Vegas Lies ( Lies Mystery Thriller Series Book 3)

by Andrew Cunningham

  Ludwick didn’t care. The truth was, he didn’t even notice. He had one thought in his head, and it dominated everything else: Dickie was an idiot.

  Ludwick had a great business, with practically no chance of anything interfering with that—until now. By abducting that woman, Dickie had just put the whole operation in jeopardy—an operation Ludwick had spent years expanding and fine-tuning. All Dickie had had to do was to come to Ludwick about the woman. She would have been dead by nightfall, the victim of a common Las Vegas mugging. Simple, right? The appearance of this woman had totally thrown Dickie for a loop and he had stopped thinking clearly. Now Ludwick had a mess to clean up. He hated messes.

  For the moment, everything was okay. The woman was hidden in his desert house, and soon she would be shipped out. He actually stood to make some substantial money on her, not that that excused Dickie for his boneheaded move. He was assured by the cop he was paying off that he was still in the clear with the authorities. But it wasn’t them he was worried about. It was that author lady and her friends. After they left, he looked her up on Google. She wasn’t kidding. How had he not heard of her? She was one of the most famous people in the country. He couldn’t kill her. The Las Vegas mugging approach wouldn’t work. The best people in the business would be on her killer’s trail. The outcry and investigations would be immense and no matter how hard he covered his tracks, the trail would eventually lead back to him. You just didn’t get away with something like that. Somehow, someway, it would come back to him. She was just too famous. Even those protecting him “up high” wouldn’t be able to stop it. Sure, he could kill her and completely dispose of the body—bury it in the desert or burn it—but it was still too risky. Besides, she was really hot-looking and so was the other one. He could make a lot of money from them.

  It said online that she was reclusive, like that Salinger guy. Maybe if she disappeared, no one would be concerned. They would just assume she was in hiding. He could even leave clues as to her whereabouts—far from where she would actually be, of course. That would give him time to move her out of the country. The payday from the two of them would be enormous. They were feisty, but he knew someone in Eastern Europe who could take the life right out of them. They’d learn their place really fast. The guy? He was different. Someone could take him out to the desert and dispose of him. He didn’t look like someone who would be particularly missed.

  But none of this would’ve been necessary if it hadn’t been for Dickie. Trouble was, Dickie was a valuable part of his organization. He’d run across him about seven years earlier. Dickie had gotten Ludwick’s name and had come to him with some schemes he needed backing for. The schemes were shit, but there was something about Dickie he liked. The man had a silver tongue and a level head—and an amazing aptitude for numbers. In only a couple of years, Dickie was in charge of Ludwick’s whole drug operation and had turned it into a smooth-running multi-million-dollar business.

  Ludwick kept Dickie away from the human trafficking side of things, which is why he had screwed up so badly by abducting that woman. He didn’t understand the way it worked and the subtleties of it. Ludwick was a firm believer in keeping his employees where they were the strongest. Businesses always made the mistake of promoting someone to a job they weren’t right for. Ludwick’s incentive was simple. You did a good job, you got more money. And Dickie was good at his job. But now he had fucked it up.

  Well, too late now. Ludwick knew it was up to him to fix it. And step one was to get his hands on the three nuisances.

  And he was pretty sure he knew how. It was pretty simple really. They were looking for Dickie. So let them find him. They’d want to follow him and he could make sure they did. And then he could lead them right into a trap. It had to be somewhere remote. Somewhere out of cell phone coverage. He didn’t want the police to ping their phones and have it lead back to Ludwick. They had to disappear into thin air with no connections to Ludwick.

  He knew just the place.

  *****

  In his pacing, Ludwick accepted the fact that Dickie wasn’t the only one who had screwed up. Getting the girls from Vista had been a mistake—a moment of weakness and greed on his part. If someone connected him with the town, things could get dicey. But it was something he couldn’t pass up. He didn’t have time to pass it up. He was going to make a lot of money on this deal, and when something like that fell in your lap, you just had to go with it.

  He'd been in Vista to visit his father—now ninety-five and in a nursing home, but still with most of his faculties. He visited his father every six weeks or so. He might’ve been the scum of the earth for all the activities he was involved in, but he still loved his father. Physically, his father was starting to go downhill, so he knew that each visit might be his last. When he was with his father, they would play checkers and backgammon for hours at a time and talk sports and politics. He would take his father out to the local Dairy Queen, and on those rare occasions when his father felt up to it, he would drive him into the mountains to soak up the pristine air. Of course, it always made coming back to the smells of the nursing home all that much more difficult.

  During the last visit, he got a message on his secure email from one of his buyers who was looking for five young girls in their early teens. They had to look like virgins. The man was realistic enough to know that his chances of getting five certified virgins was slim, so as long as they looked the part, he was happy.

  The problem was, he wanted them quickly—within the month. In Ludwick’s business, that was considered a rush order. He had to find the girls, plan the abductions, transport them to Vegas, prepare them for their trip, and then actually send them. A month was cutting it impossibly close. But the money he would get from the rush order would be phenomenal.

