“Any idea why?”
“Not a one. Not unless they were married off, which I doubt. We’re talking Basque country up in Northern Nevada—they are staunch Catholics. I’m still digging.”
“Okay, thanks. Anything on Dora Bates?”
The sound of pages flipping echoed through the line as I motored up the driveway to Cielo. I should feel like I was coming home, but I didn’t. I felt oddly disconnected, like I had as a child when Mona had sent me to Vegas. What was wrong with me? It would probably take a battalion of shrinks and more money and patience than I had.
An excuse, an avoidance strategy. Even I could hear it.
“She’s sort of that typical mid-American, mid-century sob story.”
“A woman with a brain born in a time and a place where subservience was her only path?”
Flash gave a low whistle. “Oh, that’s even a bit cynical for you.”
“Am I wrong?” The valet opened the door. I left the key and stepped out, using his proffered hand to help lever my bulk from the low machine.
“Not really. Life was so bad, apparently, she needed help from the mental-health professionals. A sanitarium upstate, just north of Sparks. She was released last year—her third extended stay. First time, she was a kid. Tough road.”
“There but for the grace of the Powers That Be…”
“Amen, sister.”
“Place shut down years ago, so that’s all the info I got. Chasing old news articles, but there’s not much. Can’t find anyone who’ll even talk about the place.”
“Not sure it’s important. Was she from the Reno area?” A connection would be nice. I crossed my fingers—stupid but I had nothing else, no lucky rabbit’s foot, no dried body parts…. Rico’s revelation still made me cringe.
“No, somewhere east of Bum-Fuck, Indiana.”
“There is no place by that name.” Why her vernacular bothered me right now, I don’t know. Developing sensibilities this late in the game was remote at best.
“There is if you’re a girl born in the late sixties, early seventies, and have ambitions beyond…”
“Bum-Fuck Indiana, I get it. The American Dream.” Women have been shackled by that dream far too long. All opportunities, with equal pay, for everyone willing to work for them. Why was that so hard?
Vegas. I was so glad I’d landed in Sin City where everyone had a chance, although, sexism was still rampant. I was a Pollyanna but not that gullible.
Another battle…for today, tomorrow, and every other day.
So many inequities in the world…including murder. Focus, Lucky, focus.
“Let me know when you have something more. You’ve given me more pieces to the puzzle. Pretty soon it’ll start to take shape.”
Fantasy, always better than reality.
Hungry, angry, worried, and wired, I made a pass through Cielo. The lobby was full, everyone happy and well-libated. Nothing needed my attention, so I headed upstairs, taking the public elevators and using the front entrance to JCB like I was a real person.
Only ten o’clock, so the place was full, the staff sliding between tables, the vibe elegant yet happy. I eased onto a stool at the bar. The bartender didn’t even ask. With a flourish, he produced a crystal flute, then filled it with pink bubbles.
“You look like you’re carrying a load.” The young man tried to be sympathetic, which I appreciated. But there was a huge gap of years and ugliness he couldn’t begin to comprehend, much less cross.
“Jet lag.” At least I could say it with a straight face.
Jean-Charles would be busy in the kitchen, so I didn’t bother him. There wasn’t anywhere else I’d rather be, so I nursed my bubbles. I’d exhausted the limit of my contacts; the cops were chasing the leads I’d uncovered, minimal as they were. I had no desire to be around my family—whatever had happened between us still burned.
Halfway through my second glass, a body slipped onto the empty stool next to me. I moved to give him room, but I didn’t look; frankly, I didn’t care and was way beyond small talk.
“Hey.” Romeo.
Okay, his small talk I could do. “You look like you’re wasting away.” I motioned to the bartender. “A platter of sliders, please. Tell the chef it’s for Lucky and Romeo. He’ll know what to do.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
I’d resigned myself to being of Ma’am vintage, but it rankled. Couldn’t they at least pretend I was still of the Miss variety?
