“When you get back, we’ll go do something fun, just the two of us,” he promised.
“Sounds good.” She smiled, then turned and headed back to where Jack and Coop were waiting.
Carlotta put her hand over her mouth to suppress nauseating fear. Flashing dots danced before her eyes. She’d been right to withhold information from Peter about talking to her father and why she wanted to go to Vegas.
“Everything okay?” Coop asked.
Carlotta looked up to see him standing near the open door, waiting. Gratitude welled in her chest. She nodded, flustered. “That’s what I get for drinking whiskey on an empty stomach.”
Coop reached into his pocket and withdrew a protein bar. “Knock yourself out.”
“Thanks.” She blinked back sudden tears.
“Hey, something is wrong.”
She pulled back her shoulders as she peeled open the snack. “No…it’s just what you said earlier about Rainie—that she’s ‘easy.’ That sounds so nice.”
He winked as she walked through the door. “I don’t believe you’d be satisfied with easy. I think you tried that once.”
He was referring to their brush with romance—she deserved that. Instead of responding, she took a bite of the protein bar and looked around the empty hallway. “Where’s Jack?”
“He went ahead.”
Jack had been eager to put some space between them, she presumed. And if Jack was going to have a family, she needed to get used to lots of space between them.
As she munched on the snack, she felt Coop’s inquiring gaze trained on her, but thankfully, the crowded elevator car prevented further conversation as they rode to the appropriate floor. When they alighted, she led Coop down a hallway to the room she and Peter had first checked into. On the door was a sign reading the room had been decommissioned and no admittance.
Coop knocked, and the door was opened by the head of hotel security. He recognized Carlotta from the previous night and waved them inside.
The gold and white suite was rendered a little less spectacular by the addition of black and yellow crime-scene tape. Coop followed her through the bedroom and down a hallway toward the walk-in closet where Jack was inspecting the safe and comparing it to notes from a file folder.
“Hey,” he said in acknowledgment. “Carlotta, do you want to fill in the blanks?”
“Where do you want me to start?”
“What time did you check into this room?”
“Around 7:45 p.m. I looked in the safe when I unpacked around eight, and it was empty.”
“Did you put anything inside?”
“No.”
“Was there anywhere else he could’ve been hiding?”
“Sure. We didn’t look in every closet, or under the bed.”
Jack’s mouth twitched down. “Then what?”
“Then Peter and I went to dinner, and when we came back, I came in to put the ring in the safe. I opened the door and the man rolled out at my feet.”
“What time was that?”
“About ten o’clock, just before I called you.”
“Was the safe door locked?”
“No, just closed. I hadn’t reset the combination, so I pulled up on the handle and it opened.”
“And you could tell the man was already deceased?” Coop asked.
“Yes. He was cold.”
“It looked to you as if he’d suffocated?”
“It certainly looked that way.”
“Yet there’s a door release lever inside that’s hard to miss…and it appears to be working.”
“And there were no marks on his hands to indicate he’d tried to get out,” she added.
Jack raised his eyebrows.
“I checked,” she murmured.
“So maybe someone killed him earlier and put him in the safe?” Jack mused aloud. “We won’t know the time of death until we get the results of the autopsy.”
“I checked his eyelids,” Carlotta offered, “and there was no rigor, so he’d definitely been dead for less than two hours.”
The men stared at her, then Jack looked to Coop for confirmation. He nodded.
Jack scowled, then made notes on the sheet he was reading. “I hate to denigrate fellow police officers, but this documentation is slipshod. And the pictures are terrible—all eight of them.”
“Do they have a name yet?” Carlotta asked.
“No,” Jack said. “The hotel says he wasn’t employed here, which we already suspected. He told you he was renting the house next to yours, so I have someone looking into the owners. For now all we have to go on is the name he gave to you and Wes—Johnson.”
“Have they run his prints?” Coop asked.
“There’s a wrinkle,” Jack said.
“He had no fingerprints,” Carlotta supplied. “They were as smooth as a baby’s bottom.”
The simile had just slipped out, but Jack gave her a sardonic look. “You checked his fingers?”
“Yes.”
“Do I want to know what else you checked?”
“There was no blood, and no tears or holes in his clothes that would indicate a wound.”
Jack sighed. “Anything else?”
“He had a small tattoo at his waistline. I noticed it the day Wes and I met him.”
“Oh?” Coop asked with a sly smile.
“His shirt was open,” she said pointedly. “It looks military to me.” She pulled out her phone, found an image, then showed the screen to Jack and Coop.
Jack sputtered. “You took pictures of the body?”
“Of course. And the crime scene. Do you want them?”
His mouth tightened. “How many did you take?”
She consulted her phone. “One hundred sixty-three. I can put them in your Dropbox.”
Jack slow blinked. “Come again?”
“Send them to me,” Coop said. “I’ll make sure Jack gets them.”
“Do you want the videos, too?”
“Videos?” Jack parroted.
“I shot a video before the police arrived, and another one of them investigating the scene. The last one is a rather large file, let’s see—almost ninety minutes long.”
Jack’s face turned purplish. “The local police let you shoot a video of them while they were working?”
