I looked up. “That’s it?”
Jeremy scrolled through his phone. When he found what he wanted, he rose and stepped to my desk. Extending the phone, he handed it to me. “The wanker made straight for that guy.” He pointed toward his phone in my hand.
Glancing down, I came face-to-photo with Adone Giovanni. “Well, that’s certainly an interesting twist.” He was popping up enough to garner some attention.
“You know him?” Jeremy actually sounded surprised . . . for a moment. “Silly me, of course you do.”
I told Jeremy what I knew.
“Families.” Jeremy’s comment begged a few questions, but I didn’t indulge. “Seems like you know a lot about the guy, but, want me to run some background stuff, see if I can dig up anything odd?”
Personally, I’d have liked to know his definition of odd—this whole mess qualified, if you asked me. “That would be great. But concentrate on Livermore . . . we need to know his angle. If you bring me some good info, I will personally arrange a special spot in Babylon heaven with your name on it.” I crinkled my brows, unsure as to what I might have just promised . . . Vegas had a weird effect on expectations. Trust me on that one.
“Miss P.?” I called without raising my voice—I knew she was within easy earshot.
She stuck her head through the doorway. “Your wish . . .”
“Could you see if you can find the UC-Berkeley guys, specifically Dr. Phelps? Last time I saw them, they were sobering up in the Sodom and Gomorrah Suite.”
Her head disappeared—I took that as a yes. Jeremy wandered after her, hopefully to do my bidding, a hazy, lost-in-thought look on his face. She mumbled something, presumably to Jeremy, then the office door opened and closed.
The bird sang out, “Pretty girl! Pretty girl.”
Brandy had returned. She materialized in my doorway, then, responding to my smile, stepped inside.
“Does that bird realize how very close to being slow-roasted on a spit he is?” I growled, half-pretending to be irritated.
Brandy, aka Pretty Girl, gave me a thousand-candlepower grin, confirming the bird’s impeccable taste. “I checked with legal. As you suspected, they’d never talked with Mr. Livermore.” She paused for my gloat. “The insurance company is equally at sea—they’ve never heard of the guy. However—” She paused until I gave her my full attention. “Chef Gregor filed a claim on the missing truffle just this morning. Apparently, he’s making quite a stink about it.”
“Interesting. But that’s one less problem we have to deal with—the insurance guys can take it from here. I sure would like to know what Livermore is after.” I worked through the possible angles he could be working, which didn’t take too long—with little concrete to go on, I was throwing darts in the dark.
“What do you think he might be after?” Brandy’s eyes danced as her voice dropped to a conspiratorial whisper. “Do you think he could be the killer?”
I pictured the nervous little man with the thick, coarse, poorly cut gray hair poking from under his hideous toupee and the bushy dark eyebrows. “If he is, then he would’ve needed help to stuff Mr. Peccorino into that oven—the good doctor wasn’t a small man.” Rehydrated, he would probably top two hundred pounds, but I kept that little tidbit to myself—Brandy still had the easily bruised sensibilities of an early-twenty-something. And she hid a big heart under that feigned toughness. So much about her reminded me of myself at that age. I wasn’t sure I appreciated that little insight—I’d always been the up-and-comer. Guess it was high time to pass that baton.
“I wonder why he came here,” Brandy continued her musings out loud. “Since he felt the need to lie, I assume whatever his reasons were, they weren’t aboveboard.”
“Safe assumption.” How I hated people who tried to maneuver me. Recently, there had been a lot of that going around, making manipulation my new hot button. I reached for my cockroach paperweight, then remembered it was gone—a fact that accelerated my mood’s slide. The little trinkets of life around me helped keep me centered. “We can’t do anything about him now, so let’s concentrate on things we can have an impact on. How’re all the ingredients for the rest of the week gelling?”
Brandy got that sort of weird look that meant her focus had rolled to an internal checklist. I used to be able to keep all the balls in the air, but lately, I’d fallen in love with the note-taking app on my iPhone, which probably would’ve bothered a lesser me. The new me was trying to embrace her limitations.
Brandy ticked off the items. “The press conference your mother had called?” She looked at me for some sign I was following. I gave her a nod. “Your mother postponed it.”
A shot of cold adrenaline to the heart. “Why?”
Brandy looked nervous—as well she should, sitting smack in the center of the crosshairs. “Mona wouldn’t say, exactly, but something about a bigger announcement.”
