Richfield & Rivers Mystery Series 2 - Stellium in Scorpio (15 page)

Jeremy,
however, fell into the time-honored Hollywood greeting, "And you
are...?" leaving room on the end for her to fill in the blank. This was
the moment when Callie Rivers—lover, partner, friend, psychic—could respond
Hollywood-style with, "I'm a writer. I have a studio deal at
Marathon." Or something that would let Jeremy get comfortable. Directors
could be very uncomfortable if they felt they were in the company of people who
couldn't name their latest movie, admire their body of work, or fund their next
picture.

"Working
on a story with Teague," she said.

"Ah,
good, another story," he replied.

"I
told Jeremy about your screenplay," Barrett said. I had no clue which
screenplay she was talking about. Callie obviously tuned into that, asking
outright which screenplay Jeremy loved, making me instantly grateful she had
"tagged along."

Barrett
replied,
"Shades of White,
and we flew in on Jeremy's plane to hear
you pitch it, Teague. Pitch him the story."

Jeremy
was an overweight man in his late fifties wearing a rumpled white shirt and
scuffed loafers. He wore large black glasses, had a bulbous nose and a gray,
scruffy beard which, I think, was more about image than the fact that he hadn't
been able to locate a razor. I was surprised to hear that he liked
Shades of
White
because it was a woman's flick: romance, heartache, love lost, love
found. It just didn't seem like a picture the man across from me would want to
spend six months filming, even if it were on location in England.

"Pitch
it now?" I asked, trying to remember the plot points.

"Unless
you'd like to do it up in the suite," Barrett said with a smile intended
only for me.

"Here
is fine." I took a deep breath. "This is the story of a beautiful
English woman who falls in love with a young duke while she's taking a tour of
Windsor Castle."

"Ahh,
period piece, nice costumes..." He smiled, not overly attentive.
"Maybe shoot it in Scotland."

"Possibly,"
I said brightly. "The duke's stodgy, aristocratic family finally blesses
the engagement after exhaustive background checks, particularly into her
ability to produce an heir—"

"Waiter,
another drink over here." He glanced at me. "Sorry, go ahead."

"She
and the duke are mad about each other and meet clandestinely to make
love—"

"Good,
we're getting to the part that sells tickets," he said.

"She
becomes pregnant by him. Then she learns that the man she believed to be her
grandfather is not, and that her real grandfather was a Nigerian man who had an
affair with her grandmother."

"Now
there's trouble. A friend of mine had sort of the same situation—" Jeremy
interrupted, behaving as if we were just sharing anecdotal information.

"She
keeps that secret," I continued forcefully, "not wanting it to prevent
her from marrying the man she loves, and of course, when they have their first
child, it's—"

"Let
me guess...purple!" He laughed, then tried to sober up. "Of course
today who cares?"

I
glared at Barrett who gave me a blank stare, as if to say she hadn't noticed
that he was rude throughout the pitch and that the only movie this man would be
interested in making would be one in which there were lots of tits, ass, and
explosions.

"Teague
just pitched a terrific film about three hookers who go on a cruise and are
shipwrecked on a remote island with a man who is completely impotent since the
age of ten," Callie said, nearly shocking me out of my shorts.

"Now
that's a film I can get made!" Jeremy salivated.

"That's
what three other directors said. She sold it just like that." Callie
snapped her fingers and a waiter appeared, thinking she was summoning him.
"I'll have a Coke, please," she said.

Jeremy's
cell phone rang and he stood up and turned his body in two or three different
directions, trying to improve reception, then finally wandered out into the
lobby to face the etched glass panels where he could hear.

"What
are you doing bringing that guy over here for me to pitch that story? It's not his
genre, and furthermore, I don't even like the damned story! I only developed it
because I was asked to do it for Marathon years ago," I hissed at Barrett.

"Calm
down. It didn't hurt anything. He's a good guy to know. Smart and connected.
Besides, I got to see you"—then she remembered Callie—"and your
friend." Barrett slouched back in her chair, resting her head on her
French-cuffed hand, letting the other arm dangle over the side of the chair and
staring at me as if I were a watering hole in the desert. In the dim light, it
was impossible to tell on which side of the testosterone scale this exquisitely
dressed studio executive would land. I knew, of course, having slept with her.

"So,
Callie," Barrett's voice was even, and her eyes never moved from mine,
"what exactly are your intentions with this woman writer across from
me?"

"I'm
taking her to bed," Callie said just as evenly, and then added, "It's
late, and we've had a busy day." She rose and took me by the hand, pulling
me up from the chair. "Enjoy your evening, Barrett, and give our regrets
to Jeremy," she said, obviously not meaning it, and Barrett grinned and
gave Callie a look that said she appreciated her style.

Callie's
smooth tone dissipated into near-choking sounds as we left the bar.

"I
don't like that woman! She was fucking with you before she fucked you, and now
she's hitting on you!"

"Odd
sequence of events, I agree," I said. "Three hookers who go to a
desert island with a guy who's impotent? You sound like that director who
pitched with me at CBS."

"He
liked it." Callie led me into the casino past the craps tables and over to
the million-dollar slots. When I mentioned that I thought we were headed for
bed, she snapped at me, saying she needed to play the slots to unwind. Barrett
had apparently gotten to her. She plopped down on a padded seat in front of a
machine with American flags and put in ten dollars, jabbing a finger into the
slot machine buttons as if they were Barrett's eyeballs. On the third roll, the
screen locked up momentarily, turned red, and began to spin. The amount went
from $7.00 to $107, it paused, remained red, then spun again. This time the
number read $257. It did that three more times until finally the bell rang on
top of the machine, and it made a sound like a fire truck. The screen lit up
and flashed us.

"You
just won twenty-five hundred dollars!" I exclaimed.

