by Nancy Warren
For a second his lips thinned and she saw the petulant teenager she’d known too well. Then he was back to being Mr. Jovial. “Of course, honey. Sure. Tell you what, you and Linda come on by the house tomorrow for breakfast. I’ll make you my famous pancakes.” He grinned over at Tiffany. “My daughter can be my sous chef.”
“All right.” She knew there would be a reckoning and she was going to have to set Dwayne D. Diamond straight on a few things. Like the fact that her daughter was not a bargaining chip. And that he was never going to get a cent out of Toni. Tomorrow morning would be good.
“Well, then girls, let me walk you to your car.”
“Aren’t you coming?” Tiffany asked, sounding disappointed.
“No, honey. I can’t. I’ve got a business meeting tonight. I’ll be home in an hour or so. Don’t you worry. I’m sure your momma can drop you off.” He put an arm around Tiffany. “We’ll have a good talk in the morning, before your mom and grandma get there.”
She nodded, so smitten with him she couldn’t even see how selfish he was.
He walked out with them, keeping up most of the conversation. Linda was uncharacteristically silent for which Toni was grateful. She knew that if her mom started talking to Dwayne, it wouldn’t be small talk.
They got to her rental car and he said good night to Linda, and “See you in a little bit” to Tiffany. They climbed in the car and when she would have followed, he put a hand on her arm. “Look, Toni, I really need to talk to you. This business opportunity is a very time-limited thing.”
“What’s her name? This business opportunity you’re meeting at,” she glanced at her watch, “eleven at night.”
“I’m meeting Grant Forstman. He’s the owner of the casino and a very well-connected guy.”
She didn’t so much as raise an eyebrow. Of course, he had no idea she knew that Forstman was the man who’d bashed up his precious car and had him thumped only yesterday.
“What exactly is this business opportunity, Dwayne?”
He came closer, dropped his voice even though there was nobody in earshot. “How’d you like to earn a one thousand percent return on your money? In only a few weeks?”
“Anything with that kind of a return is a scam or crooked. Which is it?”
He ran a finger up her arm and stepped even closer. She could smell the Stetson cologne he’d worn forever. See how attractive he was with the tiny crinkles around his eyes. “All I want is to make enough money to start over. I know I’ve made mistakes. I look at that girl of ours and it breaks my heart I don’t know her better. You do this one thing for me and I’ll be able to leave Vegas. I’m thinking maybe I’ll come home. We should be a family, again, Toni. A real family.”
He was angling his head, moving his lips infinitesimally closer to hers, exactly like a scene from a movie. “Dwayne, are you seriously hitting on me?”
The angling for her mouth stopped. “I find you very attractive, and you are the mother of my child. I am not hitting on you. I’m telling you I want another chance.”
She resettled her bag over her arm. “Kidnapping my daughter and trying to use her to extort money out of me is not the best way to woo me. Just FYI.”
And then she turned from him and got into the rental car, banging the door behind her.
“There’s plenty of room at the hotel, Tiff. Why don’t you come and stay with your grandmother and me? They’ve got the movie stations. We could watch a movie while Grandma gambles your inheritance away.”
“I—I can’t. I promised Dad I’d stay tonight.”
She knew better than to push. Seeing Dwayne tonight had reminded her all too well how stubborn a girl could be at sixteen. “Okay. But you call if you change your mind or want to talk.”
“I will. Thanks, Mom.”
They dropped her off and Linda called out to her, “Tell Sunny and the Three Chers to call me. Your mother and I can give them all a makeover. I think we’ve got some products that could really add to their show.”
“I will,” she said in a tone that sounded more like, “I’d rather eat maggots.”
Toni turned to Linda. “Mother,” she said.
“Yes, honey?”
“Can I apologize right now for what I put you through when I was sixteen years old?”
She nodded. “Doesn’t feel too good, does it?”
She shook her head. “Sometimes being a mother sucks.”
Linda nudged her. “It’s still the best job in the world, though.”
