by Nancy Warren
She patted his shoulder. “Don’t worry, I have better taste in men now.”
“Obviously.”
He followed her into her the kitchen and while she served pizza onto her pretty pale green plates, he opened and poured the wine.
They settled on the couch in the den. Not even the cloud of testosterone hanging around Luke like a swarm of mosquitos could tone down the femininity of the room but he didn’t seem to mind.
While they ate, he filled her in on Dwayne’s whereabouts. “You couldn’t find him because he’s got no address.”
“He can’t be homeless.” Even Dwayne wouldn’t invite his own daughter to go live with him under a bridge.
“No. The house is registered to a numbered company.”
“Not his?” Unless the number was zero.
He shook his head. “It’s a CPA who owns the house. Brent Hodgkin. I’m guessing your ex rents a room. But it’s in a respectable part of town,” he said, answering the question he must have known she’d ask first.
She nodded, knowing she wouldn’t be happy until she’d seen Tiff for herself and urged her to share a hotel room with her for a few days while she got to know her dad. If Tiff had made up her mind she was going to spend some time with her father, well, she was going to do it. Toni had spent some time thinking today and decided the best thing she could do was to stay in Las Vegas herself until Dwayne inevitably lost interest in chaperoning a teenaged daughter around and broke her young heart.
“What’s your plan?” Luke asked.
“I’m going to play it by ear. So long as I know she’s safe I’ll try not to be too hard on her.” She pressed her lips together for a moment then let them go. “I think I’ll stay in a hotel for a few days with plenty of room so she can stay with me if things aren’t as rosy as Dwayne’s pictured them.”
“What do you think the chances of that are?” his dark eyes regarding her.
“Oh, I’d guess about one hundred percent.”
“Poor kid.”
“Yeah.”
He pulled a computer print-out from his pocket. “This is the address where Dwayne lives. I’ve also added the contact info for my buddy. If you need anything, or Dwayne pulls any kind of crap you don’t like, well, my friend’s the kind of guy who can let a man like Dwayne Diamond know that messing with you, or your daughter, is a bad idea. All off the record, of course.”
She smiled. “Thank you for this.”
He nodded briskly but didn’t meet her gaze. She watched him for a second. He might have a truly excellent cop face, but she knew this man pretty well. “What aren’t you telling me?”
“It’s nothing. Dwayne’s not unknown to the cops down there, that’s all.”
Her stomach did a swan dive. “Define not unknown.”
“He made free and easy with a woman’s credit card to the tune of a few grand. She was going to press charges and then next thing you know, claimed it was all a mistake. A lover’s quarrel.”
“He always did make fools of women.”
“She’ll be okay,” he said again, knowing she was thinking of Tiff.
“Yeah. She will.”
“You need a ride to the airport?”
She shook her head. “My mom’s driving me. But thanks.”
“Then I guess there’s not much more I can do.” He leaned forward, his dark eyes teasing and mesmerizing. “Unless I can help you take your mind off your troubles.”
She nodded and he took her hand and led her to the bedroom where, for a few hours, if he didn’t make her forget that her only daughter had run away from home to visit her deadbeat dad, at least her cares were pushed to the back of her mind for a while.
In the morning, Luke headed out early, kissing her on his way out. “Call me if you need anything.”
She watched him head out the door. “Hey,” she called as he opened it.
He turned.
“Thanks,” she said.
Since Toni had spent the afternoon the day before canceling all her appointments and reshuffling her responsibilities to other members of her team, she had nothing to do this morning but pack. The task didn’t take long since she was scrupulously organized, and she’d packed plenty of times for conventions and business trips. She estimated she’d be in Las Vegas for four days and packed clothes for six just in case. Her traveling makeup bag was always packed with this season’s colors and because she never, ever, left the house without promotional items, she packed the smaller of her sample bags. By nine she was fully made-up, her hair done and she was ready to go. She’d dressed casually in a pair of jeans with a pattern of rhinestones on the butt, her leather boots, a blue shirt and a light jacket. She hesitated over her jewelry. Normally, she liked to display the gorgeous rings she’d won over the years for sales performance. The bling not only reminded her every time it flashed before her eyes that she was meant to sell Lady Bianca, but the jewelry also reminded every woman who sold Lady Bianca cosmetics, or who might one day sign up to sell them, that there was money to be made.
