Richfield & Rivers Mystery Series 2 - Stellium in Scorpio (5 page)

"You're
very strong." She laughed. "You don't look that strong."

"I
didn't know I was." I laughed. "Maybe you're just little."

"The
best gifts come in—"

"Small
packages," I completed the well-worn phrase and slid her suit jacket off
her shoulders and pushed aside her silk blouse. As if on cue, Elmo put his nose
to the lock on the suitcase and sniffed and squeaked.

I
decided to ignore him, and I focused on Callie's phenomenally soft breasts,
putting my face in them and breathing in her perfume, loving the sounds of
pleasure she emitted. Elmo's high-pitched squealing continued. "Elmo, be
quiet!" I demanded, but Elmo was unusually disobedient. Moments later, he
moved up an octave and let out a sustained violin sound. Callie giggled.

"Elmo!"
I barked. "Quit it!" He glared at me and then deliberately punched
the suitcase with his nose, backed away from it, glared at me again, and
threatened to go up yet another octave.

"He's
unhappy. Maybe he's a neatness freak. You have to unpack anyway, or your
clothes are going to look like they were pressed in an accordion," Callie
took up for him. I was less enthused since I had no desire to ever put my
clothes on again. However, I crawled out of bed and tossed the luggage up on
the spare bed and clicked open the latch. Inside, right on top, was a small
manila folder with the hotel logo in the upper left-hand corner. Elmo sniffed
at it as if it contained a bomb. As I wondered aloud how this had gotten into
my luggage, Callie tore into it and removed a scrap of yellowed paper torn from
some larger document. She flipped the delicate, faded piece of paper over and
stared at it intently, her mind seeming to wander. She placed the scrap of
paper on the writing desk and sank down into the straight-backed, elaborately
scrolled chair and gently rubbed her hands back and forth across the symbols on
the page as if transporting herself into them. I watched her without making any
sound, wondering what this gorgeous woman was thinking, or doing, and why this
scrap of paper seemed to mesmerize her. When she spoke it was quietly and from
a faraway place, as if by speaking softly she could keep the details of that
place in her mind and not scare them away.

"How
did you get this?" she asked.

"I
didn't put this in here. Someone's been in my luggage!" I rummaged through
the suitcase and then opened the other bags to make sure there wasn't more than
just an envelope stashed in my belongings. "It had to have been put there
by the bellman or someone who helped unload them in valet parking."

"But
how would they know to put something astrological in your bag, when it's meant
for me?" Callie asked.

"Someone
must have seen us together in the bar and knew we'd be sharing a room," I
replied.

"I
pulled up this astrological chart almost two decades ago for the builder of
this hotel," Callie said, fixated on the yellowed piece of paper.

"You
were here with the builder? How did that happen?" I held my shirts up to
the light and checked the pockets, for what I wasn't sure.

"I
was in my early twenties at the time, and I had just met Robert Isaacs. He
brought me to Las Vegas to impress me."

I
hated any sentence with Robert Isaacs's name in it, the smarmy Marathon Studio
executive who had married Callie Rivers years ago. Their marriage according to
Callie lasted roughly "ten minutes" and went something like I do, I
did, I'm done. She'd tried to explain the reasons she'd accepted his proposal,
and the lessons it had taught her, and the fact that marrying him was somehow
in her personal growth chart, but I still could not grasp the idea that Callie,
who was so in tune with the cosmos, could have tuned out and married a creep
like Robert Isaacs.

"I
was this young, blond psychic telling the builder about the stars. I remember
that I had just begun to think about everything in the world as having a birth
chart, because a birth is nothing more than a beginning. Everything has a
beginning, middle, and an end—a life span, in essence—and of course I believe
lives recycle," she continued a dialogue with herself. "I told the
owner that this hotel had a birth chart. This is a piece of that chart..."
Her voice trailed off.

"How
do you know it's from the same chart?" I asked, leaning over her chair and
kissing her shoulders, not really caring all that much about the chart.

