Dammit!
She scrolled to the list of incoming calls, but the number Annabelle had called from was blocked. Re-dial produced an invalid number message. At least now she had a destination: the Luxor.
As she started toward the taxi stand, the cellular rang again. The display showed
Bert Falkenberg.
“I’ve been trying to reach you,” Bert said.
“What’s up, Bert?” Claudia moved close to the wall, sheltering her phone ear, straining to hear over the street noise.
“There’s been a development—Cruz was arrested last night.”
“No way!” No wonder Cruz hadn’t answered his phone. “He’s been charged with—”
“Paige’s murder,” Bert finished for her. His tone dropped a couple of levels, turning somber. “I’m afraid things don’t look so good for Annabelle. He hasn’t confessed yet, but the police believe he probably killed her, too.”
That put the lie to Giordano’s claim that they were about to issue a warrant for her arrest. What was going on here?
“No, Bert, she’s alive. I just talked to her.” Claudia heard a sharp intake of breath.
“You
what
?”
“She called me this morning from Las Vegas. I flew out; I’m here to take her home.”
“But—you’re in
Vegas
? I don’t understand—what did she say?”
“Her phone kept cutting out. I couldn’t really understand anything except she’s escaped. I’m on my way to meet her at the Luxor.”
“Wait a minute . . .” Bert sounded bewildered. “I don’t—”
“Bert, I have to go. I want to be at the hotel when she gets there. I need to grab a cab.”
“Wait, Claudia. I’m in Las Vegas, too. I’ll pick you up. I’m not far from the airport.”
“What are
you
doing here?”
“I had to get away from everything. Thought a little blackjack would take my mind off it all. Drove out last night. I can be at the airport in fifteen minutes. You’re near the taxis? Watch for a black Escalade.”
Claudia rang off, her thoughts churning. Bert wasn’t her first choice of confidant, but it was a relief to know she could share the responsibility with someone.
A loud beep sounded from her phone indicating that she had received a voice mail during her conversation with Bert. Dialing in, she listened to Annabelle complaining that the battery on the phone she was using was about to die. She planned to hitchhike to the Luxor.
Hitchhike?
Claudia didn’t think her anxiety level could get any higher. She stepped to the curb, craning to see Bert Falkenberg. A few minutes later, his SUV pulled to the curb beside her and he was beckoning her from the driver’s side.
She slid into the luxurious leather seat and told him about Annabelle’s voice mail. He shifted into gear and joined the slow-moving line of traffic on Swenson Street, his fingers drumming impatiently on the steering wheel. “Depending on traffic, we ought to make the Luxor in about ten minutes,” he said. “Now, here’s the plan—”
“There’s a plan?” Claudia interrupted. “I’m glad to hear
you
have a plan, because I have
no
idea what’s going on.”
Bert swung left onto Tropicana Avenue. “We’ll go ahead and check into the hotel and debrief Annabelle in private. After I see what condition she’s in, I’ll decide what to do from there.”
“What do you mean,
you’ll
decide?”
“I’m in charge of the school now, so she’s my responsibility.”
Claudia shook her head. “She’s not a Sorensen pupil anymore. Her belongings were sent home, remember? Besides, her father has involved me, so any decisions about Annabelle are
at least
going to be joint ones.”
His jaw bunched and his knuckles whitened on the steering wheel. “I’m not about to argue with you,” he said in a tight voice. “Let’s get the girl back first before we start going off half-cocked.”
They traveled west in silence for several minutes, threading through traffic as heavy as any L.A. rush hour.
“That must have been what Annabelle was talking about,” Claudia said, pointing to the eleven-hundred-foot Stratosphere hotel at the north end of the strip. “She said she could see it from where she was being held. She said she was in a hospital.”
Bert jerked a sideways glance at her. “A
hospital
? How the hell did she get out?”
“I don’t know; the phone connection sucked. We’ll find out when we see her.”
He made a left onto Las Vegas Boulevard, where most of the eye-popping resorts claimed space. “Who else knows you’re here? Her father?”
“Nobody,” Claudia said. “Detective Pike called about an hour ago, but I blew him off. I didn’t want him asking questions I can’t answer.”