Romeo leaned across the bar to get the bartender’s attention as he focused on entering our food order into the computer. When he had it, he pointed to the shelves of bottles behind the bar. “That bottle there, third shelf, in the middle, the Wild Turkey 101.”
“A glass for you, yes sir.”
“And the bottle.”
Romeo settled back on his stool as we both stared at him.
At the bartender’s questioning look, I gave a slight nod, then I braced Romeo. “I was going to ask you if you’d found anything, but I guess I have my answer.”
We both watched the bartender pour several fingers of amber liquid into a glass in front of Romeo. He left the bottle next to the glass—perfectly staged like an advertisement showing the hazards of our lifestyles.
Romeo took a long pull—he didn’t even choke.
“Impressive, but you can’t do that for long.”
“Right.” He clinked his glass against my flute. “You’re the poster child for liquid sustenance. What have you had to eat today?” Point made.
“So?”
“Once we got Mrs. Bates down, I waited while the coroner and his team got the straitjacket off. Underneath, she still had on a blue jean jacket that she or someone else had done all this fancy stuff to.”
“Bejazzled.”
“If you say so.”
“Anyway, on the underside of the sleeves from the cuffs back about halfway to the elbow…” He paused, taking another sip of his medicinal spirits.
I knew my cue. “Let me guess. Little red ball thingies.”
“You get a gold star. One was missing.”
“Okay, so we have Beckham lurking around the Babylon. He saw that I found the red ball thingy in the pony’s stall. He had barbiturates. Things are lining up against our man with the bad temper.”
“We’ve got all assets working on finding him,” he said in answer before I could ask.
In the mirror backing the bottles behind the bar, I caught sight of my chef bringing our platter of hamburgers. Watching him work his way through the crowd, I must’ve smiled.
“You are going to marry him, right?” Romeo asked.
That startled me out of my lascivious thoughts. “I said yes, didn’t I?”
“That’s not an answer, that’s avoidance. Why’d you sleep at the hotel last night?”
“It was late.” Even I heard the lame in that excuse.
“You’ve been gone a week, and the first night you’re back you sleep by yourself.” He let the accusation hang between us like raw meat bleeding out, before continuing, “You know you have a habit of doing this.”
“What? Sleeping by myself?” I lowered my voice as the bartender was sneaking closer for a good listen. Then I glanced back at the mirror. Jean-Charles had been waylaid by a table of four who were fawning.
“No, keeping people at bay, then letting them go when it gets uncomfortable.”
“I do not.” Smacked by the truth, I feigned indignity.
He threw back the rest of his drink, then poured himself another couple of fingers. “Just not with this one, not until you’re sure. Okay?”
Jean-Charles’s voice grew closer. Without turning, I could sense him close behind me. Of course, the aroma of the burgers helped…or that’s what I told myself. I snuggled toward him as he planted a kiss on my neck.
After lingering for a moment, breathing me in, he raised the platter on one hand over our heads, setting it in front of us with a flourish. “Voila.”
His inhibitions buried under the bo
oze, Romeo didn’t waste any time in snagging two, which he mashed together, then took a huge bite.
I turned on my stool, capturing my chef between my legs, which had the added advantage of blocking Romeo from view. Sliding my hands down Jean-Charles’s arms, I captured his hands in mine. The look on his face held a wisdom I lacked, but my heart matched the love. “I’m sorry.”
He gave one of his patented Gallic shrugs that I found endearing. “My heart is sad without you close, but I know your life—”
“—is no excuse. Balance, right?” I let loose of one hand to reach up and brush back his hair where it just curled over his collar. Then I caressed his cheek with the backs of my fingers.
He leaned in to my touch and closed his eyes. When he opened them, they were a light, untroubled blue. “You have ice feet, then?”
I felt a smile start to bloom. “Cold feet?”
“Yes, this,” he said, and I couldn’t tell whether he was misusing the words on purpose, knowing how much I enjoyed it when he did.
Romeo cleared his throat.
