the stroke of one with the full intention of driving straight through to Vegas. We figure we can make it in thiry-four hours if we take turns behind the wheel.
Good intentions bite the dust in Albuquerque, New Mexico. We hole up in a Comfort Inn for a few hours, then hit the road at the crack of nine thirty the next morning.
In the middle of the night we drag into Vegas, pumped on caffeine and ready to take the city by storm. Vegas is a night city. Lights ablaze. Crowds thronging the casinos. Party-till-you-drop atmosphere.
We check into a cheap, no-tell motel on the edge of the Strip, and Lovie sprawls on the bed while I grab the phone book and start checking under the Ms.
“Good grief, Callie. What are you going to do if you find her? We can’t barge over there in the middle of the night.”
“I just want to see if she’s listed, that’s all. She has a head start. We can’t afford to dally.” I trace my finger down the list of Ms. “Shoot. She’s unlisted. We have work to do. Let’s go get ’em, tiger.”
We shuck our shorts for killer outfits, hail a cab (we’re both too tired to drive), then head into the city that never sleeps. Lovie looks like a firestorm in a flashy red sequined dress and rhinestone earrings as big as Arkansas, and I look about ten feet tall in a brand-new pair of stiletto-heeled, lizard-skin Enzo Angiolini sling-backs.
At Caesar’s Palace where Bubbles last worked, we split up at the roulette wheel and agree to meet there in two hours. I look across the sea of people and see nothing but bad haircuts and split ends.
If I’m ever going to find Dr. Laton’s corpse I’ve got to quit thinking like a hairstylist and start thinking like Humphrey Bogart doing Phillip Marlowe.
I pick out a distinguished-looking gray-haired couple who would have been old enough to afford show tickets around the time Bubbles was probably in her performing prime. Translation: before she started needing a forklift to hold up her breasts.
I head their way and prepare to exaggerate my drawl. A southern accent is a good ice breaker if you’re outside the Deep South.
“Hello, I wonder (pronounced wonnndah) if you nice folks could help me (he’p meee).”
They stare at me as if I’ve landed from another planet and plan to start eating senior citizens first.
“I’m (ahhh’m) from a little ole fan club in Dallas called FTS—that’s Find the Stars—and I was hoping I’d (ahhh’d) find somebody who might know one of my favorites. Bubbles Malone.”
“What’d she say, Gertrude?”
Pointing to his ear, Gertrude yells, “Turn on your hearing aide, Hubert.” Hubert complies, then winces when she yells, “She’s from the PTO and wants to know about somebody named Bubble Along.”
He taps me on the shoulder. Hard. “Young lady, I’m from the MYOB club. That’s mind your own business.”
They turn and walk in the opposite direction, but not before he shoots me the bird.
“That didn’t go so well.”
“What didn’t go well?”
I nearly jump through the gaudy two-ton chandelier. If it fell on somebody, it’d kill them.
Lovie has sneaked up behind me, apparently determined to cause my first gray hair.
“Where’d you come from?”
“Two proposals and six indecent propositions. Let’s get out of here. My butt’s black and blue from unsolicited pinchings.”
“Okay. Maybe we’ll have better luck at the MGM Grand.”
We weave our way through the crowd and onto the Strip to hail a cab. There we are, minding our own business (almost), when a young man in torn jeans and a dirty muscle shirt streaks by and grabs my purse.
“What next?” I say.
“We catch his skinny carcass and beat the daylights out of him. Come on.”
Lovie steamrolls down the street with me barreling along right beside her. I’d hate to be in our path.
Elvis’ Opinion # 3 on the Southern Mafia, Rocket Science, and Garbage Cans
My plan was to take a few days off to get to know my little French sweetie, show her the sights, then head on home and introduce her to my human mom.
You know what they say about the best-laid plans of mice and men, and I reckon that includes basset hounds. Callie’s not home.
For one thing, Ruby Nell has moved into our house. That would never happen unless (a) one of them is sick or dying or (b) Callie’s gone. Not that they don’t get along. They do. You just can’t coop two strong-willed women up together for more than twenty-four hours and expect peace in the valley.
For another, I can smell Callie a mile.
She smells like a flower. Gardenia. And it’s not perfume, either. She has a natural set of powerful pheromones that roped in my human daddy and made him forget he’d planned on being a bachelor till the day he died. Which could be sooner than later. You ought to see his arsenal. Knives, guns, rifles, machetes. He’s got ’em all, and he knows how to use them, too.
Of course, he’s an expert at keeping secrets. The only weapon Callie knows about is the Colt .45. And I’ll never tell the rest. She’s got enough on her mind keeping up with the Valentines and the Latons’ dirty laundry.
And I’m not talking blue jeans.
Just because I’m taking a little R and R, don’t think I don’t know what’s going on. Finding stuff out’s not rocket science if you know the fine points of eavesdropping.
Yesterday when I was on the farm showing Ann Margret around (well, bragging, if you want to know the truth), I overheard Ruby Nell and Charlie talking about the body snatching. (Obviously, they’d met down there to talk about things they didn’t want the Latons to know.)
If they had put me on the job, they’d never have lost the body in the first place. But what can I say? Don’t step on my blue suede shoes? Everybody in the world loved me when I was crooning gold and giving away Cadillacs, but Callie’s the only one of the Valentines with a true appreciation of my talents.
Of course, if they’d put me on the job I wouldn’t have met my little French poodle. Don’t get me wrong. I’m not one to get my head turned by every Raquel rottweiler and Shelley sheepdog that walks by. But let a honey like Ann Margret come along and a basset hound can’t help falling in love.
But even fools have to eat.
I sashay over to the garbage can behind the truck stop to see what’s cooking. Coleslaw. Cabbage. Dill pickles. It might do for stray cats but not for a King.
I head down to the farm with Ann Margret trotting along beside me to see what I can find in Ruby Nell’s garbage cans. Day-old meat loaf, half a loaf of Wonder bread, a big hunk of lemon pound cake. The woman’s a kindred spirit. I wonder if she was a basset hound in another life.
