She shrugged. “About the same.”
I took my feet off the desk, then pushed myself upright. “You know what they say . . .”
“If you’re not moving forward, they’re gaining on you.”
I slapped her on the back. “Precisely!” I grabbed my Birkin from the couch where I had thrown it, then stepped into my private restroom for some much needed repair. “I need to make a surgical strike on Pahrump.”
“Do you want me to call downstairs for a car?”
“I don’t have time to drive. See if the helicopter is available. Oh, and find some place to stash mother’s virgin, someplace secure.” My reflection staring back at me wasn’t as bad as I feared, nor as good as I hoped—not that it ever was. “Then, call the district attorney’s office—I need to talk with our dear friend, Mr. Lovato.”
“Anything else?”
“Yes, I need to talk to Delphinia.”
“Delphinia, the wedding planner, from the chapel downstairs?”
“How many Delphinias do you know?” My trip to Pahrump shouldn’t take more than an hour, then another hour to fit in the DA and thirty minutes of wiggle room. “Tell her I’d like to stop by at eleven, if that’s convenient.”
“Is there a wedding I don’t know about?”
Repairs made, I brushed down my sweater and slacks one more time in a futile attempt to establish some sense of order. Yesterday’s events had started me pinging around like a pinball. Today, the game played on. At some point, I sure wished whoever was playing me would tilt the game and drop me into a hole.
“Are you going to make those calls?” I asked, as I breezed out of the bathroom on my way out the door.
“Are you going to answer my question?” She followed me into the front office.
I paused with my hand on the doorknob. “Do you really expect me to?”
“Call me a cockeyed optimist.” She moved around her desk. “There were several messages from Teddie on the voicemail. Something about your phone not working.”
“It works fine... when I turn it on.” I reached into my pocket and extracted the thing, then handed it to her. “You keep it for now. Get the messages off. If anyone calls, tell them I’ve gone over the fence.”
“Okay.” She looked at me a moment, weighing her words. “Is Jordan Marsh really staying at your place?”
“Yes. I have him handcuffed to the bed. Can you hold down the fort while I’m gone?”
She gave me an exasperated look. “Brandy will be in at ten. There won’t be anything the two of us can’t handle.”
“Don’t bet on it.”
“Lucky?” She paused, looking uncomfortable. “The picture in the paper—the one of Teddie and the singer? Well, I don’t think it’s what it appears to be.”
“Nothing ever is.” I opened the door to leave. “Remember that.”
* * *
THE helicopter was already spooling-up when I arrived at the helipad perched atop one wing of the hotel. Crouching, I ran under the whirling blades, and ducked into the copilot seat. Headset on, Dane grinned back at me from the pilot’s position.
“What are you doing here?” I shouted over the whine of the engine and the whap of the accelerating blades as I wrestled with the door. Finally, the lock dropped, securing it in place.
He shook his head and pointed to his headset. Thrusting an identical set toward me, he then gave the thumbs-up to an attendant on the helipad who scurried out of the way. Once I had my headset in place, the noise level dropped to a tolerable roar and I could hear Dane’s voice clearly.
“Fasten your seat belt.” He waited while I complied. “Temps are up and everything’s in the green. Are you all set?”
“You do know how to fly this thing, don’t you?” Dane wasn’t one of our regular pilots. “I didn’t know your job description for the Gaming Control Board included flying hotel execs around.”
“I’m moonlighting. It’s good practice.” Gently pulling on the collective, he eased the flying machine into the air, glancing around as he did so. Once clear of the hotel, he pushed the stick forward, lowering the nose and starting us in forward flight. With a grin at me, he threw us hard into a bank toward Pahrump.
Somehow I resisted grabbing for a handhold. While I didn’t find flying terrifying, it wasn’t exactly as comfortable as terra firma.
But it was exhilarating... and liberating. Up here, my problems couldn’t follow me. For a brief few moments I was free. “So this is practice for you? I can’t tell you how much better that makes me feel. When are you going to get good at it?”
