Diva Las Vegas (Book 1 in Raven McShane Series) (7 page)

Obviously, Mike needed that.  So did I.  People assume that strippers must have wild and fulfilling sex lives, but most men we meet are scumbags or just plain losers.  And when the good ones find out what we do for a living, they tend to back away after a few dates.

Our breathing returned to normal after a few minutes.  “Want to get out?” I asked.  We were still standing, holding each other, the water bubbling up to our chests.

Silence.

“Mike?”

He had fallen asleep standing up.  I gave his ass a meaningful grab.  “Mike?  Let’s go to bed.”

“Okay,” he murmured.

I led him slowly out of the pool, and when he got out he stood there naked, dripping wet and still half aroused.  He probably thought he was in a dream.  I pointed to his shirt and shorts on the ground and he seemed to get the idea.  I found my robe and put it on.  And then I panicked.

“Mike, did you bring your room key?”

He felt in his shorts.  “No.”

“Well, I’m sure they’ll just give us new ones at the front desk,” I said.  We’d look ridiculous, but I didn’t care because I was drunk and in a happy
afterglowy
place.  Mike got his clothes on and we made our way slowly to the door.  It was locked.

“What the . . ?”  I pulled at the doors again.  “We need a key to get back in.  We’re stuck out here.”

He seemed not to fully appreciate the situation.  He was drunker than I thought.

I looked around.  “Well, it’s July, we’re in San Diego, and there’s a bunch of cabanas over there with beds in them.  It could be a lot worse.  Let’s go get a big drink of water first.”

He followed me to the drinking fountain and drank from it like a parched mule at the Rio Grande.  I led him to a cabana.  He was already half asleep when we got into bed.  I opened my robe and pulled his head to rest on my chest, and I fell asleep dreaming of an early morning encore.

“Ex-
cooz
me, ex-
cooz
me.”  The high-pitched voice was insistent.  As I grudgingly awoke from a peaceful sleep, I realized there was something off about the voice that I couldn’t place.  An accent, that was it.  Mexican.  I opened my eyes and squinted into the light.  A wide-faced, dark skinned woman was standing in front of the cabana, her arms on her hips.  Her look of disapproval didn’t require any translation.

I pulled my robe around myself and propped myself up in the cabana bed.  “What time is it?”

“No speak English,” she said.  “Ex-
cooz
me,” she said again, and pointed at the door.  “No open.”

“Okay, I get it.  We were locked out.  Key?” I asked.  I made a lame motion with my hand trying to explain what had happened.  Mike was still asleep, face down.  I shook him by the shoulders and he began producing a series of grunting noises.  “We have to get out of here,” I said.

“Mm hmm.”  He rolled over and I tried to pull him up.  He seemed to finally get it and slowly raised himself from the bed.  I smiled apologetically at the Mexican woman.  She kept frowning at us as she looked us over.  And then her eyes got big.  I followed her stare to Mike’s swimming trunks.  It looked like he was trying to hide the Washington Monument in his shorts.  I thought I caught the faintest hint of a grin on the woman’s face as she turned away and waved her hands in the air in mock disgust.

“Let’s go,” I said.

The doors were now open, and we took the elevator down to the lobby in silence.  They gave us new keys without batting an eyelash, and on the way back upstairs I couldn’t tell if Mike was hung over, embarrassed, or both.  We agreed to meet in the lobby coffee shop in forty-five minutes.

I was halfway through my large coffee and a bagel when Mike arrived.  He got himself a glass of orange juice and a cup of yogurt mixed with fruit and granola.  I was about to make fun of him, but I had a flashback to his toned, athletic body.  His
pecs
and abs made a pretty good case for avoiding alcohol and eating right.  He didn’t seem too talkative, and I decided it would be better to avoid the subject of last night.

“We should probably get up to La Jolla as soon as possible,” I said.  “It might be a long day.”

He nodded.

“You know, you don’t have to come with me.”

“What else am I going to do?  Go shopping?”  He smiled at me over his yogurt.  “So,” he began tentatively.

Here it comes, I thought.  He wants to talk about last night.  I was dreading this.  Guys had a way of going weird on me—either they bailed out right after sleeping with me, or they got clingy and needy.

He continued, “You have a plan other than just going up to this guy’s door and ringing the doorbell?”

“Um, actually, no.”

“Okay, just checking.”

