Brad was at her side in an instant. “Hey, hey, what’s this? What’s going on? Kasey, what is it? You’re not crying are you?”
She drew a deep breath. “Brad, what are you doing here?”
“Hey, I didn’t mean to scare you. The last thing I wanted to do was scare or upset you.”
“I didn’t invite you.”
“I’ve been patient, haven’t I? Haven’t I, Kasey? It’s been weeks. How can you get to know me, know the real me, if you won’t spend some private time with me? Let me show you how gentle I can be. Please, Kasey. I’m not a kid. I’m a man. A man who knows how to treat a woman.”
“Oh Brad.”
“No, don’t start with that ‘oh Brad’ routine.” He lightly fingered the material on the sleeve of her blouse. “One glass of champagne,” he said, steering her into the room. “One. What harm in one glass of champagne?”
He eased her down on the end of the bed. “I only wanted to show you I could be a perfect gentleman. Wine, conversation, a little closeness maybe, without jumping all over you. One glass?”
“Brad, what’s going on?”
“I just told you. I’m trying to get to know you.”
She pulled her arm away. “I’m not talking about us,” she said, cutting him off. “I want to know what you’re up to. I catch you going through Jay’s office safe. I see you with Dan Carne the day before the phony bomb was found. You chase after Cage in the garage, but he conveniently gets away. You’re the only one, Brad, who hasn’t been threatened or attacked. Would you care to comment on that? Maybe explain what the hell is going on?”
“What do you know about Carne?”
“Damnit, Brad, answer the question. Do you have anything to do with what’s happening around here?”
Brad stared at her, the expression on his face changing from playful boyishness to bewilderment, then to something that could only pass for injured pride. A sadness crept into his eyes.
“Christ, Kasey, I can’t believe you would think I had anything at all to do with my uncle’s problems. I admire him more than any man alive. I love him like a father. I would never, never, do anything to hurt him. What kind of a fucking bastard do you think I am?”
Either Brad was a very good liar or Kasey had grossly misjudged him. Could anyone display such hurt and indignation and be faking?
“But you and Carne—”
“Have nothing to do with Jay or the club. Nothing. And for you to even consider that I would…” Brad shook his head, stepped to the chair, lifted his jacket, and draped it over his arm. “Good night, Kasey,” he said, his voice cracking. “Just forget I was here. That shouldn’t be too hard for you.”
“Brad, wait.” Kasey reached out, touched his arm, felt muscles rigid beneath his shirt sleeve. “Look, I didn’t mean…It’s just that seeing you with—Oh, shit, I’m sorry. Pour me a glass of that stuff, will you?”
Brad gazed down into her eyes again. The muscles in his face relaxed. Then he smiled, that slow, sweet smile that reminded her of Kevin.
He dropped his jacket on the chair, picked up the champagne bottle, and filled two glasses. He gave one to Kasey and sat beside her.
Kasey sipped. “Brad, this is not Dom Perignon.”
“I didn’t say it was. I just asked if you liked it.”
She smiled, drank it down, held out her glass for more.
“That bad, huh?” Brad said. He refilled her glass.
She went a little slower this time. “Why were you and Carne—”
“Not now,” he said softly, putting two fingers to her lips. “I’ll explain everything when the time is right. Trust me.”
She looked away, nodded. The last thing she wanted to believe was that Brad was involved. That Brad would want to hurt Jay, or anyone. “How did you get in?”
“With a master.” He looked contrite, topped off her glass again. “I wanted to surprise you.”
“You did. You really did.” She drank, sipping now. She heard soft music, Michael Bolton love songs came from a CD player Brad had brought. She looked around the room. In addition to the candles, there were flowers and bunches of balloons—balloons left over from a slot tournament downstairs that afternoon.
“Where did you get the flowers?” she asked.
“Steak House. From the tables after it closed.”
“You went to a lot of trouble.”
“You’re worth it.”
