“I’m sort of in show b-business myself, you know,” I told Flynn.
He turned a speculative look toward me. “Really?” he said. “A dancer?”
“No, not at all,” I said. “Certainly n-not like that. Not that I’m making any judgments. No, I deliver ssinging telegrams.”
“I’m guessing the stammer goes away when you sing?”
“That’s right.” I liked the no-nonsense way he mentioned my speech impediment. People who try to pretend it’s not there sometimes get on my nerves.
“You could be a dancer,” Flynn said. “You’re graceful enough. Probably not a showgirl, though. You’re not tall enough.”
“Or b-built enough.”
He shrugged. “There are all sorts of beauty in the world.”
I didn’t look at Donovan, but I imagined he was sitting over there on my other side fuming. That couldn’t be helped. Our personal feelings didn’t matter right now. The only important thing was finding the talisman.
The waiter came back with a bottle of champagne in an ice bucket and a tray with three tall, thin glasses on it. He set them on a small table at the end of the sofa where Flynn sat and asked, “Would you like me to open, sir?”
“No, I’ll do it,” Flynn said. “That’s all. Thanks, Royce.”
The waiter left. Flynn stood up to open the champagne. Donovan took advantage of that opportunity to lean over and whisper to me, “You’re playing up to him awfully hard.”
“And it’s w-working, too,” I whispered back to him.
The cork came out of the bottle with a soft pop that the audience down below probably didn’t even hear over the music. Flynn poured the champagne and handed glasses to Donovan and me. As he sat down beside me again, he said, “To making the most of your trip.”
I wasn’t sure what he meant by that, but I said, “To making the m-most of it.” Donovan just grunted and leaned forward to clink his glass against mine at the same time as Flynn clinked his against it.
I took a sip of the champagne. Donovan downed a bigger drink of his. Flynn had just lifted his glass to his lips when he leaned forward, frowned, and muttered, “What in the world?”
He was looking at the stage, where the group of showgirls had started performing another number. I followed his gaze and saw that a man had come from behind the curtains and wandered into the middle of the dancers. He was short and stocky, and his white hair and beard told me that he was an older man. He moved around in a herky-jerky pattern, like he was trying to get off the stage, but everywhere he turned he practically ran into a buxom, nearly nude woman who was a head taller than he was. He must have felt like he was lost in a sea of Amazons.
The audience, of course, thought it was all part of the show and started laughing uproariously. I could tell from Flynn’s expression, though, that it wasn’t. “That crazy old coot,” he said. Without drinking any of the champagne, he put his glass on the table and stood up. “I need to go deal with this, but please, you two stay here and enjoy the champagne and the show with my compliments.”
“That m-man…” I said.
“My uncle,” he replied with a tight smile.
“Do you n-need help – “
He held up a hand to cut me off. “I’ve got to go. Sorry.”
Donovan put a hand on my arm to keep me from saying anything else. Flynn hurried out of the box and down the stairs. Donovan said quietly, “This is our chance to look around.”
“The falcon’s not here in this b-box,” I said. “We would have seen it.”
“That’s right,” he said, “but we’re in an area off-limits to regular guests, and Flynn’s got his hands full right now.”
That was true. The idea of poking around behind the scenes made me nervous, but this was probably too good an opportunity to pass up.
And if we got caught, we could always say we were just trying to go back to the hotel lobby and took a wrong turn. My brain was getting more devious, I thought. I wasn’t sure if that was a good thing.
Down on the stage, the dancers were doing their best to continue the routine despite the old man wandering around among them. I’m sure to the audience everything looked like it was supposed to be that way. I felt sorry for him, though. He was so obviously confused, not putting on an act.
We waited until we saw Malcolm Flynn look out from behind the curtain. His mouth moved, and I thought he was probably calling to his uncle, trying to get his attention. Donovan said, “All right, let’s go.”
