Chapter Eleven

Sitting in the back of a cab with Alex while James rode in the front seat, I replayed the bits of my conversation with Viv over and over in my head.

Cryptic.

That was the word I’d use to describe my conversation with Vivian. Now that the emotional impact of seeing her and the frustration of not being able to carry on a real conversation with her had worn away, what I was left with was a strong sense of urgency. She’d been trying to tell me something. But what?

I wished I’d paid better attention. I wished I had the kind of memory that recorded everything like a video camera. Most of all I wished I could hit the rewind button on this whole trip.

Alex took the hand that had been fidgeting with the cheap pleather piping on the taxicab seat and squeezed. “Easy. We’re almost there.”

I didn’t answer. Instead, as we slogged our way up the strip through the traffic to my hotel, I propped my elbow on the windowsill and looked out at the lights. Their cheerful brightness mocked me. This was supposed to have been a fun trip, a crazy, stay-up-all-night, drink-till-you-puke weekend. Instead I was sitting in the backseat of a cab worrying about how I was going to prevent my best friend from being prosecuted for a murder she didn’t commit and feeling guilty for enjoying all of the attention Alex gave me because of it.

Alex.

I wasn’t being entirely truthful with myself about my feelings for him. I liked him way more than I should, way more than I wanted to. The truth was I would have given him another chance at a date even if he hadn’t let me in to see Vivian instead of James.

I slid my eyes sideways to sneak a peek at him. Dang it! Why couldn’t I fall for a handsome, available man? Why did I always pick the ones who put me second after their favorite sports team or their buddies or the woman they were banging on the side? It wasn’t like I was ugly or desperate.

Oh my God, that was it. I was desperate. Pathetic and desperate. I was going to end up hoarding cats or making a world-record-breaking giant foil ball or something.

Out of habit I started to reach for my cell phone, thinking to call Viv for one of her famous talk me down from the ledge speeches. And it hit me all over again. Vivian had confessed to murder. What had started as a fissure seeing Vivian in handcuffs for the first time was now a yawning, gaping wound. What would I do without her?

She’d been the only one to stand by me when my life had come crashing down around my ears. When I’d lost my job, my credibility, and a big chunk of my friends. Viv had been the only one who’d stuck when all the others had scurried away like rats. She’d helped me find a new job. She’d been the one to loan me the money to pay back our old boss so I wouldn’t be prosecuted for theft. Money I hadn’t stolen. Not only had Vivian believed in my innocence, she’d even tried to help me prove it by trying to get the real culprit, my ex-boyfriend, to confess to taking the money. She’d done her best, but the selfish jerk just wouldn’t ’fess up, leaving me with the reputation of being a thief.

Over the next few years, I’d scrimped and saved and paid Vivian back. She’d never mentioned it again. Not even the couple of times when I was late paying her. When I was back on my feet financially, she was the one to suggest we open a salon together.

And now it was my turn to try and prove her innocence. I didn’t know if I could do it. I was probably stupid to even try, but I had to help Vivian. I had to. Swallowing the lump in my throat, I summoned all the courage I could scrape together and thought about what to do next.

I’d formulated a fairly competent plan by the time the taxi pulled up in front of our hotel. Okay, maybe competent wasn’t the right word, since I was fairly certain it rode hard the line between this just might work and a crazy-Lucy-and-Ethel-scheme. But it was the best plan I could come up with.

I left Alex and James at the front desk to book themselves a room and headed up to Juan Carlos’s. I needed him to tap into his vast network of friends for someone who could give me information on Dhane’s company. I also wanted to know more about Dhane’s past, most specifically the murder of his father. That was a task I was saving for myself.

Outside Juan Carlos’s door I could hear music playing. I knocked, hoping he could hear me over Frank Sinatra. Sinatra?

There was some shuffling and then Juan Carlos opened the door enough for his head to pop out at me. He looked a little rumpled.

“Oh, I’m sorry. Did I wake you?”

“No.” He looked a little guilty. Or was it embarrassed? “I’m up. Whatcha want?”

“Aren’t you going to let me in?”

