“Carl Masser?” Jake asked.
The man nodded.
Jake introduced Roberta and himself.
“Mr. Masser, do you have a minute to talk?” Jake asked. “It’s about Margaret Winston.”
“Maggie?” Something desperate flashed in his eyes. “Yeah, sure. Let’s get off the site.” He turned, calling out to the man who had stopped them. “Dilly, I’m outta here. Send the men home in an hour.” He removed the hardhat, ran fingers through his thick black hair, then tossed the hat to the man.
Masser led the way to a bar across the street called The Gang Box. If the name didn’t give it away for a construction crew hangout, then the dusty clientele, hardhats since replaced by billed caps with lumberyard and building material logos, did. The dozen or so men openly watched Roberta as she crossed the dim room and took a seat at an empty table. A miniskirted waitress appeared with an icy bottle of Dos Equis and placed it in front of Masser.
“Thanks, Barb,” Masser said to the waitress. He downed half of it in one long pull.
Roberta and Jake declined a drink.
“Either of you related to Maggie?” Masser asked.
“No.”
“You from the cops?”
“No.”
“Then who the hell are you?” Masser looked from Jake to Roberta. “What do you want?”
“We’d like to talk to you about her.”
“Yeah? That’s what you said before. Here I am. So talk.”
“Mr. Masser,” Roberta began, looking at the ceiling, “this is going to sound really bizarre…”
He tipped his head, waiting.
“I’ve been having visions…psychic visions, and I think your fiancée is in them.”
Masser stared at her, incredulous.
“I think Maggie’s been kidnapped. That she’s being held captive by a man…a very big man with a beard—”
Masser turned to Jake and asked, “What’da you do?”
“Psychiatrist.”
“She your patient?” He jerked his head toward Robbi.
Jake tensed. “Look, Mister—”
Then Masser laughed, cutting Jake off. “Bizarre, she says? That’s fucking crazy.” His eyes were hard as he turned back to stare at Roberta. “You took me away from an overtime job for this? You think this is funny? You don’t honestly expect me to believe this crock of shit?”
Jake stood, took hold of Robbi’s arm, and said, “Come on, let’s go.”
She put her hand over Jake’s, stalling. “He’s keeping her somewhere in the mountains.”
“Oh, yeah? Well, with the entire Sierra Nevada range at our back door, she should be a cinch to find.”
“Roberta…” Jake said, urging her up.
“She was taken from an alley near the Stardust Lounge. I don’t care if you believe me or not, I saw it.”
“Jesus fucking Christ,” Masser said, shaking his head, his expression unreadable.
Roberta was halfway to her feet when Masser stopped them.
“Hey, wait,” he said quickly. “What you just said about the Stardust—look, give a sec to digest this, okay? You come waltzing in telling me my girl’s been snatched by some big, bearded dude and your proof is a—what did you call it—a vision? I’m a wreck. I’m trying to cope with Maggie’s disappearance, I’m on overtime with the club, and the cops are leaning on me. I can’t sleep or eat. I’m running on caffeine, booze, and sheer tension. Then two complete strangers pop up out of the blue and throw stories of the strange and unexplained at me—now, how the hell am I supposed to react?”
“I know,” Roberta said. “I don’t understand any of this myself, Mr. Masser.”
“Carl. It’s Carl.” He ran an impatient hand through his hair. “Shit, I don’t believe in this psychic mumbo jumbo, but I’ll tell you something—at this point, if it gets me closer to Maggie, or sheds some light on what happened to her, I’d believe in flying saucers. So far the cops haven’t come up with a damn thing. I—I don’t know what to do. I’m going outta my fuck—oh, hey, I’m sorry, Miss Paxton. Excuse my language, I’m not thinking straight.” He pointed to her chair. “Talk to me. Please.”
Jake and Roberta sat again.
“Do you know the Stardust Lounge?” Jake asked.