The champagne was going straight to her head. She realized she hadn’t eaten since five o’clock, eleven hours ago, between meetings when she’d grabbed a sandwich in the employee kitchen. She was getting high and she didn’t care. Again she was reminded of Brad’s resemblance to Kevin, and something inside her softened. The dim room, the candles, flowers, soft music, champagne—it was all very soothing. And now Brad was massaging her neck and shoulders. This was a day for love and romance. Her horoscope had said so. The love was upstairs in the Skyline Room. The romance, where was the romance?
She leaned into him. “A perfect gentleman, huh?”
“I won’t do anything you don’t want me to do.”
“Don’t talk,” she said, slipping off her shoes. She turned, stretched out on her stomach, and—with a deep sigh—let Brad massage her back. After an indeterminate amount of time, she felt the zipper at the back of her dress slide down. The clasp of her bra went next. As though in a dream, she lifted herself while Brad painstakingly pulled her clothes down and off. Finally, when he gently coaxed her over onto her back, she was ready for him. Ready to receive his mouth. Ready to receive his naked body next to hers. Ready to receive his hands and mouth at her most intimate places. Ready to receive him.
She visualized Jay when he entered her. And a short time later when she reached orgasm, she cried out Jay’s name.
Chapter Forty-One
Jay tossed and turned in the king-size bed in the suite’s master bedroom. He checked the clock for what seemed the hundredth time since he had fallen into bed several hours earlier, numb from the Jack Daniel’s he’d slugged downed after Kasey had run out on him in the lounge.
6:00 A.M. The blackout drapes were drawn. The room was pitch dark.
The alarm on the travel clock began to beep. He groaned. If he had slept at all, he wasn’t aware of it. He reached for the light and knocked something off the nightstand. Groping around on the floor, his fingers wrapped around a lightweight object. He switched on the light and squinted at the red-and- white spray bottle.
An antihistamine. It didn’t belong to him or Dianne, yet he had seen one like it before, and not long ago.
Suddenly he was wide awake, the bourbon fog instantly gone. He dropped the bottle, leaped from the bed, strode to the window, and yanked open the drapes. Morning light filled the room.
Where was it? What the hell had he done with it? Jay stood naked in the middle of the room, racking his brain. He remembered picking the bottle out of the dirt at Lucas Cage’s private shooting range last week with Frank. Jay had dropped it in his pocket and he had forgotten about it. Where the hell were those pants?
He found them on the top shelf of the closet in a bag of clothes to be taken to the cleaners, neatly folded, the cuffs soiled with mud. He shook the pants until the red-and-white plastic bottle slipped out onto the carpet.
With a clothes hanger he turned it over. A neat hole—a bullet hole—obliterated the product’s name, but the two bottles were unmistakably the same—a common over-the-counter brand.
Excited, Jay felt certain both belonged to Cage. He recalled the man in the surveillance video at the elevator lobby putting something to his nose. It wouldn’t be hard to prove that Cage used—was addicted to?—spray antihistamine. Two identical containers, one found behind Cage’s shack and the other found on Dianne’s side of the bed. Cage must have dropped it there the night he attacked her.
He had to tell Frank and Kasey. He called Frank at home, told him what he had. Frank promised to stop at the hotel before going to the station.
Jay hung up and dialed Kasey’s room. Before it could ring, he disconnected. He had to see her, had to tell her in person. He couldn’t let her quit now. They were getting so close. Cage was getting sloppy and soon he would trip himself up. The more evidence they had, the tighter the case against him. As it stood now, the police had nothing really solid to hold him on. But, if one of Cage’s fingerprints could be lifted from the bottle on the nightstand, they’d have him deadbang, as Frank was fond of saying. Kasey couldn’t quit on him now.
Jay hoped she was still in the hotel. If she were, she was probably asleep. He’d have to take that chance. To wait was to risk missing her.
He pulled on sweats and running shoes, ran his fingers through his hair and over the coarse whiskers on his face, debating whether or not to shave and deciding against it. He left the bottles where they lay in his room and hurried from the suite.
Jay found the floor security guard in the alcove with the ice and vending machines, pulling a Coke from a slot. The guard straightened when he saw him.
“Morning, Mr. King, you’re up early. Can I get you something?”
