F
lash
caught me as I was scribbling my name on the check. She nodded at the retreating back of Special Agent Stokes. “Yummy.” She flounced into the chair he had abandoned and fastened her Elvira eyes on me. “Girl, you gotta tell me your man-catching secret.”
“My secret?” I put the pen down and gave her the once-over. “Disinterest.”
Still looking like she stole her wardrobe from the punk-rock preteen section of a second-rate outlet store, her face painted in varying shades of pink—darker on the cheeks, lighter on the lips—her red hair unfettered, cascading in a riot of ringlets, Flash was the one constant in my life.
“Seriously. How do you do it?” She looked sincere.
“I told you.”
That got me a dirty look. “Fine, be that way. But really, you get Captain America, and I get Captain Save-A-Ho.”
“What?” The word tumbled out on a laugh. “Captain Save-A-Ho?”
Flash motioned to a cocktail girl. “Bring me some of that pink stuff with all the bubbles,” she said when the girl approached.
The girl’s eyes widened into a look of impending panic—she must have been a new hire.
“Rosé Champagne,” I clarified, and the girl disappeared, presumably to do our bidding, although Flash may have scared her off.
I leaned back, waiting. Flash moved forward, keeping the same space between us. “So, the other night I met this guy from L.A., well-heeled, older, important friends—in the film business.”
“That should’ve been a huge red flag.”
Flash gave me a fleeting scowl. “Who am I to judge? Anyway, a mutual friend introduced us. So, this guy acts all interested, telling me how he’s tired of rescuing women who can’t hold their own, you know what I mean?”
I nodded, not even trying to hide my amusement—this was a train wreck anyone could see coming.
“He’s relationship ready, wants something profound and meaningful. And he can tell right off I don’t need him for his money, and I don’t need to be saved.”
“Quite the opposite.” I waved off the cocktail waitress’s offer of a glass for me and watched while she poured a flute for Flash. “With you in his life, he’d need a body guard.”
“Not if he played straight.” Flash grinned and puffed out her prodigious chest. “So, this dude comes on, says all the right stuff, and I’m thinking this could really be interesting—maybe, for once, I meet a guy who has some substance. Know what I mean?”
“By reputation only. Solid guys are an endangered species.” I thought for a moment. “If not wholly extinct.”
She sipped her Champagne, then groaned and giggled. Bubbles had that effect on me, too. With her free hand, she tapped her pink-tipped talons on the table as she got into the meat of the story. “Here’s where the train goes off the rails . . .”
“Stay on the high side, I shock easily.”
“Right.” She huffed. “Anyway, he takes me out to dinner. We’re swapping stories, having a fine time. After dinner, he takes me to the Foundation Room.”
“Impressive.”
“Yeah?” Flash throws back her Champagne and motions for another glass. “So, we order some bubbly and he says, ‘Here’s my deal.’ I thought, uh-oh. I didn’t know there was a deal—maybe he had me all wrong or something.”
“Wouldn’t be the first time.” I felt compelled to toss that in, just for fun.
Flash gave me a dirty look, which I countered with a benign smile. “Anyway,” Flash continued, warming to her story. “I let him talk, and he tells me he’s not sure if he wants a relationship, really. Maybe he wants many, or none. He didn’t know.”
“Poor baby.” I frowned. “What an ass.”
“Oh, honey, it gets better.” Flash scootched her behind farther back in the chair, settling in and cradling her flute. “The guy tells me that for the first time in a long time, he’s dating a bunch of women, and they actually like him.”
“Poor taste on their part,” I added, enjoying the tale.
Flash settled me with a disbelieving look. “Do you know what he said next?”
“I’m afraid to hazard a guess.”
“He had the audacity to tell me he didn’t want to disappoint any of those adoring females.”
“By giving you exclusive rights?” In disbelief, I had to ask for clarification. Men had said some stupid stuff to me, but this ranked right up there.
Flash drained her flute, then, leaning forward, she set it on the table, a glint in her eye. “Here’s the kicker.”
