Diva Las Vegas (24 page)

“Thank God! Sorry, officer. Guard. Whatever!” George cried.

“What are you doing? You almost knocked me over!” The guard was a young man, but wore the annoyed expression that most mall security guards acquire after time on the job. He ignored George and looked at me.

“What’s the problem, ma’am?”

“There’s a man chasing us,” I said, out of breath.

“Take it easy. Where is he?”

“Right there . . .” I turned to show him, but Toni was gone.

“He was there, I swear. He followed us and he’s dangerous.”

“What did he do to you?”

“Well, nothing . . . yet.”

“What did he say?”

“Nothing.”

“Ma’am, how do you know he means you any harm?”

“Look,” I said, “I’m pretty sure he had a knife. See, I’m working with the police on a murder case.” Well, I was. And we needed him to act.

Now he scowled at me.

“You’re a cop?” he asked. “Let’s see some ID.”

“No, I’m not a cop,” I said, “but I’m working with the police.”

He stepped back.

“I know who you are. You’re on that show—
Too Late for Yesterday
, right?”

“Yeah, right,” I said. Wrong show, but it didn’t matter.

“Look, look, there he is!” George said, grabbing the security guard’s arm.

I turned and saw Toni coming toward us.

“You’ve got to stop him,” I said. “The police are on the way.”

“I’ll talk to him,” he said.

“Take out your gun,” George said.

“I can’t do that, sir,” he said. “There are rules I have to follow. Just relax and I’ll talk to him.”

“Officer—” George started, but he was already headed to intercept Toni.

“Okay,” George said. “It’s gonna be okay.”

We walked a few feet away and watched as the guard stopped Toni and spoke to him. Toni jabbed a forefinger into the guard’s chest. The guard slapped it away, but then Toni got even closer. The guard put his hand on his gun, but when I saw the flash of light on the knife, I knew he was too late.

“No!” I said. I thought I screamed it, but it came out a whisper.

Toni stepped in close to the guard, and the guard’s body jerked.

“Oh, my God,” I said, “he stabbed him!”

“Oh no . . .” George breathed.

Toni looked at both of us over the guard’s shoulder and grinned. He slowly lowered the guard to the ground, and pulled him around the corner into the alleyway.

“George, we have to go.”

“B-but, the guard—”

“He wants to kill me. Us, since you’re with me. Let’s go. Now!”

“The fountain.” George snapped to. “Let’s go!”

As we were running toward the center of the Grove, I dialed Jakes. No service! Where were the cops? I turned around and saw Toni behind us, waiting for a trolley car to pass. We were almost at the fountain. It was similar to the dancing waters in front of the Bellagio in Vegas, only on a much smaller scale. Still, it attracted people for the show it supplied every half hour. They gathered around, forming a human wall, which was exactly what we needed at that moment.

“That dude is crazy! Where’s Jakes?” George asked. I was wondering the same thing as he pressed up against me from behind.

The music started and the waters began to dance. People oohed and aahed as they watched. George and I kept looking around to see whether Toni had somehow moved in on us through the crowd. I kept expecting to feel the blade of a knife cutting into me from behind.

It occurred to me that Jakes’s idea for us to go someplace crowded probably would have worked if Toni had been armed with a gun, but a knife in a crowd? With all of us pressed so tightly against each other . . .

“There must be more security around,” George said.

“Georgie,” I said, in his ear, “we should split up.”

“Why?”

“Because he’s after me,” I said. “He’d let you go.”

He looked at me, shocked. “I wouldn’t leave you!” he said. “My God, Alex—”

“I don’t want you to get hurt, George.”

“Well, I don’t want you to die!” he shot back.

“Maybe he doesn’t want to kill me,” I said. “Maybe he just wants to take me somewhere.”

“Yes,” he said, “to kill you. No, no, we’re staying together.” He grabbed my hand and held it tightly. “If he wants to hurt you, he’ll have to go through me.”

I squeezed his hand and kissed his cheek. Abruptly, Toni Jones appeared behind George. Georgie jumped, as if he’d just received an electric shock, but the look on his face was one of pain.

