Her 24-Hour Protector

by Loreth Anne White

  Those were the days when no bank or legitimate investor would’ve come near the gambling business. Without mob money, the Vegas boom would have never happened. They were the days before Howard Hughes had started investing massive proceeds from his airline sale into Vegas property, giving gambling its first positive image, opening the doors to corporate ownership of hotel-casinos. After Hughes, Wall Street investors had finally sat up and started taking notice—and gambling had become acceptable to mainstream America. It was about that time that the federal government had started a massive crackdown on organized crime in Las Vegas, running most of the old gangsters out of town.

  Epstein, however, had managed to elude the dragnet. He’d given the feds nothing they could pin on him. But they’d continued to watch him. They’d kept files on him, looking, in particular, to connect him with some of the brutal murders alleged to have been carried out by a man named Tony Ciccone.

  A mob enforcer.

  Lex continued to scroll down through the old microfiche files the FBI had compiled on Epstein dating back to the 1970s, noting that Epstein had hired Ciccone from Chicago to handle security at the Frontline.

  He sat back, reached absently for his coffee mug, sipped. It was cold. He pulled a face, shoved the mug aside, thinking that one needed to understand the context of Vegas at the time. It was a period when the mob literally ruled Sin City. And people like Ciccone—who took orders from men like Epstein—commonly got away with murder. Murder and gangsters even added to the edgy glamour and allure that was Las Vegas in that era.

  But when Ciccone had eventually come under investigation for a run of increasingly violent homicides, Epstein seemed to have severed ties with him. Lex scrolled further through the files, noting it was around this same time that some sort of rivalry had developed between Ciccone and Epstein. And Ciccone had broken away from Epstein, forming his own camp, and allegedly muscling into Epstein’s business, on Epstein’s turf.

  It was also around this period that Lex’s mother had been murdered.

  Lex rubbed his brow. Was he insane for even thinking along these lines? What on earth could Sara Duncan have had to do with any of these people? The fortune-teller’s words snaked back into his mind. “Everyone was touched by those tendrils of evil. Everyone…”

  He shook off the thought, turned back to the files.

  Apparently, before the feds had been able to pin the homicides on Ciccone, the Italian-American had simply vanished. Dematerialized into the ether. The FBI had mounted one of the country’s biggest manhunts for the violent mob enforcer, but no one ever found a clue what had happened to him. It remained an unsolved mystery to this day.

  And from the point of Ciccone’s disappearance, Frank Epstein’s business seemed to have suddenly gone squeaky clean, Epstein apparently transitioning seamlessly into the new corporate era of Las Vegas.

  The new Vegas has risen…

  However, the FBI files on Epstein had remained open, and the feds continued to keep him in their sight. Now, decades later, the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, and the FBI’s financial crimes unit, finally had a small lead on Epstein’s alleged involvement in a massive junk bond scam. And now an undercover investigation into some of Epstein’s other holdings and New York Stock Exchange transactions was currently under way.

  Lex reached for his coffee, almost taking another swallow before he recalled how cold it was. He set the mug back down, turned to Perez. “You got any idea yet when exactly Harold and Frank were on good business terms, and when things went sour between them?”

  Perez flipped through her notebook. “I got here that in the early 1980s, they were still in business. Seems things went sideways in the mid-80s when they dissolved a formal partnership.”

  “Does the dissolution revolve around any deal in particular?”

  “Still looking into that.”

  Lex chewed on the inside of his cheek, thinking. Harold was a little younger than Epstein; still he’d been around and doing business in Las Vegas long enough to have been tainted by the organized crime that had once ruled Sin City.

  “What are you thinking?” asked Perez.

  About who could have killed my mother, and why.

  “Just can’t help wondering what happened to Tony Ciccone, you know?”

  Perez twisted her thick, dark hair round a pencil and made it into a bun, the pencil sticking out the top. She did that when she was getting tired and needed to keep focus. “You think Epstein had Ciccone whacked or something?”