“Which will be a bigger problem. Oh, joy.” With my plate overflowing, I refused to worry about Mona’s scheme, whatever it was. “Go on.”
“The turkeys . . .” Brandy’s focus switched to me, probably just an instinctive bit of self-preservation. Apparently feeling that death wasn’t imminent, Brandy hit the list again. “The turkeys are caged in the motor pool, which . . .”
“. . . is a very short-term solution,” I said, narrowing my eyes as if training a sight on an invisible Mona. “Can’t wait to see how Mother handles it.”
That got a smirk from Pretty Girl. “The set for the cook-off is pretty much set up—the chefs have the rest of the day and tomorrow to familiarize themselves with the available equipment. I shouldn’t think there will be any complaints—they have no idea what they’ll be cooking.”
Brandy had never dealt with the creative culinary wiz-kids, so I let her naïveté go—although I did offer a veiled warning. “Just in case, I would keep the knives locked up until the show, if I were you.”
She looked for my smile. When she didn’t find one, she made a note—or at least, she looked like she’d file it in her mental in-box. “Chitza said she might not make it down until tomorrow—the Sodom and Gomorrah Suite hired her as their private chef.”
“Really?”
“I got the impression it was sort of a setup, an inside job, if you will.”
“How so?”
The girl looked at me like I’d been living under a rock or something. “She and Dr. Phelps are tight. When Chitza was in the chef thing on TV, every day, he was in the front row cheering her on. It was
sooo
great. Guys can be so wonderful.” Her smile dimmed when it ran headlong into my skepticism. “Don’t you watch TV or read the rags?” She didn’t really expect an answer—I knew that, so I just raised an eyebrow. “Oh, right. You don’t, like . . . have a life or anything.”
“Anything else?” I asked blandly, unable to pull off huffy. Her little tidbit did explain the comfortable pull I had detected between Chitza and the young scientist.
“Just the normal craziness.” She paused and returned from mental gyrations. A sly smile ticked up one corner of her perfect, pouty lips. “So, what’s up with the Teddie thing?”
“There is no Teddie thing. And it would behoove you to focus on the problems you can solve.” What do you know, I
could
do huffy today.
She nodded and gave me a knowing look. “Ah, not so good, then. Interesting.” With that, she tossed a pitying look at me and strolled out of the office.
Could today get any better?
Filled with questions and riding on a wave of unspent energy and emotion, I needed to move. When I stepped into the outer office, the bird sang out like a bo’sun whistling arrivals on deck, “Bite me! Bite me!”
“Enough out of you. If you don’t learn some manners, I’ll pluck you one feather at a time.”
“Asshole!”
“I mean it!”
The bird glared at me and stopped hurling invectives. Instead, he let loose a wolf whistle and shifted his charm to another. “Pretty girl, pretty girl,” he cooed, making me laugh out loud.
Hunched over some papers on her desk, Brandy pretended to ignore both of us, but her smile gave her away.
Miss P. was on the phone. Flinging a hand over the mouthpiece, she gave me a glare.
I raised my arms and mouthed, “What? I just walked in here.”
While she finished the call I waited, shifting from one foot to the other in front of her desk.
“Yes, yes. I see. Could you give me the address again?” Holding the receiver in place with her shoulder, she jotted notes. “Got it. Thank you.” Lowering her shoulder, she let the receiver fall, catching it in a deft move, then dropping it in its cradle. She tore off the top sheet of paper and handed it to me, giving me a look over the top of her cheaters. “Here.”
I tried to decipher her scrawl, with only marginal success. “The big what?”
“Hole.”
“The heavy equipment experience?” A very creative entrepreneur had bought a vacant lot way south on the Strip and leased some heavy equipment. For a fairly hefty fee, anyone could don a hard hat and move some serious dirt or dig a tunnel to China with a Caterpillar. Admittedly, that kind of mechanical power had its appeal—I’d been tempted more than once. Of course, there’d usually been a body I’d been fantasizing about tossing in a hole and covering.
Fantasy, the alternative to life without parole.
Miss P. nodded and gave me a look usually reserved by the insensitive for the slowest kid in the class. “Apparently, your good doctor and his friends are putting on a show for the press. It starts in forty minutes. If you hurry, you can just make it.”
* * *
I’d made it all the way downstairs before my phone vibrated at my hip—probably a record of some kind. Rotating it, I glanced at the caller ID. Romeo had run out of patience.
