Lucky Ride (The Lucky O'Toole Vegas Adventure Series Book 8)

by Deborah Coonts

The kid snorted. “Who told you that?”

  “Scuttlebutt.” I’d love to track down the origin of the scuttlebutt. Someone pointed a finger at the girl, and I wanted to know why.

  Killing the guy in front of thousands was a stroke of genius. Too many witnesses. Too many versions of the truth as they saw it. A detective’s nightmare.

  “Did you see the arena before he raked it?”

  “Sure. It takes a while to sweep all of this. Especially after half the crew got tired of waiting and lit out.”

  “What did the dirt look like?”

  He reared back a bit, tucking in his chin as if I’d asked a stupid question. “I don’t know, like dirt.”

  I reached for patience, but it was beyond my grasp. But I had no energy to muster an attitude. “I get that, but I was wondering if it looked like that body had been dragged around before being left there. Were there like any flat, smooth, trough-like marks in the dirt that would lead you to believe that might have happened?”

  He pursed his lips as if thinking might be happening. I was hopeful but not sure. “Naw. It all looked just messed up like it always does at the end of the day. How could the guy be dragged with all of us watching?”

  “I don’t know. Stupid question, maybe. But you weren’t looking at him; you were watching the bull. And maybe folks could’ve thought it was part of the show. How about you? What were you looking at?”

  “The bull and wishing they’d catch him and wrap it up so I could go home.”

  “Precisely. Did you see anybody come near the dead guy before he fell?”

  “No, but you just established I am an unreliable witness.” The kid seemed happy about it. I didn’t blame him.

  “Who gave the nod to finally rake the arena?”

  “Toby Sinclair. Among other things, he manhandles the cleaning crew, like somehow dealing with us is beneath him.”

  “Any idea who he works for?”

  The kid shrugged. “He came in with the rodeo people. They’re sorta like a circus, all self-contained. They roll into town and set up shop, then they break it down and are gone before the dust settles, leaving only a whisper.”

  “Pretty poetic for a guy with a broom.” I gave him a half-smile. “You work for the circus, too?”

  “There is no more circus.”

  “What?” I couldn’t imagine a world without the Ringling Brothers—my port in a real-world tempest. And my backup plan. The idea of running away with the circus had gotten me through many a dark moment.

  “Yeah. Another one of life’s certainties that bit the dust. Like the wind coming up before a changing sea.”

  “Way more than sorta.” Change—that little wet fart of life was cropping up so often even I couldn’t ignore it. But I had no idea what to make of it. “You’ve been reading too much Hemingway.”

  “English lit major. Nobody’s invited me into the Ivory Tower, so I do what I can.” He started sweeping again. “You watch out for Toby. He’s in charge of the bulls. Used to be a rider until he got gored after a bad fall. Walks with a limp and a frown. Has a badass buckle which says he used to be somebody.” The kid paused for a moment to telegraph his pointed stare.

  Yeah, the used-to-bes were a special breed. “A badass named Toby—that’s a first.” Of course, far be it from me to judge a man, or anyone, by a name given them by someone else. Lucky wasn’t exactly all badass either. Of course, Lucky Luciano had been a bit of a bully. Not exactly my namesake, but I owned him when convenient. I felt conflicted about that.

  “First time for everything.” The kid shrugged. Bending down, he dug out an empty beer cup from under the seat and tossed it in the pile of dirt growing in front of his broom with each pass.

  “You there?” An angry shout from below.

  The kid jumped but ignored the voice. “Sinclair,” he said out of the side of his mouth.

  I looked down and could just make out an angry scowl and mile-wide shoulders that could carry the weight of the anger and attitude that tapered to a thin waist and long legs.

  He glared up at me. “Who the hell are you?”

  “What do you care?”

  He seemed surprised that someone would dare give him some push back. “You’re slowing my crew down. Move on and let them finish.”

  The kid and I watched him move into the shadows, then disappear through one of the tunnels leading to the mezzanine area.

  “He’s either in a hurry to go home, or he doesn’t want anyone talking to you.” The kid didn’t offer an answer. “Tell me about the guy who raked the arena? Rico?” I didn’t pause for confirmation—I knew I had that name right. “Where can I find him?”

