CHAPTER EIGHT
Shabina, you’re killing us with this breakfast. We’ll never be able to climb,” Stella Harrison proclaimed, scooping more of the egg scramble up and placing it into a tortilla wrap. “How do you manage to make everything taste so good?”
“I just want to know how she gets up so early and has her brain cells working enough to figure out an actual entire menu,” Zahra Metcalf said. She managed to sound and look exhausted even as she took more scramble from the warmers. Zahra had dark, dark eyes and hair that was cut chin length to frame her pixie face. She was the shortest of all the women and worked as a hospital administrator.
Vienna had to admit, Stella was right about the excellent food. It wasn’t a normal breakfast scramble. And Zahra was right about the early morning hour. They’d gotten up long before the sun to make sure they could boulder before it got too hot.
“You’re looking good, Stella. So far, the thought of marriage to Sam hasn’t made you want to run for the hills and disappear. We’ve taken a bet on it, you know. The odds of you actually making it down the aisle aren’t that great,” Vienna said.
Stella did look good, with her silvery blonde hair and crystal blue eyes. “Sam says he’s watching for the big runaway, and if I’m running, he’s running with me. He would too. He doesn’t mind not being married. Or eloping. Or just marrying quietly with only the dogs there.”
“That sounds like Sam,” Vienna said.
“He could track you too,” Raine predicted. “In any case, you do love him, even if I think you’re crazy to fall in love, so you’re stuck. You may as well get over your cold feet and just marry the man. You’re definitely going to stay with him. Sooner or later, he’s going to knock you up and you’ll have kids, and if you aren’t married, when the kids go to school, there might be a bully who’s mean to them. Sam will retaliate in some huge way and you’ll have to live off the land in the mountains for the rest of your life.”
Raine took thirds on the egg scramble without a qualm.
“Hey,” Harlow protested. “I haven’t had seconds.”
“You’re just lounging there with your feet up,” Raine pointed out, unrepentant while everyone else laughed at her tale of Stella’s life with Sam without marriage. “Who knew you were going to get energetic enough to actually get food for yourself?”
“There’s plenty,” Shabina, the peacemaker, said. “I counted on Raine to have an extra helping.”
“While we’re all sitting around and Raine is telling tales about Sam, I’m going to tell you about my fun stay at the Northern Lights.” Vienna proceeded to tell her friends everything that had happened, including the malevolent feelings she’d gotten from the crowd. The warnings about Benny. The attack on her from Charles. She showed them the fading bruises on the side of her head and across her belly, close to her ribs. She ended with the things Daniel Wallin had said to her privately after her win.
“I don’t know if he was threatening me or warning me,” she concluded.
Raine already had her computer out. She could access almost any site. She had a very high government clearance, but in this case, she shouldn’t need it. If what Wallin said was the truth, Liam Gram’s death would have been in the newspapers. Bodies were found in the desert occasionally during certain time periods. Raine had the name and the approximate date the murder might have happened.
“Did it feel like a threat?” Harlow asked. “What did your gut tell you?”
“I wanted out of that room. After two of his security team had come to my room the day before—I was certain to kill me—I didn’t want to be alone with any of them. Wallin or his security. I didn’t trust any of them. I wanted to get out of the hotel. I couldn’t be seen with Zale. I felt very alone and was so happy to see Shabina and Raine. I didn’t even say thank you for getting a plane and coming early. I was afraid they’d overhear. The relief was tremendous.”
Raine held up her hand. “I found something. Liam Gram was found in the desert by two young men riding dune buggies. He’d been missing for three weeks. He was found buried up to his neck in the sand, both eyes shot out. Cards had been shoved in his mouth and it was wired shut with his teeth clamped around the cards. When they performed an autopsy, they found he’d been tortured for some time. He was thirty-five years old at the time of his death. That was in 1980.”
“Holy crap.” Zahra sat upright. “This is the only man who ever beat this Daniel Wallin at a game of cards? He ended up tortured, shot and buried to the neck in sand in the desert? We need to get you out of here.”
“It isn’t as if Wallin never lost a hand at cards, or he didn’t get bad cards,” Vienna said. “No one would ever have played him if that was the case. It’s just that when it was a huge pot or it really mattered, he was unbeatable.” She knew, because that was how she played. Carefully, so she didn’t look as if she won every single hand.
“What was the prize?” Stella asked. “How much were they playing for?”
“That’s a good question,” Vienna said. “Daniel was building the casino. It was in construction, and he had backers, but according to all the propaganda, he managed most of the financing himself. He was really young at the time, and no one believed he could do it. He owned seventy-five percent of the casino and a corporation owned twenty-five percent. I believe it’s still that way.”
“During that time, it was highly possible that ‘corporation’ meant one of the Mafia families,” Raine said. “They were still entrenched until around 1985.”
Harlow made a face of complete disbelief as she shook her head. “Where would a man his age get the kind of money it would take to build a casino like the Northern Lights? Seventy-five percent? That’s a lot of cash. Even if he was gambling and winning huge pots, I can’t see him making the kind of money it would take for the construction of a casino as first-class and luxurious as the Northern Lights.”
“I agree with Harlow,” Stella said. “Is it possible he inherited money? Raine, can you find out anything about his background?”
“I looked that up first thing,” Raine said. “His father, Norman Wallin, came to the States from Sweden under murky circumstances. I say that because it looks as if he may have been escaping a scandal in his country involving a good deal of money and jewels he’d conned from his fiancée and her family. She did give them to him of her own free will, so they couldn’t bring charges against him. The parents had given the money to him as an investment.”
“Wallin’s father was a con man?” Zahra asked.
Vienna was fairly certain the man had the ability to use his voice in the same way Daniel did. Rather than playing cards, he conned people out of their money and jewels.
“What happened when he came to the States?” Vienna asked.
“He seemed to run with the rich and famous,” Raine said. “The ladies loved him. There are pictures of him with various movie stars and singers on his arm at club openings.”
“Did they find out who killed Liam?” Harlow asked.
“They investigated, of course, but remember, some of the cops at that time were corrupt. The FBI came in and did a huge sweep, cleaning up Vegas a few years after the murder took place,” Raine answered.
“Was Daniel Wallin a suspect?” Shabina asked.
Vienna was very interested in the answer. Had she been a detective, Daniel would have been very high on her list of suspects, alibi or not.
Raine nodded slowly as she went back to reading the various reports. “Newspapers claim he was a person of interest but that he had an ironclad alibi. He also said Liam was a good friend of his and he was extremely distraught over his death. He had many, many interviews, really taking advantage of his disappearance and death. He knew how to turn things to his benefit even then. It will be interesting to see how he spins your win.”
“Is there anything on what the prize was? It must have been news that Daniel lost such a big game,” Stella persisted. She gathered the plates and took them into the kitchen.
Zahra immediately began taking the food warmers from the dining room into the kitchen. There wasn’t much food left, but she scraped it into the compost container. The archway between the rooms was very wide, so they could see and hear as the conversation continued.