Lucky Break

by Deborah Coonts

  Designed in the European style toward pleasure, pampering, and fabulous food, Cielo had no gaming—a risky move in Vegas, but one true to my heart … in many ways. Jean-Charles’s restaurant was our calling card, lending just that perfect bit of European flair.

  My blood pressure eased, my mind stopping whirling, life receded enough for calm to ooze in. Hotels I could do. Life, not so much.

  I clapped my hands, getting the attention of some staff that had been on hand to help with the party and now huddled in the corner. “Smiles. And get some music playing in here. I’m feeling the need for some country. I bet you guys can find the right playlist.” Someone had stolen Holt Box’s chance to make more music; the least we could do is honor him by playing his hits. Briefly I wondered it that would be in bad taste, but what better way to honor the singer? Either way, someone would complain.

  That much I knew. And that I could handle.

  The elevator waited, its maw open. Techs from the coroner’s Office shuttled their equipment using the service elevator, then wheeled it through the lobby, the metal carts clattering on unsteady wheels. So much for subtle.

  And so much for calm. Real life had an ugly habit of intruding into my Las Vegas make-believe where fantasies were our job.

  With an eerie sense of déjà-vu, as the first strains of Holt Box’s deep voice singing one of his hits about trucks and Texas filtered over the sound system, I stepped into the elevator and made another solo ride to the top floor. No excited voices greeted me, no Frank Sinatra songs … no party. Someone had even turned off the light illuminating the Van Gogh. I flipped it back on as I walked by.

  Jean-Charles stood behind the bar, his smile back in place—it brightened when he saw me. He popped the top on a longneck Bud and placed it in front of his only customer, Dane. The long, tall drink of Texas smooth had stepped back into my life as seamlessly as he’d left it. We had unfinished business. And, as with most of the relationships in my life where trust had been broken, and even some where it hadn’t, I had no idea how to find an equilibrium again, or even if I wanted to. Not everyone deserved to be a part of my adventure—a lesson I still had trouble with.

  Dane had turned when I walked in, his gun at the ready. When he saw it was me, he lowered his gun, then his hand closed around his beer. I could see the questions, the unfinished issues between us, in his emerald eyes. Time had given me some perspective, but I no longer felt the need to smooth those waters. His dark wavy hair had grayed a touch at the temples in the intervening months. It looked good on him.

  Without the party excitement to mask them, my steps echoed off the hardwood. A much more somber air filled the room, although Jean-Charles seemed to have once again found his footing. Filling the crystal flute next to his on the bar with matching rosé bubbles, he gave me a look with a flicker of horror in his eyes as I took a stool across from him. “Such a bad thing, this. How is your father? And your friend?”

  “My father is in the clear. Teddie, not so much.”

  “Did he kill Holt?”

  “Means, motive, and opportunity,” I muttered, mimicking Teddie. I caught Dane’s sideways glance. For a moment, our eyes met. We were thinking the same thing: barring divine intervention, Teddie was screwed.

  “What is this? Means, motive, what?”

  I gave him the Hollywood version of police work.

  “But you do not think he did this?”

  “No.” I didn’t go into the details. No matter what I believed, it was still nothing but theory. Even someone who failed geometry knew that wasn’t enough.

  “You will fight for him, non?” Jean-Charles’s voice remained impassive, but I could tell from the tic in his cheek that he wasn’t feeling the love. “If I had only said no to Mr. Box.”

  I grabbed his hand, fisting it in mine. “Don’t for one minute think this was your fault, or that you had anything to do with it. Whoever killed Holt Box would have found another way.” Or another victim, if my theory held water, but right now it was just that, another theory. I’d be careful, but not paranoid.

  He looked stricken. “I know that is to make me feel better, but I’m not sure it does.”

  Crestfallen, I let go of his hand. “I know what you mean. Evil finds a way.”

  “You must fix that.” The conflict in his eyes wasn’t mirrored in the tone of his voice.

  “Me? This is Romeo’s little problem. And what ever happened to you wanting me to stay out of the fray?”

  Dane snickered, and I elbowed him.

  Jean-Charles motioned to the cowboy to my right. “See, he sees this also. While I do not respect Theodore, nor do I like him, he doesn’t deserve to be guilty if he is not.”

  “A matter for the police.” The color rose in my cheeks; I could feel the warmth. I had no idea why this got my back up, but it did. All three of us knew that I couldn’t keep my nose out of the investigation even if the fate of the world hung in the balance. So why was I arguing?

  “Romeo is a better detective when you are with him.” Jean-Charles looked to Dane for agreement. He got it—a quick nod. “But…” Jean-Charles stopped, waiting for my full attention. He didn’t have to wait but a nanosecond. “You must not go where you will be in any danger. Just talking. Okay?”

  Ah, there was the payoff. I wanted his concern. Was I still that needy, that insecure? No, but I wasn’t above liking the expression of his concern. “Sure.”

  Dane choked. We all knew I lied, but somehow we all felt better. I knew I did, and I could see it in the men’s faces as well. Jean-Charles had said what he needed to. I’d heard it. And Dane had gotten a laugh out of it.

