Vanity, Vengeance And A Weekend In Vegas (A Sophie Katz Novel) (6 page)

Sleep was not a possibility. I
lay in bed staring at the ceiling. I had managed to puke out most of the
alcohol which left my head a little clearer than I wanted it to be.
 
Dena and Marcus were sleeping…well,
probably sleeping, in the adjoining room.
 
Before arriving in Vegas Leah had booked a room at Hotel Noir after
“confirming” that I was staying there.
 
Now she had canceled that (grumbling the whole time about the hefty
last-minute cancelation fee) and Mary Ann had booked a room at Encore for the
two of them, although they hadn’t been able to get one on the same floor as
us.
 
Of course the fact that there
was now a record that my sister had booked a room at Hotel Noir was going to
make it even harder for me to convince anyone that the room apparently
registered under my name was never registered by me.

At around three a.m. I gave up
and pulled myself together enough to go out. I didn’t want to wake my friends
but I couldn’t bear the idea of sitting alone in my room.

In jeans and a tank top I went
down to the lobby with a book that I knew I wouldn’t be able to focus on and
sat down on a cushy chair that gave me full view of everyone coming and going.
Even at this hour of the night the place was bustling.

No one seemed to be paying any
attention to me, except one redhead in a little black dress sitting about
thirty feet away from me. She seemed to be glancing over in my direction every
few minutes before returning her attention to a magazine she was reading.
 
Or maybe she wasn’t looking at me.
Maybe she was looking behind me toward the casino. Was I being paranoid?

I shifted slightly in my seat and
tried not to be too obvious about examining her. Even from across the room I
could tell she was pretty with a perfect little figure.
 
The hot pink stilettos suggested that
she wasn’t a cop or a lesbian so my suspicions about her checking me out were
probably unfounded.
  

And then she looked up and we
locked eyes.

Shit.

I watched, frozen in place, as
she closed her magazine, got out of her seat and crossed the room to where I
was.
 
“Excuse me,” she said as soon
as she was only a few feet away.
 
“But are you Sophie Katz?”

Was there any reason to say no? Again,
there was no way a cop would wear heels like that.
 
It would be like a lifeguard wearing chainmail. But if she
wasn’t a cop she might actually be dangerous…

…
and she might know where Anatoly is.

“Yes,” I said after I had let
way
too much
time pass for my response to sound natural.
 
“I’m Sophie.”

The redhead smiled and sat down
in the seat next to me. “I recognized you from the picture on the back cover of
your books. I just finished your last one.”

She was a fan? I let out a little
relieved laugh. “If you can recognize me when I’m this much of a mess I am in
serious need of a new publicity shot.”
 

Again, the woman smiled and let
my self-deprecating comment pass without correction. That in and of itself was
a little odd.
 
“I also just read
this really interesting article in USA Today,” she said. “It was about how some
mystery authors have real life experience with crime. Like, you, Pamela Cope
and Amanda Preston.”

“Yeah,” I said cautiously, “but
Cope and I have worked to expose crimes while Preston actually beat a woman to
death when she was a teenager.
 
I
really feel that’s an important distinction.”

“I see your point.” She crossed
her legs and looked up at the ceiling thoughtfully.
 
“But that certainly makes Preston qualified to write about
murder, doesn’t it?
 
She knows what
it
feels
like
to take another person’s life.
 
Do
you think you’re as qualified as her?”

The question took me off
guard.
 
“No,” I said quietly. “I’m
not.”

“So you’ve never killed anyone?”

I had. I had shot him at close
range. It had been self-defense so technically it wasn’t murder…but still, I
took a life.
 
I had expected my
actions to haunt me. I thought that after the shock had worn away I’d be
overcome by remorse or at least some level of guilt.
 

But I didn’t feel any guilt at
all. Most of the time I didn’t even think about it.
 
And that meant that it was possible that Preston and I had
more in common than I cared to contemplate.

And a disturbing little voice in
my head told me that if there was someone out there who had harmed my Anatoly I
could kill again, with no guilt whatsoever.

And
another
little voice told me this was a
very strange question for a reader to be asking. “Are you asking if I’m a
murderer?” I asked. “Because obviously the answer to that would be no.”

“Interesting,” the woman mused,
“and yet you write about it so convincingly. Have you ever interviewed anyone
who does have experience with killing? Like, have you interviewed ex-cons, or
cops or military guys?”

“I think the experience of a
soldier fighting to defend his country is significantly different from the
experiences of someone who kills for personal interest,” I glanced toward the
entrance. Perhaps when a pink stiletto-wearing stranger tries to start up a
conversation about murder the appropriate response is to just get up and leave.

“True, but I didn’t necessarily
mean American military,” she continued. “You know in some countries there’s a
lot of crossover between the police, military and crime families. In Russia for
instance—“

I snapped my head back in the
woman’s direction. “Excuse me?”

