Lucky Score

by Deborah Coonts

  “You’ve got a free pass with Mona. She’s working through some heavy guilt right now. But I won’t breathe a word.” Bethany, my cousin, was Mona’s niece. Mona and her sister had suffered an assault when they were kids. Mona, the stronger one, had found a way to move on. Her sister had not. Through one of those political plays that often hid the guilty, the assaulter had not only escaped punishment, but also his guilt had been hidden. But two young women knew the truth—an accusation would ruin his newfound legitimacy as a country vet. He’d found Mona’s sister at the sanitarium. Realizing her word would never be believed, he did what he’d started years before. Bethany resulted. Recently, he’d sniffed out Mona and had come after her. He’d died. I’d taken a bullet in the calf for my troubles.

  Justice had been served.

  While I’d inherited Bethany, essentially a kid sister, my mother staggered under a load of guilt. Misplaced, for sure, but she wouldn’t listen to reason.

  Guilt, a bazooka in the war against self-respect. Wasn’t most of it borne by those who lacked the responsibility?

  Bethany flicked a glance at my father. He raised his hands, palms out. “Mona won’t hear it from me. Last thing I need is another thing to keep that woman on the warpath.”

  I tried to focus as I glanced at my watch. Was stylishly late a good thing when it came to this Privé party? Who knew, but I was going to find out. My phone dinged the arrival of a text, which I ignored. Teddie, I felt sure. As if pressuring me was going to improve anything. A caveat to the Curse of the Y-Chromosome: control it or kill it.

  “So, even if you don’t go through the little rules thing, you can still play?” I asked Bethany, cutting to the chase.

  “It’s just legal overkill. We use air guns that shoot plastic pellets. Nobody gets hurt.”

  The irony hit us both.

  “The new guy, the one Bogie hired, where’d he go? Did he play? Was he a referee?”

  “I don’t know. I didn’t see him again, and he wasn’t on the few tapes I got.” She started to rewind the delicate cloth.

  I didn’t stop her. “What’d he look like?”

  “Big. Like the players but a little soft. You could still see the muscle, but not in a ripped, pro athlete sort of way. Blond hair. Angry little eyes and lips that look good on Angelina Jolie, but only highlight a man’s shortcomings. And he had this way of walking; a bit sideways like a rabid dog.”

  “As long as he wasn’t foaming at the mouth.”

  “I didn’t get that close.” Realizing what she was doing, she smoothed out the silk, then tucked the pillow under several others. Then she picked up the unadulterated pillow on the top of the stack and clutched it to her stomach. This one had fringe, which she started to braid.

  Mona was going to need some new pillows if she didn’t die of apoplexy first.

  I turned to stare out the window as if I’d find an answer in all the flashing lights and silly come-ons. An answer probably lurked there, but not to the questions I asked. Romeo had my guts knotted, my brain spinning, and my heart bleeding. I’d love to kill him if whoever was gunning for him didn’t get to him first.

  If I could just figure out who was gunning for him. He’d made enough enemies; it’d take too much time to sort through them all. I needed a break.

  “Back to Romeo. You’re sure it was him? Did you see him on any of the other feeds?”

  “No. Like I said, they were spotty. But it looked like him: thin, angular, hunched shoulders, the raincoat thing.”

  “You didn’t try to stop him?”

  “I stepped out of the shadows and called to him. He glanced my direction, then ran.”

  Staring out the window, I chewed on my lip as I struggled to come up with a plausible excuse. My father, who had turned his back on the lights, gave me a look that wasn’t hard to read.

  “Not good, right?” Bethany gave voice to my father’s fear.

  “No, not good.”

  “That’s why I went downtown tonight. A pawnshop seemed like the place a cop would ditch a gun he didn’t want found. You know how on TV the cops always have snitches and guys they work with at all the seedy places.”

  Make-believe wasn’t reality—only a kid would equate the two. But tonight it came closer than I was comfortable with.

  “There’s one other thing. I’m not sure if it’s important or not.”

  “All this is critical.” I hoped to a defense and not a prosecution, but things weren’t shaping up exactly the way I’d hoped.

