LITMIR.BIZ

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was it?” I asked.

      “Victoria McKimber.”

      What?

      Was I hearing right? Victoria McKimber? How could she be dead? She was just riding in my car on Tuesday night. She was fine! She had plans!

      “Victoria is dead?” I said. “What happened?”

      “There still has to be an autopsy, but it looks like she bled to death,” David said.

      Nothing was making any sense. What was Victoria even doing on Blue Diamond Road? She was supposed to be at the Beavertail.

      “I’m so sorry, Copper,” David went on. “I know you were getting to know her. It’s such a shock.”

      “How could she bleed to death?” I interrupted. Was she shot?”

      “No, no gunshot wound, but that’s the only thing that’s clear. She might have been hit by a car, or she might have been beaten.

      “God. She told me she had enemies, but—”

      “They’re still trying to figure out whether she was killed where she was found or just dumped there.”

      “So she was murdered?”

      “Not necessarily. It could have been an accident.”

      “I don’t know,” I said. “Like I said, she had enemies.”

      “The police will sort it out,” David said.

      “What do you think?”

      “I don’t know. All we can do is give the detectives a chance to do their work.”

      I didn’t say anything.

      “Anyway, I really am sorry,” David said. “It’s always hard when you know a victim. And I can see you liked her.”

      “I don’t know if I liked her. But I did respect her.”

      :: :: ::

      I was grateful that the press conference was unpleasant enough to take my mind off Victoria’s death. The Alliance for the Homeless had been trying to close the deal on its godforsaken piece of land for over a year. The property was a large desolate triangle wedged between railroad tracks and the wastewater treatment plant. The only “improvements” on the property were a warehouse with a caved-in roof and a dilapidated trailer. The police swarmed the place every few days to evict homeless men, and every so often there’d be a fistfight. You’d think the city and the county and the other powers that be would be thrilled that a nice nonprofit organization wanted to invest in a piece of land less inviting than the surface of Mars. It was crazy that they were giving Michael and his well-intentioned colleagues such a hard time, when all they wanted to do was clean up an eyesore and get some homeless people off the streets.

      The press conference was held on the property, which had been spiffed up considerably for the party later that day. Sierra was one of the organizers, and she’d been complaining all week about how hard it was to cover up oily dirt. They’d had to rent at least an acre of Astroturf. Fortunately, the big white tent hid the crappy buildings pretty well, and with the forest of potted palms they’d trucked in, the whole place would look pretty decent after dark.

      Things were going okay until a gadfly columnist from the Las Vegas Herald-Dispatch asked a question that made everyone in front of the microphones stop smiling.

      “What happens if the deal doesn’t close?” Randolph Berman asked.

      “It’s as good as closed,” said the woman standing next to Michael. She was wearing a rust-red power suit that almost exactly matched her hair. “If it weren’t, we wouldn’t be going ahead with the gala tonight.”

      “Don’t you lose your funding on December 31st?”

      “We aren’t losing any funding, and—”

      “Let me say something,” Michael interrupted. My brother smiled beatifically and took his time before he spoke. It’s his favorite tactic for calming difficult situations.

      “Mr. Berman,” he said after a long minute. “It’s true that the final documents haven’t been executed, but this has been a complex transaction. Everything will be finalized tomorrow, and the Alliance for the Homeless will at last be able to—”

      “But Reverend Black—”

      Michael has always hated being called Reverend, but he didn’t let it ruffle him. He just started talking again in his Sermon on the Mount voice.

      “We are grateful to all of you for joining us here this morning, and we’re looking forward to an even happier day when we open our new service center’s doors. Now, if you’ll join me in prayer—”

      He pulled it off. Michael actually made Randy Berman shut up. The only sad part was that the stories in tomorrow’s papers, including David’s, wouldn’t be about the Alliance’s altruistic plans, but rather about all the legal and financial troubles.

      “I have to write about it, Copper,” David said as we left in his Jeep. “The land isn’t theirs, and it’s true that the matching grant money disappears at the end of the year. That’s not much more than a week away, if you subtract holidays and weekends. The deal was supposed to close over a month ago, and it still hasn’t. I’m sorry, but that’s—”

      “I know. You don’t have to tell me. That’s the story.”

      And then, damn it, I cried. I don’t even know why. I didn’t give a rat’s ass about the Alliance for the Homeless, and I hardly knew Victoria. I couldn’t believe it, but I also couldn’t help it. I sat there snuffling, and I didn’t even have a Kleenex.

      “Cleopatra must die.”

      I didn’t mean to say it out loud, but the words popped out.

      “What?” David asked.

      “Oh, nothing,” I said, still sniffling. “It was just the name of my—no really, nothing.” But I’d said too much. David was staring at me.

      “‘Cleopatra Must Die’ was the title of my senior thesis.”

      “That sounds like a history topic. I thought you majored in English.”

      “I did. It was about—do you really want to hear this?”

      “I do.”

      “Cleopatra, Joan of Arc, Antigone—strong women … ”

      “Who die,” David finished.

      I nodded. “I tried to make the case that as literary characters, they’re killed off to maintain the status quo.”

      “I guess they are,” David said. “Uppity women, all of them.”

      “Yeah, I admit it. It was a feminist rant, and I’m not even sure I proved my point, but—”

      “Victoria.”

      Fresh tears sprang to my eyes. I nodded, unable to speak.

      “You’re right,” David said. “She was trying to disturb the status quo.”

      “And she’s dead,” I said. “Just like she would have been in a play by George Bernard Shaw.”

      We just sat there for a minute or two.

      When I finally stopped hiccupping, David said, “Have you ever been to the Art House?”

      “No,” I said, but I knew about it. The Art House is a trendy downtown restaurant favored by people who work for the city and county.

      “Want to grab a bite to eat?” David asked, and I readily agreed.

      I felt better as soon as I walked inside. The lunch rush hadn’t begun, and the hostess told us to sit wherever we liked. David ushered me to a booth in the corner. A big framed print of Marilyn Monroe trying to keep her

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