He scoffed. “Is that a challenge?”
The man thought I was joking. “Show me what you got, rotor-head.”
Once we cleared McCarran airspace and the bounds of civilization, he dropped us down until we skimmed no more than twenty feet above the ground, which whizzed underneath us at dizzying speed. With a flick of his wrist, Dane popped us around a tall Joshua tree. Another tree, another flick of the wrist as we raced toward the Spring Mountains. When the mountains filled the windscreen, Dane jerked on the collective and yanked the stick back, sending us skyrocketing into the air. The Gs forced me back and down into the seat. Up and over we went, then back down to the desert floor on the other side. As the negative Gs worked on my stomach, I was glad I hadn’t had much breakfast.
Racing along, nose down, the ground so close I felt I could reach out and touch it, we scared a herd of burros. The creatures ran in front of us, then scattered.
My worries fell away, leaving only the here and now. Both Dane and I had stupid grins on our faces.
Too soon, the sobering silhouette of Mona’s Place appeared in front of us.
“You want to go around the patch some more? I know this dry lakebed west of here. We could really put this puppy through its paces,” Dane said.
“I would like that, but today I don’t have the time.”
“Perhaps another time?”
I looked at him and saw the unspoken question in his eyes. I guessed he’d seen Norm Clarke’s column as well. Boy, bad news sure traveled fast. “Perhaps.”
As we closed in, the full extent of the media circus Mother had created became apparent. An invading horde of television crews, reporters, picketers, and curious onlookers amassed in the parking lot in front of Mona’s. Behind them, on the other side of the street, a dozen or more television trucks sat side by side. Their relay booms extended, the vehicles looked like catapults, cocked and ready to throw digitized news to the world.
“Out of the frying pan and into the fire,” I said, to no one in particular as Dane lowered us to the landing pad, a scoured rectangle of desert behind the main building.
“What is our mission?” Dane asked, looking out the side door at the ground.
“Rescue a virgin in distress.”
As the skids settled on solid ground, he whipped his head around. “You are shitting me, aren’t you?”
“Unfortunately not.” I opened my door. “Keep the thing running, okay? We’re going to have to make a quick getaway.” I ripped off my headset before he could reply, jumped down, and bolted for the back door. Where the heck was everybody?
I found Trudi, mothers chief cook, bottle washer, right-hand man—and my surrogate parent—nervously smoking a cigarette in the kitchen. A trim woman with an overabundance of nervous energy, she started in the minute she spied me. “Your mother has really gone and done it now.” She took a long drag, then stuck the butt under the faucet and doused it with a burst of water. “The girls are in their rooms. Some of them are hiding. Others are hanging out the windows showing everything they got to the cameras. Business has evaporated like a stream in the summer sun. What was your mother thinking?”
“I don’t know why you’re surprised,” I replied. “It’s not like this is the first time she has leapt before she looked.” I shot the woman a grin. “Remember the time she and the girls had a bake sale at the elementary school to benefit the Girl Scouts? I thought the members of t
he PTA were going to burn her at the stake.”
We both smiled at the memory.
Trudi lowered her voice as if she were telling me a secret, “The sheriff told all those crazies out front he’d shoot anyone who sets foot on the porch. I tell ya, that man means business. He peppered one guy who was climbing up the gutter pipe.”
“He shot a reporter?” Why did he get to have all the fun?
“With rock salt—probably stung like hell, but didn’t hurt him none.” She flicked the butt. We both watched as it traced a perfect arc, then landed in the trashcan near the door—a center shot. “So far he has them scared. Don’t know how long that’ll last.”
“Where’s Mother?”
“She and that poor girl have barricaded themselves in your mother’s suite on the top floor.”
As I turned and ran for the stairs, Trudi’s voice trailed after me. “Be careful, she has her twenty-gauge and it’s loaded for bear. If you don’t announce yourself, she’ll perforate you for sure.”
In the foyer, I paused for a moment. Opening the front door a couple of inches, I stood behind it so no one would see me, and stuck my face to the opening.
