Lucky Ride (The Lucky O'Toole Vegas Adventure Series Book 8)

by Deborah Coonts

  “Well, there’s the crucifixion of St. Peter.” At my look, Romeo shrugged. “Catholic school. In a church setting, it’s a sign of the devil or the antichrist.”

  “I’d hardly call Las Vegas a church setting.” Although I loved my city, I didn’t gloss over its seedy underbelly.

  Romeo gave a tight little chuckle. “True. I think now the upside-down thing is used to mock holiness.”

  I turned to the body once again. “But this wasn’t a crucifixion.”

  “No, but reminiscent of one.”

  “And then there’s the straitjacket.” I lost myself in thinking out loud. “Although we pride ourselves on offering our guests all the possible amenities, I don’t think that’s one we stock.”

  Romeo pulled out his pad and started jotting notes. “No. He came prepared. And he sent a message.”

  “Yes, but to whom? Why here?” That’s one of the things that really bothered me: why was her murder staged in my hotel?

  “You’re not involved in this, are you?”

  “Only through the girl’s assertions, which you know.” My stomach clenched as I thought of my mother and father. What were they hiding?

  “You sure this is Dora Bates?”

  “Not sure, but it’s a good guess.” I pointed to the cowboy boots. Two initials in pink leather on each heel. “DB. Dora Bates.”

  “The doc’s alibi?” Romeo gave a low whistle.

  “Which would put him squarely in the suspect hot seat except he’s been under your protection at the hospital.”

  “There is that.”

  “Once you guys confirm her identity, you’re going to need to get to her daughter before someone else does.”

  “Her daughter! I forgot.” He gave me a look that was easy to read.

  “You find her; I’ll run interference.” And put the thumbscrews on these kids.

  If the murders were connected—and it was easy to jump to that conclusion—was there more to the connection than a simple extortion game?

  He turned his back and made a quick phone call, then turned back to me. “I’ve got a victim’s specialist rousted to go find the daughter. This is getting a bit close to home, don’t you think?” With his pencil, he pointed at the body. “Same type of rope as the one at the rodeo. Boots in the corner. The girl with familial designs on your family is traveling with the rodeo.” He leveled a serious look at me.

  I knew what it meant. “Yeah, too many connections to ignore.” And my mother is stonewalling me. “When you guys get the body down, will you take some close-ups of the knot and send them to me? I need to talk with Bethany.”

  Romeo’s personnel streamed in around us. I stepped out of the way while he did his thing. When the medical examiner from the Coroner’s Office arrived with his staff, he gave me a disgruntled look like somehow I was responsible, then set to work.

  My phone rang. A quick look at the ID and I stepped back to take the call. “Hey, Jerry. What do you have?”

  “I’m knee-deep in flogging my staff. Can you handle a problem in the Hanging Gardens?”

  The Hanging Gardens of Babylon were one of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World. After extensive research, the Big Boss had done an admirable job at re-creating them in a huge atrium at the Babylon. The humidity of the only tropical climate in the Mojave Desert slapped me in the face as I pushed through the doors into our little slice of jungle. My lungs and skin, desiccated by the lack of any measurable water content in the Vegas air, sighed in relief.

  Above me hung our Garden Bar. Connected to the hotel via a rope bridge, the bar resembled a tiered and terraced tree house. Today, people hugged the roped railing looking out over the gardens.

  Someone had strung a latticework of rigging from one pillar on the fourth floor, across the hanging gardens with all its flora and fauna and meandering streams, to several pillars on the fifth floor on the other side. A man with a balance bar teetered in the middle of the lowest rope as he worked his way across. Above me, a man hanging by his knees from a trapeze let loose from his stand on the top tier of the bar and swung out over the small cluster of men and women I could see gazing skyward through the trees. Another launched himself from the other side of the atrium.

  In the middle, high above, two women had scaled separate ropes hanging from the highest point and were now wrapping the ropes around their torso, legs, and whatnot. I didn’t even want to know what came next.

