Lucky Bastard

by Deborah Coonts

  I figured the odds that I would know the dead guy in the lav at better than even.

  One of the flight crew slumped in a seat across from the forward lav. The bars on his shoulders indicated he was the low man on the totem pole. Regardless, I doubted his job description included handling dead bodies. That sounded more like something in my contract. Assuming every job was a stepping-stone to another, I briefly wondered what position mine was preparing me for? Who knew? And it was too terrifying to speculate.

  Our young flight engineer was fast asleep, his legs sticking out in front of him, his hat pulled low over his eyes, his chin resting on his chest, his breath coming in long even pulls. I envied him—only saints and sinners were awake at this hour. And fools like me who unfortunately qualified as neither.

  With a toe, I nudged his leg. “Excuse me?”

  He raised his head and tipped his hat back, exposing the most incredible dark eyes. His face was angles and planes with a square jaw that, in the proper venue, either begged to be hit or kissed. With a sexy two-day stubble and full lips curving into a slight smile, he most likely found his current profession a nice respite from adoring females. Young females. His twentieth birthday couldn’t have been too far in his rearview. Too bad cradle robbing wasn’t within my skill set. Sometimes it was hell to have standards.

  “I’m here to see about your passenger stuck in the lav,” I said, trying to muster a pleasant tone.

  A blank stare. Those puppy-dog eyes.

  Damn. I swallowed hard. “The dead guy?” I prompted, willing my mind to focus. An overactive libido could be such a bother. Wrong time. Wrong place. Wrong guy. Welcome to my world.

  Realization dawned and the young man jumped to his feet. “Sorry.” He wiped his palm on his pant leg before extending his hand. “I’m Benton Miles.”

  A grown-up name for a not-so grown-up, I thought and prayed the words hadn’t come out of my mouth. He still smiled, so I assumed they hadn’t. “Lucky O’Toole. From the hotel.” I took his hand. He had a strong, firm grip.

  His eyes widened a smidge. I swallowed hard.

  “I’ve heard about you,” he said, holding my hand a bit longer than propriety dictated.

  I didn’t know whether that was a good thing or a bad thing and I didn’t really want to know. Pulling my hand from his, I inclined my head toward the lav. “Show me what you got.”

  “It ain’t pretty.”

  “Didn’t expect it would be,” I replied with a bravado that quickly evaporated when I peered into the small space.

  “Christ.” Normally, being right was a good thing—tonight was not one of those times. I knew the guy all right. I knew him well. “Shady Slim Grady. Damn.”

  My heart sank—the Big Boss. The two of them went way back. So far in fact that, had Shady Slim Grady had a normal name, I’m sure I would have been instructed to refer to him as my Uncle Whatever—although, in Vegas that could have led to interesting misinterpretations.

  A poker legend, Shady Slim was bald as a billiard ball, with a ready grin, ubiquitous cowboy hat and alligator kickers. As a young man, he had presided over the birth of Texas hold ’em. Now semiretired from competitive play, he dabbled in the periphery and contented himself with being wined and dined as one of the gods of the game.

  A native Texan hailing from Corpus Christie, he had played that shtick for all it was worth, calling me “little lady” each time he saw me. I’d liked it—especially since I’d never been…little, that is. Probably not much of a lady either, come to think of it. But, in Vegas, nobody noticed—I was lucky that way. And I’d liked him. With an effusive personality, height to match my own, in heels, and a substantial girth that had expanded with the passing of the years, Shady Slim had been larger than life, both figuratively and literally.

  Now it seemed the figurative aspect alone remained. Abandoned by its life force, his body had collapsed in on itself. His bones appeared to bend as if unable to withstand the assault of gravity. He sagged like a puppet with no strings, his height expanding into width. Oozing over the sides of the toilet seat onto the bench underneath, his ample flesh filled the tight space between the walls. His shoulders braced the small space. With legs splayed, his knees pressed against the cabinet under the tiny sink on one side and the outside wall on the other effectively wedging him into the tiny space.