A shotgun across his lap, his hat pulled low, the sheriff sat in one of mother’s Queen Anne chairs. His feet crossed on the porch railing, he balanced on the rear legs, his bulk straining the delicate chair. If he broke the thing, he’d better start running and not look back—Mother was armed. And we all knew she was dangerous.
“Sheriff, it’s me, Lucky,” I whispered, loud but not too.
He turned his head toward me.
“Don’t look at me.”
He snapped his head back to neutral. “How’d you get here?” he asked, out of the side of his mouth.
“Didn’t you hear the helicopter?” The guy must’ve been tail-end Charlie in sheriff school. “We’re parked out back. I’m going to take the girl with me, but I need you to provide cover—keep the sharks at bay. Can you do that?”
“Yes, Ma’am.”
“Remember, I’m one of the good guys—don’t shoot me and, if you want to live until lunchtime, don’t even think about aiming toward the helicopter. Got it?”
“What? You think I’m stupid?”
He really didn’t want me to answer that question, so I pretended it was rhetorical. “You work your way around back. I’ll go get the girl.”
“That ought to take some of the fuel off the fire.” He stood, hitched his pants up, belched, then ambled toward the south end of the house.
I lost sight of him as he turned the corner, heading around back.
Mother’s suite occupied the attic level, four flights up. At the top of the stairs, out of breath and short on patience, I fisted my hand and banged on Mother’s door. “Don’t shoot, Mother. The cavalry has arrived.”
I heard Mother chamber a round in her pump-action. I stepped to the side in case she had a twitchy trigger finger. The bolt hit the stops with a bang, the door opened a couple of inches, then the barrel poked out. I almost peed my pants.
Mother’s face appeared, then the door opened wider.
“I had to make sure it was you,” she said matter-of-factly, glancing along the hallway to ensure I was alone.
“Who else calls you Mother? And, for God’s sake, don’t stick the gun out where someone could grab it.” I pushed the shotgun’s barrel aside as I stepped into the room.
“Someone could pretend to be you.” She pulled herself to her full height—I still had a few inches on her. “And, for the record, you’re being insulting—I only have one illegitimate child—and that would be you.”
“I should get that in writing, but I don’t have the time. And, for the record, no one in their right mind would pretend to be me.” I glanced over her shoulder, scanning the room. “Now, where is the prisoner I’m supposed to break out of this loony bin?”
Motioning toward her bed, she stepped aside.
I followed her gesture. My breath caught in my throat.
From her perch on the edge of Mother’s four-poster, an exquisitely beautiful young woman stared at me with luminous brown eyes. Her olive skin was a soft, smooth canvas stretched over high cheekbones. Her eyes tilted up at the corners, enhancing her exotic aura. Full lips softened the angles of her face. A shiny cascade of golden brown hair fell over her shoulders. Fragile and trim like a delicate porcelain doll, she appeared as if she would shatter at the slightest touch.
Dressed in a khaki skirt and a starched white shirt, her hands tucked under her thighs, her long brown legs dangling over the edge of the elevated bed, she stared at me. Her eyes held the terror of the hunted, not the cold-blooded calculation of the hunter.
“Mother, what have you done?” I whispered half to myself as I motioned to the young woman. “Come,” I said to her. “Let’s get you out of here.”
* * *
THE heartwarming thumping of the helicopter at full rpm greeted us as I eased open the back door. Her birdlike hand clutched lightly in mine, I led the young girl outside.
The sheriff, his several deputies, and most of Mother’s staff formed a phalanx, keeping the reporters and photographers well away from our path to the helicopter.
“We’ll have to run for it,” I shouted as I took off, pulling my charge in tow.
Dane had opened both of the doors facing us, and we dove in, me in the front, the girl in the back. Once he had us, Dane lifted the bird and headed for home.
As I buckled the young girl in, she started to cry—tears tracing a sad trail down her cheeks. My heart threatened to break as I placed a headset over her ears and adjusted the mike close to her lips.
