Scottsdale Heat: a romantic light-hearted murder mystery (Laura Black Mysteries Book 1) (24 page)

“They must be having a storm in the Pacific today,” she yelled back at me. “Laguna has overhead waves this morning. I’d love to be back there. It would give me a chance to wear my purple wet suit. I haven’t worn it in years.”

I walked into the front part of the office. Gina was nowhere to be seen. I plopped down on the chair besides Sophie’s desk.

“Wow,” she said, “you look terrible. No luck in finding the bag last night?”

“Nope,” I said, “And I’m out of ideas. I just don’t know where to go next. How was the wedding?”

“It was great. I met a cute electrical engineer. He works at the Intel plant in Chandler.”

“Did Gina come up with anything yet?”

“She has an interview with a man who knows the woman in the lobby who lost her bikini top. Gina hopes to get a line on whoever paid her to flash her boobs. Apparently, bikini woman works at Jeannie’s, so Alex probably knew her and it was most likely him.”

“We’ve assumed it was Alex, but if it wasn’t we’ll have something new to go on. I’m out of leads. I have no idea where the freakin’ bag is.”

After that we both sat in silence. Sophie had stopped looking at her computer. She instead was staring into space, chewing on her lower lip, apparently deep in thought. I was about to ask her about it.

“There’s one thing I don’t get,” Sophie slowly said. “We don’t think Alex had anything to do with this until he showed up at the Blue Palms to deliver the car.”

“True,” I said. “Before that, he seemed to be leading a normal life. I talked to his parole officer about it. He said con men sometimes have a relapse. Sometimes an easy con just falls into their lap. They can’t help themselves. They just steal out of a knee-jerk reaction.”

“OK, I get that part. But, if that’s true, then Alex didn’t know he was going to steal the Russian’s bag until he saw it that morning. Maybe he went to the front desk to ask about the person he was delivering the car to? Maybe he saw the little guy holding the bag tightly to his chest? Maybe he could tell it was valuable? Maybe he somehow talked bikini girl into losing her top to create a distraction? I get all that. What I don’t get is where did he get the bag he used to make the switch? Odds are pretty low he just happened to be carrying around the exact same color and type of gym bag.”