  Aircraft designers! Why they felt compelled to make each lav small enough so everyone could throw up into the sink while still seated on the throne beat the heck out of me. Rather Machiavellian for us larger than normal types. And, I don’t think they anticipated someone would actually die in the bathroom, although I thought that a bit shortsighted. In my experience, people did it all the time. I guessed there were worse ways to go, but, right at the moment, I couldn’t imagine one. Stuck tighter than a cork in a bottle of twenty-year-old wine, Shady Slim’s extrication was going to be very public. Of course, I doubted Shady Slim cared, but Miss Becky-Sue would have a cow.

  I turned to Benton who was fidgeting behind me. “Did Miss Becky-Sue come with him?” I asked, knowing the answer but hoping I was wrong. Wherever Shady Slim went, Miss Becky-Sue trotted four paces behind.

  The kid nodded, a flash of panic lit his eyes. I knew the feeling—I’d tussled with that little bit of Texas trash before. Between you and me, I was still a trifle snakebit—although I would never admit it.

  “They got her in the back there.” The kid stammered, looking a bit wild eyed. “She’s…”

  “I can imagine,” I said, patting him on the knee. “No worries. My shots are up to date, I’ll handle her.”

  After a moment, he rewarded me with a grin. Dimples. Damn.

  Forgetting I was in a plane, I straightened quickly—at six feet plus four-inch heels, I needed a pretty good clearance. Thank God it was a G550 or else I would’ve broken my neck…or perhaps knocked some sense into my empty head. “Call the maintenance department. Get them to tow this beast into a hangar away from prying eyes. Then, ask them to send some folks proficient in dismantling a G550.”

  “Ma’am?”

  I stepped aside and gave the kid a good view of Mr. Grady. “The only way we’re going to get him out of here is to take this lav apart. The door is going to have to come off.” I peered around the side and knocked on the partition. Even I was smart enough to know none of the walls in a plane were load bearing. “And probably this wall as well. We’ll need a crane.”

  “Where are we going to get that?” the young pilot asked.

  “Leave that to me.” I reached for my phone. Very rarely does luck swing my way, but this was one of those times.

  The funeral directors were holding their annual convention in our main ballroom.

  “First, find me some privacy. The cops will have their go, then we’ll deal with getting him out of there.”

  ***

  Like a rabid pit bull, Miss Becky-Sue whirled on me the minute I slid back the stateroom doors, but I was prepared. At least I thought I was. Silly me.

  “You!” she snarled. “This is your fault.” She pointed a long, painted blue talon at me. It reminded me of the knuckled finger of death.

  “Of course it is.” I tried to look appropriately sympathetic. “I’m sorry for your loss, Miss Becky-Sue.”

  I guess she’d been expecting an argument because that stalled her for a moment. Precious seconds I used to gird myself for battle. I had the woman by at least a foot, and a disturbing number of pounds, but she still scared the life out of me. Logical, I can deal with. Hysterical, I can manage—as long as someone hovers nearby with a ready hypodermic or a stun gun. But, Miss Becky-Sue was neither consistently logical nor consistently hysterical…ever. Instead she gyrated wildly between varying emotional extremes. Dealing with her was like riding a roller coaster, just when you thought you’d stabilized, the bottom fell out and you were plunged into oblivion, your stomach in your throat.

  Stretched and tanned, peroxided and waxed, sheathed in fringed leather and cowboy boots, and pain
ted in primary colors, Miss Becky-Sue looked like Dale Evans on crack. Texas trashy on the outside, tempered steel on the inside, she was a barracuda with a bimbo fetish. If she had a heart, I hadn’t seen a hint of it.

  From her eyelashes, to her blond beehive—she always said, “The bigger the hair, the closer to God”—to her generous tits and her smile, she was as fake and as overprocessed as Velveeta.

  The name on her law degree from some lesser law school in Texas read “Gloria Axelrod.” But the Axelrods had disowned her after an ugly skirmish with the State Bar Grievance Committee—the last in a long list of embarrassments. The feeling was mutual. So, Gloria reinvented herself as Shady Slim’s bimbo, which was probably a better fit, all things considered.

  When I was younger, I couldn’t understand the pairing. My father told me that if you put tits on a warthog and taught it to bat its eyes, Shady Slim would’ve jumped it. Being visual, I never got rid of that image, but I did get it…sort of. Like so many of his clan, Shady Slim did most of his thinking with the wrong head. And, I’d wager Miss Becky-Sue knew some tricks that the rest of us weren’t privy to. If only…

  Pride, Lucky. Pride.