“The bar on Sierra? Sure. Before we met, Maggie used to stop there after work sometimes.” Carl turned to stare at Roberta. “What was she wearing that night?”
“A white blouse and black skirt. She was smoking one of those long, thin cigarettes that are popular now. She drank whiskey neat.”
“You weren’t in the bar that night? And you didn’t know her before she disappeared?”
“I never laid eyes on her. I was a patient in the hospital the night she disappeared.”
“Washoe Med,” Jake added. “She’d had a serious accident and was recovering from it.”
Carl seemed paler. He stared at Roberta, his face an intricate pattern of emotions. “What the hell’s going on here? Why you?”
“I don’t know.”
“What can I do? Tell me what I can do to help,” Carl said, leaning forward.
“Did she say anything to you about someone watching her, following her? A big man in particular?” Jake asked. “Did she give you any indication that she was afraid?”
“No,” he said, shaking his head. “She works swing shift at the Golden Club five days a week. Eight to two. Blackjack dealer. Came straight home. We didn’t get to see a helluva lot of each other. I have to be up at five. I’d usually try to listen for her, y’know, to make sure she got in okay.”
“You live together?”
“Yeah.”
“Did she come home that night?”
“Obviously not. Damn,” Masser said, clunking down the bottle, “there’s nothing I can tell you that I haven’t already told the cops.”
“Is there anyone we can contact?” Jake asked. “Friends, relatives?”
“Sure, I can get you names and numbers.” Masser turned to Robbi. “Tell me what you see. Tell me everything.”
“Carl, I can’t tell you much more than what I’ve already said. It’s not clear to me exactly what’s happening.”
“Has she asked for me?” he said softly.
Robbi glanced at Jake, then looked down and shook her head. “But,” she said quickly, “that doesn’t mean she hasn’t. I don’t see and hear everything. Bits and pieces.”
A frown veed Masser’s brow. “What’s he doing to her? Tell me what he’s doing to her.”
Robbi blanched. This was one reason Jake had been reluctant to let her talk with Masser. He’d anticipated the questions, knowing the difficulty Roberta would have responding to them.
“Carl,” Jake began, “Roberta’s under a great deal of stress. This is very hard on her. You understand she can’t answer questions like that…here…now.”
“Okay. Okay.” Masser pulled a red grease pencil from his back pocket, tore a cocktail napkin in half and scribbled a phone number on it. He pushed it across the table to Robbi and handed her the pencil and the other half of the napkin. “Could I have yours? Please.”
“I think—” Jake began.
“It’s all right, Jake.” She wrote out her home number.
Masser signaled the waitress for another drink.
Robbi stood.
Jake and Masser rose.
“I have a vested interest in this,” Masser said. “The missing woman happens to be my fiancée, remember? We were supposed to get married at the end of the job. I’m about to go outta my mind with worry. The cops are doing nothing.” He turned to Roberta. “You’re my only link to her. You can’t pop into my life, tell me Maggie’s been kidnapped, then just say adios.”
Roberta looked up into Masser’s strong-boned face, a face that now looked about to crumble. “I wouldn’t do that. We’ll talk. Soon.”
They left Masser in the bar and stood outside on B Street, the setting sun burning into their eyes. Jake put on his mirrored sunglasses and Rob
bi held a hand to her forehead, screening the bright rays.
“You don’t know a damn thing about him,” Jake said, his voice sounding tight. “Be careful, all right?”
Roberta faced him, a strange, enigmatic expression on her face. “I don’t want to go home yet. Can we talk?”
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
With their backs to the sun, they strolled east along Victorian Square. A slight breeze whispered against Robbi’s face. A hansom carriage conveying tourists through the town square passed them on the cobbled lane. Robbi quietly took in the sights. Trees, shrubs, and bright flowers, black wrought-iron lampposts, spiked railings, and white lattice gazebos made up Victorian Plaza. Ahead she could see the new amphitheater filling with people.
