“Could you arrange for me to pay him a visit? I’d like to get his story straight from the horse’s mouth.”
“Would this be about those messages from your vanished magician friend?”
“You got it.”
“I’ll see what I can do.”
“Thanks,” I said as I let my eyes wander—without a glass in my hand, I was all fidgety.
A short man, deep in conversation in the far back corner of the room, caught my attention. Zoom-Zoom Zewicki. He looked angry. Clusters of partiers blocked my view of the woman he was talking with—I caught a glimpse, then nothing. Curious, I leaned around until I got a better view.
Zoom-Zoom glanced up and caught me staring. He said something to the woman. She whipped her head around. Molly Rain! Our eyes met and held. When I started toward her, Molly turned and ran through a service door in the back wall. Not caring about the stares, I ran after her.
As I moved to dart around him, Zoom-Zoom stepped in my path. Had he not grabbed my arm, I would have fallen. “Lucky, what’s the hurry?”
“I’ll be right back, okay?” I jerked my arm out of his grasp and hit the door running.
I was too late. Molly Rain was gone.
“Did you do that on purpose?” I demanded of Zoom-Zoom when I returned to the party.
“The girl is distraught enough. You looked loaded for bear. I didn’t think this was the appropriate time or place for you to question her.”
“The police are looking for her.”
“She’s been in touch with Detective Romeo.”
I had nothing to say to that. If that was true, Romeo was dead meat. “Do you mind me asking what she wanted from you?”
“She wants me to try to contact Dimitri. They were lovers, you see. She’s beside herself. She wants to know if he’s okay on the other side.”
After all this time in Vegas, I should have mastered the art of talking to crazy people, but “uh, huh” was all I could think of to say. Clearly, I was losing my grip, and, Junior Arbogast had been wrong—drinking would most definitely help. The whole world had gone nuts—I might as well join in. “And have you managed to make contact with the late Mr. Fortunoff?”
“Thursday night. Midnight. We have a séance planned out at Rachel—part of the whole UFO conference entertainment. You are welcome to come.” He put a hand on my arm as I turned to go. “But I warn you, these things can be dangerous, life altering.”
“Life altering would be good.”
***
Dr. Zewicki was right—I was indeed loaded for bear. Not feeling the least bit sociable, I snuck out the side entrance, leaving the spookies to party on without me. Too antsy to head for home and with all under control, I was at loose ends. An unusual state of affairs—a problem I had no idea how to solve. I needn’t have worried. A call from Mother caught me wandering aimlessly through the lobby.
“Lucky, you need to come up to your father’s suite right away.” Her voice sounded tight, choked.
“Mother, what’s wrong? Are you crying?” My mother rarely cried—normally she made other people cry—or, in my case, want to shoot something.
“It’s your father… ”
“He’s okay, isn’t he?” My heart constricted—the memories of the phone call announcing he’d been rushed to the hospital still fresh in my mind.
“No, he’s not okay!” Mona wailed. “He’s mad at me. He left here in a rage. I don’t know where he’s gone.”
“People do argue, Mother. Even people in love.”
“But I’ve never seen him like this,” she whispered as she choked back a sob.
“What set him off?”
“He asked me to marry him. He got down on his knees and everything.”
“That’s great!”
“I told him ‘no.’”
***
Again, words fled. I was once again at a loss—this was sooo no good. So I took a call from Security instead—perhaps I’d have better luck communicating with them. If not, I was going to need a go-between all my own…happy thought. “Mother, hold on a minute,” I ordered. Not waiting for her reply, I switched to the other call. “Whatcha got?”
“We’re responding to an injury in Room Fourteen Six Seventy,” Jerry, our Head of Security said, his voice calm—just another day at the circus. “Thought you might want to be in the loop.”
“Is it serious?”
“I didn’t get that impression. The man who reported it couldn’t stop laughing.”