  “Now,” I said, pulling my mind out of the gutter and wading into battle. “What can I do to make you comfortable? The police are on their way.”

  “I ain’t talkin’ to no pigs,” Miss Becky-Sue spat, her veneer slipping.

  “I’m afraid that’s nonnegotiable.” I motioned to the two pilots cowering in the corner, making themselves small. “I’ll take it from here. Thank you. But stick around. I’m sure Metro will want to talk to you both as well.”

  The two men came within an eyelash of knocking me down in their haste to leave. They jammed in the doorway when they both tried to go through it at the same time. The older of the two finally forced his way through first, followed by the other. And I was alone in the lion’s cage.

  The look in Miss Becky-Sue’s eyes made me wish I had searched the cabin for firearms. I’d sell my mother for a Taser. Or even a chair and a whip. Or a chunk of raw meat laced with sedatives. “Why don’t you take a seat and let me pour you a drink?” I said in what I hoped was a conversational, nonincendiary, yet forceful tone. “Single-barrel, one cube of ice, if I recall?”

  Turning to the bar, I felt her eyes bore into my back. Glancing at her briefly, I watched her lower herself into a dainty chair. In addition to the lavs being a tight fit, the furniture on the plane was Lilliputian. I felt like I was playing inside a dollhouse. Thankfully, the bottle of Jack was full sized. I splashed a generous amount into a Steuben crystal tumbler and extended it to her.

  Her hands shook as she took the glass then drank deeply, wiping her mouth with the back of her hand. Her red lipstick an angry smear, she lifted her eyes to mine. They were dark, dead eyes—lethal and heartless.

  “Why don’t you tell me what happened?” I said before she could jump in.

  “Why should I tell you anything? You can’t bring Slim back.” She plucked a tissue from the box by the bed and dabbed at an imaginary tear, presumably for my benefit.

  “No, while I’m pretty good at pulling rabbits out of hats and drawing to an inside straight, resurrection is definitely not part of my repertoire.” I glanced around for a place to park my carcass, but I didn’t think anything would fit, or hold my bulk. Probably not true, but I wasn’t in the mood to be proven right. “I’m going to have to tell my father something, so whatever you can give me—for the Big Boss—will help.”

  Eyeing me over the rim of her glass for a moment, she then threw back the rest of the sour mash and extended the glass for a refill. I complied as she started in. Her voice seemed to have warmed a bit, but I might have imagined that part.

  “Slim, he was fidgety. Like a young bull sensing the knife, you know?”

  I winced and nodded. Talk about letting her steer the conversation. Okay, puns pop up when I’m under pressure. I’m not proud of it, but I’ve learned to deal with it. With no desire to explain and no way to protect myself, I bit down on the inside of my mouth, stifling the grin that threatened to explode.

  “No matter what I did, he wasn’t spilling.” Miss Becky-Sue crossed her arms across her ample chest. She glanced through the small window next to her while she gathered herself.

  “Why did you arrive so late?” I asked. “I haven’t checked the log, but I’m sure the plane was sent to pick you up and deliver you in plenty of time for the Big Boss’s party.”

  “I bought this outfit special.” She brushed down her white leather skirt, and then raised her eyes to mine. “We ran into some storms or somethin’ around Wichita Falls and had to detour halfway to Canada to get around them. We were way late. I got tired and fell asleep.”

  “And Slim, was he feeling okay?”

  “Seemed to be. He spent the whole time yacking on the phone. Got pretty steamed a time or two, but that’s nothing new.” Miss Becky-Sue chewed on her lip as she continued to stare out the small window. She had to bend down a bit; it couldn’t have been comfortable.

  “Do you know who he was talking to?”

  She shrugged, then turned and tried to stare me down—it didn’t work. Finally she broke. “What, you think I can keep track of all the pies that man has a finger in?”

  From what I knew of Miss Becky-Sue, I’d have to say she could run a small country single-handedly, but I let it slide. Sometimes giving folks a long rope was a great way to get them the hang themselves. Maybe I’d get lucky.

