Betting on Grace (14 page)

“H
EY
, S
ARNA
,
they want you up in the big man’s office.”

Nick looked over his shoulder at his supervisor, a short Philippino with dreadlocks he wore tucked under his hat. Nick handed him his broom. “A raise already?” he said jokingly. “Must be my great work ethic.”

“Hey, you’ll be lucky if they don’t fire your ass. I seen you talking to the boss’s girl the other day. Word gets around, you know.”

The boss’s girl?
Not according to Grace. Had news of their date reached Charles, he wondered as he made his way to the suite of offices?

To his surprise, MaryAnn sent him straight in.

Charles was seated behind his desk. “Sit down. I have a little problem, and I think you might be just the man to help me get rid of it.”

Nick brushed off his dusty jeans. “For the right price, I’ll do ’most anything. What’s up?”

Charles made a bridge with his fingers. His expression was serious. Dead serious, Nick realized as he listened to Charles’s proposition.

“You want me to off somebody? And you’re not even sure who?”

“I’ve hired a computer expert to track where the
e-mail was sent from. The first two letters came in the mail. I ignored them because the threat wasn’t specific. Just something like ‘Pay up or you’ll be sorry.’ I put them through the shredder.”

Nick forced himself to act nonplussed. Here was an undercover cop’s reward for scrubbing toilets.

“Hey, I don’t know much about computers, but just because you find the machine, doesn’t mean you know who used it, right?”

Charles frowned. “It will give us a place to start. If I agree to meet the blackmailer’s demands, he—or she—will need to contact me to set up a drop-off point. That’s when you can nail him. Or her. At the moment, my money’s on Liz—no pun intended.”

“Grace’s sister? What’s she got on you?”

Charles turned sideways, his gaze fixed on something in the distance. “That is none of your business. Suffice to say, there are details regarding my sister’s troubled life that I’d rather not be made public.”

Nick remembered seeing some mention of Charles’s sister in his file. A drug addict. Her body had been found in an ally in North Las Vegas. An apparent overdose.

“Why would Liz blackmail you?”

Charles’s look said Nick was the stupidest person alive. “The money, of course. She’s in way over her head with that house of hers. Grace has called it a money pit.”

Nick’s stomach clenched. He, too, had heard Grace mention Liz’s struggle to make ends meet, but Nick would never have pegged her as the type to resort to extortion.

“Plus, something happened to her when she was overseas,” Charles went on, more to himself it seemed than to Nick. “Grace told me the whole family has dis
cussed it. They think it had something to do with a man, because Liz hasn’t dated since she got back. Who better than a man-hater to want to bring me down?”

“What about your sister’s friends? The people she hung out with.”

Charles made a scoffing sound. “Those losers? They wouldn’t dare cross me.” Unblinking, Charles looked straight at Nick and a chill passed down his spine. “Not unless they want their well to dry up.”

No shit.
Zeke had been right about Charles’s drug connection.

“Besides,” Charles said, “whoever sent this knows I’m negotiating a deal with Grace. Today’s note threatened to tell her if I didn’t come up with the cash. That narrows the list of suspects. Someone who knew my sister and is privy to the Radonovic family gossip.”

“Why would exposing details about your sister ruin your deal?”

Charles sighed. “Grace is young, idealistic and passionate about family. She’d never understand about Amy and me. We were…close. Not in age, of course. I practically raised her. But as she got older, she became more…troubled. She was mixed up and made some terrible choices for herself, including drugs. I know that Grace would blame me for that, if the blackmailer told her everything.”

Everything.
Nick wondered what that involved. To block his suspicions, he asked, “How much is this worth to you?”

They haggled over the price for a good ten minutes, then Charles said, “Are you sure you can handle it? I mean, I’ve heard that you and Grace have been hang
ing around together. Her last boyfriend was a good-looking loser, too.”

“She’s just a means to an end,” Nick said, wishing like hell he meant it.

Charles nodded as if trying to decide whether or not to believe him. “And if the blackmailer is Liz? Could you do her?”

