he’d be expecting me and, in fact, had been one of those who’d advised her to see if I’d be interested in helping. So, she’d talked to the police about it and they were on the case and Brian, the chief detective who knew me, is working on the case, quietly, as of yesterday. He’s tall and thoughtful, wears a suit and a tie, and if you didn’t know about his work, you might think he’s a life insurance salesman or an accountant with an MBA. He fools people into thinking he’s harmless and unimportant but I know better.
“Your thoughts on the note?” Brian says after we’d taken seats in his office.
“I don’t think it’s a kidnapping, although it might be. Seems like someone who knows her daughter is missing knows how valuable it is to the mother and wishes to take advantage of this family thing where the daughter is no longer speaking to the mother and has just disappeared for a reason Something like that?.”
“Yeah, what I thought. You want some coffee?”
Brian has achieved the kind of detective status that meant he could afford expensive coffee from Columbia that he bought at a health food store near the Gold and Silver Pawn Shop on the Strip just North of Charleston Boulevard.
He had a coffee maker to go with the ground beans and keep all it right there on a small table in his office at the police station. I assume if you’re a detective investigating crimes in Las Vegas you start the day with a decent cup of coffee.
“Her daughter is a student at UNLV?”
“That’s the story.”
“What’s she studying?” I ask.
“Anthropology.”
“What’s that, exactly?”
“This culture is different from that culture and here’s why and so on.”
“The culture of Las Vegas is different from the culture of Davenport.”
“I think it’s more like Europe is different than India. At that level.”
We sip coffee.
“Your guys talking to anyone who might know her over at UNLV?”
“We’re on it. Classmates. Professors. Sorority sisters. Just started gentle inquiries into her whereabouts. No one’s seen here but apparently that’s not unusual. She’s got a habit of dropping from sight for a few days and then showing up again. She seems to go to places without telling anyone where.”
“So, no one over there is all that concerned. Those that know her.”
“Not so far, Bobby. They seem to know about her problems with her old lady so no one’s exactly surprised she may have finally taken off. Big arguments. Not talking to each other. Daughter is unhappy with Mom, et cetera. It is true, apparently, that this time around she’s been gone longer than usual. ”
“I think I’ll go over there and see what’s up.”
“Let me know.”
“What’s that sorority she belongs to?”
Brian told me and I wrote it down, took a sip of the expensive coffee he’d made and we shook hands and I headed over to UNLV. I hadn’t been there for awhile since they do not have Texas Hold 'Em poker classes (at least, not officially, maybe they do in the dorms) but I liked the idea of seeing green grass being watered endlessly between school buildings out here in the dry desert or, here and there, the rock gardens with strong cactus plants that just need regular intense, desert sunlight and the occasional torrential rain storm.
None of the 2 or 3 sorority sisters at the house wanted to help me out with the whereabouts of Mary Catherine Tamblyn but confirmed that she’d been gone a lot longer than usual but none of them wanted to call it “missing” Not yet, anyway.
One of them said I should come back at about dinner time when everyone was there. Another asked me if I had a private investigator badge and I said no and she said well, shouldn’t you have one? I thought for just a moment about telling her that, in fact, it works better in the long run if you don’t have one and, by the way, it’s not actually a legal necessity, besides which I make a living playing poker, but then I had second thoughts and just headed downtown again. I’d come back at dinnertime. I did not say “I don’t need no stinking badges.”
I stopped at my bank – well, they liked to call themselves a “financial institution” in all of their advertising which is kind of funny for a bank located in the state of Nevada – and deposited the cash from the envelope.
The teller did not blink at the amount or that I’d shown up with it, taken it from my pocket and counted it out on the little desk in front of her. She took it, counted it, typed something into her computer and a tiny receipt popped out. Cash around here is as normal as pancakes at a church social. No one thinks twice about seeing it except when it’s being counted. She handed the receipt to me, asked if there was anything else and I said no and left the premises. I wondered whether she would make a good dealer.
It wasn’t that different from being at the cashier’s desk at any given casino – my thoughts as I drove over to the Golden Nugget to see who was playing midday poker. I’d kept a few hundred dollars for the purpose of buying into a game and for buying lunch. I wanted time to think about the missing daughter of the rich casino owner and to consider what my next steps might be. It would be good to relax over a decent Texas Hold 'Em table and assess what the odds were about the whole thing.