“On my way.” I clicked back over to Mona. “Mother—”
“How dare you put me on hold! I’m in extremis here. Don’t you ever—”
“Cork it, Mother. The needs of our guests take precedence over yours. I’ll be there as soon as possible. Don’t do anything else stupid, okay?” My “okay” was rhetorical, even if she couldn’t grasp that. I hung up on her in mid-whine.
***
When I knocked on the door to Room 14670, Jerry let me in without a word, the look on his face stoic. “This one is more up your alley than mine, I think.”
A woman, mid-fifties, forty pounds overweight, and naked as the day she was born—except for a towel draped between her legs—hung suspended from the ceiling in a sex swing. A long rope, strung through a grommet on the ceiling, connected Velcroed belts around each thigh, spreading her legs wide. Her large breasts, lifted and separated by a harness, hung like ripe fruit. First looking at us over one shoulder, then having to switch to the other as she rotated, she managed to choke out between fits of laughter, “Ya’ll gotta get me outta here. My legs have gone numb and I’m laughing so hard I’m gonna pee.” Laughter would have doubled her over had that been possible.
A man, the same age and looking like he had also spent too much time at the trough, wiped the tears from his face with a handkerchief. He wore a huge grin and a towel around his ample waist, nothing else. An empty bottle of Tattinger lay on its side on the floor, which explained some of the giggling.
“I’m Harry Simpson from Muskogee. That there’s my wife, Mavis.”
“I’m Lucky O’Toole, Head of Customer Relations. How can we help?”
“Well, me and Mavis came with the bus tour for the UFO conference. We don’t cotton to all that woo-woo stuff, but the spookies are a fun bunch—sure a lot more interesting than the folks back home.”
“Harry, get to the point, Honey,” Mavis instructed from her perch—her voice held the patience of a long marriage.
“Right. Well, in our bag of Vegas stuff we saw this flier from Smokin’ Joe’s Sex Emporium—they said they delivered, so we thought when in Vegas… ” He nudged me with his elbow and gave me a wink. “Everyone could use a boost to their between-the-sheets time, right?”
I treated the question as rhetorical. One actually needs a sex life before they can give it a boost.
“Anyway,” Harry continued, fighting laughter as he glanced at his wife. “I strapped her in that thing and hoisted her up there, but I’ll be damned if I know what I’m supposed to do with her like that.”
Jerry rubbed a hand over his face, hiding his smile. Biting hard on the inside of my mouth, I refused to look him in the eye.
“Maybe we ought to get her down,” I suggested. “Then you guys can start with some of the less… adventurous… stuff. Then maybe once you get the hang of it… “
Both Harry and Mavis looked at me wide-eyed, then burst out laughing. Jerry turned away.
“That’s the thing,” Harry said, when he’d gotten control of himself. “She’s stuck.”
“Stuck?” I asked, as I eyed Mavis.
“Yup.” Harry nodded. “She’s hung up tighter than a large calf in a small momma.”
I closed my mind to that visual as I surveyed the problem. “It looks like the rope has one of those safety catches—like window shades.”
“Well, I’ll be danged,” Harry announced, as he looked where I pointed. “No wonder I could only make her go up.”
“Come on,” I said, grabbing the end of the rope t
railing out of the catch near Mavis’s left thigh. “Put your weight to it. I’ll back you up. Let’s get her down, preferably without cracking her like a wishbone after Thanksgiving.”
***
“What took you so long?” Mother turned on me the minute the elevator doors opened to their penthouse apartment.
“You’ll be amazed to know I actually have other responsibilities that sometimes take precedence over your problems,” I growled, as I advanced on her. “What in God’s name were you thinking?”
She retreated to the couch. Crumpling in on herself, she wedged into a corner using several pillows as a shield. “You sound just like your father.”
Mother’s tear-streaked face took the fight out of me. Settling in next to her, I brushed a strand of hair out of her face as she looked at me with big eyes. “Why don’t you tell me what happened?
“He was so cute, really—so earnest and sincere.” Once a mother, always a mother, she brushed at a spot of dirt on my shoulder as if taking care of me would make everything right again in her world. “He’d even bought a ring—one of those ten-table rings other women wear.”
