by Lowe, Shelia
“There’s a plan?” Claudia interrupted. “I’m glad to hear you have a plan, because I have no idea what’s going on.”
Bert swung left onto Tropicana Avenue. “We’ll go ahead and check into the hotel and debrief Annabelle in private. After I see what condition she’s in, I’ll decide what to do from there.”
“What do you mean, you’ll decide?”
“I’m in charge of the school now, so she’s my responsibility.”
Claudia shook her head. “She’s not a Sorensen pupil anymore. Her belongings were sent home, remember? Besides, her father has involved me, so any decisions about Annabelle are at least going to be joint ones.”
His jaw bunched and his knuckles whitened on the steering wheel. “I’m not about to argue with you,” he said in a tight voice. “Let’s get the girl back first before we start going off half-cocked.”
They traveled west in silence for several minutes, threading through traffic as heavy as any L.A. rush hour.
“That must have been what Annabelle was talking about,” Claudia said, pointing to the eleven-hundred-foot Stratosphere hotel at the north end of the strip. “She said she could see it from where she was being held. She said she was in a hospital.”
Bert jerked a sideways glance at her. “A hospital? How the hell did she get out?”
“I don’t know; the phone connection sucked. We’ll find out when we see her.”
He made a left onto Las Vegas Boulevard, where most of the eye-popping resorts claimed space. “Who else knows you’re here? Her father?”
“Nobody,” Claudia said. “Detective Pike called about an hour ago, but I blew him off. I didn’t want him asking questions I can’t answer.”
“Good. That’s the only way to keep this thing under control. Keep that barn door closed.”
“It’s a bit late to worry about that, don’t you think?”
Bert made an impatient sound and shook his head, looking like he wanted to say something poisonous. He clamped his teeth together and stared straight ahead.
Claudia gazed out at the wide boulevards of the world-famous strip with its towering palm trees and as many taxis as downtown Manhattan. Finding someone who had a compelling need to hide themselves in this town would be about as easy as winning a progressive jackpot in one of the big casinos.
The larger-than-life-size Sphinx loomed as they drove up the avenue of stone lions. At midmorning the immense black pyramid of Luxor hid secrets. After dark, the brightest beam in the world would project ten miles into space from the top of the obsidian glass structure.
Bypassing the weary vacationers in rumpled Hawaiian shirts queuing in the valet line outside the lobby doors, Bert headed for the self-park. He squeezed the big vehicle into a parking space far from the hotel entrance, muttering about valets taking all day.
Claudia couldn’t care less where they parked. A feeling of anticipation had her nerves jumping. God knew what Annabelle had been through over the past ten days. She would insist that Bert not press the girl too hard. Give her some time to decompress.
They had walked a few yards from the vehicle when Bert stopped suddenly. “Damn! I forgot my phone. Wait for me.” He hurried back to the SUV, returning a moment later. “Can’t leave home without it.”
“Come on, Bert. She might already be here, looking for me.”
They took the people mover to the lobby, which was nearly deserted at this time of day. In another hour, the place would be fulminating with travelers checking out.
Claudia was on her way to the registration desk when Bert caught her arm. “Wait, Claudia. Uh, would you mind putting this on your credit card?” He looked a little sheepish, cleared his throat. “I don’t want it showing up on my corporate card. I’ll reimburse you,” he hastened to add.
“No problem,” Claudia said. Something in his voice made her look closer. His face was pale, with a light sheen of perspiration. “Are you okay, Bert? You don’t look well.”
He took out a handkerchief and mopped his forehead, where pearls of sweat had gathered. “It’s the stress of everything—Paige, the school, Annabelle. You have no idea how relieved I am to know we’re going to get her back.”
Claudia nodded agreement. “I’ll be happier when we actually see her.”
Bert started to reply, but was interrupted by his phone. He excused himself and walked away to answer it. Claudia stepped over to one of the empty stations at the long stretch of registration desks and requested a double room. They probably wouldn’t need to stay overnight, but if they did, she and Annabelle would take the room. Bert said he’d come out the night before, so he must have a place to stay.