  I didn’t have to guess. One let go, dropping as she spun toward the earth. Just above the trees, the rope caught, arresting her fall and my heart. My anger redlined, which probably didn’t help my old ticker, but it was used to this sort of abuse.

  Another perk of being me.

  There was only one person in town who could be responsible. On my second pass, I spied Philippe LeGronde in the cluster below. I covered the ground as if I rode on a broomstick. Grabbing him on one shoulder, I pulled him around.

  A small man, tight and compact, with thinning hair and ruddy cheeks, he looked happy to see me.

  My scowl solved that misplaced emotion. “What the hell are you doing?”

  “Practicing, but of course.” His smile never faltered.

  Clearly, my bark needed work.

  “The show, they would not let us practice there. Insurance, they tell me. So, since we are all staying here, it was the logical choice. I know you don’t mind. We are not bothering anything.” He swept his arm in a circle, taking in all the hotel customers watching in rapt attention. “We are providing a free show. You should be pleased.”

  As I opened my mouth, the crowd gasped then held its collective breath as one of the trapeze guys let loose, launching into a double flip. Horrified, I gazed skyward as my breath stuck in my throat.

  Time stopped.

  At the last minute, the man snagged the outstretched arms of his compatriot. The crowd cheered and applauded wildly.

  “You see?” Sounding proud, Philippe beamed. “My students, they do good work.”

  My breath came back in short gasps and I was in danger of hyperventilating. “Students?” My voice squeaked.

  “Yes, once a year I hold a training. They learn my special techniques to tie off the rigging. It is good, yes?”

  “No, it is not good.”

  He blinked at me. “No?”

  What was it about talking to the French that made simple concepts seem so difficult? “Yes, it is good you practice, but not here in my hotel. Our slip-and-fall policy wouldn’t cover your high-wire act.” Above me, the performers continued their show. My first instinct was to start yelling—a distraction sure to give me what I was trying to avoid: acrobats splatting all over the Hanging Gardens. “We have no insurance at all for this. Make them stop. Right now.”

  The man actually had the audacity to pause for a moment as if I’d given him a choice and had asked nicely. Clearly, self-preservation was not one of his strengths. Of course, he defied death every night.

  A cluster of people knotted behind him stared at me with varying degrees of distaste and malice. Guess they were the students who’d have to practice elsewhere.

  The crowd above booed as Philippe called to the performers to climb down.

  I felt eyes bore into my back. Winning friends and influencing people, just a couple of my many talents. “Did security not try to stop you?” I eyed the rigging—they’d set it just above the cameras focused on the floor and just below the ones capturing the higher floors that jumpers found attractive. Clever.

  I got Jerry back on the other end of the line. “Where were you on this one? Dear God, if someone had fallen!”

  “I know. I just got here—only four hours of sleep in the last three days is not enough. My staff was a bit preoccupied with the murder. The performers rigged it so we had to know what we were looking for. We missed it. Not making excuses. I’ll take care of it.”

  Cameras gave a picture. Experience interpreted it. “I understand. It’ll be a good lesson during our next training session. Refocus everyone
on your end.” I almost rang off, but a thought hit me. “Wait, Jerry?”

  “Still here.”

  “Can you call my office and ask Brandy to send you a photo of Homer Beckham? We’re looking for him in conjunction with the murder at the rodeo, assault of a police officer, and anything else I can drum up to get him tossed in with men who might look at him as a plaything. I don’t expect him to be wandering around here—it’s a long shot, but worth a try.”

  “She sent one over a while ago. We identified him last night sometime in the Kasbah—he’d gone before we started looking for him. You need me to send anyone to help you?”

  “No, I’ve got a handle on it.” I eyed the Frenchman who watched me with interest. “Philippe owes me a favor.”

  “Tell him to pay up. With you, the interest rate can triple the cost.”

  I held my phone away from my ear. “Did you hear that?” I asked Philippe.