“Yeah. I know.”
“Do I have to go choke down Dwayne’s pancakes tomorrow?”
“You can talk makeup with Brent and do makeovers. Hopefully Tiff can help you and Dwayne and I can come to an understanding. As in, he needs to understand that he is not getting one penny out of me, and I will not have my daughter used like a poker chip.”
There was a short silence. “Okay. For that I can choke down pancakes.”
But they never did get their pancakes.
Toni and Linda were getting ready to leave for breakfast the next morning when Toni’s cell phone rang. “It’s Tiffany,” she said, surprised. Tiff rarely called. She always texted.
“Probably telling us Dwayne needs us to pick up pancake mix.”
“Shhh,” she said then answered. “Hi, Tiff.”
“Mom, you’ve got to get right over here.” Her daughter sounded hysterical.
Every nurturing, child-protecting gene in her body leapt to attention. She had her car keys in her hand even as she said, “What is it?”
“It’s Dad. He’s been arrested.”
“Arrested? What for?”
“Murder.”
Chapter Seven
“The only way I’d be caught without makeup is if my radio fell in the bathtub while I was taking a bath and electrocuted me and I was in between makeup at home. I hope my husband would slap a little lipstick on me before he took me to the morgue.”
— Dolly Parton
“I can’t leave yet, I haven’t finished my face,” Linda cried. She had one false eyelash glued to her lid and the other hanging from one finger.
“Tiff needs us. Dwayne got hauled away for murder.”
“Oh, for Pete’s sake,” Linda said, and pushed the other eyelash on so rapidly it went on all crooked.
“You can finish your makeup in the car,” Toni cried as she ran ahead to press the button to call the elevator.
“What is the second commandment of Lady Bianca’s Ten Commandments?” Linda asked as she tottered along behind her daughter.
“Never apply cosmetics in a moving vehicle,” she replied. “But Dwayne’s gone and broken one of God’s Ten Commandments, and I think that might trump Lady Bianca’s.”
“Oh, I feel like a caterpillar is crawling up my eyelid,” Linda complained, trying to fix the faulty lash.
“Who could Dwayne have killed?”
“I always thought he’d end up killed by a jealous husband to tell you the truth. I never thought he’d do the killing.”
“No.” Toni felt as though her world had tipped sideways. The elevator came and they stepped in it. The downward swoop did nothing to restore her sense of balance. “He’s a cheat and a liar and he’d steal and swindle if he had the opportunity. But I can’t see Dwayne as a killer.”
“You haven’t known him in a long time. People change.”
“But right when he’s got his daughter staying with him? Why wouldn’t he wait until she was back home if he was going to kill someone?”
“I don’t know. Maybe it was an accident.” Then she shrieked. “Oh, darn it, I just poked myself in the eye. Ow. Oh, now my mascara’s going to run.”
Toni drove as fast as she dared to Brent Hodgkin’s house and pulled into the drive. Whatever drama had taken place was over. The house looked as respectable and dull as always.
She and Linda ran to the door. She’d barely rung the bell when the front door opened and Tiffany tumbled into her mother’s arms. She’d obviously been cry
ing. “Mom. It was awful. They came and they had guns, like on TV. And they took him away in a cop car.” She sobbed. “My daddy’s not a murderer!”
Toni hugged her daughter to her, feeling the young body shake with sobs. “I don’t think he’s a murderer either, honey,” she soothed. After a while, when Tiffany was calmer, she asked the obvious question. “Who is he accused of killing?”
“That awful man. The one who crashed into our car.”
Toni got a very bad feeling in her gut. “You mean the casino owner?”
“Yes. Grant Forstman.”
The man Dwayne had said he had a meeting with late last night.
“Let’s sit down and figure out what to do first,” Toni said.
As she spoke the words, Brent came out of the kitchen in a navy blue robe, pajamas and slippers. The gorgeous Sunny from last night had morphed back into the dull-looking Brent. “Please, come in and have some coffee.”
