Assignment Vegas: The Case of the Athlete's Assassin: Jae Lovejoy Cozy Mystery Two (Jae Lovejoy Cozy Mysteries Book 2)

by Lucey Phillips

  Colin and I sat in a couple chairs by the wall. I texted McKenna, asking her to tell the security guard that I can come back. I told her I need to talk to her about our accident today.

  I fidgeted in my chair while I looked from my phone to the security guard, and back to my phone again. McKenna wasn’t answering me. And the security guard didn’t seem to have any news.

  Colin sat still, scrolling through his phone.

  Finally, Dee walked into the small lobby. Her face was pink and a little shiny. She was smiling as she motioned for us to follow her.

  “Was that your first time seeing the show?” she asked. “Good, huh?”

  “Amazing,” I said.

  “It went really well—minimal drama, no screw-ups,” Dee said. “No matter how many times we do it, it’s still such a rush when everything comes together.”

  When we got to McKenna’s dressing room, she and Mariah were there, sitting on the couches across from each other. McKenna wore sweats and had her hair wrapped in a towel. There was white lotion all over her face, which she was blotting with a towel to remove her makeup.

  Mariah was beaming with pride.

  “Didn’t you just love it?” she asked.

  “We did,” I said.

  Then I asked McKenna if she was feeling ok. That performance looked unbelievably strenuous on a good day. But it seems like it would be impossible after being in a car accident.

  “I went in for a massage and took some supplements—B vitamins and spirulina. I’m okay,” she said. “So, I’m glad you liked the show.”

  “Loved it,” I said. I meant it, too. “But I have to talk to you about something. Do you remember that man sitting beside me in the waiting room at the hospital today?”

  She puckered her mouth to one side and shook her head.

  “His name is Jacob White, and he’s a detective with the Las Vegas Police Department,” I said. “He was at the hospital talking to Mike. It’s not an official investigation, but he’s looking into how Mike’s accident happened—whether it was intentional.”

  McKenna’s chin trembled for a moment, then stopped when she took a deep breath.

  “He thinks someone tampered with the pool,” McKenna said softly, with a tone of finality.

  I nodded.

  “And he thinks I was the target. It was supposed to be me in the water, not Mike.”

  “He’s looking into that,” I said. “And there’s more.”

  I went on to tell her about the conversation I’d just had with Jacob. I explained that the car that caused the collision was stolen from the parking garage at Currents.

  “Oh, honey,” Mariah said, moving to sit beside her daughter. She wrapped her arms around McKenna. “We don’t know for sure. It could just be a coincidence.”

  McKenna pulled away from her mother just slightly. “It’s too many coincidences. Something else is going on, not just bad luck.”

  She gazed at the floor.

  Colin and I glanced at each other.

  Mariah moved back to where she was sitting earlier, on the couch opposite McKenna. She looked at me while she wrung her hands.

  “What do you think, Jae? Do you really thing McKenna could be in trouble?” she asked.

  “I think it’s possible,” I said. “I think you just need to be aware that something could be going on. Don’t do anything risky, and look out for anything unusual.”

  “Risky?” Mariah turned toward McKenna, her mouth in a frustrated frown. “Her job is to get set on fire and dropped from the ceiling! If someone wants to hurt her …”

  Mariah’s voice started to crack. “Maybe you should step down for a while, honey? Let Poppy play your part for a while—till this all gets straightened out.”

  “I may as well quit and go work serving cocktails on the casino floor, Mom. If Poppy does it right, they won’t let me come back. They’ll make me the understudy!”

  “All that matters is that you’re safe, Kinney,” Mariah said.

  “I’m not going to hide like a loser,” McKenna said. Now her voice was shaky, too.

  There was a light knock on the door. No one said anything, but the door opened anyway. James leaned his head in.

  “Ready for your ice bath, Kinney?” he asked.

  McKenna’s expression brightened immediately. “Oh yeah, I can’t wait,” she said with a giggle.

