Panty Raid

by Diane Vallere

  Amanda’s face went through an assortment of expressions while I talked: disbelief, surprise, and, finally, shock. And then she giggled.

  Her giggle was contagious. I giggled too, and then, like a release valve, the giggles turned into full-on laughter that bordered on hysteria. I hadn’t realized how much anxiety I’d built up over the course of the day until now, and I had Amanda Ries to thank.

  Las Vegas deserved every ounce of reputation it had. People got cray-cray out here.

  Amanda checked her watch. “I need to get back to the booth.” She stood up. “What about you?”

  I looked down at my robe, considered my options, and looked up. “Do you mind if I borrow this for the rest of the day?”

  20

  Amanda and I went separate directions. She returned to the White aisle, and I stopped into the Flush newsstand and scanned the articles about Lydia. I would have bought copies, but with my wallet still in Yarvi’s booth, I was broke.

  Which I realized again when I tried to take the Deuce. The driver raised his eyebrows at my attire and turned me away.

  By the time I arrived at The Left Bank, it was after six. I was hot, my feet were swollen, and I wanted comfort food. Sadly, for everything Las Vegas boasted in their advertising campaigns, they lacked pretzels, my snack food of choice.

  I stumbled to the front desk. “Meees Keeed,” Jacque said. “How can I help you today?” His eyes shifted back and forth between my face and my (Amanda’s) robe.

  “I lost my keycard,” I said.

  “Your room on ze sixth floor?”

  “No, I’m in the Napoleon Room.” He looked confused. “It’s a long story.”

  He tapped the keyboard a few times. “My system shows you checked out this morning,” he said. “You do not have a current reservation.”

  “Oh yes, I do. I don’t check out for another three days.” Do not panic. “Can you look up Nick Taylor?”

  “Non, there is no Nick Taylor in our system either.” He smiled. “Would you like me to see what we have available?”

  “What about Marc Rico?”

  “I cannot give out personal information about our guests, Meees Keeed,” he said.

  I’d had just about enough of secrets and lies and people pretending to be something they weren’t. I wanted to relax. And to sample at least half of the twenty-two versions of mac and cheese from the room service menu. And to change into real clothes, not a (very soft!) robe from Amanda’s collection.

  I leaned forward until I was as close to Jacques as the marble counter would allow. “I know that you know that I know Marc Rico and Nick Taylor and if you don’t tell me where they are in the next five minutes, I’m going to create a scene right here in the lobby.”

  His eyes widened, and his voice dropped to a whisper. “Allow me to ring Mr. Reeeco.”

  I stood upright and attempted a smile. I’d left this morning with my doubts about Marc’s past and present, but it appeared as though he held the key to my immediate future.

  “Mr. Reeeco, I have a Samantha Keeed here at ze front desk. She asked me to ring your room—oui. I see. Of course. I will tell her. Thank you, Mr. Reeeco.”

  Jacques hung up. “Meees Keeed—” I glared at him. “Mr. Reeeco made arrangements to move your bill under his account.” He picked up a keycard and recoded it. “As a guest of Mr. Reeeco, you are entitled to complimentary use of our amenities, including ze Left Bank Spa.” He glanced at my robe again. “If there eees anything else you need, please let me know. I am sorry for ze inconvenience.”

  Why the sudden attitude change? Jacques already knew I knew Marc from the very first time I tried to check in. Pretending to be surprised by Marc’s generosity was suspicious. If just knowing Marc was the reason for Jacques’ attitude change, I should have been getting this treatment all along.

  I took the keycard and left. There was something fake about Jacques, and it wasn’t just his accent.

  ***

  The Napoleon room was unoccupied. I set the new keycard on my end table and went directly to the bathroom for a shower. Once clean, I dressed in my black capri pants, a loose black tunic with a halter neckline, and a pale pink brooch shaped like the sun in the center of the neckline. I styled my hair, did a full face of makeup, and added earrings and bracelets.

  In the time it took me to do all that, Nick didn’t return. After another ten minutes of wiping off the red lipstick left over from my stint on stage and replacing it with a more subdued mauve shade that matched the brooch, I called down to the front desk.

  “Mr. Rico, how can I help you?” answered a female voice.

  “This isn’t Mr. Rico. It’s Miss Kidd. Samantha Kidd.”

  “Ah. Mr. Rico’s guest. How may I help you?”

  “Why did you think I was Mr. Rico?”

  “Your room number flashed up on the screen, and the screen indicates that the room is booked to Mr. Rico.”

  “You know all that from one phone call?”

  “It is our job to take care of our best clients,” she said. “Mr. Rico is very special to us and we want to keep him happy. As his guests, that applies to you as well. Is there something special you would like me to arrange? Dinner reservations? A show?”

  “Do you have access to today’s newspaper?”

  “Of course. I’ll have the Las Vegas Sun sent right up.”

  “Yes, and, um, do you have any others? The less legitimate ones?”

  She paused. “I’ll have an assortment of Las Vegas daily newspapers sent to your room.”

  I thanked her and hung up. My next call was to room service. A little mac and cheese wouldn’t spoil my appetite should Nick want dinner.

