Authors: Elizabeth Lowell
Las Vegas
November 4
Late morning
J
ohn Firenze grabbed
his private phone like it was a winning lottery ticket. “Yeah?”
“Sheridan left with Tannahill and another man. They haven’t returned.”
“Where did they go?”
“Out.”
“Jesus Christ, I could have guessed that!” He glared across his office to a window that overlooked the construction of another huge resort/casino. The problem with hiring relatives was that not all of them were real bright. At least his cousin Frankie had more wattage than numb-nuts Cesar. “Out where?”
“Place called the Jackpot Motel. The old bag there said they asked questions about Cherelle, Tim, and a dude called Socks. Cost me fifty bucks to find out that she didn’t know anything so they didn’t learn anything useful.”
Socks. Shit. They’d made his fucking stupid nephew.
“What are they doing now?”
“They split up. The second guy is going door-to-door with two photos.”
“Who of?”
“I didn’t get close enough to see. Want me to?”
“No. Get Sheridan alone and give her the message I gave you. Got it?”
“Yeah, but it won’t be easy. Tannahill’s all over her like a rash.”
“Don’t tell me your problems. I got plenty of my own.”
Firenze disconnected and punched in the number he’d memorized simply by using it so many times in the last hour. The answering machine picked up again. He didn’t wait to hear the message. Like the number, he had it memorized by now:
Mr. Shapiro of the Second Chance Loan Exchange is with a customer. Please leave a message, and he will get back to you as soon as possible.
Firenze looked at his watch. He couldn’t stall much longer. Another hour and he’d have to settle for a smaller piece of the pie.
Or none at all.
Las Vegas
November 4
Early afternoon
W
illiam Covington’s business
establishment looked like what it was, an upscale antique-consignment store that was rumored to lend money for short terms at ruinous rates with antiques as collateral. Brown furniture loomed everywhere, set off by crystal chandeliers and Tiffany-style lamps. The only weapons in the place were more than a hundred years old and mounted on the wall like trophies. Glass cases displayed smaller items whose value and portability might tempt a browser into crime.
“Thank you for seeing me on such short notice,” Shane said when Covington came hurrying out of his office toward them.
“My pleasure, Mr. Tannahill, Ms. Sheridan.” Covington smiled at each in turn, displaying brilliant teeth. “Come back to my office, please. I have coffee waiting.”
Neither Shane nor Risa was interested in coffee, but they followed Covington anyway. The office promised more privacy than the front salesroom, where high-end bargain hunters and hungry decorators prowled among the dark furniture.
After everyone had sipped coffee and made appropriately meaningless remarks about the lack of weather in Las Vegas, Covington looked at Shane expectantly.
“I understand you sometimes do business with Mr. Smith-White,” Shane said.
“We pass business along to each other, yes.” Covington smiled. “We’re friendly competitors.”
Shane nodded to Risa. She took an envelope from her purse, pulled out glossy photos, and began spreading them across Covington’s nineteenth-century mahogany desk. Shane watched the store owner, not the photos. There wasn’t any flicker of eyelids, any shift in his mouth, any increase in the pulse beating visibly above his white collar.
Not one sign that he recognized the photos.
“Quite unusual,” Covington said. “Are they for sale?”
“How much do you think they would be worth?” Risa asked quickly.
“Heavens.” He frowned. “I’d have to think about that. I deal more in furniture than in decorative arts and antiquities. I haven’t any idea what these items might be worth.”
“Really?” Risa lifted her eyebrows. “Then how did you decide what to charge Smith-White for them?”
Covington absorbed the fact that apparently he had sold the gold. “Smith-White. Really. Was it a recent sale?”
“Early July, according to the receipts.”
With a wave of his pale hand, Covington dismissed the matter. “Well, there you have it. My shop sells many things that I don’t personally handle. This was probably part of an estate consignment or a consolidation consignment from another dealer which I sold to Smith-White because it suited his clientele more than mine.”
“According to Smith-White’s records, you purchased these gold artifacts from a Mr. Shapiro,” Risa said.
“Then I or one of my representatives undoubtedly did just that.”
“The provenance provided was sketchy,” Risa said, watching him closely. “Second-generation descendant of a now-dead purchaser.”
“Distressing how little the modern world cares about the past, isn’t it?”
“So you’ve never seen these before?” Risa asked.
