I called 411 and got Jeff’s home number. I dialed, half hoping he wouldn’t pick up.
“Hello?” First ring.
“Jeff, it’s Raven. You’re not sleeping, are you?” It was almost 10:30.
“Raven, wow. What’s up?”
“I need a favor. I’m at the Flamingo. Can you get over here?” I asked.
“Uh, sure. I’ve got my kid tonight, and a few of her friends are sleeping over, but I think I can trust them.”
“You have a kid?”
“She’s fifteen,” he said.
“Well it won’t take too long. I just want you to book a hotel room for me.”
“Sounds like an interesting story,” he said. He sounded more amused than I would have preferred.
“Call me at this number when you get here.”
I sat in my car in a daze for five minutes. What had I gotten myself into? Here I was, broke, naked . . . Oh, crap. I had forgotten to tell Jeff to bring me some clothes. I called him back and told him to get me some shorts and a t-shirt in the gift shop.
“What about panties? And a bra?” he asked hopefully.
I sighed. “That’s not necessary. Just shorts and a t-shirt. Bring them to the sixth floor of the parking garage.”
Chapter 16
Jeff arrived a little earlier than I expected. He pulled up to my car and brought over a pink bag from the Flamingo gift shop.
“I had to guess your size,” he said apologetically through the window.
I looked at the shorts. They were hot pink. “Size 2? Are you insane?”
“They were the smallest ones they had,” he whimpered. He looked like a frightened child.
“That’s all right.” It was actually something of a compliment, I figured.
I scooted over to the passenger seat and tried squeezing into the shorts.
“Holy crap,” I said. “You of all people should know that I actually have an ass. I think these are designed for ten-year-old girls.” Somehow the shorts fit around my waist, but I could feel my butt ballooning out in back. They would have to do for now. I dug into the bag again and pulled out a blaze orange t-shirt that looked like it was sized for a Barbie doll.
“Jeff!” I hissed.
“I thought it’d look good on you.”
“Not if it squeezes off my circulation.” I got out of the car and contorted my shoulders to try to slip into the shirt. The back ripped open an inch from the neck. At least the tear gave my boobs a little more breathing room. Even with the extra space, they stuck out so much that the shirt didn’t even reach my belly button.
“It’s a good look for you,” Jeff said. “Trust me.” He hadn’t even pretended to look away while I tried it on, but I didn’t care.
“I’m used to dressing like a high-priced call girl, not some cheap whore from the 1980’s.”
“I can go back down and get something else,” he offered.
“Screw it. I guess I can wear this for a few minutes. You’re the one who has to have me on his arm. You can be my john. Let’s go check in and I’ll explain what’s going on.”
By the time we reached the lobby I began to reconsider Jeff’s offer to get me some different clothes. Each step I took made my shorts ride up higher and higher, and my butt cheeks were soon in full view of anyone who wanted a peek. It didn’t bother me that people were looking. It bothered me that they were getting their looks for free.
Jeff went up to the desk to book a room. I decided to wait for him in the casino, where I could blend into the garish carpeting. Luckily Jeff returned before anyone tried to hire me for a half-hour.
“We have to go back to the gift shop,” I said. “This is ridiculous.”
I felt more idiotic than at any point in recent memory, but I calmly selected a few pairs of non-pink shorts and a couple t-shirts in my size. I found a couple of Flamingo boxers that looked comfortable, too. I had no idea how long I would be staying. Jeff paid for them without comment.
“Let’s go to the room,” I said. I reconsidered immediately. Jeff was being a sweetheart, but I decided I didn’t want him getting any ideas. “Actually, I’ll meet you down here in ten minutes.”
Jeff handed me the keys and I scooted into an elevator just before it closed. I punched the button for floor thirty-two, and on the long ride up I studied myself in the mirrored door. Pink and orange were not a good look for me. I looked like a giant sherbet cone having a bad hair day. I turned around and tried to get a look at my butt. I cringed. It was a miracle I hadn’t been arrested.