  It wasn’t long after the papers arrived that I confirmed my earlier suspicion. The same photo that I’d seen in the trashy newspaper at Intimate Mode appeared in every paper that ran the notice of Lydia’s death. I called the Las Vegas Sun, the most reputable of the bunch.

  “Hi. I’m calling about the photo of the lingerie model you ran in today’s paper. I noticed the same photo appeared in other publications. Do you have contact information?”

  “Hold, please,” said a bored voice. Jazzy music filled the headset. While I waited, I spread the various newspapers out on the bed.

  When the story on me from the Ribbon Eagle/Times was picked up by the AP wire, there had been one accompanying photo. The original “Local Girl Does Good” puff piece had been pitched with the terms that the photo shoot be a staged day of me at work, styling a page for Tradava’s upcoming catalog. The intent was that the merchandise—and the store—would get double exposure.

  As it turned out, the pictures from the shoot were confiscated as evidence in an investigation. The lone photo that appeared with the article had been taken by the delivery van driver from Tradava. He’d wanted something to show his family. The reprint rights had paid him more than his Tradava severance package, and an unflattering view of me goofing around in front of a rack of samples had landed in over a hundred newspapers across the country.

  I learned two things from that experience: when newspapers want a photo to accompany a news piece, they have standard payment terms for acquisition. And to collect on those payment terms, the photographer had to sign a release. So even if the photo credit was withheld upon request in print, the newspaper would have documentation to prove they’d fulfilled their end of the bargain.

  “Hello?” said the bored voice.

  “I’m here,” I said.

  “Yeah, you wanted to know about the photo of Lydia Moss?”

  “Yes, please.”

  “The paper acquired full rights. It’s ours now. You want to reprint it like everybody else?”

  “No, I’m looking for the photographer.”

  “‘Alain Remie’ is the name on the contract. I can’t give out more than that.”

  I was stunned. “That’s all I need. Thank you.”

  As I hung up, I couldn’t help conside
r the third thing I’d learned from my experience at Tradava: when a camera is aimed at you, smile. It was a good thing no cameras were aimed my direction because this information was anything but cheerful.

  Alain Remie was the hotel manager who had shown up with the police the day I’d reported Lydia’s body.

  21

  I dropped onto the bed to consider what this meant. Alain Remie had arrived at Nick and my room after we called the police. It might be standard procedure for the hotel management to be notified, especially here. If one phone call to the front desk could elicit the hotel service I’d experienced an hour ago, then sure. And I’d seen Ocean’s Eleven. There was always someone watching in a Las Vegas hotel.

  Alain Remie had known about Lydia’s body lying outside on the sidewalk before the police had arrived. He’d taken photos and financially benefitted from them. Surely there was a conflict of interest in there somewhere? If it got out that the manager of a hotel of this magnitude was selling photos of guests, The Left Bank would be ruined.

  I closed my eyes and thought back to the image of Lydia’s body. I’d known almost immediately that it was her from her hair, her T-shirt, and her wedding veil. But the photo in the papers had been taken from a different angle, one that caught the #GetCheeky slogan on her panties. It was as if the photographer—Mr. Remie, I now knew—had it in mind to include it in the frame. And as I considered who would benefit from such a photo, one clear person came to mind: Joey Cheeks. Right now, he was the person with the most to gain from Lydia’s death to the tune of free publicity across the news. But that meant the position of her body hadn’t been accidental—which was a whole other level of creepy.

  More and more, Lydia’s death was looking relevant to her line of work. Good thing I had two more days to work the Intimate Mode show for Tradava. Tomorrow, I’d rearrange my schedule for maximum sleuthing time.

  ***

  I was between my second and third room service orders of mac and cheese (lobster vs. truffle) when the keycard clicked in the door. I jumped to my feet and raced to open it, eager to share with Nick everything I’d found out. But Nick’s greeting was halted by his appearance—shirt open at the collar, necktie loosened, jacket in hand—and scent, which was decidedly not the Creed Bois du Portugal cologne I bought him for his recent birthday. It was more like Eau du Public Transportation.

  “I’m sorry,” he said.

  “For what?” I shut the door behind him. “I’m the one who should apologize. I didn’t know how long you would be, so I ordered room service.”

  “You don’t need to apologize for ordering room service. Trust me when I say I need to apologize and you don’t.”

  “Why? We’re both here to work. I figured your day went longer than you expected. Trade shows can be overwhelming, and sometimes you have to do things you didn’t think you’d have to do to get the job done.” I weighed the pros and cons of admitting I’d revealed my bang bang on stage. Maybe there was a different way to describe my day.

  Nick put his hands on my shoulders, his arms straight out in front of him. “I need to take a shower, and then we need to talk. Because I’m having serious second thoughts about, well, about everything. What happened today was a little more than I signed up for, and I don’t know if I can do this.”

  I felt like I’d been punched in the gut. Amanda must have told him. She lied about keeping my participation in the panty raid a secret, and now I was going to have to explain to Nick that I’d been mostly naked in a public venue today. Worse, it had been fun. How to explain that?

