The snapping of two bullwhips—louder than gunfire—echoed against the silver striped walls inside Nick’s Burlesque. Calamity Jane was dressed in a denim thong, a holster, a skimpy fringed vest and red cowboy boots. She’d already taken off her red cowgirl hat, and her curly brown hair bounced around her shoulders as she went through her routine with a whip in each hand.
Julian watched impatiently. Not that Jane’s act was boring. She took aim at beer cans on a ledge onstage. One by one, she tore through them while never losing the beat to “American Woman.” After a strut down the spotlighted runway, she used her whips to extinguish candles on two of the tables close to the stage. The small but enthusiastic audience applauded. Most of these guys had seen the show before and knew what was coming. They cheered when Jane pulled three wooden targets onto the stage and drew one of the throwing knives from her holster. Other knives awaited her on a special table. After a sexy bump and grind, she took aim at the first target that outlined the shape of a man. Three throws. Thunk-thunk-thunk. Three hits. Head, heart and crotch.
She was deadly accurate. He couldn’t imagine that Jane was afraid of anything, but Cara had implied fear when she told him that her mom needed him. Julian would stand on his head to help Jane out, definitely didn’t want to lose her. She was a draw, one of the most popular acts at the Burlesque. She’d worked at some of Lorenzo’s other clubs in Denver but preferred Nick’s because of Julian’s rules prohibiting full nudity and fraternization with the customers. Some of the other dancers didn’t mind showing more skin and picking up bigger tips. Not Jane. She’d told him that being a good mother was the most important thing in her life. She adored Cara.
The kid was bright, no doubt about that, and she had ten times the street smarts of most adults. That little girl had been clever enough to know that her mom couldn’t chase after her while she was onstage. Cara must have waited for that precise moment before running out the door of Nick’s Burlesque. This marked the third time he’d caught Calamity Jane bringing her daughter to work, and he couldn’t let it slide.
Julian made his way around the club to the stage door, where he slipped inside. From the stage, he heard renewed cracking from Jane’s whips. At an outdoor event, he’d seen her light a couple of specially treated whips on fire which made a spectacular effect in the darkness but was against regulations for the club. Near a long backstage table covered with a sparkling array of makeup and glitter, he motioned to Lola—a tall brunette in a flamenco-style dress who had a surprisingly operatic mezzo-soprano voice.
“I know why you’re here,” Lola said as she adjusted the ruffled skirt that she’d rip off during her aria from Carmen. “It’s Cara, right?”
“Bringing a minor child to the club is against the rules.”
“Maybe those rules ought to change. I’ve got a couple of kids myself, and I’d be willing to pay if you set up some kind of day care.”
“Not a chance.” Was she blind? Couldn’t she see the obvious? Nick’s was an adult establishment with drinking, gambling and sexy performers. Though he wanted to believe that these were victimless crimes, he knew that lines sometimes got blurred. People got drunk. Fights broke out. “I can’t guarantee it would be safe, even if the day care was in a separate area.”
“Why not?” Lola tapped him on the chest with the long-stemmed paper rose she always held between her teeth during her performance of the “Pole Dance of the Toreador.”
“Number one, our patrons don’t want to be bothered by children. Number two, this isn’t a good environment for kids. And number three, I’m glad you feel like you can come to me with your concerns, but I’m not your caretaker. I’m your employer.”
“So?”
“No day care, Lola. Now, tell me what Cara is so upset about.”
“No idea. She probably just wanted to get your attention.”
He hoped that was the only issue. The sooner this situation was taken care of, the sooner he could get back to Angie. She was up to something, and he needed to figure out what was going on. Her background references from sources in California didn’t tell the whole story about Ms. D’Angelo. She’d already admitted that she erased her past and gave herself a new identity. What else was she hiding?
He heard the sound of Jane’s act coming to a close with a flurry of swirling whips. She dashed backstage holding her red cowgirl hat filled with tips. As soon as she caught her breath, she confronted him. “I know you’re mad.”
“Yes.”
“I can explain.”
The backstage area offered zero privacy. In addition to the dancers and crew milling around, there were hidden cameras and mics, supposedly for the protection of the performers but the surveillance also gave an insight into potential hustles these ladies could be planning. No cameras in the bathrooms, but there was audio surveillance. The three private dressing rooms, including Jane’s, were discreet. He followed her into the room and closed the door. The scent of leather from her whips and holster mingled with a woodsy perfume.
“I’m listening,” he said.
“Just before I went onstage, somebody told me that Cara ran off, and I’m guessing she went looking for you. Where is she?”
“Don’t worry. I left her with a reliable adult.”
“Are you sure this person is responsible?”
There were a number of reasons that Angie couldn’t be trusted, but Julian couldn’t imagine that she’d harm a child. “She’s a new hire, assigned to revamp the OTB operation.”
“You left her with a woman? Good! Cara tends to get attached to men. She sees all of them as potential father figures, but I don’t have to tell you that.”
Jane unfastened her holster and hung it on a peg before she stepped behind a screen to change. Not wanting to accidentally ogle, he trained his gaze on a photo of Jane and Cara that sat on her dressing table. They were riding on a sorrel horse with mountains in the background. “You can’t keep bringing her to work.”