  Lex shrugged. “A lot of people apparently thought so at the time. Ciccone was in Epstein’s employ, and when Ciccone started drawing too much federal heat to Epstein during the crackdown, it looks like Epstein tried to sideline him, send him back to Chicago. It appears Ciccone didn’t want to go home. He dug in, started trying to muscle in on some of Epstein’s Vegas business himself. Then, poof, suddenly he’s gone.” Lex snapped his fingers. “Just like that. And Epstein goes clean as a whistle.”

  Perez got up, stretched her back. “I’m beat. Want some food? I’m going to get takeout.”

  “Uh…yeah, sure. Did you manage to get those records on Mercedes Epstein I asked you about yesterday?”

  Perez rummaged through the growing pile of papers on her desk, extracted a file. She slapped it down on Lex’s desk, reached for her jacket. “Pizza or Chinese?”

  “Whatever,” Lex said, opening the file.

  “Oh—” she stopped at the door “—that fire in South America, at Joseph Rothchild’s old offices? No record of it.”

  “No surprise, either,” Lex muttered as Perez left the room. But what Lex saw when he opened the file did come as a surprise—Mercedes was not her real name. It was a stage name.

  She’d been born Mary Roberts and had officially changed her name when she’d arrived in Vegas and started dancing. And what Lex read next chased a strange shiver over his skin.

  Mary Roberts, aka Mercedes Epstein, originally hailed from bluegrass country, a Kentucky girl who’d run away from home at the age of seventeen. In the file that Perez had compiled were copies of newspaper stories about a distraught couple searching for their missing teenage daughter. But it was the next line that had chilled Lex.

  The city Mary Roberts hailed from was Lexington, Kentucky.

  He sat back, feeling vaguely shaky. Not many people had the name Lexington. Personally he didn’t know one. This meant nothing, of course, just another coincidence that a woman who had bid a fortune on him hailed from Lexington, Kentucky, and that she was the wife of a one-time mob man who had sacked his mother for being pregnant with him. And that she shared Lex’s passion for orphan-related charities.

  He dragged his hand though his hair, cursed softly. Perhaps the Lucky Lady was right. Perhaps Las Vegas was rubbing off on him, and now he was starting to look for signs, for connections. For omens.

  He thought again of The Tears of the Quetzal, of the legendary curse.

  Of Jenna.

  He shook it all off. Superstition was ludicrous. He was a cop. He dealt in cold hard facts. Logic.

  Still, it felt weird. He felt off, and no matter how freaking nuts it all was, somehow it was all dovetailing. On impulse, he grabbed the phone, dialed the FBI’s financial crimes unit in New York, asked to speak to someone on the Epstein investigation.

  It was late Sunday evening and Harold was still holed up in his study. Jenna paced impatiently outside her father’s door. She’d been trying to find an opportunity to speak to him all day, and now she was dressed up and due at Cassie’s big birthday bash being held at the Desert Lion.

  But she couldn’t go without speaking to her dad first. She just could not leave this for another day. She stopped outside his door, sucked in her breath, knocked. Harold detested being bothered in his study.

  Jenna waited impatiently, getting tense. She rapped again, harder.

  “What is it?” her father barked from inside.

  She opened the door. The lights were dimmed, and Harold Roth
child was sitting in his great leather chair with his back to her, feet up on an ottoman, whiskey tumbler balanced on the arm rest, as he listened to female vocals with the clear voice of a bird. He did this sometimes when he was brainstorming a particularly thorny problem.

  He glanced round. “Jenna?”

  “I need to talk to you.” She set her purse down, struggling suddenly for a way to broach the issue.

  He studied her for a long moment. “Why don’t you take a seat and—”

  “I don’t want to sit. I want the truth, Dad. You’re hiding things from me, and I want to know why.” She gestured in the direction of his desk drawer. “Why didn’t you tell me about the additional death threats to our family? Why did you keep those other five notes from the police? And what’s all that stuff about revenge for a past deed and The Tears of the Quetzal? What was it, really, Dad, that got Candace killed?”

  His face, usually so controlled, his blue eyes usually so deceptively friendly, suddenly turned dark and thunderous.