  The kid lifted his chin toward the main gate at the far end of the arena, the one where the performers and competitors entered. “Head back there. You’ll see a stall for the tractor off to the left. Rico won’t be far. He finished not too long ago, and he likes to make his rig shine before its next circuit.”

  A man and his tractor. “Thanks.”

  As I made my way around to find Rico, I stayed to the shadows several rows above the floor and I watched the cops and the coroner. Reynolds wasn’t happy about something. The coroner was pretty hot as well, and he was doing all the talking. I couldn’t hear what they were saying, but if I showed myself and edged closer. I had no doubt Reynolds would throw his guard up.

  Nobody noticed me at the far end of the arena as I filtered down to the floor then around to where Rico stabled his steed. As promised, he was tending to his tractor.

  “Excuse me?” Not wanting to startle him, I tried for a soft tone.

  It didn’t work. He bolted upright, banging his head on some sort of strut or something.

  “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to startle you.”

  A young guy, blond, with an easy smile, Rico wasn’t what I’d expected. He doffed his hat and rubbed his head where it had met metal. “It’s been a night.” He looked a little pale. “Sorta spooked, you know?”

  “Your first dead guy?” A little more calloused than my normal approach. The dead guy was a clown, after all. Didn’t that at least give him a presumption of being one of the good guys? Then there was the flip side: who would kill a friggin’ clown? Of course, the creepy clown thing going around on the Internet had everyone a bit hatchet-happy.

  Bug-eyed, Rico looked at me like a second head had sprouted from my shoulders. “First? Shit. Hope it’s my only.” Then he squinted at me. “How many for you?”

  “Mmmm…” I stalled. Barely through the first full day of the New Year and already that whole no-lying resolution was tripping me up at every turn. I probably should be worried about that, but, instead I blew by it, lying to myself. Oh the irony! But lying to myself wasn’t a resolution breaker. With me, it was a given.

  I arranged the emotion out of my expression. “To be honest, I stopped counting awhile ago.” That wasn’t a lie.

  “You with the cops?”

  There was no way to answer that, keep my New Year’s hope alive, and get what I wanted. “Yes, I’m with the cops.”

  Resolutions—easy come, easy go. Just another way I set myself up for personal disappointment—as if I needed more. I adopted one of those brusque, TV-cop tones. “What’s your take on the…death? Did you see anything, anyone, that might help us understand what happened?”

  “We were all watching the bull.”

  That wasn’t really an answer. “I understand the bull got loose. Were there a bunch of people in the arena?”

  “Yeah. The cleaning crew was picking up stuff, rearranging things to get ready for the slate of events, you know what I mean?”

  If I slapped him, it would be justifiable assault. Was there such a thing? I focused, willing my mental train to stay on the main line and avoid the sidetracks. Yeah, right. “The cleaning crew?”

  “All the folks who sweep up the stands, keep the aisles in the barn clean. You know, pooper-scoopers.”

  Considering the size of some of the animals, the only way I’d
do that was with a backhoe and a HAZMAT suit. “Does the bull get loose often?”

  “If it does, you couldn’t prove it by me. Pretty dangerous. The rodeos I’ve worked on go to a lot of trouble to keep the bulls where they can’t hurt anybody. Well, at least not until it’s their time, you know—?”

  “I can imagine.” I had to cut him off or I’d end the night getting my picture taken holding a number across my chest. “Nothing unusual until the bull got loose?” Normally, a kid with an irritating speech pattern wouldn’t be a blip on my radar.

  “Nope.” He rubbed his head one more time, then resituated his cap. “I did see the girl, though, hanging around, which, I guess, was unusual.” He went a bit starry-eyed.

  Another hormonally handicapped male, to the extent that wasn’t redundant.

  “The girl? Which girl?” I tried to keep my tone impassive, but my heart hammered.

  “The Rodeo Queen.”

  Not the answer I expected, thank God. “Not unusual, I shouldn’t think. It’s the rodeo. She’s the Queen.”

  “She’s young; it was late. Her father is a rodeo dad.”

