Time Spell (24 page)

“Ok ready.” I smiled at him.

“Whoa, you look…” His eyes raked over me.

“Ready to kick some Proxy ass today?”

“That’s not what I was going to say, but yes, that too. Where are we going?”

I handed him Helen’s note from last night. “She says Simone’s car went off the road around 8 p.m. Simone was supposedly headed to meet a diamond dealer. That’s why Helen thinks she did something with the diamonds that day. Helen’s crew examined the crash site before the police got there, and the diamonds weren’t in the car. I need to get to Simone’s suite now. I may have already missed the window today.” I looked at him. “I didn’t know I was so tired. I didn’t mean to sleep late.”

“You needed it. You went through a lot yesterday. Ok, let’s go.” Jack held one of the doors open for me, and we descended through the hotel to the corridor behind the casino floor.

“I don’t know how long I’ll be gone this time. It could be all day. Can you watch the wall the whole time?” I asked.

“If you can do what you’re getting ready to do, I think I can watch the wall. Go. I won’t let anyone in or out.” He resumed his guard pose, and his arms were crossed, legs firmly planted a few feet apart.

I faded myself into invisibility, unfolded the seam, and walked into 1968—six months after my last visit there. I brushed the seam’s coldness from my shoulders and arms and ducked into the casino. My next stop was Simone’s suite at the Diamond Towers.

Las Vegas, 1968

The door of Suite 710 was locked. I pressed my ear against the cool surface, straining to hear if Simone was on the other side. I
Open Spelled
my entry into the foyer and searched for the sultry brunette.

She was in her bedroom, sitting in front of the vanity, running a brush through her hair. She picked up a black beret-like hat, folded her hair into it, and affixed it to the top of her head. It made her outfit. She was wearing a white shift dress with black sleeves and a wide black leather belt, accented with a square buckle. It made her size four waist look like a double zero. She really was a beautiful woman. I hated that I wasn’t here to save her, to stop her from getting in the car that would deliver her to her death.

Instead, I was here to track her and the diamonds for Helen. It made my stomach lurch. My guilt-ridden conscience began attacking my resolve. What if I did save her? What if I warned her somehow about the car? No, no, no, it wasn’t my place. I had to complete this mission.

I watched her pin the backs on her square earrings. I noticed they matched her belt buckle, and she slipped on black gloves. She remained in front of the mirror for a few seconds, admiring her outfit and alluring face. After a few side-to-side turns of her cheek, she removed the mirror and turned the dial of the safe, hidden behind her vanity. Inside was the same black leather bag. She pulled it out, opened the latch, and looked inside the bag. The diamond pieces layered the bottom of the pouch.

“Not long now,” she whispered.

I followed her through the suite, passing the row of her portraits. There was a new one in the line-up. Her arm dangled over the side of a balcony. She had on a chiffon teal dress. Her eyes were gazing off to the horizon, vacant of her regular seductive come-hither look. I paused in front of the photo, thinking there were more layers to the twenty-five-year-old mistress, but time was running out. I hurried behind her and out the door.

Simone greeted the Diamond Towers doorman with a big grin. “Larry, would you hail a cab for me?”

The older man held the door for Simone and let her pass through, and then he stepped to the curb. “Here you go, Miss Davis.” He held the door for her, and Simone slipped into the backseat of the taxi.

I took to the sky, following the car as it meandered the Vegas streets. The car pulled up in front of a rundown one-story ranch. Rocks sprinkled the front yard, and a cactus stood guard at the mailbox. The pink stucco house sat a few feet from the road and was as close to the houses bordering either side. Simone clambered out of the side of the cab with her leather bag stocked full of her half of the VonRue diamonds. What could she be doing in a place like this? She motioned for the driver to wait a few minutes, and then skipped up the few steps to the front door and walked in the house.

I descended from my position in the sky and crept up the shaky steps. I looked through the front window. The room was empty. I opened the front door and slipped in.

Orange chairs and a plastic-covered couch filled the room. There was a spider plant hanging from the ceiling, reaching its tentacles to the window light. A braided brown rug covered a portion of the hardwood floors. A few bi-fold frames lined the top of the television. A much younger Simone smiled with her arm around two middle-aged people. I guessed those were her parents.

“What are you doing in there, Simone? Can’t you even tell your old man hello?” Slurred words bellowed from the other side of the living room.

“Just a minute, Pop.” Simone’s voice echoed through a closed door on the other side of the living room. I saw a man with a bad comb-over and a half-buttoned plaid shirt stagger in front of the door.

“If your mom was still living, you wouldn’t act like this—barging in and not saying hello. She raised you better!” The man continued to argue at the closed door.

Five minutes later, Simone appeared empty-handed and closed the door behind her.

“I’m sorry, Pop. Just some girl things I needed to put away in my old room.” She hugged the ragged man and he grunted. “No one goes in there, right?”

