Panty Raid

by Diane Vallere

  No, I didn’t wonder. I knew. The answer was no.

  “There’s one thing bothering me about last night,” I said.

  “Only one?”

  I smiled. “With everything you told me, why did you go out with Marc in the first place?”

  “What happened with Pamela happened a long time ago. It’s entirely possible that she did commit suicide. There was a lengthy investigation and Marc cooperated. Nobody thought he was involved except Amanda and me, and we were twenty years old and wanted someone to blame. If Marc had nothing to do with Pam’s death, then he doesn’t deserve to be judged. He’s wildly successful and has lived with the same memories that we have. And if Amanda could get past her suspicions, then I should be able to as well.”

  “Okay, let’s approach this like what it is. A college friend of yours was in Vegas to get married and his wife is dead hours after the ceremony. That’s tragic. If that’s the truth, then we shouldn’t be sitting in a café bringing up old wounds. We should be making sure Marc is okay.” I stood up. “If Marc just lost the woman he loves, then he shouldn’t be alone. You said yourself he doesn’t have any other real friends in Vegas. Let’s go find him and try to be his friends.”

  “You’re incredible. Do you know that?” Nick said.

  “I’m glad you noticed.”

  What I didn’t tell Nick was that I needed a little more time around Marc Rico to form an opinion of my own.

  ***

  Las Vegas had a familiarity about it even though I’d never been here before. Casino. Lost in America. Rocky Balboa. Miss Congeniality 2. If it weren’t for all the Midwestern families with Big Gulps wandering up and down the strip, I could have pretended Mitzi Gaynor was scheduled as our evening entertainment.

  A girl could dream.

  We rode the Deuce to The Left Bank to drop off my registration materials. Jacques was back on concierge duty, but aside from a wave, I had no business to conduct with him. We went to our room and found Marc waiting for us. It’s not every day you see a billionaire sitting in the hallway outside your (fifth) hotel room.

  “Nick, Sammie, you’re back,” he said. He stood up and fell against Nick with a bro hug. He still wore the tuxedo he’d had on that morning, and this time the distinct scents of alcohol and body odor were present, too. The man was in bad shape.

  I unlocked the room and Nick helped Marc inside. Marc collapsed onto the lip-shaped sofa in the lounging area of the room. Immediately, he put his hand up to his face and covered his eyes. “Bright,” he said. He held up the opposite hand and waved it back and forth.

  “I’ll close the curtains and make coffee,” Nick said.

  “No, you stay here. I’ll take care of that.” I drew the shades and the room went dark. Next, I brewed two cups of coffee and carried them out to the men. Marc sat on the sofa, one leg bent, his hand on his forehead and his elbow resting on his thigh. Nick sat across from him, leaning forward, his forearms propped on his own thighs. Male body language was a thing to be studied.

  “Have some coffee,” I said. I held a mug out to each of them. Marc waved his off.

  “Drink it,” Nick said. His tone suggested it wasn’t negotiable.

  Marc took the mug. I left, brewed a cup of hot chocolate for me, and returned. The silence was oppressive.

  Marc looked up. For the first time since arriving in our room, I got a clear view of his face. He’d aged ten years in the hours since I’d last seen him. Puffy and discolored bags, swollen nose, and red-rimmed eyes spoke of his pain. “It’s happening again,” he said. He shook his head as if to ward off thoughts he didn’t speak out loud and covered his eyes with his hand.

  I looked at Nick. What does that mean? I mouthed. He shrugged. He seemed as in the dark as I felt.

  I sat in the chair next to Nick. He shifted his mug to the right hand and reached out for my hand with his left. I held it. The small gesture reassured me that we were a team, regardless of what had happened before we’d met.

  I tucked that thought away for a rainy day, just in case Nick ever asked about the deli counter guy.

  Marc took a deep breath and swallowed some coffee. He set the mug on the table between us. “It’s happening all over again,” he repeated. “Just like with Pamela.”

