Vanity, Vengeance And A Weekend In Vegas (A Sophie Katz Novel) (5 page)

My heart was beating a little
faster now.

Maybe the gun was in the drawer.
I opened the top drawer of the dresser.
 
What I saw there did NOT make me happy.

Women’s
underwear!
Son of a bitch
! He hadn’t just picked up some random, drunk, slut.
He had actually checked in with her!
 
Less than a week after we broke up! Even Dena would take issue with
that! And I knew this chick was a slut
because of this stupid skimpy thong…actually
it wasn’t that skimpy.
 
I had the
exact same one at home.

I also had the same pair of
bikini panties that were underneath those and I owned those same bras too.
 
My head was spinning as I opened
another drawer.
 

There was the Michael Stars
t-shirt that I had left in my dresser at home along with my BCBG knit top and
my scarf that I had bought with Anatoly at the North Beach street fair.
 

In yet another drawer were two
pairs of my jeans.

I looked down at my hands. They
were shaking and this time it had nothing to do with the cosmos.
 

That’s when instinct took over.
As quickly as possible I took out every item of clothing and stuffed it all in
Anatoly’s bag.
 
I ran into the
bathroom and snatched up the Aveeno and threw that in his bag as well. I didn’t
know what was going on other than that it looked like someone wanted others to
think that this was my room and I had a very strong feeling that if that’s what
they wanted it was
very
important that no one ever reach that particular faulty
conclusion.

I could barely feel the effects
of the alcohol anymore.
 
Adrenaline
had taken over. I grabbed a washcloth from the bathroom and wiped down
everything that I had touched.

“Anatoly, where are you?” I asked
the empty room.
 
I desperately
wanted to leave but then what if he came back?

I glanced over at the
closet.
 
Would more of my clothes
be in there?
 
I rushed over to the
closet door and threw it open.

There, underneath a few of
my
sundresses
that were hanging from the rod, and on top of
my
beat-up overnight bag that I never
used anymore, was the blonde bimbo.

She was just lying there…with a
bullet hole in her forehead.

“No.” I said the word out loud
but this time it didn’t feel like I was talking to myself. It was more like a
prayer.
 
“No!” I said again and
then pressed my fist against my mouth.
 

She was dead! Dead and draped
over
my
overnight
bag! As if I was planning on packing her or something!

And Anatoly was nowhere to be
found.

I had to do something right now!
But what? I started to reach my hand towards the woman, as if to feel her pulse
but quickly withdrew it. People with bullet holes in the middle of their
foreheads did not have pluses!

I felt myself gag against my
fist.
 
I tore my eyes away from the
woman and yanked my dresses out of the closet.
 
I had to get the bag too.
 
I gagged again but forced myself to pull it out from
underneath her.
 
She flopped forward
and I nearly screamed before I finally resolved to shove her back in the closet
with my foot and then slam the door.

Someone wanted it to look like
this was my room and now a woman…a woman who was recently hitting on my
boyfriend, a woman who I had paid a stranger to
follow,
was dead in the closet.

Calling the police was simply not
an option.

I bit down harder on my fist.
What
were
my
options?

Oh yeah, I needed to get the hell
out of there.

I threw my dresses and Anatoly’s
jacket in my bag and with effort managed to scrunch his duffle bag in there
too.
 
Using my foot I opened the
door, then thought better of it and used the washcloth to wipe down the
doorknobs and undo the deadbolt so the door would actually lock behind me.
 
Swiftly, and keeping my head down, I
walked toward the elevator.

And with each step toward the
elevator the same thought rang through my head.

What happened to Anatoly?

“I’m a very forgiving
person…particularly after I’ve made my enemies pay.”

 
--Death of the Party

Anatoly was still the only thing
on my mind as the elevator doors opened to the main lobby. If he could just be
down here, waiting for me…even if he was with another woman I just needed to
see him!
 
I stepped out and scanned
the room.

“There you are!”

I froze and turned toward my
sister’s voice. She was no more than fifteen feet away and by her side was my
friend, and Dena’s cousin, Mary Ann Bettencourt. Mary Ann’s chestnut brown
curls bounced loosely around her porcelain features complimenting her green
hoodie and light grey knit, straight-legged pants while Leah’s chemically
straightened hair was pinned up and she was wearing a knee length charcoal grey
pencil skirt paired with a bell jacket cinched neatly at the waist.

“Oh yay, we found you!” Mary Ann
squealed. “We didn’t know your room number and I was beginning to think we’d
have to spend the whole night looking for you!
 
How come you didn’t answer my text?”

“My room number?” I asked
blankly. I had fallen through the looking glass, no doubt about it. First I had
been confronted by a dead body in a closet and now I was being faced off by
Mary Ann and my sister…who was apparently trying to channel a 1980s version of
a bitchy Joan Collins. I wanted to throw up. I wanted to run away screaming, I
wanted to cry…what I didn’t want to do was stand here in this lobby having a
conversation.

