I text Rachel the next morning when I know she’s not in class. Instead of texting me back, she calls.
“You will not believe what happened last night,” she says.
I prepare myself not to believe. “What?”
“Grandpa had that hookup of his
stay over
.” Pause. “
In
the guest room.” Pause. “
With
him.”
I don’t want to believe it. That much is true.
“What are you going to do about it?” Rachel demands.
“I’m not sure.” It’s not as if the man is doing anything illegal. Immoral? That we could debate. I’ll tell you one thing. This behavior does not jibe with the code I’m trying to instill in my daughter. And since it’s my house, it’s my rules.
“If you’re okay with it,” Rachel says, “you should let Ryan stay overnight in my room.”
“Nice try.”
“I am
so
not okay with it. I think it’s
disgusting
.” She hesitates, then, “Plus I feel bad for Grandma.”
I do, too. “I want to talk about this with your father.”
“Good. He won’t like it, either.”
Jason and I communicate via text.
What do we know about this woman?
Jason wants to know, which makes me think he’s worried about theft. Not that we have all that much to steal at our house. I take my tiara with me when I travel.
I share my meager knowledge with Jason.
I don’t like it,
he informs me, as Rachel predicted.
I’m calling him.
I embark on my day confident that my husband will read my father the riot act. I’m not sure it’s rational but it’s what I want to see happen. I plan to call him as well.
As planned, Cassidy meets me outside the Las Vegas Convention Center, which is immense. “One of my rolls told me it’s like three million square feet,” she says.
I wonder how many of these “rolls” Cassidy has to her name.
“Did you bring it?” I ask her.
She dips into the same handbag she was toting twelve hours before and extracts a lovely crystal bowl adorned with etchings of ocean creatures like sea horses and starfish.
“Wow. This is beautiful.” I don’t ask where Cassidy got it. So long as it didn’t originate with Samantha St. James, it will serve the purpose for which I intend it. Since I had the forethought to carry my patent leather shopper with goldtone hardware, the bowl fits comfortably inside.
“I bet you haven’t called your reality-show contact yet,” Cassidy says. It’s fair to describe her tone as snide.
“For your information, I checked in with her Sunday night.” As I say this, the soulful brown eyes of one Mario Suave come to mind. I decide it’s a victory of sorts that I didn’t think about him even once yesterday. “Why do you want to be on a reality show so much anyway?”
She looks at me like I’m crazy. “Fame! Cash! I want my fifteen minutes and my million bucks.”
“Okay. I’ll call her today. I promise.”
Cassidy harrumphs. “I’d lay odds that the person you call is that detective.”
“Not if I get what I want from you this morning.”
My goal is to have Cassidy point Hans out to me. I want to investigate him. I figure if he was angry enough to give Danny a black eye Saturday morning, he might have been angry enough to put a bullet in him Saturday afternoon. To my mind, it’s a theory worth pursuing.
But Cassidy and I have a problem. There are a gazillion conventioneers roaming the grounds. How is Cassidy going to find Hans among them?
I’m feeling overwhelmed by the sheer number of people until I spy a digital billboard listing the conventions. Maybe Cassidy and I can narrow our search to a specific hall or meeting room. “Do any of these conventions ring a bell?” I ask her.
She squints at the list. Then, “N. A. B.”
“N. A. B. Great.” That one takes up two halls in the south building. We head in that direction.
I cannot tell whether Cassidy has taken my wardrobe instructions to heart. I asked her to dress in a low-key manner so we could improve our chances of Hans not noticing her. Maybe this outfit does represent low-key for Cassidy. She’s wearing a black Henley mini dress, with the classic U neck and button placket. But it’s tighter than a bikini on pageant night and she’s left three of the six buttons undone to reveal more than a hint of cleavage.
Even though I don’t like using sex appeal to achieve my goals, I know it can be awfully effective. So today I deliberately dressed to seduce. I’m in a slim-fitting coral-colored mini halter dress that normally I restrict to the pool or beach, where lots of skin is being flashed.