“Never. Sorry.” Covington smiled and stood up. “Now, unless there’s anything else I can do for you, I really must be off. So much to do.” He turned to Shane. “I have a lovely new consignment from Italy to price. If you ever decide to open a gambling museum, there is a particularly remarkable roulette wheel I would like to you to see. Gold rails, ebony and ivory insets, with a solid gold ball. It was used by Italian aristocracy for their own amusement.”
“Send photos and particulars to my office,” Shane said, standing and helping Risa to her feet, squeezing her hand in a warning for her to be silent. He gathered the pictures of the gold artifacts and slid them into his breast pocket. “If you remember anything else about the provenance of this gold, or if you have gold antiquities of a similar quality, my ten-thousand-dollar reward still stands.”
Thin gray brows twitched. “Indeed. I shall check my inventory quite carefully.”
Shane smiled like a wolf. “You do that.”
As soon as they were outside, Risa said, “That lying sack of shit.”
“We can’t prove it.”
She blew out an impatient breath. He was right and she knew it. She just didn’t like it. “Now what?”
“Shapiro.”
“Another lying sack of shit?”
Shane didn’t answer. He didn’t have to. His thin smile said it all.
Las Vegas
November 4
Early afternoon
I
an had seen enough
dried blood to know what it looked like. Not that you had to be some kind of twenty-first-century Dick Tracy to figure out that the partial handprint on the side wall of the shoe-repair shop was organic and fairly recent. Even though the blood was dark rusty red and sun-struck, the flies were all over it, so he was sure it wasn’t some graffiti artist’s sprayed statement of urban anomie. There was a palm-size puddle of dried blood on the cracked pavement of the alley, too, as though someone had leaned there, gathering strength to cross the street.
Six doors down the alley, a uniformed cop was stringing yellow tape over the back of a crime scene. The bad news was that Ian couldn’t track the blood back to its source without giving himself away. The good news was that the crime tape didn’t leave much doubt about the source.
Since the cop didn’t notice Ian looking down the alley, Ian just kept on walking until he reached the end of the block and could see down the main street. There was yellow tape all over one storefront. Several squad cars were double-parked in front. So was an ambulance. A white news van with a satellite feed sitting on its roof like a big soup dish waited curbside in front of the ambulance. Two plainclothes cops talked with a cameraman and a reporter who were leaning against the news van, waiting for a photo op.
Ian walked up to the uniformed cop who was guarding the front entrance. “Heart attack?” he asked.
The cop gave him a look. “What’s it to you?”
“Nothing, so long as it isn’t one of these two people.” Ian pulled out the two photos. “Is it?”
The cop glanced down at the photos. “What do you want them for?”
“Missing person, nonsuspicious disappearance. Left her husband and kids back on the farm and came here to make her fortune. Her grandmother won’t give up looking for her, which is fine for me.” Ian flashed his trust-me smile. “Pays the rent. The guy may or may not be her most recent live-in.”
The cop took another look at the photos. “This part of town is my beat. I know the hookers and the drunks and the regulars. Don’t recognize either one of them.”
“Thanks anyway. I’ll try up and down the street. Maybe I’ll get lucky.”
The rattle of gurney wheels announced the ambulance crew a few seconds before they rolled out into the streaming sunlight. A dark body bag was strapped to the white sheet over the thin mattress. The way the bag moved announced that rigor mortis wasn’t a problem any longer.
“Hey, wait!” called the cameraman, hurrying over. “Back it up and come out again, okay?”
One of the detectives yelled after the cameraman, “You think anyone in Vegas gives a shit about slime like Joey Cline?”
“It’s a corpse, ain’t it?” said the cameraman. “Give us a minute and do it again, okay?”
The ambulance crew shrugged. It wasn’t like it made any difference to their patient. “Yeah, sure. Dude’s been dead for probably a day. Few more minutes won’t matter.”
Ian waited near the satellite truck, hoping to overhear something else useful. No such luck.
By the time he faded into the edges of the thin knot of people that had gathered, the ambulance crew was making its third run-through for the “live film at six o’clock.” The on-air reporter checked the smooth blond helmet of his hair, straightened his suit coat and tie, took his place by the front door of the pawnshop, and began talking into a mike for the third time. One of the detectives stood to his right, not blocking the camera’s view of the scene and the reporter.