  I felt a chill in the room. Nick dropped my hand. “What do you mean?” Nick asked.

  “Lydia’s death. It’s wrong.” It sounded like he was trying to convince himself. But as I watched the man, I couldn’t deny his visible grief. He was a wreck. No amount of money in the world could bring back the woman he loved, and the loss was crushing him. “Help me, man, because I don’t know how I’m going to get through this.”

  I couldn’t just sit there while Marc suffered. “Lydia’s death was horrible and untimely, but it wasn’t your fault,” I said.

  Marc looked up. “It was as much my fault as Pamela’s death was back in college.” He looked from me to Nick and back to me. “Somebody’s using the women in my life to destroy me.”

  “What do you mean? Pamela killed herself. Until the medical examiner comes back with evidence to the contrary, Lydia’s death may have been suicide or an accident.”

  “No,” Marc said, shaking his head rapidly. “The detective called. He said there are too many questions about Lydia’s death to rule out murder. He’s having her stomach contents analyzed, but his working theory is that somebody killed her and then staged it to look like a suicide. Somebody’s making me relive what happened with Pamela.”

  10

  Marc leaned forward and buried his head in his hands. His shoulders shook. There was no doubt he was crying. It was rare to see a man cry, especially one who’d maintained an in-charge persona since I met him, and I felt like I shouldn’t be present to witness his grief. Marc’s emotional torment was not for a stranger to view.

  Nick stood up and pulled Marc to his feet. They hugged, this time less drunken-frat-brother and more consolation. This was the Nick I knew.

  Marc pulled away and put one hand on Nick’s shoulder. “You think I don’t remember what happened? It haunts me every day. It’s why I dropped out of I-FAD. I needed to get a clean start. I don’t blame you or Amanda for not keeping in touch.”

  I stood up. “It sounds like you two have a lot to talk about. I’ll get out of here and let you get caught up.”

  “No,” Marc said. “You’re going to be Nick’s wife. There shouldn’t be secrets between married couples. I want you to hear this too.”

  “Are you sure?” I asked Marc while looking at Nick.

  “Yes. You’re a calming presence, Sammie. It’ll be good to have you around.”

  Even Nick had the good sense to stifle his smile at that.

  There was a time when Nick accused me of thriving in chaos. My best friend, Eddie, agreed. When I first moved to Ribbon from New York, I’d wanted to simplify my life, but since then, I’d been involved in one dangerous situation after another. Chaotic became the new norm, and when there was no chaos, I was off-kilter. If Marc saw me as a calming presence, then I couldn’t begin to imagine what his life was like on a regular basis.

  I opened the blackout curtains and Marc ordered room service. While we waited for the food to arrive, we moved from the lounging area to the office area and sat in a small circle. Marc broke the silence.

  “I met her three years ago through a private service that specialized in discreet fix-ups for men of a certain economic level.”

  “Is that PR for high priced escort service?” I asked.

  “Kidd!” Nick said.

  “Just asking.”

  “Yes,” Marc confirmed.

  “See?”

  Marc didn’t seem bothered by my question. “At first it was purely physical,” he continued. “She was very comfortable in her own skin, which I guess comes with the territory of being a lingerie model. The more I saw her, the more I wanted to see her, and the less I wanted anyone else to see her.”

  I
didn’t like where he was going.

  “Sounds possessive,” Nick said, echoing my thoughts.

  “If she wanted to see other men, it would have been different. But she didn’t. She quit the service but asked them not to tell me. She didn’t want me to feel pressured to change our relationship. Over those six months, I got to know her on a different level. She was smart, thoughtful, artistic, and caring. She understood my world and never asked or pushed to be let in. In time I knew I wanted to make things permanent.”

  The Lydia he described sounded nothing like the woman I’d seen in the lobby with her bachelorettes in a Marry Rich: Pending T-shirt, or the brash, angry fiancée who’d attacked Nick’s motivations for hanging out with Marc. Was it possible she’d had this endgame in mind from the beginning and simply played her cards right? For three years? And never once slipped up?