“Good. That’s the only way to keep this thing under control. Keep that barn door closed.”
“It’s a bit late to worry about that, don’t you think?”
Bert made an impatient sound and shook his head, looking like he wanted to say something poisonous. He clamped his teeth together and stared straight ahead.
Claudia gazed out at the wide boulevards of the world-famous strip with its towering palm trees and as many taxis as downtown Manhattan. Finding someone who had a compelling need to hide themselves in this town would be about as easy as winning a progressive jackpot in one of the big casinos.
The larger-than-life-size Sphinx loomed as they drove up the avenue of stone lions. At midmorning the immense black pyramid of Luxor hid secrets. After dark, the brightest beam in the world would project ten miles into space from the top of the obsidian glass structure.
Bypassing the weary vacationers in rumpled Hawaiian shirts queuing in the valet line outside the lobby doors, Bert headed for the self-park. He squeezed the big vehicle into a parking space far from the hotel entrance, muttering about valets taking all day.
Claudia couldn’t care less where they parked. A feeling of anticipation had her nerves jumping. God knew what Annabelle had been through over the past ten days. She would insist that Bert not press the girl too hard. Give her some time to decompress.
They had walked a few yards from the vehicle when Bert stopped suddenly. “Damn! I forgot my phone. Wait for me.” He hurried back to the SUV, returning a moment later. “Can’t leave home without it.”
“Come
on
, Bert. She might already be here, looking for me.”
They took the people mover to the lobby, which was nearly deserted at this time of day. In another hour, the place would be fulminating with travelers checking out.
Claudia was on her way to the registration desk when Bert caught her arm. “Wait, Claudia. Uh, would you mind putting this on your credit card?” He looked a little sheepish, cleared his throat. “I don’t want it showing up on my corporate card. I’ll reimburse you,” he hastened to add.
“No problem,” Claudia said. Something in his voice made her look closer. His face was pale, with a light sheen of perspiration. “Are you okay, Bert? You don’t look well.”
He took out a handkerchief and mopped his forehead, where pearls of sweat had gathered. “It’s the stress of everything—Paige, the school, Annabelle. You have no idea how relieved I am to know we’re going to get her back.”
Claudia nodded agreement. “I’ll be happier when we actually see her.”
Bert started to reply, but was interrupted by his phone. He excused himself and walked away to answer it. Claudia stepped over to one of the empty stations at the long stretch of registration desks and requested a double room. They probably wouldn’t need to stay overnight, but if they did, she and Annabelle would take the room. Bert said he’d come out the night before, so he must have a place to stay.
Annabelle had said she was starving. Before making arrangements to return to Los Angeles they would order room service and give her a chance to rest. Once Dominic Giordano learned she had been rescued, he would probably join them in Las Vegas and take charge of escorting his daughter home himself.
Claudia asked the reservationist who was running the charge on her credit card to leave a message for “her niece, Annabelle,” to come up to the room. After all the media coverage of Paige’s death and Annabelle’s disappearance, it was too risky to give her surname, which was uncommon enough to draw attention.
The reservationist gave Claudia a professional smile and slipped two key cards into an envelope. “Certainly, Ms. Rose, with pleasure. You’re in room 1408. Just take the Inclinator to the fourteenth floor.”
Claudia thanked her and glanced around. Bert had disappeared from view. She wandered through the massive lobby looking for him, imagining that the Pharaohs seated on their colossal thrones staring down at her with cold, impassive faces were challenging her right to be there.
Caring about Annabelle gives me the right,
she thought with a touch of defiance, as if the stone Rameses could read her mind.
She spotted Bert on a marble seat near the entrance to the casino. He was faced away from her, elbows leaning on his knees, his body language giving off waves of tension.
As Claudia came near she could hear him. “. . . really deep shit now,” he was saying with rising agitation. “I gotta go. I’ll call you later, when I get everything arranged.” He rang off and his head slumped forward, giving him a look of utter despair.
Wondering whom he was talking to, Claudia reached out to touch his shoulder. Bert swung around, eyes wild, his hands going up in a defensive stance. The cell phone clattered to the floor.