“I don’t know why you’re here,” I
said as calmly as I could manage, “but we’ve got to leave.”

“What do you mean, you don’t know
why we’re here?” Mary Ann asked. “Leah said you guys were turning this trip
into my bachelorette party!”

A flash of guilt crossed Leah’s
face but when she looked at me her expression switched to panic. “What’s
wrong?” she asked. “Oh dear Lord, tell me you’re not married!”

“I didn’t get married, “ I said,
grabbing her arm and pulling her toward the door.
 
Mary Ann fell into step beside us. “Mary Ann, call Dena and
tell her you’re here with me and that she and Marcus should meet us back at our
room at the Encore right now.

“The Encore?” Leah asked
confused. “But isn’t this where you’re staying?”

“Why would you think that?”

“Because I called and the front
desk confirmed that you were a guest here…did you book rooms at two hotels?”

I froze, still twenty feet from
the main exit. Pivoting toward her I met her brown eyes with my own. “There’s a
room booked under my name here?”

“I called five different hotels
asking to leave a message for guest, Sophie Katz. This is the one that had a
reservation for you. I figured there’d be a good chance that this is the place
you’d pick, seeing that they have a movie theater that shows Hitchcock and all
that other stuff you’re into—”

“They said they had a room booked
under my name,” I said again.

“I don’t get it,” Mary Ann
interjected. “I thought you said this was all arranged with them, Leah. Didn’t
they tell you which hotel they were staying at?”

“She didn’t arrange anything with
any of us,” I snapped as I quickly scanned the lobby for anything or anyone suspicious.
Was the green-eyed man around? Did he have anything to do with this? “You
really need to call Dena and tell her to get out of this hotel. It’s
important.”

“Okay,” Mary Ann said uncertainly
as she reached for her phone

“Come on, we’re getting a cab
back to Encore.”

“Can’t we just walk?” Leah asked.

“Look, you’re crashing my party,”
I hissed as I resumed my march to the door. “You are not in a position to
complain to me about my itinerary and right now I’m telling you that the next
thing on the itinerary is getting out of here. Do you understand that or not?”

“But you’re not married,” Leah
said, as she followed me out into the cold night air.

“Fucking hell, Leah,
no
!”
 
I stepped close enough to whisper into
her ear. “I didn’t get married again, but I did find a dead body in a closet.”

Leah didn’t react immediately.
She seemed to need to take a second to process the information. “Why do you
keep doing this?”

“What?”

“
What
? It’s gotten to the point that when
I see the words
body
discovered
in a news article I immediately start scanning for your name,
that’s what!”

“Keep your voice down,” I hissed
and started pulling her toward a cab. I could hear Mary Ann talking to Dena on
the phone. I could tell from Mary Ann’s side of the conversation that Dena was
pissed, most likely at me, but I was just going to have to explain later. Right
now the most important thing was to get everybody out.

We all piled into the car and I
gave the driver our destination. As we pulled onto the strip Mary Ann hung up
and looked over at me and then the overnight bag that was now squeezed between
the front-seat and my knees. “Something bad happened, didn’t it?” she asked.

“Okay, so help me understand
this,” Marcus said slowly. It hadn’t taken us long to get back to the Encore
and we were now all in his and Dena’s room. I was standing by the window, my
arms tightly crossed over my chest and the overnight bag I had removed from
that room right by my side. Mary Ann and Leah were sitting on one of the double
beds and Dena was sitting at the desk refusing to look at anyone but Marcus who
was standing in the middle of the room. Marcus turned to the two newest
arrivals.

“Why are you here again?” he asked.

“I thought Sophie might do
something stupid,” Leah explained, “and I wanted to be here to chaperone. I
knew that if I brought Mary Ann with me Sophie wouldn’t be able to just send me
home.”

“And you thought
Sophie
would
do something stupid?” Dena muttered but Marcus pressed on.

“And Sophie, you went up to
Anatoly’s room?”

“It wasn’t his room,” I said
quickly.

“It was the blonde’s room?” he
asked.

“No, not really…I don’t think
so.”

Dena gave me a withering look.
“You barged in there like a first class stalker and you don’t even know whose
room it is?”

“Go easy on her,” Marcus
murmured, “drunken heartbreak makes people do crazy things.”

Dena didn’t look like she wanted
to take it easy on me.
 
“So I take
it you went up to his room and found him with the blonde and now you…what? You
stole his overnight bag to get revenge?”

“This isn’t his overnight bag,
it’s mine.” I unzipped it and pulled out the duffle bag. “
This
is his bag. It
was in the room but he wasn’t.”

“Maybe this isn’t a good time to say
this,” Mary Ann hedged, “But I’m so sorry to hear about you and Anatoly.
 
If it makes you feel better, I really
don’t think it’s a permanent break. True love always finds a way!”

All of us in the room took a
second to stare at Mary Ann like she was an alien from outer space (a real
possibility) before turning back to the subject at hand.

“So the blonde let you in?”
Marcus asked.

