At my nod, he continued. “My mother, she likes the earth, the animals. My son, too, likes the animals, especially the babies. My parents have many on their farm.” Jean-Charles chuckled as a faraway look flashed in his eyes. “In the beginning, the animals were to be raised organically. Then, when the time was right, they were to be slaughtered and served in my father’s restaurant. You know, of course, how this would end?”
Taking a sip of wine, I relaxed and smiled, enjoying the story.
“My mother, she gave them all names. This, my father said, was the death kiss. And he was right.” Jean-Charles laughed at the memory and shook his head. “All their animals die of old age.”
“And your father’s restaurant?”
“He buys his meat from a local farmer with a more hard-hearted wife.”
“I would like them, I think.” My phone sang out at my hip—actually it was Teddie doing the singing.
I didn’t meet Jean-Charles’s eyes as I reached for my phone.
I didn’t have any answers, but one thing I knew: My fun was over.
As I raced out of the restaurant, I clung to the tenuous threads of a cheery mood that threatened to evaporate in the face of worry. Jerry’s call had been brief—he refused to share over the phone. He said only that I needed to meet him at the front desk, I’d better hurry, he hoped I hadn’t eaten anything, and I would not like whatever it was he hadn’t told me.
My pulse still racing from the kiss delivered with meaning by my chef, I dodged and darted through the ever-thickening crowd, arriving at the appointed spot in near record time. But Jerry wasn’t there. My back to the counter, I leaned on one elbow and scanned the crowd, cooling my heels, waiting for a man who was never late.
Taking measured breaths and pretending this was just another day, much like all the rest, I reminded myself that all problems, no matter how large, had solutions, but I just wasn’t buying it. That’s the problem with arguing with yourself—nobody ever wins.
This was so not going to be good—I could feel it. Like smoke under a door, an ominous sense of foreboding filtered through the edges of my consciousness. My heart skipped a beat, then raced to catch up.
Surprises, especially bad ones, were among my least favorite things—Jerry knew that. I’d shot people for less—okay, I made that part up—but I’d felt like shooting them. For him to risk running afoul of my notoriously short temper and twitchy trigger finger meant it had to be bad. Real bad.
I should’ve known—today could get worse. Silly me. At least Brandy and Cole were safe under the watchful eye of Detective Romeo as Cole went off to play poker in the High-Stakes Room. At least, that’s where they had said they would be, but I had left in a hurry.
Brandy, Romeo, and Cole. The three of them. Together. Perhaps I should rethink that “safe” part.
“Ms. O’Toole?”
I whirled, even though I knew Jerry would never call me that, and found myself face to face with Sergio Fabiano, our front desk manager.
Dark and delectable, with bedroom eyes, a mop of jet-black hair that he constantly flipped out of his eyes, full, pouty lips, and a body Rodin would have immortalized in marble, Sergio was the perfect frontline face for the Babylon, or so said the Big Boss. Admittedly, he was a tasty bit of eye candy, but he was a tad fussy for my tastes.
If you ask me, it wasn’t his animal magnetism but rather his mystical ability to tame the customers with a firm but gentle hand, like Siegfried and Roy with their white tigers, that endeared him to the brass, me included. As long as he continued beating back the hoards from my office door, I was good. And, as his direct superior, I guess my opinion counted for something, although, at times, I wasn’t so sure.
“Ms. O’Toole, are you busy?” Sergio asked as he grabbed my arm and pulled me toward a couple standing off to the side. “I have some people I’d like you to meet. They are such good customers.”
Something about his manner kept me from shrugging him off. I was as far from being in a social mood as was humanly possible, but he looked like he was having fun. Right now I could use even just a hint of joy, so I let him maneuver me to the far end of the reception desk.
The couple, I guessed them to be somewhere around forty, give or take a few years, stood apart, several feet separating them. To the casual observer, they didn’t look like they were together or that they even knew each other. They didn’t make eye contact, or any contact for that matter. They didn’t chat or exchange flirty looks. In fact, they appeared to be studiously avoiding each other.
The man looked ill at ease, antsy, as he shifted from one foot to the other. I guessed him to be a trifle over six feet since, with me in my sensible Ferragamos with their one-and-a-half-inch heels, we were eye to eye. Casual in his pressed jeans and open-collared shirt, he looked up as I approached. He had kind eyes and a corn-fed, middle-American wholesomeness.
As we stopped in front of the two of them, Sergio motioned toward the woman and said, “This is Mrs. Jacobs.”
