“Have you seen Fox? Is he there?”
“No. He didn’t show for his shift.”
“Are you filling in for him?”
“Yes.” One thing that had gone right tonight.
“Has anyone been paying a lot of attention to the video feeds?”
“Hard to tell. We all do our own thing up here.”
In the darkness in Security, with everyone focusing on their own job, their own bank of monitors, someone intent on doing dirty could probably pull it off, especially without Jerry there. “True. Now that you’re manning the helm, wander a bit and report anyone doing anything they shouldn’t or asking questions that seem beyond the appropriate scope of their job, okay?”
“You got it.”
I reholstered my phone as the elevator slowed.
Romeo, I could understand, but why Chase? What did he have to do with anything?
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
A S I’D both feared and hoped, the family had convened on the couches in front of the windows in my parents’ apartment. When the elevator spit me out, three heads turned in my direction.
“Help yourself to a drink,” my father said, raising his voice to be heard across the vast expanse of the great room.
As if I needed an invitation.
Was I a guest in my own family? Was that possible? Or were we redrawing boundaries with all the new additions? Or maybe I was trying so hard to hang onto what was that I was losing a place in what is. Nothing made sense, and the harder I thought about it, the less sense it made. All I knew was my life was abandoning me one person at a time.
“In a sec.” I charged through the swinging door to the kitchen. With a handful of paper towels and some water, I went to work on all the blood. The stuff was everywhere, crusting on my face and neck. The cleanup took me longer than I thought. After turning my sweater inside out and pulling it back on, I felt like perhaps I wouldn’t scare anyone too much.
I was wrong. When Mona got a look at me, she gave a little yelp and went all maternal…a very unusual state for her.
“Lucky?” Worry pinched her face even though it didn’t propel her off the couch.
“I’m fine, Mother.” Making a beeline for the bar, I gave the hand-knotted silk rugs a wide berth—something about stepping on handcrafted art bothered me—as if the knotters would feel the disrespect. I didn’t even want to think about the animals that had given their hides for the sake of interesting furniture. The exotic trees that had been sacrificed didn’t bother me quite as much—although someone once told me that scientists had recorded lettuce screaming as it was harvested. Whoever that was, a pox on their soul—the visual of my salad fighting for its life would never leave me.
The lesser works by the Masters that graced the walls, each exquisitely lit to perfection, added class to the carnage. At least no lives had been lost in their creation. Well, Van Gogh took his own—a loss to humankind I still mourned. And he’d never known what his talent meant to so many.
But I guess the purpose of the giving is not in the getting back.
Somehow, I managed to wade through all that guilt and finally arrived in front of the bar. Medicinal beverages called from three shelves eight bottles wide and three deep. If the Big Boss didn’t have it, it wasn’t worth having.
I poured a healthy dose of my favorite poison, Wild Turkey 101, then fisted the Steuben tumbler and joined my family at the windows. Despite Bethany curled in the corner, Mona moved over, clearing a space on the couch, but I chose to join my father at the window.
“You smell like a plumber.” My father wasn’t one to mince words. “And you look like a prizefighter. I hope you won.”
“Well, my day has included lots of running through old garbage and being shot at. But, I’m here and still breathing. I’d call that a victory.”
He accepted that as coming with the territory, which spoke volumes. “A shower…”
“Next on my list.” Another glance at my watch. Time was running out.
My phone dinged. Another text.
Where are you? Party is about to start. Teddie knew better than to prod me. He did it anyway.
I’d like to go on record as someone who abhors texting. Whatever happened to calling? But, on second thought, hearing Teddie’s voice right now…
My reply was pithy “Not without me. I have the invite.”
And I have your costume, such as it is.
I let that go. Either Teddie was kidding, or he’d be dead, simple as that.
You and Jordan at your apartment? It wasn’t really Teddie’s apartment, but I didn’t have the patience for accuracy. Since the fire, he’d taken up residency in the small apartment next to my parents’. Even though the repairs to his own unit in the Presidio, one floor above my former home, had been completed several weeks ago, he showed no signs of decamping to a more comfortable distance…for me. He seemed fine with the tripping over each other coming and going.
Yep. Waiting on you.
I’m next door contemplating homicide. Be there shortly.
Need help?
Good friends brought the weapon and the shovel, no questions asked.
And Teddie and I were good friends. We’d failed at being good lovers. Well, the sex had been smokin’, so not a complete failure, but ultimately unsustainable. I felt warmth flood my cheeks and shut out those memories, focusing instead on my father and the view out the window. “What’d you do with Ponder?” I asked as I sipped my brew and drank in the lights of the Strip as they unfurled at an angle to my left.
“They gave him an ankle bracelet and left him in my care. He’s sleeping the last of it off in the spare bedroom.”
“Caught bloody-handed and he gets out on bond? And on your recognizance, I’m assuming. Took some doing, I bet.”
He stared out the window. Even his reflection refused to look at me. “A couple of phone calls.”
Only part of the story. “How much?” Normally, I didn’t get into my father’s wallet, but he hadn’t been making the best choices lately. One bullet had aged him decades. Would he ever be who he used to be? Would the rest of us? Rhetorical questions—the answer was a two-letter word that began with an N and ended with an O—but just because I knew didn’t mean I could live with it.