Callie
smiled at me as if I'd asked how she'd recognized one of her own children.
"I know where the planets were...right down to the minute. It's a birth.
You don't forget a birth."

A
piece of the birth chart of a hotel and casino,
I thought in my usual jaded fashion.
I
am
absolutely mad about a woman who creates birth charts for buildings.

"I
know what you're thinking." She focused on me for the first time. "He
felt the same way. He asked what kind of hotel it would be, and I told him the
hotel would be an overly sexual place, even for a hotel, with Scorpio being
ruled by Pluto, and Mars in Scorpio in the Eighth House. It would attract money
to it, perhaps money from the Underworld, another Plutonian connection. Of
course I had no idea that Mo Black had mafia connections. I was so naive, and
that amused him."

She
pointed to the chart she had created, her finger tracing the symbols for the
six planets that had found their way into the Eighth House at that exact moment
in time. Then she fired up her laptop, plugging in numbers and data, tapping on
the keyboard and watching the planets change position on the screen, finally
announcing decidedly, "October thirty-first, Halloween, Las Vegas, three
p.m., with a new Moon, and Mars at 29 critical degrees, the day of the
groundbreaking, part of an Eighth House Stellium in Scorpio!" Callie
explained how she'd told him that kind of power, particularly in the Eighth
House, could be used for good or for evil, depending on one's intent, so he
would have to watch carefully to avoid the darker side of the hotel business.

"He
laughed and said, 'Tell you what, Blondie, if this joint ever gets into trouble
growing up, I'll send for you.' I asked how I would know it was he, and he
smirked, 'I'll give ya a little clue,' and in a mock whisper, as if he were
saying
Rosebud,
he uttered, 'Stellium in Scorpio,' and then laughed,
shouting to Robert, 'Like your girlfriend, Isaacs. Very entertaining little
broad.' And then, I'll never forget it, he looked at me seriously and said
under his breath, 'That guy ain't no good for you.'"

"Meaning
Isaacs?" I asked, and Callie nodded. "I like the guy already. Who is
he?"

"Mo
Black," Callie said.

"So
what's on this little torn piece of paper?"

"Just
the Eighth House—with the Stellium in Scorpio," she said quietly.

"Sounds
like he's trying to tell you something about the hotel. Right after I make love
to you," I said, pulling her into me, "we'll give Mo Black a call and
hear what he has to say."

"Mo
Black is dead," Callie said.

I
picked up the phone and explained in detail to the woman at the front desk that
I'd found a manila folder bearing a hotel logo in my suitcase and I had not put
it there, so someone had rifled my luggage. The woman apologized, but she
wasn't too concerned beyond that. After all, a manila folder hadn't ever harmed
anyone to her knowledge. I didn't tell her about the astrological chart, which
would have taken me all day to explain. I decided to wait and see if whoever
put it there would follow up. My focus was on Callie and just being as close to
her as was physically possible.

"What
did she say?" Callie asked when I hung up the phone.

"She
wants me to bring it down to the front desk. We'll do that later," I said,
pulling her down on the bed and kissing her, going instantly hot.

"We'd
better do that now." Callie pulled away and slipped her jacket back on.
"We might be busy later." She kissed me again.

"Thanks,
Elmo." I shot him a look. "Your sussing out this folder in my
suitcase has derailed my evening. Try to remember that you're a basset hound,
not a bloodhound, okay? You're cramping my style."

Elmo
snorted as I headed out the door.

I
bolted across the lobby and slapped the folder onto the counter at the front
desk, more out of sexual frustration than anger over my luggage being invaded.
The young woman behind the desk gave the folder the once-over and asked if
there was anything in it. I hesitated before replying that there wasn't. She
then exhibited true managerial finesse by inquiring if the folder had damaged
any of my clothes, or if the ink had rubbed off on my luggage, or if it had
caused any other issue for which she could reimburse me, thus diverting me from
the real issue of my luggage having been opened. I mentally applauded her
polished handling of my circumstance and went back to Callie with the news that
there was no news about the envelope.