Shorter than the man, but not by much, and dressed in a chic Diane von Furstenberg wrap dress and flats, the woman was long and lean, with black hair, penetrating onyx eyes, and porcelain skin.
A quiet mirth sparkled in her eyes and the hint of a grin tugged at the corner of her mouth as she made a shushing sound, then said, “Myrna, please.”
When I took her extended hand, the warmth of her skin surprised me.
Sergio dropped his voice, adopting a conspiratorial whisper. “Right. My apologies.” He gestured toward the gentleman. “And this is Mr. Jacobs.”
“Toby, please,” he said as he grasped my hand and pumped it up and down. “And we don’t know each other. I mean, I know I don’t know you…” He paused, flustered, as his cheeks reddened and he started over. “I was referring to this lady here.” He tilted his head toward the woman who I thought had just been introduced as his wife.
We hadn’t even successfully navigated the how-do-you-dos and I was already at sea. Lately I’d been spending so much time behind the eight ball, I might as well hang out a shingle and call it home.
Pausing, I blew at a lock of hair that tickled my eyes, hoping for an epiphany…or an explanation. When neither was forthcoming, I looked between the two of them then raised a questioning eyebrow at Sergio.
He shrugged and grinned—so helpful.
“I’m Lucky O’Toole,” I said to the couple, “part of the Customer Relations team here at the Babylon.”
My face flushed when I realized I still clutched Mr. Jacobs’s hand. Trying not to call attention to that fact, I let him have it back. If I had breached protocol, he didn’t seem to care. “Welcome to our hotel. I take it, this isn’t your first stay with us?”
“Oh, no,” Myrna said in a theatrical whisper. “We come here every year.”
“But you don’t know each other?”
“Not yet. We meet tonight for the first time.” Myrna glanced at her watch. “Oh, I have to hurry. They’re holding some things for me at the mall. You’ll have to excuse me.” She pecked her husband-who-she-had-yet-to-meet on the cheek. “Bye, honey.” Then she waggled her fingers at us as she stepped away and melted into the crowd.
Toby seemed energized as well. “Gotta scoot. I need to make some…preparations.” He too melted into the crowd although I could see the top of his head as he moved toward the elevators.
When I turned my attention back to Sergio, he pressed his lips together as if trying to stifle a laugh.
“Am I the butt of a joke?” I asked.
Sergio seemed aghast. “But Ms. O’Toole, I would never make you the butt.”
“Trust me, I don’t need your help. I am able to do that all by myself with alarming regularity.” I thought I felt the glimmer of a smile tickle my lips, but I wasn’t sure.
Sergio must’ve seen it as he relaxed a bit, the tension easing from his shoulders as his body settled into its normal insouciance. “I wanted you to meet them—to me they are…wonderful.”
“Certifiable, if you ask me.”
“Perhaps.” Sergio nodded, his dark eyes dancing. “But they have fun. Twice a year they come here together, then pretend to not know each other.”
“A mutual time-out vacation?” I’d met plenty of folks who came to Vegas to take a respite from their marriages—a few even with their spouse’s blessing. But I’d never met a couple traveling together to cheat on each other. Sounded like a prelude to justifiable homicide. “A cheating trip,” I said, not sharing Sergio’s glee.
“Exactly.” Sergio adopted a sage attitude. “But they don’t cheat
on
each other, they cheat
with
each other.”
“Really?” This time I know I managed a smile as the pieces fell into place and it all made sense. Marriage therapy, Vegas-style. Once again love triumphs. Just the thought proved a strong antidote to an abysmal day, so I wallowed a bit. “They role-play—I like it. Do you know if their tastes include a French maid’s outfit? I’ve heard that can be fun—although, between you and me, I’d laugh myself silly. Somehow that would probably break the mood, don’t you think?” Captured by the visual, I glanced at Sergio.
Momentarily struck dumb, he stared at me with owl eyes.
“What?” I kept my face impassive. “You know what they say about all work and no play.”
Sergio still couldn’t rally, which made me proud. Never one to gloat…much…I decided to let him down easy, especially since this wasn’t exactly the sort of professional repartee a corporate type should have with the staff. Even in Sin City we had sexual harassment sensitivity training. However, I never understood whether it was something we were being taught to avoid or to do—lines blur somewhat in Vegas.
“Sorry,” I lied. “Recently, I’ve developed this proclivity for oversharing.” Unfortunately, that last part wasn’t a lie. For some reason, I wasn’t as embarrassed as I should have been. Apparently my give-a-damn had gone AWOL. I wondered if that was a good thing or a bad thing, but I didn’t seem to care.
