The Fashion Police (29 page)

I couldn’t afford the plush, expensive kind like Hanbury Manor, so I checked myself into the cheap kind, which was stuck in a 1970s décor time warp. 

I peeked out of my room’s window. There was a tiny balcony outside, just wide enough to stand on as long as you were slim. I closed the curtains and checked out the ancient bathroom. There were lime scale streaks everywhere. Lovely. It looked like the cleaners had done the best with what they had, but they hadn’t bothered to remove a toiletry bag that had been left on the side of the bath. As nosy was my middle name, I unzipped it and peered inside at a bottle of contact lens cleaner, a plastic contact lens storage pot, some saline drops, a tube of toothpaste, and some hemorrhoid cream. Boring. I’d been secretly hoping it might be full to the brim with something exciting, like cash, for instance, or failing that, chocolate.

OK, first up on my list of priorities was some food, followed by a long, hot shower. I ordered a chicken burger, chips, and a bottle of red wine, then stood under the steaming shower. A groan escaped me as I savored the soothing feeling of the hot water spraying down onto my tense shoulders.

I padded back into the bedroom wrapped in a towel, which was so small that it could’ve doubled as a postage stamp. The heating had suddenly sprung to life in the bedroom, turning the room into a sauna. I’d just opened the French windows on the balcony to prevent keeling over from heat exhaustion when I heard a knock at the door, and a male voice announced the arrival of my food.

‘Just leave it outside, please.’ Giving him a minute to disappear, I poked an eyeball around the door. Phew, coast clear. I yanked the door open, expecting my food to be on a tray beside my door. Instead, the idiotic man had left it practically half a mile away. I tiptoed up the corridor and then almost jumped out of my postage stamp when I heard the door slam shut behind me.

Why me? Why do these things always happen to me? I rolled my eyes up to the heavens. 

I stood there, debating this little conundrum. I could go down to the front desk, flashing off my nether regions, and get someone to let me back in, giving them a good eyeful or a heart attack in the process. Or I could hope that I had a discreet next door neighbor who’d let me climb over their balcony.

No contest. I knocked on the door to the right of my room, shivering in the freezing hallway. God, it was bum-numbingly cold. They had a serious problem with temperature control in this building.

‘Ah!’ A little old lady opened the door and gasped at the sight of me.

‘Hello.’ I gave her my best non-nutcase smile. ‘Sorry to be a pain, but I’ve locked myself out. Can I just climb over your balcony and get back into my room please?’

She jabbered away in German to me with a frown on her face.

‘Ya,’ I said, which is the only bit of German I knew.

The woman waved her arms around as her voice went from loud to shrieking volume. I made frantic pointing gestures toward her balcony. After a few moments of finger action, I think she got the drift.

‘Ah!’ Her face relaxed and she motioned for me to come in.

‘Thanks.’ I rushed toward the balcony.

I gazed out, trying to decide the best way to climb over without slipping and taking a nosedive to splatsville. The balcony was so narrow, I didn’t fancy going forward, plus if I did fall, I’d see it coming. In the end, I clutched the tiny towel around me for dear life and backed out, climbing rear first over the balustrade separating my balcony from the German lady’s.

Phew! I breathed a sigh of relief when I landed on balcony firma. My first thought as I slipped through the French doors was that someone had ordered a Texas poker game in my absence. My second thought was that I’d gotten my left mixed up with my right when I was in reverse mode, and I was in the wrong room.

All six of the burly, incredibly hairy Hell’s Angels lookalikes sitting around a table in the center of the room turned around and eyed me up.

‘Hello, missy. You must be our stripper-gram,’ a leather jacketed biker said, looking pretty excited at that prospect.

‘Er…no. I’m afraid not.’ I gave them a vacant smile. ‘Anyway, sorry to interrupt–’

Another beefy-looking one with a splodge of ketchup stuck to his beard grabbed hold of my arm. ‘Hey, not so fast. If you’re not our stripper-gram, why are you dressed in a mini dress?’

‘Yeah,’ another one piped up.

‘What, this old thing?’ I pulled the bottom of my towel down further, not that it had much effect, but psychologically, I felt less naked.

‘Come on, let’s get the party started, missy.’ Mr. Leather Jacket leered at me.

‘Let’s not,’ I said.

‘Why not?’ Ketchup Face said to me.

‘It will make you go blind.’

One of the others cackled. ‘Hey, we’ve got a feisty one here.’

‘I bet I could make your clothes disappear,’ one of the others said as he twisted a ginormous diamond ear stud around and around. He licked his lips and looked like he seriously wanted my clothes to disappear.

‘I hope that’s not your poker-face,’ I said to him. ‘You’re giving far too much away. Nice diamond, though. Is it real?’ I looked at his stud, twinkling at me as the light bounced off it.

‘Yeah, why?’ he gave me a suspicious look.

‘No reason. Ooh, look at that.’ I looked at the five card spread in the center of the table. There were two aces amongst them. Then I pointed at the two aces held in Ketchup Face’s hands. ‘You’ve got four aces.’

Mr. Leather Jacket looked at the cards in the center of the table, frowned, and looked at his cards. ‘You can’t have four aces. There are two on the table.’ He glared at Ketchup Face. ‘And I’ve got two aces right here, so you can’t have two aces in your hand.’ He shot up, sending his chair flying to the floor. ‘You’re cheating.’ He pointed at Ketchup Face.

