Jean-Charles flushed with barely controlled anger. As I turned to go, he grabbed my arm. “I am having some trouble with the new oven in Cielo. You will meet me there later?”
I fixed him with a steady gaze.
“Please,” he added, perhaps remembering too late that I was not one of his minions who took orders. “I know it is not convenient, but I am meeting a friend there, and I would like you to take a look. You always know what to do.”
I weighed his words as I mentally walked through my day—I had time, but not for a bit. “Give me a couple of hours.”
With a glance at Romeo, he nodded curtly. “I will be there.”
* * *
I was nursing my third Diet Coke at the bar in the Burger Palais when Romeo straddled the stool next to me. “About time you showed up,” I said. “I’m practically floating away.” I took a long pull through the straw until I exhausted the soda and pulled in air. The rude noise made me smile. Mona had always reprimanded me for doing the same thing when I was young—so, of course, I took delight in it. Still did.
“I needed time to separate the three of them and put an officer on each one to take a statement. I don’t know anything about this Fiona Richards, but whatever she did to those folks, it runs deep.”
“You don’t really think . . .” I stopped him before he answered. I knew what he was going to say. “I know, it’s not what we think, it’s what we can prove . . . or disprove.”
“You’re worried about your chef.” Romeo motioned for the bartender to give him one of what I was having. “You like him, then?”
“What’s not to like?” I stared into my glass, trying to sort out my jumbled emotions, but that proved to be like capturing lightning bugs: when you opened the jar to trap another, those inside escaped and flew away.
Romeo eyed the bottles behind the bar as he swirled the Diet Coke in his glass. “You wouldn’t have something with a bit more kick to it, would you?”
“Bourbon for breakfast? I’m not sure I could live with myself if I led you down the road to sin and perdition.”
“Seriously?” Clearly, Romeo thought I was amusing.
Glancing at him, I realized he had aged a decade during our brief association, and he was developing some of my bad habits, which didn’t make me feel good in the least. “I guess I’m not the best influence,” I admitted grudgingly. To be honest, my recent comfort with the bottle had me a bit worried, not something I would readily admit. Heck, it was hard enough to admit it to myself. Delusion—sometimes desirous, sometimes disastrous. I knew I needed to be careful—while balance was a concept I understood, I found it next to impossible to apply.
Vegas and temptation, virtually synonymous . . .
“Wow, you’ve gone all quiet and pensive. I didn’t know you had it in you,” Romeo teased.
I knew he was trying to lighten my mood. “If you’re trying to make me feel better, you suck at it.”
“As I recall, we established that some time ago.”
That got a grin out of me, despite my best efforts.
“Ha!” He pointed at me like a kid rubbing it in. “See, I
can
be taught new tricks.”
“I think we established
that
some time ago as well.”
His smile faded as he backed off his stool. “Save some of that firewater for later, okay?” he told the bartender.
“Sure thing, sir.” The young lady shot me a questioning shrug.
“We’ll be back.” I pointed to a bottle on the top shelf. “And the 101 is ours.”
Romeo put a hand on my shoulder. “Right now, I’ve got a crime scene to process. Care to join me?”
“For old time’s sake?”
Romeo had been a greenhorn when we met chasing a weasel. We’d cemented our relationship tracking down a killer who had tossed an oddsmaker into the shark tank. Since then, we’d gone on to bigger and better things. Once the teacher, I’d now become the sidekick, and I actually liked it—expectations were lower.
In a perfect Columbo impersonation, Romeo patted his pockets as he tilted his head forward and looked at me from under his brows. “Don’t let it go to your head. I’m just throwing you a bone to keep you from gnawing on my leg.”
* * *
Jean-Charles’s food truck was parked on the unpaved, sandy expanse at the rear of the parking lot behind the Babylon. Technically not part of our official lot, guests used it anyway. So did the hotel, parking extra corporate vehicles back there. The rub was that, since it wasn’t an official public-use area, our video surveillance didn’t cover it.
As Romeo and I pushed out the back doors of the hotel, I got a full view of the Presidio, my former home—one floor below Teddie’s penthouse. The apartment building had been perfect, for a while. I could walk to work. Walk upstairs . . .
