Red Roses in Las Vegas (2 page)

Jack and I let the two Rent-A-Cops cuff us and waited for the police to arrive. They entered the building at the same time as the paramedics, and the Rent-A-Cops, who’d been alerted by the loud alarm going off, explained the situation to the police and disappeared. Two women in white shirts and dark slacks felt for the man’s pulse, and spent five minutes trying to find his heartbeat before pronouncing him dead.

I was slightly dazed as the cops uncuffed us and asked what we were doing here. They were two young men I didn’t know, but Jack made regular, large donations to the LVMPD Foundation, so both the cops knew who he was.

“Insurance,” Jack had told me once, about the donations, and it seemed to have paid off now. The two rookie cops apologized for the Rent-A-Cops’ behavior, and treated Jack and I with a respect not normally reserved for civilians found at the scene of a crime.

They questioned us politely, and Jack and I told them the same story: we were out on a date, Jack’s friend owned Verdant Wealth Solutions and had given him a key, and we’d come up to have a look around.

We told them what we’d seen and heard, and I wiped away a few stray tears. More cops arrived on the scene, and someone led us away, saying something about “not disturbing the crime scene.”

“You can leave now,” said one of the cops who’d been the first to arrive. “You can come into the station and make a statement tomorrow, but it’s getting late now and I know you folks’ll want to get home.”

“Do you have any idea what he meant?” I asked them. “‘Stupid red roses?’”

One of them, the one with dark brown hair and a mustache, shook his head. “Dying people say strange things. Most of them don’t make sense.”

I couldn’t quite believe that a dying man would make an offhand comment about red roses. Surely they meant something. But it wasn’t up to me to investigate – if the police thought the red roses meant nothing, there wasn’t much I could do about it.

Jack wrapped an arm around me and walked me out of the building. He dropped me off at my tiny condo, and walked me upstairs to my door. We’d been silent on the drive over, neither of us in the mood to talk.

“I’m sorry,” Jack said as I unlocked my door.

I shook my head slightly. “Not your fault.”

Our eyes locked and neither of us moved. This wasn’t how I’d imagined the date ending. In my fantasy, we’d left the building successfully, and laughed about it over drinks or coffee. He’d walk me up to my condo, and then we’d share our first, exciting kiss.

But instead, we looked at each other sadly. This had probably been the worst date in the history of bad dates, and I stepped inside and closed the door behind me.

“Thanks for having me over,” Ian Ewanson was saying. “This food is amazing. I hope I’m not being too much trouble.”

My mother smiled wearily and looked at me. “No, of course not,” she said. “We’re always happy to have a friend of Tiffany’s over.”

Her voice was studiedly polite but I could see the exasperation in her eyes.
Why me?
she seemed to be saying.
Why am I the one whose daughter brings over a pathetic male friend to our Saturday lunch instead of a nice boyfriend?

The dining room, where
we all sat around digging into mashed potatoes, gravy and roast chicken, seemed warmer than the air outside, but maybe that was just because of all the hot food we’d eaten. My parents had moved into this house soon after I’d graduated high school, and the walls were still builder-beige, with only a few floral and abstract prints to liven up the space. The bedrooms and the den seemed dark and heavy with hefty furniture and thick drapes, but the formal living areas, including the dining space we sat in, were decorated with lighter furniture and sheer, white drapes, and the spaces were largely empty, all the better for our occasional guests. My mother had shifted all our clutter to the den, including my dad’s collection of signed baseball prints and Nanna’s framed black-and-white family photographs.

“Ian just broke up with his girlfriend,” I told my mother, answering her unasked question.

“That’s tough,” Nanna said to Ian. “Love’s tough.”

Nanna gave Nathan a meaningful look and I stared at my post-lunch coffee and stifled my groan. Nanna’s seventy-four, and Nathan is her twenty-something-year-old “boyfriend.” I’m not quite sure what’s going on between them, but my friend Stone thinks that Nathan’s just after some poker tips from Nanna, who happens to be a good player. I think that Nathan’s a bit of a con artist, with his blonde curls and big blue eyes, although I’m not yet sure what his con is.

