Ms America and the Villainy in Vegas
Page 20
They tell me I fainted. As I lie in a hospital bed smothered in blankets, the impressive assortment of ER types arrayed around my bed tell me how I shrieked when the door to the cryogenic chamber opened and then raced out into the anteroom and promptly fainted dead away on the floor.
Fortunately not “dead away” in the literal sense, although it does feel like heaven to be cozy comfy in a bed, wrapped up like a beauty-queen papoose, no longer fearing for my life.
“That was very smart of you to block the vent,” says a male doctor type. “The paramedics told us that caused a siren to go off.”
I’m still sort of woozy so I have trouble grasping this.
“Apparently somebody outside the spa heard it,” he goes on. “And then hotel security found you. We have to keep an eye on you but there’s every reason to expect you’ll be just fine. You were very lucky.”
“Lucky?” I try to say, but my mouth won’t work right and a nurse cuts me off. “Don’t talk,” she says, “rest for now,” and for the first time in my life I don’t mind being shushed. I am content to lie quietly and bask in the luxury of not being dead.
In fact, of being “just fine.” And warm. Nice and warm. I never want to be cold again. If Jason wants to hotfoot it out of Ohio for parts down south, I just might be game.
The doctors and nurses bustle away. I see that my bed is in a small curtained-off area, probably in Urgent Care. I note that my left arm is hooked up to an IV. The weird thing is that my skin looks awfully pink. I try to wriggle my fingers, first on my left hand and then on my right. They seem to work. Ditto with my toes. If my extremities are in good shape, I bet the rest of me is, too. If memory serves, frostbite is the thing to worry about if a person spends too much time in a cryogenic chamber. At this point, for me, I would say two seconds is too much time.
A different nurse approaches the bed and offers me water. “We need to keep you hydrated,” she says. “That’s what the IV is for.” She props me up on my pillows and I take a sip. She sets the little blue plastic glass and straw on a table that she rolls close and asks whether I’ll be able to reach it. I reply that I will. All in all, soon I start to feel like myself again. Things come back to me in dribs and drabs.
Frank. Being in the chamber. The panic button.
So it was the siren from the vent being blocked that got somebody’s attention. Somebody outside the spa. It wasn’t the panic button that did it.
No, because only Frank heard the panic button. And he wasn’t going to save me. That was the last thing he was going to do.
I start to get agitated. “Nurse? Nurse? I have to talk to the police.” After all, there’s a killer on the loose. I need to tell them it’s Frank Richter. I wonder who he’ll go after next? Sally Anne? I doubt she’s safe. She must be warned.
“The police want to talk to you, too,” the nurse who brought me water says in a soothing voice. “But so do a few other people. Should I let them in?”
“Okay,” I say, and they turn out to be my mother and Jason.
“Oh my God!” my mother shrieks. She runs to my bedside, grabs my hand, takes one look at me, and yowls at the nurse. “She’s as pink as Babe the pig! What the hell’s the matter with her?”
I find this a worrisome assessment even as I hear the nurse reassure my mother that the rosiness is only a temporary phenomenon. I do not appreciate being likened to a Disney animal, particularly one of a porcine nature.
If I’m pink, Jason is white. I think of his skin as olive-toned but right now he’s as pale as Dracula himself. He kisses me and gently touches my face and hovers above my bed staring down at me like I’m a precious jewel. It’s kind of nice, I will tell you.
“It was Frank who pushed me in there, you know,” I tell him.
My mother catches that. “That bum Sally Anne was going to marry? I kept telling you he was bad news! But would you listen?”
“I’m gonna kill him,” Jason declares.
“At least now we know who’s behind all this.” I can’t get Sally Anne out of my mind. I’m really worried she’s in serious danger.
“I don’t want you ever investigating anything ever again,” Jason says. “We’ll talk about that later. For now I want you to listen to this.” He pulls out his cell. “Rachel left a voicemail for you.”