“Ah, yeah, sure, hang on a sec.” He slipped his head back in and closed the door.

“Juan Carlos, open this door. It’s not like I care what you look like.” I rolled my eyes at the closed door. Really, what was the matter with him? “Come on, open up.” I knocked again.

A moment later he opened the door, smoothing his hair back into style. “Sorry. Come in.”

“What are you—” I stopped short at the sight of an equally rumpled-looking Richard. I swung my head from one to the other, my dropped jaw swaying. “Were you…? Are you…? Oh, gosh, I’m so…” Wait a minute. I swatted Juan Carlos on the arm. “What is the matter with you? Vivian’s in trouble and you two are in here going at it like a couple of teenagers?”

“I should head out.” Richard scooped his phone off the nightstand and started for the door, head down, avoiding me.

I blocked his path. “Where’s Jun?”

“Jun?” Richard stopped and looked to Juan Carlos to field my question.

“You know, Jun? The comic-strip kid? You guys were supposed to keep an eye on him.”

“Yeah, about that,” Juan Carlos began.

“Oh, no. Don’t tell me you lost him. I don’t have any way to get in contact with him.”

“What was I supposed to do? He’s an adult—”

“Sort of,” Richard interrupted.

“—he said there were some things he had to do. I did get his cell number for you,” Juan Carlos offered as consolation.

“That’s all right, I guess.” I eyed the two of them. I should have been more annoyed than I was, but in reality I was glad to see them together. “So, you guys…?” I made a back-and-forth motion with my hand.

“No!” At Juan Carlos’s cross-armed glower, Richard corrected himself. “I mean, we were just, you know…” Richard broke out in a bright pink blush.

“You’re such a prude,” Juan Carlos admonished him. “We were just about to have wild, crazy monkey sex, but then you showed up and ruined it. Thanks a lot.” Juan Carlos held up his finger and thumb. “I was this close to finding out just how well-proportioned the big guy really is.”

Richard looked like he wanted to melt into the horribly patterned carpet.

I cast a dubious eye at the perfectly made bed, then back at them. Really it was none of my business what went on between them, and besides, seeing the two of them get together was the best thing to happen all crappy day.

“I hate it when that happens,” I teased Juan Carlos.

“I know!” He pointed a finger at me. “You owe me.”

I cracked a smile, feeling the most normal I’d felt all day.

“I, ah…’bye.” Richard made for the exit so fast he nearly spun me around.

“You embarrassed him. He’s never going to let you find out now,” I joked.

Juan Carlos looked at the closed door like it held everything he ever might have wanted.

“Oh my God,” I whispered.

Juan Carlos turned to me, his face full of the hopeful joy and near-painful rush of falling hard. What I’d seen a hint of earlier was now broken open, naked and free, filling the space between us. He didn’t just like Richard. He was falling in love with him.

I’d felt that once. With my ex-fiancé. And he’d handed it back to me, broken and rejected.

“He’ll be back,” I offered, not knowing what else to say.

“You know what his ma said to me on the phone?”

I shook my head.

“She asked me what was wrong with me. Why I’d throw away a perfectly good man like her son.” He looked at me with eyes filled with disbelief. “I thought he hated me.”

“I always thought you hated each other.”

“I did hate him.”

“Do you want me to leave?”

“No.” He shook his head, throwing off his mood and returning to himself. “You can stay if you tell me what happened with skunk girl. And don’t leave anything out.”

“Jeez, it feels like forever ago.” I relayed every detail I could remember. By the time I got to the part where Trinity danced around the room, Juan Carlos was in stitches, gripping his stomach, bent nearly in half. I couldn’t help but laugh right along with him.

“Holy Dancing with the Crazies. You have got to be making some of this up.” He swiped a tear off his cheek. “Please tell me you got it on video.”

“No cameras allowed.”

He dropped into a chair. “Oh, man. That’s the best story I’ve heard in a long time.”

“And I saw Vivian.”

“What?”

“Yeah.”

“You should have started with that! What is the matter with you?” He rushed me, pulling me down onto the bed next to him. “What happened? What did she say? How’d you get in to see her?” He shook my arms. “Start talking, chica, before I pass out from lack of information to my brain.”

