The show must go on and all that, I guess.
“Where’s Ainsley?” I asked.
I didn’t think it was a trick question, but all four girls gave each other a look before Cara spoke up. “She never showed. Sherman kept calling her, but I guess she never picked up. We don’t know where she is.” Instead of concern, however, I heard relief in her voice. None of these girls wanted to share the stage with a stranger.
“You have to believe me. I had nothing to do with Sherman being arrested,” I said.
Tiffany finally put down her hairbrush. “It would be good for you to have someone else arrested, though, wouldn’t it?”
She thought I had something to do with Daisy’s death. Because of that stupid blog. “Listen, I’m a victim here, too,” I tried, noticing Jeff’s eyes get a little wider. I’d have to talk to him about that later. I proceeded to tell them about the blog and how I’d been set up. “I had nothing to do with any of that,” I concluded.
The four girls exchanged glances, as if deciding whether I was telling the truth. Finally, Cara spoke up.
“Daisy liked you, Brett. She trusted only you to do her tattoos.”
I didn’t know what to say. I’d been struggling with the same thing ever since I’d heard about Daisy. “This has been bothering me, too,” I admitted. “But if Sherman did it, well, she’d trust him, wouldn’t she?”
Another look exchanged. This one I couldn’t read.
“Daisy was quitting,” Josie said, the drumsticks now in her lap, still. “She was going out on her own.” Her tone was sharper than cut glass. She wasn’t happy with Daisy’s decision. And from the look on everyone else’s faces, neither were they. But Sherman Potter had someone lined up to take her place already; he’d even been using that as a line to pick up girls at Cleopatra’s Barge. I didn’t see why he’d have to kill Daisy. It didn’t seem he really had a motive. But these girls might.
However, Cara put that idea to rest.
“I already told everyone else tonight, after they took Sherman away, that he threatened Daisy.”
“Threatened her how?” I asked.
“She told me he said he was going to take her for everything she had. That he’d get her on breach of contract. She came out here early to tell him to go ahead—she was done as of right then.”
So maybe Daisy had confronted Sherman Potter in that room at the Golden Palace. The one that was registered to Ainsley Wainwright. And then he’d killed her and moved to the Venetian. Ainsley, his new lead singer, must have been there, too, since she was probably the woman who the police had thought was me at first.
But how did Daisy end up being tattooed? The scenario made sense until that point.
“Did you ask Sherman about that? Did Daisy confront him?” I asked.
Melanie nodded. “We talked to Sherman not long before your brother showed up. He said he didn’t threaten her, and he never saw Daisy that day. He’d been tracking down gigs for us.”
“He said we didn’t need her,” Cara added. “That she was overshadowing us.”
And it would give him a way to get his lover into the band.
“Did any of you tell my brother any of this? What Daisy told you about Sherman?” I asked, my eyes skipping from one face to the next. They all shook their heads.
“He’s our manager,” Josie said. “We need him.”
“You need to tell my brother what you know,” I said. “What if Daisy was right? You’re taking his word against hers, and the Daisy I knew wasn’t a liar. You can always get another manager.”
None of them looked as though they believed me.
“She was going to quit,” Josie said quietly, and by pointing out Daisy’s betrayal, I could see how hurt they were. How Daisy would never be able to make it right with them.
The big security guard stuck his head in the door. “Five,” he said, then disappeared.
I thought about Ainsley the blogger. Also dead. And I remembered what Tim had asked me.
“What’s Ainsley’s last name?” I asked.
They all looked at me as if I had three heads, but Cara said, “Wainwright. Her name is Ainsley Wainwright.”
I couldn’t breathe for a second. Okay, so that could not be a coincidence. And it probably wasn’t a coincidence that Ainsley was conveniently missing the same day another Ainsley Wainwright was found dead in her apartment across town. Since blogger Ainsley was dead, it only figured that Sherman’s Ainsley had taken her identity for some reason. But when had she taken it? Sherman Potter seemed like he’d known her longer than just a day or so, which was how long the blogger had been dead.