A tall cylinder of glass and steel, the Presidio was the finest place to live in town . . . at least, that’s what the brochure said. Rectangles of dark and light formed a mosaic up the side of the building as various occupants opened their shades to welcome the sunlight or left them shuttered against the growing warmth of the day. My eyes followed the pattern to the top floor. I didn’t want to look, but I couldn’t resist.
The windows of the penthouse were uncovered—the shades that had blocked them for months now retracted. When Teddie had left, I’d turned the light out and moved into the hotel—I had a small apartment next to my parents’.
A place to sleep, it wasn’t home.
Romeo followed my gaze. Looking up, he pursed his lips. “The top floor, that’s Teddie’s place, right?”
“Hmmm.”
“Looks like somebody’s home.” The detective turned and looked at me.
A deer caught in the headlights of an onrushing life, I couldn’t move, couldn’t breathe. “Teddie.”
Romeo let his gaze drift upwards. “I’m glad I don’t have your problems.”
“Thanks.”
“It had to happen at some point. I mean, the guy couldn’t stay gone forever.”
“Why not?”
Romeo laughed as if I wasn’t serious. He hooked his arm through mine. “Come on. Maybe giving me a hand with the dead girl will help.”
“Homicide. Just what the doctor ordered.”
T
he
food truck was easy to find. Squatting in the middle of a circle of floodlights, surrounded by crime scene technicians, with the whole area cordoned off by the yellow tape used to delineate the boundaries of horror, the scene looked like a CSI location shoot.
Alas, no cameras. No make-believe. This was real.
Reality—not something most Las Vegans were equipped to deal with.
And it had happened in my backyard. Even worse, the noose of suspicion encircled people I cared about.
Romeo ducked under the tape, then held it up for me. He paused to talk with one of the technicians and I circumnavigated the truck, getting my bearings. A typical food truck, it was already several years old when Jean-Charles bought it a month ago. I knew that because I’d helped him find the thing.
My job offered me almost limitless pies to stick my fingers in. As a result, I was the go-to gal when anyone needed anything done—not as much fun as it sounds, but then again, I’d lost my smile.
Vegas boasted a cadre of gourmet food trucks serving everything from fancy sliders to high-end tacos—which sounds like an oxymoron but isn’t—to full-fledged creations by multi-starred chefs. Especially those chefs who, like Jean-Charles, used the trucks as platforms to not only attract a new and younger clientele, but also to try new recipes that might not please the palates of their established followers.
From time to time, the Babylon hired the food trucks and their cast of flamboyant culinary wunderkinder to provide an interesting twist to a promotional party or a fun slice of West Coast hip for patrons hailing from somewhere lacking a cool factor. Because of my love of food, I usually volunteered to ride herd on the truck vendors. Sometimes I even had to play my rung on the corporate ladder as a trump card to get the gig. When it came to food, I lost my ability to play well with others . . . sharing was not in my gastronomic repertoire. And when Jean-Charles had floated the idea of using the food truck as a combination billboard and test kitchen, I thought it brilliant.
Boy, had that idea backfired.
Like everything in Vegas, the truck had a light coating of dust. Here in the Mojave, we have such a problem with dust the city bought billboards to remind residents to refrain from off-roading. Of course, there wasn’t much the city fathers could do about the wind, and it regularly blew hard enough to sandblast all in its path.
As I eased my way around the truck, I made mental notes: dented right fender, headlight rim also dented, the rear bumper had a scrape of black paint. Nothing stood out—and it would be impossible to tell when and how any of the bumps and bruises had happened. The tires, down to their last millimeter of tread, wore a halo of crusty mud. I couldn’t remember the last time it rained . . . sometime in July, I thought. The monsoon season—a moniker that made me laugh. Monsoons conjured jungles—trees laden with vines, humidity, and man-eating felines. While Vegas had all three, all of them were kept indoors and had nothing to do with the amount of rainfall.
Coming full-circle, I paused at the steps leading into the truck and leaned in. Several technicians were wedged into the small space, hunched over the body, plucking, dusting, and bagging. I never got used to the indignity of death, which transformed a living, breathing being into a thing. I watched for a moment, not really thinking, trying not to feel. Although the techs blocked some of my view, I caught glimpses. The body contorted, the hands pulled behind and bound. The feet, also bound, were brought up to the hands and somehow trussed together, pulling the body into a backward bow. I couldn’t see much more than that . . . and I didn’t really want to. Death was never pretty.
Romeo stepped behind me and leaned over my shoulder. “What are you doing?”