Annabelle had said she was starving. Before making arrangements to return to Los Angeles they would order room service and give her a chance to rest. Once Dominic Giordano learned she had been rescued, he would probably join them in Las Vegas and take charge of escorting his daughter home himself.
Claudia asked the reservationist who was running the charge on her credit card to leave a message for “her niece, Annabelle,” to come up to the room. After all the media coverage of Paige’s death and Annabelle’s disappearance, it was too risky to give her surname, which was uncommon enough to draw attention.
The reservationist gave Claudia a professional smile and slipped two key cards into an envelope. “Certainly, Ms. Rose, with pleasure. You’re in room 1408. Just take the Inclinator to the fourteenth floor.”
Claudia thanked her and glanced around. Bert had disappeared from view. She wandered through the massive lobby looking for him, imagining that the Pharaohs seated on their colossal thrones staring down at her with cold, impassive faces were challenging her right to be there.
Caring about Annabelle gives me the right, she thought with a touch of defiance, as if the stone Rameses could read her mind.
She spotted Bert on a marble seat near the entrance to the casino. He was faced away from her, elbows leaning on his knees, his body language giving off waves of tension.
As Claudia came near she could hear him. “. . . really deep shit now,” he was saying with rising agitation. “I gotta go. I’ll call you later, when I get everything arranged.” He rang off and his head slumped forward, giving him a look of utter despair.
Wondering whom he was talking to, Claudia reached out to touch his shoulder. Bert swung around, eyes wild, his hands going up in a defensive stance. The cell phone clattered to the floor.
Then he saw it was her. “Goddamn it, Claudia! Don’t ever sneak up on me like that!”
“Jeez, Bert,” she said, unprepared for his reaction. “I didn’t mean to scare you. I’m sorry.”
He bent down with some effort and retrieved the phone. His hand trembled noticeably as he shoved the cellular into his pocket. “The Sorensens are trying to get a court order,” he said, scrubbing a hand through his hair, leaving it standing on end. “They want to freeze operations at the school until there’s a hearing.” He shook his head, ridding himself of the Sorensen family and their machinations. “Forget that. Did you get a room? Let’s get going. I could use a drink.”
The odd sensation of the special elevator slanting up the side of the pyramid gave Claudia a slight sense of vertigo, and she was glad when the doors opened at the fourteenth floor. “I don’t like being up this high,” she said, glancing at the open balcony overlooking the Galleria far below. “It was the best I could do since we didn’t have a reservation.”
“It’ll be fine,” Bert said. “It’ll serve the purpose.”
He looks really unwell, Claudia thought, taking in the grayish cast to his face, the trunk-size bags under his eyes. Then an uncharitable flash: He’d better not have a heart attack.
She slid the key card into the electronic reader on the door and stepped into a room with the expected Egyptian-themed decor. To the left of the entry was a standard bath. The room had two queen-size beds and an armoire, a small round table with two side chairs, and an armchair.
Claudia already felt emotion
ally drained and had a tension headache. She shrugged out of her blazer and laid it across one of the beds, then dropped into the armchair. “Let me know if you find any painkillers,” she said to Bert, who had made a beeline for the minibar and was pawing through it.
“Liquor, soda, candy,” he said, squatting in front of the cabinet. An airline-size bottle of tequila disappeared in his meaty fist. “What do you want?”
“Diet Coke if they have it. We can order room service when Annabelle gets here. Poor kid, she said she was starving.”
Bert handed her a can of soda. “God, what a week.” Sighing with the exaggerated kind of relief one might expect from a parched man at an oasis, he uncapped the tequila and chugalugged the little bottle, then tossed the empty into the trash can beside the desk.
Claudia popped the top on her soda and drank. “Tell me about Cruz getting arrested.”
“That asshole,” Bert said bitterly. “Pardon my French. He had no alibi. Admitted he’d been with her, but he claimed he couldn’t remember anything, including whether he’d hurt her. And the belt that . . . it has Cruz’ initials engraved on the buckle.”
“How do you know about that?”