Then he looked behind Toni to her mom. “Linda, I think there’s a spider on your cheek. And what happened to your eye? Did someone hit you?”
Linda put a hand up to the eye she’d poked herself in. “Do you have a bathroom I could use.”
“Yes, of course. You can use my bathroom. It’s got the best lighting.”
While Brent took Linda to show her to his bathroom, Toni led Tiffany into the kitchen and poured them both coffee. When they sat across from each other at the kitchen table she said, “Okay. Tell me every single thing you can remember about last night.”
“Like what?”
“What time did your father get home?”
She shook her head. “I didn’t hear him. I was asleep.”
“And what time did you go to bed?”
“Around midnight. I was waiting up for him, but I had my music on and I fell asleep with my earbuds in. He came in sometime after that but I don’t know when.”
“Did the police say anything?”
“No. First, they asked if he knew Grant Forstman. And he said he did. Then they said they wanted to ask him a few questions down at the station. I did a Google search and found out that Grant Forstman was murdered last night.”
“The cops must have given their names.”
“They did but I don’t remember what they were. It was all so awful.”
“What did your dad say? How did he act?”
At first he looked like he wanted to run away. I could see it in his eyes. He said he didn’t know what they could want with a law-abiding citizen on a weekend morning and he’d better be back in time to make his daughter pancakes. Stuff like that.
Toni imagined he’d been babbling like a fool and Tiffany didn’t know how to repeat all the stupid things he’d said without making him sound like an idiot.
“I don’t know a lot about police procedure, but I don’t think they arrested him. Did they Mirandize him?”
“Read him his rights?” Tiffany took a sip of coffee. “No. I don’t think so. I’m scared, Mom. What are we going to do?”
She sipped coffee and then shook her head. “Honestly, I don’t know.”
“But you have to save him.” She looked so young sitting there. “He’s my dad.”
Toni reviewed her options. Naturally, option #1 was to leave Dwayne D. in police custody so his time would be too occupied in saving his faithless butt to bother her or her daughter.
For several reasons, most of which concerned that daughter, she discarded option #1.
Option #2 was to try and find out whether Dwayne had been arrested and to see if she could get him out of jail.
When Linda arrived in the kitchen with Brent, who had changed into gray sweat pants and a white T-shirt, she said, “Mom, can you take over cooking breakfast? I’ve got to make a phone call.”
“Please,” Brent said, “allow me. I will make you my world famous pancakes. I hope you like pancakes?”
She strongly suspected that they were going to taste exactly like the ones Dwayne had claimed he was going to make. It seemed Dwayne couldn’t get close to anyone without trying to steal something from them. Their heart, their virtue, their daughter. In Brent’s case it seemed it was a purloined pancake recipe.
While the three were busy in the kitchen, Toni took her cell phone out front and settled in the velvet divan, which enfolded her with so much luxury she could imagine for a moment she was at the spa waiting for some delicious treatment to begin.
She selected the number on her phone and pushed send.
“Hey, Toni, what’s up?” Luke had answered on the first ring.
“You didn’t bark Marciano at me like you usually do,” she said.
“You’re a woman with personal problems. I was being sensitive.”
“Don’t let that story get around or you’ll lose your rep as a badass cop.”
“I take it you found her okay.”
“Yeah. I did. Thank you for giving the address.”
“You don’t sound like you’re going to be on the next plane. What’s going on?”
Sometimes it was spooky being involved with a man who saw what you tried to hide and heard what you didn’t say. But sometimes it was wonderful. Depended on the situation.
In this one, having a man a step ahead of the obvious was a real bonus. “I need another favor.” She let out a breath and decided to cut to the chase. “Dwayne’s been picked up in connection with a murder. Tiffany won’t leave until we figure out why and if there’s a way to help him.”
“Murder? That’s pretty serious stuff.”
“I know.”
