So Damn Lucky (Lucky O'Toole Vegas Adventure Book 3)

by Deborah Coonts

  “How did we get from a change of clothing to the bird in the office and all of my stuff upstairs?” I raised a hand, stopping her comment. “That was rhetorical. I know my father—the if-a-little-is-good-then-more-must-be-better guy.”

  “You got it. Overboard as usual. But his heart’s in the right place… except for the friggin’ bird.”

  Newton glared at her and said, “Asshole.”

  She looked at me wide-eyed.

  “Creepy isn’t it?” I responded, knowing what she was thinking. “If I didn’t know better, I’d swear he understood every word.”

  The door swung open admitting, Brandy, fearless assistant number two, looking scrubbed, refreshed, professional, and ready to meet the day.

  The bird let out an earsplitting wolf whistle.

  “There is no justice in the world,” I announced, when my ears stopped ringing. “I’m his provider and I get ‘Fuck you, bitch.’ Little miss beauty queen sashays in here and she gets an appreciative whistle.”

  Brandy walked over to the cage. “What a cute bird. Whose is it?”

  Newton preened for her.

  “Yours,” I teased…sort of. “I’m going upstairs to look for my lost youth.”

  ***

  The door was open, the crew just finishing up, when I arrived at my new, temporary home. A smaller version of The Big Boss’s suite, with warm wood floors, faux-painted walls in a rich shade of orange, lush Persian carpets, comfortable furniture, and a wall of windows framing a dramatic view of the Strip, it would be a nice home while I discovered where I really lived.

  Nodding to the workmen as they hung my art on the walls, I wandered, picking up knick-knacks. I couldn’t shake the feeling that maybe I really was running away, from the memories, the disappointments… myself.

  Somehow, I needed to close the chapter with Teddie. Even though I denied it, I had loved him… part of me still did. When he left, he took a little of my heart. Maybe that’s how life works—the people you love add to your life, but take a part of you in return.

  I sank onto the couch in front of the windows and buried my face in my hands. Vaguely aware the hammering had stopped, I jumped at the hand on my shoulder. Looking up into the eyes of my father, I moved over and offered him part of my perch.

  “Few men are worth your tears, honey. The ones who are won’t make you cry.” He put his arm around me, pulling me to his shoulder.

  “I’m not crying. Just trying to catch up.” I closed my eyes and tried to relax.

  “Your last forty-eight hours have been doozies.”

  “Tell me about it.” And, thankfully, he didn’t know the half of it—aftershocks of my recent French earthquakes still rolled through me. “Thanks for all of this, by the way.”

  “A bit overboard. Your mother bent my ear about it. Told me I was meddling.”

  “Expediting, I would say. And saving me a ton of hassle. Thank you.”

  “Everything okay?” he asked, his way of probing. Unlike his daughter, my father was an expert at beating around the bush.

  “Perfect.”

  “I thought it would be.”

  I let him hold me a moment longer—there was nothing quite like a father’s shoulder.

  ***

  After a quick shower, I managed to locate my underwear drawer and a fresh pair of stockings. Today seemed like a red lace day… and a sexy, feminine, girly-girl Dolce and Gabbana day as well. I added a pair of Christian Louboutin shoes because, somehow, French seemed perfectement.

  ***

  The bird eyed me when I returned to the office, but with Brandy sitting at her desk near his cage, he remained strangely quiet.

  “Brandy, a minute, please?” I asked, as I sailed through the outer office, into mine.

  “Everything’s on go for tonight,” she said crisply. “All the bands showed up—the roadies are setting up as we speak. Banquet services, security, we’ll have our final meeting at two this afternoon. Do you want to be there?”

  “You handle it.”

  The girl maintained a calm exterior…professional…in control, but her huge grin betrayed her.

  “Where are we on Mrs. Olefson?” I had asked Brandy to find a nice room for our permanent guest—the new addition to our Babylon family.

  “She’s booked the suite through the weekend. Monday we are moving her to a nice room in the west tower with a Strip and mountain view.”

  “Has she seen the room?”