“Ten table rings?”
“So big you can see them ten tables away.”
“Ah.” I held her hand—her skin was cold. “I’m at sea here, Mother. Sincerity. A huge ring. Why again did you turn him down?”
“He’s only marrying me because I’m knocked up,” she wailed.
The laugh, so long contained, now burst free, bubbling out of me despite my best efforts to keep it contained. At my mother’s frown, I laughed harder—I couldn’t help myself. Tears streaked down my face as I struggled to breathe.
My mother yanked her hand from mine. “I don’t find this funny at all,” she huffed.
“From where I’m sitting, it’s hilarious. I just pray to God that idiocy is not an inherited trait.” I headed for the bar in search of a drink—clearly I was way behind the rest of the people in my little corner of the universe. I splashed a finger of Wild Turkey into a tumbler, then threw it back. The trail of fire brought tears to my eyes, but I didn’t care. Fortified, I returned to loom over my mother. “Pull yourself together, Mother. Go wash your face, put on a fresh outfit, and go find him. Start with the bars—that’s where most men I know go to nurse a demolished ego.”
“You think I’m being silly, then?”
“No. I think you’ve lost your friggin’ mind. Blame it on hormones and beg his forgiveness.”
***
A few minutes ahead of my mother, I went in search of The Big Boss. As expected, I found him in his favorite spot in the Garden Bar overlooking the pools and the hanging gardens.
When he glanced up at me, his eyes held the glassy stare of more than one double-bourbon. “I guess you heard.” It was a statement, not a question. “She doesn’t want to marry me.”
He looked so sad, I wanted to spank my mother—then strangle her, but that would be too good for her. Somehow, maybe this pregnancy was a bit of the payback the woman deserved—an attention getter—if she only paid heed.
“Of course she does,” I said, the conviction of truth ringing in my voice. “Hopefully, she is on her way down here, so I only have a few minutes—I don’t want her to see me with you. May I give you a word of advice?”
“Fire away.”
“Next time she pulls a stunt like this, do a caveman.”
“And risk certain death?” A fleeting grin lifted one corner of his mouth.
“She’s all blow and no go. Trust me, I’ve been handling her for years.”
“So I should take matters into my own hands?” he asked.
“Absolutely. For God’s sake don’t let her think she wears the pants in the family—she’ll make your life a living hell.” I turned to go, then turned back. “You know, I’m beginning to doubt your sanity—she’s my mother, I have to deal with her. You, on the other hand, can cut and run.”
This time I got the full wattage of his smile. “If she passed a burning building, she’d rush headlong into it—you gotta love her.”
“Brave, but not wise.”
“You have a lot of your mother in you.”
“I’m not sure this is the best time to tell me that.”
***
Love has a way of scraping back the layers of self-protection, leaving us exposed and vulnerable. The joy must be worth the pain, since humans keep falling in love, but you couldn’t prove it by me. Oh, I had the pain all right, but the joy was proving a bit elusive.
Right now, all I wanted was the escape of sleep.
After retrieving my Birkin and my Glock—leaving a loaded weapon in my office didn’t seem like the best plan—I pounded the pavement toward home. My sights set on a hot bath, then cool sheets, I barely nodded at Forrest. “Nothing new on the Daniels robbery?” I asked without pausing to talk.
“Nothing more than the firestorm set off by your friend, that loud woman with the paper?”
That stopped me. “Flash?” I asked, turning to face the big man.
“That’s the one!” He nodded. “She hit the evening news with some story about Mr. Daniels having been the head of some secret program at Area 51.”
“Really?”
“Yup.” Forrest dropped his voice to a conspiratorial whisper, causing me to move closer. “Here’s the kicker: apparently those papers stolen from Mr. Daniels were secret documents, smuggled out of Area 51.”
That ought to bring some unwanted attention, I thought. “What kind of program was it?”
