Gold Promise

by Ninie Hammon

  He'd bent over as he spoke until his face was level with Styles's.

  "We clear, pal?"

  Styles nodded his head. Vigorously. But didn't speak. Probably couldn't.

  Brice slid into the driver's seat of his cruiser where Bailey'd been waiting for him.

  "And…?" she said.

  "I just committed a crime, a Class D Felony. Terroristic Threatening. If I have to, I'll take my chances with a jury."

  He told her what he had said and done.

  "What did Styles do?"

  "I don't know. He might have crapped his pants."

  That would have been funny under other circumstances, but Bailey couldn't find it in her to laugh.

  "So where does that leave us? There is a portrait in my studio of a dead girl who ran away in terror from her murderer before she was beaten and strangled. Was that girl Jocelyn Farrington? Did we prevent a murder?"

  "I don't know if we did or not. I do know we did everything we knew to do. The rest is out of our hands."

  Chapter Fourteen

  Bailey hadn't intended to get excited about the birthday party celebration at the Nautilus Casino, had certainly never intended to start looking forward to it! But it'd happened whether she liked it or not, had started renting serious real estate in her head until she finally went out and bought a new dress just for the occasion at the cute little dress shop called the Sassy Fox on Milliken Street. She'd kept the receipt, of course, placed it snug in the zipper pocket of her purse so in the very likely event she was struck by a lightning bolt of buyer's remorse, she could take it back. Of course, she'd tried on so many outfits, she probably wouldn't even need a receipt — the sales lady would definitely recognize her on sight — particularly after she'd selected the shoes, the perfect coup de grâce that sealed the enchantment of the outfit. An exact match to the distinctive green of the dress, the shoes featured six-inch stiletto heels, thin as an icepick, made out of shiny chrome with a green rubber tip.

  The sales lady had admitted she'd never sold a pair of the shoes because most women couldn't walk in heels that high. Maybe it was being a runner with strong calf muscles, but Bailey had no trouble at all.

  When, oh when, had Bailey Donahue last bought anything new to wear? She knew when. Not since … but she was learning the skill of walling off that part of her life, of putting up a barrier with three-foot-thick walls and razor wire on the top, sentries with automatic rifles and attack Dobermans with their sharp teeth filed to razor points. Slowly, painfully, grudgingly, she was beginning to build the semblance of a life on this side of the wall. A new life — oh, how she hated that phrase, but it was what it was.

  Now, she stood looking at her own reflection in the mirror. The dress was jade green, what her little sister María would have called "slinky" but which she preferred to call "form-fitting"— down to the knee. From the knee to the floor were rows of big puffy ruffles. Like the train on a bride's dress, you could remove the ruffles if you preferred the short version of the dress. Bailey'd picked short because the all-the-way-to-the-floor ruffles completely hid the high heels and she definitely wanted them to show.

  She was still a little too thin to maximize the fetching quality of the dress, but she was getting there. No longer rail thin. No longer even skinny. Another five, maybe ten pounds or so and she'd look … yeah, look what? Just like she used to? Not a chance. Her body might one day return to its fundamental shape, but when she looked into the eyes of the face that looked back at her from the mirror she saw a woman fundamentally different from the one who hadn't had a scar on her right temple placed there by a bullet.

  She scratched around inside her psyche, trying to regain the excitement she drummed up in her soul for the party, the excitement that'd drained away the instant she saw the portrait she hadn't intended to paint sitting on the easel in her studio.

  Now the painting sat behind a closed door, but it might as well have been on display in a lighted frame in her living room.

  Was that poor girl Jocelyn Farrington?

  Had they found the victim, prevented the murder?

  Or not.

  She suspected the safer money was on "or not."

  She heard a knock on the door — authoritative. Brice was the big Scot even when he knocked on a door. She tried to summon a smile. Nothing. Then she noticed a tear she hadn't cried sliding down her cheek and she blotted it away before she went to let him in.