I could do this on my own without his stage direction, but his concern made me smile. “Yes, a bit, I think. Marriage is not something I ever thought of for myself.”
“Why not?” At my discomfort, he looked around as if remembering where we were. “Perhaps you will tell me later? We can talk about it over a bottle of the fabulous wine I have discovered from Santorini. Very dry, lots of minerals, you will love it.”
“I love you. And that sounds perfect.” I barely managed the words before he covered my mouth with one of his patented best-kisses-ever.
And the world disappeared.
Romeo’s phone jangled for attention, jarring me back a little. I didn’t let go of my chef, preferring to linger in the kiss, keeping the real world at bay a few ticks longer.
As Romeo addressed whatever minor issue was at hand, Jean Charles pulled back. “Trust your heart. Do only what it says. But, I will tell you, mine says we will be very good, you and I.”
Romeo barked a few curt words that I only half-heard. After he repocketed his phone, he leaned around Jean Charles to get my attention. “Hate to break this up, but we gotta go.” In addition to rising pink in his cheeks, he had a touch of Béarnaise sauce at the corner of his mouth.
“You’ve got something here?” I touched my mouth to show him where.
He swiped at it with his napkin, then threw it on the bar. “Come on.” He backed off his stool.
Jean-Charles stepped out of the way and extended a hand to help me off the stool. He motioned to the bartender who had stayed close, a puppy eager to please. “Wrap up those hamburgers. Ms. O’Toole needs to go.” He gave me a smile. “You must eat. Promise me.”
“I will.” A bit conflicted about diving into Romeo’s world again, I turned to the detective. “What’s the rush?”
“We have Beckham.”
As it turned out, the “we” meant me. Jerry had Beckham sequestered in our very own holding cell in the lower reaches of the hotel. Normally, we reserved it for belligerent drunks, allowing them to sleep it off, or bellow it off, their choice. But they did it far from prying eyes, which was good for everyone concerned.
Romeo followed hot on my heels as I took him into the bowels. “I’ve never been down here.”
“We try to keep the police out.”
He grabbed the back of one of my sweater sleeves as he stepped on the back of my heel. “Seriously? What do you do down here?” The kid had returned.
“Thumbscrews and waterboarding.”
“Wow, seriously? Is that how you do it?”
I whirled around to give him the full force of sarcasm and ran into a big grin, which made me laugh and made my heart happy—he was truly back.
Now, if I could hang onto me. How to do that when relationships were shifting like dunes in the desert?
Jerry met us at the elevator. Even after the craziness of New Year’s Eve, he was spit and polished, pressed and creased. Was it easier for men to do that? Or was I a terrible failure to my gender and humanity in general? Of course, Jerry took a special pride in impeccable. A trim, Black man, his bald pate was shaved and polished to a rich brown shine, his face without a hint of a five-o’clock shadow, his collar open but stiff with starch, his khakis creased, his loafers polished. A flash of gold at his wrist completed the whole stepping-to-the-bridge-of-a-yacht-in-the-Med look.
He acknowledged Romeo with a nod. With me, he cut to the chase. “Brandy forwarded a photo. My staff did the rest. We found him sleeping off a serious bender—he ran up quite a tab at the Daiquiri Den.”
“Where was he?”
“In one of the dumpsters behind the Bazaar. Trash guy took a look before he started the crusher. Beckham’s one lucky dude.”
“Is he sober now?”
“Enough. Being held for the police on a potential murder charge can do that.”
Adrenaline, the antidote to inebriation, if it didn’t kill you.
“You make the call,” I said to Romeo, tossing the words over my shoulder.
“Why don’t you do the questioning; then it’s not an issue.”
“It’s an issue if you want to use the statement later.” I stopped, forcing him to do the same. “Before we get to the holding cell and before Beckham can overhear, let’s figure out how to play this. You’re the boss.”
The kid took that in stride and with only a slight widening of his eyes. “Why don’t you ask him a few of the obvious questions and see what he says. After that, I can take him in. We can get him stone-cold and then put him under the bright light.”