A dull ache in her ankle made her slow her pace. Jake noticed, offered his arm. They entered John Ascuaga’s Nugget, made their way through the teeming casino to Trader Dick’s and took a booth in the cocktail lounge away from the band.
Roberta’s mind kept returning to the women in the photographs and the visions. Something gnawed at her, something that Jake had brought up a few days before.
“You asked me once if I could be clairvoyant at will,” she said.
“You said you couldn’t.”
“I’d like to try again.”
“Tomorrow?”
“I’ll be tied up all day in a rummage sale for the center, but tomorrow night’s okay. Can you come over around eight?”
“Eight it is.”
________
They waited to be called for dinner. Robbi sipped the wine, her second, or was it her third? Whatever, the alcohol was taking effect. With the band playing mood songs, she felt relaxed and warm all over, more relaxed than she’d felt in a long, long time.
“Robbi, tell me about the other experiences. The ones when you were young.”
She toyed with a cocktail napkin. “My grandmother was the first. She lived in Rhode Island, nearly three thousand miles away. I couldn’t have been more than three at the time. I saw her fall down the cellar steps. I don’t remember the details or if I told anyone about it. There was a funeral. Years later I learned she’d broken her hip in the fall and died of exposure on the icy concrete floor. I often wonder, had I said something about what I saw, could she have been saved?”
“Christ, Roberta, you were just a baby. Who would have believed you?”
“Next was my best friend in first grade. Peggy had leukemia. I knew she was going to die. Everyone knew it. One day I was in the school lunchroom and suddenly all the activity around me stopped. I saw Peg in her bed with her family gathered all around. I watched as she took her last breath. She died at noon that day.”
Jake laid a hand over her trembling one. “And your brother…?
The mention of Ronnie brought back that crushing feeling in her chest. She felt her throat constrict. “Ronnie drowned. It was an accident. He—” Roberta blinked back the tears that abruptly sprang into her eyes. “I can’t… I can’t talk about Ronnie. Not now anyway. Too much wine, I’ll be blubbering.”
“I understand,” he said. “Only visions of death?”
She nodded. “Once or twice after that, when something would flash across my mind, I ignored it. Wouldn’t let it develop into anything. I managed to repress it—whatever it was. I didn’t understand it, and I sure as hell didn’t want it. Eventually, I stopped having the visions. Until Angela, that is.”
Jake’s hand squeezed hers. She looked over at the man who’d been a companion for the past four days. His gaze met hers and locked. He stared at her with a veiled look that told her nothing, yet made her tremble inside. In the flickering candlelight, his eyes were deep, hypnotic. She returned his stare, seemingly powerless to break contact. She felt something in a hollow part of her glow faintly, embers that had lain smoldering. She was being drawn in by the sheer heat. Mesmerized.
The maitre d’ appeared, informed them their booth was ready.
Robbi was jolted back to awareness. She looked at Jake for some sign that he had felt something of what she’d felt, but he was already standing, buttoning his suit jacket and gazing around the lounge.
________
Jake forced himself back to his present surroundings with the ease of dragging a bucket underwater. For a moment he was completely, utterly lost. Lost? Where? He couldn’t say. Only that it was a very erotic place, warm and fleshy and moist, filled with a specific woman’s scent—and a specific woman. This evening was proving difficult. And only a moment before, her soft voice relating things personal and obviously painful, he’d wanted to draw her into his arms and hold her tenderly.
Over dinner she asked him questions about himself. He told her he grew up in a large house in a small town in central Kansas. The only boy of five kids, fourth in the birth order. Their mother died of a viral infection when he was seven, recasting his three older sisters into a single-parenting role.
“What was it like having three sisters mother you?”
“Heaven and hell. But I had male support. My father and grandfather.”
“What did your father do for a living?”
“Both he and Grandpa were wallpaper hangers. They had a business together.”
Roberta laughed lightly. “So that’s where you got the experience when you were in college.”
“Right.”
“Happy family?”