Grabbing the thing, I confirmed it was the young detective—he’d caught me striding across the lobby. As I caressed the face of my phone with my thumb, I made a beeline toward the entrance. The noise of day was quickly escalating toward nighttime and its promises of fun, frivolity, and a dose of debauchery. The Ferrari slid to the curb as I pushed through the doors and pressed the phone to my ear, hoping I could hear. “Whatcha got?”
“Not the good news you’re hoping for.” The voice had a weird echo—like it came through the phone and yet it sounded like he was standing in front of me.
In crumpled overcoat, slouched stance, messy hair, and a scowl, he blocked my path, bringing me up short. Okay, so he was in front of me. A dribble of mustard trickled down his tie, which I thought I remembered seeing yesterday.
Face-to-face with the young detective, I terminated the call, replaced the phone at my hip, and switched to conversation mode. “Have you had any sleep?”
“A couple of hours last night on the couch in your office. Why?” He stepped out of my way and followed me to the car. Pausing with his hand on the passenger side handle, he looked at me over the top of the car. “Forget that last question, we need to talk . . . and you are so not going to like it.”
“If longevity is your goal, you might want to let me arrive at that conclusion myself—you know what they do to the messenger.”
I didn’t even get a smile. Not a good sign.
“We have another note.”
“W
here
did you get this?” I asked Romeo.
The young detective swallowed hard. “You don’t want to know.”
“Of course not. That’s why I asked.”
Huddled together, the crowd streaming around us into the hotel, Romeo and I examined a small piece of foil he had carefully unfolded and spread on the top of the car. The foil looked slightly off-color, and it was easy to tell it had been crumpled.
I read the words aloud. “Pigs to find a feast so rare. But eat a morsel taking care. A bit is fine but take heed. Death will come to those with greed.” The little ditty had been scrawled on the foil in black ink—the writing looked familiar, but I was no expert. “Is that the same handwriting as the first note?”
He nodded. “That’s not official, of course. The analysts are looking at both notes right now, but off the cuff, they said it sure looks like the same perp wrote them both.”
“Have you compared the handwriting to examples from any of the potential killers?” My brain was spinning, but thoughts whirled just out of reach of reason. Stress—it’d either send me off the deep end or run me out of town if I didn’t learn to handle it better.
“The notes are printed using block letters. Most people don’t write that way.” Romeo ran a hand through his hair, making it worse. Amazingly, the kid looked worse than I felt.
“Loosely translated, that would mean you’re working on it, but don’t hold out much hope the comparisons will tell you anything. Guess my wish to remove Jean-Charles from the suspect list isn’t going to happen.”
Romeo gave me a tired smile and a shrug. “That’s how these things usually go. These days, a clever killer can run on a long leash.”
“We’ll pop him when he hits the end.” I gave him a reassuring smile that I didn’t feel. My personal take on that whole if-you-build-it-they-will-come thing was, if you believe it, it will happen, so I went with it. And if Jean-Charles turned out to be in this up to his
toque blanche
? I’d deal with it—but I would totally swear off men for a while. Could my picker be that far off? Oh yeah, it sure could. That was my MO in the dating game. “I got something for you.” I rooted in my pocket, then deposited the chips from The Grape Spot into Romeo’s hand.
“Where’d you get these?”
I gave him the short version. Satisfied he didn’t need to preserve any fingerprints, Romeo dropped the chips into his pocket. “You know we’re having some trouble reading the first chip you gave us. I’ve got forensics working on it.”
“You’d better hurry, my ass is on the line. I lied by omission to Homeland Security. You’ve got my back, right?”
Romeo gave me a half-hurt look. “Of course. What did the feds want?”
“They’re wise to some of this rerouting game and are worried about the continued safety of the food supply.”
Romeo’s eye shot up. “First I’ve heard. I’m low on the totem pole, but normally, that sort of thing would cross my desk.”
“The feds are your problem,” I said, although I wasn’t entirely sure that was true. Agent Stokes had knocked on my door—I wouldn’t be able to shrug him off that easily. “They have even fewer answers than we have, so help from that quarter probably won’t be forthcoming . . . not that they ever play nice with us peons.”
Romeo rubbed his eyes. “I don’t know about you, but I’ll take all the help I can get.”
“I’m on my way to get Dr. Phelps and his geek squad on board right now. Somebody has to know how to read those damn chips.”
“Right.” Romeo looked like his thoughts weren’t exactly tracking today. I knew the drill. “So, Brandy told me somebody stole your paperweight thing, and is taking pictures and posting them on the Internet?”