  That was a lot of energy spent on the game of marrying rich.

  “I wish you could have met her,” he said to Nick. “You would have loved her. You too, Sammie.”

  I cleared my throat. “I did meet Lydia,” I said. “Yesterday at Flush. I went to the convention hotel to register for the lingerie fair and she was there. It wasn’t a formal introduction, but when the two of you were escorted out of the casino, we both followed and ended up together on the curb out front.”

  He rubbed his eyes and looked up. “Then you know,” he said. “You know she was in good spirits. She wouldn’t have done this. Somebody killed her.”

  “About that,” I said. “If you were scheduled to get married today, why’d you get married last night? Did ten or so hours make that much of a difference?”

  “Come on, Sammie, you and Nick here are about to get married, too. You have to know what it’s like, having wedding chapels every fifty feet, reminding you how easy it would be to make it legal. You’re in love, right? I know you’re both here to work, but there’s got to be a part of you that’s already thought it through. Heck, when I left Nick last night, he was on his way to get you so we could make it a double wedding.”

  I stole a glance at Nick. He said he didn’t remember much from last night, and he hadn’t said anything about that when he stumbled into the room. Nick glanced at me out of the corner of his eye, gave me an embarrassed half-grin, and looked back at Marc.

  “Tell us what did happen last night,” I said.

  Nick cleared his throat. “Good idea.”

  Marc seemed not to notice our silent communication. “Nick and I had a lot to drink, so my memories are a little spotty. You can help me out a little, at least to the part where we woke up Lydia.”

  “You must have gone to her after I left. I didn’t see Lydia last night,” Nick said.

  “Sure, you did. Remember, we went into my room and had scotch. We were talking about making it a double wedding. I changed into my tux and we went to Lydia’s room to wake her up.”

  Nick looked at me again. This time, the smile was more of a cringe. “That’s not how I remember it. I remember the scotch in your room but everything sort of fades from there. I’m lucky I ended up on the right floor.”

  Marc shrugged like it was a minor detail. “We were pretty far gone. I remember waking her up and telling her I didn’t want to wait a minute longer. She said her dress was with her maid of honor. I told her I needed her, not a fancy dress. She grabbed her veil and we left.”

  That explained why Lydia had been in her Marry Rich: Pending T-shirt and not something classier. It explained the veil. But it still did not explain how Lydia had gone from marrying the man of her dreams to dying.

  “You said something about paying off a couple in the wedding chapel so you could take their spot, right?” I asked.

  “Yes.”

  “Do you remember anything about them?”

  “No. Why?”

  “I’m trying to determine the last hours of Lydia’s life. Those people in the chapel would have seen her. They might have noticed something you didn’t.”

  “I’m pretty sure those people wanted to get out of the chapel and on with their night, especially after I gave them ten thousand dollars.”

  “Cash?”

  He nodded.

  Did Marc always walk around with that much money on him, or was this trip unique? Had Lydia known about it? It stood to reason if he parted that easily with ten grand that he had far more than that available. I still didn’t know what I believed about the previous night, but Marc’s account of it racked up more questions than answers.

  “You got married,” Nick pointed out. “That means there’s a chaplain or a Justice of the Peace who officiated, so to Samantha’s point, there’s going to be someone else who can speak to Lydia’s state of mind.”

  “I hadn’t thought about them,” Marc said.

  “That’s good news,” I added. “You need people other than yourself who know Lydia was happy about getting married. You want there to be people who saw you. You signed the guestbook, right? That’s good too.”

  “I don’t remember the guestbook. The main thing I remember was getting married in secret. I know how the press works. I wasn’t going to let the vultures swoop in and ruin the moment.”

  “Was that a real possibility?” I asked. “I’m honestly asking. I have no idea what your life is like. Lydia said something about people constantly hitting you up for money and never knowing who you could trust. She spoke like she protected you, not the other way around.”

