3 Sin City Hunter (16 page)

Betsy Ann looked shocked. “Was his behavior inappropriate?”

“Yes, it was
,” I told her. “
But he didn’t know I was a Slimmers employee at the time, so it really can’t be considered in a work context.”

“I understand,” she said. “But if he’s out of line at all while you’re here in the offices, you tell me right away.”

I nodded my head
and said, “Could we please
keep this between ourselves?”

“Of course. I’ll see you tomorrow, Susan,” she said warmly as she turned to walk out the door.

I left the building. The driver was waiting to take me back to the hotel.

Upon arriving, I rushed to my room and jumped into the shower. I needed to hurry and get changed for the hockey game
which
started at 7:05. Why do those games start so early anyway?

I stood for a few minutes, allowing the warm water to ease the tension in my shoulders while I thought about my day. On o
ne hand, I was elated with how well the day
had gone. On the other hand, I was more than a little concerned
with
the turn of events. L
ast night, I thought I might be out of danger, and now I didn’t know what to expect.

After blow drying my hair and re-applying my make-up, I dressed in a mid-thigh, red and black plaid shirt with lon
g sleeves. With black tights
underneath, the long shirt doubled as a casual dress. I grabbed my black suede knee boots and sat down on the bed to tug them on.

A
s I stood up, Darby came through the door. “Hi sunshine, you look really cute,” he said with his usual big smile. He plopped down on the bed and asked, “How did your day go?”

“Really well,” I told him. “I think I made a good impression in some high places.” His smile grew even bigger, and I could tell he was proud of me.

“Did you have any problems?” he asked. “Did you see Dudley
,
or was there anything that seemed wrong anywhere? Did you stay indoors and not go out into any open areas?”

I had forgotten
Darby and I hadn’t talked since the shooting incident yesterday. “Oh my gosh, Darby! I have so much to tell you. I left the room last night to go get a sandwich -”

I could see his mouth drop open, and he interrupted me. “Susan! You can’t do that. You simply can’t
be alone
. We agreed
you wouldn’t put yourself in danger.”

I gave him some exasperated hand-flapping motions and said, “I know. I found out. I ran into Carl when he was getting off the elevator on our floor.” Darby was now looking horrified. “He
basically told me
I didn’t know what I
saw
when I
looked out th
e
door, and
the man on the ground had a seizure, and they took him to the hospital. I thought he was tell
ing me that if I agreed to his
story, I wouldn’t have to dodge any more bullets - his words, not mine.”

Darby was practically sputtering, “What did you do?”

“I said ok. What
could I do? I was relieved
I might not be killed in the next day or two,” I said sarcastically. “But Darby, Dad and I were reading the newspaper this morning, and there was an article about a janitor from Slimmers who
was
killed and his body
mangled
on the railroad tracks south of the city. I knew as soon as I read it that it was the guy outside that door.”

“Do you think there’s
some way we can find out for sure?” he asked.

“Oh, I already know for sure,” I told him while nodding my head. “Guess who was running our big meeting this afternoon? Mr. Carlton Waltham, the new Operations Manager for the company.”

Darby
gave me a
confused look and said
,
“So?”

“Carlton. Carl. Dirtbag, murderer Carl,” I told him. “He wasn’t happy to see me at all.”

Darby’s mouth fell open yet again. “Susan, this is terrible. Carl works at Slimmers? He knows
you saw them murder the janitor
.” He paused for
only
a second and started shaking his head. “No. Oh no. You have to make some kind of excuse at work and fly home. You need to get away from this right now. You made a good impression today, and that’s enough.”

“No,” I told him stubbornly. “Th
ere’s something wrong here.
Why was the janitor murdered? Why would a janitor even come to see Carl? I heard through the grapevine today that no one even cared
he
was
murdered. I heard he was a hard man to work with, but he was also snoopy. What if he had something on Carl? What if he confronted him and Carl had him murdered?”

He stood up and grabbed me by my shoulders and said firmly, “You have to stay out of this, Susan. You can’t go snooping into this, or you might end up on some railroad tracks yourself. You hear me?”

“I hear you,” I told him. “I’m not planning to snoop into anything at all. I just want to do what I came here to do this week.” I looked at him with a determined look and said, “But if anything is said around the office
to
help make a case against Carl, I want to be there to hear it.” He hung his head and gave up. He knew there was no arguing wit
h me right now. I smiled
and said, “Did you have a good time last night?”

A half grin came over his face and he said, “I had a really good time last night. I met a ni
ce group of guys
who
were
out for a night on the town, and we hit three clubs together. I didn’t come in until four this morning, but you still should have waked me to see you to the car. I was relieved when I found out you were with your dad this morning. Then your parents
went out
for a while this afternoon, and I sat out by the pool. It’s nice out there even if the pool isn’t open. I was surprised at how many people were
lounging and enjoying themselves
.”

I nodded in agreement
as I checked
my watch. 6:20. We weren’t going to be
on time
for the first face-off if we didn’t get on our way soon. “Where are Mom and Dad now?” I asked him.

“They’ll be at the front desk at 6:30. Dad wants to take a cab to the hockey arena. He doesn’t want to lea
ve the Chevelle in the lot
.”

