Claudine (10 page)

Claudine gaped at the tiger. “You’re her husband?” “Married for five years,” Tyrell said. “Frankie keeps things interesting.”

“I’ll bet she does.”

Frankie moved close to Claudine and trailed her scarlet nails across her rump. “Your skin is still flushed from having my husband. You smell of him.” She moved even closer. “I like that. And I love that feather brand on your wrist.” Frankie grasped
her hand. “Let’s not waste our time,” she said. “You got twice your fee for tonight and I paid half of it.”

This wasn’t the first time Claudine had doubled up; she had no issues with it. But she’d been expecting two men; she hated being taken by surprise and felt edgy because of it. Frankie led her to the pink divan. It had been left behind a screen after Claudine’s burlesque act. She kissed Claudine on the mouth while Tyrell massaged her shoulders. He reached for her breasts from behind, raising them to Frankie’s lips.

After a minute of Frankie’s careful ministrations, Tyrell turned Claudine to face him, left a trail of kisses down her stomach. She tried to resist the delicious quivers his lips caused, flicked a glance back at Frankie. The woman’s lips tightened, a glint of jealousy in her eyes. Claudine knew these situations were often delicate; they always risked animosity from the woman involved. She twisted away from Tyrell and ran her hands over Frankie’s small perky boobs. Featherlight touches on her dark nipples solicited sighs of pleasure. “You’re very attractive, and you’re so hot tonight,” Claudine murmured in Frankie’s ear, “I’m going to have a hard time holding back.”

Frankie gave her a genuine smile in response and relaxed.

Claudine gave up control to Tyrell’s wife, turned around and knelt on the divan, offering herself to Frankie. She sensed Frankie approach, felt the woman reach under to lift her hips and play with the mouth of her vagina. Frankie slapped her ass and spread her wide with her fingers.

She felt the dildo press into her notch, felt its hard length slide into her up to the hilt, filling her completely. Frankie clamped her hand on Claudine’s hips, forcing the dildo in deeper,
rocking her with rapid motions. It was a strange, schizophrenic encounter. Claudine experienced nothing but blankness in her groin at the women’s feverish assault, yet felt a lovely buzz float through her as Tyrell fondled her nipples.

“Suck my husband’s cock while I do you,” Frankie demanded. Claudine obeyed; she took the thick head of Tyrell’s cock in her mouth and ran her tongue up and down his shaft. She grasped the base of his penis and deep throated him, knowing instinctually Frankie would want her to take all of him.

“Good,” Frankie cooed, flicking her nail over Claudine’s clit. The sharpness made Claudine buck, and Frankie thrust harder. After a few moments, she’d had enough and Claudine faked it by letting Frankie feel a tremble run through her body and moaning loudly.

She felt Frankie’s hands on her back, pushing away, the sucking release of the dildo as it popped out. “You’ve really got me going,” Frankie said huskily. “But now I need my man.”

She moved out of the way while Frankie straddled Tyrell on the divan. He toyed with her dark ringlets, her tits and the nest of wiry black hair at her pubis. The animal in him took over for real this time. With few more preliminaries than that he pushed her on her back, pinned her arms above her head, and pushed into her. She gasped. Their bellies slapped together. After a moment, he flipped her around, pressed her head into the divan so that her tush was up in the air. He screwed her noisily from behind, his arms, abs and chest glistening with the sweat of his efforts. His wife grunted with each of his powerful thrusts, and as he came, she collapsed beneath him with a loud cry. She lay underneath her husband, his arms and legs entwined around her body. He nuzzled her and rubbed his cheek on hers.

Claudine blew them a kiss good-bye, scooped the red frock coat off the floor and Andrei, waiting in the wings, draped it around her shoulders, ready to escort her back to her dressing room.

She got a rush out of knowing her most intimate moments were shared with strangers. In a few weeks if she recalled Frankie and Tyrell at all, it would be indistinctly. It was best not to remember faces in her business. Call it professional forgetting. Clients didn’t want their faces remembered. They hoped to be forgotten; that was the whole point. Sex without obligation was exhilarating. Soon, the faces of the tiger and his pale, black-haired wife would fade. That’s what she loved about it. The heat of the moment dissolving to blissful forgetfulness.

