Fury and the Power (24 page)

"Oh, dear God! Betts? Betts
Burkhalter
?"

MAKING FRIENDS WITH DEATH

THE DEVIL IS ANY GOD WHO BEGINS TO EXACT OBEDIENCE.

—John Cooper Powys

LAS VEGAS, NEVADA

OCTOBER 19

2:00 P.M. PDT

T
hey had been in Las Vegas barely long enough to unpack in their room at the Brazilian-themed mega-resort called Bahia, and already Lewis Gruvver's girlfriend Charmaine was complaining.

"Lewis, you're on vacation! I thought we were in Las Vegas to have
fun
."

"We are, baby. Cornell and Lourdes are taking us to dinner at the Eiffel Tower Restaurant. It's up the Strip there in the Paris Hotel. Then we have tickets to see 'Legends of Doo-wop' at the Riviera."

"
Le Tour Eiffel
," Charmaine said. She was a senior at Clark Atlanta University, majoring in computer science. But she had taken two years of French and was in the habit of repeating something he'd said in the Gallic language. Working on her accent. Gruvver had been going with her for three and a half months and still found this cute. Other quirks he just put up with. He was willing to put up with a lot from Charmaine. Most of her complaints were concluded with an appealing smile. She was beautiful as well as smart, cool as chocolate mint, and so graceful she could slip between the drops of a spring rain. She put on blue jeans like a snake getting back into its skin.

Wearing only bikini briefs for now, Charmaine was riffling through an entertainment guide she had picked up in the room, which was furnished in blond bamboo, decorated in shades of orange, pink, and pistachio. There were two large paintings of parrots over the bed. The room was about as restful as a pinched nerve.

"'Elvis Presley in concert'? Thought the man died."

"He did. Now he's a legend. That's an Elvis impersonator you're looking at. It's kind of a new-age art form."

"Are all the entertainers here legends?" Charmaine said, turning more pages.

"Guaranteed." Lewis was changing out of the jeans and sweatshirt he'd worn on the flight from Atlanta, which had arrived late. He checked the time, then chose a light blue shirt with a button-down collar to go with his dark gray summer suit.

"I hate it you're going off and leaving me. Why can't I go too?"

"It's business. Unofficial, but still business."

"
Police
business?"

"Yeah." He leaned toward Charmaine and kissed the bridge of her nose. "While I'm gone you can visit the spa."

"The one where it said in the brochure they have a 'Zen relaxation and meditation chamber'?"

"Uh-huh."

Charmaine tossed the entertainment weekly on the double bed and looked out the window. From the fifteenth floor the view north took in the faux skyscrapers of New York New York, Bellagio, and Caesars Palace on the west side of the Strip. To the west, where the sky was the color of a molten steel ingot at two in the afternoon, there was a desert mountain range that she whimsically saw as a scarred, miles-long, burnt-out dragon. Near the highest peak, where she would have expected the dragon's eye, she saw instead something like a million-carat diamond embedded in a blue fold halfway to the blazing sky.

"Lew, what's that way out there?"

He paused while buttoning his shirt and looked over her bare shoulder.

"Couldn't say for sure, but it might be the Lincoln Grayle Theatre."

"
Le théâtre du Grayle
." Charmaine turned and brushed a cheek against his. One hand groped playfully behind her to his trouserless lower half.

"Sure you need to go someplace?" She closed her eyes and sighed for emphasis. "What I have here is a part of you that wants to stay in this hotel room with me."

"We got three whole days yet. Promise you, I'm back in an hour. Okay, fifty-nine minutes.
Ohh
, now. Easy."

"Easy? You're the one taught me to play the meat flute. I was pure as granny's boiled milk 'til Lewis Gruvver showed up in my life. Now look how shameless. I just want to practice practice practice all the
time
."

"My sweet Lord! Fifty-
eight
minutes, and I don't lie."

"Well… maybe I'll just go down to the pool for a little while, save that spa for when I'm needin' a real tune-up."

"Now you're talking."

Charmaine mercifully let him go and rummaged through her carry-on for a swim ensemble, holding up a couple of bikinis for his approval. Gruvver could've put her entire bikini collection in his wallet.

"What did you say Cornell was to you again?"

He quickly finished dressing. "My half brother. From Chicago. He works undercover for Gambling Control, and Lourdes, she's a shop steward in the Culinary Workers' local. They've done real well for themselves. Four-bedroom house with a black-bottom pool. We'll be over there Saturday for a western-style barbecue. Lourdes says ordinary hotel maids were earning thirty large a year in Vegas until the economy tanked and some of the hotels here started goin' under."

"Your half bro's married to a Mexican woman?"

"No, she's from Honduras. This knot in my tie look okay?"

"Yes, stop fussin' with it. You calling on royalty?
Les royauté?
"

"Part of the job is always to look professional. Gets them to respect you right up front."

"Big-bucks white folks, you're talking about."

"'Specially them," Gruvver said.

T
he Spicer family, Jack and Shelley and their two young children, lived in the priciest section of Lake Las Vegas, a gated community called "Miramonte." Waterfront villas in Miramonte started at a million-five. Gruvver drove in his rental car the seventeen miles from the heart of the Strip and waited a few minutes at the gatehouse while the guard confirmed his appointment with Mrs. Spicer. Then he followed directions to a mustard-yellow house with tiled roofs that was surrounded by feather-duster palms. A sailboat was tied up at the dock below the house. Gruvver parked in the circular stone-paved drive near a garage that housed a red Humvee, a vintage sixties 'Vette, and a golf cart. He remembered to leave the windows on the rental down. It was autumn in Las Vegas, but daytime temperatures still approached ninety. He followed a serpentine walk through a grotto with an arched roof of pierced concrete to double front doors.