  Brandy crinkled her brows as if trying to figure out how to tell her boss that was a stupid question.

  I bit back my grin.

  “Of course. She’s delighted and wants to schedule tea with you and I quote ‘your Frenchman’ next week.”

  “Remind me on Monday. I can’t plan anything now—this weekend is going to be a real killer.”

  Chapter Eighteen

  LUNCH came and went before I knew it. Buried in a sea of paper and phone calls, I didn’t come up for air until well past three. Needing a break, I decided to check on Marik and his preparations for tonight. Brandy’s desk was empty—she was off at her meeting. I left Miss P holding down the fort, and Newton muttering sweet expletives in her ear.

  My phone rang just as the door closed behind me. Irritated, and more than a little bit sick of fielding phone calls, I pressed it to my ear.

  “Hey,” Teddie said, his voice quiet, unsure. “I can’t believe you answered.”

  My heart skipped a beat, then settled back into its steady rhythm. I didn’t tell him that I wouldn’t have answered had I been smart enough to look at the caller ID. Curiously, the sound of his voice wasn’t the punch to the solar plexus I’d expected, although it did leave me with a hollow feeling somewhere near my heart. “Hello, Teddie. What do you need?” I tried, but I couldn’t keep the ice out of my tone.

  “Just to hear your voice.”

  Stopping, I looked out over the crowded lobby below. The guy was working me like a yo-yo, stringing me along like a twisted version of walk-the-dog. “I don’t know how to talk to you right now. And I’m not sure I want to.”

  “I know.” Distance echoed between us, both real and imagined. “We really screwed this up, didn’t we?”

  “We?”

  “Okay, me. I really screwed this up. I never should have slept with you in the first place.”

  That was going back further in time than I expected.

  “I had you in my life,” he continued. “Now I’ve lost you. I know sharing our lives won’t work—we don’t want the same thing. But can we go back?”

  “This was what I warned you about in the beginning.” I squeezed my eyes tight against the pain, then refocused. “I don’t know how to be your friend anymore, Teddie.”

  “Can’t we figure it out?”

  I gripped the phone, his mother’s words echoing in my memory. “No, Teddie. Keeping a connection between us makes it impossible to move on. I’m sorry.”

  After a long silence, he said, “You can’t mean that.”

  “Good-bye, Teddie.” I said.

  “No, wait,” he said, before I could disconnect. “ I have one other thing I think you should know.”

  “What?”

  “I just got the weirdest phone call. A gal from the truck pool at the Babylon called me. She wanted to know if you had taken the van off-road. Apparently there was some damage.”

  A chill chased up my spine. “What did you tell her?”

  “I told her there was no way it was us—we didn’t take it any farther than Trop and Decatur.”

  My heart sank. “Damn.”

  “I take it that wasn’t the right thing to do?”

  “It’s okay,” I said, trying to slow my heart and marshal my thoughts. “How would you know what was going on?”

  “I thought it would be okay to talk to the gal. After all, she called from your phone.”

  ***

  At least I knew I hadn’t lost my phone.

  Flash fell into step as I strode across the lobby. “I’m st
arved,” she said. “ Want to buy me breakfast?”

  “Can’t. I’m chasing my tail.”

  “I’ve always found it more fun to allow others to chase that part of my anatomy.”

  “You would.”

  “Are you going to tell me where you were last night?” Flash asked with a grin. “I looked for you all over.”

  “So are you here merely to ask about my sex life?”

  “Inquiring minds want to know.” Her face turned serious. “Actually I wanted to bring you up to speed on the various blind alleys I’ve been running down. Or up? Which is it?”

  Her bad news took my black mood down a notch…all the way to abysmal. “Don’t worry about ruining my day.”

  “That good, huh?” Matching me stride for stride as I shouldered through the lobby on my way to the office. “You were right, Dimitri had a wife. She died a couple of years ago…suicide they said. But her name wasn’t Joy.”

  “And to think you got my hopes up with the suicide angle.” A man who was clearly eavesdropping shot me a worried look. I pulled Flash out of earshot. “No Joy connected to anybody else?”