Once I settled myself, I said, “Sweetheart, what’s your name?”
“Arrianna.”
“Well, Arrianna, relax. I’m Lucky.” I hooked a thumb at our pilot. “And this is Mr. Dane. We’ve got a nice safe place for you to rest.”
“I think I’ve made a big mistake,” she choked, her voice a tortured whisper.
“The deed isn’t done, yet.” I reached around and squeezed her hand. “You still have time to change your mind. I’ll help you, whatever you decide.”
She looked at me with those mesmerizing eyes, now red with tears.
The trip back to the Babylon wasn’t nearly as much fun as the trip out.
Dane and I sat in silence as Arrianna quietly cried.
IF I didn’t know better, I would’ve said Miss Patterson was showing her passive-aggressive side. In my absence, she had reserved the second largest bungalow in the Kasbah, Bungalow Two, for Arrianna, and had charged it to me. Right now, I wasn’t in the mood to quibble.
As I bustled about, pointing out the various features of one of our finest rooms to Arrianna, it occurred to me I was talking to myself. She wasn’t listening. Not only that, she wasn’t following me, either. Retracing my steps, I found her standing in the main room of the suite looking like a lost puppy caught in the middle of rush-hour traffic.
“This is amazing,” she said, her eyes as big and bright as a harvest moon. “How much does this cost a night?”
“With staff, twenty grand.”
“That’s more than my father makes in a year.” Her shock evident, she walked over to a wingback chair near the window. Her fingers traced the heavy brocade. She looked afraid to sit in it.
“What does your father do?”
“This and that—whatever he can get. He and my mother emigrated from India when they both were in their twenties. My mother was Muslim, my father Hindu. He defied his family, renounced his religion, and married her anyway. With no family, no dowry, no nothing, they’ve had a tough road. They’re living proof that true love doesn’t put food on the table or a roof over your head.” Her back to me, she stared out the window at the fountain burbling in the garden and cascading into the private pool.
“And what do they think about you auctioning yourself to the highest bidder?”
“They are very disappointed.” Her shoulders sagged under the burden of exp
ectation. “This is not what they wanted for me, but I will make it up to them. Next semester, I will join my boyfriend at Stanford Medical School. I’m going to be a pediatrician.”
“Your boyfriend?”
“I know what you’re thinking—Charles and I decided to stay pure until we both were absolutely ready.”
“I see,” I said, although the logic of her story was as convoluted as a mountain road. “No, I don’t see, at all.”
“Do you know how much it costs to attend a private medical school? Even with scholarships we will be buried under debt by the time we can actually earn a living. And we both won’t earn much where we’re going.”
“Where is that?”
“Home to India, where the children die like flies and the world doesn’t seem to care.” Some of her fight came back as she talked. “What does it say about a world that sacrifices its children?”
As I looked at her I wondered, what indeed? I don’t think my young friend saw the irony at all. Of course, I doubted she saw herself as the child she was.
“And Charles, what does he think?”
She deflated. “At first, he was okay with it. I mean, he’s going to marry me because he loves me, right? Not because I’m a virgin.”
“If he loves you, who came before is irrelevant.”
She nodded as if I had confirmed a belief she held, but those close to her did not.
“What about now? Is he still gung ho?”
“He says so, but I think he’s lying.”
“Pragmatism is no match for love. Nobody wants to see their loved one in someone else’s arms.” Even thinking about Teddie and Reza Pashiri made my heart crack a little. With nothing else to add and at a loss as to how to comfort the girl, I turned to go. “I’ll have someone bring you a change of clothes. You’re about a size two, right?”
She nodded.
“Stay put, don’t go wandering around. Since we picked you up in a hot pink helicopter with Babylon stenciled in chartreuse on the side, I think even reporters can put two and two together. Room service has anything you want. Don’t be afraid to indulge. Eat, drink, and be merry.”
Lucky Stiff (Lucky O'Toole Vegas Adventure Book 2) Page 16