Running Scared (12 page)

Las Vegas

November 2

Half past noon

M
iranda Seton’s blue eyes
were as faded as her dreams. Other than alcohol, there was only one source of pleasure in her life, and he was standing in her garage with an empty stomach and a garbage bag full of dirty clothes. She hugged him again and again while she fed clothes into a washing machine that was almost as old as her son.

“I can’t believe you’re here, Timmy! You should have called. I would have bought some pork chops to fry for you and made your favorite cookies.”

Tim patted his mother’s narrow shoulder and kissed the top of her head. He kept forgetting how small she was, how old she looked. And what a gray place she lived in. Even the Siamese cat curled up on the kitchen counter looked down on its luck.

Anger flared. “Mama, you should make that stingy bastard treat you better.”

Her smile quivered and flipped upside down. Tears stood in her wide-set, childlike eyes. She had a savings account just full of money given to her by her son’s father, but she was waiting for Timmy to grow up before she turned it all over to him so that he could take care of both of them.

Even half drunk, she knew it might be a long wait. But right now that didn’t matter. Her beautiful boy was back in the house.

“Don’t you talk about your daddy like that,” she said. “I’m happy here, and he gave me the best thing in my life. You.”

Tim’s anger slipped away. He had never been able to hold on to it for long. The one time he’d worn his mother down enough to reveal his father’s name, she spent the next four days drunk and crying and making him promise over and over again not to contact his father, not for any reason,
not ever.

She might have loved the man once, but he had always frightened her.

After Tim had learned more about who his father was, he knew why his mother didn’t want to rattle that cage. Once you got past the public face, that was one cold, mean son of a bitch his mother had spread her legs for.

“Aw, don’t start in,” Tim said, hugging Miranda. “As soon as Socks gives me what he owes me, we’ll go out to dinner at that cafeteria you like so much. How about that?”

Though she said instantly, “Don’t waste your money on me,” she was smiling again.

When the garbage bag was empty, she opened up his backpack, knowing that he usually stuffed dirty clothes in there, too. Her groping hand found cloth wrapped around something hard. She grabbed it and hauled it out into the glare of the naked lightbulb just above the washing machine.

“What’s this? You carrying shotgun shells or something bad?” It was her greatest fear that Tim would end up in jail again. That first time, his father had ripped her up one side and down the other for letting his son go bad. But he hadn’t threatened to stop paying her.

The nice thing about the statute of limitations on murder was that it never ran out. Not that that was the only thing that kept the money coming in. Tim’s daddy didn’t have any children. He might not be real good when it came to loving and all that, but he sure did like owning things—even a son he couldn’t brag about.

Tim snatched the sock before his mother could upend it on her palm and shake out the figurine. “This is just some shit Cherelle picked up from a friend. Why don’t you go and scramble me some eggs or something, and I’ll put the rest of the stuff in the washer.”

Miranda hesitated, smoothed her hair uncertainly, and drew her faded rose housecoat more closely around her body. If she had known that her son was coming, she would have dressed up a little. Or at least changed out of her pajamas.

“You sure?” she asked. “You know how much soap and everything?”

“Mama, I’m over thirty. I can wash a few clothes.” He just didn’t like to. Most of the time he could sweet-talk Cherelle into doing it for him, along with the rest of the cleaning.

“That lazy girl of yours is making you do your own wash, isn’t she?” Miranda’s voice was laced with a mixture of irritation and triumph that no woman treated her son as good as his mother did. “You’re out working two jobs to put food on the table, and she’s lying around eating chocolate and watching daytime soaps.”

Tim ignored his mother.

“Huh,” she muttered. “You should kick her out on her no-good ass and find a woman that knows how to take care of a man.”

“They don’t make ’em like you anymore, Mama.”

“Huh.”

Smiling, Miranda hurried into the house, shooed the cat off the counter, and began cooking for her boy.

Las Vegas

November 2

1:00 p.m.

R
isa hung up
the house phone, cursed under her breath, and headed for Gabriel’s Horn before another person with the wrong kind of gold artifacts to sell could interrupt her. She didn’t want to keep Cherelle waiting. Not only would it be rude, it would give Cherelle a chance to do what she did best—attract attention.