  Jean-Charles dusted his hands, as if dispensing with an unsavory topic. “Then, a toast.” He raised his glass. “To Holt Box.”

  We clinked and fell quiet for a moment. A man had died here. And not just any man. An icon of the country-music world died here. I wondered if Jean-Charles had any idea what that might mean. Rabid fans, like true believers, would make pilgrimages from far and wide to offer homage in a mecca of this sort. Country music and fine dining—an interesting Venn diagram. How large would the overlap be? Or were they mutually exclusive?

  “Let me cook for you.” Jean-Charles smiled, a look of understanding softening his eyes. “It will make us both feel better.”

  “Our own wake for Holt Box?”

  “Or a celebration of our life, which is short. Our own little party, non?”

  “A celebration.” I clinked my flute with his. “Every moment of every day. Even the not-so-good days.”

  “Vraiment.”

  The bubbles brought some happy back, not much, but enough to know we’d get through this and life would still be wonderful.

  Teddie. Now, he was another story. Too many had been railroaded in the court of public opinion. I couldn’t let that happen to him.

  Dane swiped his beer off the bar as he backed off the stool. “I know my exit cue. I’ll be out front.”

  I relented and gave him a smile. “Thank you.”

  He nodded and made himself scarce.

  “You called this man to come sit with me. Why?” Jean-Charles adopted a conversational tone, but his eyes told me the question was anything but casual.

  “A momentary weakness.” A perfunctory reply to stave off worry. Then I stopped. He needed to know my suspicions, even if they proved to be false, as I so desperately hoped. “Not true. A man who hates me was released from prison a few days ago. No one bothered to mention it. I’m worried he might be targeting people close to me. You need to be careful.”

  Disbelief rearranged his perfect features, puckering his kissable lips. “Who could hate you? That is silly.”

  “And that is why I love you. Well, that and a million other reasons.” Avoiding my flute, I leaned across the bar and kissed him. With my lips still next to his, I murmured, “And that’s why I called Dane.” Carefully finding my perch once again, I put my phone on the bar between us and played the message. The evil laugh still raised the h
air on the back of my neck.

  It also sobered my chef. “I see. And the phone number?”

  “I gave it to Romeo and I have Jeremy tracing it.”

  “You haven’t called it back?”

  I drained my bubbly, then motioned for a refill. “Didn’t want to give him the satisfaction. But you need to get used to hanging around with Dane.”

  “He is to be my shadow? This is right, non?”

  “Yes. And yes.”

  For once, he didn’t argue. “I am hoping he knows how to use a knife.”

  “One can only hope.” My Frenchman and I were picturing different uses for that knife, but I didn’t mention it.

  “Papa!” The excited voice preceded by a fraction of a second a tiny human projectile who startled us both. Christophe Bouclet, followed by his aunt, with Dane rounding out the trio.

  As Jean-Charles stepped from behind the bar and squatted, opening his arms for his son, I gave Dane a nod and he disappeared back to his post out front.

  The boy launched himself into his father’s embrace almost toppling him over. The laughter, the joy on Jean-Charles’s face drove away the demons. The love between the two of them was something special, perhaps enhanced by the loss of Jean-Charles’s wife in childbirth.

  Desiree, Jean-Charles’s twin sister, slipped in next to me, her breath coming in rapid gasps. “That boy. He sneaked out while I wasn’t looking. He is a Bouclet, never wanting to miss the party. Mon Dieu!” As she caught her breath, realization dawned. “Where is the party? It is now, oui?”

  I gave her the low points, but not the particulars. With Teddie and jail weighing heavy, I just couldn’t go through it again.

  Desiree sobered, her delicate features pressing into a look of horror, her blue eyes dark and serious. So much like her brother. “My brother, he is safe? This man, the killer, he does not want Jean, does he?”

  I really couldn’t say, so I told her what she wanted to hear. “No.”

  “This is good.” Relief smoothed her concern, and her face returned to its previous perfection. With all her easy French sophistication, I wanted to hate her, but that would just prove I was as shallow as I feared. So I didn’t. “If anyone wished to kill my brother, all they would have to do is take his child. He would perish.”

  A horrible sinking feeling hollowed my chest. “Don’t even say such a thing!”

  She crossed her other arm across her stomach, then rested her elbow on it. “I am sorry. When I see them together. How much my brother needs his son. How he almost did not survive losing his wife. And now he has opened his heart to you. We did not think he ever would. You see, my brother, he is a man of passion. He loves deeply. So loss is lethal.”

  I heard the subtle warning in her words. If I left him, perhaps it would kill him, but she would kill me for sure. I could live with that. My heart filled as we watched father and son giggle and tease.

  Jean-Charles, his son in his arms clinging to him like a monkey, joined Desiree and me. As if leaping from one tree to another, Christophe launched himself from his father toward me. Prepared, I caught him, grunting theatrically with the effort. “You have been eating too much of your father’s cooking.”

  The boy giggled as he raised his shirt. “I am still skinny.”

  I staggered a bit, pretending my legs buckled. “Then I am old and weak.”

  The boy howled in delight. “But, Papa, where is the party? I want to dance.” Sometimes the tone in the boy’s voice so matched his father’s it was eerie.

