Lucky Catch (11 page)

He looked chagrined that his joke didn’t elicit the expected response. “This is so.”

“You blame Jean.”

Adone shrugged.

“And then.” I leaned forward, pressing home my point. “When you came crawling, he put you in a food truck.”

Adone pulled himself out of his slouch, pressing his shoulders back. “He told me I would not work in any of the best kitchens.”

“Not ever? Or not yet?”

Adone’s face shut down. “It is a small difference.”

Teddie and I exchanged glances.

The hate ran deep between these two.

Deep enough for murder?

T
he
minute I strode through the front entrance to the Babylon, Flash Gordon, my best friend and Las Vegas’s primo investigative reporter, hit me like a killer whale hitting a baby seal. She fell into step beside me, which was good—I had no intention of slowing down . . . I knew what she wanted.

“Girl,” she said. “I’ve been cooling my heels here for, like, forever. Where you been?” She gave me the once-over. “You got the look on you. Give it up.”

I flicked a glance in her direction. Refusing to meet her stare. She was like the Devil—if she looked into your eyes she could see into your soul—or so it seemed, anyway. Today, I didn’t want to fall under the spell of her particular form of black magic.

The lobby was packed with people strolling, looking, cuddling, or just enjoying the ambience. Many took advantage of the moment and paused to snap photos against the wall sectioning off the indoor ski slope, or while sitting on the railing of one of the arcing bridges across our version of the Euphrates as it meandered through the lobby. Some even pointed their lenses skyward to capture the Chihuly rainbow of blown-glass hummingbirds and butterflies. All of that should have warmed my heart, but with Flash in full barracuda mode, I wasn’t feeling the joy. Somebody roasting a man in “my” oven, and a missing chef, had put a serious damper on my day.

Even with Flash in heels and me in flats, my six-foot frame gave me a huge advantage . . . almost a foot. Today, as every day, Flash’s clothes looked painted on: tight jeans, a hot-pink tee shirt stretched well past the point of good taste. Not that taste was ever Flash’s goal. Riotous curls of red hair cascaded down her back from the clip that caught them at the nape of her neck. Gold diamond hoops, way too large for her heart-shaped face and diminutive stature, looped from her ears and banged against her neck as she took two strides to my every one. Hot pink lips pressed into a thin line and large doe eyes that belied her killer instinct completed the picture. I ignored all of it as, deterred by the line in front of the elevator, I motored toward the stairs.

Flash reached for my arm, but I shifted it out of her reach. I might not outlast her, but I could outrun her, or at least stay out of her grasp.

“Come on, Lucky. Throw me a morsel,” she gasped as she struggled to keep up. “Even a tidbit would keep me ahead of the pack.”

When the alarm tone on my phone sounded at my hip, I changed directions. I didn’t even need to look at the thing. The prep meeting for the Last Chef Standing competition was scheduled to begin ten minutes from now in the Golden Fleece Room. Since I was in charge, I figured I probably ought to show up.

Flash grabbed me hard and whirled me around, despite my serious size and weight advantage. There was a leverage lesson in there somewhere, but I was too scattered to glom onto it. “That look. Yup, you got it, and I want to hear about it. You got bodies being fricasseed all over town. A recipe for disaster.”

“Isn’t that my line? If it isn’t, it sure sounds like something I might say.” I yanked my arm from hers. “Regardless, it’s an ongoing police investigation.” The woman was amazing—she must have a direct tap into the information superhighway. The bodies weren’t even cold yet. I cringed at the visual of the baked guy and wondered how long they could leave him out of the cooler before he started to rot. Of course, he was half-cooked, so that might help. I let my head drop forward—Christ, I was one sick puppy.

After making sure I had Flash’s attention, I gave her a stern look. “You really should leave this alone.”

She made a rude noise. “Honey, you know ‘should’ ain’t in my vocabulary.”

I continued walking. “Yeah, well it should be.” Was that like a tautology? I couldn’t remember. Unable to come up with a better pithy reply, I left the whatever-it-was hanging between us. Then a thought hit me. I stopped, catching her off-guard. She galloped a few strides before adjusting and coming back. I gave her a serious look. “Our normal agreement, right?”

