Green Eyes in Las Vegas (10 page)

The bank statement covered the last three months, and I went through it carefully. There were once-a-month deposits, a couple of grand each time, which I assumed was her income from being a stripper. Other than those deposits, there was no money coming in. There were a couple
of cash withdrawals, and there was a regular, once-a-month bank transfer of five thousand dollars each month, for the last three months, to a Cheryl Czekanski.

Cheryl must’ve been one hell of a pal for Crystal to transfer so much money over to her each month, but I’d never heard
of this girl’s name before. I switched on my laptop and typed it in, half-hoping that I’d find a result. Instead, there were twenty pages of results. Clearly, there was a large population of Polish women named Cheryl, so I changed my search to “Cheryl Czekanski, Las Vegas.”

This time, I got about five pages of results. I clicked through the top couple of results – there was a dermatologist, a marketing expert, a nutritionist. This was going nowhere. I skipped over to the
“Image” results, hoping I’d see a familiar face. Once again, I didn’t see anyone I recognized. There were photos of the dermatologist, the marketing expert and the nutritionist, along with photos of a dozen other girls. There were a couple of kids who looked about five years old, and I had a brief moment of worry about their privacy before I moved on. There was a photo of a gorgeous blonde, a woman with curly black hair, and someone who wore two-inch thick eyeliner and had dyed her hair purple.

I switched off my laptop and called Samantha. My phone went straight to voicemail, so I assumed she was at work and left her a message
, letting her know I’d come by to talk to her tomorrow. I needed to talk to Crystal’s friends at The Peacock Bar, and maybe I could ask Samantha if she knew Cheryl Czekanski.

It was almost
time for the party, so I slipped into the shimmery green dress I’d selected, piled on some eyeliner, mascara and lipstick, and ran a straightener through my hair till I figured I could almost pass as an extremely high-class escort.

There was a knock on my door at exactly seven, and I wondered whether Stone had arrived early and waited in his car until the precise, correct time. When I opened the door, he raised one eyebrow almost imperceptibly, and I thought I saw the hint of a smile.

“I’ve never seen you wearing a dress before,” he said.

“And I’ve never seen you wearing a suit.”

Our eyes met and held for a brief second. I wondered whether I should admit that he looked good, but I waited for him to say something first. Another second ticked away.

Finally, I said, “Aren’t you going to tell me I look nice?”

Stone smiled. “I knew you’d say that.”

I scowled and grabbed my bag, feeling as though I’d lost in some childish game. “Why can’t you act like an adult?” I grumbled as we
approached the elevator.

“Why can’t you?”

Trouble is, I
was
acting like an adult. That’s why I wanted him to compliment me, and that’s why I thought he looked like James Bond but couldn’t say anything about it. Sure, James Bond drives an Aston Martin, and Stone drives a silver Porsche convertible, but I’m pretty sure the similarities end there.

I stepped into his car and placed my tiny, beaded purse on my lap. The engine
purred into life, and just before he pulled away from the curb, Stone reached over and grabbed my hand in his.

My skin seemed to burn where he touched me, and I felt a jolt of electricity run up my arm and spread through my body. I looked at him in surprise. His eyes had softened and he said gently, “You look beautiful.”

The air seemed to have left my body and I wondered if he’d lean forward to kiss me. I was beginning to think it might have been a bad idea to invite Stone to the party, when he released my hand and began to drive away.

We didn’t say anything on the short drive up to
The MontePatria Casino. With anyone else, that might have been awkward, but I was used to being in silence next to Stone. Still, I wondered if I’d misread something in our conversation there.

***

Outside the Forum Ballroom, where the party was being held, there were two men with square bodies stuffed into dark suits, checking everyone’s invitation cards.

Stone and I slid
past them effortlessly, and once we were inside, I took a moment to imbibe the atmosphere. Like most places in Vegas, the room was large and ostentatious. Massive chandeliers hung from the ceiling, Romanesque art hung from the walls, and the floor was varicolored marble. The lighting was diffused and classy, and I thought I heard the subtle notes of classical music above the low hum of polite conversation. 

The women were all dressed in slinky outfits like mine, and the men were in suits or tuxedos. Everyone was sipping drinks and nibbling hors d’oeuvres elegantly. There was an air of chummy belongingness inside the room – everyone here was wealthy, powerful,
or important, or all three. Except for Stone and myself, of course. And I’m not really sure about Stone – for all I knew, he was wealthy and successful, and a powerful behind-the-scenes advisor to some bigshots.

I glanced around the room, trying to find a man who matched the photos of Jeremy
, the owner of the stolen Van Gogh, that Stacey had shown me. There were only a hundred or so people, and I spotted Jeremy right away – he was holding a glass of whisky in his hand and chatting with two women in their late sixties.

I nudged Stone. “That’s him.”

We began to walk over to Jeremy when Stone ran into someone he knew.

“You son-of-a-bitch!” the chubby, grey-haired man said. “Good to see you again!”

“Harry.”

They did some back-slappingly manly hugging, and then Stone introduced me. “This is Harry,” he told me. “I did some work for him.”

“Are you kidding?” the man said. “Guy practically saved my business. And me.”

Stone asked how Noel and Sharon were doing, and they chatted about these mysterious people for a few minutes before we moved on. Jeremy was alone now,
glancing vaguely at the guests and probably looking for someone he knew.

We were about to make a beeline
for him, when Detective Elwood stepped in front of me, blocking our path.

“Tiffany Black,” he said slowly, “How nice to see you here.”

Elwood’s voice was low, and I seemed to detect a slightly menacing edge. He looked incongruous in his shiny, slightly-too-tight suit, and in his left hand he held a glass of transparent liquid with a slice of lime in it. To the casual observer, it looked like a vodka tonic, but as an experienced dealer, I know a decoy drink when I see one – it was definitely a club soda, and he was definitely not drinking.