“Trying not to look, but I can’t help myself. How was she killed?”
“I told you, with a Saf-T-Smoke. It sorts looks like a gun thing that you use in cooking.”
I shot Romeo a look. “If you have the smoking gun, then your job’s done, right? Piece of cake.”
He didn’t smile. “I said
a
smoking gun-like thing, not
the
smoking gun, a subtle but important distinction. You’ve been watching too many old movies. Actually, the smoking thing didn’t kill her, the plastic around her head did .”
After weighing my options for a nanosecond, I took the bait. “What, then, is
a
Saf-T-Smoke, exactly?”
“Apparently, it is a device that chefs use to impart smoky flavor to various foods, cheeses and the like. It looks like a large plastic handgun with a reservoir for the wood chips and a nozzle the smoke comes out of. You cover the food you want to smoke with plastic, then stick in the nozzle.” He gave me a knowing look. “But this brings a whole new meaning to the concept of ‘smoked.’”
I could picture the poor woman, her head wrapped in plastic, suffocating, while someone imparted a mesquite flavor to her flesh . . . or perhaps they preferred her apple-smoked. A shudder of revulsion rippled through me. Blinking rapidly, I shook off the visuals. Once again, I leaned in to catch another glimpse of poor Fiona—I don’t care how awful she was or wasn’t, suffocating was a terrible way to die . . . not that any of the options were all that great.
“Like Hannibal Lecter, but with a discerning palate,” I said, instantly regretting the words . . . sort of.
“I’m going to pretend you didn’t really say that.” Romeo wasn’t completely successful at keeping the grin out of his voice.
A daily dose of death required a morbid sense of humor for psychological survival. Cops had it, doctors, too. And, apparently, so did I, but mine was born from panic welling up inside me.
An odor caught my attention. Tentatively, I pulled in air through my nose, testing, identifying. “Smell that?”
Romeo leaned over my shoulder and sampled the air. “Death.”
“Yes, but beyond that.”
Like a lion testing the wind, he closed his eyes and sniffed. Breathing deeply, he ticked up a corner of his mouth in a half-smile. “Truffles.”
* * *
“We’ve got a problem,” Miss P., my second-in-command, said as I burst through the office door. As usual, she was sitting behind her old desk in the outer office instead of occupying her new digs in my former office—I’d been booted up to vice president, and Miss P. had filled my former Head of Customer Relations shoes—a game of corporate musical chairs that effectively changed nothing.
When I’d walked in, I’d caught her in the act of dialing the phone. Slowly, she replaced the receiver in its cradle as she blinked at me. As usual, her golden hair was spiked, her makeup subtle. Her eyes held the embers of after-glow—no doubt a gift from her much younger lover, the Beautiful Jeremy Whitlock, Las Vegas’s primo PI.
The whole cougar thing had me a bit envious. But with my heart so recently splintered on the shoals of love, prudence dictated that I wait a bit before wading into the deep end again—not that prudence was one of my strong suits or anything.
I parked my butt on the corner of her old desk and reached for the pile of messages in my in-box. “Why are you sitting out here and not in your office?”
She leveled her gaze at me over the top of her cheaters. “Don’t you want to know what the problem is?”
“Does it have anything to do with a homicide on our back lot?”
That stopped her. “No.”
“Then not really.” As I flipped through the notes, I pretended to be consumed. Like working a poker hand, I pulled a couple that I wanted to keep, then tossed the others.
“What homicide?”
I waved her question away. “Romeo’s on it.”
“I see,” Miss P. said, although it was clear she didn’t, which made me smile since I did the same thing all the time.
So I segued back to the original topic. “The way I figure it, you’ll tell me what the problem is when you’re ready. Until then, I’m happy with the whole ignorance-is-bliss thing.”
“A kinder and gentler Lucky? Patience is a virtue and all of that?” Miss P. raised an eyebrow and fought a smile. “There wasn’t really a homicide on property, was there?”
“Apparently.” With a forefinger, I nudged my golden cockroach paperweight back from the edge of the desk. It had been a gift from the employees after dealing with a guest and his pests, and I was sorta attached to it. “What is this doing out here?”
“I have no idea.” Miss P. looked like she was losing patience with my lack of interest in her problem—the one she desperately wanted to make mine. “I’ll put it back on your desk.”
