by Beth Yarnall
“I am Tenchi.” The doorman’s handshake was much better, but I still wanted to rub his creepy cooties off.
“Ace.”
I turned to find a young man with the striking high cheekbones and long raven hair of a Native American warrior. After our handclasp, I closed my fist, sealing in the contact our hands had made. Not creepy. Not creepy at all.
“We’ll excuse ourselves.” Sora motioned to Ace and he followed her out of the room like a hound scenting his dinner.
Then I was alone with Tenchi. His weird eyes and weirder blond pageboy haircut made me wish I were back in the hallway exchanging insults with Kennedy again.
“First the rules.” He signaled for me to take a seat. When we were settled he continued, “Talk directly to Trinity, not to Curio. He merely serves as an interpreter, if you will.”
“Interpreter. Like for a foreign person?”
“Correct.”
“Okay.” I’d never been good at rules and hoped there weren’t very many more.
“Don’t look Trinity in the eye. Don’t say the words ‘three,’ ‘fortune,’ or ‘skunk.’ She especially hates the word ‘skunk.’”
“Skunk. Got it.”
“You can’t chew gum, but breath mints are permissible. You can cross your right leg over your left, but not your left leg over your right.”
“You’re making this up.”
He tried to pull a brow up into his bangs but his Botox-frozen face wouldn’t oblige him. “Do you want to speak with her or not?”
“Yes. Sorry. Carry on. Right leg yes, left leg no. Got it.”
“You’re not an Aquarius, are you?”
“No, a Cancer.” Jeez. Was this guy for real?
He nodded approval. “There’s just one more thing.”
Thank goodness.
“You can’t mention Dhane’s name. This is important. Just his name sets her off and we’ve finally gotten her calm again after the police left.” He shook his head in pity, but oddly his hair stayed still. Nothing on this guy moved. “Do you agree to the terms?”
I anxiously bobbed my head, but how in the world was I going to pull this off? Right leg and breath mints yes. Gum no. Don’t say three, fortune, skunk or Dhane’s name. Don’t look at Curio and don’t look Trinity in the eye. Oh, and that thing about Aquarians. I supposed it was a bad time to mention that my rising sign was Aquarius.
“This way.” He stood and walked to a closed door. “Just one more thing. I need to hold your cell phone. She hates cell phones, especially since they started making them with cameras.”
I pulled my phone from my bag and stared at it for a moment. This was my last link to the sane world, and I really didn’t want to be without it, but I handed it over to him anyway. I was deep in the crazy den, about to meet the queen of the crazies. It would have been nice to be able to call for help, should they try to eat my brain or something.
“Remember, talk to her, not Curio.” Then he opened the door and shoved me through it, quickly shutting it behind me.
It took a moment for my eyes to adjust to the dimness in the room. The faint mocking scent of bubble gum hung in the air, competing with the smoke from a recently extinguished candle. I shuffled my feet and rubbed my arms. It was much colder in here than the rest of the suite. Unease crawled up the back of my neck. I fought to control it, clamping down on my fight-or-flight reflexes.
A match ignited, illuminating the hand that held it. The smell of sulfur tinged the air as three candles were lit. Three. The irony was almost a relief. But the thing that really struck me was the face revealed by the match before it was blown out.
Pale as the moon and framed by hair darker than night, Trinity’s face was eerily perfect, freakish in its symmetry, as if it had been made by a machine. I supposed some would have called her beautiful, with features exactly the size and shape as they should be. But there was something wrong, something altogether ugly and unstable about the way they came together.
In the meager candlelight, I could just make out her shape on the bed piled in pillows. Afraid to blink, I froze in place with the door at my back and the unknown before me.
And then she spoke with the voice of a child, high and tinkling, edged with unrestrained irritation. “She’s wrong. Wrong, wrong, wrong. Why is she here? Here and not there? Tell her to go away!”
“I asked to see you. I wanted to know why you sent me a note from Dh…ah…y-your brother.”