Then he saw it was her. “Goddamn it, Claudia! Don’t ever sneak up on me like that!”
“Jeez, Bert,” she said, unprepared for his reaction. “I didn’t mean to scare you. I’m sorry.”
He bent down with some effort and retrieved the phone. His hand trembled noticeably as he shoved the cellular into his pocket. “The Sorensens are trying to get a court order,” he said, scrubbing a hand through his hair, leaving it standing on end. “They want to freeze operations at the school until there’s a hearing.” He shook his head, ridding himself of the Sorensen family and their machinations. “Forget that. Did you get a room? Let’s get going. I could use a drink.”
The odd sensation of the special elevator slanting up the side of the pyramid gave Claudia a slight sense of vertigo, and she was glad when the doors opened at the fourteenth floor. “I don’t like being up this high,” she said, glancing at the open balcony overlooking the Galleria far below. “It was the best I could do since we didn’t have a reservation.”
“It’ll be fine,” Bert said. “It’ll serve the purpose.”
He looks really unwell,
Claudia thought, taking in the grayish cast to his face, the trunk-size bags under his eyes. Then an uncharitable flash:
He’d better not have a heart attack
.
She slid the key card into the electronic reader on the door and stepped into a room with the expected Egyptian-themed decor. To the left of the entry was a standard bath. The room had two queen-size beds and an armoire, a small round table with two side chairs, and an armchair.
Claudia already felt emotionally drained and had a tension headache. She shrugged out of her blazer and laid it across one of the beds, then dropped into the armchair. “Let me know if you find any painkillers,” she said to Bert, who had made a beeline for the minibar and was pawing through it.
“Liquor, soda, candy,” he said, squatting in front of the cabinet. An airline-size bottle of tequila disappeared in his meaty fist. “What do you want?”
“Diet Coke if they have it. We can order room service when Annabelle gets here. Poor kid, she said she was starving.”
Bert handed her a can of soda. “God, what a week.” Sighing with the exaggerated kind of relief one might expect from a parched man at an oasis, he uncapped the tequila and chugalugged the little bottle, then tossed the empty into the trash can beside the desk.
Claudia popped the top on her soda and drank. “Tell me about Cruz getting arrested.”
“That asshole,” Bert said bitterly. “Pardon my French. He had no alibi. Admitted he’d been with her, but he claimed he couldn’t remember anything,
including
whether he’d hurt her. And the belt that . . . it has Cruz’ initials engraved on the buckle.”
“How do you know about that?”
“Detective Pike came and talked to me about it. He had questions . . .I can’t . . . Paige was . . .” Bert turned his face to the window, his shoulders shaking. For a moment he said nothing and Claudia sat quietly, waiting for him to gain hold of his emotions.
When he spoke again, his voice was soft, but the words harsh. “That piece of shit took her away from me. He deserves what’s coming to him. I’ve lost everything. Paige, the school . . .”
“You and Paige—”
“Torg was out of the way; she was ready for a younger man . . .” He stopped, seeing the appalled look on Claudia’s face. “Oh come on, Claudia. Don’t pretend you didn’t know she was sick and tired of being tied to that old geezer. It was making her old, too. Everything was peachy between her and me until Cruz showed up.”
His words had set her mind racing. Surely he wasn’t saying that Paige somehow hastened Torg’s demise? “She said she loved Torg. Why wouldn’t I believe her?”
Bert returned to the minibar for seconds. “Dammit, no more tequila,” he grumbled, grabbing a minibottle of Southern Comfort and one of Tanqueray. He cracked open the whiskey and stood the gin on the nightstand. Downing his second drink in a couple of gulps, he stretched out on one of the beds, clasping his hands behind his head. A few seconds later he bobbed up again and grabbed the third bottle.
I’ll bet he got started before he came here,
Claudia thought, wanting to slap the bottle out of his hand. She said, “I’m not your mother, Bert, but would you knock off the booze? It’d be nice if you weren’t totally bombed when Annabelle gets here.”
He gazed at Claudia through eyes gone glassy and downed the Tanqueray. “Don’t worry,” he said with a look that dared her to challenge him. “I can hold my liquor.”