The circle of weak light cast by the nearest streetlamp did little to illuminate the path to the front door. As I muttered an epithet and hoped I wouldn’t sprain an ankle, the light over the front door flipped on with the brightness of an interrogation beam. Appropriate, in a way, and I appreciated the irony.
Needing time to adjust, my eyes watered a bit. The brick of the sidewalk looked new, the grout still clean. In fact in the light, the house looked well cared for. The front door, painted a fire engine red, made me smile.
People constantly surprised me. Squash Trenton, über lawyer, badass, and macho male was no exception.
A red door. A port in a storm.
Squash opened the door as I lifted my hand to knock. “Working hard to endear me to my neighbors?”
His smile looked genuine, which went with the rest of him.
His hair stood straight up at the crown but was smashed on one side. He hadn’t bothered to throw a robe on. In fact, he hadn’t donned anything other than a pair of boxers. He had that thick, muscled physique of a wrestler, which somehow fit. And he didn’t mind showing it off—or using it to his advantage.
If I knew him like I thought I did, his attire, or lack thereof, was carefully calculated to put me off-guard, an ingrained lawyer trick to give him the initial advantage. Although not a lawyer, I was wise to the game. And the fact he thought it’d work on me? Not a chance—on a good day. But today had been so far from good I couldn’t see it from here. And, given my weakened state, his ploy had a fair chance of success.
I stopped on the stoop feeling a bit bedraggled. “Knowing you, I doubt you care what your neighbors think.”
He leaned around me. “On the contrary. Mrs. Perino who lives in the house over there,” he pointed to a house hiding in the darkness across the street, “she gave me the most incredible apple pie recipe. And Mrs. Buell,” again he pointed at a house, this time one further up the street. “She taught me how to make the most incredible Hollandaise, from scratch…in the microwave.”
“Offending every true French man and woman alike, but point made. Apologies offered.”
“It’s okay. They both are deaf as posts, wouldn’t hear a bomb if it went off on their front porch. I check on them regularly. They don’t have anybody.”
“What? A softie hiding under that shark exterior?”
“Yin and yang are immutables in life, but you won’t tell my secrets.”
“Really? Why not?”
“You need me.”
I hadn’t even gotten an invitation inside and I was already down in this game. My energy was low as my stomach growled—I should’ve eaten that hamburger. “Did you ever get Mrs. Morales’s recipe for green chili?”
“Oh, man. That woman.” His tone dripped with respect. “If she went to law school, she’d run this town.” Squash shook his head. “I’d hate to run up against her in court.”
“What’d she make you do?”
He looked like he’d paid dearly. “I had to fix Freddy’s tickets.” Freddy was her son and the object of our mutual dislike. “At first, I thought I’d gotten the best of her.”
“Never underestimate a woman who holds the cards. Don’t you know better than that?”
Men, even the enlightened ones, assumed a woman would be an easy adversary. For some reason, I thought Squash Trenton would have been a bit more educated by now.
“How many tickets did Freddy have?”
“Two hundred. The Magistrate wanted to shoot me.”
“One of these days, you’ll listen to me. I told you you’d met your match.”
“Yeah, but that recipe…”
“Was it worth it?”
“I would’ve taken care of two thousand tickets.”
“That good?” Men and their recipes. “Well, I’m glad death wasn’t the price you had to pay, as I have need of your services.”
“The middle of the night, it must be important. I’m all ears. You want a cup of coffee?” He opened the door wider. Stepping back, he motioned me inside.
He wasn’t all ears. Even in my diminished state I could appreciate that. “A cup won’t even get my starter to turn over. Do you have an intravenous setup? That would be far easier.” My body vibrated with need…for caffeine. I stepped into the front hall, blinking against the light and trying to ignore his lack of appropriate attire. But, of course, what would be considered appropriate when a woman shows up in the dead of night…inappropriately? A question requiring far more nuance than I could muster.