  “I checked everybody’s relatives, known friends, lovers, distant cousins—everybody—and came up with nada.”

  “Did Dimitri’s wife have any siblings?”

  “Her obit mentioned a brother named Carl and some various lesser and sundry relatives, a stepfather, nothing interesting.”

  “Carl Colson?” So he did have a sister! Maybe he wasn’t so crazy after all.

  Flash’s head swiveled my direction, her eyes shooting daggers. “Yeah. Are you holding out on me?”

  “Of course not. I’m psychic.”

  “And I’m Mother Teresa.”

  I wondered if psychic abilities ran in families. Carl was off the charts; I’d be willing to bet my last dollar his sister was also. “You sure her name wasn’t Joy?”

  “No. It was a weird name, I’d never heard it before.”

  “Just for grins, why don’t you let me in on the secret?”

  “You don’t need to get huffy.”

  “Bodies are piling up while you jerk my chain.”

  “Alaia, okay? Her name was Alaia.”

  I stopped in my tracks, jerking her to a stop as well. “Say again.”

  “Alaia.”

  I clapped my hands and shouted, “Bingo!”

  Heads turned. I didn’t care.

  “What?”

  “We have our Joy! You’re brilliant.” If I hadn’t been standing in the middle of the lobby masquerading as a hotel executive, I would’ve done a happy dance.

  “You’re not making sense,” Flash groused. “Don’t tell me the voices are talking to you, too?”

  “Alaia, a derivation of the Spanish word alegría, meaning…”

  “Joy.”

  “Close enough,” I said, my spirits soaring.

  “You sure?” Flash asked.

  “Of course I’m sure. The word means happiness, jubilation, etc. Alaia is actually a Basque name, I think.”

  “How the heck do you know these things?”

  “Speaking Spanish is part of my job description. And as for the name, remember that internship I did at the Ritz in Madrid? I worked with a girl named Alaia.”

  “What does all this mean?”

  “It means we’re going to catch that bastard.”

  Flash’s eyes widened when I pulled my phone out of my pocket. “Are you going back to the age of the dinosaur? That technological relic belongs in the Smithsonian.”

  “My other one walked off. This is a spare.” I punched Romeo’s speed-dial. Nothing. Damn. His number was in my old phone. “Would you go to my office and ask Miss P to call me with Romeo’s number,” I asked Flash. “ I want to check on the preparations for tonight’s magic show. Won’t take me a minute. I’ll meet you at the office.”

  “You got it.”

  ***

  At the main entrance to the Arena the phone rang. “What’s his number?” I asked.

  “What?” Jerry’s voice came back.

  “Sorry, I thought you were Miss P. What’s up?”

  “We found Zewicki. Housekeeping pulled him out of a laundry bin on the tenth floor. Bound and gagged he was mad as a hooker on vice night. He said Danilov jumped him.”

  “How long ago?”

  “Ten minutes, no more.”

  “Is Danilov still on the property?”

  “Negative. We didn’t catch up with him in time. I’m sorry.”

  “Damn.”

  “But I do know where he went.”

  “One of these days, Jer. One of these days…”

  “Your buddy, Danilov, caught a cab. The doorman heard him ask to be taken to Trop and Decatur.”

  ***

  Pacing, I dialed Jeremy. Come on. Come on. Answer the phone! The call rolled to voice mail. “Damn!” I muttered—apparently “damn” was my new favorite word. I tried twice more to reach him even though I knew it was futile—he was buried in the bowels of Vegas.

  Thoughts racing, I resisted running after Danilov. A minute to think. It was all there right in front of me.…

  A missing magician whose wife died. Her name was Joy—in Basque. Her brother was Carl Colson, who was in this secret mind-bending program at Area 51. Bart Griffin had an axe to grind with the Air Force. Zoom-Zoom and Danilov both had connections to the same program. If Jenkins’s mind-reading trick wasn’t a trick at all… I’d be willing to bet my last dollar he was the “expert” called in to play God. Play God, deal with the Devil.

  Assuming psychic abilities clustered genetically, I could assume Joy was the girl who died in the program. Who everyone thought was murdered. But the death had been swept under the carpet.

