“As a matter of fact, you’re right,” I said.
“Whatever,” Carlos said, as though he didn’t care a whit. “You can do what you want. Obviously.” At this, he forced a chuckle.
I smiled. In a purely selfish way, it was nice making a guy like Carlos feel awkward, even if it was painful for him. The elevator ride seemed interminable, however, a direct function of the awkward distance now raised between us. He sensed I’d been sugarcoating it, that Alex wasn’t just some random “friend” but someone to be taken seriously as a rival for my affections. I didn’t feel bad, though. After all, Carlos was the one with the steady girlfriend.
Carlos drove me home where I freshened up for later and made sure to pack an overnight kit. I didn’t want to be obvious about it, as though I expected to sleep at Alex’s place, but I wasn’t about to be unprepared, either.
CHAPTER TEN
It occurred to me on my drive to the restaurant that Alex would be a good person with whom to discuss this whole predicament. He was the CEO of one of Nevada’s largest banks, having built the company up from a few branches to more than a hundred, and the man knew a thing or two about money. He might even have an understanding about oil financing in Eastern Europe and Russia for all I knew. I supposed it wasn’t the most romantic topic of dinnertime conversation, but romance could wait for after dinner.
We were meeting at a quiet local’s restaurant in a strip mall about two miles from the Strip. In the Midwest I had grown up believing that strip malls were basically ratty commercial blights on the landscape—the home of check-cashing joints, insurance agents, and tiny health food stores—but here in Las Vegas they were home to some of the nicest stores and restaurants in town. The Nine o’Clock Club fit the bill. It was a bit stuffy, in the old-fashioned sense of literally being stuffy. The air was thicker somehow, as if permeated by the cigar smoke trails of the thousands of customers who had dined there before us. I didn’t mind since the handsome man at the bar flashing a million-dollar grin in my direction was the man I’d come to see. And he had an extra drink in front of him.
I sidled up next to him feeling underdressed. I had put on a semicasual tan skirt with a thin beige top, and Alex looked like he’d just stepped out of a Gillette commercial from the 1950s. He was a regular Don Draper with some alluring George Clooney thrown in for fun, the few flecks of gray in his black hair giving him an air of a man who’s been around the world and lived to tell the tale.
“I forget if you drink martinis,” he said. “If not, I figured I could help you finish it.” He was smiling a goofy grin, a mixture of wryness at his own joke and a hesitancy, almost a shyness, that I found alluring.
I rolled my eyes. “As long as it’s gin,” I said. “Vodka’s for suckers,” I announced. If there was one thing I was preachy and opinionated about, it was booze.
He smiled. “Why do you say that?”
I hesitated, wondering whether the drinks were, in fact, vodka. After all, vodka was more popular than gin. For some reason. I tried to put the thought out of my mind.
“Well,” I began, “for starters, vodka has no taste. That’s the whole point. You pay fifty bucks for a bottle of premium vodka, and the selling point is that it tastes like water? What’s with that?”
“Fifty bucks if you’re lucky,” he said enigmatically. “Go to one of these clubs all the young kids go to, and it’ll set you back a grand to get a bottle.”
I shook my head. “Don’t get me started.” I moved my drink in front of me and sniffed at it like a dog approaching a new fire hydrant. Ever the pessimist, I feared the worst. But the drink was giving off a faint whiff of juniper berries, the signature of a good gin.
“Tanqueray okay?” he asked, officially putting me out of my misery. He was wearing that goofy grin again, revealing a tiny gap between his lower incisors.
“It’s nicer than the cheap stuff I usually drink,” I conceded. I took a sip and enjoyed its simultaneously cold and hot effect on me, that familiar burn that only an ice-cold drink at 80 proof could deliver.
“So you’re a gin snob, but you drink cheap gin?” he asked, stirring the olive in his own drink. “How does that work?”
“Very well,” I said, smiling. “Just one of those feminine mysteries you’ll never figure out, I guess.”
