“Then you’ll do it?”
“I can request it, but I doubt the request will be granted. Dianne wasn’t murdered. She wasn’t even raped. Thank your lucky stars for that. By the way,” Loweman added, “I got some feedback on Lucas Cage this morning. Just as I suspected, there was nothing damaging on his sheet in two of the three departments he was hooked up with, but I got a strong impression that the people I talked with knew more than they cared to share.”
“That Blue Wall of Silence you spoke of?”
“Exactly. I’m still waiting to hear from Vegas, which we believe was his last official law enforcement attachment. It’s possible he screwed up royally there. A cop gets away with so much over the years and he begins to think he’s untouchable, beyond the law. There’s a saturation point, and Cage may have reached it in Vegas.”
“Let’s hope so.”
“Won’t help us much on this case, but it will give us some idea what we’re up against—how bad this perp is, shit like that. He was issued a police work card, so he’s not a felon.”
Jay drank beer from the can. “He’s not working alone. Someone has been feeding him information, opening doors, covering his ass.”
“Someone inside?”
“Yes.”
“Any candidates?”
“Oh, yes.”
“Care to share?”
“My guess would be Cummings.”
“Your top man?”
Jay nodded.
“You don’t trust him?”
“Jesus, I don’t know. He’s the best CEO we’ve had. The guy is top-notch. I considered bringing him in, giving him a share of the operation.”
“So what’s changed?”
“He used to work for Ansel Doyle. So did Cage. Doyle is looking for a piece of the action here in Northern Nevada. He wants King’s Club.”
“Doyle made you an offer?”
“A generous one. I turned him down. Said the club wasn’t for sale. Doyle doesn’t like to get turned down. He has a reputation for leaning on people to get what he wants. One of his key men from his lake operation was snooping around awhile back.”
“Who’s this key man?”
“Tony Bartona.”
“I’ll check him out.” Loweman wrote in his notebook. “And you think Doyle might be behind this?”
“It’s crossed my mind.”
“But you have no proof about either him or Cummings?”
“No. Just that it was Cummings who received the bomb threat on his car phone. How many people have access to the private line of a casino’s chief exec? It was Cummings who sounded the alarm.”
“What would Doyle gain by all this?”
“Go downstairs. Take a look around. You could drive the fun train through there without hitting anyone. Local papers, news media, they’re having a goddamned field day at the club’s expense, at my expense. If you were a lender, would you lay out forty million to renovate a joint that you thought might go up in a puff of smoke before you got your money back?”
‘‘Okay, let’s say it is Doyle, and that his terrorist tactics are meant to force you to sell out to him. Wouldn’t he be sabotaging his own future investment?”
“Not really. The public has a short memory. In a little while, things would get back to normal. Doyle has enough money to ride out the adverse publicity. I don’t. No, his main objective would be to scare me into selling. He could accomplish that by keeping me uncertain as to when or where the next strike will come. A fire, another killing, another bomb threat. The fact that the bomb was a hoax leads me to believe it was Doyle. He’s not going to do anything that could actually damage the club, only its reputation. No business can survive one attack upon another. I’m not even sure I can make it work now.”
“Jay, the club will prosper.”
“But will I? Will my family? How far will this go? How far is this bastard willing to take it? Frank, you know this club is my life. But is it worth my life or the lives of the people around me?”
Jay thought of those people. Dianne, Brad and Brenda, and most recently Kasey. His love for his niece and nephew was unconditional; they were family. Dianne was his wife. Despite their many differences, he had hoped his feelings for her would remain constant. When this was all over, would he ever be able to overlook her blatant abandonment of him? Could he love her again? He had his doubts. Too much had been lost.
Then there was Kasey.
Kasey, who at this very moment could already be gone from his life. Although she hadn’t officially checked out of her room, the clerk at the front desk had seen her passing through the lobby with luggage, and earlier in the day Gail had given him Kasey’s message of termination.