  Finally, his cherubic smile dimmed. “Oui.”

  “And, Jer,” I said, returning the phone to my ear, “check in with Miss P. Make sure she’s okay and your staff has her back—she’s a bit freaked.”

  “I’m on it.”

  My voice dropped. “Did you see it?”

  “Not yet, but sounds like Miss P isn’t the only one freaked.”

  “You will be, too.” I ended the call then pulled up my photos. “I need your help with a knotty problem,” I said to the tiny acrobat still watching me with a half-bemused expression.

  Philippe concentrated on the photos of the two different knots, the one around Turnbull’s neck and the new one around Mrs. Bates’s. I’d made sure to enlarge them so only the knots were showing.

  “Go back to the first one,” he said. I did as he asked. He stared at it for a moment. “Now the second.” He gave that one more attention while I waited semi-patiently.

  My patience ran out. “What do you think?”

  He held up a hand to silence me, then brushed my hand aside and did the flipping between the photos himself.

  Finally, he stepped back. “The first one, it was tied in a hurry. The person, he was not so careful. The second one is more precise, like he meant it.”

  “Okay.” I fought a shiver. Like he meant it. Damn straight he meant it. “Were they tied by the same person?”

  He pursed his lips. “Oui, I think so, but it is hard to tell. There is an extra turn of the rope, if you will.”

  “Something unique?”

  “Yes. And the person was left-handed, I think. We work very hard to make the knots the way they should be, but sometimes the person’s comfort, it comes in. The knot is still good, just different, depending on the knot.”

  I pocketed my phone in a bit of disgust. “Now I know how Prince Charming with the one glass slipper felt as he asked the ladies to try it on.”

  Philippe gave that Gallic shrug, which, on him, I didn’t find so cute. “But it is something, no?”

  “No.” The ropes started snaking down as the crew dismantled their web. “How long did this take you?”

  “We are quite fast.”

  As fast as we covered our ass, someone would dream up something new to keep me awake nights.

  Vegas, the Mischief Capital of the World.

  And it was my job to make sure it didn’t become the Murder Capital of the World.

  I needed help.

  Flash answered on the first ring. “Nothing yet, shit; art takes time, cupcake.”

  “Investigating as art? Interesting, but who am I to quibble? That’s a rhetorical question.” I added that, lest she wanted to dismantle my character or list my shortcomings. Either would take far longer than I wanted, given that I was distracting her from her sleuthing. “We have another dead body, one Dora Bates, but this one is on the QT. Her daughter has yet to be told.” I gave her a few of the personal details, but none of the grisly. “Run a background on her. I want to know everything, whether she has pimples on her ass, who she’s sleeping with, has she met the police up close and personal, where she’s from and where she’s been, you know the drill.”

  “You don’t know where she’s from? That would help focus the search.”

  “I’ve been told she’s from Reno, but I haven’t confirmed it. Her daughter is competing in the barrel racing. I’m sure the rodeo would have that info. Hell, it’s probably listed in the program. And she works in the front office of the rodeo.”

  “She handles the money?”

  “Yep. So, follow the money trail, if there is one. No one has said anything about accounting anomalies, but it wouldn’t hurt to ask.”

  “Got it.” She paused and I could picture her scribbling notes.

  “What about YouTube? Find any interesting footage?”

  “Still working on it. We weren’t quite fast enough. Ever since that nutcase in Chicago took to Facebook to post his own little real-time snuff film, they’ve been a lot more vigilant about taking all that kind of stuff down. I’ve got an inside track, though. Once it’s posted, it never disappears if you know how to look for it.”

  I didn’t want to know what laws she was breaking in the name of justice. But, if she went to the slammer, maybe we could share a cell. Although, in a small confined space with Flash, I’d last maybe fifteen minutes before doing something I’d regret.

  “Are we done?”

  “This getting to you?” Flash knew the answer, but she couldn’t resist letting me know I sounded testy.

  “Being all wound up with no one to strangle makes me a tad grumpy.”

