Diva Las Vegas (Book 1 in Raven McShane Series)

by Caroline Dries

  I couldn’t see anything outside of the pool, and Cody was nowhere in sight. As I watched the three guys with the beach ball, I heard what sounded like a sliding door open and close outside my field of vision. It was soon followed by five or six quick steps and a Tarzan yell. At first I couldn’t see what all the commotion was, but the mystery was soon cleared up when a completely naked man cannonballed into the pool right in the middle of the beach ball players. They managed to scatter at the last second, but the splash from the impact erupted a full twenty feet. The cannonballer emerged from underwater with a triumphant smile on his face and chased down one of the others and jumped on his back. He didn’t seem to mind either that his bare butt was fully exposed or that his genitals were pressed against the other guy’s back.

  Holy shit, I thought. So it’s that kind of party. I suppose I should have figured it out earlier, but it just wasn’t on my radar screen.

  I reached down to grab my camera when a voice in front of me yelled, “HEY!” My heart skipped a few beats and I froze, certain I’d been caught peeping.

  “You’re getting us all wet!” the voice shouted in mock protest. That was a relief. I searched for the source of the voice. I hadn’t noticed it before, but if I looked down at a sharp angle I could see about half of an oversized hot tub in front of me through the junipers. Inside the tub were three more men, their backs turned to me. Two bottles of champagne and some plastic cups rested next to the tub amid a pile of wet swimming trunks and robes.

  I didn’t have a view of his face, but I was sure the blonde guy in the hot tub was Cody Masterson. As I crouched there in the bushes, I tried to process what this all meant. I failed. I had no idea what it meant. It was interesting, for sure, but was it anything more than that?

  So Cody enjoyed the company of obnoxiously attractive men. So what? That didn’t make him a murderer. Hell, if stereotypes were worth anything, it probably made him less likely to be a violent guy. A lover, not a fighter, and all that. But as I crouched there watching the backs of the men in the hot tub, I began wondering. If Cody preferred the company of men, it seemed a bit of a stretch for him to claim that he and his wife were making passionate love on the night of George Hannity’s murder. It might be a crack in his alibi, something the jury hadn’t known about. It wasn’t exactly a smoking gun, but it was something.

  I turned on my camera and tried to position the lens through the junipers. I took a few pictures to test the angle, but it was no good—all I could capture were close-ups of the backs of their heads. I would either have to wait for them to move or find another opening.

  I decided to play it safe and wait, but I soon got bored. Luckily, after a few minutes the hot tub jets powered on and made a loud racket that gave me some cover to move. I crept along the back of the lot and managed to find a better angle in the opposite corner of the yard. The blonde guy was Cody all right, and he seemed happily buzzed. I snapped four or five pictures of him and the other men in the hot tub, and for good measure I took a few of the naked guys frolicking in the pool. If nothing else, I could blow them up and paste them on my locker at work.

  It didn’t take a genius to connect the dots: good-looking young guys at a clothing-optional pool party with no women in sight. Still, I didn’t have anything more suggestive than Cody sitting in a hot tub. That could be explained away, whereas a photo of Cody in flagrante could not. It didn’t look like it was going to happen, though: the three guys in the hot tub seemed content just kicking back with their feet poking up out of the water. I was about to leave when one of them climbed out, grabbed a bathrobe, and headed back to the house. It looked like he was getting more champagne.

  Cody was left in the hot tub with the other man, a chiseled-faced guy with close-cropped black hair and what looked like a permanent five o’clock shadow. He looked like a model for Gillette razors. He said a few inaudible words and Cody nodded and climbed onto his lap, and both of them now faced me. The Gillette man began massaging Cody’s back and neck with his hands. I made sure my flash was off and began snapping photos. After a minute the man wrapped his arms firmly around Cody’s chest and pulled him close, kissing Cody behind his ears and on the side of his face. Cody closed his eyes in obvious pleasure. I snapped a few pictures of the two men in action, making sure Cody was clearly recognizable. That was good enough, I thought. I didn’t wait to stick around for Act II.