  A warning to be cautious whispered through Jenna. She’d intended to broach the issue delicately, but she’d already botched it in her frustration. And she could see her father had already had a couple of Scotches. It was at times like this, loosened by alcohol, that Harold could get mean, and she’d become a little afraid of him, even though she loved him so much. Because of his power to hurt and reject her.

  Because of her own need to be loved.

  All those old childish emotions suddenly began twisting into a thorny braid in Jenna’s chest now.

  “You saw the notes?” he asked quietly.

  “I saw them,” she said. “Why did you hide them, Dad?”

  He said nothing.

  Anger began to bubble deep in her gut, fueled by her conflicting emotions. Jenna tried to keep her cool, but control was elusive. “Candace died, Dad—she was murdered. And those notes threaten our entire family with the same fate. That includes me. But you didn’t think to let me know, did you? Oh no, the great Harold Rothchild is immune from death threats. Little Jenna doesn’t need to know anything. Just use her to play with the FBI agent and mess up his homicide investigation so it can all be thrown out of court later—”

  “Jenna, that’s not—”

  “Not true? Why should I believe a thing you say now? I think Lex was right—I think you do want to use me to obfuscate this whole business.” Her heart was racing, moisture now filling her eyes. “Why? Why are you doing this? Why do you not want the police to solve this thing? Why are you putting us all in danger?”

  He swung his feet down off the ottoman, took a deep slug of his drink, set it down and glared at her. “What were you doing in my office?”

  “Is that all you care about?”

  “What—” he repeated, cold and slow “—were you doing in my office?”

  “The…door was open and so was the desk drawer—”

  He got swiftly to his feet. Even in her four-inch heels, Harold positively towered over Jenna. She instinctively cringed inside but refused to take a step back. “Rebecca Lynn had been in here, Dad. She left the door ajar, and she left that top drawer open with the file sticking out.”

  A fleeting unreadable look shadowed his features.

  “Rebecca Lynn knew about those death threats, Dad, and she purposefully set me up to see them.” Jenna wasn’t going to mince things now. She wanted to poke at him, about Rebecca Lynn, about everything.

  Harold regarded her for a long moment, as if trying to control his rage before he spoke again. Jenna felt Napoleon nudge against her ankles, but she resisted the powerful urge to scoop up her little dog, hold him tight. Instead she met her father’s glare head-on.

  “They’re idle threats, Jenna.” He watched her eyes carefully as he spoke. “They’re simply designed to unnerve us. My belief is that someone read in the papers about Candace, the ring, the legendary curse and just wanted to jump in on the whole Rothchild media circus. I will not allow the sender of the notes that pleasure.”

  “Is that not a conclusion the FBI should be making?”

  “Does this mean you’re going to tell your FBI agent about this?” His voice was ominously quiet.

  “Why shouldn’t I?”

  He picked up his glass, walked over to his private bar, uncapped his bottle of prized whiskey, poured a glass—neat, no ice—turned back to face her. “Jenna, for all I know, Rebecca Lynn could have left those notes herself.”

  “Excuse me?”

  “We’re having…relationship issues. Rebecca Lynn wants attention. She could have done this to get it. Those notes you saw are clearly different from the first one, and the fact Rebecca Lynn showed them to you would seem to confirm my suspicions. You see? I kept those notes secret, therefore Rebecca Lynn did not get the attention she was seeking, and now she wants you to cause a fuss with me.” He sipped his drink. “She wants to drive a wedge between you and I, sweetheart.”

  “So…you didn’t speak to Rebecca Lynn about them at all?”

  “No.”

  Jenna brushed her hand over her hair, suddenly unsure. “I…I still think this is something for the FBI to decide.”

  “Absolutely not. I will not have them messing around in my personal issues. Can you just imagine the media finding out my own wife left me death threats? I don’t want the feds looking into my business dealings, either. Candace’s murder has nothing to do with all that. It’ll just cause trouble.” He paused. “Untold trouble. Look, Jenna, you’re not naive. Some of my dealings, like those with the Schaeffers, were not exactly kosher. An investigation into my private business could bring us all down, the entire Rothchild empire.”

