On his way to the underground garage, Forrester pulled out his cell phone and dialed directory assistance. Within a few seconds he was connected to the number he wanted.
“Lucy? It’s Steve.”
“Hi. This is unexpected.”
“I was kind of hoping, if it isn’t too late, to drop by your place and maybe pick up where we left off last time. Remember, you’d just made this pot of coffee …?”
There was a definite hesitation on the line. “I don’t know, Steve,” she said finally. “Are you sure you want to drive all the way out here at this hour?”
“I need to talk to somebody who isn’t a cop or a coroner.”
“God, what’s happened now?”
“Well, I guess you could say it’s good news and bad news.”
“Give me both.”
“Tony Francisco is dead.”
Disturbed by the news, Lucy Baker replaced the receiver slowly.
Things were happening, events that were beginning to shake the very foundation of the cozy little world she’d created for herself. She felt insecure, dislocated. It wasn’t only the awful crimes that were being committed under the same roof where she spent forty hours a week. It was more the terrifying prospect of a relationship with this exciting, charming, impetuous man who was filling her thoughts in a way she’d never have believed possible.
Kind of like being in a Hollywood movie, she thought, with somebody
else writing the script. She tried to shake off this new feeling of unreality and failed, unable to come to terms with the surprises life kept handing her lately. Since coming to Las Vegas, her life, and her lifestyle, had been safe and predictable. It appeared that those days were over—and she just wasn’t ready.
Lucy rose from the couch where she’d been reading and began to tidy up the already neat living room in preparation for Steve Forrester’s arrival.
“I want to apologize for the other night,” Forrester said. “And for not calling you sooner. But I’ve been up to my neck in this extortion thing, what with the poisoning—and now this.”
Lucy sat upright in the armchair, her knees pressed closely together, while Steve perforce occupied the couch. “You don’t have to apologize,” she said. “I understand. It must have been awful for you.”
“It was pretty awful for Tony Francisco, I can tell you that. No matter what we might have thought of him, he was still a human being, and no human being deserves to die the way he did.”
“I’m almost afraid to ask. What happened?”
“They electrocuted him. The same people who poisoned that man in the coffee shop. They wired up his shower … and that was it. I guess the only blessing is he died instantly. At least, that’s what the coroner said.”
“My God. What do these people want?”
“Money. Lots of it. If the association doesn’t pay, they’re threatening to burn down a casino. But Droopy’s hanging tough.”
Lucy was silent for a moment, her eyes downcast, as she absorbed this news. When she looked up again at Steve, there was resentment in her voice. “Why does everything have to be so … complicated?” she asked plaintively.
Steve rose from the couch and knelt by her chair. “Are you talking about the extortion or …?”
“Or about us? I don’t know. It’s just everything, Steve. Things were so simple until …”
“Until I came along?” He tried to put his arms around her, but she stiffened. “What’s the matter?” he asked, rebuffed in his attempt to comfort her. “I really thought we had something special the other night.”
“I don’t know, Steve. I’m still a little bit afraid.”
“Of me?”
“Of the way my life is changing. Nothing’s simple anymore. I need time to think things through.”
Forrester sighed. “Okay, I guess. Maybe I should go.” Lucy nodded sadly. He stood up and walked toward the door. With his hand on the knob, he turned and asked, “Is this really about your … experience on the cruise ship?”
When she didn’t answer, he said good night and quietly closed the door behind him.
Aboard the Rio de Janeiro, twenty-three-year-old Lucy Baker still could not believe her luck.
The money was good, the work in the ship’s casino pleasant and the fringe benefits marvelous. Kind of like being on perpetual vacation, she wrote her family. The days passed quickly under the tropical sun; the evenings were all her own. For Lucy, the best part of them was a relaxed stroll around the deck with the soft salt breeze caressing her face and ruffling her hair.