“Did I mention Nathan just got a job as a valet at The Treasury?” Nanna asked us. 

Only a thousand times, already. It’d be great having Nathan work in the same casino I did –
not.
Hopefully we wouldn’t work the same shifts, but I kept that thought to myself. Instead, I smiled politely and said, “I look forward to it. Just a fortnight before you start.”

Ian said, “That’s so great! You’re so lucky to have a job!”

Nathan smiled at him. “And you’re so lucky to have a trust fund.”

Ian had earned a truckload of cash by being one of the early investors in an internet start-up. After selling his shares, he’d chucked all his cash into a trust fund managed by his parents and an external financial advisor, who seemed about as strict with money as
Scrooge McDuck.

Ian shrugged and twisted his lips. “Damn trustee. That’s why Stephanie dumped me.”

Stephanie was the latest in a series of women who came and went from Ian’s life. Ian has curly orange hair, a wide, doughy physique, and a strange obsession with sci-fi movies and action figurines. He attracts a surprising number of stunningly beautiful women, who all claim to love him for who he is. All of whom leave him, once they can’t enjoy his substantial trust fund.

Nanna sipped her decaf and said, “You wouldn’t have been happy with a gold-digger.” Ian started to protest and defend his ex’s virtuous nature, but Nanna interrupted him and said, “That’s all she was. Any girl who leaves once she can’t get her hands on your cash is a gold-digger. Isn’t there a song about that, now?”

Nanna looked at me, but I just shook my head, refusing to be drawn into a conversation about hip-hop and women.

Ian said, “What do
you
think, Tiff?”

I shrugged. “Nanna might be right.”

“I guess I shouldn’t date gold-diggers then,” Ian said. “It’s no fun being broken up with.”

“Then you need to stop acting rich,” said Nanna. “Take your girl out to the movies instead of a five-star restaurant.”

Ian turned to me. “Does that work?”

“I’ve never tried acting poor. I’ve never been rich enough.”

“Not that I don’t sympathize with you, Ian,” my dad said, “but Tiff, how’s the PI work going?”

I sighed. “Not good. I’m thinking of quitting.”

Everyone stared at me in surprise. My “regular” job as a dealer at The Treasury Casino pays the bills, but there’s only so long you can deal cards to belligerent drunks and hopeful gambling addicts. I’d been thinking of transitioning into being a full-time private investigator, but recent events had me looking for alternative career options.

Ian was the first to speak. “I can’t believe this! After all that time I spent watching spy movies and reading detective novels. We were going to be partners! How could you do this to me?”

“Hey,” I said. “I never promised we’d be partners, I said I’d think about it. You don’t have any experience.”

“I’ve got experience saving your li—” I shot him a warning glance, and he got the hint just in time. “I’ve got experience dealing with Mr. Beard,” he said instead.

“Who’s Mr. Beard?” asked my dad.

“Um, just this… guy,” I mumbled. “He had something to do in one of my investigations. Nothing serious.”

That was a complete lie, of course. Mr. Beard was a crazy freakazoid who’d been after my blood, and Ian had indeed saved my life.

“Anyway,” Ian said. “We’d make a great team. You should keep on being a PI and let me be your partner.”

“You
should
keep on being a PI,” my mother said. “Aren’t you tired of being a dealer? Don’t you want a better job? You keep talking about how you want to help people, instead of just taking their rent money.”

“I don’t like being a dealer,” I said. “But being a PI has other problems.”

“Like what?” she asked.

Like people trying to kill me, I thought. Like people stalking me, and threatening me, and making me worry that I wouldn’t live long enough to see my next birthday. Oh, and the need to carry a loaded gun whenever I could, and go to Krav Maga classes where I had to learn how to hurt people. None of that was any fun, but I couldn’t worry my parents with any of it.

So I just said, “This and that.”

“Is it money?” Ian asked. “Are you having trouble with money? Because, you know, I’ll invest in our PI business. And I’ll do all kinds of marketing and get you a bunch of good, new clients.”