  And the murderer walked.

  Damn!

  ***

  Like a banshee after a wicked soul, I flew through the Arena oblivious to my surroundings. Grabbing a surprised Marik by the arm, I growled in his ear, “Come with me.”

  He jerked his arm away. “I’m busy,” he snapped.

  “It’s important.” The murderous look I gave him did the trick.

  “Where are we going?”

  “To spring a trap.”

  ***

  Throwing myself headfirst into the cab at the head of the queue, with Marik close behind, I barked out our destination, then said, “There’s a hundred in it for you if you make this bucket of bolts fly.”

  A gamer, the cabbie joined the chase.

  Gripping the handle, with feet braced, I fought to dial my phone with my free hand. “Call Romeo. Tell him to meet us in the storm drain, Trop and Decatur, fifty feet in, take a right, follow the shouting,” I barked to Miss P when she answered. “He should bring backup.”

  Taking the right turn onto Trop faster than I thought physics allowed, the cabbie punched it on the straightaway. My phone flew out of my hand as I grabbed for anything solid. Any attempt to retrieve it would risk serious bodily harm, so I didn’t try. It wouldn’t matter anyway.

  “Are you going to tell me what this is about,” Marik asked.

  “Let me tell you what I know. You can fill in the details.” I gave him a glare. “I’ve been wracking my brain trying to figure out what happened to Dimitri, who was responsible. I was looking for one person, maybe two, but the more I dug, the more connections I made. Then it hit me—all of you guys are in this up to your eyeballs. Both you and Dimitri are Ukranian, and, you called him Dimchka—a term of endearment used mainly for relatives or family. Which is it?”

  His face a mask, Marik looked at me for a moment, then he gave a slight, resigned shrug. “Cousin.”

  “All of you—Zewicki, Bart Griffin, Danilov—are trying to catch a murderer and it just might get Carl killed.” Along with Jeremy, but I didn’t say that aloud—saying it made it real. “Dimitri added the needed publicity—casting a wide net to reel in a murderer and his disappearance had the added benefit of allowing him to work behind the scenes while the rest of you acted o
ut this little farce on a very public stage.”

  Marik didn’t deny it. “Go on.”

  “ The whole Danilov robbery threw me off for a while.” I continued, gaining momentum. “ Very clever. You knew Metro wouldn’t give a simple robbery much attention. So you staged it, setting the trap.”

  “When did you figure it out?”

  “When I got the Joy connection.” As the cab screeched to a stop at the familiar corner, I pulled a couple of bills from my pocket. “Thanks! Keep the change.”

  Marik and I ran for the entrance to the drains.

  ***

  At the dark opening, I put a hand on Marik’s chest, pushing him behind me. “Follow and be quiet.”

  With no flashlight, the darkness was virtually impenetrable, snuffing out the tiny cone of light from the entrance like a blanket over a flame. My hand on the wall, I felt my way, trying to follow the memory of my previous visit. The back of my sweater fisted in his hand, Marik followed closely, silently.

  Jeremy’s post was empty. I shut my mind to the possibilities.

  Carl’s growl echoed through darkness. “You’re one of them.” He sounded angry, scared, coiled like a lion lured by the scent of blood and ready to pounce.

  “One of whom?” Jeremy’s Aussie accent tripped my heart.

  Stopping at the corner, I flattened against the wall, then eased my head around.

  In the flickering light—remnants of a fire—I could see Jeremy. He stood, not ten feet from me, his arm around Danilov’s neck. If he was aware of my presence, he didn’t show it.

  Danilov hung like a ragdoll in Jeremy’s arms, a trickle of blood oozing from a cut on his temple.

  Carl, his feet braced, his eyes wild, held his rifle leveled at Jeremy’s heart.

  Taking a deep breath, I stepped into the room.

  Marik stayed hidden in the shadows behind me.

  “Carl, put the rifle down,” I said, as I eased toward him, my empty hands outstretched.

  He swung the rifle toward me, then recognition dawned. “Lucky?”

  “It’s over now, Carl. Give me the rifle.”