It was like somebody turned on a light in my head. It was so obvious. Where
did
Alex get the bag? A bag that was so identical the Russians didn’t know it was switched until they opened it? I had been assuming Alex had some time to plan this out, but Sophie was right. This was most likely a spontaneous event for Alex. He had to get a bag from somewhere in the hotel. If I could find out where Alex got it, maybe I’d have a clue to finding the one that was switched. We didn’t see any gym bags in the hotel when we were there the day before. But we really hadn’t been looking for one. Maybe I should look again.

~~~~

I got to my car and drove up Scottsdale Road to the Blue Palms. For the second day in a row, I walked into the lobby and looked around. Several shops were located in both the front and the back lobbies, but none of them sold gym bags. One shop carried luggage, but the smallest piece there was much larger than the bag Alex had on the videotape. I asked the woman behind the counter if they sold gym bags or anything small enough to look like a gym bag. She said no, but suggested I try the souvenir shop.

The souvenir shop sold backpacks and beach bags, but no gym bags. I walked around and looked for a locker room or a weight room, without luck. Dejected, I walked over to a comfortable couch and sat. Where could Alex have found a gym bag on a moment’s notice? He would have had five or ten minutes, at most, before both the Russians, and the bag, disappeared forever. Not to mention he also had to convince a woman to flash herself in public.

I let my eyes wonder around the back lobby. I ended up glancing at a shop I had seen before. Again it was like somebody had turned on a light in my head.

When Gina and I first saw the security videotape, Lenny said the small black bag was a gym bag. I hadn’t questioned it. Gina hadn’t either. It sort of looked like a small black gym bag and we just assumed Lenny knew what he was talking about. Could Lenny have been wrong? Up until now, nobody knew exactly what the bag looked like. With the poor quality of the videotape it could have been any type of bag. All of the guys have assumed it was a gym bag. Mobsters are tough guys, after all, and tough guys carry black gym bags.

I got up and walked into the shop. Thirty seconds later I knew where Alex had gotten his bag. I also knew what he did with the bag after he took the three diamonds out of it.

I sped down Scottsdale Road, hung a hard left at Doubletree Ranch Road, and raced into Danica’s subdivision. I pulled into her neighborhood and drove to her house.

When Danica answered the door she looked better than she had Saturday night, but I could tell she still hadn’t gotten a lot of sleep. She had on a short tropical print sundress with spaghetti straps and flat sandals. She was only wearing a hint of make-up and her hair was bunched in a loose knot on top of her head. It was the closest I had ever seen Danica to being messy.

“Hey,” I said, letting myself in. “How’s the clean-up going?”

“Oh, it’s going OK. There’s just so much damage. It’s going to take a few days to go through everything. The police came over again this morning and were here for almost an hour. They just left a few minutes ago. I think now they’re trying to see if this has anything to do with Alex or not.”

We walked through the destruction of the living room and into the kitchen. Danica pulled an open bottle of white wine from the refrigerator. She poured out a full glass and handed it to me. She then refilled her glass, which had been almost empty. Danica held up her glass and looked at it.

“For some reason they decided not to break my wine glasses. I thought I should celebrate by using them a lot today.”

I held up my glass and she tapped it with hers. It made a pleasant dinging sound.

“The other night you thought nothing was taken,” I said. “Have you found anything that’s missing yet?”

“I’ve spent all morning sorting through the mess. The insurance company wants me to make a list of everything that’s missing or damaged. I’ve gone through the entire house and I haven’t found anything missing. Damaged yes, destroyed yes, missing no.”

“What about your purse?” I asked. “The big black shoulder bag you’ve been carrying around all week.”

She looked at me like I was just short of insane. “I don’t know. I put it in the closet a couple of days ago. I’ll go see if it’s still there.”

We got up and went into the living room. She walked into her bedroom, only to return a moment later. I knew the answer by the look on her face. I felt my heart sink.

“It’s gone. How did you know?” she said, wonder in her voice. “Who would ransack an entire house, ignore thousands of dollars’ worth of jewelry and art, only to steal an empty purse? Sure, it was a Farucci, but there wasn’t a wallet or a checkbook in it. Not even any make-up, nothing.”

Two chairs in this room were more on less intact. I sat in one and waved for Danica to sit in the other.

“Tell me about the bag,” I said. “When did you get it?”

“There’s not much to tell,” she said. “It’s a Farucci Spy bag. I got it last week, on Tuesday, I think.”

“I saw you at Nexxus last Monday
.
You had it there, so you must have bought it before then.”

Danica blushed two shades of red.

“Danica,” I said. “What is it? Tell me what’s wrong.”

“If I tell you something, you’ve got to promise never to tell anybody. I’d never do anything to hurt Alex.”

“OK,” I said, mentally crossing my fingers. “I promise. Now what is it?”

“Well, the Saturday before he disappeared, Alex and I had dinner at
A Different Pointe of View
. It was so wonderful. That restaurant has one of the nicest views in the city. I could tell Alex was excited about something. He can’t ever hold a secret. After dinner he gave me a handbag. He even tied a red bow to the strap. Just seeing the look on his face as he gave it to me made me so happy. He hasn’t been able to afford many presents, so this was a big deal to him. I think it was the first spontaneous present he had ever given me. It was a Farucci, a Spy bag
,
just like the one they took from my closet.” Danica then leaned over and whispered to me: “But that one wasn’t a real Farucci. It was a knockoff, like they sell over the border in Rocky Point or Nogales.”

“Did Alex say where he got it?”

“He was a little vague about that at first, but he eventually said he found it.”

“He said he found it?”

“He said he found it in the trash in the back of the Scottsdale Blue Palms.”

“In the
trash
?”

“I know, but he said the rich women staying there are always tossing away things like that. He said that for some women, spending two thousand dollars for a purse isn’t any more of a big deal than me paying two hundred dollars for a pair of shoes. When they get tired of their purses, they just toss them. I know I’ve sometimes done the same thing with shoes when I’m tired of them.”