Halfway up the elevator, it finally hit me that I’d actually been within seconds of death. If I hadn’t had that beer bottle in my hand, who knows what would have happened. And if he had killed me, what would he have done with my body? Fed me through a wood chipper? Dumped me in the desert? My mind raced to the funeral I’d have, with my mom insisting that I be buried in one of my old dresses from high school. And the poor mortician with the unhappy task of explaining how the dress wouldn’t fit over my breasts, which somehow had tripled in size since high school.
The elevator doors finally opened and saved me from the grim stream of consciousness my mind was heading down. I got out and followed the long hallway down to the last door on the end. The door opened on the first try with the key card and I walked in and plunked my stuff down on the floor. For the first time in hours, I smiled. Instead of a standard room, Jeff had booked me some kind of high-roller suite. To the left was a massive sitting area with thick tan carpeting, a small dining set and a pair of leather recliners. In the far corner, two suede couches faced an amazing corner view looking down at the Strip. There was a Jacuzzi tub in the marble bathroom, and two very large TVs. The bedroom was its own separate room. I kept smiling. It almost made up for the awfulness of the last few hours. Well, not even close. But Jeff had done good.
I changed into something less objectionable and found Jeff downstairs inspecting a counter of overpriced chocolates in the gift shop. Jeff had held on to my laptop and car keys. He seemed disappointed by my change of clothes.
“Maybe I’ll wear the outfit you bought me for Halloween,” I said. “Although usually I don’t wear much more than a mask. Anyway, how about buying me dinner? All I’ve had since lunch was half a bag of pretzels.”
“Sure. They have a good café here. Lindy’s, a New York deli.”
After wandering aimlessly for five minutes, we were informed that Lindy’s had closed ten years ago. In its place was a tropical themed cafe. It would have to do. At this hour it was half-empty, and we found a spot at the counter. The waitress took our orders. Two cheeseburgers, with fries, and two large Heinekens. Jeff assured me they went great with junk food.
“Anyway,” I began, “someone broke into my apartment. He was waiting for me on the balcony, and he almost killed me.”
Jeff’s face immediately became serious. “Wow. I’d say you could come stay with me, but Anna and her friends have taken over the house and . . .”
“No thanks,” I cut him off. Not in a million years. “The suite is beautiful, by the way.”
“You’re worth it. Actually it was the same price as a regular room. I have a lot of points built up at these places.”
“Really?”
“I play a lot of craps.” He smiled lamely. “So who was this guy on your balcony?”
I cut him a break. “I can’t be sure. I didn’t get a great look at him. But I’m pretty sure it was a guy from the Outpost. He has sandy brown hair and a mustache, and he’s built like a refrigerator. He was one of the guys that was in the back room with me.”
“The back room?”
“Oh yeah, I suppose I haven’t seen you in awhile. See what you miss? The guy on my balcony and the head of security threw me out and banned me from the place. The security guy got a few million of my skin cells under his fingernails.”
“Huh.” Jeff looked contemplative. “Kind of dramatic, isn’t it? Are you really sure this kind of thing is really up your alley? I mean . . .” He gestured at my tor
so.
“You mean what?”
“Nevermind. I’d just hate to see anything happen to you. Is it worth all this? I mean, I’m sure Rachel will understand if you want to back off. Just call the cops, let them take over.”
It sounded so easy. Just call the cops—as if that hadn’t occurred to me every step of the way. “I’ve been thinking about that for the last hour,” I said, “but by now I think I’m in too deep to just walk away. These people know where I live, obviously. The cops would come barging in and blow everything.”
“So who are these people?” he asked. “Working for Cody, you think?”
“Could be. I saw him tonight, actually,” I said.
“So whoever it was broke into your place while you were with Cody?” he asked.
“Yeah. I went over to Red Rock for awhile too. I wasn’t exactly with Cody,” I explained. “I ended up following him across town and watching him for awhile. He has some interesting hobbies,” I added cryptically.
Jeff took the bait. “Stamp collecting? Scrapbooking?”
“Well,” I paused. “He likes to host pool parties for lots of other young men.” The waitress behind the bar looked over at us discreetly.
