“It wasn’t my story to tell.” Bunny put her hands on her hips. “What you don’t understand is that I’ve lived a really different life than you have. Las Vegas is like no other place on earth, and the rules are different there. You learn pretty damn fast to mind your own business, and be awful careful about who you try and help, because there’s no quicker way of making an enemy than doing someone a favor.” She gave Skye a half smile, and then went into the kitchen to get the eggs the cook had been hard-boiling all morning.
Skye contemplated what Bunny had said as she finished setting up the last dyeing station and went over to check on the prize table. Once again, Simon’s mother had proven she was far from the airhead she pretended to be.
A deep voice yelling, “Ho, ho, ho,” broke into Skye’s musings, and Charlie strode into view. He held a purple Easter Bunny costume out in front of him.
Skye hurried up to him and kissed him on the cheek. Laughing, she said, “Uncle Charlie, where did you get such an elaborate costume? It looks like it could walk and talk all by itself.”
“I rented it from a place in Chicago.”
“Well, it’s terrific, but the Easter Bunny does not go ‘ho, ho, ho.’ ”
He frowned. “Well, what does a rabbit say?”
“Nothing. The Easter Bunny just nods and smiles and hands out prizes.”
“You mean you ladies talked me into wearing this stupid outfit and it isn’t even a speaking part?” Charlie pretended to be upset, but the twinkle in his blue eyes gave him away.
Bunny came out of the kitchen, put down the tray of eggs she was carrying, and walked over to him. “There are other compensations.” She took his arm, tugging him toward the storeroom. “Let me show you the present Ruby brought me.”
Skye felt her cheeks flush, remembering the objects that had gotten Ruby into trouble when the blonde first arrived in town.
She checked her watch. “The kids will be here in half an hour.” Bunny and Charlie walked away without acknowledging her words. Skye called after them, “Don’t forget Frannie and her crew will be here any minute, so keep it G-rated.”
The teenagers arrived just as Skye started to get the refreshments ready. They pitched in, and as they all worked Skye went over their duties one more time. “Each of you is in charge of five kids. Miss Bunny and I will be available if you need help with anything. After the eggs are dyed, take your group into the basement. We’ve got three games for you to play with them. Try and give us at least thirty or forty minutes to hide the eggs before you bring them back upstairs. Everyone with me so far?”
They all nodded.
“Great. Once they come back upstairs, hand them each a little basket and let them start hunting. There’ll be the regular eggs they dyed, and also plastic eggs with slips of paper inside indicating prizes ranging from a chocolate bunny to the grand prize—a bicycle. Try to make sure all of the children find at least one plastic egg. Understand?”
More nods.
“Okay. Let me show you the games we set up in the basement.” Skye led the teens to the stairs.
They encountered Bunny as she came out of the storeroom. The redhead’s hair was mussed and her makeup smeared. She waved at the kids and said to Skye, “I’ll be right back. I want to freshen up and see if Ruby needs anything. Charlie is changing into his costume.”
“Good.” Skye looked at her watch. “We’ll unlock the door in five minutes, so don’t be long.”
After the tour of the basement, Skye led the teens back upstairs and to the entrance. There were already twenty or thirty kids and their parents waiting outside. As soon as Skye unlocked the door they dashed inside, and Frannie and her team snapped into action, registering kids, taking coats, and separating them into groups.
Skye made her way through the crowd, reminding parents to pick up their kids no later than five.
The last parent had finally left when Bunny rushed over to Skye, took her arm, and pulled her aside, frantically whispering, “Ruby’s gone! The apartment’s been ransacked, and there’s blood all over.”
Skye felt her chest tighten. “I’ll call Simon and Wally. You go ahead with the hunt.”
Bunny looked torn.
“There’s nothing else we can do right now. We have a hundred kids here, and we can’t tell them to leave. Most of their parents dropped them off and they’re here alone.”
Bunny nodded and pasted a smile on her face, turned to the kids, and said, “Let’s go have some fun.”