“No note. No notes for her. For her but not her. It’s all wrong. Wrong, wrong, wrong.”
“The note wasn’t for me?”
“Why is she here? No notes for her. Notes for her not her. Tell her to go away and bring me the one. It’s wrong. Wrong, wrong, wrong.”
“What one?” This whole speaking to me like she was reading from a Dr. Seuss book was frustrating.
“I want the little one, the one who made all the red. Tell her to bring me the one who made the red.”
What the hell was she talking about? I squinted in the darkness, trying to get a better feel for what I was up against here.
“Red, red, red. Red flowers, red lips, red hands. Hands dipped in red, dripping red, all red. Red, red, red.”
Oh, no. Somehow I understood what she was trying to tell me. Dread washed over me, pinning me in place. The room seemed to narrow. I took a step forward, then another. I’d been here before. Disappointment warring with hurt, and over it all a desperate need to believe that this was not happening.
Chapter Nine
“Do you mean Vivian?” I asked, fearing the answer.
“Why is she still here?” Trinity stormed. “I want the one with the red. Red, red, red.”
“You sent the note for Vivian?”
“Notes for red, red notes. Red hands read red notes. I want the one who made the red. Tell her to bring me the one who made the red!”
“I can’t.”
“Can’t, won’t.”
“You don’t understand.” I moved a few paces closer.
I could see her now. She stroked a matted and worn stuffed skunk on her right shoulder, her face tilted toward it. I focused my gaze on the unusual star pendant hanging from her neck. It had the same awful symmetry as her face.
“Vivian is in jail,” I explained. “I’m trying to help her. I was hoping you could tell me why you sent her the note. Was it from you or Dh…your brother?”
“All the red mixed with red makes more red. The red makes dead. Dead makes red and they all know it. They know it. Dead wanted red so dead is red. But she’s not red.” Trinity pointed a finger at me, then resumed her vigorous petting.
In a strange way, I began to understand what she was trying to tell me. “Your brother wanted Vivian, am I right? So he sent the note?”
She turned to me so sharply it took all my focus to keep my eyes from her face.
“Red should be with dead. Red, dead. Dead, red. Yeah.” She turned back to Curio with a smile. “Dead red. That’s good, isn’t it? Am I right? Time to go,” she chirped, popping from her bed and quickly blowing out the candles. “It’s time. Time to go. Time to take. Time to let go and be let go. She’s not the one. Not the red and not the dead. She’s gone. Gone, gone, gone.” I felt more than saw Trinity coming toward me in the darkness. “Tell her to tell the one to tell them all that red is dead and dead is red.”
She grabbed my hand and held it to her face. I stood stock-still, afraid to breathe and accidentally inhale some of her crazy.
“Pretty is pretty. She’s not the one, but I like her. Tell her to come back and be pretty again.”
“I’ll come back,” I said. In that moment I would have agreed to stick my hand in a meat grinder. If lunacy was catching, I was sure to come down with it now.
“I’m happy! Are you happy?” she asked Curio. “Happy is as happy was. Every day and all day. Happy, happy, happy.” She spun away from me, twirling in the darkened room like a deranged ballerina. “Happy day today. Happy, happy, happy. Happy day.”
&n
bsp; I backed toward the door, afraid to take my eyes off her. Feeling for the knob, I couldn’t help but wonder what would happen to Trinity now that her brother was dead. She clearly needed to be taken care of. Would Tenchi and the others watch out for her, or was there some other relative who would step in?
As the door closed on Trinity’s dance, I breathed a sigh of relief to finally be away from her. My visit with Trinity had yielded at least one tidy tidbit—Trinity had sent the note with Dhane’s key card to Vivian, not me. Somehow Jun had gotten it wrong.
“Well?” Tenchi startled me with his abruptness. He stood hands on hips, waiting for a report.
“She’s fine. I didn’t upset her. She was happy when I left, honest.”
“Happy? What do you mean happy?” He strode past me to the door and put his ear against it. Then he stood up straight and gave me an odd look. “What did you say to her?”