  “I’ll take your word for it. I do have one thing, although, I can’t tie it up with anything or anyone in this farce yet.”

  I wanted to tell her it wasn’t a farce, but she knew that. We all have our coping strategies. Flash’s was to pretend life was nothing but a great scoop. “Good.”

  “No, not good.” The taunt left her voice, which meant only one thing—I was so not going to like what came next. “You’re not going to like it,” she said, reading my mind.

  “Nobody has told me anything I liked in I can’t remember when. But, if you can help me solve this…” In the emotion of the moment, I managed to stop before I made promises I’d regret.

  “Well, there was a murder in Reno about the time the rodeo was in town. An old guy, a retired doctor. Dean was his name. He owned the farm the girl’s grandmother was buying. He’s got a son. I’m trying to locate him now.”

  Murder. I hated being right.

  “What kind of doctor?”

  “A vet, just retired.”

  Must’ve been the one Bethany mentioned.

  “There’s more.”

  Something in Flash’s tone put me on high alert. “O—kay.” I stretched out the word to prolong the inevitable.

  “I’ll keep digging to see if any of the victims have pasts that collide. As far as the murder goes, there’s one person of interest.” She pulled in a deep breath.

  I braced myself.

  “Lucky, they’re looking for your girl.”

  CHAPTER TEN

  THERE were actually two places in town the police set up shop. The Detention Center was one of them. All the cases of mischief that happened in Clark County were handled there. And, curiously, all of the Strip, the most lucrative section of what the world considered to be Las Vegas was in Clark County, outside the confines of the City of Las Vegas, and out from under the thumb of the mayor. Personally, I liked the mayor, but this was an end-run perpetrated before Vegas became a monetary powerhouse by some casino owners disgruntled at the idea of city rule. Never one to willingly accept the yoke of government authority, I could appreciate their motivation. Back in the day, scuttlebutt had it that the power brokers owned the County Commission, or thought they did.

  Politics, a dirty business, then and now. Different players. Same game.

  Yes, this was the potential cesspool Mona had chosen to wade into.

  Mona. We had two dead and she was sitting on the truth.

  Half of me wanted to kill her.
The other half wanted to kill anyone who tried to stop her. If I wanted a fight, I didn’t have to look far—I could just fight with myself.

  A win-lose proposition at best.

  I parked the Ferrari across the street from the Detention Center where it would attract little attention. A kid slouching against the wall just out of the glow on the streetlight gave me the once-over as I got out and made sure to lock the car. I pulled out a fifty and extended it toward him. “There’s another one here for you if you keep everyone off my car.”

  He took the bill and gave me a nod, then he resumed his former position.

  As I crossed the street, Squash Trenton fell in at my shoulder, matching my stride. “You realize you just gave cash to one of the biggest dealers in town? Normally, that would get you a Go Directly to Jail card.”

  I’d done plenty of business with the kid, but Squash didn’t need to know that. In fact, nobody needed to know that. It would be more dangerous to the kid than to me. We all had our contacts—I liked that word so much better than snitch. We’d helped each other out, me and the kid. That’s how it worked on the streets. I had a high friend in a low place, and he had a low friend in a high place—worked for both of us. “Really?” I feigned ignorance with a shrug. “Who better to watch my car?”

  “A C-note says your ride won’t be there when you get back.” Squash peeled off a hundred from the roll of cash he pulled from his pocket and held it out in front of me.

  I didn’t take it. “Deal, but apply it to my tab.”

  He held the door at the entrance to the Detention center for me. His face fell when he caught the look in my eye. “I lost the bet, didn’t I?”

  “I never count my chickens. Anything can happen.”

  “You ever think about going to law school?”

  That got a smile; I couldn’t help it even if I didn’t feel like it. “Me? A lawyer? The possibilities for disbarment and incarceration would be endless.”

  He didn’t argue. “Who are you here to see?”

  “A bull handler from the rodeo.”