Toni grinned at me and showed me his knife over George’s shoulder, with blood on the tip. Casually, he wiped it on the sleeve of George’s shirt.

Oh, God, I thought. He stabbed George!

My best friend sagged. I felt an overwhelming desire to jump on Toni and gouge his eyes out. Toni must have sensed it.

“I just stuck it in a half inch, Alex,” Toni hissed. “Just enough to hurt, but not enough to kill him.”

He looked around as people walked away.

“Let’s just stay nice and close to each other so folks can’t tell what’s goin’ on,” he said. “We’re gonna walk out of here nice and slow, like three really good friends.” He slapped George on the back, making him jump again. I could see underneath Toni’s shirt. Lots of bumps and grooves. Muscles, I guessed, but on some crazy, overblown scale.

Steroids, all right. And lots of them.

George still looked pained and scared, but smiled.

“Good,” Toni said. “That’s good. Come on, now. Let’s go toward the Farmers Market. We’ll go out that way. And I
will
kill your chubby little friend. So don’t try anything.”

Well, I thought, my heart thumping in my chest, that’s dumb. We were being led away, probably to be killed. Why would we not try something?

Toni stayed behind George and me, using the knife to push each of us ahead of him. I tried to jerk away, and he wrapped one arm around my waist and pulled me tightly to him.

“Be nice,” he hissed in my ear.

“Why should I?” I asked. “You’re going to kill me, right? Why shouldn’t I just start screaming?”

“Because I’ll push this knife into your chubby friend so far, you’ll see the tip of it on the other side.”

“Could you please stop with the
chubby
? He’s very sensitive about his weight.” George looked at me quickly with a
Now?
look.

I was scared, but didn’t want to show it.

“Why’d you cut Shana’s throat?” I asked. “She didn’t have to die that way, did she?”

“Who said I killed Shana?”

“If not you, then Pookie. Right?”

“Shut up and stop trying to distract me.”

I got an extra hard shove.

“And Linda? The girl in Vegas? And what about Susan?” I asked.

“I don’t remember their names,” Toni said. “I just do the job.”

“So you’re for hire?”

He laughed. “I’m not a pro, if that’s what you mean,” he said, “but I’m earnin’ my money, believe me.”

I dug in my heels. We were walking around the fountain, so there was still water on our right.

“No,” I said. “Let George go. I’ll go with you, but let him go.”

“Sorry,” Toni said. “Can’t do that. He’s seen me, you idiot.”

Then George shocked us all.

“Run, Alex!” he shouted. Then he turned, spread his arms and took Toni into the fountain with him. The look on Toni’s face showed how shocked he was.

I was shocked, too—too shocked to run. I wanted to grab George and help him out of the fountain before Toni could climb out, but at that moment, somebody grabbed me from behind.

I started to fight.

“Easy, Alex,” Jakes said in my ear. “We’re here now.”

Suddenly, there were a lot of blue uniforms climbing into the fountain, grabbing George and Toni, hauling both of them out.

“Finally!” George said, looking at Jakes with exasperation. “What the heck took you so long?”

“Not him,” Jakes said, putting his hand on George’s shoulder. “He’s with me.”

The policeman holding on to George nodded and let him go.

“Georgie, you’re my hero!” I cried, throwing my arms around him.

“Ow!” George said.

“Oh,” I said, letting him go. “Jakes, George got stabbed in the back. Are you all right, Georgie?”

“I banged my knee when we fell into the water,” George said. Jakes turned him around and looked at his lower back.

“Just about a pinprick,” he said. “But we’ll have the EMTs look at it.”

“Did you find that poor security guard?” I asked, as Len Davis walked George over to the ambulance.

“Someone found him,” Jakes said. “He’s gonna be okay.”

“Toni said he wasn’t a pro,” I said.

“That much was obvious.”

“I think he killed Shana and those girls in Vegas,” I said.

“Well, we’ll confirm that soon enough,” Jakes told me. Cushing found Elizabeth Sessions, and she’s bringing her here to LA. She’ll take a look at Toni Jones and identify him.”

“Then it’s over,” I said.

“No,” Jakes said. “We need the person he was working for.”