He plays it for me. I need to remember it the next time I want to wring my daughter’s neck. It’s a passionate, teary monologue about how much she loves me and how I’m the best mom ever and how she’ll totally go to college next year if I want her to and how she can’t wait until I get home so she can give me a huge hug.
My mom hands me a tissue so I can wipe my eyes. Then Jason lays an extra long smooch on my forehead. “That kiss is from your dad.”
“You spoke to Pop?”
“He wants you to call him as soon as you can. So does Cantwell.”
“You spoke to him, too?”
“Trixie did. He called her to find out what the heck was going on.”
Uh oh. I have some explaining to do.
I sink back against the pillows. I am exhausted. I am so ready to go home and see Rachel and Pop. The good news is that my work in Vegas is almost done. Now we know who the killer is and there’s only one more Sparklettes show. I wonder if I’ll be up to performing tonight. I wonder if the doctors will let me.
“Trixie and Shanelle are in the waiting room,” Jason tells me, “but the cops want to talk to you first.”
The nurse reappears. “We just got orders to move you to a private room.” She lowers her voice. “With a bodyguard outside the door. Courtesy of the LVMPD.”
Jason and I exchange a glance. It’s nice to be treated like a VIP but clearly this maneuver is designed to keep Frank Richter from taking another whack at me.
My mother and Jason are hustled away so Detective Perelli and I can speak in private. She appears shortly after I’m relocated, as stylish as ever in a slim-cut sleeveless dress that’s white on the bottom, black on top, and features a bright red ruched inset at the waist. She sets a bag of salt water taffy on my bedside table. “Straight outa Jersey. I get my mom to send it to me twice a year. The crap out here just doesn’t compare.”
“That is really nice of you.”
She eyes me as she chews her gum. “I’d say you are one lucky girl. You don’t wanna know how close you came.”
“I don’t think I do.”
She boots up her electronic tablet and takes notes as she grills me about the morning’s events. When she’s done, I ask if she’s been able to bring in Frank. She frowns. “You mean, from downstairs?”
I sit up straighter. “He’s downstairs? Downstairs here?”
“Where else would he be?”
I don’t know. Behind bars?
CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE
“Nobody’s told you, huh?” Detective Perelli asks. “Frank Richter’s got a lump on his noggin the size of which you wouldn’t believe.”
It comes out, then—how the paramedics who found me in the cryogenic chamber also found Frank, face down in the corridor outside the men’s locker room, lights out.
I find this astonishing news. “So it wasn’t Frank who locked me in the chamber?”
“Doesn’t look like it.”
According to this scenario, it wasn’t because Frank wanted me to die that he didn’t respond to the panic button. It was because he was unconscious and didn’t hear it.
I sink back against my pillows. This is deflating. And unnerving. Sure, I felt bad for Sally Anne that her fiancé was a homicidal maniac, but at least we had the thing sewn up, which meant that I was out of danger. “Are you positive Frank didn’t injure himself so we’d all think it was somebody else who locked me in there?”
“No way that injury is self-inflicted. Now”—she chews a few times—“that’s not to say Frank Richter didn’t push you inside the cryogenic chamber only to have another party conk him upside the head, but I’d say that’s unlikely.”
I process all this.
“What about the counterfeit-money guy? What’s his name again?”
“Bobby Erskine. He’s still in custody in Arizona.”
That’s right. Detective Perelli told me that the prior afternoon before I went to the Ziana show. That reminds me of my conversation backstage with Travis Blakely. “You know what? I told Travis Blakely yesterday that I go to the spa at the Cosmos all the time because Frank lets me into the cryogenic chamber for free.”
“You don’t say?” Detective Perelli frowns. “I’ll check into his whereabouts.”
All of this is giving me the creeps something fierce.
“Since the spa is where Cassidy Flanagan was stabbed,” she goes on, “chances are that whoever shoved you in that chamber knew the layout. They managed to sneak into and out of the spa the other day without anybody taking notice.”