“No thanks. It’s Hollise, isn’t it?” Jay said.
“Yes, sir. Matt Hollise.”
“Matt, do you know a security guard by the name of Lucas Cage?”
“No, Mr. King. Would you like me to try to locate him for you, sir?”
If only you could. “No, it’s okay”
“Is Mrs. King doing better?”
“Much better, thank you.” Jay lent a hand by holding up the metal lid of the ice machine while the man filled a plastic bucket. He leaned back to look down the corridor and saw the door to Kasey’s room open.
Good, he thought, his timing was perfect She was just going out.
But instead of Kasey, it was his nephew who stepped into the hallway, softly closing the door behind him. Brad’s hair and shirt were disheveled, the shirt hanging out in back, his jacket slung casually over his shoulder.
The fact that Brad was coming out of Kasey’s room at six in the morning spoke volumes. But it was the confident way he squared his shoulders and tossed back a lock of hair from his forehead before turning and sauntering down the corridor that made Jay’s stomach twist with an unspeakable force.
“Sir, is there something wrong?” Hollise asked.
Jay returned to his suite without answering.
*
Kasey awoke at ten that morning in no way ready to face the day. Even though Brad had left her bed at dawn, she stretched out an arm to make certain she was alone.
The night before, Kasey had lain awake listening to Brad’s quiet breathing as he slept beside her, unable to close her eyes until the light of morning when she woke him and asked him to leave. Only then was sleep possible for her.
The room was bright. Morning sunlight streamed in through the parted drapes, reflecting off the vanity mirror and into her face. Kasey moaned and rolled onto her stomach. She could hide from the harsh rays of the sun, but she couldn’t hide from herself and what she had done the night before. She had opened her arms and body to Brad. Had shared something very intimate with a boy who, in a fragmentary, superficial way, had served as a surrogate lover, temporarily filling a void that only one man could fill.
It wouldn’t happen again. She would see to that. Knowing Brad, knowing his type, she believed he would make one or two halfhearted attempts at a relationship before giving up. For him, the real challenge, the thrill of the chase, had ended last night in her bed. If he had heard her call out his uncle’s name, he had made no mention of it.
Brad could be very persuasive, very convincing. If she hadn’t already been in love with Jay, she might have fallen for his charms, age difference or not, much sooner. Although he’d told her he had nothing to do with the apparent sabotage of King’s Club and she had believed him at the time, she now felt a niggling doubt. The next time they met, she would insist he tell her about his association with Dan Carne.
Kasey dressed in slacks and a short-sleeve blouse and quickly packed. The phone rang before she finished. She debated answering it, not eager to talk to either Brad or Jay. But thinking it might be her mother, whom she hadn’t touched base with in several days, she picked up the receiver and said a tentative hello.
“Is this Kasey Atwood?” A woman’s voice.
“Yes.”
“You probably don’t remember me. It’s Paula…Paula Volger.”
The maid. The friend of the murdered housekeeper. “Yes, Paula,” Kasey said, trying not to sound too eager, “I remember you.”
“Can we talk?”
“Of course.”
“Not on the phone. I’m where people can hear me. Can you meet me somewhere tonight?”
“Where?”
“I don’t know. Somewhere safe.”
“Your place?”
“No. I think he’s been watching my house. I haven’t been there since…” she hesitated. “He’d see us. Know what we were talking about.”
“Who?”
“I think you know.”
Kasey’s excitement rose. “Is it the man who assaulted you in the parking garage?”
“I can’t talk now. Look, I feel safer in the hotel than on the street. How ‘bout your room tonight at nine o’clock?”
Kasey had planned to checkout that morning. She had left a message with Jay’s secretary saying she was no longer on the job and that a bill for services rendered would be sent to the hotel. She would keep the room long enough to rendezvous with Paula.
“Nine then. I’m in room—”
“I know which one. No cops. I’m not ready to go that far yet.”
*
With all her belongings, Kasey called for her car at valet and left the hotel. Since the attack in the garage, she had used valet parking. She had one stop to make before going home.
A few minutes after eleven, she knocked on the door of the King residence.
