“Look,” Revienne said, “our last chance to see the Bellagio fountains dancing.”
He turned in his chair, watching the silent waltz of water and lights and music. The fountains were diminishing into sprinkler height as he escorted Revienne out of the restaurant.
She wanted to pause at her previous spot to put his twenty bucks in the slot machine.
He took the bill, studied the scene, then moved it and them to the end of another row. “This one.”
A skeptical blond eyebrow almost distracted him from the white skirt stretched tight as she sat on the stool and slid the bill into the waiting slot.
The moving icons chirruped and blinged and binged. Coins plinked into the stainless steel apron under the computerized slot machine. Revienne scooped them with her white-tipped French manicured nails into the paper cup Max held. Again she pushed the button. And again.
In a few minutes she’d won a hundred and fifty dollars. And she laughed like a kid while doing it.
“That is magic,” she said.
He shook his head modestly. “They position sucker slots to let someone win for a while and lure others to lose.”
“It’s all programmed?”
He nodded as she set her full cup on the shelf.
“It was fun, winning, but I don’t need the money. It’s not worth the fuss converting all these coins to cash.” She rose. “Let someone else find it, and think they got lucky too.”
Max laughed. And escorted her to the drive up.
“We can hear the fountains’ music from here?” Revienne asked.
“With a short stroll.”
“After dinner, a stroll is always good. Very Parisian.”
Max led her near Las Vegas Boulevard. As they arrived, the fountains paused for a moment to take a deep breath and then gushed up like geysers to the accompaniment of symphonic music paced by the lights and water. Behind the dancing shafts of water the Bellagio façade was lit with its own symphony of light.
“You know,” Revienne said, turning to view the spotlit Eiffel Tower behind them and the Paris’s festive neon balloon, “this almost reminds me of Paris, out of the corner of my eye, anyway.”
Max looked at the Vegas he remembered in bits and pieces, compared it to crisp images of bustling Zurich and the mist-blurred landscapes of sweet, savage Ireland and Belfast. This was new territory to his unraveled memory, and he stood isolated, having no remaining remembered intimate connection, except one.
The evening wind blew a wet mist from the fountains across the Strip. Revienne recoiled and then laughed, welcoming the cooling shower.
Max’s hand had automatically gone between her shoulder blades for support and she relaxed into his shoulder.
The Bellagio fountains continued their assault on hot Las Vegas with waves of cool Irish mist.
“My clothes, hair, everything, will be wet, ruined,” Revienne said, laughing. “It’s wonderful!”
He remembered the hardships of their on-foot escape in the Alps.
She turned her face into his shoulder and lifted it, eyes closed to the tiny wet crystals of water dewing her eyelashes, lips, and all that everything that was getting wet.
He wondered if they would get to first names this time. She thought his was Michael, and Garry had told him it actually was, once upon a time.
“You want a return engagement?” Max asked. “Why?”
“Because this is somewhere very special and free, and your strength of will is phenomenal.”
“I’d be much better now.”
“Yes,” she said, smiling even more. “That too.”
Chapter 54
Meddling Belles
“Tell me about the wedding,” Miss Midnight Louise demands. “I understand you wore a sissy white bow tie.”
Louise has buttonholed me while I dallied in the Circle Ritz parking lot, after the wedding party saw the happy couple off to their Crystal Phoenix digs.
I do not mean my business partner literally buttonholed me, but she did stick a tiny but sharp shiv in my black velvet shoulder that gives me pause.
Girls just like to hear about weddings, even if they are fixed.
“Who has ratted on me?” I ask.
“I heard your very own roommate oohing and aahing to Miss Van Von Rhine in this very parking lot about how adorable you looked in white tie and black tail. They were giggling about you revisiting this role again soon.”
Gag me with a can of politically correct, dolphin-safe tuna. I put in my vote for all species forgetting the folderol and eloping … me with Miss Topaz from the Oasis. Now that I am playing Gossip Guy, I will confess that I am so over lion-cut shaved Persians.