Whew—I had dodged an awkward conversation.  It was almost ten when the valet brought the car around.  I pressed the button to drop the top down and we spent the ten miles drive up to La Jolla enjoying the warm sea air in our faces.  We headed up the Pacific Highway and swung west on Mission Boulevard, which crossed over the coastal side of Mission Bay.  The road hugged the coastline, and soon turned into La Jolla Boulevard.  From there I retraced our route from yesterday and found the streets leading into Mel’s home at the La Jolla Country Club.

As we turned onto Fairway Road, I spotted a green Volkswagen pulling into Mel’s driveway a block ahead of us.  I hit the brakes and began inching the car closer, trying to get a glimpse of the driver without drawing too much attention to us.  I stopped a half block away and saw the car’s driver—it obviously wasn’t Mel—walk up the front steps.  The girl looked about twenty and had her blond hair tied back in a pony tail.  She wore a gray sweatshirt and dark green shorts, and she had a grocery bag under her arm.  She propped the bag up on her left hip while she used a key to let herself in.

“Well, that’s not him,” I said.  It was not among my most insightful observations.

“Maybe that’s who was moving around in there yesterday.  Maybe he’s renting the place out or something.”

“I’m not gonna call first this time,” I said.  “Keep your eyes open, okay?”

I left the car parked a half block back and walked up to the house.  I harbored the vague hope that if I spotted the girl through the large front window she would be forced out of embarrassment to answer the door.  No such luck.  I rang the bell, but again there was no answer, and I didn’t detect any movement inside.  What the hell was going on?

I waited a full minute but decided it would be impolite, not to mention awkward, to linger on the front porch any longer.  I walked back to the Audi and slumped in the driver’s seat.

“Welcome to detective work,” Mike said.  “A lot of sitting around doing nothing.”

I was beginning to feel silly for dragging Mike along with me, although after last night I didn’t regret it for a second.  “So what’s your professional advice?  Sit here and wait?”

He sighed and began fiddling with the radio.  “Let’s give it a few minutes.”

Ten minutes turned into twenty.  Mike was still messing with the radio, which was more than a little annoying.  He hadn’t settled on a station yet when Mel’s garage opened and a huge black Lincoln began backing up slowly out of the driveway.  The car turned in our direction and began barreling down Fairway Road towards us.

“Get down,” Mike said.

We both slunk down in our seats.  I cursed myself for leaving the top down, but I think we managed to stay out of sight.

In the rearview mirror I saw the car wind its way north on Fairway Road and veer left when that road met up with the main country club drive.  I started up the Audi and did a quick U-turn, hoping I could follow the Lincoln without being too obvious about it.  By the time we came upon the end of the club drive, however, I had lost sight of the car.

“You see where it went?” I asked.

“No, but this road veers pretty sharply north.  If he was going some other direction, he’d probably have turned off before now.”   

I bore north on Torrey Pines Road, and sure enough, at the next intersection I caught a glimpse of the Lincoln, easy to pick out amid the endless parade of smaller BMWs and Porsches that darted around La Jolla’s streets.  I kept following, keeping about a block’s distance between us, and we veered onto La Jolla Parkway into the heart of what was now the noon rush.  After crawling along for a few blocks, the Lincoln headed for the I-5 expressway, and I followed it north at a safe distance, hoping the mass of cars on the freeway would give me some cover. 

“Don’t worry,” I said.  “I won’t follow it all the way to San Francisco.”

I soon began wondering how long I
would
follow the car and chided myself once again for failing to come up with any semblance of a plan ahead of time.  Luckily, within ten minutes the Lincoln pulled into the right lane and exited in the town of Del Mar.  There were two cars between us and the Lincoln, and the Lincoln turned left at the first road.  The stoplight turned red and prevented me from following immediately, but I was able to see the car take another left at the next street up.  When the light changed and I caught up, it all started to make sense.  The Lincoln was three cars ahead of us in line to enter the Del Mar racetrack. 

“He’s playing the ponies,” I said.

“A lifelong casino man, right?  Makes sense.  Where else you gonna find any betting action around here?”  

I paid the five dollar parking fee and was careful not to trail the Lincoln too obviously, although I ended up being forced to park closer than I would have liked.  The blond girl soon emerged from the driver’s seat, but the passenger door opened only a crack.  The girl had changed her clothes and now sported a pale yellow sun dress and fashionable oversized sunglasses.  She was tall and rail-thin, with no hint of any curves beneath the dress.  She was an undeniable stunner—a runway model type.  I could picture her in a glossy Chanel ad splayed out on the bow of a yacht in Monaco.  