The bottom line is that Cassidy and I do not blend into this crowd. We get a leer from the left, then a leer from the right. As we approach the south building, I tell Cassidy that we need to separate. Hans won’t have a thing to do with me if he knows I’m linked to the woman who trick rolled him. Nor do I have any desire to make like Danny Richter and get a shiner.
Or take a bullet.
“If you see him, call my cell,” I instruct Cassidy. “Make sure he doesn’t see you. I’ll be on the other side of the hall.”
Time passes slowly in situations like these. I pretend to be engrossed in a pamphlet describing the convention center’s many appealing features and am delving into the wheelchair accessibility information when at last my cell phone rings.
“That’s him,” Cassidy says, “in the black pants and white shirt.”
“You need to be more specific. That describes half the men here. And where is he exactly?”
“By the big windows, by that thing with the pictures of satellite dishes on it? You see the guy with the blond hair and the glasses?”
I do. Hans is a late thirties body builder type with short hair and tortoiseshell eyeglasses. He looks too clean-cut to do what he did but I know appearances deceive.
“I got him. You can go now but don’t make any fast moves because I don’t want you catching his eye.” I feel like I’m in a bad
Get Smart
remake. “Thanks, Cassidy. I’m going in.”
I watch her head for the down escalator. I take a deep breath and sashay toward my target, letting my hips sway and my hair bounce. Now I feel like I’ve gone from
Get Smart
to
Charlie’s Angels
. I am aware of more than one member of the male persuasion giving me the eye but so far I haven’t caught Hans’s …
There. I just did.
I hold his gaze as I close the distance between us. I smile, just a slight lift of the mouth and parting of the lips. He is staring into my eyes and I don’t think he is moving a muscle. I’m not convinced he’s still breathing.
I stop right next to him, just a tad too close, and appear to give my full attention to the satellite dish pictorial display. Actually what I’m doing is giving Hans time to peruse the goods: the face, the skin, the hair, the cleavage, the legs. Yes, they do come in handy sometimes.
Finally, he speaks. “You’re not here for the N.A.B. conference.”
Cassidy is right! He sounds exactly like Arnold Schwarzenegger. “How can you tell?” I let my smile widen though I keep my gaze trained on the display.
“You’re not wearing a name badge.”
I smile as if this were a clever line. “Actually, I’m trying to figure out whether the group I belong to should hold its convention here next year.”
“What group is that? The Society of Beautiful Women?”
Now I favor him with a direct gaze. “No, though that’s very sweet. The Esthetician’s Association.”
He speaks perfect English but pretends to mangle the name. The ploy gets us both laughing. “I’m Hans Finkelmeister,” he says.
I’m lucky on two counts. It’s okay for me to be laughing and his surname is spelled out for me on his name badge. I do suffer a moment of panic as I realize that I forgot to pre-plan a fake name. “I’m Harriet”—my brain spins—“Pierce.”
“You’re the prettiest Harriet I’ve ever met,” Hans reports.
I’m thinking there can’t be too many Harriets in Austria. “Where are you from?” I ask, even though I know, and that prompts a discussion of how he was born in Innsbruck but now lives in Vienna and how his mother is Dutch but his father is Austrian, blah blah blah. I note he makes no mention of a wife, though Cassidy asserted he is married. He is not wearing a wedding ring but maybe that’s a European thing.
Foreign tradition or not, I disapprove. Jason wears a wedding band. If he gains a few pounds, he can’t get it off. That’s fine with me.
I am wearing mine, and even though I wear it all the time, along with my engagement ring, this morning it’s by design. I know some men prefer to have a fling with a married woman because they presume she will be just as eager as they are for a nostrings-attached hookup.
Hans glances at his watch. I’m guessing he bought this one here in Vegas since his old one is stashed in Cassidy’s apartment along with his wallet and laptop. “I have to go in to the presentations now,” he says, “but maybe we can continue this conversation later over a drink?”