But what of Frankie’s compliment about her feather brand? An innocent remark or did it have a deeper meaning? She banished the thought as soon as it arose. If she wasn’t careful, she’d end up paranoid, imagining every new customer an enemy.

M
aria and Andrei found Lillian curled up on the cot in the dressing room, asleep. Lillian’s petite, compact little body was perfectly relaxed: her mouth was slightly open, and her tiny, strong hands were tucked under her cheek. In sleep, she looked younger than her years.

Lillian had left her family in the Philippines at the age of eighteen, newly married to her cousin. She was the sacrificial lamb, earning money in America as a makeup artist to keep her parents, siblings, in-laws—fifteen people altogether—alive. She saw her husband once every three years when she went back home. He had another woman there with whom he’d fathered
three children. Lillian’s parents insisted on her marriage to bond her more closely to the family, the strings that kept her attached, crucial for their survival. That was the difference between Maria and Lillian. Lillian accepted her bonds; Maria refused to be tied down.

Her eyes lit on a white envelope with her name typed upon it, propped against the mirror on the dressing room table beside a white gardenia, a bow tied to its stem. She picked up the envelope and tore open the flap. Inside, on a simple piece of notepaper, were the words:
This flower is one of many but you are the finest of them all. Irreplaceable to me. A gift awaits.

She thought immediately of Reed. It was the kind of gesture he’d make although she doubted he’d use such stilted language. But why did he think it necessary to flatter her anymore? And how on earth did he know where she was?

She woke Lillian gently. “All done. Time to go back to the hotel.” Maria gestured to the table. “This note and the flower—who brought them?”

Lillian sat up and rubbed the sleep from her eyes. “One of the waiters from the lounge. He didn’t get the name.”

She picked up the flower and inhaled in its pungent scent. Likely one of the customers from tonight, too shy to meet her face-to-face. It was a sweet gesture.

While Lillian packed up their cases, Maria dressed in her street clothes and Andrei called down to the limo driver. In the hotel elevator on their way to their rooms, Maria held the note up between two fingers for Andrei to read. “What do you think of that?” she asked.

Andrei frowned. “From Reed Whitman?”

Ever since he saw Reed at the library a few days ago, a wall
had grown up between Andrei and Maria. She’d tried to chip away at Andrei’s sullen emotional distance by teasing him and sweet-talking him into a better mood, but he wasn’t having any of it. All her efforts failed. He was acting like a jealous lover. It was the first time she could remember him being so difficult.

Tonight, though, she found his reaction amusing. “Don’t think so. Reed wouldn’t use such flowery words.”

“Right,” Andrei said dismissively.

Maria slipped the key card into the slot and opened the door to her hotel room. As she screamed Andrei grabbed her from behind and pulled her back into the hallway.

A blond woman lay upon the bed, her face battered beyond recognition. Her pelvic area and genitals were saturated in blood.

CHAPTER
11

“Don’t go in. Stand against the wall, both of you,” Andrei ordered. “Don’t move from this spot.” He took out his gun, went inside and shut the door quietly. Maria scrambled through her bag for her phone. She could barely hit the keys for 911, her body shook so much. Just as the dispatcher answered, the door cracked open again. Andrei stepped into the hall, shoving his pistol back into the shoulder holster underneath his jacket. “It’s not real, Maria. Hang up.”

“Nine-one-one. What’s your emergency?”

Maria covered her phone and whispered, “What are you talking about?”

“It’s a doll. It’s not real.” He motioned for the two women to follow him.

“Hello? Nine-one-one. State your emergency please.”

She shut off the phone. Her legs trembled so much she had trouble approaching the bed. And yes, now she could see the
rubbery pink skin, the coarse doll’s hair, the dimples at the knees and elbows, remarkably lifelike limbs and fingers. It was an inflatable sex doll, the kind with realistic breasts and open orifices—mouth, vagina and anus—suiting all tastes. But whether the blood that covered it was real or even human was impossible to tell. It looked to be. The doll’s vacant openmouthed smile and slack limbs spelled their own horror.

Lillian hovered outside the room, unwilling to go near it. Andrei used his phone to click pictures of the doll.