He frowned and studied his olive, and then he unceremoniously stuffed the whole thing into his mouth.
“Never been here before,” I said. “Good?”
“The best,” he said. “I’m glad you were free.” Our eyes locked, and I felt a little twinge of giddiness course throughout my body.
“Want to eat at the bar?” he asked, still holding my gaze.
“No,” I whispered. “I want a booth.”
He smiled and then stood up, and then helped me out of my stool. He made a hand gesture to the host who seemed to understand perfectly. After a glance down at his podium, he smiled and waved us over.
“Right this way,” he said. “Welcome back. Alejandro will be your waiter this evening.”
Alejandro led us to a booth near the rear of the restaurant where the air was lighter and a tad more breathable. I elbowed Alex.
“He knows you?” I whispered.
“It’s not my first time here,” he said. “Plus, I’m a good tipper.”
“You don’t have to tell me that,” I said, chuckling. Alex had been overpaying me for lap dances for the better part of the last decade. The weird part was that he’d never wanted an actual lap dance. Instead he just wanted me to undress and dance slowly in front of him. He said it was so that he could admire me from a distance. Plus, he had been married, and he felt like a lap dance was a line that he couldn’t cross. I’m pretty sure he was about the only man on earth who made such distinctions.
Alex was a man of contradictions. It was clear he respected me for more than my body, and he treated me almost as an intellectual equal, even if I couldn’t begin to understand how his bank made money or explain the difference between credit default swaps and collateralized debt obligations. Yet there was something old-fashioned about him, a mixture of chivalry and protectiveness that I found charming.
I was not surprised when he said he’d order for me.
“You just have to try it,” he insisted, leaving no room for debate. I didn’t object, either, when he ordered us two glasses of wine.
“I don’t think I’ve ever had foie gras before,” I said. “Goose liver, right?”
He smiled. “Just trust me.”
Alex was the rare man who could string together several sentences without making any references to sports teams, and so I enjoyed his recounting of the workday he’d just finished, a day that had started with an alert that several thousand of his customers’ accounts had been hacked and ended with a meeting with an angry Korean investor.
“Heavy lies the crown,” I said, amazed at how much responsibility rested on one man’s shoulders.
“This is what I wanted, what I signed up for,” he said simply. When you build up a small empire, you can’t complain too much.
Our foie gras appetizer arrived. Hesitantly, I picked at the impossibly soft meat, which was the size of a small pancake, something I probably would have preferred. But no. Once it melted in my mouth, the combination of the fatty liver and the apple-pear glaze created an almost orgasmic sensation in my mouth.
He was studying my reaction and smiled knowingly when I exclaimed an involuntary, “Wow.”
“You finish it,” he said generously, pushing the plate over to my side of the table. I scarfed the rest of it down, for once oblivious to the fact that I probably looked like a prizewinning swine at the Wisconsin State Fair.
“Thank you,” I said, sincerely. I honestly couldn’t remember when I’d eaten anything tastier.
Our entrees arrived, a glazed pork tenderloin and a spread of lamb chops, which we ended up sharing. After a momentary lull in which I briefly considered but rejected the idea of dessert, I brought up the subject that had been on
my mind all afternoon. I hoped he wouldn’t mind talking about my investment with Kayla and Miranda.
Alex listened intently to my recap of the situation and then cut to the heart of the issue.
“How much are you in for?” he asked.
“I gave them ten thousand, but they already paid out two,” I said, once again clinging to the latter fact as though it made my investment safer.
He shook his head. “I still don’t like it. I mean, I don’t know much about the Russian oil market, but don’t you think it’s a little odd that they need exotic dancers to fund it?” He was hesitant to call me a “stripper,” but I wasn’t sure that exotic dancer was any more polite. Not that I minded—I knew damned well what I did for a living.
I sighed. “I know. I know. I’m kind of over it, but I still feel stupid. Here’s the thing, though. The girl who got me involved in this whole thing wound up dead today. Or at least missing.”