“No! No! She didn’t let me in!
She couldn’t let me in because she was in the closet!”

There was a long pause before
Mary Ann clapped her hands happily. “This is great news!” she squealed.
“Anatoly couldn’t have been having an affair with a lesbian! He still loves
you!”

Leah dropped her head in her
hands and sighed.

“You’re not understanding me,” I
said slowly. “She was literally
in
the closet!”

Dena cocked her head to the side.
“Really? That’s a new one for me. Usually when people talk about a closet
fetish they don’t mean it literally but…”

“Oh dear Lord, Dena, not
everything is about sex!” Leah burst out. “What Sophie’s trying to tell you is
that there’s a dead bimbo in Anatoly’s hotel room closet!”

“Whoa, whoa, whoa,” Dena held up
her hands. “Have you gone mental? How the hell did you come up with that?”

“No, she’s right,” I said,
fighting back tears. “I found her in there with a bullet hole in her forehead.
And look,” I reached into Anatoly’s bag and pulled out the ammunition.
“Anatoly’s got bullets in his duffle bag.”

Marcus’ mocha skin looked about
two shades paler.
 
“Anatoly killed
the bimbo?”

“No! He would never do that! But…”
I looked down at the bullets,
 
“someone did and Anatoly’s nowhere to be found.”

“Oh, wow.” Mary Ann shook her
head. “I was so much happier when I thought he was making friends with
lesbians.”

Marcus pressed the base of his
palms against his forehead. “We have to call the cops.”

“There’s more,” I said quickly.
“As I was saying before, it wasn’t actually Anatoly’s room.”

“You also said you didn’t think
it was hers,” Dena reminded me.

“That’s right.” I took in a deep,
shaky breath. “I think it was mine.”

I proceeded to tell them
everything. I had to stop once to throw up but my friends were too shocked to
mind much.

“So that’s it,” I said when I had
finally finished.

“This,” Marcus said slowly, “is
incredibly bad.
 
The police are
going to be looking for you.”

I shook my head. “I cleared all
my stuff out of the room and I wiped off my fingerprints.”

“But if it’s registered under
your name…” Leah’s voice trailed off.
 

“Eventually they’ll figure out
that I didn’t book it! And…and there’s nothing to place me there!”

“Except the security cameras in
the hallway outside the room,” Leah pointed out, “and the stranger who gave you
the room number. But aside from that, nothing.”

Security cameras! I hadn’t
thought of that.

“Maybe whoever booked the room
did so for a really long time,” I suggested. “I don’t think hotel maids vacuum
closets. And they always keep the air conditioning up so that’ll keep her from
getting too smelly. It could be more than a week before they find her!”

Dena banged her cane on the floor
in frustration. “Could you go throw up again so I can talk to sober-Sophie?
It’s a cool hotel room, not a fucking meat freezer! And you said you kicked her
back into the closet with your shoe! That means she is
on
your shoe right now!”

I screamed and ran into the
bathroom to wash off my shoe…and to throw up again.

When I got back I flopped down on
the bed and pressed my face into a pillow. “Why is this my life?” I wailed.

“Yeah,” Marcus mused, “why
is
that?”

“And what about Anatoly?” I
gasped looking up. “What if something happened to him? What if he’s
hurt?
” I knew
that it could be worse than hurt but I couldn’t go there. Couldn’t even
entertain the possibility.

Mary Ann moved to sit next to me.
“He isn’t. If he was hurt you’d feel it,” She patted her heart. “You’d feel it
in here.”

“Oh for God’s sake,” Dena
muttered. “She already threw up twice, no need to make us
all
nauseous.”

“Yes, and honey,” Marcus said
gently, “it’s possible that Anatoly is a murderer.”

“I’m
telling you that’s not
possible!
” I propped
myself up on my elebows.
 
“I should
never have kicked him out! I shouldn’t even be in Vegas! All he asked for was
the chance to explain! Six years we’ve been together and I didn’t even give him
that!” I started crying, crying so hard that it even brought out the nurturer
in Leah who handed me Kleenex and mumbled a few sympathetic words.

“I want to call him!” I cried.

“Sweetie, you have his phone,”
Marcus reminded me.

“I don’t care! I just have to
hear his voice.” I snatched up my phone and dialed Anatoly’s number. I listened
to his phone ring. I had programmed a special ringtone for myself into his
phone so he would always know it was me; Wild Horses by the Rolling Stones. He
had kissed me for my efforts. As it played now the memory of that kiss came
hurling at me like a brick, knocking the breath right out of me. When his
voicemail eventually picked up I put it on speakerphone and clutched my hands
in my lap as I listened intently to the sound of his voice.

“I’m unavailable right now. Leave
your name and phone number after the beep.”

I swallowed my tears as the beep
sounded.
 
I leaned over the silent
phone and screamed, “You son of a bitch, where the fuck are you?”

Dena clicked the phone off with a
sigh.

“What am I going to do?” I
moaned.