“Nothing really. She did most of the talking.”
“You’d better go.” He slapped my cell phone into my hand and disappeared into Trinity’s room.
I half expected to find Kennedy still lurking in the hall, but thankfully my getaway was quick and uninterrupted. It was full dark when I got outside and still hotter than a backstage dressing room. Vegas at nightfall was something to behold. The lights from casinos and hotels illuminated the night, giving off a feeling of endless celebration, as though it were perpetually five minutes to midnight and Las Vegas was the world’s largest New Year’s Eve party. I could almost hear the artificial clinking of coins hitting the trays of a million slot machines and smell the stench of cigarette smoke and cheap booze mixed with the hopeful anticipation of the gamblers.
God, I loved Vegas.
Sitting in the back of a cab, I mulled over what I’d intentionally and unintentionally learned. I could not get over Kennedy’s words. Vivian had confessed. But why? Setting aside what I knew about her as a person, there was still no way she could have done it. Yes, she was found with the body, but she didn’t have a drop of blood on her. At least none that I could see.
And what would be her motive? She had been looking for Dhane earlier in the day, so she was obviously anxious to see him. And when she finally did, she’d seemed really happy and he did, too. Why would she kill someone she hadn’t seen or talked about in years? As far as I could tell, there was no motive.
That left opportunity. The truth was I had no idea where Vivian had been while I walked the convention and sat in Lisa’s class. I imagined there had to be some level of security in the hallways of the Raine Hotel, most likely cameras. The police would likely be looking at the comings and goings of suite 3848 very closely. I would have given anything to get a look at those tapes, even if it meant playing nice with Kennedy, but that was highly unlikely to happen.
I should have caught up with Juan Carlos and Richard after my visit to loony town, but Kennedy’s words haunted me, almost daring me to verify them. As the cab pulled up in front of the police station, I scrounged the depths of my brain to come up with a way to get in to see Vivian. I had to see her. I just had to.
The cab pulled up in front of a building built block on top of block with little or no imagination. I paid the fare, then stood staring up at the forbidding facade. Vivian was in there, encased in a building that looked more like a crypt than a police station. What must she be thinking? Feeling? The image of someone as bright and colorful as Vivian entombed in this concrete block was sadder than I had words for.
I hitched my bag higher on my shoulder and marched into the large foyer, where spare ultramodern met incarceration chic. An officer stood behind a wall of glass as thick as a mattress, helping someone who talked to her over a telephone attached to the wall. I got in line behind a woman with two children huddled to her like limpets and began a mental list of questions to ask Vivian.
I was debating whether or not I should bite off a hangnail and ruin my manicure when a door to the left of the glass wall opened. Two suits walked out, deep in whispered conversation. I recognized them as the guys Dhane had been walking with when I’d met him at the convention. I’d have given anything right then for bionic hearing, but the best I could do was to try to read their body language.
In an amazing flash of brilliance, I nicknamed the shorter one Shorty. The other one I called Jerk because he had the pinched mouth, uptight attitude, and beady eyes of a real asshole.
Shorty looked panicked—not the ordinary kind of anxiety that comes from losing your keys or something, but the bone-deep fear his world was about to come to an end. He punctuated his speech with short, choppy hand movements and swipes across his sweaty forehead.
Jerk seemed to get more and more annoyed with Shorty, until he finally grabbed him by the back of the neck and propelled him toward the exit as fast as Shorty’s little legs could go. I tried not to show any interest as they passed me, Jerk digging his fingers into Shorty’s neck. Shorty let out a protest—something about not telling—but Jerk didn’t let go until they were through the front doors.
Even though I was now second in line, I abandoned my post to follow them. Pressing my face to the glass door, I tried to see where they’d gone, but they’d disappeared into the darkened parking lot. I glanced back at the line, then back at the door.
Really, there was no question. I knew I would follow them from the first moment they appeared. They’d been close to Dhane, close enough to know who had access to him and who might have wanted him dead. The police must have thought they had knowledge about the case.