He raised his eyebrows and then took a healthy slug of his wine.
“You think?”
“Well, she’s vanished, and there was a large pool of blood on her carpet. I saw it myself actually.”
He frowned. “I suppose that changes everything,” he said. “It’s no longer just about the money.”
“The thing is I have no idea what the connection could be. If any. Everyone was making money,” I said, thinking again of Miranda and the life that was now snuffed out. “It’s so sad,” I whispered. “I don’t think she had any family, either.” And then I blushed, angry with myself. I had wondered, if only for the briefest of milliseconds, who would inherit all of her handbags.
“Are you nervous?” Alex asked.
“About?”
“Well, I mean, if this had something to do with your investment, you could be in danger yourself,” he said, keeping his eyes on the glass of red wine he was swirling around.
“Huh,” I muttered. “Great, now I have something else to worry about.”
“Sorry,” he said. “I just assumed you had considered that already. I’m sure it’s nothing to worry about.”
I nodded halfheartedly. On that sour note we pushed our plates away, and Alex picked up the check. I wanted another glass of wine, but we were both driving. Which led to the question of whether we were both driving to the same place. I felt like a teenager again, wondering whether he would invite me over or whether I should take the initiative. I didn’t need to worry as it turned out.
“My place?” he asked, as casual as a cool breeze.
I smiled in response, not needing to say anything. We were standing outside the restaurant enjoying the way the desert air had cooled off in the first hours of the evening. It would get downright cold later, in the wee hours, but I always found the dry, cool autumn Las Vegas evenings to be invigorating. As it turned out Alex was reading my mind.
“Good night for the porch,” he said, an overly modest reference to the massive outdoor living area he’d built behind his modernist, suburban mansion.
“And a bottle of wine, of course,” I said, wondering what vintage he’d produce from his well-stocked cellar.
“Just one?” he asked, a twinkle in his eye.
“Don’t you have to work tomorrow?”
He smiled. “Yes, but I’m the boss. Plus, I have years of experience working through hangovers.”
“The boss, eh?” I asked. “Maybe you can boss me around a little bit later.”
I cringed internally, painfully aware of how lame that must have sounded. But if he thought it was lame, he didn’t let on.
“I will definitely take you up on that,” he said.
And he did.
Being a man of some experience, Alex wisely made his move before we’d indulged in too much wine. We were standing outside in his backyard which he’d made pitch black by shutting down all the interior and exterior lights using an app on his phone. Mars had just risen above the horizon, and he’d wanted to show me the red planet. After he’d pointed out the tiny, glowing red speck, he leaned over and grabbed me. Minutes later, we found ourselves in his bedroom.
We’d made love before, but not like that, the hungriness in his desire signaling that he had been thinking about me long before dinner. I reciprocated his passion, losing myself in the moment, and then we found ourselves lying there, a pile of heavily breathing people in a dark room. It was still early, at least by my standards, but I couldn’t resist the pull of sleep as I nuzzled my head against his chest.
I felt him move a few times during the night, and when I woke just after six thirty, he had disappeared. I brushed my teeth, dressed, and found him nursing a giant mug of black coffee. The Wall Street Journal was splayed about in front of him, and a pair of brown reading glasses was perched on the tip of his nose. I must have startled him because he jerked his head up and pulled the glasses away as soon as he sensed my presence.
“Good morning,” he blurted out in a half stutter. Clearly he had not been expecting me so early. He was in some other world now, a man thinking about business and the hundreds of other problems that rested on his shoulders. He stood up and came over to kiss me on the cheek.
“Did you expect me to sleep until noon?” I asked, smiling playfully. “You know, I have a job, too.”
He smiled now, relaxing a touch but still standing there a bit awkwardly.
“Eggs?” he asked. “Or toast?”
“Both,” I replied. “I can make them.”