  Colin and I glanced at each other again. I know he was thinking the same thing I was: That was the first time we’d ever heard McKenna crack a joke.

  She finished wiping her face, tossed the towel toward a hamper, and stood to leave.

  “I’ll be careful, you guys, but I can’t quit the show,” McKenna said. “You should go home, Mom. I’ll take a car later.”

  Mariah looked nearly panicked, but she didn’t argue.

  “Just call me before you leave,” she said, standing and pulling her oversized purse onto her shoulder.

  We all filed out of the room. Before we turned the corner to walk back toward the rest of the resort, I glanced back at McKenna’s dressing room door, wondering whether it locked automatically when she closed it, and who had keys to it.

  | Eight

  When Colin and I arrived at our hotel floor, I told him good night.

  He said “Night,” and turned to unlock his door. Then he stopped.

  “I should have said this earlier, but you look nice tonight,” he said.

  “Thanks,” I said. The word came out more quietly than I’d expected.

  Colin was smiling serenely. I couldn’t think of what to say next, so I smiled back, and then turned toward my hotel room door, hoping I didn’t look as awkward as I felt.

  The phone was ringing when I got inside my room. The only place that had this number was my work. I hurried to answer it.

  My hand clenched tight on the receiver when I heard the voice on the other end. It wasn’t work. It was my mother.

  “Oh. Mom. How did you get this number?”

  “Well, you didn’t respond to my letters and you never answer when I call your cell phone, so I had to call your work.”

  She sounded sober and irritable.

  “What? What did you tell my work?” My thoughts immediately went to my editor, Lance, as I wondered who she had talked to at Alt News America. Quinn was the only person who knew about my mom’s alcohol problems, though other coworkers may have picked up on the fact that I never mentioned my mom.

  If my stomach hadn’t already felt turned inside-out, it did now.

  “I just told them I’m your mom and I needed to get in touch with you. At first, they wanted to take my number and give you a message. But I told them I’m having some health problems, and I needed to get in touch with you. They said you were staying at this Currents casino.”

  I couldn’t help it—I snorted a laugh. Health problems, of course. My mom was reframing her addiction and describing it like something that deserved sympathy.

  I fought every impulse to grill her about exactly who she’d spoken with and exactly what she’d said. My entire life, I’d expended so much energy feeling ashamed of her and trying to hide her failures from my school and work and social circles.

  Long ago, I’d started working to end that habit. I told myself that the people who really mattered in my life would not judge me according to my mom’s behaviors. Sometimes I believed that. Sometimes I didn’t.

  “Mom, please don’t call my work. We’ve talked about that before.”

  “How else am I supposed to get in touch with you when you hardly ever return my calls?” she asked in a whiny, injured tone.

  You’re not, I thought, that’s the whole point. I didn’t say that out loud, though. Instead, I said. “Mom, I’m really busy. You know that.”

  She went on to tell me how her program is going. She was supposed to be in for 30 days. After that, she said, she wanted to visit me.

  I just responded to that with a non-committal, “Uh-huh.”

  “Did you get my letters?” She asked.<
br />
  “Um … yeah. They’re around here somewhere…”

  I wasn’t going to tell her I read the first sentence and threw them away. I had no interest in being a part of her supposed recovery. But if I was too unsupportive, she would blame me for her inevitable relapse.

  “I poured my heart into those letters, Jae. I want you to know I meant everything I said. I really am sorry. I know it’s not easy being my daughter.”

  “Okay, Mom.” I was pacing back and forth in the narrow space between the two beds in my hotel room, wandering as far as the phone cord would allow me to go before the phone started sliding across the nightstand and I had to turn back.

  I knew this routine: the phone-call-from-rehab routine. Sometimes there were tears and remorse. Sometimes just excuses. But always, always, there was a request for money.

  “I just don’t know what I should do about my apartment,” she said, sighing woefully. “I’d like to try to keep it, but my last paycheck went straight to collections … I need a place to live when I get out of here.”