Maria went into the bathroom to splash cold water on her face. Stuck to the mirror was a photo of her posing as Lili St. Cyr at the club in midperformance. She’d just stripped off the black chiffon skirt and the bustier. The photographer snapped her as she’d lowered the ostrich feather fan, tilting her chest out to display her bare breasts, the rhinestone pasties catching the light like glittering gems. Underneath the photo were a few neatly typed lines:

There once was a girl from Siret
Six-year-old Maria
Innocent angel or
suca
?
She’s a girl I won’t forget.

Maria ripped down the photo.
Suca
was Russian for whore; Siret, the town near the orphanage.

She flicked a towel off the towel rack, wiped her face and stomped over to the doll, gingerly lifted it so she could see the underside of its right wrist. Printed onto the rubber skin was a feather exactly like hers.

“Look at this!” She thrust the photo at Andrei.

He raised troubled eyes to the picture, then glanced over at the blood-splattered doll. “He’s upping the ante, showing he can have access to you anytime he pleases. That he can slip in and out of your room at will with nothing to stop him. He wants to keep you in a constant state of fear.”

“Well, it’s not going to work. And why a doll this time?”

“Don’t know. Probably too risky with guests and cameras everywhere to kill a real woman.”

Maria rubbed her right wrist subconsciously, as she did whenever she felt anxious. The shrink she’d seen as a teenager said it was a kind of flashback to the times she’d been strapped to the orphanage crib. “He’s not going to turn me into a spineless victim. You have to find him, Andrei. There has to be a way.”

A hard rap on the door silenced her.

Andrei peered through the eyehole. “It’s hotel security. I called them.” He opened the door.

The security director entered the room and introduced himself. He had an air of self-importance. His eyes widened when he looked at the bed. “Jesus! Is that a sex doll?” He addressed his remark to Andrei as if Maria and Lillian were invisible.

“Yeah.”

“Any idea who did it?”

Maria interrupted the man, irritated by his attitude. “I’ve been getting threatening e-mails. Whoever’s harassing me must have done this too.”

He took in the three of them. “And what’s the relationship here? Are you all guests? I need to see some ID and your key cards.”

“We’re all hotel clients,” Andrei interjected, giving their names and individual room numbers, clearly disliking his
manner as much as Maria did. “Do you have cameras in the hallways? Any chance there’s video of whoever did this?”

“A very good one.” He whipped out his phone and asked one of his staff to check the cameras on their floor. He suggested all three of them wait in the unoccupied room next door until the film was ready. “Have you called the police yet?”

“No need to,” Andrei said. “This is vandalism, pure and simple. Believe me, I’ve seen hotel rooms trashed much worse than this. No one’s been hurt and I imagine the hotel would prefer to avoid the negative publicity. If you don’t mind, we’ll wait right here until we see that camera footage.”

The director hesitated for a moment, unable to make up his mind, then said, “All right, I see your point. Let’s keep this a private matter.”

Maria silently thanked Andrei for his quick thinking. If the local police were called and decided to dig deeply enough, an investigation would reveal that she was more than just an exotic dancer. She stood a greater chance of being arrested than the sick stalker who was messing with her.

When it finally arrived, the video proved disappointing; it showed only a heavyset male around six feet tall, wearing a knapsack, keeping his head down, approaching Maria’s hotel room. A glimpse of his face shrouded by a hoodie showed he was probably Caucasian. He took a quick look around to make sure no one was in the hall, slapped on latex gloves. The time stamp for the figure’s entry into her room read 12:30
A.M
.—the point Maria commenced her second act with the tiger man. He used some device to unlock the door, stayed inside for twenty-two minutes, then exited the room and strode down the hall to the elevators.

“Guy’s clever.” The security director’s eyes raked Maria’s figure.

“Why do you say that?” Maria demanded.

“He’s avoiding the cameras, that’s why. What are you people doing in town?”

Maria had mentioned to some of the other hotel staff that she was performing at the club; he’d find out soon enough if she lied to him. “I’m a dancer. I had a gig tonight at Show World Live!”

He made a sucking sound with his lips. “Well, you girls are ripe prey for this sort of stuff. These guys can get worked up. Put a few drinks in them and a couple of hits of coke and they go a little haywire. It goes with the territory.”

“You’re saying staging a fake murder is
going a little haywire
?”

“Loonies are attracted to the sex stuff. I’m just being realistic.”