“Well.” Miss Louise nudges me. “I want a complete report, down to the wearing apparel, besides yours.”
It is to yawn, but there is only one way I will be left to my own devices.
“The bride was totally drool-worthy. She wore a silky soft, tiered lace-and-ruffle dress that flared below the knee into a mermaid skirt. It was a pale peach mauve color like really diluted blood.
“The bodice featured an oversized soft chiffon bow in back, with the tails reaching all the way to her hips. A pity it will hang in her Chicago closet from now on.”
Louise is as close to swooning as I have ever seen her. “Ummm,” she purrs. “Totally climbable and clawable. A ten on the Shred Scale. What about your roommate?”
“Even better. As maid of honor she wore pale saffron—”
“Saffron?”
“We fashonistos don’t say ‘yellow.’ It was a saffron full-pleated skirt, ’50s length.”
“Oooh, the hem at calf-level, so accessible and a potential carousel of swing.”
“Unfortunately, there was no dancing afterwards. The Misses Van Von Rhine and Kit Carlson—”
“They were there?”
“Along with their spice, which is the plural of spouse, as mice is of mouse, Nicky and Aldo Fontana. Nicky was best man, and Matt led his mother down the aisle to some organ music he’d recorded earlier.”
“The standard Mendelssohn wedding march?”
“The very unstandard Bob Dylan. That music did work well. It was slow enough I got an excellent ankle-level perusal of footwear.”
Louise nods judiciously.
“Unfortunately, from groom to best man to the eight Fontana brothers in attendance, the uniform was shiny black patent loafers.”
“Hard candy,” Louise agrees. “As chewable as stale licorice twists.”
“Not worth raiding the closet for,” I concur. “Speaking of which, my Miss Temple had chosen a toothsome gold silk sandal with an Austrian crystal ankle button—”
“Glittering baby balls! So Las Vegas. Much fun, if you can detach them from the strap.”
“Miss Temple could not find both of them just before the wedding. I was falsely accused of making off with it.”
“You missed copping such a prize?”
“My role of the day was ‘little gentleman.’”
“And you wore the white-tie collar to prove it. I hope that is preserved on film and photo. Why did you not grab such a classic toy?”
“I was busy in the wedding chapel making sure that all the soft sculptures were sitting up pretty.”
“You were napping!”
“I had a very active time in Chicago, Louise. Philip Winslow wore a black tux, but all the dudes wore faint diamond-pattern tuxes in shades of gray and silver and gold, with black satin lapels to match the side stripes in their trousers and white-on-white paisley ties. Regular ties. I was the only one in a bow tie. Apparently the Fontana brothers’ Gangsters franchise can supply party garb as the well as the limos to wear it in. They all were pretty duded up, considering this was a hurry-up affair.”
“Not from what I heard in your Chicago reports. Miss Matt Mama took some long and winding roads to snagging a decent mate.”
“I meant the wedding was a hasty event, not the events leading up to it. You will remember, Louise, that h
ad I not investigated Miss Matt Mama’s premises and sacrificed myself as handy kidnap victim to two Chicago Outfit thugs, our detecting friends would never have uncovered the Effinger connection. Makes you wonder about fate and redemption and true love.”
“Makes me wonder about your mental stability.
“I know you favor Mr. Max, but I will tell you Mr. Matt looked so good in his silver suit, Miss Temple seemed likely to make them the next couple in front of Miss Electra Lark in her black justice of the peace robes. They were a symphony in gold and silver.”
“And you were a tuxedo cat for a day.”
“For a couple of hours. I performed impeccably, by the way, when Mr. Matt bent down to unhook the wedding ring from my white tie and collar. I held still.”
“So, what was the ring like?”
“I heard Miss Kit Carlson describe it to Miss Van Von Rhine as a ‘fancy blue diamond solitaire surrounded by diamonds with a matching diamond wedding band.’ As per the usual wedding, the gemstone was outshone by the glitter in the eyes of the female guests.”