Jeff took a second longer to catch my meaning. “No way,” he mouthed. “Every time I used to see him in the paper he was surrounded by gorgeous women.”
“I think that was just a ruse. A cover. He was in that beefcake strip show, remember? It wouldn’t be good for business if people learned that the star of the show was more interested in other men than women.”
“Wow,” was all Jeff said. His food soon arrived and I recounted the evening’s events as he chewed his meal. I kept it brief and hit only the high points: Amy had a lover, who happened to be the guy who had dug his fingers into my neck, and Amy’s husband spent the night partying in a hot tub with a bunch of other men at a house he kept in a deserted neighborhood.
Jeff ate like a pig, but his lawyer’s mind was working like an elegant computer. He zeroed in on what I thought was the key issue. He paused to mop up a glob of ketchup with a half-dozen fries. “Big picture, it sounds to me like this fancy boy was probably not doing his wife on the night of the murder. That was his alibi, right?”
“You got it,” I said. I had been looking forward to explaining that to him, but apparently he didn’t need my help.
“Well there you go. With that juicy little tidbit about his personal life we could probably nail him in a civil case.” He seemed pleased. I wasn’t so cavalier about exploiting a man’s personal sex life, but it was hard to disagree with Jeff’s pragmatic analysis. It was also a relief that my efforts hadn’t been a total waste.
“It’s just,” I started. “It doesn’t fit perfectly together for me.”
His eyelids danced in surprise. “Not you,” he said, in-between chews. He shook his head. “You’re just like that jury. Did Cody cast a spell on you too?”
I chuckled. “I agree, the evidence looks bad for the murder. Like you so eloquently put it, with the pictures I’ve got it will be a lot harder to convince a jury he was banging his wife the night Hannity was killed.”
Jeff paused from demolishing the last remnants of his burger. “Pictures?” he asked, thoroughly curious.
No one else was near us, so I opened up my laptop and ran through a few of the photos for him. He wasn’t shy about studying them.
“One thing is for sure,” Jeff said, patting his gut affectionately. “The guys in those pictures do not eat a lot of cheeseburgers.”
“It takes a very secure man to admit when another man is good looking,” I said.
“I never said that. I said they were in good shape.” He seemed pleased by this meaningless clarification. “So did anyone know you were going to be out tonight?”
“No. Just Carlos, the bouncer at Cougar’s, and that was last minute,” I said.
“You think they’re watching you?” Jeff asked.
I hadn’t considered until now how anyone would know I was gone so they could break into my place and wait for me. “I don’t know. Probably. It’s not like I’m hard to follow around.”
Jeff chuckled. “So do you think Cody was behind this?”
“I really don’t know. I have to assume so, since he’s the one with the most to lose and he’s running the Outpost. At least, in theory.”
“Who else would be behind something like this?” Jeff drained his Heineken and signaled the waitress for two more.
“Well, the general manager, Phil d’Angelo. He seemed pretty pissed off that I would even consider looking into the case. I don’t know if he’s working on Cody’s behalf or his own. But he was the one go got me kicked out of the casino. There was one other thing.” I filled him in about what Mel Block had told me at the Del Mar racetrack.
“Hmm.” Jeff pondered the question. “So if Cody or this d’Angelo guy are skimming off the top, they’d be really interested in putting a stop to what you’re doing.”
“Right.”
“Does Amy know she’s being ripped off?”
“ Nope. But right now it’s just one old man’s theory. I have no proof, and I don’t think I’m going to get any.”
“That stinks. It complicates things. If there wasn’t any financial hanky panky going on, you could just follow the trail back up through this guy who tried to kill you.”
I wasn’t following. I think it showed on my face.
Jeff tried again. “I mean, now you know there could be other people who want to stop your investigation, and their reasons for wanting to stop you might have absolutely nothing to do with the murder of George Hannity. It’s like you were trying to avoid waking a sleeping bear, but you stepped on a hornet’s nest in the process. ”
I frowned. “So I nearly got killed, but I didn’t even manage to get any useful information out of it.”