Jay wondered who was left. Whom could he trust? His chief executive was a prime suspect. His wife had turned against him. His nephew had spent the night with the woman he loved. And although that woman had run out on him, too, she was the only person he could trust, Kasey was the only one without a personal stake in the hotel.
As if reading his mind, Loweman asked, “This Kasey Atwood, what part does she play in all this?”
Jay found himself unwilling to meet Loweman’s gaze. “She started out as a consultant. Dianne brought her in.”
“Interesting.” Loweman pulled a handful of change from his pocket and seemed intent on examining it.
Jay looked at his old friend, and saw empathy in the warm brown eyes.
“Does it show?” Jay asked.
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Loweman said, returning the coins to his pocket. “If you mean does it show that you like and trust her, yeah it does. But, shit, I like her, too. She’s got a helluva lot going for her. A guy could do a lot worse—for a partner, I mean.”
“A partner?”
Loweman clapped Jay on the back. “Gotta go.” He went a couple of feet before stopping and turning. “Oh, I’m s’posed to tell you thanks again for lunch last week. Marlene’s still talking about it. You’re one of her favorite people, y’know? But then, there ain’t nobody she don’t like,” he said with a grin.
“You’re a lucky man, Frank.”
“Yeah, I know”
After Loweman left the suite, Jay called downstairs to personnel and asked for Kasey Atwood’s home address.
Chapter Forty-Two
Lucas Cage unlocked the box at Reno’s main post office and took out the plain white envelope. Although it had no return address, he knew the sender and he guessed the contents. Cage had been expecting the letter.
He tore it open, pulled out the single sheet of cheap note paper. Do it NOW!
He grinned. He could almost smell the desperation in those three short words. Do. It. Now.
Why hurry? he asked himself. He was having too much fun. He wasn’t ready to end it just yet. His initial instructions were to get rid of them in a timely manner in any way he chose. He would do it when he chose and how he chose. No one was going to tell the Monk how to do his business. No one. And especially not now, when he had the upper hand.
He folded the envelope and slipped it into his pocket. With long strides, he crossed the parking lot, climbed into Sherry Kidd’s old GMC truck, and drove away.
*
When Kasey arrived home, she spotted her mother walking across the rear yard toward the pasture. Marianne towed a honeycomb box in a Red Flyer wagon, her other arm laden with her beekeeper’s tools of the trade—a smoker, bellows, rags for burning, gloves, and veil.
“Ma, wait up,” Kasey called out as she ran to catch up with her. When she reached her mother’s side, she helped lessen her load by taking the smoker and bellows. “The Crumbys have a swarm?” The Crumbys were the neighbors to the east.
“Yup. Took a fancy to Cliff’s old pickup. Been there a couple days. Crumby waited till they were good an’ peeved before giving me a call.”
Kasey fell in step beside her mother and clucked her tongue. She knew from experience that in the early stages the swarm was relatively docile. Before ta
king to the sky, loyal troops of a displaced queen gorge themselves on honey, which makes stinging difficult, if not impossible; but after several days on the move, they become ill-tempered and downright cantankerous.
“Mind if I tag along?”
“Love to have you. I missed you,” Marianne said. “It’s been almost a week. I thought maybe you would call, y’know, for your horoscope.”
“It wasn’t necessary; I looked it up myself You’re a bad influence on me, Ma.”
Marianne chuckled and nudged Kasey affectionately with her shoulder. “Do you have to get right back? Can you stay for dinner?”
“Lunch, dinner, and probably breakfast in the morning. I quit. I won’t be going back to the club.”
Marianne gave her daughter a long, hard look. “Why? What’s up? It’s not like you to quit a job.”
Kasey looked away.
Marianne stopped, pulled Kasey around to face her. “What is it, honey? You haven’t been the same since you started this job. Whenever I see you, you seem more and more withdrawn. What’s wrong? Is it our financial situation?”
“How could it be financial? Yesterday’s horoscope said financial worries will soon be a thing of the past. See, nothing to worry about in that department,” she said flippantly.