  I snuck around the back of the yard the same way I’d come in and found Carlos dozing lightly in my car. I started it up, keeping the lights off, and got us the hell out of there.

  “Any luck?” Carlos asked.

  “You might say that. Check these out.” I handed him the camera and he began scrolling through the photos on the camera’s viewing screen. He had to bring the camera close to his face to get a decent view.

  “What the . . .?”

  “Never been to a pool party like that, I bet,” I said. A mile outside of the subdivision I found an empty parking lot off the road and pulled over. I dug my laptop computer out of the back seat and hooked up the camera to the computer, bringing up the pictures on my computer screen to get a better view. There was no mistaking Cody’s identity or his amorous actions.

  Carlos shook his head. “I guess that explains why we didn’t see any women going in,” he said, chuckling. “So both Cody and Amy have boyfriends. Now what?”

  “I have no freaking idea,” I said, “but it’s pretty damned weird, isn’t it?”

  We drove in silence for most of the trip back to the Red Rock Casino, where Carlos’s car was still parked. When we hit a long stoplight I asked Carlos the question I’d been turning over in my head.

  “So let’s say you’re on the jury,” I said.

  “Okay.”

  “And Cody and Amy get up and testify that they were having passionate sex on the night of the murder. That’s their alibi.”

  “Okay,” he repeated.

  “And then you’re shown the pictures I’ve taken tonight,” I said. “Do you believe their story?”

  He paused to consider the question. “Depends. You mean knowing only what you just said? It’s fifty-fifty. The fact that they’re screwing other people now doesn’t necessarily mean they weren’t together then. And maybe Cody likes both men and women.”

  “True. How about with all the other evidence in the case, though? The financial motive. The murder weapon in his backyard.”

  “Then I don’t believe a word of it,” he said confidently.

  “Good,” I said.

  He was quiet for a minute before he piped up again. “You know what else? It probably means you could show that Cody didn’t marry Amy for love. She leaves for the weekend and an hour later he’s in the tub with some naked dude. That means he probably married her only to get at her casino money.”

  I nodded along with Carlos. “So if he’ll marry someone purely for money, it’s not a stretch to think he’d go to other extremes for money as well.”

  “Like blowing off his brother-in-law’s face.” Carlos smiled broadly, clearly pleased with himself.

  “You just earned your paycheck for the night,” I said, grinning. I thought about patting him on the leg, but I didn’t want to give him any ideas.

  I dropped Carlos off and made we made arrangements for him to track down the Indiana bachelor party again tomorrow. They had seemed pretty tame, and I wasn’t worried about watching them every minute of their trip. Heck, they were such lightweights that I might even refund part of Mrs. Finley’s check.

  On my way home I ran through the night’s events in my head. I had started out only wanting to see if Amy was actually cheating on Cody. But I now had damning photos of both of them straying off the reservation, and pretty seriously too. It wasn’t the strongest evidence in the world, but it could create enough doubt about his alibi that a jury might find him liable for George Hannity’s death and make Rachel a multimillionaire. I thought I would run it by Jeff Katz first, though. After all, he was the guy who’d have to prove it
in court.

  But even as I patted myself on the back, I couldn’t shake another feeling lurking in the back of my mind. I hadn’t ever spoken a single word to Cody Masterson, or whatever his real name was, but there was something about him that made me question whether he was the type of person who would kill another man in cold blood. I knew it was purely superficial, but I couldn’t get past his looks. He seemed like the kind of guy who was destined to spend his days in satin sheets wearing red silk boxers with hearts on them. A tray of chocolate covered strawberries would be within easy reach. And it wasn’t just his soap opera looks. There was something in his manner that seemed basically gentle, even passive. He was a seeker of pleasure, a playboy. I was beginning to see how a jury might have had its doubts that he was a brutal killer.