  “Romeo wasn’t part of the game. He hadn’t been at the safety briefing.”

  “So, he hadn’t known he’d be watched.”

  Waiting in the wings, Mona breezed back in as if responding to a cue from a director.

  Life is but a play...

  She carried two steaming mugs. One she handed to Bethany, then she took a position by her husband’s side, offering him the second mug.

  He took a sip, then grimaced. “What is this?”

  “It’s tea. It’s supposed to be calming.”

  My father tried another taste, this time without the grimace.

  Bethany cupped her mug in both hands, a climber clinging to a safety rope.

  “We all ought to mainline the stuff, then,” I offered, wishing I had my own mug but knowing it would have little effect on my frayed nerves. Alcohol would soften the hurts, but it would exact a price, one I could no longer pay.

  Mona sniffed at me, unable or unwilling to discern honesty from bullshit.

  “Mother?” I bit down on my grin when she actually jumped. I’d made an effort to keep the bark to a minimum, obviously to little effect. “I need your help. Can you give me some dirt on the Sheriff?”

  Her shit-eating grin bloomed slowly like a flower after a soaking rain. “The Sheriff? Oh, honey, he and I go way back. How much dirt do you need?”

  Mother might be a pain, but she had her uses. “Enough to encourage him to do something he won’t want to, but not so much that I piss him off.”

  Mona drummed her fingers on her chin as she rolled her eyes skyward in thought. After a few moments, she settled back with a look. “I’m a little worried. The Sheriff might not take to me giving out his secrets. Do you think maybe I could wheedle the information out of him?”

  She looked so desperate and sounded so pitiful. Having been a somebody in the world of commerce, if prostitution fit, being relegated to diaper duty would be a blow. “This is really important, Mother. Life and Death important.”

  “The Sheriff and I were…” She flicked a glance at her husband. “Close. He trusts me. And he’ll believe me.”

  I looked to my father for help, but he stayed on the sidelines. I glanced at my watch—the sand had run through the hourglass. “Okay, Mother. I appreciate your help.” I stifled a smile at her relief, but her gratitude made me uncomfortable. “Here’s what I need.”

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  Y OU WANT me to go as a cow?” I eyed the two men who had met me at the door of the apartment next to my parents’.

  Teddie, standing directly in front of me, with Jordan next to him for moral support, held up my costume—yes, a cow, complete with dangling udders.

  Teddie looked like he was gargling rocks as he fought a guffaw. “You said black and white. This is a Holstein, a very noble cow.”

  Fun at my expense—nothing made me grumpier than being the butt of the joke. “You’re not making any of this better for yourself.”

  “My mea culpa act wasn’t working, so I thought I’d just go back to being me.”

  The subtext in that statement made my gut instinct stand up and salute.

  Just being himself.

  “You used to think I was fun.” He tossed off the line with the practiced ease of a consummate performer.

  Like my mother before, I found myself struggling with the line between truth and bullshit.

  “That says more about me than it does you.” Getting nowhere with Teddie, I nailed Jordan with a glare. “Just so you know,
you’re not off the hook. Under the law, accomplices earn the same punishment as the trigger man.”

  Jordan had the sense to look sheepish. “Guilty as charged. But, Lucky, think about it this way. You believe many of the suspects in this whole drama will be at the party, right?”

  Except for the cops—a fact I glossed over. “Everything is pointing to that.” Out of ideas, options, and the will to fight, I let him lead me down the path even though I knew where we headed.

  “So, dressed this way, you can get close to them, and they won’t know it’s you.”

  He was right, but I wasn’t yet ready to cave, despite knowing pride often led to a scraped ego, at best.

  He could sense my vacillation and honed in for the kill. “Look, I’ve played a lot of cops in both television and film, hung around with the real deals who were there to keep us as close to reality as Hollywood would allow. I’ve even hung out with the writers who had to research the stories and make sure they were accurate, so I know how this sort of thing works.”

  “You’re trying to convince me by using people who make stuff up for a living as your foundational sources?”

  “Weak, but hey, it’ll also cover up that nose, which looks ghastly by the way. What’s the downside?”