Squash looked a bit owl-eyed in the light as well. “An enema does the trick even better.”
“Please, I’m very visual and it’s too early in the morning for that kind of trauma.” A shiver chased through me and suddenly I was cold, very cold, my body in shutdown mode. When I was twenty, I could run on fumes forever. I wasn’t twenty anymore, and my body felt I needed a reminder. “An enema. Shit. I’m not even going to think about that, much less think about how you know that.”
He shut the door, then threw three deadbolts before turning his back and charging toward the back of the house, motioning me to follow. “This way.”
I fell into trail, trying not to stare at his ass and the way the muscles clenched under the thin fabric as he walked. I failed.
“Law school. Drinking. You do what you need to do.”
“An enema?”
“As drunk as I was, I wasn’t going to let one of my buddies perforate my arm with a needle looking for a vein. An enema was the next most expedient hangover cure. You’d be surprised.”
He got that right. “More information than I needed.” I took refuge behind the center island.
“You asked.”
One of those shimmering silver devices with all the tubes and water vessels and knobs and dials that one needed a six-week course in how to operate squatted on the sideboard that sagged under the machine’s weight.
“Espresso?” he asked, demitasse in hand.
On my heels, I caved. “Sure. The higher the octane, the better.” I stared at the back of his head. “And, for the record, counselor, I did not ask.”
He set to work making us tiny cups of coffee tar. I wouldn’t have minded a bit of white stuff to improve the viscosity, but I thought perhaps that might offend some java juju or something, so I kept my desires to myself—all of them.
Finally, he turned, setting a cup in front of me while keeping one for himself. “But you did ask. Maybe not in so many words, but that’s what you do. You say you’re not going to ask, but it’s really what you want to know. And, for the record, espresso has less caffeine per cup than regular drip coffee.”
“Couldn’t you have left me happy in my ignorance?” I sipped at the brew, finding it surprisingly good.
“I’m a lawyer. Truth, justice, and all that.”
With the cup almost to my lips, I paused and looked at him over the rim. “That’s a joke, right?”
He shrugged but didn’t argue. “Tough crowd.”
I took another sip and savored the hit, minimal as it was. “I’m that easy to read?”
“No. But reading people is my job, or a big part of it anyway.”
With my courage flagging, I considered having him run interference with Mona. I could use someone adept to get a bead on her, especially now. Our next visit would be a doozy. But with Mona, a handsome man would just gum up the works, so I abandoned my plan. I wrapped my hands around the warm cup as a shiver chased through me. “Aren’t you cold?”
He glanced down, then turned and grabbed an apron hanging from a hook on the side of the refrigerator. Slipping it over his head, he tied the string in the back, then turned, arms wide, expecting my appreciation. “Better?”
A Superman apron, stained from use. Red from tomato sauce, I bet. The yellow one could be Hollandaise. “Hey, it’s your superhero fantasy, not mine.” I tried for nonplussed. From the slight widening of his eyes, I knew I achieved it.
But his grin told me he could tell I was at least half lying.<
br />
Okay, I admit it. He was the stuff dreams are made of—assuming I went for incredibly handsome, yet irritatingly obnoxious hired guns, who are too smart for my own good, which I didn’t…well, not for longer than a weekend in Tahoe, anyway. But that sort of romantic gymnastics was part of my past youthful indiscretion. Kids had weekends; adults had…what? I chalked up my lack of character at the moment to the whole grass-is-greener thing.
Who wasn’t attracted to bad boys at least a little bit?
He even cooked—and everyone knew about my love affair with food.
But I had a good man at home. Boys, even bad boys, were things of my past. At least that’s what I kept telling myself—and I took a lot of convincing. One of my biggest faults is that I find the status quo boring. Yeah, Mona wasn’t the only one waiting for me to grow up.