And did the same today, apparently. “What about surveillance cameras?”
“None in the spa. In the casino and wedding chapel, yeah. And in the main public areas. We got people going through that tape.” She glances at her watch, a really cute one with a white strap, mother-of-pearl dial, and crystal inlays on the band. I am surprised I take note of this even under these dire circumstances. “I put an armed guard on you. When you get outa here, he’s going with you. Do not attempt to shake him.”
“There’s no danger of that.”
“One last thing. It nearly got you snuffed but I want you to know how much I appreciate the help you’ve given me. You don’t have that crime-buster reputation from Oahu for no good reason.” She winks at me before she leaves.
Crime-buster. I like the sound of that.
Next to be ushered into my private lair are Trixie and Shanelle. Both of them are fully made up and dressed in adorable sundresses, reminding me that beauty queens maintain their appearance even in grievous situations like their titleholder BFF narrowly escaping death.
“It’s a good thing we look pulled together,” Trixie remarks after the requisite hugs and sniffles, “what with all the TV cameras outside.”
“Trained on us,” Shanelle clarifies. “They’d be trained on you if they could but we’re the next best thing.”
“It’s a huge story, Happy.” Trixie perches on my bed. “Not only are there two still unsolved murders at the Cosmos Hotel but now there’s been an attempt on you, the beauty queen sleuth.”
“She’s the only one calls you that,” Shanelle says.
“That may be the case for now,” Trixie says, “but it won’t be for long.”
No wonder Sebastian Cantwell wants an explanation. The phones at pageant headquarters must be ringing off the hook. “Jason tells me you spoke with Cantwell,” I say to Trixie. “Just how mad is he?”
“He’s not really that mad,” Trixie reports. “He wants to talk to you about the whole investigating thing but he says it’s good for business.”
“And you know how much he’d like that,” Shanelle puts in.
I’m delighted to hear this but I’m also confused. “How could my investigating be good for business?”
“Scads of women are entering the Ms. America feeder contests,” Shanelle says. “You haven’t heard about that? Last month was a record in a whole bunch of states. And it’s all because of the publicity you got by solving Tiffany Amber’s murder.”
“I’m amazed you didn’t know that!” Trixie exclaims. “Even I know that.”
“It means the entry fees are way up,” Shanelle says.
“I get it now.” I am profoundly gratified. “That would be good for business.”
“I’m really glad you have that armed bodyguard now,” Trixie says. “Jason told us he’s been assigned to accompany you back to the hotel and guard your room there, too.”
“They’re already talking about letting me out of the hospital? Maybe that means I can perform tonight!”
“Jason says no way he’ll let you perform even if the docs give the all clear,” Shanelle says. “And girl, if I were you I wouldn’t go against him on this.”
“I agree,” Trixie says. “He’s hiding it but I can tell he’s upset that you almost got killed today on account of your investigating.”
Jason will have a fit if I declare I want to perform tonight, especially if Detective Perelli hasn’t nabbed the killer by then. He’ll be worried somebody may try to pick me off in the kick line. And for all I know, somebody may.
The nurse returns to ask Trixie and Shanelle to leave so I can get some sleep.
“We’ll come back later with an outfit for you,” Shanelle says. “With all those cameras out there, you must not exit this facility unprepared.”
“I’ll give you a full makeup.” Trixie gives me an assessing look. “Good thing I have a foundation that kills redness.” She scrunches her nose. “Sorry. Bad choice of verb.”
I manage both to call Pop and squeeze in a little shuteye before Elaine Shreve visits bearing a Get Well balloon from the Sparklettes. She’s still on the premises when Mario appears behind an enormous bouquet of my favorite—yellow roses.
“You’ve given me those before,” I say. They look stunning on the side table. He doesn’t look bad, either, and I can tell from Elaine’s expression that she thinks so, too.
“I gave you yellow roses when you won the title,” Mario says.