“We know who it is,” I said.

The police had cordoned off the fountain so that no one else was standing near it. People were watching the action from a distance. I heard the handcuffs being snapped on to Toni.

“He works for Pookie.”

“We know he works for her,” Jakes said, “but we don’t know that he killed for her. We’ll hold him for attempted murder of the guard, and threatening you and George. Maybe he’ll give Pookie up.”

We looked over at Toni, who was grinning at both of us.

“There’s only one problem,” Jakes said.

“What’s that?”

He looked at me and said, “I think he’s crazy.”

“Where are we going now?”

Jakes and I were in his car. George had been taken to the hospital. Toni had been booked on multiple charges, including the attempted murder of the security guard. Davis was taking care of the paperwork.

“Pookie’s house,” Jakes said. “If she sent Toni after you, she’s probably waiting to hear from him. Well, that’s not gonna happen. She’ll be hearing from us.”

“Are you going to arrest her?”

“I can’t,” Jakes said. “Not unless she confesses, or I get a call from Len saying that Toni gave her up. But I can take her in for questioning.”

“What if she’s not involved at all?”

“We’ll find that out, too.”

“And why am I along?” I asked.

“If she’s expecting you to be killed tonight, I want to see the look on her face when you walk into her house, alive and kicking.”

“I get to kick her?” I asked hopefully.

He smiled, took his eyes off the road just for a moment to look at me, and said, “We’ll see.”

 

When we reached the house, we found the front gates wide open. As we drove up the drive, we saw why. We had to park behind two other cars—a Lexus and a BMW, both brand-new.

“Looks like she’s got company,” I said.

“I’ve got an idea,” he said as he put the car in reverse and backed it down the driveway, out of sight. “They won’t hear the car doors from here.”

“What are we going to do?” I asked.

“We’re going to see just who’s visiting Pookie,” he said. “We might get lucky.”

“You think the doctor might be in there?”

“I’m not sure Miss Pookie is smart enough to have planned all this,” Jakes said as we got out. “Whatever
all this
turns out to be.”

“Because she’s a woman?” I asked. “You think a man has to be behind it? Like Reynolds? Or Bennett?”

“Don’t get your I Am Woman shorts in a bunch,” he said. “It’s not because she’s a woman. I just didn’t get the impression she was that smart. And before you say it, it’s not because she was a showgirl.”

“Just clarifying. Maniacal killers aren’t gender specific, you know. They come in all shapes and sizes. And sexes. Don’t you watch A&E?”

He looked at me and shook his head.

“I’ve been thinking all along that this whole antiaging deal means a lot of money to everybody involved,” Jakes said. “The doctor, Bennett and Pookie.”

“So you think they’re behind it together?”

“It’s all about getting FDA approval,” Jakes said, “for a product that doesn’t work. And who could

blow the whistle on them?”

“Anybody who tried the product,” I said.

“Right,” Jakes said. “The showgirls in Vegas and Shana.”

“But wait. Why would Bennett send out a memo saying the product didn’t work?”

We were working our way up the driveway, back toward the house, talking in whispers.

“I don’t know,” Jakes said. “Maybe he got involved after the memo was sent. Reynolds could’ve offered him a ton of money to keep quiet.”

“They could have tried to get all the copies of the memo back, but they couldn’t get the one that Stalker Eddie grabbed.”

“And he gave it to you.”

“But where’d he get it?”

“My first bet would be her garbage can. Ketchup and chocolate, remember? He’s a stalker,” Jakes said. “Those are all loose ends we’ll have to tie up, but for now, let’s see what’s going on inside that house.”

We saw lights blasting into the sky from the back of the house. They must have been in the atrium.

We had to circle around the house, but as we got back there, we could hear the sound of raised voices.

Luckily, there was a lot of foliage in the back. We were able to stay out of sight while getting close enough to hear what was said.

Neither of us had ever seen Dr. Reynolds in person, only in photos, but we recognized him. He was in the atrium along with Carl Bennett and Janet “Pookie” Wisniewski.

“. . . crazy,” Reynolds was saying. “You’ve always been a crazy bitch, but this takes the cake.”