“I was just saying that in Russia
being part of the military doesn’t preclude you from involvement in crime or
even in the Russian mafia….or as they call it the Bratva.”

I felt myself go rigid.
 
“Who are you?”

Her smile broadened. Leisurely,
she checked her diamond Cartier watch and stood back up. “You should go back to
San Francisco and write another one of your wonderful books. Vegas is no place
for a novelist. It doesn’t provide a conducive ambiance for creativity.”

“What are you saying?”

“I’m saying that there’s nothing
for you here. Go back to San Francisco. Tomorrow morning if you can.”

She started to turn but I
immediately got up and grabbed her arm. “Where’s Anatoly?” I hissed.

“I don’t know what you’re talking
about.”

“The hell you don’t! Who are
you?”

“Do I need to call security
over?” the woman asked, her voice sweet and sympathetic.
 
“They might even call the police. Would
you like to talk to the police tonight?”

I let go of her arm. “Just tell
me where he is.”

“There you are!” Marcus’ voice
carried across the lobby tinged with notes of anger and panic. I turned to see
him striding toward me. He grabbed me by both my arms and squeezed a little too
tightly. “I can’t believe you just took off like that! Tonight!”

“She knows where he is!
 
This woman knows everything!”

Marcus gave me a puzzled look and
then glanced behind me.
 
“What
woman? You mean that redhead you were just talking to?”

I broke free of Marcus and
whirled around. I caught a glimpse of her as she stepped out the front doors of
the lobby

“No, no, no, no!” I cried and
then took off after her at full speed, Marcus close on my heels.

“Who are we chasing?” he asked as
we ran outside.

I came to an abrupt halt and
swiveled my head back and forth trying to get a glimpse of red.
 
No one should be able to move that fast
in stilettos. It just wasn’t possible, was it?

“Do you see her?” I asked
urgently.

“No, she must have jumped in one
of the cabs or something. Who is she?”

Desperately I stared out at the
street that was littered with cabs of various colors. “She’s gone,” I
whispered.

“Who!” Marcus demanded again.
“Who’s gone?”

“I don’t know.
 
But she gave me a warning. She told me
to go back to San Francisco first thing tomorrow.”

“Or what?”

“Good question.
 
But I guess we’ll find out because I’m
not going anywhere.”

Marcus released a heavy sigh.
“Are you really going to stay here and risk our lives to rescue your horny,
married, mafia-lovin’-boy-toy? Because that song’s even too pathetic for
Nashville.”

“Anatoly is
not
a boy-toy.” I snapped.

Marcus brought his fingers up to
the bridge of his nose. “You need sleep, Sophie. You’re not going to be able to
do anything without that.”

I bit down on my lip. I knew he
had a point. I could feel the exhaustion tugging at me and without sleep I
would be left with a debilitating hangover when the sun came up. Perhaps if I
had been more rested I wouldn’t have allowed Little-Miss-Evil to get away so
easily. But I knew that if I lay down the images of that woman in the closet
would come back to haunt me and yank me out of unconsciousness. I sighed and
started walking toward the strip.

“Where are we going now?” Marcus
asked as he matched my pace.

“Isn’t it obvious?” I asked. “I’m
going to see if any of the local drug dealers peddle Ambien.”

 
“The vibrator was the fifth domestic appliance ever to be
electrified, coming over a decade before the vacuum cleaner.
 
It’s comforting to know that every once
in a while society gets its priorities right.”

--Death Of The Party

 
We never did find a dealer who sold Ambian but we did find a
very nice prescription drug addict who allowed me to bum a couple of Valium off
her and after twenty minutes more of staring at the ceiling of my hotel room I
was finally able to get to sleep.

I dreamt I had a closet full of
monsters and standing between it and me was the redhead in her pink
stilettos…and in her hand was Anatoly’s gun.

“Who are you?” I asked.

“You know who I am,” she replied,
coyly. Behind her the monsters scratched at the closet door.

“Are you guarding me against the
monsters?”

“I haven’t decided,” she
whispered. In the real world the whisper would have been too soft to hear but
in my dream it was as clear as a scream. “The problem is,” she went on, “I’m a
monster too.”

And that’s when I woke up. The
room was empty and completely silent. It took me a moment to put together what
was a dream and what wasn’t. There were no monsters in the closets. Just dead
bodies. The mysterious woman wasn’t here…but she had to be
somewhere
…and so did Anatoly.

That was unsettling on several
different levels. I propped myself up on my elbows. The door adjoining my room
to Dena and Marcus’ was open but from what I could see both of them were out.

I closed my eyes again and tried
to predict what the day would bring.
 