Man, I’d really like to take a crack at her closet.

“But since the bag was a fake, I thought maybe the woman was just too embarrassed to keep it.”

“Did he say what he was doing up at the Blue Palms? That’s quite a ways from where he lives or worked.”

“He was delivering a sports car to a woman who was staying at the resort. He said he was driving the car around to the back and he saw the purse sitting on top of a pile of boxes in a dumpster.”

“Was there anything in the bag when he found it?” I asked.

“I don’t know. When he gave it to me it was empty. I even checked the pocket.”

“Tell me more about it. You said it was a knock-off? Are you sure? How do you know it wasn’t real?”

Danica just sat there, giving me a look.

“Hey,” I said. “Don’t give me that look. I need to know. I wouldn’t know a real Farucci from a fake Farucci if it hit me in the head.”

Danica looked down at my bag, $18 at Bargain Barn. This brought a sad smile to her face.

“OK,” she said. “Well, the exterior fabric and the hardware were OK. Maybe those parts were even real Farucci. But there were several parts of the bag nowhere near Farucci standards.”

“Like what?” I asked.

“Well, first of all, it felt wrong. Real Farucci’s are light and have a very smooth and balanced feeling. They just sort of
swing
as you walk with them. This bag felt too heavy and wasn’t balanced at all, like maybe the straps were stitched in the wrong position. And, there was a cheap leather insert sewn into the bottom. The quality of the leather and the stitching was nowhere near the quality of stitching on the rest of the bag. It seemed like they were using the leather to stiffen the bottom of the purse so it didn’t sag when you put a wallet in it. You could also tell it was a fake Farucci because they used a cheap interior fabric, that’s always a dead giveaway.”

“I take it you didn’t tell Alex it wasn’t real?” I asked.

Her eyes softened. “Oh no, I didn’t have the heart. You should have seen him. He was so proud of it. I didn’t care he gave me a bag he pulled out of the trash, or wherever he got it. It was just sweet he thought of me. He thought he had found a real Farucci, a two thousand dollar bag. It would have crushed him if he found out it was just a knock-off.”

“Where is the bag now? The fake Farucci?”

I saw that Danica was searching her mind. I didn’t want to make it worse for her, but if she had thrown the bag away, the Russians would probably kill Alex, but not before I choked her to death first.

“Umm, I’m sorry, I don’t remember,” she said.

“Come on Danica,” I said. “Think. When was the last time you had it?”

“Well, the only time I took the bag out was when we went to Nexxus for champagne. That was two nights after Alex gave it to me. We went to celebrate Alex getting his trust fund money. I couldn’t help noticing our waitress kept staring at it. I could tell she knew it was a knock-off. It was so embarrassing. While we were sitting there drinking the second bottle of champagne, I decided to get a real Farucci and get rid of the fake. Alex would want me to use the bag whenever we went out, but I just couldn’t be seen in public with a fake Farucci.”

“So you went shopping for a real one? When was this, the next day?”

“That’s right. I remember I didn’t know what to do with the fake. I had the bag in the car with me when I drove to Biltmore Fashion Park. I was thinking I had to get rid of it so Alex wouldn’t find it. I stopped by work first to pick up my Cowgirl costume. I needed to drop it off at the dry cleaners. A guy had thrown up on it.”

Ughh, gross!

She saw the look on my face.

“It happens sometimes,” she said. “Oh, now I remember. I stuck the fake in my locker at the club.”

Yes!

Mentally, I pumped my fist up and down and made mental
whooo-hooo
noises. Outwardly, I did my best to remain calm.

“OK, that’s great,” I said. “Now then, is it still there?”

“I don’t know. Christy saw me put it in the locker. She dances at the club too. I’ve known her since I started there. She said it was a hot-looking purse. I told her it was a fake, but she said it looked real enough to her. I told her she could have it if she wanted it. She told me I was sweet and she’d pick it up later. I think she knows my locker combination, so unless she forgot she might have it by now.”

I felt my heart sink again. It looked like I had found DiCenzo’s missing bag of diamonds and now it was most likely gone again.

Why does my life suck so much?

Danica was watching me. She could see something was wrong.

“What is it?” she asked. “Why is a fake Farucci is so important? There isn’t anything in it and it can’t be worth more than about thirty dollars.”

I decided to level with her, more or less.

“Anthony DiCenzo is looking for that bag. He was sorta responsible keeping it safe, and then it disappeared. I had a meeting with him and he asked me to help him get the bag back. He’s not the kind of guy you refuse.”

Danica’s eyes got so big I was surprised they didn’t fall out of her head. Her breathing sped up and her face became a light crimson.

“You mean the bag that I loved, and the bag I was embarrassed by, and then the bag I gave away? That was Tony DiCenzo’s bag? Tough Tony? The mobster?” Her voice came in a loud but squeaky shout.
“Oh My God!
You’ve got to get it back to him! Nobody messes with Tough Tony and I mean nobody. People who mess with Tough Tony have a habit of disappearing. You had a meeting with him?
Oh my God,
Alex? Do you think Tough Tony took Alex?”

“When I talked with DiCenzo, he said his people didn’t have Alex, but I get the feeling we’ll need to get the bag back to DiCenzo before Alex is released.”

Danica stood up and began pacing back and forth, not knowing what to do.

“Look,” I said. “This should be easy. Is your friend Christy working today?”

She shook her head back and forth. “No, it’s her day off.”

“Why don’t you call her and see if she has the bag.”

“I can’t. She doesn’t believe in phones. But, I know where she lives.”

“Great,” I said. “Why don’t you go over to her house and see if she has it. I’ll go to Jeannie’s and see if the bag is still in the locker. You call me if you get it and I’ll call you if I get it. Before you go, call the manager over at Jeannie’s. Let him know I’m coming to get something out of your locker. Is there a lock on it?”

“Yeah, you need to keep things locked up there. The combination is 36-24-34.” She paused and blushed again. “My measurements.”

I just looked at her.

“Well,” she said, “I wanted a combination I could remember.”