“It is partly money,” I admitted. “I don’t see the PI stuff earning me enough, any time soon.”

“I’ll invest in the company,” Ian said, “And you don’t have to worry about cash anymore. But we’ll still be fifty-fifty partners.”

“That sounds like a good deal,” Nathan said, and I shot him a death glare.

“See?” said Ian, his eyes wide with optimism.

I shook my head. “Your trustee wouldn’t allow it.”

“I’ll convince my trustee,” Ian said. “And you can help me.”

“Surely you can convince his trustee?” my dad said, and I looked at him pleadingly.

I wasn’t really concerned about the trustee. Even if I didn’t have to deal with any more life-threatening scum, I didn’t want to be a PI if it involved taking on Ian as a partner.

It was bad enough that he lived across the hall from me and was constantly coming over to make “helpful” suggestions about being a better PI. I didn’t want to make things worse by allowing him to officially invest in my business.

“We can convince my trustee together,” Ian told me. “He’s only concerned about gold-diggers and you’re not one.”

My mother made a low snorting noise.

“What?” I asked her.

“Nothing.”

“No, what?”

She looked at me steadily. “You haven’t had a boyfriend in ten years so I wouldn’t expect you to be a gold-digger.”

That’s not quite true. I’ve had boyfriends within the last ten years, just not within the last ten months. Jack didn’t count as a boyfriend yet.

“What about Stone?” Nanna said. “Stone seems to have money, and Tiffany’s almost hooked him.”

“I haven’t hooked him!” I looked at Nanna, exasperated. I seem to have to remind my family every other week about this. “Stone and I are just friends. Nothing’s going on between us.”

I wasn’t entirely sure about that, of course. Stone is a good friend and he’s helped me out with my PI work on occasion, but every now and then, it seems like there might be something more between us. But things haven’t gone anywhere, and when I told him I was thinking about dating Jack, he hadn’t advised me not to.

“Really?” said Nanna. “Maybe there’s nothing between you two because you can’t send him the right vibes. I know some good tricks.”

“That’s ok, Nanna.”

“No, really, you need to know this stuff. The first thing is, you look at a guy, like this…”  She feigned wide-eyed admiration. “And then you look down, like this.” She looked down and
smiled. I supposed she was trying to look shy and embarrassed, but instead, she looked like she’d spotted an empty slot machine that was due to pay out.

I groaned. “Nanna, please stop.” I turned to my mother. “Make her stop.”

Nanna batted her eyelids rapidly, giving Scarlett O’Hara a run for her money.

My father stared seriously at his coffee, and Ian said, “Hey, I’ve seen girls do that. It works. At least, I saw a girl do that once, then she came up to me and asked me to buy her a drink.”

I shook my head in disbelief. “Nanna, are you done? Where’d you learn that stuff, anyway?”

“Cosmopolitan,” she said. “Gotta keep up with the latest. And I’m not getting any younger, you know.”

“You look plenty young,” said Nathan, with a charming smile.

“Thank you, sweetie,” said Nanna, her smile equally wince-inducing. She turned to me again. “The next thing is– ”

“Please stop,” I pleaded. “I’ll take flirting tips from you another day, I promise.”

“Where is Stone, anyway?” asked Nanna. “I thought you’d bring him along.”

“He’s away on business.” I wasn’t sure what business it was, but Stone’s an ex-Special Forces guy who runs a security company, and I didn’t really want to know the details.

“You should make Ian your partner,” Nanna said. “He seems like a nice young man and goodness knows you need to invest some cash and attract new clients.”

Ian beamed at her and Nathan said, “Otherwise you might never be able to leave your job at The Treasury.”

I froze and looked at Nathan steadily. He smiled back helpfully. I didn’t trust him, and I hated him for getting to the root of my fears.

“I’ll be a great partner,” Ian said again. “Why don’t I start tomorrow, by– ”

There was a loud rap on the door, and I jumped up. “I’ll get it.”

I all but raced to the door.

When I opened it, I saw Detective Elwood and Detective Wilson standing on the other side and I frowned.