She nodded and switched gears seamlessly. Faster than I could say Siegfried and Roy, a pencil and pad materialized in her hands. “I help you. You give me the exclusive, but I don’t print a word until you say so.”

“Don’t even breathe a word until I give you the go-ahead.” She nodded once, which was enough. With Flash, a nod was a bond. “I need all the info you can gather on Fiona Richards. Apparently, she was a purveyor of gourmet foodstuffs.”

She had me spell the name, even though I couldn’t imagine how else one would spell Fiona Richards besides the obvious way, then I gave her all the background I knew, which took all of ten seconds, fifteen at the outside.

Flash flipped her pad closed, then stuffed it in her back pocket, surprising me—the fabric looked stretched beyond imagination as it was. The pencil, she stuffed in the crevice of her ample rack.

“Why do you put that there?”

“It’s the best place to keep pencils.” She managed to say that with a perfectly straight face, but buried under two murders, my sense of humor couldn’t rise to the innuendo.

I glanced down at my own inadequate chest. “I wouldn’t know.”

“Not much to work with.”

I gave her a stunned, wide-eyed look. “For your sake, I’m hoping we’ve shifted back to the business at hand and are not waxing poetic about my inadequacies.”

She shot me an equivocating grin.

“Cute. Anyway, that’s all I got. You’ve worked miracles with less.” I started again toward the elevators, the line had dissipated. “I need to start making connections. I’ll have the name of the other victim as soon as Romeo figures out who he is . . . was. Then I want you to dig until you can connect the dots.”

“Isn’t this the sort of thing the Beautiful Jeremy Whitlock is better at? After all, he’s the city’s best PI, and you got him in your back pocket.”

I stared over Flash’s head. “Yeah, but I need him for something else.”

I wasn’t ready to tell her I needed him to find my missing chef.

* * *

Flash left me to ride the elevator up one floor to the mezzanine on my own. A precious moment of solitude to gather myself. Unfortunately, it wasn’t nearly enough. When the doors opened and I stepped out, I still felt shaken and out of synch with the universe. Heading down the hall, I made a half-hearted attempt to pat my hair into place, then smooth my skirt and adjust my jacket. I swiped a finger under my eyes—with all the tears, I could only imagine what my makeup looked like—and tried to pull myself together. Catching a quick glance in a wall mirror, I was surprised to see a calm and collected outward appearance that perfectly hid the tumult inside.

Smoke and mirrors kept me together. Abject fear propelled me forward.

My favorite venue for meetings, the Golden Fleece Room appealed to my cynical side, or maybe it was my sarcastic side . . . sometimes, the two blended. Regardless, the name usually suited the gatherings, and this one was no exception. The folks at the top of the gourmet world were notoriously . . . difficult.

The murmur of voices through the closed doors sounded like a swarm of bees, excited and ready to sting. Oh, joy. I paused, tucking in my shirt one more time, fortifying my resolve. Pasting on a smile, I threw back my shoulders and strode into the room with conjured confidence.

No one noticed me.

The contestants and staff clustered in the middle of the room, talking animatedly, their voices rising with their tempers. Everyone gestured, emphasizing points that no one listened to as everyone talked at once. I was used to this fire drill, so I took a moment to size up my challenges. Scanning the room, I noticed Jean-Charles was absent. Of course, I hadn’t expected him to be there, not really, but his absence extinguished the last, tiny glimmer of hope.

Something was terribly wrong.

And the killer could be in this room right now . . . or not.

Again, I tried to focus on the gathered throng. Curiously, Adone was there, as was Chef Gregor. The other two contestants besides Jean-Charles were Christian Wexler, a young chef riding a high after winning one of those Food Network shows, and Chitza DeStefano, a tatted, whippet-thin, rising local star.

I’d first met Chef Wexler when he had wanted to rent the space formerly occupied by Gregor’s Italian place and currently home to the Burger Palais. I’d accepted Gregor’s bid. In retrospect, not the right choice, but I’d had good reasons at the time. One being that Wexler had wanted a huge amount of participation from the hotel. Gregor came with money in hand. I knew better than to make a choice based totally on dollars and cents, but I did it anyway, and lived to regret it.