However, her personal financial success was not something she wanted to broadcast to her lowlife ex.
It cost her a pang to lock up the best of her jewelry, but she still had enough sparkle about her that she could live with herself.
When her mother pulled up in front of the house, she said, “I’ve got wonderful news.”
Since Tiffany wasn’t sitting in the passenger seat of her mother’s boat of a car, she couldn’t imagine the news could be all that wonderful. “You’ve heard from Tiffany?”
Her mother’s bright expression faded. “No. I haven’t. But the good news is I don’t want you facing Dwayne Dipshit Diamond by yourself.” She beamed. “I am coming with you.”
“But, are you sure—”
“Yes. I’ve booked the flight. They had space. We’re going to get our baby back.”
Toni couldn’t imagine her mother was going to be a huge help. On the other hand, she didn’t have a lot of time to waste trying to convince her to stay put. “One rule, mother.”
“What rule?”
“You are not allowed to shoot Dwayne.”
Her mother put her well-powdered nose in the air. “I’m not even bringing a gun.”
“Good.”
And they set off.
When they arrived at McCarran Airport, the first thing Toni did was turn on her phone. The first thing her mother did was to head to the slot machines with a squeal of delight.
There were three missed calls on her cell phone from Dwayne’s number. Three voice messages. As she was attempting to retrieve the messages, the phone rang again. Dwayne. She answered immediately, an unpleasant constriction squeezing her chest. “Dwayne? Where is she? Tell me she’s okay.”
“Mom?” Tiffany sounded panicked.
“Tiff, what’s wrong?”
“I’m not sure. But I think Dad might be in trouble.”
If Dwayne wasn’t in some kind of trouble that would be news, but Toni didn’t say that. Instead, she said, “Where are you?”
“I’m at Dad’s house. Mom, I know I screwed up and shouldn’t have left without telling you, but could you please do something for me?”
“What is it, honey?” Though, in her heart, she knew what was coming because she knew Dwayne and she knew her daughter.
“Could you come to Vegas and help Dad?”
“Already on it,” she said.
She collected her mother from the slot machines and they went to fetch the rental car she’d booked. They could take taxis but where Dwayne was concerned, she wanted to know she could always get away.
With her mother navigating using her cell phone app, they soon found the house. “You’re sure this is it?”
“It’s the address you gave me.”
The house was a surprise. Clean and modern, with a big garage out front and enough windows upstairs that there must be at least three bedrooms, it looked like something a suburban family would live in. It was close to downtown and she
imagined the rent must be reasonable for Dwayne to live here.
She parked in the driveway in front of the closed garage door and they approached the front door. “You let me do the talking, Mom. Okay?”
“Uh-huh.”
She rang the bell and in no time at all, her daughter opened the door.
“Mom!” she cried and threw herself into Toni’s arms the way she’d done when she was much younger.
“Oh, Tiff,” she said, hugging back fiercely. “I’m so glad you’re all right.”
“You gave us quite a scare, honey.”
“Gran!” And then Tiff was hugging her grandmother. “Come on in.”
She was going to ask where Dwayne was when she stepped into the house and glanced around. Her senses were immediately overloaded. All she could say was, “Oh, my.”
Tiffany giggled. “I know. It’s like you walk into the world’s most boring looking house and step into the Arabian Nights or something.”
A tart’s boudoir was the term on Toni’s tongue but she kept her mouth shut. The wall colors were vibrant jewel tones and when Tiffany led them into the living room off the front hall, she almost expected to see Mae West reclining on the red velvet chaise that held pride of place in the room, asking some young man to peel her a grape.