  She'd seen him out of uniform many times, beginning with the day they'd spent in bathing suits, riding jet skis as they searched for the mythical "death boat" that, as it turned out, never existed. She'd seen him in street clothes often as he fought his way back to life after four days on a ventilator, courtesy of a black widow spider. Or maybe a wandering spider. One or the other.

  But she had never seen him dressed up. Coat and tie. It was a pretty breathtaking sight.

  Six feet six inches of muscle, topped with a face that only missed Pierce Brosnan perfection because the features were stronger than that, the bone structure of his face more angular. The scar on his right cheek from the black widow bite was fading. But it'd always be visible because the skin was slightly indented there.

  He looked her up and down and she realized he'd never seen her dressed up, either. His gaze landed on the shiny stiletto heels.

  "Those shoes would be considered a deadly weapon in some states. How on earth do you —?"

  "Balance. It's all about balance."

  "Is it no longer politically correct for a man to whistle at a pretty woman?"

  She didn't have time to answer before he produced a ferocious wolf whistle.

  "Where did you learn to do that?"

  "I got skills." He paused. "And one of them is reading people. Not that reading you right now takes any skill. You don't want to go to this party, do you?"

  "I have to go."

  "No, you don't."

  "Yes, I do. T.J. said I did."

  "You refuse to let … how did you put it, 'A piece of metal be the hall monitor of your life,' but you let T.J. Hamilton dictate—"

  "He's right. Everything in his mother's life was about what she'd painted. Eventually, it destroyed her. I can do the same thing. Or I can … figure out a way to live with it. I'm trying very hard to pick Plan B. Help me out here."

  "Maybe I can."

  She lifted an eyebrow and waited.

  "When I was a little boy, the sweet old lady who lived next door to us found me on the back porch one day, upset about something. I don't remember now what it was, but it wasn't anything that mattered." A look crossed his face she couldn't read because it was there and gone too quickly. But its main component was pain. "I only remember what she said to me about it.

  "Li'l Drum …" His face actually flushed. "Middle name's Drummond. You know, when I was a kid …"

  Before she could comment, he rushed ahead, mimicking an old lady's voice.

  "You need to put that in a garbage bag, pull the strings tight and leave it … oh, by the stairs maybe, or by the door or under that tree you like to climb, just somewhere you can always get to it when you want to.

  "I had no idea where she was going. Then she told me, 'The thing is, you have to leave it there. You have to put it in that sack and walk away like it doesn't even exist. You can always go back for it, you know where you left it. It'll still be there after you go play ball or ride your bike or chase frogs.' Then she held out an imaginary garbage bag and had me put my 'trash' in it. 'Now, scat,' she said, and she slapped me on the butt. 'The sack'll be here whenever you want it.’

  "And I did. I went out and enjoyed myself … and I went back to whatever I'd been upset about that I'd put in the sack now and then, but … well, you get the picture. She was teaching me how to compartmentalize, how to put the bad stuff somewhere that the stink won't get out and spoil everything else. I've used that technique … often. In Afghanistan, I …"

  His face downshifted into grief and loss between one heartbeat and the next.

>   "All that happened there — it's in a garbage bag … and unfortunately, I go visit it way too often. But I'm not going there tonight. Tonight, I'm going to a birthday party for a pretty lady."

  He paused, then extended his hands — holding out an imaginary garbage bag.

  "This is where that painting belongs. And after … later, we will all get together — all four of us, take it out of the sack together and help you deal with it."

  She took a breath, then dumped very real garbage into his imaginary sack.

  Her smile was small, fragile. But it was genuine.

  Chapter Fifteen

  T.J. and Dobbs were waiting for them at Joe's Hole Marina, ready to board the launch that would take them across the lake to the Nautilus Casino/Hotel. The complex was owned by W. Maxwell Crenshaw, who also owned Crenshaw Coal Company and, according to T.J., "one out of every two legislators in Charleston, the governor, a supreme court justice or two and the pope."