I needed to let Tim know what was going on, what these girls had said about Daisy and Sherman, and about Ainsley Wainwright.
Before I could take my cell phone out of my bag, though, yet another burly security guard stepped into the room and nodded at the girls. They all shuffled to their feet, Josie’s drumsticks now tapping the air.
“We’ll talk after,” Melanie promised as they left the room.
Jeff and I stared at each other a second before that first security guard came back in. “I can take you to your seats,” he said gruffly.
“I need to make a call first,” I said, now pulling my phone out and punching in Tim’s number. The guard didn’t look all that happy with me.
“You can’t stay in here,” he argued.
I shrugged at Jeff, my phone to my ear, as we allowed ourselves to be herded out. It was louder out here, though, the music blasting, and I could barely hear the phone ringing. We turned a corner, and I thought I saw someone familiar up head. Familiar in that she was a tall redhead. Walking very briskly away from us, so I only saw her back.
I dropped my phone from my ear and cocked my head toward her, asking Jeff, “Look familiar?”
He didn’t seem to hear me, since he was one step ahead of me, sprinting forward, but he didn’t get too far before the security guard stepped in front of him.
“Can’t go down there.”
If looks could kill, the guard would be so dead. But he was a lot bigger than Jeff, and it seemed that he clearly meant to keep him from going farther. Jeff’s mouth set in a grim line, his fists clenched, but he didn’t try to get past the guy.
The security guard flicked his wrist, to indicate we were to follow him. The sounds of the arena faded as we went through a side door and down a long hallway. We hadn’t come up this way, and it seemed that he was purposely leading us away from the woman we’d seen.
I felt like I was living that scene in This Is Spinal Tap where the band was wandering around not able to find the stage.
Just when I thought we would never see any other human being again, we turned a corner and the security guard pushed open a door.
And shoved us out into the night, slamming the door shut behind us.
Chapter 28
Jeff and I stared at each other.
“What’s up with this?” I asked, trying to pull the door open again. It was locked tight.
“It was her,” Jeff said.
I knew whom he meant. The woman he’d met who’d been impersonating me. But I didn’t think so. Ainsley Wainwright was supposed to sing tonight. Her debut as a Flamingo. But why would she be lurking around the arena rather than out on stage with the rest of the band? Maybe she’d shown up while Jeff and I were talking to everyone. It would make sense that she’d run from us; she probably recognized me. She probably managed to get the security guard to make sure we wouldn’t see her. Having met her, I could see how she’d be able to do that. I’d seen how she behaved with Harry. She was a vixen, that one.
I put my phone back to my ear. I’d lost the call, but I redialed. It was quiet out here, so I could actually hear.
No answer.
I tossed the phone back in my bag. Jeff was surveying the door, his expression blank.
I checked out where we were: in a back parking lot. A Hummer limousine sat about fifty yards away. A chain-link fence surrounded the whole lo
t, probably to keep the riffraff out. Since we were on this side of the fence, I’d like to consider us anything but riffraff.
But then I saw the riffraff. And heard them. There must have been twenty or thirty of them. Young girls and guys, having a sort of tailgate party just beyond the fence. A portable iPod speaker blasted music—the Flamingos—into the still night; they danced with their arms high in the air, hands holding beer bottles that sloshed liquid as they moved. Stuck in the ground were five plastic pink flamingos, dressed up with Hawaiian leis and pink boas. One even wore a rhinestone tiara.
Fans. Who probably couldn’t get tickets to the concert so they were hanging out back here, waiting for it to be over and for a possible glimpse of their favorite band as they headed to the limo.
Jeff didn’t pay any attention to them as he started toward the limo.
“Where are you going?” I asked after him.
He shook his head and continued walking. I jogged to catch up with him.
“Aren’t we going to try to get back in?” I asked.
He shrugged me off as we reached the limo. He knocked on the driver’s side window. It came down a few inches. A pair of eyes stared out at us.
