Stilettos & Scoundrels Page 14

  Chapter 12

  I sipped my large mocha latte, which wasn’t Starbucks, but wasn’t bad, and munched on the double chocolate brownie I wasn’t able to resist. I tried not to think about those five pounds standing in the way of my looking super hot in my Diesel jeans as I sat down at the computer terminal and typed in Garrison Palazzo. It was amazing what one could find these days on the Internet.

  The search engine pulled up multiple hits. Many were from the Las Vegas Sun, which must be the local newspaper out there. Garrison Palazzo couldn’t be all bad, as there were several articles on how he had given money to different charities. Probably did the philanthropic stuff to cover up what he did for a living. Wow, last year he gave one million dollars to a children’s hospital and they named a wing after him. He was clearly worth a lot of money.

  I kept scrolling down and to more of the same, all making him look like a good guy. Okay, this was getting boring. Wait a minute. I was scrolling quickly through the repetitive articles when one jumped out at me. Backup, sister, I muttered to myself. I knew I passed it, it was right here. For the love of Pete! Where did it go? I was getting annoyed when finally I found it again. The headline read: Local Vegas patriarch honored by the Businesswomen of Vegas. It wasn’t the headline that grabbed me, but rather the picture next to the headline was what caught my attention.

  It showed a picture of Garrison and someone I presumed was the head of the Businesswomen in Vegas organization. At a table behind the podium were Helen and Tom, which wasn’t a big surprise, but Cooper was with them. What the hell? Why didn’t Cooper ever mention he was in Vegas with Helen and the senator? He told me he had only been working for Daniels for the past six months, and this luncheon took place over nine months ago. Why would Cooper lie?

  I was also going to have to ask Helen how they knew Garrison Palazzo well enough to be at a luncheon for him. I guessed that put him firmly in the running as a suspect. He could have inside information that could be important. But then that shot my theory of Bobby and the senator having that issue in common, since I knew Bobby owed him, and he gambled at the same place the senator did. You wouldn’t go to a luncheon for someone you owed money to and who was threatening you, would you? Unless that was part of the debt repayment plan. Though maybe it was to keep Senator Daniels on his toes, so he would know that people were watching his every move.

  I went on to search for Vegas news on Helen and Tom Daniels, which pretty much brought up the same information. I found it odd that I couldn’t find anything on Simon Atkins, but maybe he was not noteworthy.

  I wondered what I would get if I put in Cooper’s name. I was almost scared to do it, it seemed like such an invasion of privacy, but his lies made me curious. I entered his name, hit the search button, and then sat back to see what it would pull up. Once the hits popped up, I was shocked and almost wished I hadn’t done a search. As I read the lead article, I couldn’t believe what I was seeing. This couldn’t have any truth to it. There was no way Cooper was involved in what the article said.

  The article, dated about two years ago, had a detailed an account of how Cooper and three other men were indicted on murder charges in Vegas. The article went on to say that Cooper and these men worked for Tony Spellmen, a reputed Mob figure in Vegas. Tony and another Vegas Mob figure had a falling out, ending with the other guy being murdered in his home. According to the person who wrote the article, the evidence against the men had been largely circumstantial and all charges were eventually dropped. However, there was still much speculation that the men had been involved, but were just adept at covering their tracks.

  Even though I was confident Cooper had nothing to do with murdering someone, I did wonder how he got caught up in the mess to begin with.