“Apparently.”
“Who?” Romeo actually looked like he expected a real answer.
“I’m pretty sure it’s Jean-Charles. I spoke to him briefly, and he told me he would tell me how to find the chips. I followed the first photo to the Grape Spot.”
“Pretty oblique.” Romeo frowned. “When did you talk to him?”
I told him.
“And you didn’t tell me because?”
“He didn’t tell me anything you needed to know.”
Romeo narrowed his eyes at me as he thought, then he shrugged.
I’d won that round. What I told him was true . . . technically. But the same argument didn’t quite cover the fact that I hadn’t told Romeo about the note Jean-Charles had sent me with the first chip, and I didn’t feel like explaining why at the moment—none of it would matter, anyway. We needed proof, not protestations of innocence. “Jean-Charles or whomever, right now, it doesn’t matter. The only thing that does is that they are leading me to the chips. I have a feeling once we have them all, and we can read them, a key bit of this sordid tale will be in there.”
“I can buy your theory that your chef might be the one helping you. That doesn’t get him off the hook, though.”
“That pesky little proof thing, I know.” I opened the driver’s side door. “Get in. You can tell me the rest of the story about that note on the way. That way, I don’t have to look at you while you tell me which orifice you had to probe to find it.”
Traffic flowed at a snail’s pace, then got hung up entirely in the ever-present knot in front of the Bellagio, which was okay since the fountains fired off every fifteen minutes at this time of day—so at least we’d be entertained. “Okay, I think I’m ready.”
“Actually, it’s not as bad as you think. The note was wadded up and stuffed down Richard Peccorino’s throat.”
I swallowed hard and fought a shiver of revulsion. What kind of person would do that? The kind of person who would stuff a guy in an oven, I guessed in answer to my own question. “Not as bad as I think? I’m sure that depends on perspective.”
“I should arrest you and Teddie for tampering with evidence. You do know that, don’t you?” Romeo stared at the fountains and sighed heavily.
“Teddie, maybe. I gave you the chip as soon as it came into my possession, remember?” I shot him a serious look. “But I’ll let you handcuff me if it would make you feel better.”
That didn’t lighten Romeo’s sad face even a little. He turned and stared out the side window. “This job is getting to me.”
I wanted to wrap him in a hug and protect him from the world—a surprising reaction, actually. Impossible, and it would most likely be unappreciated, so instead, I let his statement go without a response. “Let’s think about this. Read the note again.”
“Pigs to find a feast so rare. But eat a morsel taking care. A bit is fine but take heed. Death will come to those with greed.” Romeo recited the lines, his voice a monotone, like a child trotting out a hastily memorized poem, the words correct, the meaning all but lost.
“These things make my brain hurt. And I’m getting really tired of this little game.” I inched the car forward, then jumped at the opening salvo of the fountains—the noise always reminded me of a cannon shot.
“Jumpy, are we?” Romeo leaned to the side and turned to get a better look.
“Just running on fumes, as usual. I need a vacation.”
“Considering our lives lately, a staycation is about the best you can hope for.”
“We live in Vegas, how bad could that be?” I drummed my fingers on the steering wheel as I glanced at the time on the newly erected neon monstrosity in front of Planet Hollywood. The sign was so bright, I felt sure the astronauts could read every word from the International Space Station.
“Not for most people, but you have two bodies in your hotel, a lover who has disappeared, and another who has reappeared, and a mother who . . .”
“Stop, you’re making me want to hurt myself.”—I pointed to the note in Romeo’s lap—“I’m assuming no prints on any of these things?”
“None that shed any light.”
“You’d think, just once, we’d get a break,” I groused.
“Wasn’t it you that used to quote that female baseball movie? What was it you said?”
“It’s the hard that makes it good. From
A League of Their Own
. A great flick, by the way.” For our Tuesday movie nights, Teddie and I had watched that movie . . . several times. I flipped on my blinker to move to the left. Why did I always forget that driving in the right lanes along the Strip was impossible—cars inevitably wanted to turn, but the constant flow of humanity on the sidewalks rarely ceded an opening.
“You know, taken out of context, there’s some innuendo there . . .” Romeo trailed off when he caught my glare.
“Those are my lines. I’ll thank you not to poach.” I didn’t worry about telling him I was kidding.
“I’ve been spending too much time around you. Apparently, I’m turning into you.”