  Nick had accepted an awful lot of unusual behavior from me in the past, but this must have crossed a line. The biggest gamble of my life was betting on a future with him, and our engagement was about to crap out over my perfectly innocent participation in a lingerie exhibition.

  “Hey,” he said. “Why are you crying?”

  “I’m a good gamble,” I said. I tried to blink back the second wave of tears that formed, but they spilled onto my recently applied makeup and cut tracks down my cheeks.

  “Kidd, I never said you weren’t. You’re the most full-of-life person I’ve ever met. That’s why I keep thinking about what you would think, or what you would like or what you would do. Your brain works in unexpected ways, and I love that about you.”

  “So why do you want to break off our engagement?”

  Surprise and confusion clouded Nick’s face. “I don’t. But when I tell you why I was late coming back, you might.”

  I cradled his face in my hands. “No matter what you did today, I probably did worse.” I thought about the three orders of mac and cheese I’d eaten on my own. “Way worse.”

  “Not possible.”

  Inhale. Exhale. Look Nick straight in his root-beer-barrel-colored eyes. “Earlier today, I had a Naughty Nightie cop costume torn off to reveal my underwear. While I was on stage. In front of the attendees of Intimate Mode. And then I hid under the stage for hours until Amanda found me. I’m pretty sure whatever you did can’t beat that.”

  Nick cleared his throat. I braced myself for “when will you learn?” or “you are insane,” or “you were right, I can’t do this.”

  “Kidd, for the past four hours I’ve been in a holding cell at the Las Vegas police station on suspicion of solicitation.”

  22

  I was keeping the mac and cheese secret to myself.

  “Is this one of those things I need to accept and not ask questions?” I asked.

  “If it were me, I’d have questions.”

  “I know. I’m usually on the receiving end of conversations like this. I’ve heard the questions.”

  “I’ll explain everything, but before I do, I’d like two things.”

  “What?”

  “A shower and some of that mac and cheese I smell.”

  At least we were still in sync on priorities.

  ***

  We were on our third day in Las Vegas and already I’d learned it was a town of excess. The lesson took hold when the fourth room service order showed up. “Thanks, Fred,” I said. I tipped my head toward Nick and signed the check unapologetically. There were worse sins in Vegas than overindulging in expensive mac and cheese.

  Nick, fresh from his shower, joined me on the sofa. He’d changed into a black polo shirt and jeans. I wheeled the room service cart into the room and transferred our plates to the coffee table in front of us.

  “Aren’t you going to eat?” Nick asked. I detected a note of worry in his voice.

  “Of course, I’m going to eat.” I picked up my fork and took a bite. Nick seemed to relax and took a bite too.

  I set my fork down. “Solicitation? For real? What were you thinking? Oh my God, I know what you were thinking. You did it again, didn’t you?”

  Nick set his fork down. “What do you think I was thinking?”

  “You were thinking ‘What would Samantha do?’ Am I right?” I could tell from the look on his face I was right. “Stop it! Stop asking yourself that. It only gets you into trouble.”

  “I’m starting to see that.”

  ***

  Mac and cheese turned into foreplay, which turned into both of us losing our clothes. The sun went down, and the twinkling lights from the Las Vegas Strip provided unique ambient lighting through the long, sheer curtains that maintained our privacy. As I lay next to him in the dark, thinking about everything that had happened since we’d arrived, there was one question that rose above the others. On top of who killed Lydia, where were the pages from the wedding chapel guestbook, what Joey Cheeks and Teresa Kander were arguing about, and how the hotel manager got away with selling an unauthorized photo of Lydia’s body the day she died, there was one question that trumped them all. But Nick’s soft snoring was sign enough that my question would wait until tomorrow.

  When the bright sunlight flooded the room the next morning, I was no closer to figuring out the answer.

  So I propped myself up on my elbow a
nd prodded Nick awake. “Hey, Nick? Why did you think I’d solicit a prostitute?”

  23

  The answer turned out to be remarkably simple.

  “Remember when Marc told us how he met Lydia?” Nick asked. “He used an escort service that catered to rich men. We know Lydia was the escort. I thought about you and how you always focus on the victim, so I thought what do we know about Lydia?”

  So far, so good. So far, no prostitutes.

  “We know Lydia was engaged to Marc. They met through a high-class escort service. She was a lingerie model.” He ticked the items off on his fingers. “I figured Marc would answer my questions about their engagement, and you had the lingerie model aspect covered with Intimate Mode, so it was up to me to explore the other thing.”

  “You frequented a brothel?”

  “Not exactly. I asked around to find out how one might contact a high-class escort service. I asked one person too many and that person turned me in for suspicion of solicitation.”

  “Were you arrested?”

  “No, I was questioned.”

  “By Detective Marbury? It would be great if it was him. He’d understand why you wanted to know.”

  “No. Besides, does Detective Loncar usually understand when you start asking questions about his investigations?”

  Good point.

  Nick was referring to my somewhat contentious relationship with the homicide detective back home in Ribbon. It had taken a couple of years and more than one investigation for us to reach a level of mutual respect (my words).