Dyed and Gone

by Beth Yarnall

  Chapter Eighteen

  “How did you know Golda had slept with Dhane?” I asked Alex while we waited for Juan Carlos and Richard to return from escorting Golda downstairs to the lobby. She’d been shaken hard by Trinity’s death, and I worried she’d accidentally veer into traffic or something.

  “I didn’t.”

  “Then what made you ask her that?”

  “I knew she had feelings for him that probably weren’t returned. It was a guess that he’d taken advantage of her at least once. It’s what some powerful men do.”

  Boy howdy did I know that way too well. “Yeah, but how did you know her love was unrequited?”

  “Perhaps I’ve had an unrequited love.” He pulled his phone out and punched a few buttons.

  “You?”

  He looked up from his phone, frowning as if disappointed. “I need to make a call.” He walked toward the door, stopping when he came even with me. Tilting my chin up, he kissed me, a soft caress. “Is that so hard to believe?” He stroked my chin with the pad of his thumb. “Maybe someday I can stop pining away for someone who hardly knows I exist.” He gave me one last kiss, then walked out to make his call.

  Mouth hanging open, I turned to watch the door close behind him. My knees gave out and I caught the edge of the bed, nearly tumbling onto the floor. I couldn’t have been more stunned by his kiss and declaration than if a whole troupe of anime freaks rode through the room right now on the backs of pink elephants. I knew he was attracted to me but this… Holy freakin’ jeebus. I’d had no idea.

  I wandered over to the window, trying to squelch the excitement that wanted to bubble up inside me. Touching my forehead to the cool glass, I looked out over the strip.

  Heat waves blurred the horizon. Down below, the Las Vegas Strip was alive, people buzzing about like bees on a hive. There was something oddly disquieting about this city in the daytime, like the inside of an amusement-park ride with the lights on. All of the magic was on hold, waiting for nightfall.

  I turned away from the window and rubbed my forehead. I needed to stop thinking about Alex and start thinking about something that wouldn’t get my hopes up to unreasonable heights. Like why had Trinity wanted to see me? Tenchi had seemed quite desperate for me to visit with her and quite devastated by her death. I wished I’d thought to ask him, but at the time I was too afraid he’d use that knife on more than my shirt.

  My shirt! I unsnapped the front of my top and slipped it off, examining the damage up close. It was mendable…barely. I took out my travel sewing kit and went to work on it, thinking all the while about Trinity. Her words about “red” and “dead” kept coming back to me. Something like the red makes dead and dead makes red and then she talked about dead wanting red so dead was red.

  It was hard to tell with all the wacky rules and Trinity’s odd behavior if she was just speaking gibberish or if she’d really been trying to tell me something. I’d assumed “red” was referring to Vivian’s flower, but what if Trinity was talking about Vivian’s flower and Sora’s red hair? And if Dhane was the “dead” she referred to, then substituting their names, she might have been saying Dhane wanted Vivian so Sora killed Dhane.

  Or, more likely, I’d caught crazy off her and now my mind was fully infested with it. What was I thinking trying to make sense of her mad ramblings? Although…what if I were right? What if Trinity was trying to give me some kind of message?

  Maybe Jun would know.

  I tied my thread in a knot and bit it off. I was no Suzie Homemaker, but the tear was repaired and I could wear my shirt again. Slipping my arms into the sleeves, I thought about Jun. Did he know about Trinity yet? I hoped so. I didn’t want to have to break that news a third time.

  I grabbed my phone and dialed Jun’s number. Alex walked into the room just as I closed the last snap on my shirt.

  “Who are you calling?”

  “Jun.”

  “Who’s Jun?”

  I put up a finger to tell Alex to wait as Jun’s voice mail picked up. I left him a message, then gave Alex the rundown on Jun’s role in this whole mess and why I wanted to talk to him.

  “I really think Trinity was trying to tell me something.”

  “There’s nothing you could have done to stop what happened to Trinity, you know.”