He smiled. Aside from losing his mother, his childhood had been idyllic. When he spoke of his carefree childhood and wholesome family, Jake saw something in her eyes—envy, a quiet longing.
“Tell me about you,” Jake said.
She talked eagerly about her young sister, spoke briefly of her mother, yet said nothing of her father, her childhood, or her fiancé, the Wall Street Wonder.
“What about your father?”
“Are you trying to spoil this pleasant evening?”
“I met your father about eight years ago at a luncheon. He was the guest speaker.”
“What did you think of him? Not the psychiatrist, but the man?”
“Intense,” Jake said, watching her closely. “Angry.”
She smiled cryptically, then smoothly maneuvered the topic back to him.
By the time they had finished dinner and stepped out of the casino into the plaza, it was nearly ten. The sky to the west, above the ragged, midnight-blue mountain peaks, glowed a luminous shade of ultramarine. At night, with the old-fashioned streetlamps glowing and the dazzling casino lights, the town looked like a movie set. A Dixie band with strumming banjos and clinking tambourines accompanied a barbershop quartet in the large gazebo bandstand directly in front of them.
Roberta leaned into him as they walked back to his car. She was slightly inebriated, which he found charming. Usually nervous and uptight, she was at ease tonight. Her smile, quick to come, lit up her face. This was the real Roberta Paxton. Or, he surmised, as close to what her personality had been like before the accident and all the tumult it had evoked.
He wanted the real Roberta Paxton. Wanted her with a profound ache.
________
On the ride home, Jake was quiet, almost pensive. She stole glances at his firmly set profile and wondered if he was upset with her for drinking too much.
At her door, unwilling to end the evening, she said, “Jake, let’s try the ESP.” She had her key in hand, trying to fit it into the lock with rubbery fingers.
“What? Now?” he said.
“Yes, right now.”
“It’s late.”
“I’m not tired. I feel good.”
“You feel good because you’re tipsy.” He spoke in a flat tone.
“So what if I’m tipsy,” she said defiantly. “It’s been a long time since I’ve been tipsy, or relaxed or…or…” She let the words die away.
“Or what?” he asked quietly.
She shrugged. “It doesn’t matter.”
“We’ll work on it tomorrow night,” Jake said, helping her insert the key in the lock.
Pushing the door open, she turned to step up onto the threshold when her ankle, weak from walking in the plaza, gave out. She felt herself falling, reached out abruptly. Suddenly strong arms were around her waist, twisting her around to face him. He held her against him with her back pressed to the doorframe.
“You okay?”
“No,” she said softly, putting her arms around his neck, leaning into him.
His arms tightened around her. And then she was staring into his eyes, eyes that seemed to harbor a feverish glint. Not sure who made the first move, though she suspected she did, her eyes closed and she felt his lips on hers; at first light and tender, an instant later they were hot and moist and alive with a fierce energy.
The intensity of their passion startled her. So swift, so forceful. What had been building between the two of them these past weeks had reached volatile proportions. She wanted him. Wanted him now before she could think about it.
He moaned, then abruptly pulled away from her.
Robbi opened her eyes and stared at him, questioning.
He shook his head sadly, reached out and tenderly touched her jaw with the tips of his fingers. He lifted her into the entry, turned, and was gone.
She sank to the floor, her legs too weak to hold her.
________
At the corner of Roberta’s street, at the stop sign, he gripped the steering wheel and shook it viciously, then laughed ironically. It seemed he spent a lot of time at this miserable stop sign, contemplative time, time spent easing the pressure in his crotch.
She had a guy in another part of the country. Over six months separated. Undoubtedly she was lonely, perhaps longing for a man’s touch, but definitely intoxicated and therefore not in full control of herself. Tonight she wanted him. But tomorrow, sober, she would probably regret everything. It had been up to him to draw the line.
So what was he, for chrissake, the policeman of logic and emotion?
He laughed again. Only one other time in his life had he felt such wanting. Such obsession.
Oh, God, he was in trouble.
Mortal Crimes 1 Page 78