“I don’t blame him,” I told him as we left the room.

Mom and Dad were already in the lobby when we arrived downstairs. On the short ride to the arena, I told them about my day, and I especially enjoyed telling them how I found an erro
r the
the operations manager had made. “Susan!” Mom had admonished. “That’s not the way to put your best
foot forward.” Dad got a
good chuckle out of the story though.

We exited the cab and had to walk a short distance to the
entrance
doors. As we
approached
, I heard someone yell, “
Hey, there’s Susan
!
”
and several photographers came out of nowhere and started shooting pictures. I walked faster towar
d the doors and could sense
Mom and Darby were right behind me, but I heard Dad talking to one of the photographers and saying proudly, “
She
’s my daughter.”

Darby turned around and yelled, “Earl! Come on!” A beaming Earl obeyed the command.

Inside, we found our seats
near center ice, about ten rows up, and directly across from the visitor’s bench. Dell obviously knew where our seats were, and he skated our way during warm-up to raise his stick in a
hello
to us. I pointed him out to Darby and my parents. Dad loved h
ockey, and I knew he was
excited about tonight’s game.

We only had to wait a few minute
s before the face-off
, and the action was underway. It took me a while to adjust to the arena. Dad and I had watched a lot of hockey on television, and the sounds of skate blades on the ice and the cracking noises of the sticks o
n the pucks was
diffused on this side of the glass. The crowd was noisy, but the audible action on the ice was missing from the equation.

But what a game it was! The action was fast and furious, fights were short-lived and ke
pt to a minimum, and we were
excited to see Dell play so well. It was obvious why he was the Blades’ star player.
At the
end of the second period, he already had a hat trick. Scotty O’ Brien had t
wo goals, and his teammates had
kept feeding him the puck in an effort for him to grab one more goal for his own hat trick. The score was presently 6-3 in favor of the Blue Ball Blades.

We
left our seats at intermission. Mom and Darby headed to the concession stand while Dad and I ran off to the restrooms. T
he line for the women was
long, so I wasn’t surprised
Dad was nowhere to be seen when I exited. I headed do
wn the hallway
,
remembering
I would need to pass three entranceways before walking in nearest to our seats. I was
aware
of
people
close behind me, but it was crowded in the hallway, so
I gripped my purse tighter and kept moving forward.

The entr
ance I was looking for was a short distance ahe
ad on my left. I started to move in that direction, but
I felt a hand on my back, and
I
heard a
deep
voice
say, “Don’t turn around. K
eep moving straight ahead if you don’t want to get hurt.”

Before I had a chance to move, argue, or even think of a plan, Darby stepped o
ut in front of me and said
exuberantly
with a huge smile on his face, “Sweetheart! There you are. I thought you got lost!” He grabbed my arm, pulled me to him in an embrace, and gave me a kiss on the lips. He then put his arm around me and started walking toward the entranceway without even glancing at whoever had been behind me.

My heart was racing and my knees were wobbly. I probably would have sunk to the ground if Darby hadn’t been holding me up. I couldn’t speak. When we neared our seats, Darby stopped
and asked, “Are you ok?”

I nodded my head.
“What happened back there?”

“When your mom and I went back to our seats,
” he said, “
and your dad was already
in his
, I knew
you were alone somewhere, and I needed to look for you right away
. I saw you as soon as I hit the hallway, but I also saw those two guys
right
behind you, and the one on my side had tattoos. I ducked back and waited until you were
almost
to the doorway
,
and then
I
came to claim you as my girlfriend. I tried to act as if nothing
was wrong and
just
get you out of there.”

I was shocked. “Dar
by, the one guy told me to
keep moving forward if I didn’t want to get hurt. I think they were going to try and force me out of here. I don’t know how those guys would have even known we were here. I’m positive I didn’t mention it at work today. Do you suppose Carl put them up to it, or do you think they’re acting on their own?”

“I don’t know, Susan, but this should show you more now than ever that you simply cannot be alone,” he said ea
rnestly. I nodded my head
, and he
reached for
my hand. “Come on. There’s the face-off.”

We made our way back to
our seats. I was getting
good at masking fear for my parents’ sake. I tried my best to concentrate on the game and enjoy the final period. Dell made yet another assist when Scotty O’Brien made his hat trick. It was one of the best hockey games any of us had ever seen. The final score was 8-6 in favor of the Blades. Dell and Scotty both skated our way and raised their sticks to us before skating off in celebration.

After the game, the four of us took a cab
to the Stratosphere Hotel. We had about an hour to gamble or look around before we would be expecting Dell for dinner. Dad was excited to be meeting a professional hockey player in person. He wasn’t an NHL player, but he was still a professional player, and a good one at that.

Rather than get too involved in anything for such a short period of time, we all sat down at
slot machines and fed them
money. Darby and I were sitting side by side playing
Village People Party
machines. They were colorful, musical, and fun. We were both laughing and even winning a few dollars. I had a bonus round where I could choose a macho man. Before I could touch the screen, Dell reached over my shoulder and picked the biker. By the time we had pushed all of our albums, we had won $419. Dell said he’d never seen anyone with the kind of luck I was having. We swung by the cage to cash the voucher, and I gave the money to Dad to put toward our dinner with Dell.