My front desk manager swallowed hard then continued, “Myrna buys trashy clothes and dresses as a...how should I say it?
“A hooker?”
He shot me a look. “If you wish to be crass, yes. She waits for him at Delilah’s. He picks her up. What happens from there…”
“I can only imagine,” I groused, my fleeting frivolity crushed under the returning weight of reality. That was the problem: I could only imagine.
Leave it to me to live in the Sex Capital of the Western Hemisphere and not be getting any.
***
Apparently underwhelmed by my mood, Sergio left me there contemplating my nonexistent sex life. For a moment I was perplexed by the conundrum of ruminating on something that didn’t exist, then decided I was making a simplicity into a complexity—one of my better skills.
That’s when Jerry appeared at my shoulder and whispered in my ear, “Come with me. You are so not going to like this.” Gripping my elbow, he held me close to his side as steered me toward the garage elevators.
“Oh goody, a surprise.” I managed to choke out, but I swallowed the rest of my sarcasm when I turned and got a good look at his face.
Dark circles half-mooned his bloodshot eyes. Like denim on a twenty-year-old, his skin stretched taut and tight over the frame of his face, bone and sinew barely concealed. Life was sucking him dry. To be honest, our days were filled with herding rattlesnakes. You never knew when the bite would come, but eventually it did—that final venomous sting of reality that would have us chucking it all for a flower stand on a beach in Tahiti. My bags were half packed, Jerry’s too, from the looks of him.
“This is what happens when they don’t let you out to play in the sunshine,” I whispered but his tight lips didn’t bend.
We took the stairs instead of the elevator, Jerry pulling me after him. Two flights left me light-headed. And that, as it turned out, was the best I would feel for the rest of the night.
We burst through the door onto the third floor of the garage and into another world. Like toys abandoned by a two-year-old, police cars rested at odd angles, defining a loose perimeter. Uniformed cops patrolled the periphery while plain-clothes detectives huddled near a dark pickup and stared at the ground between the truck and the yellow Ferrari parked next to it. Crime scene tape draped around the two vehicles. Like vultures eyeing a kill, large lights on stands perched over the area, capturing the scene in stark, unforgiving light.
As we moved to step over the tape, one of Metro’s finest stopped us with a meaty hand to Jerry’s chest. Tall, with broad shoulders and a gut straining the buttons on his wrinkled uniform, he rested his other hand on his service revolver hanging on his hip. With his beady eyes half hidden under a ledge of bushy brows, he perused us with the casual interest of a natural predator already sated, but always willing to eat. The gun on his hip seemed ill advised, but what did I know?
“You two, I don’t know who you think you are but you got no place here,” the man-mountain growled as if talking to the village idiots. My tax dollars at work—I was so proud.
“I’m the head of security at this hotel,” Jerry growled back. “I got more years dealing with crime scenes than you’ve been walking and talking—I know the routine. Don’t tell me where I can and can’t go.” I couldn’t remember the last time Jerry had let someone raise his hackles.
To be honest, I was looking for a fight as well. If the cop had even the hint of a glass jaw, I would’ve been tempted. At least then I’d have a problem I understood.
Before I could do anything rash, Romeo’s head appeared above the bed of the pickup—he must’ve been crouched down between the two vehicles. When he looked at me, our eyes caught and I got a brief glimpse into an old soul. Where had the kid gone?
“Officer, let them through.” Romeo covered the distance between us, stepped on the tape and motioned us over. “Donovan,” he read from the officer’s badge. “I’m going to recommend you for a stint in the Protocol Office.”
Donovan’s face fell as the kid gave me a hidden wink. It was the only hint of mirth in his demeanor.
“Are you getting a complex?” he asked me as I stepped over the tape and brushed by him as he held it down for Jerry.
“No.” I eyed him, searching for an explanation. “Why?”
We stepped around the end of the pickup. There, on the ground, in a contorted position of pain, lay a man—from the looks of him, a very dead man—his face turned away. Balding, a ring of dark hair, thin, wearing a black suit jacket…no, a tuxedo jacket and pants with satin down the side.
Romeo motioned for the gloved tech to roll the body. “Do you know him?”
I stepped closer and bent down to get a good look at the man’s face. My heart stopped. “Shit.” I fought the urge to leap back. “Marvin J. Johnstone. He used to work for us as the manger of our high-stakes poker.”
“Used to?” Romeo raised one eyebrow as he pursed his lips.
“He was fired last night…early this morning.”
“Really? By whom?”
I swallowed hard. “Me.”
“You?” A spark of something lit his eyes then died as the chatter quieted and all heads swiveled in our direction.