I pushed out into the night, the warmth radiating up from the earth wrapped around me like a heating blanket. I immediately slipped into the shadows, away from the lights of the building so my eyes could adjust to the darkness. I spied the suited pair standing next to a nondescript rental car, their argument now in full swing.
“They check these things out, man. They’re gonna know.” Shorty seemed even more agitated now, pacing back and forth like a caged animal.
“Don’t be an idiot. We didn’t tell them anything. Calm the fuck down,” Jerk replied, puffing out cigarette smoke.
“Calm down. Calm down? You’re not the one with his ass hanging out. I knew it. I knew I shouldn’t have listened to you.”
Jerk grabbed Shorty by the neck, jabbing his cigarette fingers in his face. “When the fuck did you listen to me? When you were boning that crazy bitch? No. When you bragged to her and set fire to this whole shit pile instead of keeping your god damned mouth shut? No.” He pushed Shorty away with a disgusted grunt. “I knew I shouldn’t’ve brought you in. You’re a total fuckup.”
“I didn’t say anything, man. I keep telling you that. Not a word. Not one single word.”
“And you keep saying that.” Jerk drew hard on his cigarette, then flicked it away. “If you didn’t talk, how’d she know? Huh? Bitch have superpsychic powers or something?” Jerk shook his head. “Fuckup.”
“I’m not a fuckup!”
“Just get in the goddamned car. They probably got this parking lot bugged.”
Shorty moved to the passenger side of the car. “I’m just saying, I didn’t say anything. I didn’t screw up. I don’t know how she found out, but it wasn’t me, man. You gotta tell Mac it wasn’t me.”
“I ain’t gotta tell Mac shit. Your ass hanging out is your problem, not mine. Would you get in the fucking car already?”
Shorty looked like he wanted to protest, but he got in the car without another word, slamming the door harder than was necessary.
“Total fuckup,” Jerk muttered, then he, too, got in the car.
I flattened myself against the building as their car passed. What were they talking about? The only crazy bitch I knew in this whole mess was Trinity. But I didn’t see how and why she would have hooked up with Shorty. Who were those guys and how were they involved? And who was Mac? What would Shorty have told Trinity that would have gotten Dhane killed?
I turned to go back into the building, my head spinning from what I’d heard, and bump
ed into a wall of hardened chest. “Ooph.”
Large hands wrapped around my arms, pushing me back a step. “Just the person I was hoping to see.”
Chapter Ten
My past slammed into me like a rake handle to the face, all six-foot-some-odd inches of what-ifs, recriminations, and abs so tight you could bounce a quarter off them.
“’Cause this day hasn’t sucked enough,” I muttered, peeling his fingers off my arms.
“Join the club,” Alex replied. “This day hasn’t exactly been beer and nachos for me either.”
Detective Alex Craig and I had had a very intense, but way too brief, attempt at a relationship. At least I’d thought it was intense. I’d been harboring a little crush on him since I’d first met him a few of years ago, but it wasn’t until James’s party when Alex had finally noticed me. We’d gone out fairly steadily until a few weeks ago when all of a sudden he started canceling and postponing dates or running out in the middle of them when he actually did show up.
On our last doomed date, I’d answered the door to his retreating back and a quickly dashed off, “Sorry, gotta go, I’ll call you!” as he jogged back to his car. I’d considered it a sign. A power greater than us was clearly at work here, and we obviously weren’t meant to be.
I just wished he wasn’t so darned cute. Or such a good kisser.
“What are you doing here?” Don’t do it. Don’t look up into those pale baby blues. Don’t…ah, damn.
“I’m here for Vivian.” He crossed his arms over his chest, which made his shoulders double in width. “Why were you lurking in the shadows?”
“I wasn’t lurking.”
“Then what were you doing?”
I held up a finger. “Wait for it…”
He looked at me like I’d sniffed too much perm solution and was still riding the high.
“Huh. That’s so strange,” I said after a few moments of his phone not ringing and calling him away.
“I’d say the only thing strange here is you.”