Lucky Break (39 page)

Romeo insisted on escorting me through Cielo and up in the elevator.
 
I pretended I didn’t want him to, but he saw through to my thinly disguised appreciation.
 
Reality had tamped down the adrenaline rush, and it was starting to hit me just how close I’d come.
 
My nerves quivered from some deep place inside, working their way out.
 
Romeo handed me off to Dane, who sat at the entrance of Cielo under the Van Gogh as he had before, two masterpieces.
 
I gave Romeo a squeeze and Dane a smile, ignoring the question in his eyes, and went off in search of a hug and a stiff drink, in that order.
 
It didn’t dawn on me that I might look a bit worse for wear.

I followed my nose to my chef, who was absorbed in a culinary masterpiece.
 
Pausing in the doorway, I drank in the sight of him, letting this reality overwrite the memory of the past couple of hours.
 
This was good.
 
He was good.
 
We were good.
 
Solid in a way I’d never had before.
 
With him I could be me.
 
And I needed a hug in the worst way.

Stepping behind him, just before I touched him, before I dove in for that hug, he sensed my presence and turned.
 
His shock registered in widened eyes.
 
As I tried to snake my arms around his waist, he grabbed them.

“What?”
 

He couldn’t talk.
 
Instead, his eyes roamed over me, drinking in the details.
 
With two fingers, he touched my cheek softly, a world of hurt creasing his face.
 
My hurt.

I hadn’t thought.
 
“Just hold me.”
 
I buried my face in the crook between his shoulder and his neck, breathing him in as his arms wrapped me tight.
 
“It’s not as bad as it looks,” I said, my voice muffled.
 
“Scratch that.
 
It is as bad as it looks.”

He held me until my shaking stopped.
 
When I could find the words, I told him everything.

After I’d finished, he parked me on my stool next to the stove, then brought me back a whole bottle of Schramsberg.
 
He popped the top, took several long swigs, then handed the bottle to me.
 
He tended the meal as I watched him wrestle with his emotions, searching for control.
 
The words would come.
 
I focused on my bubbly—I needed both hands to steady the bottle to my lips.

I’d had enough alcohol to begin to thaw the ice inside when he spoke, his voice tight and soft, filled with emotion. “I cannot lose you.”

“We can’t control that.”

He slammed a spoon down on the counter next to the stove.
 
“Yes, yes I can.
 
You must stop this.”

“I was getting in my car.”
 
I wanted to argue, to fight, but my fight wasn’t with him.
 
And logic never prevailed over emotion. Logic could win only when the emotion was gone.

Jean-Charles vibrated with anger, and perhaps fear.
 
Hadn’t Desiree warned me the one thing he was afraid of was losing someone he loved?
 
I had my way of coping.
 
I’d let him have his.

“Please don’t burn whatever that is.”
 
I said, wishing today was a normal day.
 
Then it struck me: all things considered, this was par for the course in my corner of the Universe.
 
I didn’t know how to reconcile with that, so I didn’t.
 
“It smells amazing and I’m starving.”

The anger left my chef.
 
I saw it in the slackening of his posture, the rigidity of anger melting.
 
“I cannot ask you to be who you are not.”

Relieved, I took another pull on my bottle, not feeling the least bit embarrassed.
 
I thrust it at him.
 
“Bubbles make everything better.”

He drank greedily—the first time I’d seen him slug the good stuff, or any stuff for that matter.
 
He polished off the rest of the bottle, then wiped his mouth with the back of his hand and gave me a knowing smile.
 
“I am learning American ways, yes?”

“Boardinghouse manners, but American, yes.”

I could tell he wanted to ask me what I referred to, but banter wasn’t in his repertoire right now.
 
“I’d be a fool to ask you to change—I am in love with you the way you are.
 
But perhaps I can ask you to be more careful?”

“For you, anything.”
 
I contemplated which to feed first, my growling stomach or my still unslaked thirst.
 
I decided neither.
 
“I’d like to ask you something about the night Holt Box was killed.”

“Not the sort of romantic whisperings I’d like, but okay.”
 
He put two beautifully marbled pieces of meat on the hot grill.

They spit and sizzled, making me salivate.
 
“Detective Romeo is having a hard time placing the man with the white dinner jacket with the gold buttons in the kitchen.
 
I know he has questioned you, but is there anything you remember, anything at all that might place the guy in the kitchen?”

He stirred and tested, then held a spoon out for me to try.
 
“Careful, it’s hot.”

I licked at the sauce, then took a full taste and groaned.
 
“What is that?”

He gave his patented Gallic shrug; he knew it irritated me. “A secret.”

“Of course.”

His grin faded to serious.
 
“I am sorry, I was not in the kitchen much once the party started.
 
I could not say if the man of whom you speak was in here or not.
 
Theodore says so.”

“Yes, but he is the only one, and he has the most to gain.”
 
I slipped off my stool, feeling a bit more energetic.
 
Nothing like having a murder to investigate and an old love to pin it on to make me feel like myself.

Love and hate, a fine line between them, like a tightrope strung between two tall buildings.
 
One slip and terminal velocity was a surety as you plummeted.

With the bubbles warming my insides, I tried to picture the kitchen as it was when I’d walked in.
 
I stepped to the middle.
 
Jean-Charles glanced at me.
 
“Teddie was here, Holt sagging in his arms, my father next to him.”
 
I closed my eyes.
 
Details, Lucky.
 