Skye made the calls. Simon was stuck at the funeral home, but Wally said he’d go directly up to the apartment. He also said that one of his officers would be at the bowling alley soon to keep an eye on things while the children were there.
She thanked him and went back to the party.
Everyone seemed to be having a good time. Skye dealt with the small emergencies that popped up, like broken eggs and fights over the red dye, but otherwise things were running smoothly.
By three thirty, all the kids were in the basement playing games, and Skye and Bunny were hurriedly hiding eggs.
They finished just as the first wave of hunters crested the stairs. Skye checked her watch. Where was Uncle Charlie?
She said loudly, “Maybe the Easter Bunny is feeling shy today. Let’s all call his name to make him feel welcome. Ready? One. Two. Three.”
“Easter Bunny!” the kids shouted together.
Nothing.
Skye smiled at the kids, but there was a line of worry between her eyes. “One more time.”
“Easter Bunny!” the kids shouted again.
Nothing; then after a long moment the storeroom door burst open and the Easter Bunny hopped out. The kids went wild and the hunt began.
A half hour later, all the kids had prizes and the parents started arriving to pick them up. By five thirty, the kids and parents were gone and the cleanup had begun. Wally had come down from the apartment after everyone left and said that he had called out all of his officers to look for Ruby, and he had the county sheriff’s department processing the crime scene. If they didn’t find her soon, Wally would call the FBI.
After Wally left, Skye paused in gathering discarded candy wrappers from the floor and asked Bunny, who was wiping tables, “Have you seen Charlie since he made his appearance as the Easter Bunny?”
The redhead stopped in midswipe. “No. Maybe he can’t get out of the costume. It looked complicated.”
Skye stood. “I’ll go check. It’s been at least an hour since I’ve seen him. Surely he’d have come for help if he needed it.”
Bunny followed her. The storeroom was dark, and when Skye switched on the lights she gasped. Charlie was duct-taped to a chair with a gag in his mouth.
Chapter 13
Blondes of a Feather Flock Together
Skye cradled the receiver between her ear and shoulder as she straightened the rental shoe racks. It was six p.m. Friday night and the lanes were full. “Mom, as I already told you in our previous hundred phone calls, Charlie’s fine.”
“Are you sure?” May demanded.
“Yes. The guy held a gun to him and duct-taped him to the chair but didn’t hurt him.” Skye repeated what she had been telling her mother every time May called. “Hey, I’ve got to go. I haven’t talked to Bunny yet, and I need to check and see if things are ready for tonight’s Marilyn Monroe look-alike contest. ‘Bye.” Before May could answer, Skye hung up and headed downstairs.
“Oh, my gosh.” As Skye entered the basement, she stopped dead in her tracks and gazed at the sea of Marilyns. There were Marilyns of all shapes and sizes crowding the room. A half a dozen dressing tables had been set up in the middle of the space, so the impersonators could add the finishing touches to their costumes before making a grand entrance when it was their turn to go onstage. Several battles over the use of the mirrors wer
e currently in progress.
Bunny fought her way through the throng and clutched Skye’s arm. “Ruby’s still missing, and that FBI agent was here this morning demanding the disks.”
Skye steered Bunny to the side of the room. “Did he search the place?”
“Well.” Bunny’s gaze slipped from Skye’s. “Not exactly.”
Skye felt the urge to shake Bunny until whatever she was hiding popped out. “What do you mean, not exactly?”
“I . . . uh . . . you see, I sort of knew where they were, so I gave them to him.”
“What!” Skye’s roar caused an ocean of blond heads to turn in her direction. She bared her teeth in what she hoped resembled a smile, and motioned to them to go back to getting ready. “You told me you didn’t know where Ruby had hidden the disks.”
“No. I told you Ruby didn’t tell me where she hid them, not that I didn’t know where they were hidden.”
Skye took a deep breath to stop herself from strangling the woman. “Where were they?”
Bunny grinned. “In the ceiling of the ladies’ room. I figured she stashed them there the day she got here when she was hiding from Wally.”