Ketchup Face shuffled in his seat, giving the others shifty eye contact.

‘I knew it,’ Diamond Stud said to his neighbor. ‘I knew he’d been cheating.’

When Mr. Leather Jacket flew across the table, grabbing Ketchup Face by the neck, I thought it was a good time to get the hell out of Dodge.

I was working my way through the wine when Brad called.

‘Where are you?’ he said.

‘Not telling.’

‘Why not?’

‘Because I’ve got a bottle of wine in my hand, and you know what happened the last time I drank too much.’

He paused. ‘What happened?’

‘We did…you know what.’

‘What?’

I rolled my eyes at the phone. ‘You know. We did the nasty thing.’ I felt my pulse pounding as I imagined it.

‘Did we?’ He sounded bemused.

I frowned, realization dawning over me. ‘You mean…we didn’t do it?’

‘Foxy, I would have loved to do the “nasty thing” with you, but it wouldn’t be that enjoyable with you in a drunken coma. Believe me, when it happens you’ll be very much awake, and you’ll definitely remember it in the morning.’

I swallowed back a lump in my throat. When it happens? Crikey. I felt dizzy and nauseous with a mixture of relief and shame. Relief that I hadn’t actually cheated on Romeo, and shame that part of me was actually disappointed that it hadn’t happened.

‘So, where are you?’ he asked.

‘I’m still not telling, just in case.’

‘I’ve got some news from Hacker on Carlos Bagliero.’

‘Great.’

‘There are three mob families who run their crime organizations on the east coast of America – the Fetuccini family, the Corleone family, and the Rossi family. Needless to say, they hate each other’s guts, and they’re always trying to muscle in on each other’s territory. Twenty years ago, Bagliero gave evidence in a multiple murder trial against Godfather Ricardo Corleone, which put him away for a long time. Hacker is still trying to get more details, but apparently Bagliero was an innocent bystander who witnessed Corleone shoot two members of the Rossi family in the head. After the trial, Bagliero and his wife were murdered.’

‘Interesting.’ That got me thinking for a while before I mentally kicked myself. I’d found one note in Heather’s office desk with the initials CB that mentioned five million pounds. When I found the other note in Heather’s apartment with Bagliero’s name on it, I wrongly assumed that it all referred to the same person. If Bagliero was dead, he couldn’t be the same person who paid the five million pounds into her Swiss bank account. In fact, he couldn’t be involved in any of this at all.

‘Hacker said that someone went to a lot of trouble to eliminate any records on Bagliero.’

‘No wonder. If Bagliero was killed after testifying, it wouldn’t make the authorities look very good if they can’t protect their witnesses. So, if he’s dead, and wasn’t the person who paid Heather five million pounds, then who did?’

‘Hacker is still trying to trace where the money came from. Swiss bank accounts are very hard to hack into. All those international state leaders and crime lords expect confidentiality and extra security when they’re stashing away their illegitimately earned petty cash.’

A light bulb suddenly pinged to life in my brain. ‘Wait a sec. Isn’t it an amazing coincidence that six months after Bagliero is killed, Fandango suddenly appears out of nowhere?’

‘That’s the first thought that I had, but Bagliero can’t be Fandango. Bagliero had green eyes, light brown hair, and fair skin, whereas Fandango had brown eyes, dark brown hair, and dark skin. I know it’s easy to change hair and skin color, but they didn’t even look alike.’

I tucked that thought into my frontal lobe to dissect later. ‘Well, I have some news for you too. I don’t think that the mob was involved in Heather’s murder or the disappearance of Fandango and his collection.’

‘What makes you so sure?’

‘Barack Obama told me.’

‘Huh?’

‘OK, the witness said that the driver of the getaway van wore an Obama mask. The same mask that Heather’s killer made her wear before he shot her. So, it stands to reason that the same person or people were involved in both crimes. Also, Carol Blake told me that the bullets recovered from Fandango’s office matched the bullet used to kill Heather. Both were fired from a revolver. When one of the Goon Girls tried to grab me again earlier–’

‘Hang on a minute. The mob thugs came back, and you didn’t call me?’ His voice oozed with worry.

‘Well…I thought we’d done something naughty, and I really didn’t want it to do it again.’ Oh, God, that sounded really horrible. ‘Not that I wouldn’t want to do something naughty with you if I was unattached, it’s just that – oh, hang on, let me take my foot out of my mouth.’

‘Foxy, your safety comes first. Anyway, you were saying…’  

‘What was I saying?’ I said, distracted by the thought that actually I did want to do something naughty, and that was the whole problem.

‘What happened when they tried to grab you again?’

‘Oh, yes. Tia and I managed to persuade them to get lost.’

‘How, exactly?’

 ‘I can be very persuasive when I want to be. That, and the fact that I got hold of their gun, which happens to be a Glock 17.’

‘Which also happens to be a semi-automatic weapon and not a revolver.’

‘Bingo! So, the Goon Girls didn’t kill Heather or steal the collection and kidnap Fandango,’ I said.

‘So, what are the Goon Girls after? We know that the mob is involved in this somehow from Enzo Fetuccini’s payments to Fandango.’

‘Maybe I was wrong about them. They must be looking for the fashion collection, too.’