We left the box and went down the stairs to the corridor. No one else was there. Donovan started trying doors. The first one opened into a janitor’s closet, the second into a room filled with electrical panels. There must have been a thousand circuit breakers. It took a lot of juice to run all the lights in a casino, I thought.
The next couple of doors were locked, and we didn’t have the key, of course. Donovan eased another one open, and when I looked through the narrow gap I saw another corridor. The door at the far end was open and led into what looked like a kitchen, from what little I could see of it. All the gleaming chrome made me think that’s what it was, anyway.
We came to a corner. There was actually a sign on the wall here, with an arrow and the word BACKSTAGE printed on it. We didn’t want to wind up among the dressing rooms, but Donovan spotted something else and pointed it out to me.
“There’s an elevator,” he said. “Let’s take a look.”
“Somebody could c-come along any minute now.”
“And our story is that we took a wrong turn and got lost.”
He stepped around the corner, and since I wasn’t going to let him do this alone, I did, too. The elevator door was about halfway down the corridor, on the right. When we reached it, I saw that it had only one button on the wall next to it, and that button was marked with a ‘P’.
Donovan pointed at it and said in a half-whisper, “P for penthouse. It stands to reason that’s where Flynn lives. Should we take a look?”
“If we get caught up there, there’s no way we can p-pretend we just got lost,” I said. “It’s too dangerous, Donovan.”
“But if the falcon is up there and we get our hands on it, there’s nothing here we have to be afraid of, Aren,” he argued. “Our powers together, magnified by that talisman…there’s nothing that can hurt us.”
I wasn’t so sure about that, but he was already reaching forward. His thumb pressed the button on the wall next to the elevator.
And as soon as he did, an alarm bell began to shrill deafeningly.
Chapter 16
“Look what you d-did!” I yelped.
Donovan just looked confused. “But I – ” he began.
Water sprayed down over us. I looked up and saw the sprinkler nozzle that had dropped from a fixture on the ceiling.
“It wasn’t me,” Donovan said. “It’s the fire alarm!” He grabbed my arm. “Come on!”
We couldn’t very well try to sneak up to the penthouse now. This corridor would probably be thronged with people any minute now.
Well, we had a good excuse for not staying in the box where Flynn had left us, anyway.
We went back around the corner and hurried toward the door that we knew led to the hotel lobby. The alarm continued to blare, and I heard people shouting even though I couldn’t see anybody yet. We reached the door and pushed out into the lobby, which was crowded with people pouring out of the casino, the bar, and the restaurant. Shamrock employees in green vests were trying to direct the guests out of the building in an orderly fashion, but that wasn’t working too well. The scene wasn’t complete panic yet, but it was moving in that direction.
I sniffed the air and said, “I don’t smell any sm-smoke.”
“Neither do I,” Donovan said, “but there’s no telling where the fire is. Could be upstairs or in one of the other wings, and we wouldn’t smell it yet. Come on, let’s get outside.”
We plunged into the mob, and I was grateful that he had hold of my arm. I didn’t want us
to get separated.
The general flow was toward the front doors, so we just let it carry us with it. Eventually we emerged into the night air, which had cooled off considerably from earlier, I noticed. The parking lot was full of people, most of them turned so they could look back at the hotel. Their heads tilted as they stared at the upper floors.
“Looking for flames or smoke,” Donovan said. “I don’t see any. Some of them are probably hoping there’ll be jumpers.”
“Don’t even s-say such a thing.”
Sirens wailed in the night. As they came closer, the crowd began to part to let the fire trucks through. If nobody was hurt in all this chaos, I was going to be surprised.
We stood there for almost an hour after the fire trucks rolled up with their lights flashing and the firefighters rushed into the building. I never saw any flames or smelled any smoke. Either the blaze had been put out quickly, or…
The firefighters came out and started climbing back into their trucks. They turned off the flashing lights. Two words spread quickly through the crowd.