  “I look udderly ridiculous.” Working hard to keep up with taking the blows of Romeo’s recent behavior, then segueing to the absolute idiocy of going to an invitation-only party in a cow costume with two jokers, I had little resiliency left. Laughter would have to do.

  The men looked at me bug-eyed for a moment as the joke settled in, then they both laughed, relief washing over them and wiping away the worry.

  I joined in, and the rest of my resistance evaporated into give up and give in. I reached out, snapping my fingers. “Ten minutes.”

  WITH OUR ENTRY UNDERWEAR, using the term loosely, tucked in my left udder, I took my escorts through the labyrinthine maze of back hallways. Before we’d stepped out of the sanctity of the apartment and, desperate to hide my embarrassment in anonymity, I’d donned my mask. Pride came at a price—the last guy who’d donned the costume had eaten a potent garlic dinner. The smell, which, trapped along with my hot, moist breath inside the headpiece, threatened to grow to puke-inducing strength, almost had me diving for cover back in the safety of Teddie’s apartment. Curiosity kept my stomach contents where they belonged and me forging ahead.

  Romeo needed me. I still wasn’t sure whether he needed rescuing or a swift kick in the ass, or both. Even though I had no idea what tonight would bring, I had an idea I’d know more at the end of it than I did now.

  Teddie flanked me on the left. Short on subtlety and long on confidence, he’d chosen a court jester’s costume that hugged every curve, leaving nothing to the imagination—not even his identity concealed poorly behind a tiny mask. His spiked blond hair and sparkling baby blues were dead giveaways. Those of us who knew him best only had to take a look at his ass, which I studiously avoided doing on principle. Besides, seeing out of the tiny cow eyeholes was more difficult than I imagined. Cows had wide-set eyes—I did not, enough said. Tonight would be spent looking first out one eye, then the other. If anyone wanted a piece of me, I’d never see them coming.

  Jordan, in his inimitable style, had chosen a perfectly tailored tux, his smile his only mask. Often lauded as the pinnacle of male pulchritude, he needed no adornment—something I both loved and hated about him, depending on the level of my self-confidence. Complicit in the cow costume, Jordan wasn’t eliciting feelings of love from me tonight.

  And, adding insult to reality, he’d also been right. As we stepped aside periodically to let the housekeeping and food service staff by, the men got the attention and the recognition. But, if anyone even bothered to glance my way, a grin was the best I got.

  Every one of them knew me, but they didn’t recognize me.

  Hiding in plain sight. This could work.

  I amused myself with the game, growing ever bolder as we wound our way to the bank of service elevators in the opposite wing of the hotel.

  “Having fun?” Teddie gave his reflection in the metal doors the once-over, angling for the light.

  I nodded, which seemed to make him unhappy.

  All the more reason to play it up. I nodded again and gave him my best silent sports-team mascot impersonation. He rewarded me with a tight grin. He had to—I looked ridiculous.

  I leaned into Jordan, well, as close as I could get given my bovine exterior. “That’s the angle. I’m not talking. I’m the proposed new mascot.”

  “The Vegas Heifers?”

  I bristled, but then realized I had udders—at least on the outside—my balls were hidden. “A joke, but let’s run with it as long as we can.”

  “Do you have any idea what kind of party this is?”

  The doors slid open. We had the car to ourselves—I guess even Jordan and Teddie weren’t sufficient inducement to get someone to ride up with a cow.

  “It’s by some group called Privé.”

  He choked, then swallowed hard. “I told you,” Teddie said with a smirk.

  “What?” I looked between them as my heart sank. My bad feeling about all this came home to roost. Sometimes I hate it when I’m right.

  A glance passed between them. “This is going to be fun.” Jordan opened his jacket, then, after untying his bow tie, he unbuttoned the two top buttons on his shirt.

  “You both know?” The doors slid open depositing us in the hallway between the bar at Babel and the Secret Suite. Another night of revelry at Babel was ramping up, the music thumping, the voices shouting over it, excited.