  And didn’t he just hit the nail right on the guilt-ridden head. The front part of my brain knew Alex was right, but the back half carried the burden of what if? What if I’d understood what she’d been trying to tell me? What if I could have done something to prevent what had happened to her? What if it was my fault she died? What if? What if? What if?

  “I know.” But I didn’t, not really.

  “I’m going to let you in on a little secret. Right now Kennedy and every other cop on this case is wondering if there was something he or she could have done to prevent Trinity’s death. Hell, I’m wondering if I’d gotten here sooner, gotten involved earlier, if I could have prevented her death. And we’re professionals. There’s nothing you could have or shouldn’t have done that caused this.” He laid his hand on my shoulder. “Do you believe me?”

  “Yes.” No.

  My cell phone buzzed in my hand. I looked at the screen. “It’s Kennedy.”

  “Put it on speaker.”

  “Why?”

  “I don’t entirely trust that guy.”

  I didn’t, either, so I did as Alex suggested. “Hello?”

  “Am I on speaker?” Kennedy asked.

  “Yes. What do you want?”

  “Take me off speaker.”

  “We either talk on speaker or not at all. What do you want?”

  “You need to come down and give a formal statement about Trinity’s death.”

  I looked up at Alex. He nodded.

  “All right. When?” I asked.

  “Now would be most convenient.”

  Alex nodded again.

  “I’ll be there in about twenty minutes.” I clicked off without waiting for Kennedy’s response. “Well?” I asked Alex. “What do you think?”

  “It’s procedure, but I wouldn’t go in without representation.”

  “Now you tell me. How in the world am I going to get a lawyer in twenty minutes on a Saturday?”

  “Let me make a call.”

  While Alex talked on the phone, I touched up my makeup. And what a scary mess I was. My crying jag from earlier had washed away most of my mascara and blush. I repaired what I could, adding a nice thick layer of fuchsia lipstick. I did my best with my hair, twisting and pinning it into something resembling a style. Sometime during the day I’d lost my flower. Damn. I really liked that flower.

  “I got you a lawyer,” Alex said. “She’ll meet us at the police station.”

  “How’d you manage that?”

  “An old friend who owes me a favor.”

  Someone knocked on the door. I exchanged looks with Alex. It wasn’t Juan Carlos. He usually beat the door down and shouted my name. I was surprised none of my hotel neighbors had complained yet.

  Alex peered through the peephole. He looked back at me with an odd expression on his face. “Are you expecting a singing telegram?”

  “A what?”

  “Could be a Cirque du Soleil performer.”

  Jun.

  “Let him in.”

  “Are you sure?” He looked through the peephole again. “He kinda looks like a mime. I hate mimes.”

  “Oh, for crying out loud.” I pulled Alex away from the door and looked through the peephole. “It’s Jun.” I opened the door to a very sad-faced boy.

  “Trinity’s dead and they…they locked up Tenchi!” Jun threw himself at me, nearly knocking me over. He clutched me as though he’d drown if he let go, sobbing, like a child with hiccups and too much snot.

  I patted his back. “It’s okay. It’ll be okay.” Over Jun’s shoulder I gave Alex a help-me look.

  Alex grabbed a fistful of Jun’s shirt and plucked him off me. “Easy, pal. Here, have a seat.” He depo
sited Jun on the end of the bed.

  My heart ached for Jun. He’d lost so much in such a short period of time. I sat down next to him and put my arm around him. “I’m so sorry about your friend.”

  Jun curled into me like an oversized baby. “Why is everybody dying?”

  “I don’t know what’s happening or why. But you’re going to be okay.”

  Alex bent down to our level. “Hey, buddy. How did you find out about Trinity and Tenchi?”

  “W-what?”

  “Who told you about what happened to your friends?”

  “Oh. Ace.” Jun wiped his nose with his sleeve. “He called and told me.”

  “Do you know how he found out?”

  Jun blinked, leaving long black marks from his lashes on his cheeks. “I don’t know. Maybe Sora?”

  “What did he say when he called you?”

  “He said that Trinity had committed suicide and that Tenchi got taken to the hospital because he wanted to kill himself, too…because of Trinity.”