“Anymore pant-worthy details?”
“For the ceremony, which was short and sweet, all the unattached Fontana brothers sat in the pews next to Miss Electra’s soft sculpture congregation. It was interesting to see them paired with the likes of Gloria Steinem, Judge Judy, and Bette Midler.
“I, of course, cuddled up with the King, because I really did wear a ring around my neck, and I was ‘his, by heck.’ And that’s all she wrote.”
Chapter 55
Twisted Tight
It was over.
Matt moved aimlessly through his apartment at the Circle Ritz, not that it was a very big space. Mom married. The wedding banquet at the Crystal Phoenix had been festive … and underwritten by Nicky and Van. Temple had been amazing, as usual.
They’d kissed the happy couple good-bye and come home to change finery and chill out. Matt relished this time alone. He’d come to Sin City hunting the ghost of his mother’s almost willfully unhappy marriage and, now, thirty years later, had watched that misery dissolve into a midlife renewal with a good man.
He himself had been remade by coming to terms with the past.
Matt loosened his tie, kicked off the fancy black patent leather loafers, sat on his red suede vintage couch. So many of the people he’d met here in Vegas had helped him make a deep personal transition.… The staff at the ConTact phone help line where he’d first worked. Janice Flanders, the police sketch artist. Danny Dove, choreographer and friend extraordinaire. Letitia Brown at WCOO. Carmen Molina, always tough and resilient. Even the Mystifying Max Kinsella.
And Temple. He could never do for his mother what she had done, taken Mira in hand and out of her self-imposed isolation. Temple was always the warm, steady heartbeat of everyone around her. Especially him. His love for her was an inner island of calm … easily ruffled by waves of shore-shaking excitement.
Now would be time for Temple and himself, solely and exclusively, and their own wedding plans could commence without any baggage from his past. At last.
As he sat there, enjoying the silence, the thoughts of the future, he noticed a nagging background sound. Something tap, tap, tapping somewhere.
Matt shut his eyes. Breathed deep. Relaxed.
Still that annoying rapping, like Poe’s darn raven.
He stood up. Listened. Was it a water pipe? They could make that noise in an old building like the Circle Ritz.
He made the brief rounds, but the kitchen and bathroom taps were twisted tight.
Back in the main living area, he sighed. No clocks that ticked. Maybe something on the patio. He rarely went there, had never furnished or used it. He wasn’t used to providing for himself. He’d called rectories home for too long, had been spoiled by the parish housekeepers for too long. He’d have to watch that self-centered domestic side of himself when he and Temple were married.
He wandered to the dark row of French doors. Danny had insisted on installing shadow-box blinds over them for “privacy.”
Matt flipped the lock and opened one door. The pecking sound was louder.
Not a bird. A bird would fly away at this human approach.
Was it a lizard or insect of some sort making a maddening mating call to some rhythmic internal clock ticking?
No. The sound came from above. Something was spinning, something attached to the roof overhang above one French door.
A … mobile? A wind chime?
Certainly a shadow against the darker shadow of night.
Matt moved into the glow of the tall parking lot lights to reach up, touch, stop the spinning object.
A shoe.
A light, glinting shoe strung up like a wind chime. A petite silver satin pump with a glitter of gold crystals buttoning the ankle straps.
Temple’s shoe. He’d remembered her fussing about not finding a mate to the “real” shoes she’d chosen.
That had gone missing before the wedding.
That someone had gotten into Temple’s unit to make it go missing and had kept to call her very own and had broken into his place, again, to display it here like a prize, like a serial killer’s ritual object.
The hairs on the back of Matt’s neck rose. A chill of murderous rage crawled up the back of his head. He knew the threat was deadly, and he knew who, but he didn’t know where.
Luckily, he knew just how to change that last condition. Right now.
Chapter 56
Rematch
Molina jumped when the doorbell rang. She never jumped. She’d schooled herself to never show surprise.