The walls were purple with gold molding framing the ceilings, and the arm chairs and sofas were upholstered in rich damask. The walls were covered with movie scenes and advertising from the ‘20s and ‘30s. A rich white shag rug covered the floor, but as though a big area of white were too dull, huge red and gold silk cushions offered extra seating.
“I think my eyeballs need a nap,” Linda said, after glancing around.
“And your father lives here?” Toni asked.
“He says it’s temporary. But the owner’s really nice. You’ll like him.”
“Where is your father?” Toni asked, refusing to be sidetracked.
Tiffany put a fingernail to her mouth, a habit she’d broken a couple of years earlier. Toni noticed that her black nail polish was nearly all scraped off. She took her hand away from her mouth before she got to chewing her nails. “He had to get his car fixed,” she said.
“You didn’t call me in a panic because your dad’s car needed a tune-up. What’s going on?”
“I don’t know, but I think he’s in trouble.”
“Now there’s a shocker,” Linda said, seating herself on the divan. With her platinum ringlets and cleavage-baring red shirt, the black trousers and gold heels, she fit right in.
“Sit down and tell me about it,” Toni said, drawing her daughter to the couch.
“These guys crashed into Dad’s car yesterday afternoon.” She wrapped her arms around herself and leaned forward, almost unconsciously assuming the crash position on an airplane. “Then two of them came over and punched him.”
“Hmm. Now the jealous husbands are buddying up.”
“Mother!”
“Sorry.” And Linda made a lip-zipping motion.
“Were you there?”
A miserable nod.
“Oh, honey, were you hurt? Do you have whiplash? Have you seen a doctor?”
“No. It wasn’t a big crash, it was more like they wanted to scare him.”
“With his daughter in the car?” Toni wanted to scare her ex-husband a little herself. With her bare hands.
“They didn’t know I was his daughter. Obviously.” Anyway, when he got back in the car, he was pretty shaken, but he said it was a misunderstanding, and then he had to perform last night.” Tiffany glanced up at her mother’s face and then down at the glass and gold coffee table as though riveted by the copy of Glamour that lay atop it. Toni noticed that the Texas Today magazine that had caused Dwayne to call her out of the blue was tucked beneath Glamour.
“Did he take you with him?” She could imagine Dwayne wanting to show off for his daughter, but the thought of him letting a sixteen-year-old girl sit in the audience unattended was enough to get her chewing her own nails. Fake diamonds and all.
“No. He wanted to, but Brent, he’s the guy who owns the house, he said you have to be twenty-one.”
And thank you, Brent, Toni thought to herself.
“I sat home last night and watched TV, but then this morning I heard Dad talking on the phone. He said . . .” She swallowed before continuing. “He said, um, he said he thought his life was in danger. And I thought, since you solved those murders at the Lady Bianca convention that maybe you could help save Dad.”
Linda made a strange sound as though she were shouting without opening her zipped lips.
“Then I will need you to be a lot more specific. Who was he talking to? What were his exact words?” Tiffany had an excellent memory and she’d inherited Toni’s powers of observation.
“Don’t get mad. Remember, you two haven’t been married for a long time.”
“So, he was talking to a woman?”
Tiff nodded. “He said, ‘Aw, now come on honey. You know I’m good for it. Our ship’s going to come in, and I’m going to take you to Paris and treat you like a princess.’” Tiff had always been a good mimic and as she repeated Dwayne’s words, she’d even fallen into his way of drawling his words. That she was getting a word-for-word account of the conversation, Toni had no doubt.
“Then he paused for a bit, like the other person was talking, and then he said, ‘Because somebody’s trying to kill me, that’s why.’ And then I think he hung up. I didn’t hear anymore.”
Tiffany and Linda exchanged a quick glance. Toni tried to come up with a diplomatic way to tell Tiffany that her father was not only a liar, but a huge drama queen. Finally, she said, “You know, Tiff, sometimes people get carried away and say things for effect that they don’t really believe. Why would anyone want to kill your father?”