“Right. There are too many variables. The guy who tried to kill you might have nothing to do with your murder case.”
“You have a way of making things so clear,” I said, smiling. I burped out loud.
Jeff induced a burp himself and beamed like a proud father. The waitress shot us another look, this one not as discreet as her last effort.
“Seriously, though, you need to stay out of sight. Even if someone followed you here, you’re checked in under my name. Hopefully there’s only one person who wants to stop you, but you can’t safely make that assumption.”
Jeff signaled for the check.
“Thanks for meeting me here,” I said. “Your daughter and her friend have probably broken into your liquor cabinet by now.”
“Yeah,” he sighed. “Duty calls.”
Chapter 17
It was only 6:30 in the morning, which meant I had gotten all of five hours of sleep, but my mind was racing. After lying in bed another hour, I took a long soak in the hot tub. I would have to get one of those in my condo, I decided. I was doing my best to ignore my problems, but they kept pressing themselves into my consciousness, so I gave in. After thinking it through, I decided that my most immediate need was to rule out Cody as the one who was behind the assault in my apartment. If that meant he wasn’t George Hannity’s killer, so be it. Rachel would not be happy. But for the time being I was more interested in who was disrupting my life—if it wasn’t Cody, I needed to know who it was. Everything else would have to wait.
After I got out of the tub I put in a call to my building and asked security if they could look into how someone had gotten into the building without living there. The morning security guy didn’t sound very enthusiastic. A lot of my neighbors had bought apartments before I did, when prices were thirty or forty percent higher. After the market collapsed a lot of people couldn’t afford to live there, so they made do by renting them out. Since so much of my building was either subleased or rented out on a weekly basis, new people were coming and going all the time. That was unsettling. Why have building security at all?
I needed food, and I didn’t feel like going back to the
tropical café. And ever since a high school band trip to Peoria, I’d had an aversion to room service breakfasts. After wandering aimlessly for a few minutes, I found myself in the line for the Flamingo buffet. That was a mistake. It quickly became obvious that I would be waiting in line all morning, and the prospect of standing there behind two-hundred other low-lifes like me was not a pleasant one. Hunger is one of my great motivators, and so I decided to stroll casually over to the VIP line as though I had simply forgotten for a brief spell that I was a VIP. The elderly Asian woman guarding the entrance frowned at me, and from what I could gather from her mumbling it seemed I didn’t have the specific VIP credentials she was looking for. But I did have a room key and the little cardboard folder it came in, which was enough to show that in fact I was very important indeed. Suite 3266 was not for nobodies. The woman grunted something in disgust and waved me through. A lot of people in this town worked for tips. She, wisely, wasn’t one of them.
The first time my younger brother came to visit me in Las Vegas, he professed the sensible view that a Las Vegas buffet should be treated as a kind of informal eating contest. I was hard-pressed to disagree. After all, you paid a flat fee. The buffet was taking advantage of you if you didn’t take advantage of it. It was a challenge issued by the chefs: I dare you to eat all this stuff.
My first round consisted of hash browns and greasy sausage, with a cup of putrid coffee on the side. That was the round of satisfaction. In case of nuclear war, power outage, or terror attack, I would have ample energy. At least until lunch. The second round was the novelty round, designed to stock up on things like dates, pickled eggs and Alaskan king crab – the stuff you would never eat for breakfast unless you were at a Vegas buffet. Round three was freestyle. I came back to my table with a waffle covered in whipped cream and chocolate sauce. In a race against the impending sensation of being stuffed, I mauled it with abandon. I’m sure that I had chocolate and white stuff on my face, so I kept my head down until I finished eating.
I came up for air and wiped my face with a handful of napkins. It was then that I realized my stomach had not prepared itself for such an onslaught. It was beginning to make unusual noises, the kind my grandma used to make after polishing off a bowl of figs. I cursed my little brother and his inane theories about buffets. I left the table feeling slightly ill and more than slightly idiotic.
Diva Las Vegas (Book 1 in Raven McShane Series) Page 12