  I expected to see something in her eyes. Sadness. Pain. Anger. I should’ve known better, but hope springs eternal. At the very least, Shady Slim deserved someone to cry at his funeral. But Miss Becky-Sue wasn’t exactly conjuring the grieving widow.

  “I remember landing. Slim was still on the phone. He told me to go back to sleep—it was too late for the party and, besides, he was expecting someone.” With a long, blue fingernail, Miss Becky-Sue scratched at a pimple on her arm as she pursed her lips. Thinking perhaps, but it was hard to tell.

  “Frank DeLuca.” At her startled expression, I felt a need to explain. “He told me.”

  “Well, if you know so much, what’re you talkin’ to me for?” She stopped picking and used the tissue to dab at a small spot of blood. “Besides, I don’t know if he was the one Slim was expecting, but he was the one who come…came.”

  “What time was that?”

  Miss Becky-Sue shrugged and avoided my eyes. “Around midnight, I guess, a bit after. I wasn’t payin’ much attention, bein’ pretty steamed about the party and all.”

  “What did they talk about?”

  She waved her hand. “Business stuff, you know. I don’t bother myself with none of that.”

  I started to ask another question, but red lights strobed through the small windows. My time was up. The police had arrived.

  Chapter Six

  Held tightly, my body pressed to his as we swayed to the music. Intoxicating, romantic music that held the promise of love…of life. Scent infused the air. Gardenias, I thought. Or maybe magnolias. And the hint of Old Spice. My head on his shoulder, I nuzzled his neck and was rewarded with a tighter squeeze. Held tightly, I felt free. Love filled my heart and completed me. I lifted my head and leaned slightly back. Teddie’s face swam into view, then faded. Then I was looking into the warm, solid face of my chef, Jean-Charles, his eyes alight with an emotion I felt.

  “Lucky?”

  The voice was wrong. The accent wasn’t French.

  “Lucky?”

  No, the voice was decidedly Middle-American. I felt a hand on my shoulder shaking me.

  My eyes fluttered open and the lovely vision shattered in the bright light of reality. I squeezed my eyes shut again, but the dream was gone…he was gone. Damn. Wrapping my arms around myself, I tried to remember, to hold on to the feeling, the emotion, the peace, but it slipped away, like smoke on the wind, leaving a hollow place where my heart should be.

  “Sleeping on the job,” Romeo teased. “Not li
ke you.”

  “Since all I do is work and sleep, it seemed only natural to combine the two.” I pushed myself up in the seat, trying to get my bearings. From the view through the cockpit window, it seemed I’d fallen asleep in the captain’s chair on the G550. Squinting against the full wattage of a day now underway—the nose of the plane stuck out of the hangar that concealed the rest—I had no idea how long I’d been out, not that it mattered. If life as we know it was on the verge of extinction, my office knew where to find me.

  “Reasonable,” Romeo said as he sagged into the copilot’s chair. “You think we could steal this thing and go somewhere far away?”

  For a moment the idea seemed irresistible. “I took flying lessons once.”

  “No shit?” Romeo lost the hardened cop voice and sounded like the kid he was, which restored my confidence in the balance of the universe.

  “Yeah, the Big Boss thought it would be a good idea. Something about having a Plan B if the hotel management thing didn’t work out.”

  “He thought you’d be a good corporate pilot?” Romeo clearly thought this was funny.

  “That was his tack. I had no idea he was my father then, but he always took an interest in my career. Between you and me, I think he was really thinking military pilot. He had visions of a drill sergeant molding me into shape.” I ran my fingers over the switches and marveled at the glass displays. Most of the instrumentation was unrecognizable. Gone were the vacuum and electrically driven dials of that ancient Cessna 172. So far in my past, flight school seemed like it had happened to someone else. “I was a bit of a handful.” I shot a cockeyed grin at the young detective.

  “Were?”

  “I am who I am. And I’m too stupid to pretend to be anybody else.” Leaning back, settling into the sturdy chair, I tried to recall what it felt like to fly. One hand on the throttle, the other easing the yoke back, my feet dancing on the rudders as the plane gathered speed. Each time the machine left the earth, I remembered being so happy, so free, I couldn’t resist laughing.