“Mom, you didn’t see those guys who crashed into his car. It was like out of a gangster movie. There were two big guys, like the muscle, and then the third guy who was obviously in charge. Dad knew him. He called him Grant.”
“You think this Grant is trying to kill your dad? Seems pretty stupid to rough him up and threaten him in front of a witness. He’d be the obvious suspect if anything happened to your father.”
Tiffany pushed her long hair behind her ears. “The guy, Grant, he said, ‘You got something of mine and I want it back. Next time I won’t play around.’ Then Dad said, “I don’t know what your crazy wife’s been saying,’ and then they hit him.”
“I wouldn’t call that a death threat,” Linda said. “He never said anything about killing your dad.”
“Dad says he lent Mom money to get her business started back when I was a baby and she promised to pay it back. He says he needs that money back now.”
“Oh, I am gonna kill that lyin’, cheatin’ sonovabitch!” Linda shouted, jumping right up out of the chaise.
“Now that’s a death threat,” Toni said.
Chapter Five
“You must do the thing you think you cannot do.”
— Eleanor Roosevelt
Toni explained to Tiffany that her father had never lent her money for her business. She stopped short of telling her daughter that he’d sneaked out in the middle of the night, taking the truck, which was the only thing they had that was worth anything. He’d left her and her baby girl without a backward glance.
Looking back, Toni knew now that he’d done her the biggest favor of her life. From the heartbreak and shock of discovering that her young husband was a no-good, cheating snake who had no intention of providing for his only child, she’d learned to survive. And then she’d learned to thrive.
But at the time, she’d believed her world had ended.
The afternoon was getting on and Linda had declared her intention of taking the three of them out to dinner somewhere nice when the front door opened.
Expecting to see Dwayne, whom she had not set eyes on since he’d left them, Toni felt her muscles contract. But the man who walked through the door wasn’t Dwayne
. He was a tall, slim man, with short, wavy brown hair, glasses and the nondescript clothing of a civil servant. He wore a plain gray suit, with a white shirt and a blue striped tie. He carried a simple black briefcase.
“Hi, Brent,” Tiff said. “This is my mom, Toni. And my grandmother, Linda.”
This had to be Brent Hodgkin, the CPA who owned the house, but surely this dull-looking man wasn’t responsible for the decorating. She wondered if he’d bought the house from a color-blind silent movie fan and never got around to redecorating.
“Toni,” he said, walking forward with his hand outstretched. “It’s a pleasure to meet you. You have a really nice daughter.” His voice was rich and resonant, and when she shook his hand she noticed that his skin was soft.
“Thank you. It’s nice of you to let her stay.”
“No problem. I’ve got lots of room.”
He shook Linda’s hand next. And Linda, who never met a single man she didn’t think might be marriage material for her daughter said, “I’m taking the girls to dinner. Why don’t you join us?”
He put his briefcase down and pushed his glasses more firmly onto his nose. “That’s nice of you, but I’m afraid I have to work tonight.”
“Oh, that’s too bad.” She glanced at his briefcase. It was pretty obvious that he was newly arrived home from work. As though feeling some explanation was necessary, he said, “I have a second job.”
“It’s a tough economy, all right,” Linda said. “And I understand Las Vegas was hit real hard.”
“Yes,” he said faintly. Then, “Well, if you’ll excuse me,” and he picked up his briefcase and left the room.
“Honey, we’re going to go check into the hotel now. Why don’t you come with us? We’ll get a suite and use the spa. It will be a girls’ vacation. You can see your father whenever you want.”
She could see that Tiffany was torn. Finally, she shook her head. “I think I should be here when Dad gets back.”
Linda started to speak but Toni kicked her ankle and spoke over her. “Okay, Tiff. We’ll pick you up for dinner at six.”
“Why didn’t you make her come with us?” Linda wanted to know as they pulled away from the curb.