There was a distinct possibility that I was about to be arrested for
murder. I glanced at the clock. 9:45 a.m. Would I have time to get a frappucino
before being sent to prison? I was pretty sure impending incarceration
justified splurging on a Venti.

I heard the door to the other
room open and close and I immediately tensed.
Oh God, what if I get arrested before I’ve
had my coffee?

“Sophie?” Leah called out. I
exhaled loudly as she appeared in the doorway, a frappuccino in one hand and a
small brown Starbucks bag in the other. “Marcus gave me his key. I thought you
might be hungry.”

She sat down on the edge of the
bed and handed me my breakfast. Gone was the suit from the night before. Now it
was twill white pants, a fitted white tank, a cotton/silk blend navy pointelle
cardigan and a short strand of pearls that looked fake but I knew were real.
She looked like she was about to jump on her yacht and win the America Cup.

 
“Thank you,” I breathed, jamming a straw into my drink.
 
“Are they coming for me?”

 
“Is who coming for you?”

“I don’t know, the police, the
mob…anyone really. If anyone is coming for me I’d like to know about it.”

“Are you planning on going on the
lam?”

“No, but if I’m going to be
arrested I need to do my make-up. I want a cute mug-shot, preferably something
I can use as a publicity photo later.”

“Naturally,” Leah said with an
understanding nod. She ran her hands over the pristine white trousers. “You
think I shouldn’t have come.”

“I did tell you not to.”

“You did, but you need my help.”

“I already have Marcus and Dena.”

“You need me too,” Leah insisted.
“When the man you were living in sin with turns out to be married and then
murders a bimbo and sticks her in a closest…well it’s times like these that a
girl needs her sister.”

“Anatoly didn’t kill the bim…that
woman. He’s not capable of that.”

“If you say so,” Leah said mildly.
“Perhaps he was one of the few pacifists employed by the Russian mafia.”

“Leah—”

“I don’t think you’re going to be
arrested this morning,” she said cutting me off. “There’s nothing in the news
about a murder taking place at the Hotel Noir or anywhere else.”

“Maybe the maid hasn’t cleaned
the room yet.”

“Well…it was the sixth floor,
right? Those lower floor rooms usually get cleaned pretty early in the morning
unless…did you put a Do-Not-Disturb sign on the door?”

I slapped my forehead in
frustration.
 
“No! Why didn’t I
think of that?”

Leah wrinkled her nose in
disgust. “Ugh, that means that housekeeping probably has been in the room and
they just didn’t clean the closet. Do you think housekeeping ever cleans the
closets? Maybe they don’t! That’s it, I’m never going to hang anything in a
hotel closet again. Just think of the germs!”

“Yeah,” I said, my mouth full of
cinnamon sugar coffee cake. “Lots of germs on a dead body.”

Leah shuddered at the thought.
“Well hopefully they at least had the professionalism to do a thorough cleaning
of the rest of the room. If so your fingerprints have been wiped away and any
strands of hair that you might have inadvertently left behind have been
vacuumed up.”

 
“There’s still the security cameras.”

“True,” Leah admitted. “But the
longer it takes them to find the body the harder it’s going to be for them to
pinpoint time of death. You might be able to argue that when you were in the
room everybody was alive and well…or better yet, that they weren’t there at
all.”

“Listen to you! You sound like an
old pro at this.”

 
“Please. You can’t be related to Calamity Jane without
learning how to clean up a mess.”

I smiled. For once, everything my
sister was saying was making sense. The longer it took the police to find the
body the easier it would be for me to create reasonable doubt.

“Where’s the rest of our little
group?”

Leah rolled her eyes. “Mary Ann
slept in but she’s getting ready now to join Marcus and Dena at that awful
trade show. She’s actually excited about going…well, I suppose it’s not
completely inappropriate since this
is
supposed to be her Bachelorette weekend.”

“I can’t believe you tricked her
into thinking we all came here for her. And now she’s getting the worst
Bachelorette weekend ever.”

“In my defense, I thought I was
crashing a pity party, not a mafia perpetrated homicide.”

“Still—”

“Still what?” Leah snapped,
cutting me off. “When exactly
were
you going to plan her Bachelorette party? Even before this
most recent mess you were absorbed with the mess of your break-up and if Dena
had planned it we all would have ended up in some horrible sex dungeon getting
ball gags as party favors. This way Mary Ann gets her little celebration and
Dena doesn’t have the chance to plan a party that would end with the eternal damnation
of all our souls.”

“We’re Jewish,” I reminded her.
“We don’t really have an eternal damnation place.”

“Well being stuck in a sex
dungeon for an evening would be a pretty close second.” She got up and opened
my closet. I bit down into my lower lip. It was going to take some time before
I was comfortable with closets again.

“You should get dressed. They’re
expecting us.”