“This is Ralph Metcalfe at the scene of a brutal murder just moments away from Glitter Gulch. According to the police, Mr. Joseph Cline was found in a pool of his own blood in the back of his store. Another bloody spot indicated that a second man, possibly his attacker, had been lying on the floor. The whereabouts of the second man is unknown.” He turned to face the cop. “Detective Yarrow, does the Las Vegas Police Department have any leads on this bloody and terrible murder?”
Ian was around the corner and out of sight before the detective got his fifteen seconds of fame. As soon as Ian was sure he’d faded away without attracting any official attention, he sent an update to Rarities and to Shane’s voice mail. Then, just in case the cops checked, Ian worked his way through the storefronts, showing photos and asking earnest questions. No one recognized Cherelle or Socks.
Casually Ian eased down the side street and crossed over to the continuation of the alley leading away from the pawnshop. If the cops hadn’t discovered the blood spoor back in the other alley, they would soon.
It took a few moments to pick up the trail of brown drops again. It led him down the alley and across a different street, up two half blocks . . . and vanished.
He thought about the back trail and the old woman at the motel.
There’s some apartments a few blocks over to the north and a few old houses just beyond. That’s the direction he went when he walked.
Ian headed north, taking alleys, looking for more blood. He didn’t find any until he was within sight of the back of one of the two old houses that huddled together against the onslaught of apartment buildings and strip malls. There were bloody handprints on the back door of 113 Oasis Lane.
No one answered Ian’s knock on the rear door. The possible entrances were barred. Ian could have gotten through the metal, but he preferred to do it in the dark.
He went around to the front. To one side there was a wall of run-down apartments. To the other was another bungalow. A man old enough to be God was sitting on the front porch. He was so still Ian wondered if he was alive.
“Looking for something?” the man asked in a cracking voice.
Ian shaded his eyes from the relentless sun and walked up to the porch. Stretched out at the man’s feet was a hound so old that it was gray from its nose to the back of its floppy ears.
“Good afternoon, sir,” Ian said, smiling as he climbed the two low steps onto the porch. “Perhaps you can help me. I’m searching for a young lady by the name of Cherelle Faulkner. The woman in the apartment across the street and down a ways said that someone at 113 Oasis Lane might be able to help me.”
As he spoke, Ian pulled out the pictures and presented them to the old man, who took a long time to fish half-glasses from his shirt pocket and settle them onto his nose.
The hound didn’t stir at the interruption. Not so much as a quiver.
Ian wondered if it was stuffed.
“Ay-ah. She comes around a couple times of year,” the man said in a scratchy Northeast accent. “Lives with that sweet lady’s no-good son.”
“The sweet lady next door?” Ian asked, gesturing toward 113 Oasis Lane.
“Ay-ah. Mrs. Seton.”
“Is this her son?” Ian asked, tapping the photo of Socks.
The old man shook his head. “He’s the bastid that drives the fahting purple car.”
Ian swallowed a laugh by clearing his throat. “Do you know when Mrs. Seton will be back? Cherelle’s grandmother really wants to see her granddaughter before she dies.”
“Mrs. Seton didn’t say. Just dumped Pitty Pat on me and took off in that black limousine yesterday afternoon.”
Ian was almost afraid to ask. “Pitty Pat?”
“My Siamese. Cat likes the Widow Seton better, ’cause old Barks A Lot chases her, so she’s always going and hiding next door.”
“Barks A Lot?”
“My hound.” He nudged the big animal stretched out at his feet.
The hound didn’t move.
“Chases Pitty Pat,” Ian said.
“Ay-ah.”
“Cat must have a helluva long memory.”
“Ay-ah.”
“Did you see anyone with Mrs. Seton?”
“Can’t say. Car pulled around to the back to pick her up. I know she’s gone, though.”
“How?”
“Pitty Pat stayed here. Soon as Mrs. Seton comes back, Pitty Pat will run off again.”
Ian folded a twenty-dollar bill and put it into the old man’s pocket along with a business card that had Ian’s cell phone number on it. “If anybody comes back here, I’d appreciate a call.”
“Don’t want to bring trouble down on the widow. She don’t much like that Cherelle. Heard ’em arguing more than once.” He shook his head. “Poor Mrs. Seton. Cherelle is what we used to call coarse.”
Ian bet people still called it that.