He nodded at Stone and said, “I wish I could say it’s a pleasure meeting you.”

“I wish I could say the same,” Stone replied.

A waitress passed by with a tray of smoked salmon topped with crème fraiche and chives on thin crackers, and Elwood grabbed one for himself. “What’re you doing here?” he asked Stone
.

“Business,” Stone said.

Elwood snorted. “I’ll bet. As long as it’s nothing we have to look into later.”

Before Stone could reply, Elwood turned to me and said, “Why am I not surprised to see you two together?”

I looked at him in disbelief. “How do you mean?” He just snorted again, and I said, “What’re
you
doing here?”

He
inhaled the cracker in one bite and narrowed his eyes. “I’ve got a hunch that whoever stole the Van Gogh is gonna turn up here. Lots of art lovers. You can’t sell it on the black market or through a dealer, now that we’re investigating, but you
can
sell one on one. This party is just an excuse for introductions.” He glanced at Stone and then back at me again. “Let me know if you meet anyone interesting.”

Elwood walked away, trying to chase down a waitress carrying a tray of exotic-looking mini-sandwiches, and Stone and I looked at each other.

“Man’s a nutcase,” I said.

Stone nodded. “Amazing how a woman can screw you up like that.”

He gave me a long look and I said, “Hey! It’s not like women collude together to screw up men. Men do it to themselves.”

“Hmm.”

We looked around, trying to find Jeremy, but he was nowhere to be seen.

“Oh crap!” I said. “Don’t tell me he’s left already?”

“Impossible. Everyone stays for the speeches.”

I
frowned. What would I tell Stacey, that I’d lost the man in the middle of a crowded room? I looked back at Elwood, who’d managed to chase down the waitress, and was now stuffing his face with whatever she had on her tray, and cursed him silently.

There were three tall, roundish men in their early sixties standing in front of us, all wearing boots and cowboy hats. They were laughing about something and I pegged them as Texans.

“Well, nice meeting you,” one of them said, “I’m gonna find me another drink. How ’bout you, fellas?”

The other two aging cowboys agreed that they, too, wanted drinks. All three of them spotted a waitress carrying a tray of champagne glasses at the same time, and they all wandered off after her.

That’s when I saw Jeremy. The three Texans had been talking to him, shielding him from our view with their wide hats and even wider bodies. I felt a wave of relief wash through me, and Stone and I sauntered up to him.

“Hi,” Stone said, “We haven’t met. I’m Jonathon Stone, and this is Tiffany.”

“Jeremy.”

We shook hands and Stone asked some polite questions – what brought him here? Did he know Oscar Goodman personally? Weren’t the tourists being awful this year?

I’d always thought of Stone as being a silent, stoic person, so seeing him turn on the charm was a bit of a surprise. In contrast, I felt like an awkward, frizzy-haired teenager, not quite knowing what to say.

After a while, Jeremy asked Stone what he did, and he used this opportunity to pull out his card and hand it over. “Security services, mainly,” Stone said. “Plus some investing, some funding new companies.”

“Sounds interesting,” Jeremy said. “I’m involved with clothing imports.”

I racked my brains to come up with some way of talking about the theft, but I couldn’t. Stone said, “Oh, that’s a guy I have to say hello to over there. I’ll catch you guys later.”

He disappeared, and I shifted my weight uncomfortably. “So,” I said. “Do you travel much?”

Jeremy shrugged. “Just a bit for business.”

He clearly wasn’t about to bring up the theft on his own so I said, “Yeah. I’ve got a friend working insurance, says thefts really go up when people leave town.”

“Oh?” Jeremy began looking around, clearly trying to escape, and I cursed my conversation
al skills. Usually they’re quite good – except when it really matters.

“Yeah.” I nodded. “She’s working on this one theft now, guy lived in Ascend
Towers and his Van Gogh was stolen.”

Jeremy’s attention switched back to me with laser-precision. “Really? What else did she say?”

“Uh… She just said to travel safe.”

I was mentally slapping my forehead. How had I gotten so stuck? I would’ve been better off even if I’d just asked him straight up, “Hey, I heard you got your painting stolen. Any idea who did it?”

Instead, here I was, being pumped for information by Jeremy.

He said, “What about
this Van Gogh theft? Are they working on it?”

I frowned, trying to think fast. “I guess I shouldn’t talk about. It could be anyone here.”

We looked at each other warily. This conversation was going downhill fast, and I needed to do some damage control. “Actually,” I said, “She told me that the guy who owned the painting was called Jeremy. Is that you?”

We stared at each other in silence, and then he said, “Yeah, it is me
, actually.”

I could see him trying to figure out if I’d know
n all along that it’d been his painting, so I quickly said, “Wow, what a coincidence! Small world, huh?”

He smiled a terse, tight-lipped smile, not seeming to have been convinced by my act, but I pressed on. “I’m so sorry about the robbery. It must feel awful.”

“Yeah,” he said. “It’s pretty awful.”

“Any idea who did it? Or how it happened?”

He shrugged. “Just some guy, I guess.”

“But I heard you’ve got great security at Ascend. How’d he get through?”

“Umm, I’m not sure really.”

“Security must’ve been off?”

“Yeah, I think he turned it off. Anyway…”

He was trying to run off again, so I said, “Geez, I hope the insurance pays out properly.”

Jeremy focused his attention on me again and said, “Why, did your friend say anything?”

I frowned and thought back to what Stacey had said. “I think they’re meant to pay out after three months, right? Unless it turns up again.”

He nodded. “That’s what they say. Those scum better pay up, this time.”