A plainclothes bodyguard let her in. He directed her to the rear of the house, where he deactivated the alarm, opened the sliding glass door to the patio, and pointed toward the pool.
Kasey spotted Dianne reclining on a chaise lounge at poolside, talking on the phone.
Dianne motioned to Kasey to join her.
“Did they catch that asshole?” Dianne asked flatly, hanging up the phone. “Can I come out of hiding yet?”
“This is hiding?” Kasey scanned the vast grounds, open on three sides. She saw a man perched on a boulder on a high bank above the pool house. He held a pair of binoculars in one hand and a revolver in the other. Another man strolled along the west perimeter of the property.
“And to what do I owe the honor of this visit? Did Jay tell you I sent him away? Did he ask you to come and talk some sense into me?”
Kasey shook her head. “Jay doesn’t know I’m here. Although he is the reason I came.”
“Oh?”
“Don’t you think you’re being unfair, Dianne?”
“Unfair? Hardly. Because of his love for that concrete mistress of his, he’s put me in jeopardy. Is that fair to me?”
“It wasn’t intentional and you know it. He’s your husband. The club belongs to you, too.”
“What good is it to any of us if we’re dead?”
“You’re hurting him. He doesn’t deserve this. Dianne, he’s a good person. Why can’t—”
“And I’m not?”
Kasey said nothing.
“Stay out of this, Kasey. I asked you to look into things at the club, that doesn’t include our private life.” Dianne looked into Kasey’s eyes. Her smile was slow, Cheshire cat-like. “Or does it?” she questioned softly. “Are you here to find out if I’m through with him? Did you have in mind to pick up the pieces?” She chuckled. “Oh, don’t look so surprised. I’m not blind. I know you’ve been avoiding him and I know why. Very commendable, but entirely unnecessary. Jay, bless his righteous little heart, is true blue. Not likely to stray. And especially not with someone like you.”
/> Kasey felt the blood rush to her face. “Someone like me?”
“Oh, you’re quite pretty, in a less-than-classic sense, and you’re smart. But I’m afraid you lack that certain, well, certain quality that appeals to a man like Jay. A man of his high caliber. Admit it, Kasey, the only men you seem to attract are losers. Drug addicts, boozers, clinging vines, leeches. Men who wouldn’t know a backbone from a wishbone. Men like your father, your two husbands. Not men like Jay.”
Kasey felt as though she’d been slapped.
The cordless phone on the lounge began to ring. “Excuse me,” Dianne said, picking it up. “That’s probably Jay now.”
Numb, Kasey retraced her steps back the way she had come without being aware of the process. In her car once again, the stifling heat pressing in on her, threatening to suffocate her, she felt a stinging behind her eyelids. She fumbled with her sunglasses and shoved them on, hiding behind their protective shield.
*
“Well, it’s something,” Frank Loweman said, studying the two plastic bottles encased in zip lock bags.
Loweman had bagged and marked them. They had located the housekeeper who, in an interview with Loweman in the suite, acknowledged finding the bottle wedged between the bed and nightstand the morning following Dianne’s attack.
“But it’s not enough,” Jay finished for him. He stood behind the wet bar, reached into the refrigerator, brought out a beer and a Coke, and held them up. Loweman, on the other side, took the Coke.
“Probably not. Do you know how many people in this state have allergies? Marlene has used an antihistamine every day for the past ten years. She couldn’t breathe if she didn’t.”
“What about prints?”
“We can always hope. Don’t put too much stock in fingerprints, Jay. Not all surfaces are good conductors. And don’t forget our boy was wearing gloves at the time he attacked Dianne. At best we’ll get a series of smudges. Yours and the maid’s included.”
“DNA testing? Jesus, the guy stuck it up his nose. That’s a body fluid, right?”
“DNA testing is expensive, Jay. A few years back a killer right here in Washoe County was acquitted because the state wouldn’t pay for the test. If they had spent the money, they would have found his semen matched the semen found inside the rectum of the dead woman and he wouldn’t have been free to rape and nearly kill another young woman.”
Mortal Crimes 2 Page 128