  Marc looked wistful. “Lydia was protective of me. In the three years I knew her, she never once asked for anything that I didn’t offer first.”

  There was a knock at the door. “Room service,” I said. I’d forgotten all about it. All three of us stood, but Marc was the one who went to the door. When he opened it, a tall, thin blonde in a cropped T-shirt and cutoff jean shorts stood in the doorway.

  “Oh, Marc, I just heard!” She threw her arms around the widowed billionaire and pressed her body against him in a hug that was far too familiar to be one of consolation.

  11

  I recognized the woman instantly. She was the lithe blonde who’d been gluing condom packets to Lydia’s veil in the lobby yesterday. She kept her arms around Marc. He moved his hands to her arms and removed them from around his neck. He stepped back to increase the distance between them. “Chryssinda,” he said. “How did you know where to find me?”

  “Jacques told me,” she said.

  While the blonde spoke, Nick moved behind me and put his hands on my arms. His palms were warm against my bare skin. I pulled his arms to around me and leaned back against his chest. Marc’s world was complicated, filled with secrets and lies and hidden agendas and manipulations. I didn’t care how much money was on the payout line. I didn’t think I could survive a day in it.

  Our slight movement caught the blonde’s attention. “You’re not alone,” she said.

  “These are my friends, Nick and Samantha,” Marc said. I was impressed that he remembered my full name and hadn’t referred to me as “Sammie the Kidd.”

  “Did you come here for the wedding?” Chryssinda asked.

  “No, we’re here for work,” I said. “I’m attending Intimate Mode—” Nick tightened his arms. I stopped talking.

  “As what?” she asked. Her eyes swept me from head to toe. “Are you one of the new bopo models?”

  “‘Bopo?’” Nick asked.

  “Body Positive. You know, real woman dimensions.” She shrugged and tossed her hair. “It’s a movement this season. Using fluffier models than usual.”

  Fluffy???

  “I’m here to write orders for a small department store in Pennsylvania,” I said.

  “You’re a buyer? Oh, that’s different. I’m a model.” She left Marc and went to Nick. “And what about you? Are you a lingerie buyer too?” she asked coyly.

  “No,” Nick said. I waited for him to acknowledge his shoe design company or pending appointments at the accessory show. He didn’t.

>   “Nick is my fiancé,” I said. He looked at me, surprised, and then draped his arm around my shoulders. I slipped my arm around his waist and rested my head against him. Message sent.

  For as big as the room was, after Chryssinda’s arrival it felt painfully small. Any chance for private time between me and Nick dissolved before our eyes. I knew it was greedy to think about that in light of Marc’s loss, but there was something about Marc’s story that didn’t sit well with me. I needed time to process what I knew. I wanted to talk things out, and I wasn’t sure if Nick would support that.

  Chryssinda turned back to Marc. She brushed his hair away from his forehead in another act of intimacy.

  “Whoever did this won’t get away with it,” she said. “I’ll go to the press and tell them everything.”

  “You can’t, Chryssie. You’ll be busy with Intimate Mode.”

  “I can do both. I’ll deal with the press today. Intimate Mode is open from nine to six tomorrow, but I can handle a lot over the phone. As soon as the convention center closes, I’ll be back here. You won’t have to be alone.”

  “Don’t you have a PR person or a business manager to handle those details?” I asked. “Can’t you hire someone?”

  Marc and Chryssinda looked at each other and exchanged an unspoken thought. “This was supposed to be a private moment between two people who love each other,” Marc said. “I kept it secret and made the arrangements myself. We agreed to keep it small. No family or friends or press. Just us.” He looked at Chryssinda. “You have your own life. You can’t monitor me twenty-four seven.”

  Nick spoke up. “Marc and I have a lot of catching up to do, and with Samantha busy at the show, I’ve got all day open. What do you say, Marc? How about I help you out?”