Nick knew the question was hypothetical, but it hit him harder than he would have expected. Liz was Grace’s sister. If she was the blackmailer, he wouldn’t kill her but he would arrest her. And the end result would be the same—he’d lose Grace.

G
RACE’S HAND
was shaking when she knocked on the door of Charles’s suite. She wasn’t big on confrontation. When she’d been dating Shawn, she’d given him third, fourth and fifth chances to make their relationship work. Finally, Kate told her, “He’s the kind of guy who wants the woman to do all the work—even the breaking up. If he pushes you far enough, he can blame you for ending it.”

The truth—and a couple of margaritas—had fortified Grace through that big ugly fight. Shawn had reversed her charge of infidelity. “What about you? You put your family ahead of me. Our relationship never stood a chance because you couldn’t choose the man in your life over those damn Gypsies.”

Grace had been devastated, but time—and the myriad problems facing her family—had helped her find some perspective. And a stranger’s kiss had opened the door to new possibilities.

Another reason she was standing at Charles’s door.
Charles was a friend. He’d been a safety net, of sorts, after her breakup with Shawn. A nice man who liked to take her to great restaurants. But there was no chemistry. Nothing like the heat that passed from Nikolai’s lips to hers and made her realize she could never settle for platonic.

Even if nothing came of her attraction to Nikolai— Lord knows there were enough obstacles on that path—he’d at least made her evaluate what she wanted out of a relationship. Grace planned to clear the air with Charles, but first, she had to break the news to him that she couldn’t finalize their partnership for another week.

She knocked a second time, harder. An odd murmur made her lean in and call, “Charles? It’s me, Grace. Are you there?”

She was reaching for her cell phone, when she heard the click of the lock. She waited, curious.

The door opened a crack. The eyes that peered at her didn’t belong to a man. “Um, hello. I’m looking for Charles. Is he here?”

The woman shook her head. Grace thought she looked familiar, but she couldn’t place the face. “Is he downstairs in his office? I should have checked there first, but he said he planned to work here today.”

The stranger looked over her shoulder as if silently consulting someone else. The door opened a tiny bit wider. Grace could see a second woman. Both were young and dressed in short satin robes even though it was afternoon.

It suddenly dawned on her where she’d seen the two before. The maids that Charles had hired. They were foreign, MaryAnn had said. Something about checking their documentation.

Grace wasn’t stupid. These women hadn’t been hired to clean toilets, and the fact that they apparently were living in Charles’s suite, which only had one bed, told her he was more than their employer.

“Well, this pretty much proves my power of ESP sucks,” she muttered. “Poor lonely Charles, my foot. He keeps not one, but two beautiful women on the side.”

The pair exchanged a confused look, then the taller one spoke. Grace didn’t recognize the language. Nothing sounded familiar except for the word Charles.

“Yes, Charles,” Grace said, nodding and smiling as she muscled her way into the room. What was going on? Were these women here by their own choice? The door had been unlocked so apparently he wasn’t holding them against their will, but still…something didn’t seem right.

While not the grandest hotel suite she’d ever seen, the corner apartment was bright and tastefully decorated. Charles’s expensive lithographs from an artist Grace found too persnickety for her taste occupied every spare inch of wall.

She marched from room to room, amazed by the mess. The Charles she knew was fastidious. The women followed, their expressions obviously worried.

“Listen, I’m not from Immigration. I’m not a cop.”

“Cops?” the shorter one repeated, her tone panicky.

Grace pointed to her chest and shook her head. “Not me. Don’t like ’em. Don’t worry. They won’t hear about you from me. Okay?”

The two looked at each other and seemed to understand her intent if not her words.

“What are your names?”

After a little more hand gesturing, Grace got them to say, “Lydia and Reezira.”

“Grace,” she said, but after that had no idea what to do. She thought about calling Liz. Perhaps she could communicate with these women, find out if they were here willingly.

But then it crossed her mind that the person to ask was Charles himself. She pulled out her phone and punched in Charles’s number. He answered on the second ring.

“Where are you? We need to talk.”

“In my office. I’m with someone at the moment, but give me fifteen—”

“Will five do? I’m just leaving your suite.”

“My suite?”