I filled him in on my visit with Vivian, from my spying on Jerk and Shorty to Kennedy’s parting words.

“Holy whodunit! This mystery is more twisted than my aunt Sandy’s morals. And they don’t call her Randy Sandy for nothin’, you know.” He stood up to pace, tapping a finger to his chin. “Something’s way off here…more than just Trinity’s rocker. I don’t like those guys, what did you call them? Jerk and Shady?”

“Shorty.”

“Right, Shorty. So, Shorty bopped a bimbo and spilled some super hush-hush secret that may or may not get back to Big Mac, whoever that is. And Vivian is covering up for someone. Someone worth protecting enough that she’s willing to become Big Bertha’s prison bitch.” He threw up his hands. “I don’t get it. What are we missing here?”

“I think it might have to do with Trinity and Hjálmar. Remember how Mateo said he’d heard a rumor that the company was for sale?”

“Yeah.”

“We need to find out if that’s true or not. I also think we need to find out how the company was structured and who takes over now that Dhane’s gone, especially since Trinity isn’t exactly in a position to step in. You wouldn’t happen to know someone who knows someone who could look into that for us, do you?”

Juan Carlos cracked a smile so wide it made the Cheshire cat look like he was frowning. “You know I do.”

“Get on it. I want to do some digging into Dhane’s father’s murder. I have a feeling that was the big something Vivian left out of the story she told us about how she and Dhane met.”

“Oh my God, you’re right! That witch.”

“Vivian trying to gloss over accidentally spilling the fact that Dhane had changed his name made me really suspicious. I knew she was hiding something. The thing I don’t get is why? Why would you and I care twenty-some-odd years later about a murder he was never charged for?”

“Use my laptop.” He ushered me over to the desk. “Go, go. I got some phone calls to make.” Then he began furiously tapping commands into his phone.

I twitched the mouse to bring the screen to life. Where to start? I had a feeling if Dhane had changed his name, then so had Trinity. I did some quick math to guesstimate the year Vivian had gone to Wichita and met Dhane. I typed in Wichita, murder, and the year. All I got was a bunch of hits for Wichita Falls murders so I narrowed my search by adding Kansas.

An hour later my eyelids were drooping so low I had to prop one open while I clicked the mouse with the other hand.

“Don’t do that, you’ll give yourself wrinkles. And if you get eyes like a Shar-Pei, I’m not gonna want to hang out with you anymore.” Juan Carlos came over and closed the laptop. “It’s late. I need my beauty sleep and you need your…sleep.”

“Ha-ha. Suddenly everyone’s a comedian. Must be Vegas.” I yawned so deep I almost blacked out. “I can’t do it. I can’t go to sleep in a nice plush bed knowing Vivian’s sleeping on a wafer-thin, lice-ridden cot in a jail cell. It doesn’t seem right.”

He brought me in for a hug. “I know how you feel, but there’s nothing we can do about it right now. We need our sleep if we’re going to help her.” He rubbed my back and I nearly dropped off standing up. “I’ll tell you what, the minute she gets out we’ll delouse her and take her to a nice spa. How does that sound?”

“All right, I guess.”

He turned me around and pushed me toward the door, grabbing up my purse on the way. “Here.” He handed me my bag. “Get some rest. We’ll begin again bright and early.” He kissed my forehead and pushed me through the doorway.

“Will you set your alarm and call me?” I was terrible at waking up early.

“Absolutely. Go.” He shooed me away.

I dragged my bag down the hallway after me. I was too tuckered to hoist its heft onto my shoulder. At my door, I had to search its depths for my key card, reminding me of the one I’d gotten to Dhane’s suite. What if I’d been the one to find his body? I shuddered at the thought. The door slid closed before I could find the light switch, but I was too tired to care. I padded my way across the room, feeling for the end of the bed.

Big hands grabbed me, pulling me onto the bed. My scream got cut off by one of the hands clamping over my mouth. I tried to struggle, but I was held too tight. Panic gripped me and blanked out everything but my desperate need to escape.