Risa hoped that her friend would look better than she had the last time they met. She’d looked so poor that guilt had closed around Risa’s throat like a fist. She wondered if Cherelle had ever connected the hundred dollars in twenties stuffed into her car’s ashtray with the childhood friend who had taken her to lunch that day.

If Cherelle had made the connection, she hadn’t ever said anything.

“Hey, baby-chick,” Cherelle said, standing up with a wide smile when she spotted Risa. “How the hell are you?”

Risa grinned, hugged her, and stepped back. “I’m just fine, mama-chick. Hey, you look”—
worn, hard, angry
—“just like you did the last time, and that was almost four years ago. What’s your secret? Women our age are supposed to
look
over thirty.”

“Well,” Cherelle said, smoothing invisible wrinkles out of her tight jeans and winking at a nearby man whose eyes followed her hands, “the sex diet works for me.”

For a moment Risa’s smiled dimmed, then notched up again. Cherelle had never made any secret of her men. Quite the opposite. It was as if she believed that every man she’d had made her that much better than any other woman. When they were younger, it hadn’t mattered so much. But that was many men ago.

Risa wished that just one of them had made Cherelle happy.

“I’ll have to give that diet a try,” Risa said lightly. She hooked her arm through Cherelle’s. “Come up to my office. I ordered some lunch for us, but I’ve got several calls out that I don’t want to miss. You want anything from the bar?”

Cherelle hesitated.

“My treat,” Risa said, signaling the bartender. If Cherelle’s wallet was as used-up as her clothes, she didn’t have money to spend on luxuries like eating or drinking in a restaurant.

“Cosmopolitan. A big ol’ double,” Cherelle said to Slim John. When she’d first started drinking in bars, a Cosmopolitan had been the ultimate in sophisticated drinks. She knew that something else must have taken its place among the young and flashy, but she didn’t know what it was.

The bartender nodded and looked at Risa. “What can I do for you?”

“You’re new, aren’t you?”

“This week,” he agreed.

She smiled. “Welcome aboard. I’m Risa Sheridan, Shane Tannahill’s curator. Send the order up to my office. Sally”—she gestured toward a woman dressed in 1950s beatnik costume who was chatting up a customer—“knows the way.”

“What about your drink?” Cherelle asked. “Or do you have a bottle stashed somewhere?”

“I’ve been on short rations of sleep. If I had anything alcoholic, my face would be in my salad.”

“Oh, baby-chick, what’s happened to you? Time was you could match me drink for drink.”

“You were right. Education rotted my brain.”

Cherelle snickered. “Told ya.”

“You sure did.” Many times.
Forget that nerd shit, baby-chick. Mama-chick will teach you all you need to know.

For a while she had.

But after Cherelle turned seventeen and left town with a drug salesman, Risa had discovered that she loved books, and especially loved learning about the world beyond Johnson Creek, Arkansas.

At sixteen Risa had a lifetime of schooling to make up. She did it in one year, thanks to her own unusual intelligence, newfound discipline, and a dedicated schoolteacher who had no family. Ms. Stinton’s tutoring, faith, and encouragement, coupled with fourteen-hour study days and advice about clothes and makeup, had speeded Risa’s transformation from tag-along hellion with no future to solitary, gifted scholar.

That change created a chasm between Risa and the one person who had truly cared about her during childhood, the person who had protected her when no one else answered her screams: Cherelle Faulkner.

So many shared memories . . .

She and Cherelle had been sisters in everything but blood. And in the end, how much did blood count? Their own blood had given them away before they were even born. Cherelle had taught Risa how to ride a bike. Cherelle had taught her how to put on lipstick and eye shadow. Cherelle had told her where babies came from and how to make sure none came from you. Cherelle had imitated the class snob so perfectly that Risa had wet her pants laughing, and in doing so got over the pain of being called trailer-park trash for having hand-me-down clothes and charity lunches and holes in her sneakers.

Cherelle also had taught her how to ditch classes, forge notes from home, and boost stuff from the 24/7 store by the highway.