"As
long as we're downstairs, there's someone here I have to meet, a client's
daughter. Will you go with me?" Callie asked. "Her last show ended at
11:00 p.m. We might catch her at the theater."

I
was miffed to say the least. I hadn't seen Callie in weeks, we were here to be
together, and our reunion was feeling like two sorority sisters away for a
weekend. Self-doubt was my psychological Samsonite. I tried not to take it on
every trip, but I had to admit to myself that it did appear that Callie Rivers
wasn't exactly unable to stand it until we made love.
Here we are visiting
showgirls, for God's sake!
I thought as I followed her along the trail of
posters and banners that heralded the
Boy Review
as the oldest, biggest,
and best nightclub act in Las Vegas!

"You
look smashing, those strong legs, and your great ass," Callie said and
leaned in, kissing me on the lips before veering off toward the hotel theater.
I perked right up.
I
am so easy!
I thought.

The
Review
was a staple with visitors to the fabulous Strip because it had just the
right combination of exotic costumes, death-defying feats, and blatant
sexuality that appealed to everyone—a blend of male and female and a challenge
to determine which was which.

"Why
do you have to go see a showgirl?" I asked.

"My
client is worried about her. She's young. There are a lot of things you can get
into here."

"Yeah."
I put my hand down the waistband of her pants. "Gotta watch yourself all
the time."

She
jumped and batted my hand away as we walked hurriedly along the concourse
beneath the wide expanse of massive marble that reached to the sky, then arched
and crisscrossed the heavens in graceful arcs that ran as far as the eye could
see. The hotel was stunning.

The
in-hotel theater was a city block's distance from the main lobby. In fact, no
two places were conveniently together. Just getting from the gift shop to the
front desk was a feat. People left the lobby for the elevators and while still
in sight shrank to half their size due to the distance between each
destination, and if you weren't tired when you checked in, you would be by the
time you walked to your room. Mo Black obviously loved Italian grandeur,
because the Desert Star was, sans gambling machinery, an architectural homage
to the spacious and dramatic cathedrals of Rome. I couldn't imagine what a
structure like this cost, or what people paid to sleep in this cathedral. I was
just glad our rooms were comped.

A young
boy with a name tag that read Desert Greeter Joey opened the theater door for
us, revealing a tiered seating arrangement for at least a thousand people. It
was theater on a grand scale and completely unexpected. How could a theater
this large be inside a hotel?

The
theater's interior was irretrievably overdone in that gay-man-gone-mad fashion
that characterized the entire city. One couldn't blame the theater for trying
to keep up.

"I
love empty theaters. They seemed to capture the essence of what we do in life:
prepare, execute, take a final bow, and exit stage left," I said with a
bit of melancholy.

"Too
confining," Callie said. "Life in a box."

I
couldn't help but laugh. Callie was obviously not a person who indulged in
melancholia or sentimentality, while I partook of it routinely.

Callie
asked Joey to let Rose Ross know that we were here. He radioed another man who
came over and escorted us up a staircase to a set of dressing rooms where the
cast got ready for their show every night. Beyond the dressing room was a
greenroom, the theatrical name for a private area where stars await their cues
and their family and friends are entertained.

"So
is the theater owned by the hotel?" I asked the man, thinking that if they
filled all one thousand seats, six shows a week, at a hundred bucks a pop,
they'd gross thirty million annually. Even if they only netted a third of that,
it would be a nice payday for the hotel.

"Uh,
I think it's leased out to the theater company that does the
Boy Review,
but
I could be wrong," the man replied. "It's a great place for theater
kids to work because every job in the hotel is treated like a part in a play.
When you're not in a production, you can be a bellman, or a desk clerk, or a
valet parker and still be performing. Theater people fill in for regular staff
wherever needed and the idea is to play your offstage role so perfectly that
everyone believes you're part of the core staff."