Even though I’d adopted a no-touch rule when it came to bad boys, that didn’t mean I didn’t like to look. But, this being business and considering my weakened state, I was glad he’d put on the apron. Even if it didn’t add any dignity, at least it added a touch of class…and modesty. Not much of a touch, but at this point, I’d take anything.
Squash watched me as if he could read the thoughts pinging around in my hollow skull. I hated it when men did that—so smug. Worse, they were almost always wrong but never believed it.
“You show up at my place in the middle of…” he glanced at the clock above the sink—a cat, its tail moving in tick-tock time—then gave a low whistle. “Way past the middle of the night.” He gave me an appreciative glance. “This late, my place, I get to pick the attire.”
“Deal, but I get to pick the topic of conversation.”
“Was that ever in doubt?”
I sipped the last of my espresso—a meager amount of caffeine, barely enough to get my heart rate’s attention. “Enough of the sissy cups; make my next one a quadruple.”
“That bad?” His expression sobered as business knifed through the banter.
“Better make a quad for yourself, too. But we can’t linger. We need to get a move on.”
He did as I suggested, except he didn’t hurry. The wheels of justice move slowly and all of that.
I worried about the girl, picturing her in the sterile environment of the Detention Center, scared, without a friend—Dane didn’t count—and I wondered if I’d done the right thing. The cops wouldn’t abuse her, Romeo would see to that, but giving her a peek through the door at real world consequences would do me good.
Scare the truth out of her.
Squash and I gathered around a tiny table in the corner. The space was small, the squeeze tight, but we did it—two adults of some size around a kid’s coloring table. Somehow, that seemed to fit the circumstances.
“I’d suggest the dining room, but there are no drapes on the window, and Ms. Pence across the street is up all night and obsessively curious about my sex life.”
“Do you have a lot of sex on the dining room table?” I said that with a straight face and a steady heart rate. Women of the world take note and be impressed.
“I do have an obligation to keep my octogenarian neighbor’s fantasies intact.”
“Self-imposed obligation.”
He gave me that point. “So, what do you have?”
I filled him in, leaving out the darkest family secrets. Of course, the only ones I knew were my own, and, unfortunately, this wasn’t all about me. On second thought, strike that. For once, I was glad it wasn’t about me.
“This kid, she thinks Mona is her mother?” Squash’s voice had gone soft and quiet.
I tried to read his emotion, but I couldn’t. “So she says.”
“Have you talked to your parents about this yet?”
“No, I haven’t had the time.”
Leaning back, he stared over my shoulder as he chewed on his lip. Then he gave a soft snort and shook his head.
“What?”
“Just interesting. You never know when the past is going to walk through your door, do you?” His gaze flicked to mine and held it.
“What do you mean by that exactly?”
He gave me the innocent-eye. “You haven’t spoken with your father?”
“No, why?”
“Considering the length of his relationship with your mother, and this girl claiming Mona is her mother, your father might be able to add the flip side of that.”
I’d thought of it but didn’t want to admit it. “Undying fealty and all that implies?”
“Wouldn’t hurt to give him a couple of single malts and see what you can get out of him.”
He knew my father well enough to know his whiskey preferences. I wasn’t sure what to make of that.
Squash moved on, maneuvering the conversation with a lawyer’s skill. “What do you know about the guy who was killed?”
A bit at sea, for once I didn’t mind being maneuvered. “Not a thing other than he was dressed up like a rodeo clown and had a rope around his neck. Allegedly, it belonged to the girl.”
“You got a name?”
“No. That’s all I got. Romeo hasn’t been to the scene. When he gets there, then I’ll know more.” As I worked on my coffee, I felt the caffeine raising a pulse. “Right now, I’d like to find out if the girl really is Mona’s daughter.”
“If she is?”
There was something in his tone I couldn’t place. His flat expression didn’t offer even a hint. “I hope you have time for a Murder One client.”
“Yin and yang, Lucky. There’s always two sides, remember that.”
“They teach you that in law school?”
“University of Nevada was progressive but not quite that into Eastern philosophy.”