And it was Cherelle who had hauled a college boy off a fifteen-year-old Risa and then kneed that boy where it would do the most good, all the while screaming that just because
she
did it for money didn’t mean her friend did it for free.

Shortly after that miserable night, Cherelle had left town with one of her “dates.” Risa had cried like she had lost her whole family.

Because she had.

Her adoptive mother had died before Risa was six. The man she called “Daddy” hadn’t wanted a child in the first place. Risa had gone to her dead mother’s sister. Stepsister, really, but the girls had grown up together, and Sara Lisa really needed the child-support payments she got when she took Risa in. Not that Sara Lisa had been a bad mother. She didn’t beat Risa or refuse to feed her. It was just that Sara Lisa was too busy waiting tables and getting drunk on weekend “dates” to have much time or energy left for Risa.

Then Cherelle’s foster parents had taken over the trailer next door to Risa’s. In a matter of weeks Risa had gone from a lonely nine-year-old to Cherelle’s quick-witted shadow. Together the girls conquered the world with giggles and long legs that could outrun any trouble they got into. At least, for a while.

Silently Risa led Cherelle to an inconspicuous door marked employees only. She punched the proper code into a keypad next to the door. It swung open.

“Here we go,” Risa said.

The door closed behind them. They were in a quiet, plain hall. Equally plain elevators lined both sides of the hall. After the lush décor and cheerful noise of the casino, the beige paint and silence were almost shocking.

Risa took the plastic ID card on its long chain and shoved it into a slot next to the elevators. After the doors opened and they were inside, she put the card into the slot next to a keypad and tapped out the code to her office. Only when a valid code had been entered did the doors close and the elevator rise. There were no lights, no numbers, nothing to indicate the floors as they whipped by invisibly.

“Hooo-eee, baby-chick. You work in the money room or something?” Cherelle asked.

“What?”

“All the cards and codes and crap. Not even a floor number.”

“Oh, that. The artifacts I work with are quite valuable.”

“Yeah? You’ll have to show me.”

“No problem. We’ll be having lunch with them. I’m working on a show for my boss.”

Cherelle almost purred. She’d been wondering how to raise the subject of her golden goodies without just plopping them out on the table like a dead bass. “Like the one in the pamphlet?”

“Pamphlet?”

“You know. The ones around that sheepskin downstairs.”

“Oh. I forgot about those. Actually, I’d
like
to forget about them. My boss is chewing my tail because I haven’t found anything special enough for his upcoming gold show. What’s in the pamphlet is just a cross-section of gold objects we’ve displayed in the past, plus a few teasers about the wonderful Druid Gold show to come.”

“Druid gold? What’s that?”

Risa paused and thought quickly, trying to find a way to explain without making Cherelle self-conscious about her own lack of education. “Remember in school when we were studying England?”

“Baby-chick, I never studied nothing. That was for the dumbs.”

“How about Stonehenge? That ring a bell?”

“That big ol’ stone circle where people dress up in sheets and dance around pretending to be witches or wizards?”

Risa laughed. “Close enough.” The fact that Stonehenge had been built long, long before Druids came on the scene didn’t matter. It was enough that Cherelle had some point of reference, however vague. “After the original builders of Stonehenge vanished, a people we know as Celts arrived. They started in Europe a long time before Christ was born and spread in all directions until they reached the British Isles about three thousand years ago.”

“Yeah?” Cherelle rummaged in her ragged purse/backpack for some gum. She had a taste in her mouth that would gag a maggot. The Cosmopolitan she’d ordered would go a long way toward cutting the scum, but the drink wasn’t here right now and the taste sure as hell was.

“Mmm,” Risa agreed as the elevator began to slow. “The Celts were master metalworkers. In fact, some scholars believe that the Celts taught the Greeks how to work gold. Others, of course, shriek at the mere suggestion that anyone could have taught the Greeks anything. We live in a very Eurocentric culture.”

Cherelle unwrapped some gum.

“Sorry, mama-chick,” Risa said. “I forget that not everyone loves the same stuff I do.”