  Chapter 15

  The weeknight valet at my building, Vladimir, made my skin crawl. After dropping Carlos off, I had no stomach for dealing with Vladimir’s dirty looks. Why couldn’t there be a cute little Tommy clone on duty twenty-four hours a day? What did my six hundred bucks a month in condo fees go for, anyway? I decided to skip the valet.

  I pulled into the garage and stretched my legs when I got out of the car. I could definitely use a bigger car, I decided. Or at least something with a reclining driver’s seat so I wouldn’t have to ball myself up in the front seat when I stalked people. I headed for the elevator, which had a bad habit of always being on the floor farthest away from me.

  When the elevator finally arrived, I rode it up and I decided on the way it would be a good time to pop open a bottle of Bollinger champagne I’d been saving. It was a special occasion, after all: for the first time since I started I actually felt like I had some useful information on the Masterson case. If nothing else, I had substantial dirt on the key suspect and his only alibi witness, and you never knew where that could lead. I wasn’t above threatening to expose one or both of them if it meant Rachel could pay off her debts.

  My apartment was three doors down from the elevator. When I opened my door, I could immediately tell something was wrong. My skin began to prickle. My heart rate ratcheted up, and I looked around expecting some creepy burglar to jump out at me. But nothing happened. I flipped on the lights next to the door and surveyed the room. Nothing looked out of place.

  I breathed a sigh of relief. False alarm. I must have been hyped up from snooping around all evening, and downing four Diet Cokes probably didn’t help. Or maybe it was a delayed reaction to my fear of facing Vladimir the valet.

  I proceeded to my bathroom and began filling the soaking tub. I threw a little ball of goop in there that would make it smell like lavender. The champagne was under the bed. I sat on the bed, took off my shoes, and began to rethink my plan. I decided I didn’t feel like drinking warm champagne in a hot tub in July in the desert. Bollinger wasn’t cheap, after all, and I didn’t want to waste it if I wasn’t fully into it.

  Plan B wound up being a cold bottle of Corona Light from the fridge. Make that two bottles. I chugged half a bottle and brought both bottles to the bathroom and set them next to the tub. The tub was half-full already, but it would still be another few minutes. I stripped off my clothes and threw them in the hamper in the closet. I inspected myself in the mirror and found the red marks on my neck were slowly fading away. It was about time. At Cougar’s men paid for the fantasy of perfect bodies and flawless skin, not red and purple welts and scratch marks. I figured those marks had probably cost me a few hundred in tips in the last week.

  I grabbed my half Corona out of the bathroom and headed out to my balcony while the tub finished filling up. The desert breeze felt good on my naked body, and the beer gave me a cozy warm feeling in my torso. I took another healthy chug of beer and leaned over the railing. The traffic on I-15 whooshed by underneath me. A half-mile away, I could see little people walking up and down the Strip, beginning their night’s revelries. Paris was lit up beautifully, and if I squinted I could make out a few couples enjoying window-side tables at the Eiffel Tower Restaurant.

  It was then that I tried to scream. No sound came out. All I knew was that an immensely powerful gloved hand had wrapped itself over my mouth. The other arm got underneath my left shoulder and behind my neck, freezing me in a kind of half-nelson. I couldn’t move. I squirmed and flailed, but the man behind me had me pinned to the railing. He pushed himself against me. The smell of his big leather glove filled my nose, and I realized then that he was trying to suffocate me. Pure panic set in as he pressed me harder to the railing. I struggled more and more to suck in air through his massive gloved hand, but his strength and weight were squeezing the remaining breath out of me.

  A survival instinct told me he only thing I could do was succumb. I silently sucked in as much air as I could and gradually stopped struggling. I made my body go limp in his arms, hoping he’d let up on his iron grasp of my neck. Through some miracle, he bought it. He squeezed himself against me once more for good measure and then held me up straight. He had let go of my neck, but he was still pressing against me with his whole body. A sicko, for sure. Sure enough, he shifted his weight a bit and took one of his gloves off to get a better feel of my body. He reached up and squeezed my left breast with his bare hand and grunted softly. When he shifted a bit to free up his other hand, I knew I had a tiny opening. In one motion, I twisted out of his grasp and with all my remaining strength I clocked him on the side of the head with my Corona bottle. He never saw it coming.