“What then?”
Kasey became somber again. “I don’t think you want to know.”
“Kasey, honey, you know you can talk to me.”
Kasey put down the smoker and bellows and leaned against an old Cottonwood tree. She watched a bee buzz around the honeycomb box. “Oh, Ma, I don’t know how it happened, how I could have let it happen. I’m—I fell in love with someone I have no right to love. The husband of a friend.”
“Jay King? You’re in love with Jay King?”
Kasey nodded, covered her eyes with her hand.
“Dianne’s no friend of yours, but that’s not the issue here. Honey, are you sure?”
“Well, I can’t eat, sleep, concentrate. I think about him first thing in the morning and last thing at night. He’s even in my dreams. What’s that sound like to you?”
“How long have you known?”
Kasey picked at the tree bark. “I guess it started years ago. I was attracted to him when I worked at the club. Me and all the other waitresses. He was rich, handsome, charming and kind. He still is, only now he’s more mature and even more sensitive. A man with many fine qualities. I might have fantasized, dreamed about marrying someone like him, but that was it. He was beyond my reach.” She lowered her head; her hair fell forward around her face. “Until now. Only now it still isn’t right.”
Marianne tucked Kasey’s hair behind her ear, held her cool hands against the side of her face, and gently turned it to gaze into her eyes. “Sweetheart, follow your heart. It doesn’t always have to be right.”
*
Jay hardly noticed the picturesque landscape of golden pastures, ponds, the cotton and dogwood trees on both sides of the highway as he left behind the traffic and congestion of the city and entered the valley. He pushed the Lexus above the speed limit, his mind preoccupied with thoughts of Kasey. He had to talk to her. Seeing Brad leave her room that morning had been a hard blow, but what did he expect? He had no claims on her. Granted, he loved her, a love he had no right to possess. But it was his problem, not hers.
She could deny his love, but he refused to let her quit on him. One woman had already done that. He needed Kasey, and the need was deeper, stronger than anything he’d ever experienced before.
In the last few hours he’d come to realize that what he had once thought was so important—his marriage, the club, his position and status in the community—all paled compared to his feelings for Kasey.
*
The angry swarm had settled in the grill of Cliff Crumby’s old truck. Wearing the veil and gloves, Marianne waved the smoker in front of the grill until its smoke gently sedated the displaced bees enough for her to transfer them to the combs in the box.
Kasey stood back a safe distance and watched. This process of gathering bees always fascinated her. Once the queen bee surrendered, allowing herself to be placed in the box, the rest of her army usually came along peacefully. An hour after they arrived, the queen yielded and the renegade bees were making their way to their new home.
“You want these bees, Cliff?” Marianne asked her neighbor, a gangly, stooped man with gray whiskers who stood beside Kasey. “By rights they’re yours. They took up residence in your truck.”
“Hell no. What would I want ‘em for?”
“For the honey, of course.”
“You hand over more honey than I know what to do with. Take ‘em. Be my guest.”
Kasey pulled the red wagon over to the pickup, trying not to jerk or flinch when several bees buzzed near her face. “Ma, maybe you should cut back on the amount of hives you keep. You ran out of storage space for the honey long ago.”
“Didn’t I tell you? The new boarder is building shelves in the laundry room. He volunteered.”
“Really?”
“I think he’s doing it more for Sherry than me. He likes to show off his muscles,” Marianne added, removing the veil and gloves now that the bees were sedated. “He’s quite smitten with our little redhead. Can’t keep his eyes off her.”
“Isn’t Mr. Flynn a bit old for Sherry?”
“Oh, no, not him. Gosh, you’re way behind. I decided on the other one. Tom. The one you sent over.”
“I sent over?”
“From the club. Tom Andrews.”
Tom Andrews. Thomas Andrews? Kasey felt as if the ground had been pulled out from under her. She rushed forward, grabbed her mother’s arm. “Ma, what’s this guy look like?”