“False alarm…false alarm…”
Malcolm Flynn appeared in the entrance. He had a bullhorn in one hand. He lifted it to his mouth and said, “You can come back in, folks. There’s no fire. I repeat, no fire. I apologize for the inconvenience.”
That drew some angry shouts in response. Flynn ignored them and went back into the building. People started pushing toward the doors.
Donovan and I hung back, not wanting to get into that crush. He looked around warily and said, “If I was that guy who’s trying to kill you, I can think of worse ways to get you out into the open than pulling a fire alarm.”
“The same thought crossed my m-mind,” I said.
“Maybe we’d better brave the mob after all.”
I didn’t like it, but I knew he was right. At the same time, there was another danger.
“With all those p-people jostling around, he could come up and stab me,” I said.
“Blast it, you’re right. Here, I’ll stay right behind you.”
He moved so that he was close behind me, so close he had no trouble sliding his arms around my waist. I felt his body snug against mine for a second, and unexpected sensations went through me. We’d only made love a few times, but I hadn’t forgotten his lean, hard-muscled strength. I wasn’t sure I ever would.
“Let’s go,” he said, his breath warm against my ear as he spoke.
What we were doing didn’t look so odd in that crowd, which was full of honeymooners and other assorted lovers. With Donovan so close behind me, no one could attack me from that direction without going through him. That might mean he was putting his life at risk, but I knew I couldn’t talk him out of it. We quickly agreed that I would watch the crowd to the left while he watched to the right. We were ready for trouble if the alleged hitman approached us.
We didn’t see any sign of him.
We spotted a familiar face as soon as we came in the doors, however. It belonged to the young waiter who had brought the champagne to Malcolm Flynn’s private box. He saw us, too, and smiled in recognition.
“There you folks are!” he said. “Mr. Flynn was worried about you. He asked me to wait here and catch you when you came in.”
“Why?” Donovan asked. “Surely he doesn’t expect us to go back and watch the rest of the show. Is there even going to be a rest of the show?”
“Well, you know the old saying, sir. The one about how the show must go on? The rest of the first one was cancelled, but there’ll be four more tonight, never fear. What Mr. Flynn wanted me to do, though, was to escort you up to his penthouse.”
I glanced at Donovan in surprise. I couldn’t help it. We wanted to check out Flynn’s penthouse, and it appeared that fate – with the help of that false fire alarm – was going to cooperate with us for a change.
Donovan wasn’t going to accept it that easily, though. He said, “What does Flynn want with us?”
“The boss doesn’t exactly let me in on his reasons for everything he does, but I imagine since you were his personal guests tonight, he wants to make sure you’re all right after all the uproar.”
“Was anyone hurt because of the false alarm?” I asked.
“Not that I’ve heard about so far,” the waiter said.
Donovan said, “What happened, anyway?”
“Beats me, sir. One of the smoke detectors could have malfunctioned, or somebody could have pulled an alarm on purpose.” The waiter shrugged. “It happens from time to time. Some joker thinks it’s funny to ruin everybody else’s good time.” He motioned for us to follow him. “Now, if you’ll come with me…”
Donovan looked at me, and I gave him a quick nod. We couldn’t afford to waste this opportunity.
The lobby was still really crowded, but the mob was starting to thin out a little as people headed back into the casino and the bar. A few went into the restaurant, but most of them seemed more interested in gambling or drinking. With the waiter leading the way, we weaved through the crowd and went through the same door Flynn had escorted us through earlier. He took us around the corner to the elevator Donovan and I had discovered in our snooping. That was irony for you.
The waiter pressed the same button Donovan had, but nothing happened this time except that the elevator door slid open smoothly and quietly. He ushered us into the car, which had a gleaming brass rail around its walls, dividing them between polished wood on the bottom and mirrored glass on top. Taking a little key from his pocket, he inserted it into the control panel and turned it. Then he pushed the ‘P’ button that was set into the panel. So Donovan and I wouldn’t have been able to use the elevator after all, I thought, because we didn’t have a key like that.