“I’m sorry.”
He noticed that the apology didn’t come with a promise to never do it again. “Cara said you needed my help. What’s going on?”
“I saw something I probably shouldn’t have, and now this jackass is following me. I don’t recognize him.” She was babbling, nervous. “He’s got a dark beard and a scar on his forehead. Does he work here? I’m sure there’s a simple explanation. Maybe he just got a job in one of the kitchens?”
Her obvious tension worried him. Jane wasn’t the sort of woman who got easily frightened. “What was the jackass doing?”
“I don’t want to get anybody in trouble.” She poked her head out from behind the screen. “Can you promise that you won’t fire anybody or put them on leave or dock their pay?”
“I’ll do whatever is necessary if there’s real danger. Tell me what you saw.”
She dove back behind the screen. When she emerged, she was wearing jeans and a plaid flannel shirt. Except for the glitter and exaggerated stage makeup, she looked like somebody who worked at a ranch. “Yesterday, I got here early and went out to the barn. Waylon lets me take the horses out for a run so they’ll get exercise. When I was getting back, I heard a commotion from inside the horse barn. Somebody with a deep voice yelled a bunch of threats.”
“Do you remember what was said?”
“A whole lot of cursing and stuff like, ‘You’d better not tell. Keep quiet or else.’”
“What were they supposed to keep quiet about?”
“I don’t know.” She plunked down in the chair at her dressing table to put on her sneakers. “I rode closer. That’s when I spotted this guy storming away. If I’d been armed, I would have nailed him. But I got distracted by what I saw in the barn. Waylon was bleeding and struggling to stand. He’d been hurt bad, and I rushed to help him.”
Jane shuddered, clearly upset by this incident. Later today, Julian could check yesterday’s video from the horse barn. “Did Waylon tell you what the fight was about?”
“He said it was just a scuffle, told me to forget I’d ever seen that guy. And I probably would have done that. But this afternoon I saw him again. Oh, damn, what am I going to do?” She dabbed under her eyes with a tissue, wiping away tears before they fell and smudged her mascara. “He was standing on the sidewalk across the street from my house in Denver. He knows where I live, where my daughter goes to school.”
“Did he say anything?”
“I didn’t give him the chance. I picked Cara up from school and drove here.” She looked up at him. “What if he comes after us?”
“Is there anybody else you told about this?”
She shook her head, sending ripples through her brown curls. “I told Cara to watch out for a guy with a beard and a scar, but I didn’t want to talk to anybody until I knew what was going on. Julian, what should I do?”
“You and Cara stay here tonight on the concierge level.”
“Is it safe?”
“The guys who work on that level are trained bodyguards, former Marines.”
“That means they’re sharpshooters.”
“They’ll protect you.” He rested his hand on her shoulder. “And if the first line of defense fails, you’ve got your guns, your knives and your whips. You’ll be fine.”
“Why did that man with the scar come after me?”
“I’m not sure.” A giant understatement. He was aware that something big was going down in the next couple of weeks, but Nick Lorenzo hadn’t seen fit to brief him on the details. Julian was responsible for what happened at Nick’s but knew very little about the rest of Lorenzo’s operations.
He hoped the man with the scar was nothing more than a bully with a grudge against Waylon, hoped their fight had no deeper significance. But he suspected deeper problems were on the horizon. The gentlemen’s club was relatively successful but didn’t make massive profits, not even with the casino. Sooner or later, Lorenzo would get greedy. There would be demands.
He heard a heavy knock on the dressing room door. “Can I come in?”
It was Rudy. His uncle Nick had probably assigned this kid to be Julian’s assistant so that Rudy could keep an eye on him. Trouble was in the air. “Get in here.”
Rudy stuck his head inside. His heavy, dark eyebrows raised and his beak of a nose twitched from side to side as if sniffing. “Hi, Miss Jane.”
“Howdy,” she drawled. “What are you doing here?”
“You’re going to be seeing a lot of me. I’m Julian’s new assistant.”
Julian stepped toward him. “You were supposed to be watching Angie.” He purposely avoided mention of Cara. The last thing he needed was an explosion from Calamity Jane.
“Don’t worry, boss. Everything is okay.” He swaggered into the dressing room, hitched his thumbs in his pockets and surveyed the whips, knives and skimpy, sparkly outfits. “Anytime there’s trouble backstage, Miss Jane, you can call on me to help. I’m your man.”
“Angie was supposed to wait for me in the coffee shop,” Julian said.
“Well, sir, she and Cara changed their minds. They went to see the horses before it got dark.”
Jane bolted to her feet. “My daughter is at the horse barn?”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“The one place I told her not to go.”
She darted from the room and headed toward the rear exit. Julian followed.
Rudy brought up the rear. “Did I do something wrong?”
“You’ve seen Jane’s act,” Julian said. “Once I saw her snap the buttons off her boyfriend’s jeans with her whip because she thought he was cheating on her. You’d better hope nothing bad happened to her kid. Run and keep up with her.”
Rudy blew past him like a nervous tornado.