  “If that’s anything like a stage mom…”

  “Worse. He had her on a short rope. Never saw her without him sweeping up for her, know what I mean?”

  I squeezed my eyes shut and counted to ten before I opened them again. Knowing what anyone meant beyond what they said was out of my reach—I needed a Rosetta stone to translate subtext. But the kid’s anger pinked his cheeks. “He made decisions as to who was acceptable for his daughter, is that it? Separated the wheat from the chaff?”

  “He didn’t even care what Poppy thought.” Hurt…and anger…slithered through his words.

  Nothing like a young lover scorned.

  It hurt. Bad. I remembered. While the memory of the boy had faded, the hurt remained. “He was with her, then? The father?”

  “No, that’s what struck me as odd. She was alone, but she looked all agitated, you know—”

  “I know.”

  “Anyway, she was yelling at some guy in the stands. I couldn’t make him out. At first, I thought maybe it was her sidekick, but I didn’t see her, which was odd.”

  “Sidekick?” This time I braced for the verbal impact that seemed inevitable.

  “Yeah, cute girl, but total jailbait. She hangs out helping out and all. Really has a way with the animals. And she loves to throw a rope. Just learning. Darrin’s teaching her.”

  “Darrin?”

  “Darrin Cole, one of the clowns.”

  “The girl have a name?”

  “Bethany, I think.”

  Bethany. I described the girl who called herself Tawny Rose.

  “Yeah, sounds like her.”

  “She wasn’t with our Rodeo Queen. You’re sure?” If I could hazard a guess, the kid had been on her way to find me.

  “I’m sure.”

  A young man would keep track of the young women within his reach, I figured, so I leaned toward believing him. “Could you tell what Poppy was yelling at the man?”

  “No. I tried to get to her. She looked freaked, know what…” He stopped himself. “Sorry.”

  Guess he’d picked up on my near-homicidal state. Being half unhinged had its advantages for a member of the grammar police.

  He ducked his head as he smiled—a shy smile that seemed to say he was trying to jettison the trappings of youth but it was hard.

  I knew that, too.

  “You never got a chance to ask her what had her so hot and bothered?”

  “All hell broke loose when the guy dropped. I lost her in the chaos. Haven’t seen her since.”

  I couldn’t tell whether he was shining me on, protecting her, or telling the truth. Clearly, my detective super powers needed sleep. “When did you rake the arena?”

  “Just now.” He placed his hand on the machine. “Engine’s still warm if you don’t believe me.”

  “I believe you. Who gave you permission to rake?”

  He leaned around the enclosure then pointed toward the small crowd gathered around the body. “The guy in the fancy suit.”

  “Detective Reynolds?” Even I knew how to do his job better than he did, which said more about him than it did about me.

  “Yeah, that’s the guy. Pompous prick.”

  “The more they pose, the less they got. Remember that.”

  “Ain’t that the truth.” He grinned, telegraphing the joke. “You know what I mean?”

  “Got it. Now stop it. Tell me how the rest of tonight went down, after the show was over.”

  “I was almost done raking when the guy in the white jumpsuit showed up. I thought he was going to stroke out.”

  “The Coroner?”

  “If you say so.” Pointing out that his jumpsuit had CORONER in block letters across his shoulders seemed salt to a wound, so I let it lie.

  “When did the Coroner get here?”

  “It took him a bit. He’s only been here thirty minutes maybe.”

  I guessed, this late at night, it might take a little longer to pull together a team. But, then again, this was Vegas. The nasties came out to do their business under the cover of darkness. “Can you show me what you raked up?”

  He blinked at me a few times, then shrugged. “Sure. We get all kinds of stuff. You wouldn’t believe.”

  “Oh, I believe. People throw stuff out of the stands, performers drop things, even competitors lose stuff—their lucky rabbit’s foot, that kind of thing.”

  “Exactly.” He looked at me with new appreciation.

  I had a new fan. Well, a faux fan as I’d been lying my ass off, making it up as I went. Give up lying for New Year’s? What had I been thinking? Lying was essential to my job. No, it was essential to my life.