  “You should be in bed dreaming the good dreams,” Jean-Charles said, trying for stern and failing.

  “But I want to dance with Lucky.” The boy pouted as his eyes flirted—the art of manipulation, a French birthright and a game he already played well.

  The quartet had packed up, so Jean-Charles cued some music through the system. La Vie en Rose. My eyes met his, finding the joke there. A cabaret song roundly despised by the French and loved with equal passion by the Americans. Personally, it was one of my favorites. Life through rose-colored glasses. My kind of life.

  And so we danced, with me holding the boy tight to my chest, his legs around my waist, and his arms around my neck. He hummed to the tune, exposing his father’s affinity for the song. His breath soft on my cheek, his hands fisted in my Pahmina, he touched a side of myself I didn’t know. A fluttering near my heart. Something primal, deep … maternal. Me. The one who couldn’t be trusted with a pet.

  As the last strains of music drifted around us, the boy tightened his grip, almost cutting off my air. “Again!”

  Ah, yes, just like his father.

  Thankfully, Jean-Charles plucked the boy from my arms. “Non. One is enough. You must get to bed.” Jean-Charles’s voice turned stern. “And mind your tante. You leave without her again, and you will be punished.”

  The boy knew when the battle was lost. Besides, it was three adults to his one half. On a normal day, the adults probably still would lose, but today was far from normal. Perhaps the boy could sense that in our faces and our voices. “Yes, sir.”

  “How are you finding your accommodations at Cielo?” I asked Desiree.

  “It is a lovely hotel. So European in its refinement, in the special touches. You have thought of everything. It is a bit—how do you say it?—odd to be staying here alone. Last night, the building it makes noises, oui? Very late I thought I heard the elevator running. My imagination, it plays tricks. I know there are guards and we are safe. I am used to hotels being full of people and sounds.”

  “The guards, they patrol,” I said. “And tonight there will be some police here, watching.”

  “As children, she never liked to be alone. She has not outgrown this.” Jean-Charles teased his twin.

  “You’ll be all right tonight?” I asked.

  “Of course. I have my nephew to protect me.” She tickled Christophe and he squirmed in laughter, pretending to push her hand away.

  With kisses and hugs in the dramatic fashion of five-year-olds we all said goodnight and bid Christophe adieu.

  “Come.” Jean Charles extended his hand as he stepped around the bar. “Now, about that party; you must be hungry.”

  “Famished.” I let him lead me toward the kitchen. Careful not to disturb the crime scene, we wove our way around the yellow tape to the stove.

  I perched on the stool he pulled next to the stove, out of the way, but where I could be close and watch a master at work. “The cops have released the crime scene?”

  “Oui.”

  “So we’re waiting on the clean up,” I muttered to myself. Given what Romeo told me, there wasn’t anything to be gained here.

  Jean-Charles gathered food from the various refrigerators below the counter to his right, presenting a very fine French backside. While I valued him for the intangibles, I wasn’t above enjoying the package they came in, so I took a moment to enjoy the view. Arms full, he deposited his load on the prep table and set to work. When it came to food, he had a single-minded dedication reminiscent of my own. He cooked it, I consumed it—a great team.

  “They dusted for fingerprints, took a few knives that my staff indicated Mr. Box had been using. The staff was still prepping and serving the chilled appetizers. The stove was not yet in use. Holt worked over there.” He motioned toward the prep area near the walk-in refrigerator with a wooden spoon dripping something dark that smelled delicious. “We were not yet cooking, so they saw no need to keep me out of this section of the kitchen.”

  I knew what he wasn’t saying, what he didn’t want to say—the cops didn’t find any blood here. No blood. I shuddered and closed my mind to visuals.

  Teddie.

  Watching Jean-Charles prepare dinner, I was glad there’d been no blood and the space had been cleaned back to its normal spit-and-polish perfection.

  While he was occupied, I stepped over to the taped-off sections of the kitchen. The pool of blood, now a dark maroon … almost brown in color, with tiny dark drips leading away. The d
rips were elongated, the thin tail of them pointing toward the back of the kitchen. My eyes followed the trail as I imagined a scenario, leaning so I could see the trail extending around the corner. It looked like it disappeared through the hanging curtain of thick plastic vertical strips, into the refrigerator.

  “Is the walk-in normally only covered with the plastic curtain?”

  Jean-Charles didn’t turn to look. “When we are cooking, yes.”

  Someone could’ve waited for Holt Box in the fridge or near, stabbed him, then filtered into the flow of a still-new staff, and worked their way out of the kitchen unnoticed.

  I’d love to know how my theory shaped up with the one the coroner would pull together—and how the timelines gelled. Did I notice the man in the dinner jacket easing out of the kitchen at about the right time to have murdered Holt Box? What time had it been?

  All good questions with answers yet to come. So now I went back to my stool and focused on my life, my chef, and our party of two. Life gave us precious little time alone as it was.

  Hard to believe it took a murder for this to be possible.

  My life needing fixing in the worst way.

  Wracking my brain, I searched for a happier topic—one that didn’t involve blood and knives and dead country-western singers … and implicated former lovers.