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

by Deborah Coonts

  At the far corner of the lobby, the opening of the Bazaar yawned, giving a glimpse of the treasures that could be found there. Practically any tangible thing worth having could be acquired there. A gross overstatement, but it captured the goal. From a Ferrari to a quickie wedding, with stops for gourmet burgers and beautification, then add some bling and designer duds and accessories, and the Bazaar was a one-stop glam shop. I wasn’t sure where weddings fit into the picture—frankly, I’d never been sure about weddings. Most I’d seen were merely the beginning of the end.

  When I turned to head into the casino, I realized Teddie had disappeared. Captured in his own pain, he hadn’t wished me a happy birthday.

  Despite a strong desire, I didn’t scan the crowd to see where he headed. Where he went and what he did no longer interested me, or so I told myself.

  What did Mona always say? Be it until you become it? Yeah, that. When it came to Teddie, I was still in the fake-it stage.

  With a smile pasted on, I waited impatiently at the foot of one of the small bridges over the indoor stream that meandered between the lobby and the casino—our own version of the Euphrates. The bridge provided the perfect photo op—from the apex, it was possible to catch the reed-lined water, the paddling waterfowl, and the flying birds and butterflies in the background. With the New Year’s crowd, today’s line was longer than usual.

  The casino continued the lobby motif with carpets that swirled with bright colors, muted lighting—much of it from wall sconces that enclosed flames under glass to mimic the torches of ancient Mesopotamia. Colorful fabric looped from the ceiling, giving a warm and welcoming air.

  People ringed the tables, their intensity palpable. A few cheers, fewer groans. The casino still corralled the excitement of last night and amped it, building toward tonight. While the insanity of the Strip on New Year’s Eve was hard to handle for the hotels—the flow of pedestrians, progressive inebriation and commensurate chaos, the fireworks, and silly stunts were all part of the party—for me, the hardest part was being trapped on the Strip—after nine p.m. the Strip was closed to cars, ingress or egress, until the next morning. Most hotels limited entry to those who were staying there, which limited the gaming revenues. A small price to pay to keep drunken marauding at a minimum—or so they said. And, for the casinos, walking the tightrope between when a player was properly oiled versus totally tanked made the evening a nightmare. By law, we had to cut off the really drunk players, which often meant the risk of serious bodily harm. Broken bones or a chat with the Gaming Commission—guess which one usually won?

  Delilah’s Bar, where the feeding and lubricating of our gamblers was of paramount importance, occupied a raised platform in the middle of the room. I caught Teddie’s ass as he worked his way up the steps on his bum leg. The white baby grand tucked in a corner called to him—a place where he lived, he’d told me.

  In my former life, I’d often joined him there after a long day and listened to him play before we headed home.

  Home.

  I wasn’t sure where that was anymore. My owner’s suite felt like work. Jean-Charles’s house felt like his home. I couldn’t bear to go back to my burned–out apartment. At some point, I was going to have to commit.

  Not my strong suit. Hell, I couldn’t even decide on another car.

  Another problem for another day.

  By design, the entrance to the Kasbah was well hidden behind a couple of towering palms. A narrow-arched doorway led to a hall. Like the entrance to a secret garden, the hallway was lined with palms, the high-domed glass ceiling allowing light to keep them alive. At the end, a guard sat behind a desk to measure the entrants’ worthiness…but mainly to confirm they had a key. He nodded to me as I passed.

  The hall turned hard left after the guard, and the carpet changed to tile as the room opened up in front of me—a soaring atrium with a glass dome and rings of rooms stretching to the sky. As with all the Strip properties, there was a hierarchy here. The most important folks got the bungalows, then we put the next tier on the twenty-sixth floor, and the rest we salted in where they fit. Not my rules, but I was tasked with enforcing them, which, of course, was impossible. Was Cher more important than Sting? And a high-ranking Chinese diplomat who wasn’t supposed to be in Vegas, where did you put him? Where he thought he deserved to be or where he wouldn’t attract attention? Or somewhere lesser, more sequestered? Obvious, but try telling him that and avoid an international incident.