After we turned him down, Chef Wexler had opened an eatery in Summerlin to much fanfare and continued success. I’d snuck away to eat there a couple of times. While his dishes were innovative, they were still accessible to culinary neophytes like me . . . I could identify everything on my plate, which was big with me. Even in an obscure location, his restaurant was filled each night with Vegas foodies.

Shorter and rounder than average, Chef Wexler wore his dishwater-blond hair pulled back and up into one of those ratty, samurai-looking man-buns. While the younger women apparently liked the look, it was totally lost on me—not that Chef Wexler cared. With his dark eyes, smooth skin unmarred by even the hint of facial hair, and an oversized mouth with thick lips, he was the human equivalent of a room decorated in contrasting styles—somehow, the odd combination worked. In addition to his obvious skills, Christian Wexler also exhibited that elusive, intangible it-factor of a true celebrity.

Spying me, Wexler separated himself from the others, who continued to worry the topic at hand like a pack of wolves tearing at a downed deer. “Miss Lucky, might I have a word?”

“If it’s quick.”

“Yes, ma’am.” His eyes flicked to mine, then returned to their lowered position, as if my covered belly button held an incredible appeal. “It’s about the ingredients for the competition. You will be providing them, correct? And they will be the same for each of the contestants?”

The answer was easy, but I had a question of my own. “Why?”

“Some of us can get the products we need more easily than others. And consistent quality can be an issue.” This time, when his eyes met mine, they held a hard look.

“We will provide each contestant with the same ingredients, in amount and quality.”

He looked relieved. “I’ve been struggling with the quality issue with my supplier, but it is hard to find a replacement—the hotels and top chefs get first crack at the good stuff. I can’t serve good food without good ingredients.”

“A dog-eat-dog world, is it?”

That got a hint of a smile out of him. “Yes, ma’am. Thank you.” He dipped his head and stepped away.

I returned my attention to the gathered throng.

While Christian had a shy, Southern manner, Chitza was the opposite. Half Venezuelan, half French, she had heat and distinction. Her deft culinary creativity, coupled with brash beauty and an exuberant personality, made her a hit with the moneyed thirty-somethings. Of course, she knew most of them—they’d all grown up with Vegas. Born to a Venezuelan exotic dancer, who had turned her back on her family of hardworking farmers, fleeing to Vegas to take up with a French gymnast whose specialties included a particular skill with a unicycle—I couldn’t recall exactly what—Chitza was a local girl made good.

She’s studied at the Culinary Institute, then had apprenticed to first the local chefs, then moved up the ranks of the celebrity chefs. Her entire training had been in Vegas, giving her the local knowledge and local association to put her at the forefront of the off-Strip Vegas dining scene. She’d gained a bit of national attention by making the finals of the
Best Chef Test
—one of the more popular contest shows on the Food Channel. Many chefs appeared on the show, including Jean-Charles—it was a feather in one’s toque to be asked.

Chitza opened her own place on the west side last spring and, by all accounts, it was a success. Although, I had that on hearsay alone. I’d yet to break away to eat there—but soon . . .

I clapped my hands. “Everyone, if I may have your attention?”

They turned on me like a pack of rabid wolves caught briefly in a flare of lights. A moment of silence, then they pounced, shouldering each other aside, jockeying for my attention, shouting questions.

Everyone, that is, except for Chitza, who stood casually off to one side, one arm crossed across her stomach, her other elbow resting on her forearm, a cigarette nipped between the fingers of her raised hand. Periodically, she would take a drag, then tilt her chin and blow a stream of smoke toward the ceiling. Then she would return to look with disdain on the pack of circling dogs. Her black eyes tilted up at the corners, giving her an exotic Elvira, Queen of the Night, kind of look. She wore her jet-black hair in a short, severe, hip style, like Rooney Mara in that
Dragon Tattoo
movie. With the sharp angles of her face, and a jaw that looked cut from granite, it would be easy to picture her as the high priestess of some select foo-doo cult. Cool and aloof, Chitza brought heat to the kitchen, and the world was finding a path to her door.

“One at a time.” I lowered my voice, not even trying to raise it above the ambient noise—competing to be heard only added to the cacophony and encouraged the others to shout louder.