“But Simon looked there, remember?”
“He was looking for a large woman, not a small white envelope that blended in with the tiles.” Bunny smiled smugly. “I, on the other hand, knew what I was looking for.”
Skye shook her head. There was no use in being upset with Bunny; she just marched to a drummer most people couldn’t even hear, let alone keep step with. “Now that the FBI has the disks, I wonder if they’ll still help look for Ruby.”
“Damn!” Bunny’s expression was stricken. “I’m so stupid. I shouldn’t have given them to the feebs. They aren’t going to care what happens to someone like Ruby now that they got what they wanted.”
“That’s not what I meant.” Skye put her arm around Bunny and squeezed. “Of course you should have given the FBI the disks. It was the right thing to do.”
Bunny didn’t look convinced, but she let the subject drop and asked, “Any news from Wally?”
“No. He said Sergeant Quirk saw the guy who tied Charlie up and stole the Easter Bunny outfit leave dressed in the costume, but he thought it was Charlie. Ruby wasn’t with him at the time.”
Bunny’s nails dug into Skye’s flesh. “Charlie’s really okay, isn’t he?”
“He’s fine.” Skye thought she would scream if one more person asked her that. “It’s too bad he didn’t get a good look at the guy, but Charlie said he wore a cap, sunglasses, and a bandanna over the lower part of his face.”
Bunny nodded and Skye turned to leave as one of the Marilyn look-alikes tapped the older woman on the shoulder. “You said I could go first, but that lady with the baby insists she’s first. It’s essential that I be first. I’m doing Marilyn before she was discovered.”
Baby? Skye glanced in the direction the Marilyn had pointed and saw a woman who had dressed her infant in a satin gown and put a tiny blond wig on its head. Skye sure hoped the child was a girl.
Before Bunny moved away to settle the dispute, she said, “What I don’t understand is how Charlie’s attacker got into the bowling alley without being seen by someone.”
“The only thing I can think of is that he came in with the kids and parents, and we just assumed he was someone’s dad. I figure he slipped into the storeroom to hide, was surprised to find Charlie there, and after he tied him up he saw the costume and decided that would be a good way to search the place without anyone being suspicious of a stranger poking around.” Skye narrowed her eyes. “In fact, I think he’s been here every night this week, dressed in various outfits and looking for those disks, or trying to get to Ruby.”
The pre-star Marilyn had been joined by a Marilyn dressed in a white halter dress, its skirt somehow wired into a permanently flipped-up position. They were both tugging on Bunny, trying to get the best spot in the show.
Bunny shook them off. “You’re right. He was probably the guy in the gorilla mask, and the Elvis impersonator. The creep even won two prizes. When he’s caught, I want those back. He’s disqualified.”
Skye grinned. Trust Bunny to see a different slant to things.
A Marilyn in a slinky evening gown pushed the other impersonators aside and grabbed Bunny. In the trademark breathy Marilyn Monroe voice, she said, “Some son of a bitch stole my lip gloss. Call the police.”
Skye shook her head and edged over to the stairs, escaping the mad Marilyns before Bunny got her involved in the case of the missing makeup.
The bar was already full. They sure were making a lot more money than usual on drinks and food this week. If the FBI didn’t shut them down for harboring Ruby, and the Las Vegas goon didn’t burn them out, Bunny’s attempt to increase business would be a success.
Skye was checking to see that everything was ready when she heard her name being called. Simon and Uncle Charlie, seated at a table near the front, were beckoning to her.
Skye joined them and said to her godfather, “You don’t look any the worse for wear.”
“I’m fine,” Charlie huffed. “I should have beat the crap out of that punk.”
Skye patted his hand. “I’m sure you would have if he hadn’t had a gun.”
“Damn straight I would.”
Before anyone else could say something, Bunny stepped onstage. She had changed into a crocheted dress with fringe trim hanging from the short hem.