The door closed, and the elevator started up with such a smooth motion it was barely discernible. It was very quiet in there, and in that silence the waiter said, “My name’s Royce, by the way. If there’s anything I can do for you during your stay, just ask at the desk for me. I’ll be glad to help any way I can.”
I had a feeling he was trying to curry favor with his boss by saying that, since he knew that Flynn had taken a special interest in us. Well, in me, anyway, and I felt bad for letting that thought cross my mind.
I almost didn’t realize that the elevator had stopped until the door opened. On the other side of it was a small reception area with thick carpet, paneled walls, and a couple of comfortable-looking chairs with an antique table between them. On the walls to right and left hung two oil paintings showing starkly beautiful Western landscapes. They were originals, too, not prints. I noted the artist’s name: Charles M. Russell.
Opposite the elevator were double doors, heavy, sturdy-looking things. I thought they looked almost like something you’d find at the entrance to a fort. I didn’t have any doubt that on the other side of them lay Malcolm Flynn’s home.
An intercom was set into the wall beside the doors. Royce pushed the button on it, and Flynn’s voice came back. “Yes?”
“I have Ms. McAllister and Mr. Cole here, sir,” Royce replied.
“Good. Bring them in.”
I heard the quiet sound of an electronic lock disengaging. If Flynn was so careful about his security, I couldn’t imagine him just taking Royce’s word for it that we were out here, so I suspected there was at least one camera in the reception room, even though when I glanced around I didn’t spot any. Royce opened the door and ushered Donovan and me into the penthouse.
It was pretty spectacular. The living room was large, and one wall was all glass. Even though we were only on the equivalent of the fifth floor, we had a good view of the Strip in all its gaudy neon glory.
In keeping with the slightly old-fashioned atmosphere in the place, the furniture was heavy and overstuffed, with lots of leather and wood. The floor was wood as well, but covered here and there with Indian rugs. More Western paintings hung on the walls, competing for space with the biggest TV I’d ever seen and a number of smaller monitors. It reminded me of
Donovan’s office in his house back in Corpus Christi, where he kept up with all the global financial markets, but on an even larger scale. These monitors weren’t tuned to the world’s stock markets, however, but rather to feeds from security cameras all over the hotel. I couldn’t help but wonder just how much Malcolm Flynn could see from in here.
But no fireplace. No green falcon named Cearul. I tried telling myself that this room wasn’t the entire penthouse and that I shouldn’t be disappointed, but I was. We had only been in Las Vegas for a few hours, but I was ready for our quest to be over anyway.
Flynn sat in an office chair in front of the monitors. He flipped a switch that made them all go dark and swiveled the chair around to face us. As he stood up, he said, “Are you all right, Ms. McAllister? You weren’t hurt in all the commotion?”
“I’m f-fine,” I told him.
“Yeah, me, too,” Donovan added dryly.
Flynn nodded and said, “Good. If anyone had been hurt…” He paused and drew in a deep breath. “Well, let’s just say it would have been one more score to settle with the people responsible for what happened.”
“It wasn’t a malfunctioning smoke detector?” Donovan asked.
Flynn shook his head. “The firefighters checked all of them. They’re in perfect working order. I knew they would be. I stay on top of that.”
“Then it was j-just a prank,” I said.
“It was no prank,” Flynn said, and his voice had a hard edge to it. “I have enemies, Ms. McAllister, who like nothing better than to cause trouble for me.”
For a second I thought he was just being paranoid, but then I reminded myself that he was in a business known for its ruthless and cutthroat – sometimes literally – competition. I remembered what Donovan had told me about Flynn being suspected of causing problems for his rival casino owners. It made sense that they would cause trouble for him right back.
“At any rate, I’d like to make it up to you for what happened,” Flynn went on. “Your room is going to be comped – “
“You d-don’t have to do that,” I said.
Misadventures of a Tongue-Tied Witch: Boxed Set Humorous Witch Series Page 25