The woman walked around the front of the car and pulled open the passenger door, lending her arm to help the passenger inside get out.  The man who emerged was short and hunched, and he relied on his cane to stand up straight.  He looked to be about eighty, with a pink face topped by an unforgivable comb-over of his wispy white hair.  His frail body seemed out of place in his pressed khakis and blue blazer.  His clothes made him appear distinguished and pitiful at the same time, the way a senator looks after serving one term too many. 

“That must be Mel Block,” I said.  “Rachel said he’d be about eighty.” 

Mel walked slowly but steadily.  We followed at a safe distance.  I had never been to Del Mar in person, although I once dated a man who’d lost thousands betting on its races at Caesars Palace.  It wasn’t enough for him to lose, though.  He had to review each race and study the racing form to figure out where he’d gone wrong, and then he’d come up with a grandiose excuse for why the race’s outcome was a fluke.  All of which he insisted on explaining to me.  Sadly, he was one of my better boyfriends. 

We made our way toward the entrance.  “I don’t suppose you’re much of a gambler,” I said.

“Got nothing against it,” Mike said.  “The Mormons are crystal clear on drinking and things like that, but gambling isn’t quite as bad.  There’s even a casino town on the state border whose main business comes from Mormons crossing over from Utah.”

I chuckled.  “Sounds like a happening place.”

Del Mar was built in a kind of laid-back Mediterranean style.  Many in the early-afternoon crowd were dressed like Mel and his companion—a lot of men in blazers and women in hats and sun dresses.  Luckily there were also plenty of people who, like us, had dressed for comfort.

Mel and his friend went up an escalator to a reserved deck.  I soon learned that “reserved” only meant shelling out an extra fifteen bucks, and that seemed a bargain once we got inside and looked around.  The deck had a private bar that resembled a lounge you’d find at an old-school L.A. hotel.  There were two private betting windows for people didn’t want to fight the crowds downstairs, and a bunch of tables was grouped near the railing overlooking the track.  Potted ferns were everywhere.

The blonde stopped at the bar while the man I assumed was Mel found a seat at a small table next to the railing.  We grabbed a seat at the table behind him.  The horses below were still parading about on the paddock, and it looked like the races wouldn’t start for at least another fifteen minutes.  No time like the present.

“Mr. Block?” I asked softly, hoping I wouldn’t startle him too much.

“Who’s asking?”  He craned his head around to face me.  He had a pack-a-day voice, low and scratchy, but it was surprisingly vibrant.

“My name’s Raven McShane,” I said.  “I’m working with Rachel Hannity on a project and she thought we should get in touch.”

He looked me over, raised an eyebrow, and said nothing.  Then he chuckled softly.

“You from Vegas?”

“Yes.”

“Are you the one who’s been calling me from the 702 area code?”

I nodded.  “Yes, I’ve called a few times but there was no answer.”

“A few times?  I think it’s been twenty.”

I shrugged.

“So you had to follow me to the race track?”  He turned around fully to face me.  “This must be some project.”

“Well, it’s pretty important.  Rachel thought you could help me get a handle on some things and . . .” I stopped in mid-sentence.  “So how come you didn’t answer your phone?”  I was more than a little curious.  And ticked.

He shook his head back and forth, his face more serious.  “It’s kind of personal.  If you really want to know, I owe a lot of people money back there, and they only managed to track me down here a few months ago.  Since then there have been any number of bill collectors and lawyers calling me, and I’ve been playing hard to get, you might say.  Sorry for the inconvenience.”  He looked at Mike for the first time.  “Your friend?”

Mike introduced himself.

Just then the young woman returned with a glass of white wine for herself and what looked like a martini on the rocks for Mel.  He flashed us a mischievous look that suggested we would be better off if we didn’t make any editorial comments about his supermodel companion or his pre-noon cocktail.  He attempted to introduce us to his young friend.

“Nicole, this is . . .” he stopped, obviously forgetting our names.

Mike shot out of his seat like a Marine corporal coming to attention for a four-star general.  “Mike Caffrey,” he said, taking her hand.  “Nice to meet you.  This is Raven McShane.”

 Nicole’s greeting was pleasant but wary.  She’d probably learned to be cagey at the Chanel modeling school.  But she smiled faintly at Mike, and I immediately began to like her a lot less.

“Sorry,” Mel said, “I’m getting old.  Nicole is my in-home assistant and caregiver.  Honey,” he smiled indulgently, “these folks have some business to talk over with me.  Would you mind taking a look at the horses in the first race?”

“Of course,” she said, knowing she was being dismissed.

“She’s actually got a great eye for winners,” Mel said.  All three of us admired  Nicole as she walked away.  I wondered if it hurt to sit down when your ass was that small.