  “Did he say how Trinity committed suicide?”

  Jun tilted his head to the side. “How?”

  Alex nodded.

  “He said she jumped off her balcony, which doesn’t make any sense.”

  “Why doesn’t it make sense?” I asked.

  “Curio is afraid of heights.”

  At Alex’s questioning look, I said, “Curio is the stuffed skunk Trinity used to communicate with others.” I turned my attention back to Jun. “Did Trinity often say Curio didn’t like things that Trinity didn’t like, either?”

  Jun bobbed his head. “Especially broccoli. Curio really hated broccoli and so did Trinity.”

  “Was there anything else Curio didn’t like?”

  Jun thought for a moment. “Raisins.”

  “Uh-huh. What else? And it doesn’t have to be food.”

  “He didn’t like crowds, the color yellow, or having his picture taken. He also hated clear drinks and too much light. Especially sunlight.”

  Well, that wasn’t very helpful. I already knew most of that. I decided to change tactics. “Tell me about Dhane and Sora.”

  Jun rubbed his nose again. “What about them?”

  “What was their marriage like? Were they happy? Had they been married long?”

  “They fought sometimes. Dhane could yell very loud.”

  “What did they fight about?”

  “Sometimes Dhane would get mad at Sora for spending too much time with Trinity.”

  “Why would he get mad about that?”

  “I don’t know, because one time he got mad at her when she wasn’t even with Trinity.”

  “Oh? Where was she?”

  “With Mac.”

  That threw me off. I had expected him to say Ace.

  “When was this?” Alex asked.

  “The night before Dhane died. I was there with Trinity, Ace, and Tenchi. We were playing mah-jong. Trinity won like she always does…did.” Jun put his head back on my shoulder. “I keep forgetting she’s dead.”

  Alex checked his watch. “We need to get going.”

  “I know. Hang on.” I had one more question. “Jun? When you spoke to Trinity, how did you understand what she was trying to tell you?”

  Jun sat up. “That was easy. I listened when she talked to Curio.”

  “Yes, but how did you have a conversation with her and Curio?”

  Jun angled his head and a crease appeared between his brows. “Same as you and me.”

  I forgot it was Jun I was talking to. Straight questions wouldn’t get me straight answers. “If you were talking to Trinity about Dhane and she said ‘dead wanted red so dead is red,’ what would that mean?”

  “I’m not sure. What was the rest of the conversation?”

  I told Jun what I could remember about my visit with Trinity, including Tenchi’s reaction afterward.

  “Oh,” he said.

  “What do you mean, ‘oh’?”

  “It’s never good when Trinity is happy…I mean was happy. I keep forgetting.”

  “Why wasn’t it good?”

  “Trinity did bad things when she was happy.”

  “What kind of bad things?” Alex asked.

  “One time Tenchi walked in and found her sitting on a shelf in her closet. She’d turned all the furniture in the room upside down and had rolled up the wall-to-wall carpet. Another time she wrote ‘gladness’ all over her walls. Every inch was covered with the word in big and small print. Just the word ‘gladness’ over and over.

  “And sometimes she’d get obsessed with people, follow them around, steal their stuff.” His gaze dropped to his finger picking at the skin next to his thumbnail. “I know she did worse, but Tenchi never wanted to talk about it.”

  “That is bad.” I felt even sorrier for that poor, tragic girl, and I couldn’t help but hope she found some measure of peace wherever she was now.

  “Red is for sure Sora,” Jun said. “That part you said about the red mixing with red and making more red sounds like Sora was doing something that might hurt her.”

  “What about ‘The red makes dead’? What could that mean?”

  “Oh, no.”

  “What?” Alex and I said together.

  “I think Trinity might have been giving you a warning.”

  “About what?”

  “I think maybe Sora’s in some kind of trouble.”

  “What kind of trouble?”

  Jun squinted his eyes and his mouth moved to one side. “I don’t know.”

  “We really should go,” Alex reminded me again.

  “Okay.” I turned to Jun. “I want to talk to you some more, but I have to take care of something first. Where are you staying?”