He really was starting to sound like me. I couldn’t tell if that was progression, regression, or whether he wanted to communicate with me in my own dialect. “I like your style.”
“Just a page out of your playbook.”
Beckham rose from the chair in the middle of the cell and rushed toward us, his big hands grabbed the bars. “You going to let me out of here?” He shook his cage like an enraged animal desperate for freedom and willing to do anything for it.
He looked like a future homicide waiting to happen. If his unwavering stare was any indication, Jerry was his intended target.
Beckham’s face was crimson. One eye was swollen shut and a gash in his lip still leaked blood.
I raised an eyebrow at Jerry. “He didn’t want to come with us.”
“And your men?”
“One has a broken arm, two others bruised ribs and various cuts and abrasions.”
Mr. Beckham shifted his stare to me—this one had a bit less murder in it. The smell of yesterday’s alcohol and cold sweat wafted off him in nauseating waves.
I expected him to start gnawing on the bars. “You’ve cut a rather wide swath. I doubt you’ll get out of there anytime soon. You clocked Romeo and Doc Latham pretty good. Put the vet in the hospital. Not to mention our Security officers.”
He let his hands drop, but anger still shivered through him. “I don’t like cages.”
“Me either.”
“I’m sorry I hurt those men.”
“And Dora Bates?”
Like a caged animal, resigned but looking for an opening, he darted a wild look back and forth between Romeo and me. “Shit. I about shit my pants when I saw her hanging there, upside-down like that.” A faraway look displaced the anger in his eyes, like he’d gone back in time to be assaulted by the vision all over again. “God, the look on her face.”
Having traveled back with him, I shivered.
Focus returned and reality dawned. “You can’t think I had anything to do with her murder!”
But he knew the opposite. I could see it in his eyes and the veil of self-preservation that dropped across his face. “Well, let’s review the facts. You took the little red ball thingy that we found in your daughter’s horse’s stall after someone had tried to kill the animal by injecting it with barbiturates. You assaulted the young detective here, and the vet, then stole more of the drug from the doc’s
van. Next, you were caught on video lurking around Dora Bates’s murder scene. One of the red ball thingies was missing from her jacket. You put two and two together, didn’t you, Mr. Beckham? You saw the red ball and knew exactly where it had come from, along with the lipstick that had been found at both crime scenes.”
He backed away from the bars, putting distance between himself and my version of the truth, which sounded rather damning, even to me.
“The bitch tried to kill my baby’s pony.” The yowl of an angry, helpless animal.
“Maybe so. I’m not sure of that yet. But that’s no reason to kill her.”
Beckham snorted. “It’s every reason in the world, but I didn’t do it. She was dead when I got there.”
“You’ll have to do better than that. Why don’t you start by telling us how you knew she was staying here?”
“I asked around.”
“Who told you?”
“I got it from the kids.”
The girls. “You headed over here to find Dora Bates after you assaulted Romeo and stole the barbiturates from Doc Latham’s van?”
“Yeah, like you said, but I wasn’t going to kill her. She needed to know I would fight back, that’s all.”
“You were mad as hell and weren’t going to take it anymore.”
“The Network,” Romeo said under his breath as he leaned in to me.
“You need a vacation,” I whispered back, then turned to Beckham. “If you didn’t kill her, who did? Any theories?” Mona always told me answering a question with a question was bad manners, but I’d always found it effective when grilling was involved.
With no ready answer, he appeared not to have thought about that, so I kept the floor. “So far, to hear you tell it, you’re the only one who had a beef with her.”
The fear returned to his eyes. “You have to believe me. I didn’t kill her.”
Romeo, who had been lurking behind, now stepped to my shoulder. “You look like a guy who knows the score and you know how this game is played.”
Wow, and I thought cops only spoke like that on TV. Thankfully, I kept my snark to myself, but I did feel like the short half of the Dragnet team.
Lucky Ride (The Lucky O'Toole Vegas Adventure Series Book 8) Page 24