FLIPKA

Chapter Seventeen

By the time we finally got to Ely, the coffee shop at the Old Ely Hotel and Gambling Hall had quit serving lunch, and the waitress, who’d been working since four thirty am, had no sympathy for us. We could walk across the street to the Dairy Queen. Or get munchies in the hotel bar. Or drive down the street to the market and make our own damn sandwiches for all she cared. Her coffee shop was closed. We had a two-thirty appointment with the sheriff, which didn’t leave a lot of time to find a bite to eat so Creamo opted for the bar (the Dairy Queen didn’t serve whiskey). Besides he couldn’t leave the hotel; Doug Hyman would be calling momentarily for an update. 

“I need a bit more than peanuts and pretzels. I’m going across the street to the DQ. Want something?” I asked. 

“What if Hyman calls?”

“What if?”

“No,” Creamo ordered, “you better stay here. Someone has to tell him why we just wasted a grand on that little dipshit and it’s not going to be me. You know, this isn’t one of those detective shows where the rich guy hands you a wad of cash to get a job done and doesn’t care how you spend it. Hyman cares. Trust me, he cares where every penny . . .” 

“Just tell him that . . .”

“No, no, no. You tell him! It’s your wacky theory. You know what I think.” 

Creamo wasn’t buying the notion that Meredith Hyman had gone in search of an underground Shangri-La described in the journal of a long-dead cavalryman. He’d already ordered someone in Las Vegas to track down her past-and-present boyfriends, and now it was just a matter of time before one of those acne-ridden, lovesick hounds confessed. Then he would pick up Merry and rough up the boyfriend. Case solved. 

“I thought Sabrina Hyman was staying at this hotel,” I asked, as I followed him into the abandoned bar. “Shouldn’t we talk to her too? After all, she was there the night—”

Creamo ignored me. “Bartender!” he yelled. Behind the heavily shellacked bar sat row upon row of tempting libations but, alas, no bartender to serve them. 

“I can’t imagine what it must have been like for her—by herself out here with her daughter missing. I think I would have gone crazy,” I continued. 

“Bartender!” he yelled again. Until he got relief, I’d have better luck stirring up a conversation with a slot machine. 

Like the hotel itself, the “saloon” (as it liked to be called) had resisted all attempts at modernization, except for the addition of electronic gambling devices and pinball machines ching-ching-chinging in every nook and cranny, even on a still-as-death afternoon in October. It was the same all over Nevada, gambling machines and pinball machines in restaurants, grocery stores, laundromats—all businesses save funeral homes. And, then it was probably only a matter of time before an enterprising mortician broke through that particular barrier of decency and installed a slot machine in his waiting room. Ho! Or, maybe he would decide to create the first drive-through funeral home. Drive up. View the departed. Drive away. Next! 

“Where is the goddamn bartender?” Creamo scowled, after a few minutes of playing piano with his knuckles.

“The bartender is probably in the back doing the lunchtime dishes,” I chuckled. “It’s not exactly the height of tourist season. Why not help yourself? And while you’re at it, hand me some pretzels.” 

I couldn’t blame Creamo for being grouchy. Thanks to me, he was low on cigarettes and even lower on patience. We’d had to bribe Nancy Jean with his Marlboros to get her to put her clothes back on. (I have a strict policy against hypnotizing naked people.) Then he’d had to occupy himself in the cold, snapping photos of tire treads while he waited.