  “Excalibur, room twenty-six fifteen.”

  “I’ll call you when I’m finished, probably in a couple of hours. Keep your phone on, okay?”

  “Okay.”

  I stood in the hall, watching Jun leave, his steps heavy with the weight of grief. I knew he’d never again be that man-child, so guileless and eager to please. His world had changed with the deaths of his friends. I couldn’t help but be sad to see his innocence lost. It was like the pang I got in my chest when my niece confessed to me that she knew there was no Santa Claus. She’d lost a part of her childhood she’d never get back.

  “You can’t take every puppy home from the pound, you know.” Alex said from behind me. I hadn’t heard him come out into the hall.

  “I know.”

  He wrapped an arm across my shoulders. “It’s a good thing you’re a hairstylist and not a cop.”

  “Why’s that?”

  “You get too involved.”

  “How can you help it?”

  His smile was a mixture of sadness and resignation. “You have to. Or you can’t do the job.” He handed me my bag. “Here.” He started off down the hall, taking me with him.

  “Doesn’t it ever get to you? The depravity? The senselessness?”

  “No.”

  I knew he was lying. Maybe to protect me, or more likely himself. I let it go. Sometimes it wasn’t good to look too hard at your feelings. The enormity of it all just might swallow you whole.

  ~*~

  Alex and I arrived at the police station, rolling up in a cab with a driver who had greased the steering wheel so liberally when he’d sneezed we’d ended up three lanes over. I had to sit on the curb for a moment or lose my lunch.

  “Are you all right?” Alex asked, standing over me. “You look a little green.”

  “Why are you not sick from Mr. Cabbie’s Wild Ride?”

  “From many years at sea.”

  I looked up at him. The sun gave him a halo, lighting up his blond hair like he was the second coming. “I never figured you for a seaman.”

  “There’s a joke in there, but since I’m here with my lawyer hat on, I should probably pass.” I turned to see a blond woman, all Marilyn Monroe curves and hair extensions a high-class stripper would kill for. She looked a
t Alex like she knew what he looked like naked and had examined every inch of him. Up close. With a magnifying glass and her tongue. “Hello, sailor,” she purred. Actually purred like she was Eartha freakin’ Kitt or something.

  “Hey.” Alex wrapped her in a hug, which she ended with a kiss, transferring half of her Tramp Red lipstick to him. “Thanks for coming down on such short notice.” He cleared his throat and tried to peel her fingers from the buttons of his shirt. “Meet your client, Azalea March. Azalea, this is Amber Hooker, your attorney.”

  I laughed. This was a joke, right? He couldn’t be serious. Must have been the cab ride.

  By the twist of Amber Hooker’s lips, I could see he was serious. Terribly, horribly serious. I scrambled up from the curb, wiping the gutter dust from the seat of my jeans. This was just great. I could already see the look Kennedy was going to have on his face when I walked in with Burlesque Barbie as my lawyer. And her name… I looked to the heavens. What had I done in this life or any of my past lives to incur this level of perverseness? I mean, come on! Who names their kid Amber Hooker?

  I rubbed the dirt off my hand onto my thigh, then offered it to Amber to shake. To her credit, she didn’t so much as hesitate in taking it. “Nice to meet you,” I said, trying to squelch my embarrassment.

  “Likewise. Alex already filled me in on your little predicament. Anything you want to add before we go in?”

  “I don’t think so.”

  I glanced at Alex. He looked both ridiculous and pretty in Amber’s red lipstick. I made a wiping motion over my mouth. “Can you…?”

  “Oh. Sorry.” He had the good sense to look embarrassed as he pulled a handkerchief from his pocket and rubbed the lipstick off. “Better?” His lips were still red, but it was more from the handkerchief than the lipstick now.

  “Much.”

  “Let’s go,” Amber said, spinning around on her platform heels. Her hips swayed like a metronome. In my seasick state, it was not good.

  “She pay for law school in singles?” I mumbled to Alex out of the side of my mouth as we followed Amber into the police station.

  “She’s an excellent attorney and a good friend,” he warned.