“You picked that up all on your own?”
“Life. The best teacher.” He had a comeback for every whine.
“What are you saying?”
“Get all the facts before you jump off the conclusion cliff.”
He was right, of course. For once, I didn’t fight just to fight. Acceptance, like retreat, was often part of winning the war. “It’s just that…”
“Takes you back, doesn’t it?”
Everyone knew my story, but few thought beyond the sensational aspects. Squash surprised me with his insight. “Yeah.”
“Maybe the girl has a better story. If she had that photo for as long as she says, she could’ve started looking years ago. She didn’t. Makes me think there was a reason.”
“Her grandmother just died.”
“There you go. Try to see there might have been some good in all of this.”
I raised one eyebrow but didn’t bother arguing the esoterics. Facts would show the truth, assuming we could uncover any.
“But, between you and me, if you want to kill Mona, based on past experience alone, we could make a strong case for justifiable homicide. You would make my career.”
“I’ll give that some thought. You know how I like to help.” Even though he was a lawyer, I was starting to like him a lot. Of course, it could be just that bad judgment/handsome man thing. “Are you aware Mona is campaigning hard to get appointed to the Paradise Town Advisory Board?”
“How could I not know? She doesn’t miss a sound bite. How’s her act playing with the Clark County Commission?”
“My mother has a Don Quixote complex, a champion of the underdog. But a political office, more so an appointment, will be an uphill battle for a former prostitute and the wife of one of the most influential casino owners in town, which is too bad. She actually would be pretty good on the Advisory Board. When she was a lobbyist for the prostitution industry, she turned Carson City upside down.”
That got a smile out of both of us.
Squash joined in my Greek chorus. “I admire her work educating hookers who want to get out. To a one, they speak almost reverently about her.”
“That’s probably pushing it a tad.”
“Your mother and I fight on the same side in that war. We need folks to challenge the status quo i
n government.”
“True. Just, could that monkey wrench not be my mother? Not right now. Maybe she could take a sabbatical?”
Neither one of us took that seriously. Mona carried a big stick and had a penchant for finding beehives. For her, pushing boundaries and testing limits was as Pavlovian as my need to solve problems.
“This could force her hand.” Squash didn’t seem to be bothered by that. Odd, since he’d just been singing her praises and all.
“I wouldn’t bet against Mona’s backbone. Once she plots a course, it’s better to get out of the way, then trail behind to pick up the pieces when the whole thing implodes. Do you think the girl could be part of a political angle?”
To be honest, Mona’s political aspirations seemed inconsequential. But politics was an ugly business—Vegas had a long and storied history of bloody power plays. Mona was vying for a spot on the Paradise Town Advisory Board, which sounded innocuous. But the money part of the Strip—the part south of Sahara—didn’t lie in the City of Las Vegas, as most people assumed. No, as a result of a money power-play back when the folks who ran Vegas were a bit less law-abiding, the power brokers put their money smack in the middle of Paradise—a loosely incorporated part of Clark County. And now the Paradise Advisory Board made feast-or-famine decisions that impacted the most lucrative part of the Las Vegas Strip.
That kind of power could attract the wrong kind of attention.
While I envisioned men with baseball bats skulking through the night intent on doing harm to my mother, Squash remained curiously unaffected by the possibility. “We’ll turn over rocks like always, and we’ll see which snakes crawl out. Been in this business long enough not to rule out any possibility.”
I leaned forward, which, given the tiny space, put me nose to nose with the lawyer—he smelled as good as he looked. “What I’m telling you is subject to attorney-client privilege, right?”
“As long as you’re not admitting to a future crime.”
“That’s always a possibility, but I’d never admit to it.”
“Then our conversation exists only in this room. The press doesn’t sniff around me anymore. I know this is hard to believe, but I can be nasty when provoked.”
Lucky Ride (The Lucky O'Toole Vegas Adventure Series Book 8) Page 5