Sin City

hour, for a while there.'

'Do you have any kind of record of that? Is there a sheet that logs which dancers went on and came off when…that sort of thing?'

'What do you think? They sign in, they sign out; that's the extent of it.'

'But you would testify she was here all night?'

McGraw nodded. 'Six P.M. to three A.M.'

Shaking her head, Catherine sighed and asked, 'Dressing room in the back?'

'Yeah.' He gestured toward the back with his head. 'Don't you want me to round up Tera for you?'

Glancing this way and that, not seeing the Jameson woman anywhere, she shook her head. 'Just the opposite. I wasn't planning on her being here…. Keep her out, while I'm in there, if you can.'

'See what I can do…. No promises.'

Only two dancers occupied the dressing room when Catherine-lugging the silver field kit-entered. Back here, the accommodations weren't much better than those of Dream Dolls. It didn't matter how nice a club was, the dressing rooms were all the same.

The nearest dancer was touching up her makeup. She gave Catherine a noncommittal nod in the mirror, her wide brown eyes sizing up the competition.

Catherine asked, 'Tera Jameson's table?'

The dancer nodded toward the back. 'She has the whole rear stall-she's a star, y'know.' Turning from the mirror to look Catherine up and down, rather clinically, she added, 'I didn't know she had a new squeeze.'

Catherine said, 'I'm with the police,' and flashed the CSI I.D.

'And that makes you straight?'

Catherine arched an eyebrow. 'The Jenna Patrick homicide?'

Now the woman got it, but she didn't seem to much care. 'I didn't know her,' she said, turning to herself in the mirror.

The other dancer had flopped onto one of the sofas, on her back, and was smoking a cigarette; she looked bored beyond belief.

At the far end, Tera had given herself some privacy by moving in a small clothes rack of her own, which she'd positioned as a wall between her and the next station. A window onto the rear parking lot was next to her table and obscured from view of the rest of the dressing room by that same clothing rack. Her makeup table and mirror was at right, while across the way-where there had once been another makeup station-another small rack of clothes was hanging with shoes below.

Tera's station itself was neatly organized. The chair was pushed in under the table, makeup case closed and sitting on the left side of the table, a box of tissues on the right corner nearest the mirror, a towel folded in quarters in front of it, another draped neatly over the back of the chair. The routine was readily apparent to someone who had once been in the life. Catherine eased into the latex gloves and went to work.

The makeup kit looked more like a jewelry box with a lid that flipped up and three drawers down the front. The top opened to reveal some small jars and brushes, and lipsticks laid in a neat row in a padded section on the right side.

But among the jars of nail polish and makeup, Catherine found a bottle of spirit gum.

Pleased, she bagged that and moved to the top drawer, where she found more lipsticks, rouges, bases, and powders. The second drawer contained much the same thing and Catherine wondered how much makeup one dancer needed. In the bottom drawer, she saw a stack of fashion magazines; she almost shut it again, then stopped and removed the magazines, and-crammed down under them-found a fake mustache and beard.

The beard/mustache combo looked as though it could match the rayon fibers they had found at Dream Dolls. With a satisfied sigh, Catherine bagged this major find and set it on the makeup table.

Catherine casually flipped through the garments on the rack nearest the station. She knew how it improbable it was that the Lipton Construction jacket would be hiding out here in plain sight, but she had to look. The circumstantial evidence was mounting, but she could already hear some lawyer saying Tera had decided to imitate her friend Jenna's old man act, and that's why she had spirit gum and blah blah blah.

But if that jacket turned up here, that would really sell a jury….

She tried the other clothes rack and found nothing but stripper attire; however, when she checked down below, looking through the shoes, hoping to find a pair of man's boots, she noted a small suitcase and a matching train case. Pulling them out from where they'd been tucked away, Catherine snapped the suitcase open and found various street clothes; the train case held, among other things, the cosmetics that had been missing from Tera's bathroom this morning.

Suddenly Catherine knew this was Tera's final night at Showgirl World. The woman would gather her last night's wages-and this week's check, due tonight-and book it out the window to the parking lot.

Catherine punched Sara's number into her cell phone.

'Sara Sidle.'

'It's me. I found spirit gum and the fake facial hair. There's even a damn window right by Tera's dressing table, for her to slip out of.'

'Wow! Why did she keep that stuff around? Why didn't she dump it?'

'She's here now,' Catherine said. 'Maybe I'll ask her. You touch base with Conroy lately?'

'Yeah, I'm in the car with her now, heading your way. Conroy wants to question Jameson.'

'What do you have that's new?'

'Greg's done with the tests on the evidence from the woman's apartment,' Sara said. 'Seems the sex toy has Jenna's DNA on it, and the menstrual blood stains from the mattress? They're from both women-Tera and Jenna, sharing a bed.'

'So Tera's lover dumped her for a guy,' Catherine said. 'Ray Lipton, a homophobic hypocritical hothead. Tera decides to get even and kill her unfaithful lover, then frame the interloping boyfriend.'

'She could have it all,' Sara said.

'It's a motive,' Catherine said, 'but we still need something to tie her directly to the killing-beard isn't going to be enough.'

'Look,' Sara said, 'keep Tera there till we get there.'

'I had better,' Catherine said. 'She's a definite flight risk. Bags are packed here at the club…next to that window.'

'Give us ten minutes. Oh yeah, one more thing Greg found-rug fibers from the lap-dance room at Dream Dolls turned up on jeans we took from Tera's apartment.'

'Okay. I'll see you…' Catherine's voice trailed off. Then she said: 'We've got her. She did it.'

'Huh? How so?'

Catherine smiled into the cell phone. 'If there were fibers from the private dance room at Dream Dolls, on Tera's clothes? She's guilty.'

'But Tera worked there, too!'

'Yeah, she worked there before that carpeting was laid. Tera left Dream Dolls three months ago, and hadn't set foot in the place, since-or so she said.'

'And the carpeting went in two months ago!'

'That's right. We've got her.'

Sara spoke to Conroy, bringing her up to speed.

Suddenly Conroy was on the phone. 'Keep Tera busy, if you can. Don't play cop: I'll make the arrest.'

Cell phone back in her purse, Catherine returned to the makeup station to gather her things, but the plastic bag with the beard had slipped to the floor.

When Catherine bent to retrieve it, she looked under the table and saw a vent in the wall near the floor. Pulling out her Mini Maglite, she shone the beam at the screws and saw that the paint on them had been freshly chipped. From her field kit she got a small screw driver, and crawled under the table to unscrew the four screws; then she pulled off the grate.

Inside the vent lay a dark garbage bag. She pulled it out and allowed herself a little smile as she opened it. In the bottom of the bag were the Lipton Construction jacket and the men's boots Tera had worn that night.