A Hispanic girl in a smock took him to an interior courtyard. Large enough for a swimming pool, date palms, purple bougainvillea, a waterfall at one end of the pool. There were parakeets in a large ornate cage. The girl asked Gruvver if he'd like a drink, then served him fresh lemonade from a refrigerator concealed in a rock wall. Cool mist drifted over the courtyard from nozzles in that same wall, holding down the heat.

Shelley Spicer was a tall, thin woman with the gloomy face of someone whose liver needs flushing. About forty, dyed red hair dark at the edges like petals of a frost-nipped rose. She came briskly out of a wing of the sprawling house as if she had another destination in mind, then detoured when she saw him, unexpectedly black and looking right at home beside her pool.

"Mr. Grover?"

"It's Gruvver, Mrs. Spicer," he said, getting to his feet. "Lewis Gruvver." He handed her a business card, the one that identified him as a detective but didn't mention the homicide division.

She motioned for him to take his seat again. "I was in Atlanta once," she said, sitting on the edge of a yellow glider near him, knees together and at an angle. She looked mildly uncomfortable, as if she'd never learned to manage her height well. "For a convention. My husband is a cardiologist. The heat was just awful. You feel it more in the South, they said, because the humidity is so high most of the time."

"Yes, it is."

"And you're here to inquire about Lise Ruppenthal? I thought we had put that dreadful business in India behind us."

"Yes, she's in prison, probably for the rest of her life." Shelley Spicer stared at Gruvver for a few seconds, as if she were on the brink of dismissing him.

"I was one of the investigators assigned to the murder of Pledger Lee Skeldon three weeks ago."

More seconds ticked by.

"I'm afraid I—"

"There are similarities in the attack on the guru in India and the attack on the evangelist in Atlanta. A Las Vegas hotel worker made an attempt on the life of the Dalai Lama in Los Angeles this past February. His attacker also tried to bite through the carotid artery."

Shelley Spicer drew her thin shoulders together with an expression of distaste.

"I hadn't heard about that." She hesitated. "But I was—I have to admit—struck by the account of Reverend Skeldon's death. Because of what I remembered about—Sai Rampa was his name, wasn't it?"

"That's right. A holy man of great prestige. Did Lise Ruppenthal ever mention Rampa to you?"

"Was she into Eastern religions?"

"Not as far as I know. I'm sure she would have had books or something in her room."

"How long did Lise work for you, Mrs. Spicer?"

"A little over a year. I hired her to look after Jack Junior and Tracy on the recommendation of an English couple we know well. Lise had been employed by the Claringtons for several months, but because of the miserable winter weather in Liverpool she was developing serious asthma. A change to our dry high-desert climate seemed a likely remedy. She looked so wan and tired when she arrived, but there was a change for the better almost immediately."

"Were you satisfied with her job performance?"

"Oh, yes. Jack Junior and Tracy adored Lise. All I expect of our help is that they be clean, honest, responsible, and patient with the children, who I know can be a handful."

Spoiled rotten
, Gruvver thought with an understanding smile for Shelley Spicer.

"I've had the devil of a time finding an au pair half as good as Lise," she continued, as if his smile were an invitation to vent. "Even the ones sent by the best agencies in Europe find Las Vegas too much of a temptation. After they've worked here two or three months—and it's the same story for our friends who also have small children—the girls quit to become cocktail waitresses. Or worse."

"But Lise didn't stick around Las Vegas after giving notice?"

"No. We drove her to the airport, where she caught a flight direct to Frankfurt."

"Did she give a reason why she wanted to leave? Trouble with a boyfriend, family problem in Germany?"

"Frankly I don't know what was in her head. And she gave
no
notice. She said only that she must leave immediately. Well, I'd thought—we had a better relationship than that. It was so unlike Lise. I offered to pay her twelve hundred a year more, and co-sign a note for a car of her own." Shelley Spicer massaged her throat as if swallowing hurt. "I don't think she even heard me."

"How was she acting? Nervous, distracted?"

"No. She was calm but uncommunicative. Up to the moment she was to board her plane. Then she threw her arms around me. I couldn't be angry with her any longer. She was—such a dear child, really. And I had a sense that—but this can't be of any help to you."

"I'm very interested in whatever impressions you might have, Mrs. Spicer."

"Well—this is hard to put into words. I just felt that although I was holding Lise, she wasn't
there
anymore. As if the Lise I'd come to know had undergone some sort of radical change of personality, literally overnight."

"Like Jimmy Nixon."

"Who? Oh, that was the name of the boy in Atlanta. But wasn't he insane?"

"We'll never know. He died yesterday without having regained consciousness. Did you have any indication that Lise might be doing drugs?"

"Oh,
no
! Never. And believe me, I know the symptoms. Sean McGriskin, Peggy's oldest—but that's another unhappy story."

"After she left Las Vegas, did you hear from Lise again?"

"I was very surprised to receive a card from her, from India. There wasn't much of a message. She had been thinking about us and hoped we were all well. Then—three weeks later, was it? That photo of her in the Sunday edition of the London paper Jack buys at Borders. The Indian police took it, I suppose. The photo really didn't look much like her, but the name, Lise Ruppenthal, jumped out at me. Now she's in what I suppose must be a dank, vermin-ridden—Lise was
always
so clean and tidy." Her lugubrious eyes glinted moistly. "Sometimes, when the children were in bed and Lise was fresh from her bath, I'd drop by her room and do her nails for her. And we'd talk. She was always so grateful for the scents and oils I brought her from Neiman's. I enjoyed those times with Lise so much. I miss—"

Shelley Spicer turned her face from Gruvver, to stanch a seep of tears with her fingertips and sniff deeply.

"There's really nothing more to tell you; Jack and the children will be home from tennis at the club any minute now."