“No,” I said, advancing on him again until my index finger jutted into his chest. “You print stories about Bigfoot having the Abominable Snow Monster’s love child and Anna Nicole Smith’s affair with a three-headed alien. You write about the government’s secret plot to cover up the Loch Ness monster.”

“Don’t knock it. I think I’m up for a Pulitzer with that Nessie exposé.” He did a slow grin, his eyes crinkling at the corners. On any other day, his brand of self-deprecating humor might have passed as charming. As it was, I fought off the urge to hit him again.

“You work for a tabloid,” I said, enunciating as if I were talking to a two-year-old. “You make crap up. You do not cover real stories about real people.”

His Hugh Grant-blue eyes lit up. “So there is a real story here?”

“No,” I quickly covered. “No story. None at all. I’m…here on vacation.”

“Funny, I thought you were vacationing in Palm Springs.” He broke into a self-satisfied grin, leaning casually against the wall as his arms crossed over his chest.

I narrowed my eyes at him. “How do you know about that?”

“Sweetheart, I know everything about you. I’m a very good reporter, you know.”

“Ha! That’s why you work at the Informer?”

His grin faltered. “Touché. All right, how about this. I know that last week I got a call from a man who’d seen your picture in our humble little…uh, how did you so charmingly refer to it, ‘sleaze factory’? He claimed to be your long-lost father and wanted to know how to get in touch with you. Not being able to resist a schmaltzy sob story, I gave him your number. Then I followed you around, waiting for the big tearful reunion. Instead, I got a dead body at a drag club. Which, by the way, is a very fun angle,” he added with a wink.

My hand balled into a fist again.

“And,” he continued, “I know that the deceased is reported to have jumped off the roof. Only any idiot who’s ever seen a real jumper could tell you the trajectory was all wrong. Put that together with the fact that you’ve been questioning friends of the deceased, and I’ve got a headline that reads: ‘Santa Monica’s Favorite Amateur Sleuth at It Again.’”

I felt sick to my stomach. Though, I noticed hopefully, he hadn’t mentioned Ramirez or the Mob. Apparently he wasn’t that good a reporter. “Leave me alone,” I warned him.

He threw on his charming face again, all boyish smiles. “No need to be hostile. In fact, let’s make things easier on both of us. How about an exclusive, huh, love?”

“Stop calling me ‘love’!”

“Why, are you going to hit me again?”

I was seriously thinking about it.

“Ever heard of slander? Libel? I could easily sue you for that Bigfoot story.”

Felix held a hand to his heart in mock horror. “Heaven forbid.”

I narrowed my eyes at him. “You’re mocking me.”

“Indeed, I am.”

“I hate you.”

“Aw. I’m crushed.”

“Listen, pretty boy, if I see one more picture of myself in your little tabloid, I swear to god I will come back here with my best friend who happens to be an Urban Soldierette and knows a hundred and one different ways to make a man sing soprano. And she’s not afraid to use them!”

He just smiled. “Oooh. Sounds kinky.”

I shot him a look that could freeze the devil himself (who was also probably a tabloid reporter). “Quit following me!” I stalked to the door and pulled it open so hard it rattled against the wall.

“Lovely to have met you, Maddie,” he called after me.

I flipped him the bird as the door slammed shut behind me.

I silently seethed as I rode the elevator back down to the casino level. I went straight to the American Restaurant and ordered a plate loaded with pancakes, waffles, French toast, and crepes that was so high I couldn’t see around it. All served with a mound of whipped cream and a river of gooey maple syrup. By the time I was done I felt totally sick to my stomach, but the anger hadn’t really gone away. It had just morphed into slow-burning anxiety. With Tabloid Boy following me around like a lost puppy, things had suddenly become much more urgent.

If Monaldo saw Felix’s story, it wouldn’t take much digging for him to put two and two together and realize I was Larry’s daughter. I wasn’t sure how this fared for Larry’s safety, but I didn’t think it would endear him to Monaldo much more.

Not to mention me.

Whatever Larry had gotten himself into I needed to get him out. And fast.

By the time I got back up to the room, Marco was strategically fitting a collection of souvenirs into his leopard-print luggage while Dana got in one last poker lesson from the casino channel.

Dana took one look at my low-cut tank, liberally dotted with maple syrup, and started clucking her tongue.

“Oh, Maddie. Pancakes? Do you know how many carbs are in those things? Not to mention the refined sugars.”

“I only had three.” I didn’t tell her about the waffles and crepes.