  He let out a low roar and stumbled to one knee, holding his face with both of his hands. A mixture of blood and beer foam poured out between his fingers, but I didn’t stick around to play nurse. When our eyes met, I saw something eerily familiar, but with his bloody hands covering half his face I couldn’t quite place him. I bolted from the balcony and ran for the door. He was still making animal noises, and I didn’t look back. I grabbed my car keys and my cell phone from the table in the hallway and flew straight out the door.

  I was still huffing it when I got to the elevator. Amazingly it was still on my floor, right where I had left it five minutes earlier. A minor miracle. I jumped in and frantically pushed the button for the garage about a hundred times, as though the elevator would be able to sense my urgency.

  The inside panels of the elevator doors were mirrors, and when they finally closed I found myself staring at the reflection of a panicked woman whose chest was heaving in and out. She happened to be buck naked as well. Shit.

  My mind raced. I wasn’t going back to my apartment to get clothes, that was for sure. By the time the elevator got down to the garage I hadn’t come up with any sane idea of what to do. But when the doors opened, I decided to make a run for it. Luckily the garage was deserted, and I managed to run to my car without being seen. I got in and pressed the button to close the roof. The cool leather seats felt clammy on my naked butt.

  At that point I wasn’t really thinking about where I was heading, but I started up the car and gunned it. I pulled out of the garage and turned right, and within a minute I was in heavy traffic on Flamingo Road heading towards the Strip. I slouched a bit in my seat so anyone seeing my naked shoulders through the window would just assume I had a tube top on.

  In front of me lay Caesar’s Palace on the left and Bellagio on the right. It struck me that a giant, anonymous hotel might be the perfect place to lie low for awhile and regroup. There was just one problem. Even in Las Vegas, I couldn’t check into a hotel naked—especially without any ID or money, both of which I’d left behind in my purse. The light changed, and I followed traffic straight across the Strip thinking that having some kind of plan would be nice.

  Where was I going? After I crossed Las Vegas Boulevard I made a left turn, almost at random, into the Flamingo hotel’s parking structure. The only coherent thought I formed was that if someone wanted to find me, they wouldn’t look for me here. I wound my way up through the dark parking structure and found a semi-deserted spot on the sixth floor.

  I turned off the car and tried to calm
myself down. Amazingly, my most pressing problem at that moment was not that I was completely nude. Nor was it my lack of money, credit cards or ID. Instead, in my nervousness the Corona was going right through me. Suddenly I had to pee worse than anything, and my search for clothes and cash and ID would have to wait. I double-checked to make sure the coast was clear and squatted behind my car. Through the openings in the parking structure I could see the mountains in the distance and a jumbo jet about a mile away making its final approach. As it passed, I imagined all the little heads in the plane’s windows gawking at me while I peed.

  I got back in my car and thought about how to get some clothes and money. There was a time and place for heroism and self-reliance, but when you’re naked and broke you don’t have a lot of options. It was time to beg someone for a favor. Who, I wondered, would be least offended by my current state of affairs?

  I thought of Carlos first. He’d seen me naked three or four times a week for at least two years. But he would be at work by now and probably couldn’t get away. Besides, he’d never let me live it down. And I wasn’t sure I wanted to owe Carlos a favor. The rest of my dancer friends would be working by now, too, I figured. I thought of Mike. He’d seen me naked, but I wasn’t sure he remembered that he’d seen me naked. It didn’t feel right to call him.

  An unpleasant sensation began roiling in the pit of my stomach. Somehow my gut knew before my brain did: Jeff Katz would come and help me. He had already seen me nude dozens of times, so there was no issue of modesty. But did I want to owe him a favor either? Screw it. I could kiss him on the cheek, grab his nuts and call it even. Plus, I needed to talk to him anyway.