“I can’t help you,” a disembodied voice said ominously.
“We need to get back inside,” Jeff said.
“Yeah, they all say that.” His eyes flicked to the right, toward the party that was going on.
I didn’t want to be mixed up in the company of those kids. And I was willing to bet Jeff really didn’t want to be mistaken for a crazy Flamingo fan, either. Although if they were really fans, they would’ve gotten themselves tickets one way or another. I had not been above sleeping overnight on the sidewalk for a Springsteen ticket.
I shook off the thoughts. We needed to get back inside. Someone didn’t want us in there for some reason, and I wanted to find out why.
Jeff was talking to the limo driver, who had let the window down another couple of inches but not enough to show his entire face yet.
“Just give them a call and say you’ve got trouble back here,” Jeff said. He cocked his head toward the groupies outside the fence. “Maybe you could insinuate that they’re storming the limo.”
I could tell the guy wasn’t quite sure what “insinuate” meant.
“Hey!”
The shout came from the party. Jeff and I turned to see a girl in a tight shirt and even tighter jeans holding up a camera. The flash blinded me for a second, giving me a panic attack as I thought about the flashes that had gone off the night before when I was out with Harry. If they were taking pictures, would those end up on a blog, too?
Jeff touched my arm. “It’s okay, Kavanaugh. It’s just a bunch of kids,” he said softly.
I’d tried not to react outwardly, but I guess I was more jumpy than I’d thought.
“It’s her!” This shout came from another one of the kids, a pimply, white teenager who was dressed like a wannabe rapper, like the kid on the monorail earlier.
What did he mean: It’s her?
I had a bad feeling about this.
“You killed her!”
Every muscle in my body was so tight I felt like I would snap in half. They’d seen the blog. Or blogs. The ones that had me pinned as Daisy’s murderer.
The limo door started to open now, and I saw a foot clad in a black patent leather shoe emerge.
“I thought you looked familiar,” the limo driver said as his whole body materialized. He was tall, muscular, his fists clenched in tight balls, his jaw set firmly as his eyes narrowed at me.
I glanced around for an escape, but there didn’t seem to be one. That chain-link fence surrounded us, no discernible exit. The door to the arena was still shut and locked. The fence provided a barrier between us and those kids, but this limo driver looked like he wanted a piece of me.
Jeff got in between us, shielding me.
“She’s not who you think she is,” he tried.
The limo driver was not to be deterred. “That’s her,” he said, taking another step toward us.
The kids began to chant, “Get her, get her, get her.”
My heart began to pound so loudly, their voices faded. I felt dizzy, and I reached out toward Jeff to balance myself, but he brushed me off and took a step toward the limo driver, who took a swing at him.
Before I could blink, Jeff had slung the guy over his shoulder like a bag of potatoes and slammed him into the hard pavement.
The guy landed with a thud, the wind knocked out of him, his eyes circling the sky as if they didn’t have a place to land.
I suppressed an urge to give Jeff a high five. He was looking down at the guy, whose feet were twitching, and then he looked up at me. “We’ve got to get out of here,” he said, his tone urgent. His eyes moved toward the fence.
The kids were scaling it, screaming now that we were murderers. They clearly hadn’t heard that the police had arrested Sherman Potter, and with this limo driver limp on the ground, they probably thought we were serial killers.
Weren’t there any security guards around here? I mean, it was the MGM’s arena. You’d think there would be some sort of security. I guess they figured they wouldn’t need it because the door was locked and the celebrities were inside.
Sadly, though, I had become a celebrity, too, it seemed. But for the wrong reasons.
“Come on, Kavanaugh!” Jeff yanked open the door to the limo. The driver was starting to get up.
I ran around the front of the limo and opened the passenger side. I knew what Jeff was going to do, and while I wasn’t sure I liked it, I didn’t think we had much choice. The first kid had already landed on this side of the fence, and he was waving a pink flamingo. The one with the tiara. The kid behind him had a broken beer bottle.
Okay, time to leave.