The three of us engage in casual conversation, at least as casual as I can be with Mario Suave in the vicinity. The nurse reappears with another Happy Needs To Sleep reminder. Mario leans down to kiss my forehead. He pulls back and we stare at one another for a moment. “I was really upset when I heard what happened,” he murmurs.
“I’ll be fine,” I manage to say. More staring ensues until Elaine clears her throat. I forgot she was in the room.
“All of us Sparklettes are so relieved you’re all right, Happy.” She grasps my hand and Mario is forced to retreat. “And I agree with your husband that you shouldn’t perform tonight. Better you rest and stay safe.”
I agree to call her before I leave Vegas. Mario and I exchange another glance before he departs with Elaine. I’m wondering how long it’ll be before I can purge that man from my system when I fall asleep again.
I am awakened by the sound of another arrival. I open my eyes to see Frank Richter beside my bed.
CHAPTER THIRTY
“Guard!” I shriek, before I realize the guard is already in my room, standing against the opposite wall. Sally Anne is next to him.
“It’s all right, already!” Frank says. “Jeez! What do I have to do to make people stop thinking I’m a menace?”
Right now he does look more victim than assailant. He’s got gauze wrapped around his head like those wounded soldiers in World War I documentaries.
He eyes me. “They tell me you’re gonna be okay. That true?”
“I hope so. They tell me the same thing.”
“I am really glad to hear you say that.” He shakes his head. “This is craziness. First Danny, then Cassidy …” His voice tails off.
Sally Anne steps closer and rubs his back. “We were both big-time worried about you, Happy. I brought you this.” She sets a lavender and white striped cosmetics bag with the Crowning Glory logo on my bedside table next to the roses and salt water taffy. “A few items from the store I think you’ll like having.”
“Thank you, Sally Anne.” I note she and Frank seem more at ease together than at any time since Danny’s murder. “How is your head?” I ask Frank.
“They tell me I got a concussion. I got a helluva headache and some ringing in the ears but all things considered”—he shrugs—“I’m making out good.”
“You didn’t see who hit you?”
“Ain’t got a clue. I was heading for the cryogenic chamber and bam! That’s all she wrote. Listen.” H
e motions to the chair behind him. “Mind if I sit down? I got something I wanna show you. Shoulda done it before but I’m doing it now.”
“Better late than never,” Sally Anne says.
“Sure,” I say. He’s got me curious.
Sally Anne passes him a manila folder.
“She’s in on everything now, by the way,” Frank tells me. “No more secrets.”
Sally Anne points at him but looks at me. “After all this I still wanna marry the guy. You believe that?”
Frank hands me some documents.
I glance at them. “These are bank statements.”
“Yup. The account’s in my name but the cash is all Danny’s.”
I shake my head, not understanding.
“The two of us had an arrangement,” Frank goes on. “He knew I needed cash because of my gambling situation. So one day he says to me, tell you what, Uncle Frankie. How about you set up a bank account and I put money in it and you use that money any which way you see fit to pay off your debts. Only the deal is, you don’t tell nobody about the account.”
“And you didn’t? Until now?”
“I kept mum.”
“So you never told Detective Perelli about this account.”
“Not a word. Now, I gotta tell you, I regret that.” He lowers his head. Sally Anne rubs his shoulder.
I look at the statements. They go back several months. The most recent shows a balance of $103,078.46. Each statement shows a few deposits, all in even amounts like $5000, $10,000, or $20,000. And all via Paypal transfer.
I look at Frank. My brain cells start to jostle. “Remember I told you that Cassidy told me that Danny was blackmailing somebody?”
He nods.
“I bet the person he was blackmailing made these deposits. Did you notice they got a lot bigger just recently?”
“Yup.”
“They start out at five thousand, then they go to ten thousand, then they jump all the way to twenty. I bet Danny started demanding more money and the person he was blackmailing saw no end in sight and so they decided there was only one way to make it stop.” Frank meets my gaze. “To kill Danny.”