“God help you.” Finally a guy in a white Prius let me move over, but not without a wolf whistle. With an upstanding member of the police department ready to defend my virtue, I smiled and waved. “Okay, what I want to know is why the killer seems to think I’m in the know.”
“I’m curious about that as well.” To Romeo’s credit, he didn’t act like I was hiding anything.
Feeling slightly guilty, I mentally ran through what I knew. No secrets. Then a thought dawned. “If you didn’t send Homeland Security to play in my sandbox . . .” I looked at him for confirmation.
“Nope, I’m too low on the totem pole for them to give me much attention.”
“Then I wonder how they singled me out,” I mused out loud.
“You mean since you’re so low profile and all.”
“It’s just odd. They usually work through Jerry and Security.”
“They had some story about tampering with the food supply?” Romeo pulled out his crumpled note pad and pencil, jotting notes as I recapped my conversation with Detective Stokes. “That does seem odd, poisoning the food supply? In Vegas? Hardly the large-scale kind of thing the terrorists go for. You’d think they’d be more interested in the water supply or something. I take it you can’t offer any clarity on this new note?”
“Give me time. I’ve never been all that great at these word puzzle things.” Finally, the light changed and the crowds clustered on the sidewalks, freeing a path for the cars. When my turn to move came, I took full advantage, whipping around the cars in front of me and accelerating down the Strip. The traffic always eased south of Flamingo—bunching briefly at Trop, then opening completely south of the intersection.
“Where are we going, by the way?” Romeo asked, but didn’t seem too concerned.
“I’m feeling the need to play with heavy equipment.”
“You know, at any other time, I would take a cut at that curve ball.” Romeo tried to banter, but he came off sounding defeated.
I joined the innuendo game. “Probably something along the lines of look no farther, you’re the complete package.”
“Always one step ahead.” Romeo leaned his head back.
“I play to my strengths.” Letting the horses run, I tried to let my brain freewheel.
Pigs to find a feast so rare.
* * *
The Mojave Desert.
Most folks forgot, or perhaps never knew, that Vegas was a carefully cultivated and nurtured oasis in a vast sea of land unsuitable to human life. And once one ventured beyond the watered environs, the landscape changed. Scrubby plants barely eking out an existence, sand and dirt, maybe a cactus or two, but little else—the perfect place to pretend to be a dirt mover.
The Big Hole wasn’t too hard to find—just navigate toward the cloud of dust. With next to no moisture anywhere, the sand became airborne with the slightest movement, and usually remained so for some time, carried on the ever-present breezes. This often had interesting results: while the rest of the world had rainstorms, we had sand storms. Just the other day, I was less than a quarter of a mile from Mandalay Bay Hotel and I couldn’t see it—a Vegas brownout, as it were.
Cars packed the parking lot, an unlined dirt square cordoned off with rope and cones. With no painted lines to supply order, there was none. Reluctant to toss the Ferrari into the melee, I reached across in front of Romeo, my hand open.
With a cockeyed grin, he put his badge in my open palm.
The parking attendant didn’t look at me—instead, he drooled with thinly veiled car lust as he let his eyes rake its length. If I’d been the Ferrari, I would’ve slapped him. When he finally looked at me, he seemed only slightly chagrined, and I waved the badge under his nose.
“Man, guess it really pays to be on the public payroll. Glad you guys are living the good life on the backs of us working stiffs.” Lifting the rope, he slid the low-slung car underneath, then motioned me to a safe spot behind the food trucks.
As Romeo extricated himself from his “ride,” he shot me a quip. “You do so much for Metro’s public image.”
“Just doing my part. You know, increase recruitment . . . maybe attract a higher-class crowd.” My disdain for the local cops was no secret. As he usually did, Romeo ignored me, but I caught a smile before he covered it with an important look.
Romeo—an iconoclast in a conformist’s uniform—a sista by a different mista, if you ignored the whole gender thing.
I threw my arm around his shoulders as we met in front of the car and turned to take in the spectacle. Normally a fairly straightforward, sedate affair, today the Big Hole had the look of a sideshow. Crowds packed the hastily erected grandstands on two sides of the big pit where the heavy equipment crawled on giant treads. No expert, I tried to identify the major pieces—a grader, a huge backhoe, a front-end loader, and a new addition—a crane swinging a wrecking ball, presumably against the triple-thick cinder-block wall bisecting the pit. Today, a shaky-looking platform had been erected atop the wall.