“What do you mean? No one comes to see me. You’re off doing God knows what in the city. Who’s going to go in there? I don’t want to mess with all that fancy shmancy stuff. It was your mother’s idea to keep that room for you. I told her we should downsize to a one bedroom, but no, she wanted you to have a room.”

He waved his arms and hit an oil painting of the desert. The painting hit the floor. Simone picked it up and reapplied it to the rusty hook on the wall.

“Come on, Pop. Let me make you some breakfast before I go.” She led her father around the corner and into the kitchen. She propped him up at the Formica table and started pulling eggs and milk from the refrigerator. I knew I had a few minutes to investigate Simone’s room while the pair worked on breakfast.

The house was small. The slightest misstep, and Simone and Pop would hear me. I tiptoed to the closed door and turned the handle. With the door closed behind me, I surveyed Simone’s childhood room. She had tacked up posters of
South Pacific
,
Gigi,
and
The King and I
over pine paneling. A few Elvis albums were stacked on the white dresser. The single bed was adorned with a purple quilt and round lavender pillows. The few accessories reflected the Hollywood dreams of a teenage girl. She had hitched her star to the wrong wagon. Neither Holden nor Helen was ever going to help her ditch the rags of where she came from.

Ok, Ivy, time to find that bag of diamonds. I tilted my ear in the direction of the kitchen. The partially sober father and his vixen-like daughter were arguing about something, and I could hear the sizzle of bacon in the frying pan.

“Reveal,” I whispered my spell into the shoebox of a room.

The orange particles came to life and swirled around me. They formed a thick comet shape and moved eight feet to the window across from the door. They slammed into the base of the window and sprinkled to the floor. I bent down and ran my hands along the paneling under the window. I pressed my fingers in the vertical grooves until I felt the laminate give way. I dug my fingers between two panels and pried the boards toward me.

Jackpot! The leather bag was tucked in the framing of the house between the paneling and the exterior wall of the stucco. The hiding place was empty except for the bag and a shoebox. I opened the lid. It was full of letters. I returned the lid then opened the leather bag. The VonRue diamonds were there. I had found Simone’s hiding spot. I put everything back how I found it, and with my palms tapped the panels back in place.

“What is this? You want me to eat this? You can’t cook like your mother.” Simone heaped scrambled eggs onto her father’s plate. The man shoveled a few forkfuls into his mouth.

“Really, Pop. I’m trying to help you.”

I felt sorry for Simone. A beautiful young woman anchored to a bitter father with a drinking problem. I understood a little more about why she had gotten mixed up with Helen. Who wouldn’t want to escape from this hellish life? I wanted to hug my father right then. I missed him, Mama, and Ian. I waited for Simone to turn her back to me and then let myself out of the front door.

Las Vegas, Present Day

Half of my body was washed in the coldness of the seam, but my face was on the other side, in the new Starlight. Jack’s back faced me. I wrapped my invisible arms around him and tickled his sides and stomach. He jumped.

“Hey! Ivy?” He steamed and I couldn’t stop laughing.

“Radiance.” I washed the invisibility spell from my body. “Jack, I’m sorry,” I stumbled through muffled giggles. “I couldn’t help it. You looked like a statue, like one of those guards at Buckingham Palace.”

“Glad I could give you a laugh today.” He replaced the scowl with a smile. “How did it go?”

“Perfect. I found them.” I was proud of my detective work.

“Where? Where did she hide them?”

“In her room. Not the one at Diamond Towers. Her father’s house. It’s actually a sad story. I just hope the house is still there, and no one did any remodeling in the past forty-five years.”

“Why didn’t you just grab them and bring them back with you?”

I cocked an eyebrow at him and gave him my best scolding stare.

“Right, you don’t change the past. Sorry.”

“Exactly. I don’t touch the past. However, we need to do a drive-by and see if the house is still here. Up for some more Las Vegas sightseeing?”

“With you? Absolutely.” He grabbed my hand and we headed to the taxi lineup.

The cab deposited us in front of the old Davis homestead. Most of the houses were deserted now, including this one. Signs announced a new development was underway in the neighborhood,
Canyon Creek
. A majority of the neighbors had scattered, and the few remaining ones were probably inside packing, readying for their move.

“You weren’t kidding. This place is depressing.” Jack eyed the house.

I filled him in on Simone’s miserable upbringing on our ride. We surveyed the faded pink stucco and walked up the front steps. A few cats milled about, lounging in the sun. Abandoned and feline-infested, the pitiful dwelling beckoned us inside. Jack scanned the street while I muscled us in the front door with my
Open Spell
.

“You know, you’re amazing right? Not every girl can break and enter like that.” He laughed as he followed me into the living room.

I smiled, thinking we had come a long way from a few nights ago in Jack’s study. The house was empty. The plastic furniture and desert landscapes on the wall were gone.

“Don’t tease me. I don’t break and enter. No one lives here.” I kept my voice hushed. Something about the whole scenario made me uneasy, and the fact was I did feel like I was breaking and entering. “This way.” I was supposed to acquire a case of stolen diamonds.