This wasn’t a surprise. It was something … worse. Even though she’d expected this caller, she’d never expected opening her door to this man for this purpose.
When she unlocked and cracked open the big wooden front door, he was turned away, back to her, studying the street. In the glow from the porch light above the door—a warm, old-fashioned incandescent bulb because she saw too many mean streets under harsh fluorescent lighting in her job—his hair looked Black Irish dark.
What the heck was he doing here? She had to ask herself that for the fortieth time. She liked blond men, even dirty blond like Dirty Larry, the ex-narco undercover guy. Ideally golden in all respects, like Matt Devine.
So who had she gotten involved with? Molina had never wanted to look too closely at the answer to that question. She stared, barring the doorway, until he turned to face her.
“Come in, Rafi,” she said, stepping back.
“Make sure you ask the right one in,” he said, eerily paraphrasing one of Mariah’s stupid fave bloody vampire film titles.
“You’ve been studying Mariah’s Facebook page.”
“And Google-plus too.” Rafi grinned, stepped over the threshold, paused. “You sure, Carmen? I’m your worst nightmare.”
She pulled back, grimaced. “Don’t flatter yourself. You’re just a teensy little bad dream.”
“Diminutives don’t thrill guys. Just a tip on something you may have forgotten after all these years.”
She fought back an embarrassed flush. She hadn’t meant to—No going back on stupid comments.
“Where’s Mariah?” he asked as he followed her into the living room, knowing the way now.
“Where she always is. In her bedroom texting, Googling, Internet-cruising, Facebooking.”
“Singing?” Rafi asked.
Molina turned to let him see the face of her frustration. “That too.”
“Sit down,” he said. “Can I get you a beer?”
She stared at him. “My house. I’m the hostess.”
Rafi pointed his left hand toward his right shoulder. “The fridge is visible right there. I know how to do twist-tops, or find a kitchen church key. Why don’t you sit down, Carmen, breathe deep, and realize I’m here to help. And bring you a cold beer.”
She cleared her throat. Actually, that would help. And her acute law-enforcement summing-up eye had noticed he’d look a lot buffer than Dirty L
arry, but safely middle-aged so Mariah couldn’t crush on him, unlike Matt Devine.
God, what am I thinking?
She buried her face in one hand, both rueful and annoyed and about ready to say, No go, get outta here, Nadir, the way she’d dismiss a snitch.
A dewy-cold bottle appeared in her free hand. The sofa in need of replacing shifted as Rafi sat down beside her. “This is about Mariah,” he said. “She’s at the age when her dreams, her path, even her mistakes are forming. Let’s not mire her in ours.”
“Dreams, or mistakes?”
“Either one.”
“Why do you care?”
“Why wouldn’t I?” Rafi said. “Did you ever ask yourself that?”
Molina put the cold wet side of the beer bottle against her temple. “No.”
“Why didn’t I see what a crazy, judgmental witch you were?”
That roused her, wanting to defend herself, but he went on too quickly.
“Why didn’t you see what a controlling, manipulative bastard I was. You wanted to be a police detective, didn’t you?”
“We weren’t like that,” she said, finally sitting up and setting the beer bottle on the sofa table.
“No kidding.”
Her deep, frustrated exhalation stirred the hair still hanging forward over her face. “I panicked.” She eyed him through the defense of her veiling hair. “I hadn’t planned on getting pregnant.”
“Like I had?”
“I couldn’t understand. We’d always been careful. I thought. There was a pinhole in my diaphragm.”
“Oh. Evidence of tampering. You want to go to the prosecutor with that today?”
“Circumstantial,” she admitted. “But I’d been so careful—”
“Yeah, I get it. You were the ‘little mama’ to your however many stepbrothers and sisters after your mom remarried when you were a toddler. Enough already on the kids. I get that. And I didn’t want to be tied down either. You do remember that about me?”
“We were being pitted against each other at work. Would the system reward the minority guy or the pushy woman?”
“We had a lot in common. We shouldn’t have let them use it against us.”
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