  T.J. and Dobbs, dressed in coats and ties, were a sight to behold. The day T.J. had demonstrated that he could speak without even a hint of West Virginia dialect, she'd told him he was a multifaceted man. Here was another side of the cut stone. Though the suit jacket looked like it probably fit him better when he'd been ten or twenty pounds heavier, he seemed as at home in the attire as he did in the coveralls or jeans and t-shirt he normally wore.

  It struck her then, as more a revelation than it should have, that T.J. Hamilton was a man who would be at home in many situations she could not even imagine and — come to think of it — in positions of authority. Yet again, she admonished herself for underestimating the man.

  And equally surprising was a debonair Dobbs. Though his jacket looked like it probably fit him better when he'd been ten or twenty pounds lighter, he wore it well.

  "When I bailed out on corporate America, I swore I'd never wear a tie again," was Dobbs's greeting. "These things," he stuck his finger between his tight collar and his neck and grimaced, "were designed by women. Had to be. Not a man alive would think, 'Hey, I know, let's make a garment that cuts off the blood flow to the higher centers of the brain.’"

  It was strange, the bond she felt with these men when she knew so little about them. And they knew absolutely nothing about her — nothing true, anyway. She'd given them the Wit Sec rap. Name: Bailey Renee Donahue. Born: thirty-one years ago today, which was the only part of the whole story that was true. Grew up in Phoenix, moved to Oklahoma to live with her grandparents when her parents were killed in a traffic accident, graduated from Ardmore High School, then Arizona State University in Tempe, then landed a job with Timberland Publishing as a graphic artist to illustrate medical textbooks. She'd moved to West Virginia for a change of scenery. All very plausible, and all a load of the wet, sticky substance you find on the south side of a horse going north.

  In truth, none of them had ever plied her with questions about her past and she sometimes wondered why not, but it wasn't a scab she picked at. Given that two of the three of them were or had been police officers, she suspected they might have guessed the truth in the very beginning.

  All the men told her how lovely she looked. And, of course, T.J. had something to say about her shoes.

  "Rubber tip comes off them heels, you gonna poke a hole in the bottom of the boat."

  She recalled the woman she'd seen standing in the mirror before she left the house, thought about the portrait of —

  Leave it in the sack!

  "With the three of you on my arm, metaphorically speaking, I'll be the envy of every woman on the boat." She looked around her. "If this crowd is any indication, that's going to be a lot of people."

  "Oh, this isn't the only launch," Dobbs said.

  "Launches operate from the other three marinas on this side of the lake, too: Westbrook, Tucker's Landing and Blackfoot."

  "I s'pect the crowds won't be on the launches," T.J. said. "Folks drive here from Pittsburgh, even Cleveland — Cincinnati, Louisville … or from small towns in three states, with the rent money in their pockets and a gleam in their eyes."

  "Crenshaw built his own airstrip, ferries guests from the airport by chopper to the helipad on the top of the casino," Brice said. "Which means you're likely to run into just about anybody here. You might be able to add to your Famous-Faces-I-Have-Seen or your Brushes-With-Greatness lists. Movie stars. Politicians. People who are famous for being famous like the Kardashians."

  "The lady at the dry cleaners the other day claimed a K sighting," T.J. said. "But she also left a stain on this suit jacket, so her vision is suspect."

  "This must be quite a place," Bailey said, genuinely impressed.

  All three men rolled their eyes.

  "You have no idea," Dobbs said, his voice soft. "No. Idea."

  Though Brice had pointed out the casino to her when they were riding jet skis on the lake last summer, it had been a long way away. As the launch drew closer, Bailey's eyes grew wider.

  "I never dreamed …" she said.

  "Tryin' to imagine this place is like Wiley Coyote leapin' across a canyon. No matter how hard you try, you always fall short."

  The most striking feature of the Nautilus Casino and Resort Hotel complex —though the nearer they got, the harder it was to pick out the most striking feature — was how it had managed not to come off as too flashy. It wasn't garish or tacky. Bailey had once driven down "the strip" in Las Vegas, in the company of two federal marshals who had only hours before swooped down on her in the middle of the night and whisked her out of Albuquerque. The Las Vegas casinos had been tasteless and gaudy —flashing lights and animated figures in tacky neon. The elements added like children tossing tensile on a Christmas tree. Nothing matched anything, everything was too much, too bright, too glaring, too showy.