“Detective Pike came and talked to me about it. He had questions . . .I can’t . . . Paige was . . .” Bert turned his face to the window, his shoulders shaking. For a moment he said nothing and Claudia sat quietly, waiting for him to gain hold of his emotions.
When he spoke again, his voice was soft, but the words harsh. “That piece of shit took her away from me. He deserves what’s coming to him. I’ve lost everything. Paige, the school . . .”
“You and Paige—”
“Torg was out of the way; she was ready for a younger man . . .” He stopped, seeing the appalled look on Claudia’s face. “Oh come on, Claudia. Don’t pretend you didn’t know she was sick and tired of being tied to that old geezer. It was making her old, too. Everything was peachy between her and me until Cruz showed up.”
His words had set her mind racing. Surely he wasn’t saying that Paige somehow hastened Torg’s demise? “She said she loved Torg. Why wouldn’t I believe her?”
Bert returned to the minibar for seconds. “Dammit, no more tequila,” he grumbled, grabbing a minibottle of Southern Comfort and one of Tanqueray. He cracked open the whiskey and stood the gin on the nightstand. Downing his second drink in a couple of gulps, he stretched out on one of the beds, clasping his hands behind his head. A few seconds later he bobbed up again and grabbed the third bottle.
I’ll bet he got started before he came here, Claudia thought, wanting to slap the bottle out of his hand. She said, “I’m not your mother, Bert, but would you knock off the booze? It’d be nice if you weren’t totally bombed when Annabelle gets here.”
He gazed at Claudia through eyes gone glassy and downed the Tanqueray. “Don’t worry,” he said with a look that dared her to challenge him. “I can hold my liquor.”
“So, why are your hands shaking?”
He glanced down at the empty bottle in his hand, which was trembling conspicuously, and stared at it as if it didn’t belong to him. He tossed the bottle into the trash, where it plinked against its mates. “It’s been a tough week. Cut me some slack, okay?”
Claudia wanted to yell at him but contented herself with a scornful look. “You think you’re the only one who’s had a bad time? It’s been tough on all of us, especially Annabelle. She needs us to be the adults, okay?”
“Yeah, sure.” Bert glanced at the bedside clock. “Where the hell is she?” He hauled himself to his feet and walked over to the window, which was slanted at the extreme angle of the pyramid.
“Shit! Ouch!” He turned back, rubbing his forehead. “Goddamned slanted windows.”
“Take it easy, Bert. Calm down.”
“Easier said than done, Miss Claudia,” he said with a lopsided smile. He turned back to the window, taking care not to hit his head again. “You know, I liked Annabelle, right from the start. She’s a plucky kid. She wouldn’t trust anyone for the time of day, but I was the one she warmed up to. Before Cruz, she used to come to my office when she had a problem, confide in me. She doesn’t think much of her old man. I guess she saw me as a reasonable facsimile.” He half turned to Claudia with a wry look. “Her judgment pretty much stinks, huh?”
What could she say to that? “I expect you helped her a lot, Bert.”
“But then Cruz—”
An urgent pounding at the door silenced him. Claudia sprang out of her chair and started across the room. Bert rushed past her, nearly knocking her down, but instead of admitting Annabelle, he swerved into the bathroom and closed the door behind him.
For a heartbeat, Claudia stared after him. Must be the booze, she thought, unlocking the door.
A small, dark cannonball launched itself into the room, and then Annabelle was gripping her as if she would never let go, her slight body racked with sobs.
Claudia shepherded her into the room, keeping a protective arm around her shoulder. She pulled a couple of tissues from her pocket, handed one to Annabelle and blotted her own tears.
She tried not to let on how disturbed she was by the pallor of the heart-shaped face, the dull hair, scarecrowthin arms. Annabelle had lost weight that she couldn’t afford to lose. Where she had been thin before, now she looked anorexic.
What did they do to her?
Claudia sat her in the armchair and pulled up a chair from the desk. She sat down and took hold of Annabelle’s hand. The back was mottled purple with bruises. “Annabelle, what happened to you?”
“Can I please have something to eat first, Claudia? I’m so hungry.”