  “Maybe it was Frank Epstein who sent the notes,” Jenna said, pushing. “Maybe Lex was right, and bad business blood had Epstein wanting to avenge some old deed.” She took a step closer to her father. “You don’t want the feds digging into your relations with Epstein, either. Why? Because of old mob ties?”

  He stilled. The color of his eyes seemed to fade, flat and hard as ice.

  “Epstein didn’t do this. He had nothing to do with Candace.”

  “How do you know?”

  “Trust me. I know.”

  She frowned. “What exactly—” she said, taking another step toward her father “—happened in the past with Frank Epstein, Dad? What makes you so darn sure about him now?”

  Harold’s neck corded, and a hint of nervousness seemed to flicker through his features. Which scared Jenna.

  “You—” he pointed with his index finger off his whiskey tumbler “—have to understand, Jenna Jayne, that messing around with that FBI agent, leading him to look into Rothchild business dealings is going to end up bad news.”

  “You,” she said, meeting his pointed glare, “were the one who set me up to get involved with Lex Duncan in the first place.”

  “Solely for information about the ring.”

  Again, the ring.

  “You set me up to seduce him, Dad.”

  “Not be seduced by him,” he snapped.

  “Oh, like you can control the whole damn world! My emotions to boot.”

  He set his glass down slowly, seriously registering for the first time that his daughter might actually have some real and very dangerous personal allegiances with the federal agent. His daughter was falling for the cop who could take him down. If she let him.

  “It’s gone too far with him, Jenna. End it.”

  She swallowed, shaking inside with fury. “You don’t control me,” she whispered. “You don’t tell me to switch my feelings on and off at your own whim, for your own personal gain.”

  “Pick a side, Jenna Jayne. Choose your family, everything we own, or pick that man—a blue-collar federal agent,” he spat the words out derisively. “For what? One night of hot sex, for the novelty of sleeping with a law enforcement officer?”

  “No,” she whispered. “For something real, Dad.”

  “Consider your actions very, very carefully, Jenna Jayne.”

&nb
sp; “Oh, I am.”

  “Consider, too, that your agent friend might know that you went to visit Candace the night of her murder and that he may have pegged you as a suspect, too.”

  Shock rocketed through her. “Rebecca Lynn told you?” she whispered.

  He said nothing.

  Hatred rustled like an ugly thing under Jenna’s skin. Rebecca Lynn wasn’t just trying to drive a wedge between her and her father; she wanted to see Jenna go down.

  A very dark and dangerous thought occurred to her—was Rebecca Lynn crazy enough to commit murder? Could she actually be behind all of this?

  “Special Agent Lex Duncan is using you, Jenna. Once he is through, you will be left with nothing, because you will have alienated me.”

  “Is that a threat, Dad?”

  He glared at her for several beats. “No, Jenna. That’s a fact.”

  Chapter 8

  Vibrating with anger, Jenna got into her car. “Damn him,” she muttered to Napoleon, who was sitting in the passenger seat on buttery leather. She slammed her hand down on the dash. “How could my own father threaten me like that?” Jenna clenched her teeth, turned on the ignition, setting her convertible engine to a smooth, low growl. She didn’t want to feel hurt. Vulnerable.

  For the first time in her twenty-five years of life she wasn’t going to give in to her dad, to her own subterranean need for her father’s affection.

  But that meant she was alone.

  She should go find Lex, tell him everything. She should let him know that she’d gone to Candace’s apartment that night to try and talk her impossible sister into a rehab program—if not for her own sake, for the sake of her two toddler sons. But Candace had wanted nothing of it. Sky-high on a cocktail of drinks and drugs, she’d launched a Ming vase at Jenna’s head.

  And yes, Jenna had cut her finger picking up the pieces. It had bled pretty badly. Her blood very likely had been left at the scene. Rebecca Lynn might be right. Perhaps Lex was spending time with her solely to glean information that could secure him a warrant for her DNA, or something, so he could match her to the blood. Jenna didn’t want to deal with that thought right now.