“Yeah. You told me you’d be working at home today, remember? Guess we have different interpretations of the word
work.
”

He didn’t say anything for a moment. “Five minutes then.” He hung up.

As she turned to leave, she paused to look in the small spare bedroom that Charles had converted to an office. A bank of built-in TV monitors which Grace had never seen before were tuned in to various spots around the hotel. This is new, she thought. After checking to make sure none of the camera shots included the elevators, she located the set that showed MaryAnn at her desk.

“I wonder who he’s talking to,” she murmured, lingering to see who would exit the office.

She didn’t have long to wait. “Nikolai. Hmm. That’s odd.” The hair on the back of her neck stood up. A sign that usually meant something bad was going to happen.
No surprise there. Not only did she have to tell Charles their business deal was on hold, but she felt compelled to poke her nose into his arrangement with these women. Maybe there was a good explanation for keeping them half-dressed in his suite. But if there wasn’t…she didn’t know what she’d do. Probably go to the police, much as the idea turned her stomach.

On the elevator ride down to the second floor, Grace gathered her courage. She knew this meeting was going to be unpleasant. MaryAnn was gone when she got there. Since Charles’s office door was open, she walked straight in.

“So Lydia and Reezira are maids, huh?” she asked when she was seated opposite him.

“Friends,” Charles said, in a way that made Grace stifle a shiver.

“Really? The kind of friends who are free to come and go as they please?”

“The kind who entered this country illegally and need a place off the street while a kindly lawyer looks into getting them green cards. Young, vulnerable girls can fall prey to all kinds of heinous endings if they’re not looked after properly.”

His tone was patient and only slightly mocking. Grace didn’t believe him, but the girls
had
opened the door for her. They didn’t seem to be prisoners.

“That’s good to know. Then you won’t care if I introduce them to Liz. She should be able to teach them a little English so they can actually get a job once they’re legal.”

“Actually, I do mind. This is none of your business, Grace.”

“I beg to differ. If I became your partner, and you were brought up on charges of say, kidnapping, then where would that leave me?”

“What do you mean
if
we became partners? I thought you were bringing me a signed contract and a wire transfer.”

Grace looked over his shoulder at the scene out the window. A new, multistory parking garage was under construction across the street. She wished she were there.

“Kate has a stake in this, too. She’s hired a lawyer to handle her ex-husband’s custody claim and she wants to take the contract in for review when she sees him.”

Charles let out a low epithet and stood up. “That doesn’t work for me, Grace. I need that money now. Preferably today.”

Today?
He hadn’t been this blunt on the phone. “Why? What’s the big deal? So what if we have to pay the contractor a little more? Over time, the cost would be amortized and—”

“Typical,” he said, cutting her off. “I should have expected this kind of runaround. Your father strung me along for years. Promises, promises. When will I learn that a Gypsy’s word isn’t worth shit?”

Grace sat back as if he’d slapped her. “My father? What does this have to do with him?”

Charles stomped around the desk until he was standing over her. “You want the truth? It’s simple. The money in your trust account isn’t yours. It never was. It’s mine. Your father—yes, upstanding citizen that everyone thought he was—took a bribe that I arranged.”

“No way,” Grace cried. “You’re making that up.”

He went on as if she hadn’t spoken. “Our deal was
fifty-fifty. Only there was this hotshot D.A. trying to earn a seat in Carson City. Ernst was a well-known gambler. For him to suddenly turn up with four or five hundred grand was no big deal. If I’d claimed the money…”

Grace got the picture, but she still didn’t believe him. “Who would bribe my dad? And for what? He was a pit boss.”

Charles backed off slightly. He settled his hip on the desk and crossed his arms. “During the late eighties Vegas was turned upside down by unions trying to establish a hold on the city. Ernst had a foot in each camp. The casino owners trusted him because he’d worked in the system for years. The union bosses trusted him because he had a way with people. You know that.”

She did. Ernst was everybody’s friend, but he was also highly respected. “He wouldn’t—”

Charles cut her off. “He negotiated a couple of deals under the table. He called it ‘finessing the situation.’ The money was a payoff for certain concessions.”