  It was rare that my mom lived in the same apartment for an entire year. Usually she got evicted for failing to pay rent, or just abandoned a place when she found a boyfriend.

  “Fine,” I said, too weary to hide my irritability. “How much is your rent and where do I send the check?”

  “Um, well honey, maybe we should just do a transfer into my account. That might be easier.”

  “I don’t want to do it that way,” I said, knowing that if my mom left rehab with a decent balance in her bank account, it would be a recipe for disaster. Not only would her rent go unpaid, I’d be underwriting her next bender.

  I thought about a self-help book for adult children of alcoholics. I’d read it when I was right out of college, making sure to keep the book in a bottom of a drawer, not out where my friends might see it.

  The book harped on boundaries. Over and over again, it admonished people like me to set boundaries and stick to them. What the book failed to explain though, was how to do that without feeling disloyal—and vaguely afraid.

  After some more mild protests, Mom caved and gave me the address. I assured her the check would be in the mail tomorrow morning. After that, we said our hurried, relieved, goodbyes.

  | Nine

  It was early in the morning, the beginning of our third full day in Las Vegas. Even though I’d been living in the Pacific time zone for a couple weeks, my brain still wanted to start the day on East Coast time. When most of Las Vegas was either still asleep, or just getting to bed, I became restless.

  There was a faint hint of dawn on the horizon over the desert when I woke up. I knew I should try to go back to sleep, but my mind was spinning with thoughts of McKenna—who was trying to hurt her? Why? And how was I supposed to write a travel story around all of this?

  I gave up on sleep and opened the curtains. I started coffee brewing and crawled back into bed, pulling my laptop into bed with me. If I could just get a few paragraphs written—decide where this story was going—maybe I wouldn’t feel so restless.

  McKenna was a difficult subject to capture in writing. She had a great story, all about dreams that came true, then fell apart, and then rewrote themselves into something new.

  I really wanted this story to do her, and Las Vegas, justice. I needed to be fair and honest, but I was starting to worry that my friendship with McKenna would compromise the piece somehow.

  She had plenty of eccentricities. And they belonged in the story. Those details would color it and help bring it to life. I needed to be able to write about those things without worrying about insulting my friend.

  And then there’s McKenna’s relationship with her mother. I guess, as much as I was able to, I understood it. As a child, she was required to behave like an adult. That precluded her from developing some life skills. So did her substance abuse.

  Now McKenna was rebuilding. And her close, some people might say enmeshed, relationship with her mom was her lifeline. So much of her recovery, her survival, was because of her mother. I wondered if this entanglement with her mom would go on the remainder of her adult life, or was she just making up for lost time? Maybe she was simply going back and writing a chapter of her childhood development that being a gymnastics champion had caused her to miss?

  I tapped out the sentence, “McKenna Johnson isn’t what you’d expect of a star.” I shook my head, disgusted.

  That was a cliché. I deleted it.

  I tried again, “If anyone can use their athleticism and art to tell the story of the butterfly—transformed from a caterpillar—McKenna Johnson can.”

  That wasn’t any good, either. I hit delete and tried again. “This is the story of how McKenna Johnson became a butterfly.”

  I read the sentence I’d just written. It wasn’t good enough, either. It was a start, though. I could work on it later. I skipped ahead and wrote about Dream Myst and what it’s like to be in the audience. I tried to show how McKenna brings magic to the story by describing audience members’ delighted, rapt reactions.

  I still wasn’t ready to write about who McKenna is, though. Maybe that would change after today. Colin and I were going to her apartment so he could photograph her at home.

  No, I knew that wouldn’t be much help. The only way I would feel okay writing about McKenna is if I knew she was safe—if I could help figure out who was trying to hurt her, and then turn that information over to Jacob.

  I closed my laptop, pulled a notebook from my bag, and opened it to a new page. I began writing a list of everyone I knew who could have a reason to hurt or scare McKenna.