  Those were the hard cases. For everyone else, the perks in Vegas hinged on money—how much you had and how much you kept in play. Celebrity was an afterthought.

  As our high-end, home-away-from-home for the high-rollers and celebrity types, each bungalow was a self-contained small house. The bungalows came with the commensurate comforts, including a 1:1 staff-to-guest ratio and 24/7 food and comfort specialists, which included massage therapists but not hookers, at least not officially. Since one of the big names in town went on national primetime and told everyone they could get anything they wanted in his hotel, everyone had come to expect…everything. If my concierge provided more than was legal, that was on his or her back. Legality was my corporate limit.

  My personal limits were a bit sketchier. Or so I told myself when I needed to feel all badass, like now.

  A water feature wound through the properties, separating them. Some bungalows, like Bungalow Twelve, my destination, had private pools—more like dipping tanks, in my opinion, but I guess there’s a limit to extravagance, even in Vegas.

  Craning my neck to catch a glimpse of the sky, I felt like Dorothy entering Oz. I pivoted to the left toward Bungalow Twelve. Miss P paced in front, the effort not to wring her hands evident in her scowl. She brightened when she saw me—nothing like off-loading a sticky problem to brighten a day.

  “There you are!” Her relief was evident in every word. Despite the worry, she looked…happy. A much younger, hunky Aussie husband could do that, I guess. But her job was most of it—she’d been promoted and was now the me I used to be, and she was better at it than I was. I counted on her competence, even if I wasn’t used to the spiky hair and beautiful clothes. “I’m really sorry I had to rope you in on this one.” She winced when she said it.

  I started to ask.

  She shook off my question. “You’ll find out soon enough. And, for the record, you’re starting to rub off on me, and I’m not all that happy about it.”

  “Starting to? I’m wounded.” Banter to buffer the ugly, Miss P’s normal MO. “This isn’t just any old homicide, is it?”

  “No.” Miss P crossed her arms, rubbing her upper arm as she glanced at the bungalow. “This one’s got personal written all over it.” She gave me a look—half fear, half green.

  “Murder is usually personal.” Thank God. The idea of joy-killing made me want to move to the moon. “I’m guessing it’s not a prostitute stuffed under a bed?” Sad to say, that was our normal murder, if those two words could ever be used in the same sentence.

  She shook her head.

  “Or a heart attack, stroke, or OD?” All fairly common. Vegas should come with a warning label, like exercise. If it’s not part of your regular routine, don’t jump in the deep end.

  She acted like she hadn’t heard me. “Maybe you should wait for Romeo.”

  “He couldn’t be more than a few minutes away. When I called him right after I talked with you, he was at the Thomas and Mack. What about the rest of Metro? All the minions and stuff?”

  “You’re the first.”

  “Jerry?” Jerry was our head of Security, my better half in the corporate world.

  “After last night, I hope he’s on an airplane to Tahiti.”

  Drat, no moral support. “I assume you’ve called Security to get them started pulling all the security tapes?”

  “I was waiting for you.”

  I gave her a look. “You’re the Head now. You got this. I’m here to back you up.”

  “Not with this one.” She rubbed her ar
ms, then a shiver raced through her. “You need to see it for yourself.”

  “Who called it in?”

  “Genevieve, one of the butler staff. The do not disturb had been on the door since yesterday. No calls to room service. The staff got worried.”

  “A greenhorn.” I let out a long sigh. “I’m sorry for that.” Through years of handling the seedier side of life, I’d risen to the championship level of compartmentalizers.

  Great for coping until I’d locked all of me away.

  “How is she?”

  “She’s having a hard time.” Miss P looked as sad as I felt.

  “You have to keep her here. The police will want to talk with her.”

  “I know.”

  “Maybe call the doc to come talk with her?”

  “Good idea.” Miss P looked like she wished she’d thought of it.

  “I’ve been doing this a lot longer than you. Is Dora Bates registered in Bungalow Twelve?”