Skye tipped her head. Was the dress lined in a flesh-toned fabric, or was that Bunny’s skin showing through? Skye glanced uneasily at Simon, who was scowling at his mother’s latest fashion statement.
Bunny tapped the mike to make sure it was on, then announced, “Good evening, everyone. Sit back, have a drink, and enjoy the world of Marilyn Monroe.”
The lights dimmed, the music from “Diamonds Are a Girl’s Best Friend” started, and the first Marilyn appeared to thunderous applause.
Some of the impersonators were good, a couple great, and a few awful, but everyone was having a fine time. Skye had relaxed and was chatting with Charlie and Simon when the sixth Marilyn made her appearance.
Skye stopped in midsentence and turned her full attention to the stage. This one was amazing. The dress, the hair, the makeup were perfect. Even the voice seemed dead-on.
Skye squinted. Everything but the hands was right. They were much too large for a woman . . . and the diamond ring on the right pinkie was obviously not a woman’s piece of jewelry.
Oh, my gosh! She knew that ring. It was the same as the one the man at the restaurant had been wearing, the same as that on the comic in the first night’s talent show, the same as the one on the Elvis impersonator. It had to be the goon from Las Vegas. What did he do, travel with a trunk full of costumes?
Skye whispered to Charlie, “Did you notice if the guy who tied you up was wearing a ring?”
“Yeah, a god-awful diamond pinkie ring on his right hand. Why?”
Skye nodded toward the Marilyn onstage. “Like that one?”
“Yeah!” Charlie leaped from his seat, thundered up the steps, and tackled the impersonator, yelling, “Pull a gun on me, will you? This’ll teach you to treat an old man with more respect.”
Chapter 14
Survival of the Blondest
Before anyone could react to Charlie’s attack on the impersonator, Bunny came flying from the wings, jumped on the guy’s back, grabbed his ears, and started pounding his head on the wooden floor, screaming, “What have you done with Ruby? If you’ve hurt her, you’re a dead man.”
The gender-challenged Marilyn’s blond wig flew off, soaring into the audience, where two women attempted to catch it as if it were a bridal bouquet and they were the last single females in town. Neither lady made a clean catch, and a tug-of-war ensued, escalating into a wres
tling match that both the women’s escorts felt obligated to join.
Most of the spectators froze, enthralled with the show, but then someone yelled, “Fight!” and several men rushed the stage, joining in the melee. They might not know what was going on, but they weren’t about to miss a good brawl.
Hacker, the bartender, sighed, scooped up his baseball bat, and waded into the frenzy.
At the same time, Skye shot out of her chair, but Simon grabbed her arm as she sprinted past him. “Hold it. You’ll only get hurt if you go up there.”
“We’ve got to stop it!” Skye tried to free herself from Simon’s grip.
“How?”
That was a good question. There were now at least a dozen men and a couple of additional Marilyns throwing punches and smashing one another over the head with anything available. Skye winced as one guy lifted the karaoke machine and brought it down on another guy’s back. Simon was right: At this point, it wasn’t as if she could break things up with mere words.
What could she use to cool the combatants off? Cool off! That was it. She hastily explained what she needed to Simon, who took off at a run, ducking between clusters of fighters. He quickly found the hose that the cleaning crew used to wash down the cement floor behind the bar and connected it to the faucet back there.
After he had it ready, he tossed the other end to Skye, who turned the dial on the nozzle to “power-wash” and aimed it at the fracas on the stage. She nodded to Simon, who turned the water on full force, and almost instantly a powerful torrent slammed into the fighters.
Ten minutes later drenched people were trooping out the bar door, and Simon, Bunny, and Charlie were tying up the male Marilyn Monroe. Bunny had contributed her panty hose, Simon his necktie, and Charlie his belt to secure the impersonator.
After making sure everyone who was supposed to leave actually did, and that the fighting was not going to start up again, Skye put down the hose and turned her attention to the guy tied to the chair. She poked him in the shoulder with her finger. “The FBI picked up the disks this morning. You’re too late, buddy.”
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