This is just what I’d hoped for though I didn’t expect success to come
this
easily. “I might be free later,” I allow with a coy smile.
He wants my cell phone number but I demur and request his instead. I’ll do a lot for a homicide investigation but I’d rather not change my Happy Pennington voicemail announcement. As I’m entering the info into my smart phone, I note that Hans carries a man purse. It’s about twelve inches square, made from cowhide leather, and hangs from a shoulder strap. It looks worn from use so I gather it’s one item Cassidy decided not to lift. She’s got enough trouble fencing her loot and probably figured that in the good old U.S. of A., a man purse would be one of the harder items to move.
Hans and I finalize our plans for the evening. I give him a smile and a wink and know as I saunter toward the elevator bank that he is salivating over every last bump and grind of my hips in my carefully selected outfit.
I realize as I hail a cab that either Hans Finkelmeister has a short memory or an assignation with a mysterious woman represents a triumph of hope over experience. Doesn’t he remember what happened on his rendezvous with Cassidy? I guess his desire for an extramarital romp trumps his good sense. He’s not the first man to make that miscalculation. He won’t end up comatose and wallet-less after his tryst with me but he won’t get what he wants, either.
I call my mother from the cab. She informs me that she would enjoy watching a Sparklettes rehearsal later in the week but cannot attend that day as the Liberace Museum awaits. “Mom, do you really intend to go there every single day?”
“I didn’t go yesterday.” It’s closed Mondays but I don’t argue the point. “You know Liberace is half Polish, don’t you?”
“And half Italian. You told me.”
“His mother’s maiden name was Zuchowski.” She pronounces it zoo-CUFF-ski. “You have no business making fun of him, young lady. How many other performers broke all records not only at Radio City Music Hall and Madison Square Garden but the Hollywood Bowl, too?”
“I can’t name any but—”
“That’s because there aren’t any. And let me tell you something else. Liberace is listed in the Guinness Book of World Records as the highest-paid pianist in the world. Back in my day, he was the highest-paid entertainer in Vegas history. And he is in Ripley’s Believe It or Not for playing 6000 piano notes in two minutes.”
I’m thinking I should worry less about my mother’s memory.
My next call is to Jennifer Maddox, Mario’s producer. I don’t expect her to be thrilled to hear from me but I told Cassidy I would follow up with my reality-show contact and I am a queen of my word.
Jennifer answers, I begin to explain why I called, and she cuts me off. “Mario told me that whatever you want, to give it to you.”
I am heartened by this information.
“So put together your resume and head shot and video or whatever,” Jennifer goes on, “and send it to my office. I’ll see what I can do to get you placed on a reality show.” Her words make it sound as if she’s ready to oblige even if her tone doesn’t.
“It’s not for me, it’s— ”
“It doesn’t matter. I’ll see what I can do when I get back to L.A. later today.”
“Oh. You’re leaving town.” I realize I’m disappointed. It’s not because
she’s
leaving, mind you.
“We’re done here. Anyway, catch you later,” and she hangs up.
I have no time to dwell on Mario’s departure from Sin City for in short order I meet Shanelle and Trixie at rehearsal. I see that in twenty minutes of acquaintance Ms. Congeniality is already a BFF of three of the dancers. All of us partake enthusiastically in the pre-rehearsal eating. Today it’s egg salad or PB&J on whole wheat.
“What Michael Phelps eats,” trainer Elaine says, referring to the American swimmer who won sixteen Olympic titles, including a record nine gold medals at the 2008 Beijing Games.
Then I learn there’s another warm-up ritual I wasn’t aware of.
“Jumping on the trampoline really gets your blood flowing,” one of the dancers pants as she gets going. I see she’s wisely taken off her silver splayed-heel dance shoes. “Tuck your abdomen and your bottom and let your body’s momentum naturally lift you.”