“It gets better?”
She nodded. “So, after dropping that little stink bomb, he tells me that I must surely understand that he’s working through what he really wants.” Her eyes dance with murderous delight. “Oh, I understood all right, but before I could rip him a new one, he pulls out a hotel key and says, ‘How long do we have to stay here in the bar? Let’s go to my room and see where this goes.’” Flash shot me an evil look. “I can tell you where it went . . .
it
marched right down the stairs, got in a cab, and went home.”
“The man is lucky to be alive.”
“Sorta sorry I didn’t take him out of the gene pool—or at least keep him from swimming for a bit. But I let him live to prey upon another unsuspecting female.”
“Noble,” I said, although he really deserved a go-direct-to-dating-jail card. “He’ll find someone who’s willing to put up with his put-downs. We pair up based on our need states.” Now,
that
was a can of worms, wasn’t it?
“Thank you, Dr. Phil.” She eyed me coolly. “The whole thing was nothing but a booty call—a Champagne and Kobe steak booty call, but that didn’t make it easier to swallow. Turns out the guy has a history of dating women inappropriately younger who appeal to his hero complex. He thinks they actually like him when all they’re doing is circling, biding their time to swoop in and take a bite out of his bank account.”
“Captain Save-A-Ho.” I chuckled. “Did you come up with that?”
“Wish I had. Pretty brilliant, actually, but apparently the stereotype is so prevalent the moniker is in the dictionary.”
“Seriously? The dictionary? I guess Oxford has lost some of its stuffiness. I never thought that possible.”
“Not
that
dictionary—the Urban Dictionary.”
I’d never heard of it. Not surprising—corporate executives are a cloistered lot, even in Vegas. “Apparently I need to crawl out of my hole a bit more.” Flash and her dating woes. But who was I to laugh? “Ego coupled with insecurity—a deadly combination.”
“Aw, he wasn’t worth shootin’.” Her face sobered. “But, that’s not why I came looking for you. I got some news.”
Banter fled as my voice turned serious. “We’ve got a killer itching to kill again, and we are no closer to his identity. If you could help make some sense of this, I’d be forever in your debt.”
“Just hook me up with Captain America, there.” Flash mooned in the direction Agent Stokes had taken. “If you don’t have designs on him, that is. I don’t poach from my friends.”
“I’ll make the introduction. The rest is up to you.” The combination was just so wrong, it might work.
Flash settled back, her glass of bubbly in one hand and a satisfied look on her face. “I did some digging on Fiona Richards, as you asked,, and the more rocks I turned over, the more snakes I found.” Her face shut down into a frown. “Some of this, you won’t like.”
I blew a short breath of air, lifting my bangs. “I don’t like
any
of this. Tell me about Fiona.”
Flash flipped to recitation mode as she did a memory dump. “Most of it, you know. She kicked around as a sous chef, hit some of the TV cooking shows, worked under a lot of chefs.”
The way she said that made me look at her.
She gave me a knowing grin. “Sort of the casting-couch method of culinary ladder-climbing.”
“Everybody’s looking for an easy in.” How I kept a straight face, I don’t know.
Flash rewarded me with the hoped-for laugh—a big, bawdy one. “She got around, for sure.” Flash sobered. “I checked the Secretary of State, and Fiona’s business docs seem fine, but minimal. She’s the only listed member in her limited liability company. She’s got a moneyman, I know, but I’m still rooting that one out. Whoever it is, they’ve buried the evidence pretty deep.”
“Makes you wonder why all the precautions,” I said, thinking out loud. I knew Flash was already way ahead of me and didn’t need my help.
She gave me a serious, rather pained look. “How much do you know about Jean-Charles?”
“Don’t tell me Fiona slept with Jean-Charles.”
“Are you letting your jealousy show?” Flash chided.
I snorted. “I’m never jealous of the past. If they had been intimate, that might just have been a bit too incestuous, don’t you think? She and Adone Giovanni were lovers. And Adone is Desiree Bouclet’s estranged husband.”