  Ludwick immediately put his plan into action, calling his men and telling them to scatter to look for the appropriate girls. It was going to be time-consuming, though, and he knew that as soon as he got home, he might actually have to do some of the grunt work himself.

  He was at Dairy Queen with his dad when he saw them—the five girls. They were stopping by for ice creams and to flirt with the hunky guy behind the counter. Ludwick studied the girls carefully, momentarily forgetting about his father. They were perfect! It was like a harmonic convergence had just occurred. All five girls together in one place.

  Of course, there were risks in taking all of the girls from one place. Much more media coverage and local cops who knew the families looking for them. But this was too perfect. Vista was considered a safe small-town community. There had only been two murders in the town’s history—both involving drunken jealous husbands—and no kidnappings of any kind. The abduction should be fairly easy. He quickly called three of his best men to join him in Vista pronto. When he knew no one was looking, he took pictures and a video of the girls to show his men when they arrived.

  When the girls had finished flirting and had taken off down the road, Ludwick hustled his father into the car. It was a small town, so he waited for the girls to turn the corner a few blocks away, then waited some more. He suggested to his father that they take a ride through the town to see if anything had changed. Of course, they had already done that many times before, but if given the choice of riding around in the car or going back to the nursing home, his father was all for the tour of the town. Having given the girls an almost ten-minute head start, Ludwick started the car and set off after them.

  He had almost waited too long. They were just entering a house mid-way down the block when he turned onto their street. He passed them slowly—but not so slowly as to arouse suspicion—and made a note of the house number. Knowing the surname of one of them might come in handy if grabbing them the normal way proved difficult. However, he didn’t anticipate any problem. He could tell by the way they walked and talked that these girls were the best of friends. Numerous opportunities should arise for taking them all together.

  His men arrived later that evening, having flown fro
m Las Vegas to Portland and renting a car there. The men rented separate hotel rooms at separate hotels two towns over. Two of them rented nondescript cars. The third man went back to Portland and bought a used van with cash and a fake ID. As soon as he was out of the lot, he took off the temporary Oregon plate and replaced it with a stolen Utah plate. The plan was for one of them to always stay at the hotel with the van and wait to be called. The other two, meanwhile, would cruise the town looking for the girls.

  Ludwick showed them the pictures and the video of the girls, then took them past the house that belonged to one of them. Then, when he felt they had the situation well in hand, he returned to Las Vegas.

  It took the men almost a week to perform their mission. It was longer than they had hoped, but the opportunity just never arose before then. They saw a lot of the girls over that week, sometimes singly or in pairs, and sometimes as a group. They learned their habits and their usual destinations.

  And then one night, fortune smiled upon the men. The girls were going to the movies. If they followed tradition, the best way home from downtown took them, for a short time, down a deserted road. It wasn’t a long one, so the men had to time it just right, but it was the best—and maybe only—place to grab the girls.

  When the movie ended, the men put their plan into motion.

  The results had come out perfect.

  Chapter 19

  I arrived at the restaurant ten minutes early. Angel was already sitting at a table by herself in the farthest corner. She was staring down into a coffee cup clutched between her hands. A large carafe was on the table in front of her. Obviously not a morning person. But considering she had probably been up much of the night, she looked pretty good. Her short blonde hair was immaculate and she was wearing shorts, sneakers, and a kind of frilly blouse. Casual, but classy. Sabrina was the only other person I’d seen who could make casual look classy.

  I approached the table and she looked up. She wasn’t the spitting image of Peep, but there was no doubt in my mind that they were sisters. It was the eyes—the shape and the positioning around the nose.

  “You must be Del,” she said. It was a sleepy voice, but sexy. She was probably never off duty.

  “And you’re Angel,” I said, still looking at her eyes.

  “What are you staring at?”

  “Your eyes. There can’t be two sets like that anywhere else,” I said, sitting down.

  “What are you talking about?” she asked.

  “You’re Peep’s sister.”

  “Who the hell is Peep?”

  “Sorry. Priscilla.”

  That stopped her cold. She opened her mouth to say something, then closed it again. She didn’t strike me as someone who was easily surprised.

  “Priscilla thought you were dead,” I said.

  “I am, as far as she is concerned.” She was over her surprise and almost spat the statement out. She got up from the chair and turned to walk away. “You didn’t see me and you didn’t talk to me. I’m dead. Leave it that way.”

  “Wait,” I said. “I think you have the wrong idea. I wasn’t sent to find you. I’m looking for your help. Peep … Priscilla is missing. We think she was taken by her ex-husband.”

  She stopped and turned back toward me.

  “If that was the case, the bitch deserved it.” Again, she started to walk away.

  “Nobody deserves it,” I said. “Please. Come back and talk to me. Just give me a half hour. I’ll pay you for your time.”

  I didn’t know if that would entice her or insult her, but I had nothing to lose.

  It was the former.

  She sauntered back, put her face close to mine and said, “Honey, you couldn’t afford me.”

  I thought of the enormous advance I had received as the coauthor of Sabrina’s new book.

  “You want to make a bet?”