“Of course not.” She pointed. “I set my camera on that shelf behind my shoes. They didn’t even know it was on.”
Coop snorted with laughter.
Jack cut his eyes toward Coop. “Don’t encourage her.”
Carlotta scowled. “You just said the police’s documentation was lame. Do you want my files or not?”
Jack jerked his head in concession, then said, “C’mon, Coop. Let’s head to the morgue.”
“Can I go?” Carlotta asked.
“No,” they both said in unison.
She frowned. “You don’t have to be rude.”
Jack pulled his hand down his face. “Coop, do me a favor and ask the hotel security guy if we can take a look at the footage of their surveillance cameras?”
“Sure, Jack,” Coop said, then walked away, out of earshot.
Jack surveyed her with unreadable bloodshot eyes until she squirmed.
“Do you want to yell at me again?” she asked.
“No,” he said, sounding exhausted. “I want you to tell me why this guy would follow you to Vegas.”
She shrugged. “I don’t know.”
“Why do you think he followed you?”
“You overheard him say he wanted to take me out.”
“As irresistible as you are, Carlotta, I can’t see the guy trailing you and your fiancé out here to try to change your mind.”
“Was that a compliment?”
“Don’t go off point. The way I see it, this guy followed you because he thought you could lead him to something he wanted, something to do with Randolph.”
She put on her best clueless face. “I don’t know what that could be. Randolph won’t even agree to let me
or Wes visit him. Why would this guy think I knew something?”
“Maybe he thought it was suspicious you would just up and go to Vegas?”
“Then he didn’t do his homework. Peter won this trip at a charity auction a while ago. We were headed to Vegas the day I stopped by the townhouse and Abramson attacked me. We had to postpone then, so here we are.”
“So there’s no special reason for this trip?”
“My and Peter’s engagement isn’t special enough?”
He studied her face for long seconds, then nodded. “If you say so. But I’m not asking just for your sake—I have explicit orders from my captain to stay away from your father’s case. I’m not kidding, Carlotta. My job is on the line.”
“Well, I wouldn’t want to be responsible for you being unemployed,” she said lightly, “seeing as how you’re going to have a new mouth to feed.”
Jack looked away, then back. “C’mon, we’ll walk you back to your room.”
They were a quiet trio as they made their way back to the upgraded suite. Carlotta mulled Jack’s probing questions about Dead Johnson—if he was following her in the hopes she’d lead him to Randolph’s hiding place and to Valerie, who would’ve hired him? Someone from the D.A.’s office? Mashburn & Tully? One of Randolph’s victims?
And what were the circumstances around Dead Johnson’s untimely death?
And if she didn’t have enough on her mind, there was Peter’s conversation she’d overheard—someone at Mashburn & Tully was paranoid about Randolph talking to his children…but why?
Peter’s promise they would do something fun this afternoon, just the two of them, echoed in her head as she approached the room’s door with Jack and Coop.
“How long are you both planning to stay in Vegas?” Carlotta asked, inserting the keycard.
Jack shrugged. “I’d like to stay until we get an ID on the body.”
Coop nodded. “Hopefully his DNA will be in the system.”
“Keep me posted?” she asked.
“Yep,” Jack said, without making eye contact.
“Send me those files,” Coop said as he and Jack walked away.
She pushed open the door to the sound of voices. On the other side of the suite, Wes, Hannah, and Chance were sprawled on the elegant, pale furniture and apparently working their way through the assortment of food and drinks in the bar. Empty wrappers were strewn everywhere and something purple had been spilled on one of the couch pillows. Peter stood nearby looking irritated and helpless.
“Hey, Sis,” Wes called, saluting with a bottle of soda. “This is one hell of a room.”
“Our room isn’t nearly this nice,” Chance said, licking chocolate from his fingers. “We’ll probably hang out here most of the time.”
Peter’s face blanched, but Carlotta welcomed the raucous interlopers.
Hannah pushed up from a chair, holding a bottle of wine by the neck. “What the fuck? Wes said some stalker followed you out here and fucking died in your safe?”
“Hi, yourself. And that’s about the sum of it.”
“How do you die in a safe?”
“I’ll tell you about it later.”
“Tell me about it now,” Hannah said, steering her away from the others. Then she leaned in close and whispered, “Why the fuck did you get engaged to Peter? I thought you came out here to find you-know-who, not to fuck up your life.”
“Can we dial down the ‘f’ word?”
“Can you give me a fucking answer?”
“Why do people normally get engaged?” Carlotta hedged. “I love him.”
“It’s me you’re talking to. You find out Jack knocked up Liz and suddenly you love Peter?”
“Okay. I want to love Peter, and I think I can get there.”
“I think I’m going to be sick all over this silk carpet.”
“Did you come all the way out here just to give me a hard time about Peter?”
Hannah frowned. “No. In fact, I need your help. I promised my father I’d meet with some VIP piece-of-shit royalty at one of our hotels out here, just to kiss his noble ass.”
“So what’s the problem?”
“So I can’t go looking like this, and I don’t want Chance to see me looking like that. Can you help me pull this off?”