“They didn’t say. The Air Force is pissed and backpedalling fast. Sorta fun to watch, actually—they think we’re all so damned dumb, telling us the base doesn’t exist. You can see the friggin’ thing on Google Earth, for chrissake!”
“There is a divine justice to it, isn’t there?”
“Yes, Ma’am.” Forrest shot me a brilliant grin, then sobered. “This is dangerous stuff, Ms. Lucky. Be careful—you being alone and all. If you need anything, you shout.”
Alone. I hated that word. Worse, I hated that reality.
If I hadn’t already completely lost my smile thinking about love and the splash Flash had made—talk about poking a stick into a bee hive—his comment evaporated any vestiges of good humor.
My apartment was empty, the bird quiet, when I tossed my bag on the couch after retrieving my firearm—next to the bed would be a good place for it—then headed for my bedroom.
I reached to open the nightstand drawer. Then I saw it. On my bed. My blood froze.
A stuffed white rabbit. A glittering collar. A note.
The note read,“DEATH WALKS. BEWARE.”
Chapter Eight
WITH my pulse pounding, the Glock gripped in both hands, I first dropped to my knees and checked under the bed. No one there.
Moving from room to room, I checked every corner, every closet, every window—the rooms were empty, the windows intact and locked. Even the balcony doors were secure with no signs of jimmying. Nothing was missing. Nothing had been tampered with, as if the intruder had drifted in like smoke through the cracks.
Satisfied I was alone, I set the Glock on the kitchen counter within easy reach and dialed Forrest.
“Has anyone been in my apartment today?” I asked when he answered.
“Only Miss Tracey to look after the bird. I let her in and waited while she did her thing, like I always do.”
“You’ve been on duty all day?”
“Yes, ma’am. Why?”
“Someone’s been here. They left a note.”
***
The adrenaline ebbed as I sat on a stool at my kitchen counter waiting for Forrest—he insisted on coming up. I didn’t argue. Not only was I alone… now I was scared.
Forrest arrived and took a turn through the place as if I wouldn’t know an intruder when I saw one. In a few minutes he reappeared in the kitchen, his face flushed, his eyes angry. “No one’s here, but somebody’s messin’ with me and I don’t like it.”
“Mess
ing with you? He’s been in my place.”
“It’s my building.” Forrest growled, eyeing the Glock on the counter. “I’m responsible.” The look in his eyes left me with no doubt that, if Forrest got his hands on him, the intruder would be sipping his meals through a straw.
“Would you mind checking Mr. Teddie’s apartment? It’s the obvious jumping off point to get to my balcony,” I asked, not wanting to go through Teddie’s place. Seeing his things, smelling the hint of his cologne lingering there, would make his absence too real… as if it wasn’t real enough already.
“Sure thing.”
***
Forrest reported back when he had finished reconnoitering. “No sign of any forced entry anywhere. I even checked the roof.”
Not what I wanted to hear. “If I had an idea how he got in,” I said. “I might be able to keep him out.”
“You got someplace else to go tonight?” Forrest asked.
“I’m not scared off that easily.” Putting my gun in my pocket, I escorted him back to the elevator. “You go on home. I’m sure your shift is long over. I’ll be fine.”
“Too bad Mr. Teddie isn’t here. I’d sure feel better if you wasn’t alone.”
“I’m fine,” I said, trying to convince myself. Then I realized I didn’t have to try—I really was fine. A little bit of adrenaline and a lot of angry were the perfect antidotes to a pity party.
“Shouldn’t we call the police?” The big man couldn’t hide his worry.
“I’ll take care of it.”
After the doors closed behind him, I phoned Romeo. “Sorry if I awakened you,” I said when I heard his tired voice.
“Sleep? What’s that? They could sublet my apartment, and I’d never know.”
“I just got home myself. Somebody broke in. They left me a note.”
“What kind of note?”
“The same kind Dimitri Fortunoff received, except my rabbit is stuffed—which is a good thing since they left it on my bed.”
So Damn Lucky (Lucky O'Toole Vegas Adventure Book 3) Page 13