  Couples, attired in tiny bits of black and white, filtered through the hall toward us. Interest flared on the faces of both the men and the women when they spied Jordan and Teddie. As they raked the men with their gazes, their interest turned to thinly disguised lust.

  My initial comfort at the partiers coming two by two fizzled, replaced by a very bad feeling. “I’m not going to like this, am I?” As I thought about the doors-locked-masks-off-at-midnight thing, the horror of what I’d gotten myself into washed over me. “Oh, this is one of those…”

  “Polyamorous parties,” Teddie finished my question with the answer.

  We’d touched on this subject before, but I never thought… “Arrive with one, cum with another? Is that it?” My skin threatened to crawl off on its own.

  Jordan gaped at me. “Well. I’ve not heard it described quite that way. A little class, Lucky, a little class.”

  “Class? Please!” I pressed a hand to my chest. “Give me a moment here. I’m presiding over the death of love. A little respect, could you?”

  Teddie opened his mouth to argue, then snapped it closed. He knew an argument he couldn’t win.

  When did everything from orgasms to attachments become so expedient?

  “In for a penny,” Jordan offered up a platitude as if it would do anything positive.

  One tiny-assed, long-legged, blonde sashayed past me. “Oh, I think far more than a penny. More like 150,000 pennies…per hour. Maybe a slight discount for a blow job but doubtful.”

  Teddie cocked one eyebrow at me. “I’d heard everybody had a price.”

  Even though he couldn’t see the murder in my icy blues, I leveled them at him anyway. “But to sleep with a cow is priceless.”

  That knocked his smirk into next year—a minor victory in a night lacking many, so I took it and summoned a bit of backbone. I could do this. But, if worse came to worse and I couldn’t contain my hurl reflex, I pitied the poor guy who rented the cow costume next. “I can’t believe you two brought me here.”

  “You invited us.” Jordan clearly thought the whole thing worthy of a Hollywood farce.

  I couldn’t disagree. Once again, I’d miscalculated. At least I was consistent, but that was about all I could say about my recent level of performance.

  Billy the Boilermaker had been billed as the bouncer, but it was Beau Boudreaux who blocked the door to th
e Secret Suite. Blood from his broken nose blackened the half-moons under his eyes like that black smudge the players wore to minimize glare or look stupid. I wasn’t sure of the exact goal and thought either equally plausible. Personally, I thought it was just acceptable war paint.

  Now, I had my own broken nose, so I knew what it felt like. It wasn’t too bad, actually. Men were such whiners.

  The outline on Boudreaux’s cheekbone had faded into a rectangular purple shadow. If he kept up his battle with the world, his face would be one huge bruise. Of course, given all my damaged body parts, I wasn’t one to talk.

  I rooted in my udder for the filigreed underwear, but with a hoof for a hand, I failed. Finally, Jordan rescued me. Poking around in my cow privates, he found the entwined bits of thread and handed them to Boudreaux.

  “That’ll get two in.”

  Jordan motioned between himself and Teddie. “We’re together.”

  “Invite is good for one couple. No cows allowed.” He didn’t even look at me.

  “Mr. Ponder’s orders.” Jordan’s Oscar win had not been a fluke—even I believed him. “Something about a team mascot.”

  That got a cursory glance, then Boudreaux’s face flushed. “That asshole. He swore he’d get even.”

  Get even? For what? The words screamed through my brain. My father had said something about an affair with Mrs. Ponder. Oh, how I’d love to hit him in the face with that. His reaction would be enlightening, if I lived. With questions burbling, I chomped down on my tongue. Even though not the brightest bulb, Boudreaux would recognize my voice.

  But, dear God, couldn’t one of the two men with me have the brainpower to ask the next question, please?

  “That who you’ve been fighting with?” Teddie asked.

  Wrong question! Why? Ask him why Ponder wanted to get even!

  “Hell, no. I ran into the bitch hotel boss lady, Lucky somebody. She has a wicked elbow, but that’s all she’s got.”

  “Oh, she grows on you.” Jordan pressed against me, then grabbed my arm, hiding his restraint behind the skirt of his jacket. “Especially when you might find yourself needing someone in your corner.”