"I
did!" she squealed. "I always win when I get that mad!"

"Glad
I could help." And I leaned over and kissed her.

A
young woman approached us and got Callie's ID and other information and said
she'd be back shortly with the money. We were both suddenly relaxed and happy
again. For a few minutes, we were alone and having a vacation just like regular
people. In fact, I was beginning to rethink my fear of boredom in a
relationship. I longed to be just a regular person with Callie Rivers, going
shopping at the grocery store, sitting around in the evening watching TV,
taking walks in our neighborhood.

A
man wearing a hotel uniform appeared and addressed Callie.
"Congratulations, you're a winner." He returned her ID, paid her out
in cash, and handed her a small slip of paper. She glanced at the paper, folded
it up, and put it in her pocket. "Quit while you're ahead and go
home," he said pointedly. Then he added, "The real winners
leave," and he turned and did exactly that.

"That
guy looked like a drag queen in a suit, like one of the performers pictured in
the
Boy Review
posters."

"It's
a drawing..." Callie pulled the paper he'd given her out of her pocket.
"It's a sketch showing a pathway leading to a cemetery with an X on the
building next to it." I scanned the room in search of the man, but he was
gone. "I think he's telling us that whatever is going on here at the hotel
is somehow connected to a cemetery," Callie said.

I
spotted the drunk guy I'd elbowed on the first night I'd joined Callie in the
bar. He was wearing the same silk pants and had drawn a bead on us, missile
locked on Callie, obviously drawn by the flashing lights. He looked drunker
than the first time I saw him. He staggered up to her, his words slurring as he
reached into his pocket.

This
is just all we need tonight,
I
thought. "Okay, fella, we're done with the Paco number, let's—"

He
slid his hand out of his pocket and lunged at Callie. For a moment, I thought
he was attacking her with his silly puppet, but then I realized in his pocket
was a small knife, and we had been lulled into complacency because we expected
it to be a puppet. Callie jumped back, but she was trapped up against the slot
machine. His knife slashed her jacket. My mind got stuck on that image: a knife
slicing through Callie's jacket, next to her perfectly formed body, a knife—so
close—a knife—her jacket—a knife. My terror at losing her causing my neurons to
lock up—short-circuit—the chemical communication to go suddenly
speechless—frozen—frightened—my mind replayed knife—jacket— knife—as my
reflexes, unhampered by my brain's issues, kicked in, and I grabbed his wrist,
twisted, and swung his arm out at a ninety-degree angle from his elbow and
cracked it back against my knee. I pried the knife out of his fist and was
preparing to drive it into his stomach when Callie screamed for me to stop.

By
now, we were surrounded with name tags of every description: security, gaming
management, hotel bar, clerks, front desk, everyone pressing the crowds back
and separating us from the attacker.

It
took about an hour to fill out the paperwork for security, who told me their
procedure was to do an internal investigation and the police had already been
notified. I smirked as the young kid filling out the paperwork for the hotel
moved his arm just long enough to reveal Palace Guard Greg on his uniform.
Great
guarding, Greg,
I thought. The LVPD officer arrived looking serious and
formal this time—the near knifing of a tourist definitely higher priority than
a sex video. The officer conducted the appropriate questioning and then took
Paco-man down to the precinct. I was certain the hotel would have him out on
bail in a matter of hours since they all seemed to know him.

When
the crowd cleared, Ms. Loomis took us aside to say how grateful she was that we
were all right, but that, as we had undoubtedly noticed, trouble seemed to be
following us at this hotel, and the management felt that for our safety, and
the safety of the other guests, we should check out. I became incendiary. This
was a neat trick: someone who wanted us out of the hotel had threatened us with
dognapping, illicit videotaping, and attempted knifing, and now was trying to
make
us
the threat!

"Ms.
Loomis," I said, my voice like steel, "this hotel has a secret.
Perhaps more than one. I am beginning to think you are aiding and abetting that
secret. Your telling me to leave further supports my belief that you're an
accomplice and you're covering up something. I know your owner, Karla Black,
and perhaps Karla will be happy to tell the FBI what's going on here."

Ms.
Loomis backpedaled, explaining that she was merely fearful for us, and the
insurance problem that all of this might cause the hotel, but certainly she
never meant to imply that we should leave if we didn't want to go.

I
stepped over to the only section of the lobby where I could get reception on my
cell phone and called my old police buddy in Tulsa, Wade Garner, who'd helped
Callie and me on the Marathon Studio murders a few months earlier. Wade was the
big square-jawed cop I'd worked alongside at the TPD, and our time together had
an odd bonding effect. We were known on the force as the Odd Couple because
there wasn't one thing we agreed on except that we'd lay down our lives for
each other.

"I
think you've encountered more crooks as a writer than you ever did as a
cop," he said. I gave him the rundown on what was happening and the names
of a few of the players, just to see what he could dig up on them: the drag
queens in the review, Karla, Mo. "It would also help if you could match
any current hotel employees with employment at the local newspaper here, say
fifteen, twenty years ago."

"Oh
sure," Wade snorted. "You think TPD stands for league's Police
Department? You know what kind of work all this shit involves? I'm not the desk
flunky on your crazy-ass cases," he said. I told him to forget my request
and implied that he was probably incapable of finding anything out about them
anyway. The response was instantaneous harassment and snorts on his end of the
line.

"By
the way," he added, "I ran into your mom and dad, and they mentioned
that you hadn't called in a week. Do I have to wipe your butt too?" he
asked and hung up.

I
rejoined Callie, who was in a snit. "I'm trying to find someone in the
hotel who can sew up my jacket. That man sliced a hole in it, and it's my good
jacket!"

I
shook my head in wonderment. "You're nearly knifed, and you're worried
about your jacket."