“Five-hundred-thousand.”
As bonds for murder went, that one was so light it floated. I didn’t want to think about how many markers he had to hand out for the favor. A future price, a future problem. Right now, I willed my worry to quiet as I absorbed the shimmering dance of neon radiating down the Strip. Nighttime in Vegas—nothing like it.
“And Mrs. Ponder? Why didn’t she fork over the dough?”
“They went all in to move the team, so it’s a bit complicated.”
“It always is. Where’d you stash her?” Frankly, I half-hoped he’d sent her packing, but on an answer quest, I needed to gather everyone so I could light a match, toss them in hot water, and see who jumped out of the pot first.
“I gave her a suite on the twenty-sixth floor. She said something about having a party to go to.”
Pursing my lips, I nodded. “She say which party?” There were several tonight, but Boudreaux indicated she would be at his.
“No.”
“She did say she needed to do some shopping. The theme is black and white and she needed something new,” Mona chimed in behind me.
Mona sounded a bit miffed at not being included. Somehow, I had a feeling that, by the end of the evening she’d be glad she warmed the bench on this one.
My luck held—now, if only for a wee bit longer, then perhaps I could pull Romeo’s delicates out of the fire and put a killer where he belonged. “Sky would rather party than comfort her husband?” Sarcasm dripped from every word. For some reason, I found Sky Ponder easy to hate—and that was all the more reason to reassess.
“He loves her,” my father said as if reading my mind. Maybe he held her in low regard as well—not that either of our opinions mattered. His words held si
mple wisdom, and pain—he knew the price exacted by loving a difficult woman.
“And he’s divorcing her.”
Love wasn’t worth that kind of pain.
Teddie had taught me that.
“It’s complicated. Lots of money involved.”
I had nothing to say to that, so I let it go. With one arm crossed across my waist, the other elbow resting on it and my glass held high, I turned and surveyed my cousin.
If a human could make themselves smaller, she did it, shrinking into the couch.
“What a damn fool, stinking stupid, asinine, juvenile, selfish—”
“I think she understands,” my mother said, cutting me off.
“Yes, well, considering only someone with a single-digit IQ would do what she did tonight, I thought giving her lots of options might improve her comprehension.”
“She is going to veterinary school at Cornell this fall.”
“Only if I let her live.” I eyed my mother. In fighting trim, she’d lost all of her baby weight. Her cheekbones were now as sharp as her normal tone. Her hair, caught at her neck in a gold clip, trailed down her back. A few tendrils softened her face, but not her bark. I knew Mona missed being relevant in the same way she had when she ran her own business. Granted, it was a whorehouse in Pahrump, but she had been a lobbyist for the Prostitution Industry, and, in many circles, that made her someone. Even though I could acknowledge her frustration, I still took the bait every time. She’d made her bed. And happy was a choice, so she’d better get over the whine. And while she was at it, she could kick me down that road as well.
A fight would keep me from ruminating on what I’d done to Romeo. Yes, he’d done it to himself, but I’d helped him along. No choice, really, but my heart still broke and I beat myself up for not finding a way out of an impossible situation.
Mona—she was the counterbalance to an otherwise decent, reasonably happy life.
Apples and trees were fine when it came to my father, but I balked at claiming too much shared DNA with my mother.
“Would you like in on this? I can roll you in if you need a good dressing-down.”
She stuck her nose in the air and studiously turned away. She’d traded her pearls for a large-link gold chain with several links encrusted with diamonds. My father must’ve done something epic to have to buy his way back into her good graces with that. It was their thing—not that I was comfortable with it.
Frankly, my price was a good bit higher than an impressive piece of “important” jewelry, as Mother called it. Each generation had its own rules of the game. Problem was, I had no idea what the rules of my generation were. It seemed like men took advantage of women, women let them, and the anger ran deep.
As a generation, we sucked.
Another problem on my long list of to-solves. Any more problems and I’d go around the bend and never come back. I guess there were worse things.
As the anger leaked away, curiosity and fear replaced it. “You do know what you did tonight was beyond stupid, right?”
Taking a sheet from my playbook, Bethany fortified herself behind a wall of silk pillows. “I know.”
“What were you thinking?”
When she glanced up at me, her gaze was unwavering, her eyes focused. “I was trying to find where a cop would get rid of a rifle.”
“What?” It felt as if the air around us all had frozen solid. “Which cop?”
“Detective Romeo.”
She started to shake. I squeezed into the tiny section of couch Mona had vacated and wrapped the girl in my arms. Skin and bones, she resisted at first, then tucked in tight as sobs shuddered through her. “He’s…your…friend.”
“That won’t change. Tell me what you saw. Romeo was at War Vegas last night before we met up with him and saw the body?”
She nodded and took in expansive gulps of air, working for control. “Much earlier. It was just dark—a little light on the horizon, making it hard to see. I couldn’t see him well, but that coat, it stands out, you know?”
“His Columbo impersonation.”