  “Yes, but not under that name.” She checked her clipboard. “She used the name, Fiorelli. Mean anything to you?” She glanced up. The look on my face told her what she wanted to know. “Guess so. Anyway, she missed her checkout time—another reason for the staff’s concern.” She glanced at me over the top of her cheaters, which had slid to the absolute last foothold on the end of her nose.

  I resisted shoving them back to a position that would make me comfortable. “To hear the rodeo crowd tell it, Ms. Bates is scrounging for cash like the rest of them. Wonder where she got the green to spring for a bungalow? How’d she pay for the room?”

  Miss P opened her iPad and scrolled. While she searched the database, I worked on finding the courage to face what had put the haunt in Miss P’s eyes.

  “Cash. She paid cash.” Miss P sounded surprised. “How’d you know?”

  “Didn’t know the answer, just knew the question.” Cash. Now that was interesting. “I’m assuming the bungalow is booked tonight?” We didn’t keep them filled as we did our rooms—they were expensive to operate. Only when someone earned that particular kind of stroking did we book them in the Kasbah.

  “Yes. For a couple of weeks.”

  “Weeks? Really? Who...” I trailed off when I saw the look on her face.

  “Jordan?”

  Clutching her iPad to her chest, she nodded, the adoration of a bobbysoxer mooning after Sinatra painting her face.

  Jordan! While I didn’t crush on him like Miss P, a little bit of happiness burned inside. A bit of normal, a touch from the outside world to brush back the cold finger of death. Okay, overstating, but still…

  A personal friend from way back, Jordan Marsh had been the Hollywood leading man for several decades until he grew tired of the charade and married his long-time partner, Rudy Gillespie, also a personal friend. Serendipitously, his timing had been perfect, and, while the confirmation of his sexual preference broke millions of hearts worldwide, it didn’t dim the glow of his Hollywood star.

  A little-known fact, but I had introduced Jordan and Rudy, then been tasked with keeping it all hush-hush…for a long, long time. Staying in the inner circle of a Hollywood A-lister was sometimes more give than receive, but I guess that’s the ebb and flow of every relationship. Except with my mother—that was all give. Anger and hurt flared anew. I had no idea which emotional door to shut it behind. Maybe family betrayal didn’t have a compartment. The thought terrified me.

  “What’s Jordan doing in town?” I was a little hurt he hadn’t called me, but that had more to do with the knife blade my mother had stabbed between my shoulder blades, nicking my heart. So I let it go.

  “Taking in the rodeo and getting in some rehearsal time with Teddie, at least that’s what he told me,” Miss P downplayed it, but a bit of gloat rounded her words.

  I let her have her fun. Frankly, I’d half-forgotten Jordan and Teddie were going to do a joint drag thing in the lounge room at Cielo—a sold-out, limited-run opening in a few weeks. “I’m assuming Jordan hasn’t arrived?”

  She glanced at her phone, which she still clutched in a white-knuckled death grip. “His plane touched down five minutes ago.”

  “Let me guess, we’re booked solid, right? No place else to stash him?”

  “None that he’d tolerate.”

  My mind worked through the possibilities. “Call the limo. Reroute to Cielo. Put him in the guest suite next to mine and ply him with anything he wants.”

  Miss P looked happy to have something to do. She should’ve gotten there on her own and not waited for me, but we’d have that discussion another day.

  Was that my fault? Was I still holding on when I needed to let go?

  With my life such as it was, work was the only control I had.

  Self-delusion, another coping strategy. Clearly, I needed an intervention or a house in the south of France with no connectivity.

  It didn’t take long. Once done, I tilted my head toward the door of Bungalow Twelve that stood open, a gaping maw that made me want to flee rather than fight. Not an option. Without really thinking about it anymore, I walked up the short walk.

  “I’ll just take a quick look before the cops and the coroner stake their claims,” I called over my shoulder as I ducked inside.