And talking about it deepened rather than built a bridge over the chasm separating her from her childhood friend.

The elevator stopped. The door opened onto a hallway that was as quiet as the other had been, but not as plain. There was wood paneling on one side, framed art of various kinds on the other, and a dense, colorful carpet underfoot.

“This way.” Risa gestured to the left. “My office is next to the ‘museum.’ “

“Museum.” Cherelle’s tone of voice said she would sooner have her toenails pulled out one by one.

“Not really,” Risa assured her. “I just call it that because we have a lot of things scattered around while we try to figure out what would go best in the show.”

“Gold?” Cherelle asked, focusing on Risa.

“Gold.”

“That’s more like it, baby-chick.”

Laughing, Risa gave Cherelle a one-armed hug. Her friend’s cheerful greed was refreshing after spending hours on the phone with auction-house representatives who sounded as though they would choke if someone asked what an item was worth. This was
culture,
after all.

It was also commerce, as anyone in the business knew. The more the auctioneers flogged culture, the higher the price went.

“So show me something,” Cherelle said, looking around.

“Jewelry?”

“Oh, yeah. Big ol’ hunks of gold.”

“Right this way.”

Cherelle followed Risa eagerly toward a long, glass-topped case. Risa gestured at the articles within.

“These are some of the things Shane has collected in preparation for the Druid Gold show that will open New Year’s Eve.”

The thought of time slipping away made Risa’s stomach knot. The only good news was that none of Shane’s other searchers had done any better than she had.

So far anyway.

Cherelle bent so close to the case that her breath fogged the glass. With a muttered word she retreated a few inches and stared intently. This stuff was more like what she had than the pictures in the pamphlet. Except that a lot of these pieces looked beaten up, as though they had been hauled around in backpacks and dumped on cement floors.

Silently she counted. Eighteen pieces. One more than she had locked in the trunk of her car.

“What do you call those?” Cherelle asked.

Risa looked beyond the pointing finger. “Those are torcs. Like bracelets for your neck.”

“Solid gold?”

“Some torcs are. These aren’t. They’re hollow, but their history is very . . .” Risa stopped talking for the simple reason that Cherelle had stopped listening.

“And those?” Cherelle asked.

“Armbands.”

“Solid?”

“Thick gold foil over iron. The design is simple but exquisitely done.”

Cherelle wasn’t interested in design of any kind. “Those?” she asked, pointing again.

“Fibulae. Like fancy safety pins for fastening clothes,” she added quickly. “They didn’t have zippers or buttons in those days.”

“Those pins are solid gold?”

“The two on the right are.”

“Kinda small, aren’t they?”

“They were probably a votive offering—a way of giving something to the gods so that the gods would listen to your prayers.”

Cherelle chewed on the corner of her mouth and wondered what the bits and pieces in the case were worth.

Risa watched her friend’s expression. In many ways Cherelle was a good test audience for the articles. “What do you think?”

She shrugged. “This stuff is like an old whore. Same equipment as a young one, but with the kind of mileage that really cuts the price.”

Risa looked at the battered metal arc that probably had been damaged by the same farmer’s plow that had unearthed the treasure in the first place. The other items showed nicks, dents, bends, warps, irregularities, and outright breakage that troubled modern eyes accustomed to new, machine-made jewelry.

But to Risa’s eyes every mark was priceless, for it told of each artifact being made, worn, passed from one generation to the next, buried, and dug up again. Each piece had a tantalizing history. She’d often daydreamed of what stories the jewelry could tell.

“When you’re between fifteen hundred and three thousand years old,” Risa said, “you show it.”

Cherelle’s head snapped around toward Risa. “What?”

“Fifteen to thirty centuries.”

She swallowed her gum in surprise. “Holy shit.”

Risa smiled wryly. That was one way of putting it. “Yeah. A long time.”

“I suppose that makes it worth more, huh?”

“More than its weight in ordinary gold? Oh, yes.”

“How much more?”

“It depends on a lot of things.”

“Like?” Cherelle pressed.

“Age, rarity, artistry, and provenance—that’s where it came from and how well documented it is.”