Remember the details.
 
“Blood.”

“Where?”

I pointed at the floor.
 
“Here.
 
Drops.
 
A trail.”
 
I followed the remembered path deeper into the kitchen, then around the corner to the walk-in. There was a door to the left of it I hadn’t focused on before.
 
“This door, it goes to the service area, right?”
 
Jean-Charles wasn’t going to leave his meat, so I raised my voice a bit.
 

“Yes.
 
To an elevator we use to bring in supplies.
 
It’s always locked but can be opened from the inside.”

I pressed the bar and pushed the door open, sticking my head out.
 
A small vestibule and an elevator that right now stood open.
 
Another door led from the vestibule, and from the orientation and more than passing familiarity with the architectural plans, I knew it opened into the public corridor leading from the main elevator to the front of the restaurant.
 
I stepped out of the kitchen, letting the door shut behind me, then I turned and tried to open it.

Locked, just as Jean-Charles said it would be.

I pushed out into the public space and came back into the kitchen through the restaurant as I had before.
 
Dane hadn’t said a word as I’d strolled by; he’d seen me in action before.
 

“Either the gold-button guy came through the swinging service doors from the restaurant itself, or someone let him in through the service entrance and he left through the restaurant,” I said when I’d rejoined Jean-Charles.

He flipped the meat carefully.
 
“You like yours medium rare.”
 
A statement that only needed correcting if he was wrong.
 
He wasn’t.
 
“How do you know he left through the restaurant?”

“I saw him.”

“Are you sure?”
 
Tongs poised above the sizzling beef.

“Pay attention.”
 
I motioned to the grill.
 
“Don’t overcook my steak.”

He raised one eyebrow, then turned to tend the meat.
 
“And yes, I’m sure.
 
Something about him caught my eye. Ol’ Irv used to dress in that dinner jacket and he would always pair it with a bow tie; red was for special occasions.”

“Why do you speak of him this way: Ol’ Irv?”

As one of the more difficult second languages, English and its peculiarities had captured my Frenchman.
 
“He has this very irritating habit of referring to himself in the third person.
 
Instead of using ‘I,’ he would use his name, Ol’ Irv.”

“And this is irritating?”

“And arrogant.
 
Like he considered himself royalty.”
 
With Ol’ Irv directly in my sights, I looked around the kitchen with fresh eyes.
 
If I could find a gold button… But they wouldn’t be that arrogant, that stupid.
 
Oh, yes, they would.
 
They had proven that at my place.
 
So where would they hide it?
 
He’d probably do that before he stabbed Holt Box.
 
And he’d place the gold button where the police wouldn’t look for it.

I scanned away from the probable hiding place in the walk-in and the path Holt had followed after he’d been stabbed, eventually falling into Teddie.
 
A drain under the dishwashing line caught my eye.

They’d used a drain once.

Would I be lucky?

Squatting, I tried to peek into the hole, but it was too dark and in an awkward spot under heavy equipment.
 
My cheek pressed to cold metal, I reached back, probing the drain with my fingers.
 
The grate moved when I pushed it, letting my fingers search deeper.
 
The drainpipe was narrow, a tube from one of the pieces of equipment, presumably the dishwasher, feeding into it.
 
Packing had been pressed around the pipe, creating a ledge.
 
Working from nearest to farthest, then back around again, I felt for something that shouldn’t be there.

I found it on the second pass, pressed into the packing material.
 
Something metal.
 
Not smooth.
 
Using a fingernail, I pried it up, careful not to let it go down the drain.
 
Stuck tight, it popped loose.
 
Adrenaline spiked.
 
I thought I’d lost it.
 
At the last minute, I flipped it into the palm of my hand, then clenched my fist tight around it.
 
And I was stuck—like the monkey and the cookie jar.
 
Using my legs as pistons, I put my shoulder into the machine and pressed, careful to ease it only as far as I needed.

Heavy and bolted to the other machinery, I couldn’t move it quite far enough.
 
Jean-Charles squeezed in next to me, adding his strength to mine.
 
It was just enough, and I wiggled my closed hand out.
 
I held it between us, palm-side up, then slowly opened my fingers.

A gold button with an embossed crest.

“Better toss on another steak,” I said, probably grinning like a fool.
 
“Romeo likes his medium.”

Romeo had polished off two steaks in between crowing about the button and giving me grief about not preserving fingerprints.
 
I doubted there would’ve been any useful fingerprints—Irv was arrogant, not stupid—but I the detective fuss.
 
All of us on emotional overload, some of the steam had to vent or rivets were going to pop.
 
Fussing, especially at me, was Romeo’s way of offloading.
 

For me, I thought perhaps some animal sex with a delish Frenchman would be just the thing to bring my stress load back into line, or as close as it ever was.

Sex is interesting—it’s also pretty silly when you think about it, but at the moment I was fixated on the interesting aspects.
 

We’d shooed Romeo away and had done a cursory cleanup.
 
On the way home, we’d swung through the Babylon, and I’d grabbed a few clothes from the office.
 
I also had some I’d left at Jean-Charles’s house.
 
Together they were the sum total of my worldly possessions.
 
I couldn’t quite get my mind around that and didn’t want to try, not now, maybe not ever.
 
But some retail therapy was definitely in order.
 
But that, too, could wait.
 
Although, this being Vegas, the dark of night was the perfect time to satisfy all your needs and desires.
 
I opted for the carnal over the tangible.