I nodded, not really concerned. Everyone knew, if they took that paperweight I would consider it a capital crime. “For the record, I’m cultivating the talents necessary to move further up the corporate ladder.”
“Passing the buck?”
“Please,” I said, taking mock offense. “Delegating. Sloth, avarice, and a taste for three-martini lunches are next.” I shot her a grin. “But I wouldn’t hold my breath if I were you—the delegating thing is still a work-in-progress, although I’m warming to it. I just tossed a thousand live turkeys into Mona’s lap. Well, not just, but a few hours ago.”
A smile bloomed across her face. “Oh, I’d pay good money for a ticket to that!”
“To be honest, I’m feeling pretty proud of myself.” I folded my messages and stuffed them in the tiny pocket in my suit. Versace wasn’t known for his pockets. “Mother’s driving me nuts with talk of testing the waters for a run at a seat on the Paradise Town Advisory Board. Now she’s waxing poetic about the girls doing a bake sale to raise money for a possible campaign. How much can she possibly hope to raise with a bake sale?”
Miss P. looked at me over the top of her cheaters. “Well, when you’re talking about a bunch of hookers from Pahrump selling their . . . buns . . . in the parking lot at Smokin’ Joe’s XXX Video Emporium, I’d say the sky’s the limit.”
My heart sank. She was right. If Mona took full rein, the bake sale would turn into a national news event. The same thing happened when she’d tried to auction off a young woman’s virginity. She should’ve learned her lesson, but Mona wasn’t big on lessons.
Mona had been my cross to bear, but recently she married my father, thereby terminating my illegitimacy and simplifying my life . . . in theory. Technically, my father, who is also my boss and the owner of the Babylon, was my mother’s keeper now that she had given up her eponymous whorehouse in Pahrump, my childhood home, and moved into the Babylon. But unlike his daughter, my father was good at delegating. And when Mona made a mess, she still looked to me to show up with a broom.
But she was on her own with the turkeys. Proving once again I was more like my father than I thought. Maybe one day I’d believe it.
So, I shelved the bake sale—today’s worry plate was full. “You can watch Mona leading the poultry parade for free. Basement Level Two, although the show is probably about over.”
“And the homicide?”
“Romeo’s problem.” I didn’t add that, given the players, it would most likely become my problem. At the moment, I lacked the fortitude to shoulder that little bit of fun. So, I feigned glibness and ignored the looming storms . . . all of them. “Now, what’s the problem that’s got your knickers in a twist?”
“We have a tiny trifle with a truffle.” She delivered the words without even a hint of a smile. Impressive.
“I think that’s redundant.” I boosted myself off her desk. “Alliterative, but redundant.”
She shrugged. “Actually, it’s not a trifle with a truffle exactly.” A hint of a smile tugged at one corner of her mouth. “It’s really a problem with a pig.”
“A pig?”
“Well, Chef Gregor . . .” Miss P. ground to a halt, raising my caution flag.
I probably didn’t want to know, not really, but my Pavlovian response to all problems goaded me into hurling myself into the fire. “Chef Gregor.” His name puckered my lips like a bad taste. For a moment in time, he had been the proprietor of the failed Italian restaurant occupying the space that now housed the Burger Palais. “He is a bit of a pig, but I’m not sure I’d be so cavalier as to call him that. I hear he has important friends and a bad habit of getting even.”
Miss P. cocked an eyebrow at me. “Chef Gregor invited the truffler and the pig who found the prized truffle to the party.”
I blinked at her for a moment, absorbing. “I need to sit down, I can tell.” I sank into one of the chairs against the wall of glass overlooking the lobby below. I stretched my legs out in front of me and leaned back, fighting the feeling that I might tip and fall through the glass—I knew I wouldn’t, but it made me nervous just the same. “The truffler?”
“The truffle pig handler.”
“Truffle pig?”
“The pig that found the prized truffle.”
“You said that already.”
“Just making sure you’re following all of this. It’s important.”
“I thought you said it was a trifle.”
Over the top of her cheaters, she gave me the stink-eye. “You do remember we are holding a truffle worth a small fortune, and it is to be the key ingredient in the chef competition on Friday?”
“I have my shortcomings, but I usually don’t forget televised affairs being hosted by the hotel, nor our participation in them.” I shot her a narrow-eyed look. “I wasn’t aware we were responsible for the care and feeding of the special truffle.”