~~~~

I almost flew the eight miles down Scottsdale road to the club. I pulled into Jeannie’s lot, parked in the first spot I saw, and ran to the door. The bouncers knew me by now and let me in without a word.

I made my way backstage and found the door to the dressing room. An unfamiliar bouncer stood at the entrance, looking very unhappy I was there. My explanation that I had permission to get a purse out of Danica’s locker didn’t seem to impress him. I talked to him for five long minutes before he ultimately called the manager to see what to do about me. Fortunately, Danica had put a call through to him and I was allowed to go in.

The dressing room was larger than I expected. There were four make-up chairs on either side of the room, each in front of a well-lighted mirror. Several of the mirrors were covered with photos of kids, men, and pets. I counted six women in the room. Two were changing costumes. One was gunking up her eyes with mascara in front of one of the make-up mirrors. The last three were having a conversation about a guy who had dated all three of them, but not at the same time, as far as I could tell. Nobody seemed to care I was there. I guess they supposed if the bouncer let me in, I must belong there.

I went to the woman who was in the make-up chair. She had just finished with the mascara and was now outlining her lips with a dark crayon.

“Excuse me,” I said.

“Oh, hi,” she said. “I’m Cheri. Is this your first day? Just go and grab an empty locker. The costume racks are two doors down the hall, on the right. Go and pick out whatever you think will fit. I’ll help with your make-up if you’d like.”

I was getting frustrated. I just wanted to get to the damned locker.

“Thanks, but I’m just I’m looking for Danica’s locker. She sent me in to get something out of it.”