“Nonsense,” he said, standing up and folding his paper. “You haven’t tried my famous eggs yet.”
“Famous?” I asked. “What’s so famous about them?”
“Watch and learn,” he said, a twinkle in his eye.
I watched, but I didn’t learn much. Alex was definitely okay in the kitchen, but he wasn’t exactly Julia Child. It turned out that his “secret” to scrambled eggs was to blend a little shredded cheese into them and then add a pat of butter to the frying pan. Which was pretty much how I think they made eggs at every truck stop in the world. The only difference with Alex’s was a sprinkling of dried chives.
Alex drove me back to my place, which was out of his way, setting him back about a half hour’s worth of traffic. Before I left the car, he touched my arm. I turned back to him, and then he leaned close enough that I could detect his crisp aftershave. We locked eyes, and then we kissed.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
I caught myself staring at the TV screen, my mind a million miles away from the midmorning fluff on CNN. It finally occurred to me that I hadn’t been properly kissed by a man in years. Alex hadn’t gone about it lightly, either, and neither had I.
I stood up and began pacing around in a kind of dreamlike haze, distracted by a stream of confusing emotions, berating myself every five minutes for acting like a schoolgirl who harbored a crush on the boy from the bus.
I shook myself out of it and forced myself to read the local news, searching for anything about Miranda’s death. It had warranted a short column in the local section online, but it wasn’t very informative. Being polite, the story identified Miranda as an “entertainer,” a term so generic that it could have applied to fully half of the Las Vegas citizenry. But the article was mum on the key details, including the question of whether she was murdered or simply disappeared. All it said was that she had gone missing and an investigation had been opened. I knew that a homicide detective was involved, which probably meant foul play, but Detective Dwyer had kept quiet about the details.
It was probably time to give the good detective a call, especially since it was apparent he wasn’t going to take the initiative and call me. I made myself lunch and then called him a little bit after noon.
I managed to reach him, but he gave me the expected song and dance.
“Why so secretive?” I asked.
“We’re running down a few leads,” he explained, “and we honestly don’t know anything yet.”
“Leads? So that means you’re looking for a suspect.”
Dwyer chuckled. “I didn
’t say that.”
“Well, what else could it possibly mean? You don’t run down leads if the victim dies of natural causes,” I said.
“True,” he said, and then he sighed. “Can you keep a secret, Raven?”
“Of course.”
“We have video. It’s not conclusive, but there’s surveillance footage of a tall, heavyset man lugging a huge suitcase out of the building. We checked with security, and no one’s ever seen him before.”
“Ahh,” I said. “That sounds bad.”
“Right. I’ll let you know if we find anything else, Raven. I promise,” he said. “It’s just a matter of the timing.” His tone led me to believe he meant it, but also that he was sick of my questions and wanted me to butt out.
“One more thing,” I said. “Is the family involved?”
There was a long pause. “She had no family.”
I hadn’t known Miranda, but it wasn’t exactly surprising. People with families tended to get yelled at by them if they started dancing around poles with their clothes off. “Thanks,” I said and hung up.
I had a strange feeling about things. It had begun with a frantic call from the dead girl’s friend convinced that Miranda had been killed, but now there was an investigation that seemed to be going nowhere with no sense of urgency on the part of the LVPD. And since it was now an official criminal investigation, I couldn’t exactly go snooping around the crime scene or interviewing witnesses on my own. They had made that perfectly clear in my private investigator training program. The mantra was let the cops be cops, and don’t get in their way. Some of them felt threatened by private eyes looking over their shoulder, and they wouldn’t hesitate to ring you up on charges of interfering with an investigation.
Although I couldn’t investigate Miranda’s death, I could investigate her life. Not knowing where else to start, I called up Kayla and proposed meeting for dinner prior to our shift at Cougar’s. Even with a dead dancer, the show must go on.
“Funny you say that, Raven. I had exactly the same idea. This is all so terrible,” she said. “It will be good to talk a bit.”
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