Jeff turned over the engine and put his foot to the accelerator.
“Strap yourself in!” he shouted.
I struggled for a second with the seat belt as I watched the fence come up fast. I’d just latched the belt when I felt the impact of the Hummer against the fence. But because of its size, the limo sailed right through.
Jeff drove the Hummer along the long driveway that spit us out onto Koval Lane at Tropicana. His hands relaxed on the steering wheel as we sat at the light.
“You do know that we stick out like a sore thumb?” I asked. “Hummer limo carjacked by tattooed killer. It’ll be all over the papers tomorrow. While we’re sitting in jail.”
“You’re so pessimistic, Kavanaugh,” Jeff said, and the way he said it meant he had a plan.
When the light changed, the Hummer veered right. That’s when I heard the sirens.
“How are we going to dump this thing and not be seen?” I asked.
It seemed like a logical question, but Jeff just grunted something that vaguely sounded like “Trust me.”
The Hummer went through the next set of lights and we turned left. And into the driveway at Excalibur.
Chapter 29
Excalibur is one of the Strip’s oldest resort casinos, built like a castle, but a really fake one. It didn’t even pretend to look like a real one, just a cartoon version of a castle, the kind of castle Ace would paint. It was a place to go if you wanted a cheap room or if you had a family, because kids loved the place.
“Get out,” Jeff said when the valet came over. Jeff shoved the keys in the guy’s hand, came around to my side, and shuffled me off into the resort.
“You’re just leaving it here?” I asked.
“Why not?”
We went up the escalator to the next level. It was more fake castle in here, with fake stonework and fake balconies. A kiosk selling kitschy souvenirs was at the top of the escalators. They had a restaurant here that was supposed to be like Henry VIII’s court, where you ate big turkey legs and pounded on the table for more mead. I hoped Jeff didn’t want to have dinner. I didn’t think I could deal with that right now.
Instead, however, he was leading me out
side and toward the monorail that ran between Excalibur, the Luxor, which was shaped like an Egyptian pyramid, and Mandalay Bay, whose gold tower shimmered over the Strip. I hoped we weren’t going to the Luxor, because that place creeped me out even more than Excalibur. It was way too dark inside.
“Where are we going?” I asked when the monorail began to move.
Jeff wasn’t paying attention. He was leaning over me, looking down at the Hummer in the driveway at the Excalibur. It was surrounded by three police cars.
“They’re going to know it was us,” I said. “I mean, those kids can identify me. So can the driver. We might as well give ourselves up.” Easy to say when we were gliding along the rail, passing the Luxor—much to my relief—and on toward Mandalay Bay.
“When we’re having dinner, you can call your brother,” Jeff said. “Explain.”
I frowned. Dinner?
“I’m hungry, and I’m glad we’re not at that concert.” Jeff stood up as the monorail slid into the station.
The doors opened, and I followed Jeff out.
We walked down the stairs and toward the casino. As we turned another corner, a glassed-in shop distracted us. It was a tattoo shop.
“Do you know them?” I asked Jeff. I had met the owner once.
Jeff nodded, then put his arm around me to steer me away. “We don’t have time to stop in.”
I hadn’t really wanted to “stop in.” If we did, we’d have to pretend that we were out like everyone else, that we hadn’t stolen a Hummer limo and abandoned it in front of Excalibur. We’d have to make small talk—oh, yes, business is quite good, how’s yours—and it would be way too much effort.
No, it was better we were winding our way through the casino toward the restaurants and shops.
Jeff stopped at one of the restaurant entrances, but when I looked into yet another dark hallway, I pulled back and shook my head. “I don’t think so.”
“Trust me,” he said for the second time that night and led me to a staircase leading down.
We were pretty high up, and to our right was what looked like a wine cellar encased in glass that stretched from the high ceiling down two stories to the bottom floor. A woman who looked remarkably like a Bond girl, wearing some sort of rappelling equipment, was scaling the glass wall as she held a bottle of wine.
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