Carlotta looked past Hannah’s shoulder to take in the motley Atlanta crew assembled in Vegas. Had everyone brought secrets with them?
“Sure. Actually, I could use your help, too.”
“No problem.” Hannah took a swig from the bottle of wine. “So where’s the big-ass diamond ring and what’s up with the pink Barbie bracelet?”
Chapter 7
“THANKS FOR LETTING ME get dressed in your room,” Hannah said, fastening her seatbelt.
“Are you kidding?” Carlotta clicked her own belt into place. “I wouldn’t have missed seeing the look on Peter’s face when you came out.” Her friend had gone into the bathroom looking like trouble, and came out looking like the cover of a magazine.
Hannah grinned. “It did feel good to render Richie Rich speechless.”
“I think I saw a spark of attraction there,” Carlotta teased.
“Oh, no—don’t try to pawn your fiancé off on me.”
“I’m not.”
“I think you are.” Hannah gave her a pointed look. “How’s the sex going?”
Carlotta sighed. “It isn’t…yet.”
“Carlotta! This is the time in your relationship when you should be going at each other like rabbits.”
“Like you and Chance?”
“Bad example, but yeah. We’ve had sex seven times since we got to Vegas—and that’s while sharing a room with Wes.”
Carlotta lifted her hand. “I don’t want to hear anymore. You have to admit finding a dead guy in the room is a libido killer.”
“Speak for yourself.”
Carlotta laughed, shaking her head.
“What’s the address for the P.O. box place?”
Carlotta read it off while Hannah punched it into the car’s GPS.
“Looks like it’s only about eight miles off the Strip, but in this traffic,” Hannah said, maneuvering the car onto the jam-packed street, “it’ll probably take us twenty minutes to get there.”
Carlotta checked the side mirror. “Keep an eye out for a tail.”
“You still think Dead Johnson wasn’t working alone?”
“I don’t know. But if he wasn’t, and he accidentally suffocated or had a heart attack in that safe, it makes sense someone would take his place.”
“And you think these people believe you’ll lead them to your mother?”
“To Valerie, or maybe to the evidence Randolph said he had that would exonerate him.” Which could exist only in her father’s imagination.
“Who would care enough to follow you?”
Carlotta counted on her fingers. “D.A. Kelvin Lucas, the GBI, the FBI, someone at Mashburn & Tully, one of the people Randolph ripped off—and that’s just from the top of my head. Plus who knows what he’s been into the past ten years? There could be a whole pile of people looking for Randolph I wouldn’t even know about.” She pulled a red wig from a bag and used the visor mirror to adjust it.
Hannah turned to look at her. “Are you sure you’re okay to do this alone?”
“I can’t confide in Peter…yet.”
“Why not?”
The phone conversation she overheard kept coming back to her. “I don’t trust him not to interfere. And I can’t tell Wes yet—I can’t trust him not to go off half-cocked.”
“But you trust Wes in a casino?”
“He’s not old enough to gamble.”
Hannah barked out a laugh. “You don’t really think that’s going to stop him, do you?”
“He told me he’s going to watch the poker tournaments to pick up pointers.”
“Okay, believe that if you want to.”
“I want to. Besides, I offered him a hundred dollars spending money, and he turned it do
wn, said he wouldn’t be needing any—so there.”
“So, to review, you don’t trust the two people you should trust more than anyone else?”
The truth hurt. “The only person who knows everything is you,” Carlotta said. The unspoken words hung in the air. The woman who’d withheld until recently the information that her own family had been a victim of Randolph’s scams. “If something were to happen to me—”
“Nothing’s going to happen to you.”
“—you have to tell Wes everything. Promise me.”
Hannah’s eyes grew serious. “You know you can count on me.”
Carlotta nodded. “Yes, I do.”
Then Hannah quirked a smile. “Wow, today could be the day you’re reunited with your mother. Are you ready for that?”
“I really don’t know. I guess I’m afraid to get my hopes up. I’m following a trail of pretty cryptic clues.” And if by some miracle she did locate Valerie, what kind of reception would she get?
“What do you know about this post office box?”
“From what I could tell on my phone, it’s one of those shipping stores where you can rent a P.O. box.”
“Want to do a drive-by before I let you off?”
“Do you have time before your meeting?”
“The dickhead prince I’m meeting will probably think more of me if I’m late.” Hannah drove the nondescript rental car around and through agonizingly slow traffic for long minutes. “Do you see anything suspicious?”
Carlotta was keeping an eye on the side mirror. “No. I think we’re good.”
“Okay, so the place should be a couple blocks down on the right. This isn’t the best part of town.”
Carlotta was thinking the same thing. The main drags of Las Vegas were clean and in good repair, but this side pocket was litter strewn and graffiti tagged. And the people hanging out on the corners weren’t passing out handbills.
As they drove closer, her heart was pounding. But if she thought Valerie Wren would be standing in front of the business, she was mistaken. It was a sad little storefront with faded window displays, not yet open for the day.
“Where should I let you out?” Hannah asked.
“Drive a couple blocks away, and I’ll walk back. It doesn’t open for another thirty minutes.”
Hannah did as she asked, letting her off outside a coffee shop.
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