  A few feet inside, I smelled death—the wafting stench of the final realization riding on a silent scream. I followed it into a great room with high ceilings and large French windows to drink in the pool and riot of bordering flowers. Hand-knotted Oriental rugs in bright hues of silk lay over polished mahogany floors. Antiques from many eras, in many styles, tucked among the overstuffed sectionals and comfortable ottomans, creating a luxurious home away from home. Along the left wall, a stocked bar beckoned, the bottles gleaming against a wall of glass behind a granite-topped counter fronted by a row of red leather stools. Tulips, in purples, reds, oranges, and yellows, sprang from a Chihuly vase in the middle of the coffee table captured in the crook of the couch.

  An oasis befitting a king. I let my gaze wander, drinking it all in. For a moment, I forgot why I was there.

  “Oh!” I fell back a step, staggered. A moment of confusion. Incongruity. Horror staged amid the luxury.

  I hadn’t been expecting a woman. And not above the grand piano where the light trained from the spot above glistened off each fake crystal of her bejazzled jeans.

  Hung from the ceiling, upside-down, a rope around her ankles, a straitjacket binding her arms, she had a thick torso and spindly legs. I couldn’t see her face. Her back rotated as the body spun slowly as the air circulated.

  My breath stuck in my throat as her face turned into view. In keeping with my preconceived notions, her makeup was overdone: red cheeks, huge eyelashes, one set mashed down covering one eye, lipstick firmly in place.

  A dusty red that looked a lot like Tawny Rose.

  Purple rose underneath the skin in her forehead and pooled around her eyes. She must’ve taken a beating. Why hadn’t anyone heard? Worse, maybe they had and hadn’t reported it. If that were the case, I wasn’t sure I knew how to live in that world.

  Clear tape wound around her head, keeping her eyes wide in fear, her mouth open, stretched into a wide grimace. Probably the last turn of the tape covered her nose.

  The killer had wanted her to know, to feel each interminable second of the creep of death.

  Battling bile rising in my throat, I concentrated. The rope looked a lot like the one wrapped around Mr. Turnbull’s throat—a stiffer kind used for roping rather than hanging. I pulled out my phone and started snapping photos. The knot, too, looked familiar but hard to tell from this vantage point. Something bothered me as I snapped away: I’d seen that knot before and not just around Turnbull’s neck. No, I’d seen it somewhere else.

  A pair of cowboy boots lay discarded, kicked to the corner. Grabbing a pencil from the side table, I squatted and inched the boots around so I could see them better.

  The lady wasn’t one of the competitors—her age, late forties maybe, aged her out. But she’d
been wandering around the arena—dirt, dung, and shavings stuck in the creases between the soles and the upper portion of the boots.

  “Whoa!” Romeo shouldered into the room, then skidded to a stop, his eyes wide. “That’s like something out of Chris Angel’s show.”

  “Except she was no magician and there was no escape. I’d say we found Dora Bates.”

  “Shouldn’t be hard to get a note from her doctor excusing her from work.”

  “Any word on Beckham?” I rose and kept taking photos from every angle I could get to without disturbing any possible trace or adding any of my own.

  “No, can’t find him or his daughter either.” Romeo approached the body, then walked slowly around it. “Ever see anything like that before?”

  “Not that didn’t involve a lack of clothing and auto-erotic asphyxiation.” I caught his shocked glance out of the corner of my eye. “Which, by the way, is almost always accidental, unless of course it’s staged, which I would doubt this was. Besides, it involves a ligature around the neck, not the ankles.” Something bothered me as I stared at the woman. Some connection I should make. “There’s a message in this killing. With a small window of time, it would’ve been easier to dispatch the woman and stuff her under the bed, so why go to all the trouble?”

  “Stuff her under the bed?” He sounded shocked.

  “Please, this is Vegas. Ugliness happens at the intersection of dreams and reality. Happens more than you want to know. Not generally in the higher-end properties. But the ones that rent rooms by the hour? For them, it’s a bit of an issue.”

  “You scare me.”

  “My small talk can shut down even the best cocktail conversation.”

  “Any ideas?” Romeo looked a bit at sea.

  I knew the feeling—I lived there. “The whole upside-down thing was meant to slap us in the face.”

  I understood the sarcasm—he’d learned it from me. “Wasn’t there someone in history hung upside-down as sort of a statement thing?”