“Careful, honey, don’t frighten the bees, you’ll get stung.”
“What’s he look like?”
“Tall, balding a little in front. Blue eyes, sort of slanted, Mongolian-like. Why? You know what he looks like. He said you told him about the room. You did, didn’t you?”
“Where is he?” Kasey said, trying to keep the rising alarm from her voice. She brushed impatiently at a bee that had landed on her arm, felt a sting, but ignored it. “Is he at the house now?”
“No. He went into town to get lumber for the shelves. He took Sherry’s rig.”
Kasey backed up. “How long ago?”
“Just before you got here.”
Kasey took off for home.
“Where are you going? Kasey, what’s going on?”
“Later, Ma, later.” As she ran through the Crumbys’ yard, she heard her mother calling to her.
She reached the house minutes later, breathless, a painful stitch in her side. The truck was nowhere in sight. Kasey felt immense relief, but didn’t stop to rest. She ran to the shed and looked through the dusty panes of glass. Inside, like a dark, brooding monster, was the black Camaro.
Damn him. The sonofabitch! He had found out about the vacant room and had used her name to get into her mother’s house. Tom Andrews. He had used a name he knew Kasey would recognize, the other security guard at the club whose reports he had switched.
After a quick glance down the deserted driveway, Kasey entered the shed. She was surprised to find the Camaro unlocked. Before she could lose her nerve, she opened the car door and began to go through it. In the glove compartment she found an auto insurance receipt and a registration form made out to a Lucas T. Cage. Also there was a greasy rag, a full bottle of nasal spray, and a hunting knife in a leather sheath.
In the light from the dome she searched the floor. She felt under the front seats, coming up with a dried French fry, dirty beer nuts, and a single pink-and-blue capsule. Kasey raised it to the light and inspected it. It didn’t look like an over-the-counter drug. Amoxil she read. An antibiotic, a form of penicillin. The murdered woman in Room 814 had had a purse filled with drugs, the contents of one bottle missing. Had it been an antibiotic? And a week later, a doctor’s room had been ransacked, possibly by someone looking for dr
ugs.
Kasey slipped the capsule into the pocket of her pants.
Hurrying now, she popped the trunk. The interior was blanketed with a fine layer of sand. In a corner was a pillowcase crammed with dirty laundry. Kasey poked through the rest of the contents. An empty cardboard beer case; a shotgun and a rifle and a dozen yellow shotgun shells—some spent and others heavy with buckshot; a folding shovel; a first-aid kit, and a green metal box, the kind used for storing important papers. The box was locked.
She slammed the trunk lid, slipped out of the shed, and closed the door.
Snickers came out of nowhere and followed her to the main house. On the back porch, when she reached for the dog to keep him from bounding into the kitchen, he whined and ducked down, as if dodging a blow.
“What’s the matter, Snickers?”
He meekly licked her hand, crouched, and turned away.
Something was wrong with the dog. It wasn’t like him to be timid, to cower, she thought, but had no time right now to dwell on it.
She snatched up the kitchen phone, looked up the number for the Sparks Police, dialed, then asked for Det. Loweman. When he came on the line, she told him Lucas Cage was living in her mother’s rooming house. Loweman told her to sit tight, that although the Atwood place was out of his jurisdiction, he would call the proper authorities and the feds and meet them there. She was not, he said sternly—repeat—not to confront Cage if he turned up before the police arrived.
She climbed the stairs to the second floor. The door to Sherry’s room was wide open, the room empty. Behind the closed door of George and Danny Quackenbush, she heard cheering sounds from the TV intermingled with soft snoring. At this time of the day, Danny would be watching a sports event on ESPN while his grandfather napped.
Partially open was the door to Artie’s old room, now occupied by Lucas Cage. Kasey felt a renewed wave of anger. How dare the bastard come into her family home, using lies and tricks to lease a room? While she was cooped up in a cramped hotel room wondering where he was, this snake, this animal, was living under her mother’s roof in close contact with the people she loved.
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