“You know those French.” Flash shook her head. “I’m gonna need to get me one of those.”
“Yes, a lover with a mistress. Sounds chummy.”
“Threesomes are . . .”
“. . . out of the question,” I said before she could horrify me with her take on it. “Now, back to Jean-Charles?”
Flash took a sip of bubbly, then set her glass down with a bit more attention than normal. She was stalling. Finally, she looked at me. “He has the reputation of being a real cut-throat.”
I shrugged. “The higher you climb, the more enemies you make.”
Flash drained her bubbly, then looked at me from under her brows. “Apparently, he likes to bed the help.”
“Back to that, are we?” My voice held the hint of a snarl. Clearly, I wasn’t the one to throw the first stone—Teddie and Jean-Charles technically both worked for me. “Not wise, but not a crime, either.” When I said it, I thought maybe that wasn’t entirely accurate. Using your position to gain sexual favors was certainly actionable. But to think I had any power when it came to the two men in my life was laughable.
“I guess that would depend on who he slept with and why.” Flash had a point, and she made it.
“So what’s the punch line?”
“Chitza DeStefano. Apparently, they had quite a dustup in Paris. Word is, they had an intense affair and then it blew up.”
I pursed my lips and nodded. “Chitza said she knew Jean-Charles. How long ago?”
“Three years. I haven’t found anyone who had firsthand knowledge, but it was quite the topic of conversation.” Flash motioned for more Champagne, and we waited while the cocktail waitress refilled her glass. Flash took a sip, then continued. “Chitza came back here and opened her place.”
“Interesting, but hardly condemning.”
“Grist for the mill. But the rest of the info on your dead girl is a bit more compelling.”
“Saving the best for last, are we?” I leaned forward, my interest piqued. “I hope it’s good.”
“Did you know she trained at Le Cordon Bleu?”
“You said she was a sous chef, so she must’ve trained somewhere.”
Flash nodded.
Two chef, one chef . . .
A shiver chased up my spine. “Le Cordon Bleu here in the States?”
“No, in Paris. Then she apprenticed with one of the important dudes, I can’t pronounce his name, but”—she dropped her voice as she glanced quickly around—“the other apprentice? Chef Wexler.”
* * *
The Beautiful Jeremy Whitlock, one butt cheek propped on the stenciled corner of Miss P.’s desk, jumped when I burst through the office door.
I smiled at him benignly. “Did I scare you?”
“I’m a man. If I wasn’t scared of you, I’d be a fool.” He shot me those damn dimples.
The bird was the only one happy to see me. He sidestepped from one end of his perch to the other as he sang, “Fucking bitch! Fucking bitch!”
“As greetings go, I’d say that one needs work.”
Miss P. stared in rapt attention at Jeremy, ignoring me entirely. Mr. Livermore was nowhere to be seen. I rewarded the bird for his affection with a slice of browned apple from the dish beside his cage.
Before he grabbed it, he rewarded me with a heartfelt expletive. “Asshole!” He delivered his best word with feeling, which helped me rediscover my smile.
“Good bird.” I grabbed the messages in my box, then motioned for Jeremy to follow me. “Bring me up to speed.”
Jeremy pulled out his phone as he trailed me into my office. “The guy, Livermore, struck me as a no-hopper, you know.”
I sorted my remaining messages, discarding most of them as I took my chair. The springs groaned, which did nothing to improve my mood. “A no-hopper. There are so many meanings my imagination can attribute to that phrase. Do me a favor, save me from myself.”
“A fool.”
“Why didn’t you say that?”
“I did,” Jeremy deadpanned.
I gave him a look that had sent lesser men running.
“Okay.” Jeremy took a spot on the sofa. Leaning back, he crossed one leg over the other, one ankle resting on the opposite knee, his hands holding his shin while his foot bounced with barely contained energy. “After you left, the guy got all twitchy, like a bucket of prawns in the sun. He didn’t wait long, then he made some excuse and ran.”