“Honey, if your ex-husband killed someone he’s in the right place. You have to let the cops do their job.” He said it with an edge as though sometime in the past she might have been a little intrusive in an investigation he was involved in.
“Luke, I don’t like Dwayne D. Diamond. I think he is a thieving, lying, cheating, heart-breaking, self-absorbed no good asshat. But I cannot believe Tiffany’s father is a murderer.” She felt the weight of her daughter’s trust that she could fix Dwayne’s problems. “Worse, Tiffany doesn’t believe it either.”
“Poor kid.”
“Yeah.”
“Have you talked to him yet?”
“No. He was picked up about an hour ago. I want to know what they’ve got on him.”
“You know that the critical time in a murder investigation is the first twenty-four hours. Evidence is fresh, witnesses are clear. Maybe they simply want to interview him.”
“They hauled him down to the station rather than interview him at home. Why?”
He took a second to answer. “Probably because they think he did it.”
“Can you find out what that case is based on? Here’s what I know.” By the time she’d outlined for him the name of the victim and that Dwayne had not only been threatened and beaten by the man a day before the murder but had claimed to have a meeting with him the night he was killed, even she could see that things weren’t looking too good.
Luke obviously shared her dim view of things. “If you find out he is guilty as sin? Then what?”
She tried to imagine that far ahead. “I guess I would hire a defense attorney, make sure he got a fair trial. For Tiffany’s sake.”
“I’ll talk to my buddy. See what I can find.”
“Thanks, Luke.”
“Don’t get your hopes up, Toni. Most people who get picked up for murder did murder somebody.”
“I know.”
“Hang tight. I’ll find out what I can.”
“Thanks, Luke.”
“Oh, and Toni?”
“Yes?”
“Don’t go sticking your nose in where it doesn’t belong.”
She ended the call and rubbed her nose reflectively. Her nose was a little on the large side. It was the beauty flaw she most struggled against. Other women might complain of bad skin or skimpy hair, thunder thighs or a short waist. For Toni her beauty challenge was her nose. She did her best to bring out her other features by wearing heavier eye make
up and brilliant lipstick to draw the eye away, but nothing but surgery would ever make it smaller.
Luke said he liked her nose. He said it gave her character. He also once said, when he was irked, that it was her face’s way of warning everyone in her path that she was one nosy woman.
Right now that nose was tingling. It did that sometimes when she was thinking deeply, having a big idea, trying to sniff out a new recruit or, in this case, a clue as to what had really happened to Grant Forstman.
“Mom,” her daughter called, ending her reverie. “Come and look at this.”
Toni walked back into the kitchen. The smell of frying pancakes filled the air with a comforting aroma. Brent was at the stove, an apron covering him from neck to thigh. Linda was frying bacon in a second pan, her much more voluptuous form also clad in an apron.
Tiffany was sitting at the kitchen table with her laptop. Toni had hauled it with her, reminding her that she needed to keep up with her homework.
“Look.”
Toni sat beside her daughter and read the latest news bulletin that was up on the screen. “The details of the murder are already on the Internet?” she asked, continuously surprised at how fast bad news traveled in the digital age. The site was called Vegas News Underground and the post mixed fact with speculation and editorial comment. She doubted Vegas News Underground complied with the highest journalistic standards, but it was all they had to go on.
Under a flashing slogan that said “Breaking News” was this:
Casino Boss Found Shot to Death
The Double Nugget’s owner, Grant Forstman, was found dead this morning at around seven in his office at the casino. Sources say an associate of Forstman found the body, which had been shot at least twice. Forstman, a frequent sight in his casino, was rarely seen without one of his two body guards.
Police removed security footage and have only said they have a person of interest in custody.
Our sources say Dwayne Diamond, a second-rate country and western singer who was appearing in the Double Nugget Show Lounge, is that person of interest.
Forstman leaves behind a widow, his third wife, Loretta Forstman.
Police have refused to comment on the case, but sources close to the slain man say Diamond and Forstman were seen arguing the night before the murder.