  Not so the Nautilus. It was spectacularly tasteful. Even with the requisite bright lights, it managed to remain elegant and stylish, aesthetically pleasing. Unimaginable millions had been invested in making it both elegant enough to appeal to the cultured upper crust while seeming accessible to the plebeians who'd come to hand over money they'd actually worked to earn. Clearly, "management" had spared no expense. You almost believed they could pull off the marketing slogan stitched in lights in tasteful calligraphy on the golden archway over the entrance — Your Every Desire Fulfilled. Beyond lay the bank of doors that stood open to welcome the world … and to suck it dry.

  The Nautilus Casino and Resort Hotel resembled a gigantic crystalline punch bowl and its walls sparkled like the exquisite cut-glass of a chandelier. There were three floors of casinos on the bottom, topped with three floors of ultra-pricy hotel rooms. The facility was built around a center axis that was transparent and featured snakes of glass-sided elevators speeding up and down like blood coursing to and from the brain.

  The casinos and hotel rooms were built in a circle that overlooked the first floor atrium. Hotel rooms on the inside of the circle had balconies where guests could watch kids swimming in a pool, dancers in the Sea Shell Night Club or elegantly dressed guests in the Nautilus Restaurant below. Hotel rooms on the other side of the hall featured balconies providing spectacular views of the lake and the mountains.

  Brice had told her that the Nautilus Restaurant was encircled by a ring of "gaming opportunities" … so it was impossible to walk into the restaurant no matter which of the three entrances you chose, without passing rows and rows of slot machines, blackjack or roulette tables ready to pick your pockets.

  Clearly this was a "floating" casino in name only. It might extend out into the lake and be connected to the landward side only with gangplanks, but that central pole structure supported the building and its roots had surely been sunk hundreds of feet into the bedrock below.

  Still, in keeping with the pretense of a "boat," the bottom floor where the restaurant was located was surrounded by decking. There were slips for the launches, and spaces for private boats, houseboats and similar large lake craft to tie up for a night on the town. Fifty yards of gan
gplank lead to the shore parking lot where locals from this side of the lake as well as those who'd driven down from Pittsburgh or flown into the airport boarded.

  On the other side of the parking lot was an additional hotel with rooms where a night's stay didn't cost more than a month's wages. Brice and FBI Agent Nakamura had questioned a church choir director in that hotel, but it turned out he wasn't the kidnapper they were looking for.

  The gangplank leading from the boat slips onto the deck surrounding the casino was covered in red carpet, lighted on the edges with colored beams that shown like light sabers up to a metal rail so they looked like the spokes of the railing. And they pulsed as a heartbeat, keeping time to the music that floated on the cool October air. Beyond it, the deck itself was edged in green light, as if from thousands of shining emeralds imbedded in the floor.

  After passing through the first-floor ring of casino games, Dobbs spoke to the concierge at the entrance to the restaurant and the four of them were shown to their table. Aquariums inset in the walls of the circular restaurant were filled with untold numbers, colors and varieties of tropical fish, creating the illusion of dining with Captain Nemo somewhere at the bottom of the ocean.

  Seated in velvet luxury, Bailey had to admit that the opulence was the kind that seemed to rub off, that she felt elegant just being here.

  "Your Every Desire Fulfilled" was embossed in gold on the front of the menus, which had more pages than the phone books in several towns where Bailey'd lived.

  "My desire is for somebody to order for me," she said.

  "That's what the waiter gets paid the big bucks for," Dobbs said as if he were totally at home in the environment — which, given the millions he so studiously pretended didn't exist, he probably was. "He will cheerfully direct you to the most expensive items available. You won't know what they are, but for the prices they'll be charging, whatever they are, you'll like them."