  I wondered if it was too late to make a substitute resolution. Could I give up Mona for New Year’s? Was I confusing New Year’s with Lent? All the self-deprivation events of the year tended to meld in my psyche into one long noooooo. Confusion was inevitable.

  “What did you rake up today? Anything interesting?”

  “You know, I quit looking.” He shook his head. “You wouldn’t believe what some folks carry as good luck charms.”

  “I’m sure you’re right, and from your tone, I don’t think I want to know.”

  “Dead stuff, parts of people and animals, and all.”

  Okay, not exactly what I was expecting.

  “Parts of people?” Even though I wanted to, I couldn’t resist.

  “Vials of blood. Fingers. Ears. I hate it when they do that. I have to turn it all in to the police. Just a lot of trouble, you know…”

  I shut him down with a slitty-eye.

  He smiled.

  The twit was playing me. My admiration for him grew like the Grinch’s heart at Christmas. “I was right; I didn’t want to know.”

  “Sorry. It just haunts you, you know what I mean?” He jammed his hands in his pockets and shivered.

  Guess my slitty-eye needed work. If he asked me that one more time, even though he was playing me, I couldn’t promise I wouldn’t slap him, so I stepped out of reach. “Now, I know.” So stop asking me, I silently shouted.

  Sarcasm—a spear that bounced off his shield of youth.

  Yeah, he’d won this round.

  “Do you still have today’s take separated from what you gathered before?”

  The top half of him disappeared into a barrel off to the side. He shimmied back out, then tilted the barrel onto its side. “Yeah, barrel was clean when I added tonight’s rake.” He started to pour the contents onto the floor.

  “Wait!” I grabbed a brush and swept a small area clean. “Okay, now.”

  He dumped the contents and I squatted to sort through them. He was right, all manner of things: wilted flowers, bits of leather, a belt buckle, which I pulled aside with the eraser end of a pencil I’d found at the bottom of my bag. A comb, beer cans…what one would expect. Nothing dead—guess my luck was turning.

&n
bsp; And then I saw it, a square elongated tube—the end of it jutting up at me. With my pencil, I pushed at it until I’d maneuvered it to the side.

  A tube of lipstick.

  I couldn’t read the color, but given three guesses, I’d give back two. “Can you read the color on the end there?” I asked Rico. Younger eyes.

  He squatted next to me, his hands on his knees. Leaning forward, he squinted. “Tawny something.”

  “Rose?”

  He gave it another squint. “Yeah.”

  I sat back on my haunches. Given that Detective Reynolds had ensured we couldn’t prove where the lipstick was found, as a clue the tube carried little weight. But as a question? It was huge. “Do you have an unused plastic bag or something?” I asked Rico.

  He thought for a moment, then nodded. “Gimme a sec.” He disappeared around the corner into the barn.

  I focused on my treasure trove, trying to envision who had lost what when. Hard to know. Easy to do some willful speculation.

  “What are you doing there?” The voice was hard, mean.

  Rico crab walked backward into a corner.

  I flinched then regained my bluff. “My job.” I rose and turned to face the man who had addressed me. Amazingly, I didn’t cringe.

  He was huge. And angry.

  How I didn’t falter, I don’t know. Stupid tired had something to do with it, I’m sure. Self-preservation was the first thing to go. “And you are?”

  “Homer Beckham.” He stuffed his hands in his pockets and hunched his shoulders.

  Too big to be a cowboy; too fat to do much heavy lifting.

  “What do you do around here?”

  “Around here?” His brows crinkled in confusion. “Just pray. My kid is a barrel racer. Poppy, she’s the best there is.” He looked over my shoulder as his eyes grew distant. “They voted her Queen, but what we really need is a win.”

  Ah, the rodeo dad, and I felt sympathy for his daughter. And Rico. He’d braved old man Beckham for a chance with his daughter. The kid had balls. “I’m sure being the Western Champion comes with perks.”

  He snorted at my understatement. “Life-changing, that’s what it would be. Endorsements, paid appearances.” On closer inspection, Homer looked tired…and haunted.

  “I get that. But it’s late, the show long over for the night. What are you doing here?”