  Her lips curled into a smile. It was a business-like smile.

  “A half hour for you will be a thousand dollars.”

  Ouch. Good thing I wasn’t looking for a good time.

  I got up and motioned for her to follow me. I led her over to an ATM—not hard to find in a casino—and inserted my card. A moment later I handed her ten crisp hundred dollar bills.

  She looked at them for a moment, pocketed them, and said, “Oh what the hell. Ask your questions. I won’t be able to help you much.”

  We walked back to the table. Her coffee cup and carafe had been taken away. A waitress came over and Angel ordered breakfast and more coffee.

  “You’re paying,” she said.

  “Of course I am.” It was the most expensive breakfast I’d ever paid for, and I wasn’t even eating.

  “I know you are Priscilla’s sister,” I said. “Andi, right? What’s it short for?”

  “She didn’t tell you?”

  “I didn’t find out about you from her. Her partner told me.”

  “Partner? She’s gay?”

  “She is.”

  She thought about that for a moment. She seemed to be processing the information. I couldn’t tell if it had significance or not.

  “Andi is short for Miranda. But you can call me Angel. Priscilla and Miranda. How do you like that? Two stuffy names given by two stuffy assholes.”

  Actually, I kind of liked the names, but I decided not to tell her. This was her show and I wanted to glean as much information as possible from her. Where would I start? I didn’t have to. She started.

  “Why do you think Richard abducted her?” she asked.

  “We know she came across him totally by accident. All we can assume is that he thought she’d go to the police. We understand that he ripped your father off for a lot of money, killed him, then disappeared. Then he must have spread the fake story of his own death.”

  She laughed. Again, it wasn’t a happy laugh, it was more of a ‘I know something you don’t know’ kind of laugh.

  “Who’s ‘we’?” she asked.

  “Priscilla’s partner, Mo, and my girlfriend, Sabrina Spencer.”

  “The author?”

  I nodded.

  “Shit, I should have asked for $5,000.”

  “Why did you laugh?” I asked.

  “You’ve got Richard all wrong.”

  “He didn’t kill your father?”

  “That coward?”

  “Coward?” I asked incredulously. It wasn’t the image of Richard—Dickie—that I had formed.

  “Not now,” Angel answered, “but back then he was.”

  “But I heard that he ripped off your father for a lot of money.”

  “You can do that and still be a coward,” she said. “Yeah, he ripped him off. Kind of. I’d call it blackmail, and the money he got from my father wasn’t nearly enough.”

  Puzzling.

  “But he was wanted for your father’s murder,” I said.

  “Just because he was wanted for it doesn’t mean he did it,” she answered.

  This was like pulling teeth.

  “So did Priscilla inherit whatever my father had left?”

  “I wouldn’t know about that,” I said.

  She waved it away. “Doesn’t matter. I’m sure she did. The bitch.”

  “You seem to hate your sister.”

  “Gee, is it that obvious?”

  “Okay, so the logical question … why?” I asked.

  “She didn’t give you any hints?”

  “Angel, I honestly don’t know Priscilla that well. I’ve known her partner Mo for a long time and I’ve spent time with Priscilla, but we’ve never gotten into any deep conversations about our respective pasts. The little bit I know I learned from Mo just since we picked her up at the airport after your sister went missing. So help me out here. Why does Priscilla think you’re dead?”

  “It’s probably more like she ‘hopes’ I’m dead.”

  Her phone rang. I waited while she schmoozed the person on the other end. She knew him. Probably one of her regular Johns.

  As she hung up, her breakfa
st arrived.

  “I’ve gotta meet someone. As soon as I finish this, I’m gone,” she said. “And I eat fast.”

  Okay, so I was going to have to put aside questions about her relationship with Peep and get to the point. It took her about fifteen seconds to make it a third of the way through her breakfast. She wasn’t kidding about being a fast eater.

  “Do you have any ideas about where she might be?” I asked. “Or Richard?”

  “Did you check the Four-Leaf Clover casino?”

  “As much as we could. We called the police and they searched it, but didn’t find anything.”

  “Do you know the name of the cop in charge?”

  “Detective Miller.”

  Her mouth broke into another enigmatic smile.

  “What does that mean? I asked.

  She shook her head, then continued talking.

  “How about Luke’s Place?”

  “What’s Luke’s Place?”

  “Google it. But you might find him there.”

  She was finished. She stood up.

  “Gotta go. Good luck finding her. But if you do find her, don’t give her my love.”

  She was gone.

  Well that was frustrating. I was tempted to ask for my money back.

  Chapter 20

  I got back to the room and relayed the information—or lack thereof—to Sabrina and Mo.

  “So I guess we find Luke’s Place,” I said in conclusion.

  Sabrina was already on it.

  “It’s a bar outside of town,” she said. “Looks like kind of a biker bar.”

  “Great,” I mumbled.

  “I suggest we go during the day,” said Sabrina. “Less crowded. Richard probably won’t be there, but we might get more information. At night, everyone will be too drunk and won’t be able to hear us over the noise of the crowd and the band. It looks pretty popular.”