“Anything you want. I’ll call room service.”
“Burger and extra fries,” Annabelle said without hesitation. “I haven’t eaten in forever.”
Claudia went to the nightstand. “Bert’s in the bathroom,” she said, picking up the phone. “He’ll be—”
“What?” Annabelle’s face registered shock, disbelief, then utter horror. “What did you do?”
The bathroom door opened and Bert Falkenberg stepped out, wielding a gun.
Chapter 28
Annabelle was out of the chair, screaming, “No! No! No!” She whirled on Claudia, shock and confusion in her eyes. “What’s he doing here? Are you crazy?”
Bert stood by the door, staring at them, panting a little. Blocking the exit. Above the bushy salt-and-pepper beard, his eyes were wide, and Claudia realized that he was as scared as she was. Pushing down her fear, she struggled to process what she was seeing. “What the hell, Bert?”
“He killed her! He killed her . . .” Annabelle’s voice rose on a note of hysteria. She fell to her knees, huddling into a fetal position, wailing. “My belt—he took it and he killed her. He killed her.”
Bert’s voice shook. “Anna, I’m sorry; I didn’t mean to. I was . . . She made me crazy. I didn’t know what I was doing.” He turned to Claudia, who was trying to figure out exactly when she had stepped into the twilight zone. “Would you get me another drink, please, Claudia? Anything.”
His request sounded so normal and polite, but it was the gun that sent her to the minibar, grabbing the first bottle within reach. He told her to open it before she handed it to him. He gulped it down, never taking his eyes—or the gun—off her.
Bert must have gotten the gun when he returned to the car, claiming he’d forgotten his cell phone. Cursing herself for a blind fool, Claudia knelt beside Annabelle and put her arms around the girl, who was silent now, rocking herself.
“My God, Annabelle, I had no idea. He picked me up at the airport.”
“We’re dead now,” Annabelle said dully. “He’s gonna kill us, too.”
“No!” Bert said, full of righteous indignation, as if he hadn’t already committed murder. “No, it’s not true. If I wanted to kill you, you’d be dead already. But I didn’t, did I? I’m not a killer. I don’t want to hurt you.”
Annabelle glared up at him through stran
ds of long black hair that covered her face like a shroud. “You’re a liar,” she screamed at him. “You killed Paige—I saw you do it! And you tied me up and drugged me. Don’t say you don’t want to hurt me!”
Claudia drew the girl up off the floor, holding her close. Trying to somehow shield her from this insanity. “What are we going to do now, Bert?” she asked, her mind whirling back over their encounters, looking for the clues she might have missed.
Sweat trickled from his forehead. With the gun in one hand, he felt in his pocket for his handkerchief, swiped it at his face. “I don’t know yet,” he said, desperation in his voice. “I don’t fucking know! First I have to get you both out of here.” He turned to Annabelle, his mouth compressed into a grim line. “I don’t know how you got away, but I’m gonna to tell you this one time, you little smart-ass. If you put one toe out of line, Claudia is toast. Then you’ll have her blood on your hands, too.”
Annabelle shrank against her with a little mewling sound. Claudia whirled on him. “You sonofabitch. You murdered Paige, not Annabelle! Don’t you dare try and push your guilt off onto her.”
Watching the gamut of emotions that chased across his face—shame, anger, fear, desperation—Claudia saw a tiny glimmer of hope. She had learned from studying criminal psychology that it’s easier to kill somebody you know in a fit of rage, rather than in cold blood. The fact that Bert had cared for Annabelle worked in their favor. She tried to remember his handwriting, but realized she had seen only his signature, which he had given as a witness to Torg Sorensen’s will, and a signature was pretty limited evidence. One thing she knew: He slanted his writing far to the left—a slingshot of emotion waiting to be triggered.
“We’re going down to the car,” Bert said, refusing to meet Claudia’s eyes. He stopped with his hand on the doorknob. “I’m trying to work this so no one else gets hurt, but at this point, I’ve got nothing to lose. If I have to ...” He let the threat hang there, somehow made worse by their imagining.