“All that white flour goes right to your midsection. I bet you just ate two hundred sit-ups worth of simple carbohydrates.”

I shuddered at the mere mention of the “S” word. “I couldn’t help it. I needed comfort food.”

“Why, what happened?” Marco asked, tucking a “Vegas Vic” coffee mug between a pair of loafers.

I flopped down on the one functioning bed and told them about my morning’s series of disasters. How one person’s life could disintegrate so quickly, I still wasn’t sure. And it wasn’t even noon yet!

When I was finished, Marco had stuffed the last of his commemorative postcards into the one square inch of space left in his bags and Dana was doing a series of “ohmigods.”

“Ohmigod! That creep! He almost ran us off the road for a freaking picture?”

“Well, he didn’t exactly run us off the road,” I conceded. In fact, now that I knew my “stalker” was nothing more than a tabloid hound, the whole thing seemed almost petty.

“What a putz,” Dana said. “I ought to go kick his ass right now.”

While I appreciated the sentiment, I had a terrifying vision of that scene splayed across tomorrow’s front page.

Instead, I turned to Marco, who was sitting on his carry-on, trying to force the zipper closed. “Any luck with Madonna last night?” I asked.

Marco got a wicked look in his eyes, dimples creasing both his cheeks. “Tsk, tsk, Maddie. You know I never kiss and tell.”

I rolled my eyes. At least someone around here was getting some. “I meant about Bobbi.”

“Oh that! Yeah, sure.” He reached into his new “I heart Vegas” tote bag and pulled out a slip of paper. “Madonna said he lives near the airport. Above this little bar called FlyBoyz. I’ve got the address right here.” Marco handed me the paper.

“I take it there’s still no sign of him at the club?”

Marco shook his head. “Nope. Madonna said the last anyone had seen of him was a week ago. He actually left in the middle of a shift. Asked one of the other girls to cover for him and just took off.”

“Had he ever done that sort of thing before?”

Marco shook his head. “Never. Bobbi’s got two exwives and five kids. From what Madonna said, it sounded like he was always behind on child support. He never missed a shift.”

I didn’t have a very good feeling about this. Hank’s funeral wasn’t until two, which left us a good three hours to go check out Bobbi’s place.

After we’d thoroughly cleaned the room out of hotel stationery and complimentary mini-toiletries, the three of us hauled our luggage down to the Mustang and piled in. Only somehow Marco’s luggage had multiplied and there was just one teeny tiny space left in the backseat for me, wedged between his makeup bag and a lifesize cardboard cutout of Elvis he’d picked up at the Neon Museum. I tried not to think about riding with The King for the next four hours as Marco pulled out onto the Strip and followed the snail’s pace traffic toward the airport.

FlyBoyz took up the lower half of a faded stucco building located directly across the causeway from McCarran International Airport. A neon sign, dimmed now in the daylight, hovered over a dark wooden door. Two windows faced the street, though they were both covered in peeling black paint. A dozen Harley Davidsons lined the far side of the lot, sporting bumper stickers that read “Desert Demons.” The upper floors of the building held a series of apartments that would have been great for watching planes take off from the tarmac. Not so great for a peaceful night’s sleep. Even as we parked the car in the makeshift gravel lot, the sky above us filled with the underbelly of a 747 and the ground shook with a magnitude 6.4, rattling the blackened windows of the bar.

“Nice place,” Dana said, laying the sarcasm on double-stuffed.

Marco just scrunched his nose into an “ick” face.

Gravel crunching beneath our feet, we made our way around to the back of the building where a set of metal stairs, minus the railing, led to the upper level apartments. There were four mailboxes affixed to the wall at the bottom. Rusted letters on their faces read A, B, C, and D. D was bulging with mail. I gingerly pulled out an envelope. A bill from the water company addressed to Bob Hostetler. A.k.a. Bobbi.

“It looks like he hasn’t been here in a while,” Dana noted.

“Maybe he’s just on vacation?” I asked hopefully.

Dana gave me a “get real” look. “Who leaves for vacation in the middle of a shift?”

Someone on the run from the Mob, that’s who. I forced that thought down as a picture of Larry sprung to mind, and replaced the envelope in the mailbox.

“Let’s check upstairs.” Holding on to the wall for support, I gingerly took the first step. The staircase seemed to hold me, so I slowly worked my way up, gesturing for Marco and Dana to follow. Marco shimmied up the stairs sideways in something that was part James Bond and part audition for Cats.