She loved the marvelous vista that extended to the horizon in all directions. Especially at night. The moon would paint a broad watery stripe through the sea, a radiant counterpoint to the faint phosphorescent glow that tinged the gentle swells. Overhead, in the velvet canopy of the Caribbean sky, the stars seemed close enough to touch. Somehow there were more of them, thousands more, than she ever remembered seeing at home in Vermont. Only the ship’s wake disturbed the tranquillity of the water, creating a luminescent trail that sparkled for miles in an arrow-straight line behind the great vessel.
Because the casino staff—managers, assistant managers, dealers, cashiers, and office personnel—were frequently reassigned to different ships within the line, Lucy Baker met new faces on every cruise. She had been lucky; her own posting aboard the Rio had lasted for over three months, during which time she’d visited almost every port on Holiday Lines’ Caribbean itinerary.
On that final, fateful western Caribbean cruise, Lucy met Nigel Fuller, a handsome, blond Brit in his early thirties, newly assigned to the post of casino manager. Fuller could not take his eyes off Lucy. He took advantage of his managerial position to assign her to his own shifts, where he “chatted
her up” with extravagant courtesy at every opportunity. Lucy was flattered and thought to herself, Is he really interested in me? She responded favorably to his advances.
Encouraged, Fuller asked her for coffee on the Lido Deck. She accepted with some misgivings, but they were soon laid to rest by the suave Englishman’s natural charm and easy conversation. He was from Stratford-on-Avon, he said, educated at Oxford, and this was his third cruise with Holiday. He had learned the casino business at the Playboy Club in London.
Lucy was fascinated by him and absolutely thrilled that this attractive, worldly man could be even remotely interested in an ordinary, unsophisticated person like her.
After working hours, their meetings became more regular. Whenever they weren’t required to stay on board for port manning, they toured lush Caribbean islands and Mayan ruins together. At sea, they danced in the ship’s nightclub or strolled the decks for hours, holding hands.
The first time he kissed her, she responded with a passion that surprised both of them. Halfway through the three-week cruise, he gently suggested that they might sleep together. Every fiber in her body ached to comply with his wishes, for by now she was hopelessly, head-over-heels in love with this man.
But Lucy was unable to overcome the deeply ingrained strictures of her Catholic upbringing. Unlike most of her unmarried friends, she was still a virgin, keeping a promise she’d made to her mother to save herself for marriage.
One warm starry night, snuggled together in a deck chair, he presented her with an engagement ring. It had been his mother’s, he said. Lucy cried a little, laughed a little, and said yes. They spent that night, and the next, and the next, in his cabin.
The cruise passed in a whirlwind for Lucy. She telephoned home from the ship the morning after Fuller had presented her with the ring.
Her mother answered.
“Maman, it’s me. I’ve got super news. I’m engaged.”
“Oh, chérie, that’s wonderful! Tell me all about him. Did you meet him on the ship?”
“Yes. His name’s Nigel. Nigel Fuller. He’s British. I know you’ll like him.”
“Have you set a date?”
“Honestly, Maman, you’re so practical! We only got engaged last night.
But I know he wants to get married in Vermont. And he can’t wait to meet you and Papa.”
They talked for another half an hour, and Lucy promised to come home with her fiancé as soon as they could possibly get some time off together.
But it was not to be. When the Rio de Janeiro docked in Fort Lauderdale at the end of the cruise, Fuller quietly disappeared without a trace or so much as a note for Lucy.
She learned from Personnel that Nigel Fuller’s contract had expired and that he had elected not to renew it.
The ring turned out to be a cheap cubic zirconia diamond imitation, which she threw overboard.
She cried for days.
Driving back to Conquistador Trail from Lucy Baker’s apartment, a thoroughly fatigued Steve Forrester sighed and wished he’d never made the trip. The magic of two nights ago hadn’t been there. Lucy was cool and reserved, and Steve was unwilling to chance a confrontation by pressing her. On the way home he stopped to pick up a carton of Vantage 100s.
So much for fickle women and good intentions, he thought glumly as he depressed the electric cigarette lighter in the burled walnut dashboard of the SL 500.