Too young to get the reference, she gave me a quizzical look. “Not important.”
She pulled into herself and took a deep, steadying breath. “I was on patrol, monitoring the game. My job was to keep out of sight as much as possible but to make sure the players were following rules, that sort of thing.”
“An on-site referee.”
She nodded. “The football players actually cause the least trouble, which I thought was funny given how big they are, and super scary competitive.”
“They’re used to referees. Are all the players told there are people on the playing grounds watching?”
“Everybody gets a mandatory safety and rules brief before they gear up.”
“And where did you see Romeo?”
“I heard a shot, a real one. It’s very different than the pfftt of an air rifle. With all that was going on, it was hard to figure the direction, but having been raised around guns and having done a lot of hunting as a kid in similar terrain, I made a pretty good guess. I saw Romeo heading the other direction.”
“Away from where the body was found?”
“Yeah. He carried a rifle. Of course, that wasn’t unusual—everybody had rifles.”
“What made you think his might have been real?”
“I didn’t, not at first. Not until after we found the body with the gunshot to the shoulder.”
Smart kid. She’d noticed.
“And the videos? Any luck confirming any of this?”
“I’ve found a few who will let me see what they recorded. Not too many, as you might suspect. It’s against the rules, and somebody got killed.”
Mona unfolded herself. “I’ll get you a cup of hot tea.” She patted Bethany’s knee before disappearing toward the kitchen.
My mother never made tea; she ordered it.
“Don’t go too far,” I called after her. “When I’m finished with Bethany, I need your help.”
“It’s my life’s calling to do your bidding.” She threw the words at me, then scurried through the kitchen door.
“Look no further to see where I inherited my penchant for sarcasm,” I said to no one in particular.
Mona surrounded herself with an emotional wall. The maternal thing always had chafed my mother like a wool shirt on a sweltering day. When I’d been seven, the stress of motherhood resulted in an itchy rash over 90% of her body. The doctors were amazed. I was less so—pretending to be what you weren’t took a heavy toll.
I’d been doing it my whole life.
“When she returns, I’d be careful,” I said to Bethany, feeling all protective like an older sister, surprising myself. “Her culinary skills are limited.”
Bethany pushed at a lock of hair that had fallen across her face. “I know, but she means well.”
I wasn’t sure. The milk of human kindness barely trickled through Mona’s veins. “So, the videos?”
“The ones I saw—I’m cataloging them, marking the tape locations, and getting them ready for the police.”
“For the M.E.?”
“Yes, but Detective Reynolds is the go-between.”
“Really?” Add another powerful man to my call list—first the M.E., then the Sheriff.
The sharpness of my voice caught my father’s attention as well. “Yeah,” Bethany answered.
“She doesn’t leave here. You got that?” I said to my father.
He gave me a quick nod and shut down Bethany’s forming argument with one of his patented scowls.
I softened my voice as I turned back to Bethany. “Okay, I’d love to see the videos, but I don’t have time right now. Can you give me the high points? Who else was there that night?”
“Lots of NFL types—I didn’t know all of them, although I think my boss has a list somewhere.” She pulled Mona’s silk pillows into a barricade around her slight frame, her legs tucked up close to her body like a stork.
“If he does, the po
lice should have it.” So far, Jeremy and Dane hadn’t uncovered any other player with a beef against Senator Lake—not that anyone would advertise that sort of thing in neon, but if Jeremy and his team couldn’t find it, it didn’t exist.
“Boudreaux was the big draw. He’s quite a shot.”
Hand-eye coordination—the stuff of great athletes and snipers. “Just what I need, a big shot with a big shot.” But it did pose some interesting questions. “But no gun?”
“After I finished showing the CSI the video room and all of that, I went back to the scene. Romeo was waiting. We scoured the scene looking for a rifle stashed somewhere but didn’t find anything. After looking at the tapes later, I realized Romeo had taken the rifle long before we all converged at the scene, and he was just stringing me along.” She stared past me out the window. “He was good at it.”
“Did you ask him about that? Why he ran?”
“Not directly. I didn’t want him to know I knew he’d been there.” She twisted the corner of one of Mona’s silk pillows, which would’ve gotten her a bark and a bite had my mother seen her. “That made me sad, you know?” Tears welled.
“I know.” I’d passed sad and was well into mad. Not for one minute did I believe Romeo had sold his soul to the Dark Side. What made me mad was being deliberately left out of the loop. “What did you say?”
“I asked if he’d ever been to War Vegas before.”
I didn’t even have to try to guess his answer. “And he said no, that arriving at the scene was his first time.”
“Pretty much.”
“Anybody else in the game who looked out of place or was acting odd?” In a game that required a serious murderous streak, what would be odd? Looking through my Rogers and Hammerstein rose-colored glasses, I was at sea.
“There was this other guy. Bogie hired him on the spot. He suited up, but I don’t remember him hanging around for the intro course.”
“It’s not required?”
“Not for staff. And really not for anyone else, but it’s strongly encouraged.” Bethany unwound the tight little knot of silk and tried to smooth it out. “Don’t tell, okay?” A flash of fear.
Lucky Score Page 24