  First on the list was Anne, the mother of James’ son. She had the strongest motivation of anyone I could think of to get McKenna off the show.

  I tapped my pen on my paper. Who else would want McKenna gone? Poppy, the understudy, would benefit from McKenna’s absence. She would become an instant star.

  There was also the matter of performance enhancing drugs. If Marcos Marilla did bring his pharmacologic business from Europe to Vegas, and McKenna found out about it, she wouldn’t want to be involved.

  But was McKenna the kind of person who would threaten to expose the drug dealer? I didn’t know the answer to that. If McKenna did get herself into that situation, she would certainly become a target.

  Then there were so many unknowns. McKenna had a messy past, to say the least. She could have enemies from her substance abuse days. Or maybe someone within Currents would have a reason for sabotaging the show.

  I texted Quinn. “Can you check on a few things for me?”

  I asked her to look up the finances, tax filings, and court filings, of Currents. It was a new multi-million dollar facility—easily the most expensive establishment on the Strip.

  When construction began, some experts in the tourism industry speculated that the European/Asian consortium that owned the property would need to attain record-breaking success in order to recoup construction costs and keep the doors open. So far though, business was booming.

  I also asked Quinn to check on Poppy’s background. I didn’t know her last name or even if Poppy was her real name, but I knew Quinn would figure it out.

  My last text to her was the most important one. “Don’t tell Lance.”

  Lance was my editor and my one-time semi-fling. We made out at a company party. Maybe I thought there was more between us than he did, but whatever it was fizzled quickly when I left for my next travel assignment. Later he got a new girlfriend—an admin who worked at Alt News America.

  Lance and I had kept close contact during my last assignment, when he prodded me into staying in Denver to cover a news story that I didn’t want to get involved with. It almost got me killed.

  He was complimentary of my reporting in Denver, but I’d heard very little from him since then. And I decided I liked it that way.

  »·×·»

  Colin came to get me for McKenna’s a little bit early. We used the extra time to stop by the coffee shop in
the resort and then stroll around the lagoon.

  The first time I saw this giant indoor body of water, it seemed too exotic. And now, after navigating around, above, and under it for the past few days, it still seemed exotic. But I found myself noticing new details every time I came here.

  There were two waterfalls on opposite sides of the lagoon. And one side had a sandy beach-like area, while another featured the tiny man-made waves lapping on a rocky shoreline.

  Windows of hotel rooms, private balconies, and restaurant balconies surrounded the lagoon. It was all enclosed by a sparkling glass-domed ceiling.

  “I never get tired of looking at it,” Colin said. His tone was bemused. “It seems different every time I see it. The light is always changing.”

  I nodded. He was standing so close beside me that his arm grazed my shoulder.

  On our way to the main entrance, we crossed through the shopping mall. It featured high-end stores I’d never frequented, or even noticed.

  I’d always been happy with the clothes I found at big department stores or—more recently—specialty online shops for professional women who didn’t quite hit 5’3” stature.

  I’d always found the high-end boutiques stuffy and pretentious.

  But now I had Colin’s friend’s wedding on my mind. I didn’t want to wear the only slightly-dressy outfit I had in my suitcase. Colin had already seen me in it when I wore it to a funeral.

  I wished I had something more festive—maybe even flirty—to wear tonight.

  When we passed the window of a shop that specializes in petites, a sparkly deep blue mini dress caught my eye. I looked away quickly, though. I didn’t want Colin to see me ogling the dress. That was out of character for me.

  Besides, I knew I shouldn’t be worrying about what to wear tonight. I knew it wasn’t a date.

  At the front entrance, a doorman helped us to a taxi. We took the 10-minute ride to McKenna’s apartment.

  When we climbed out of the cab—and into the mid-morning sun for the first time—the Nevada heat felt scorching against my body. I looked up as the heat made mirage-like waves between me and the apartment building.