I laughed but then stopped short
when I realized she wasn’t joking.
 
“Are you kidding? I know you don’t want to go and I sorta have other
things I have to deal with.”

“You’re right, I’d rather run a
marathon…and you know how I feel about running. But if our story is that you
didn’t see a dead body last night we can’t act like you did. And that means
sticking to your precious itinerary.” She turned back to the closet. “What is
one supposed to wear to a sex toy trade show, anyway?”

I eyed her outfit and smiled.
“Probably not Brooks Brother’s.”

“Don’t be ridiculous, Brooks
Brothers works for everything.” She pulled a pair of wide legged pants out of
my closet and a loose, silk, red tank from my dresser and laid it out on the
bed next to me. “Get yourself together. I’m going to go see what’s taking Mary
Ann so long.”

I sipped my frappuccino as she left
the room. She had a point. I needed to keep up appearances as much as I really,
really didn’t want to. I got up to take a shower but the ring of my phone
stopped me. My mother’s number flashed across the screen.

“Hi, mama.
 
Checking up on me?”

“Mommellah, something terrible
has happened!”

My heart dropped as I lowered
myself back down on the bed. “Are you okay?”

“Yes, yes, I’m fine.”

 
“Mr. Katz? Is Mr. Katz okay?”

“What is this? You ask after a
cat before asking after your own nephew? Not that there’s anything wrong with
your nephew, or your cat for that matter, but still, what would people think of
your priorities? Is this how I raised you?”

Maybe this wasn’t the time to
tell her that she had apparently raised me to hang out at sex toy trade shows.
“So if everybody’s okay, what’s the problem?”

She hesitated a moment before
continuing. “I came to your house to feed the kitty but…oh, mommellah, someone
has been here!”
 

And again, my heart went diving
toward my toes. “Someone’s been…in my house?”

“And such a mess they left!” my
mother went on. “The cushions on the couch are slashed open, the books are on
the floor, it’s—”

“But Mr. Katz, you’re sure he’s
okay? Is he with you?” my hand clenched the sheets beneath me.

 
“You’re cat’s with me. He was hiding behind the curtains.”

“Oh, thank God!” I breathed. I
bent over holding my stomach with one hand, literally overcome with relief.

 
“I’m surprised they didn’t tear up the curtains too!” Mama
went on.

“What’s missing? The television?
Stereo? Did they take my computer?”

“No, no, not all that. These were
strange burglars. They took the computer but as far as I can tell that’s all.
Who does something like this? I think it’s all that MTV the young people are
watching these days.”

“Mama, the young people who used
to watch a lot of MTV are now middle aged people watching Ellen. All they took
is the computer?” I silently thanked the writing gods that I had taken my
MacBook with me. I was only three chapters away from completing my next
manuscript.

“All your checkbooks are here,
your jewelry, the Waterford Leah gave you…they even left that Lennox Kiddush
cup! And I paid a pretty penny for that! I tell you, these crooks are
meshuggeneh!”

“Yes, that or they were looking
for something specific,” I muttered.
 
“Mama, the desk my computer was on, is that still there?”

“Yes, it’s here.”

“And the USB stick that was in
the top drawer…is
that
still there?”

“Hold on…”

I bit my lip and waited as she
made her way through what I imagined was my trashed living room. The thought of
anyone
violating
my home like that made my skin crawl.

“Such a mess!
 
They dumped everything in that drawer
onto the floor. Real schmucks this people are!”

“Have the police already been
there?”

“Oh, the police, they always make
such a mess of things. I called you first.”

That was silly. But in this
particular case I was glad she had been imprudent. Eventually the Vegas cops
were going to find that body. The last thing I wanted to do was to bring myself
to the cops’ attention now. Reporting the burglary might also put Anatoly on
their radar. Anatoly who was armed, M.I.A., and might easily be considered a
murder suspect too.

“Are you sure you kept the USB
sticks in that drawer. Those are the little grey sticks, right?”

“Yes, it looks just like the one I
gave you to back up your recipes…what about CDs…or any discs at all? Are any of
them there?”

“I don’t see them. So what was it
these people were after? USB sticks? You told me they weren’t very expensive!”

“They’re not valuable,” I said
distractedly. But whoever took them clearly thought that what was on them was.
Of course the only thing that was really on them were my manuscripts.
 
I had a hard time believing that this
whole fiasco stemmed from the Russian mafia’s interest in expanding into
plagiarism.

 
“Listen Mama…I don’t think you should call the police. As you
said, they usually just make a mess of everything.”

“Yes, but on second thought this
place is pretty messy already! Listen, I didn’t call the police until I was
sure the kitty was okay and your jewelry was safe, but when someone breaks into
your house and turns it into a pigsty you call the cops.”