“Why did Sara leave Vegas after she was fired from the Frontline?”
“I honestly don’t know. She just packed up one day and vanished.” A sadness filtered into the Lucky Lady’s eyes. “I figured it was because you were on the way. Maybe she wanted a fresh start.”
“She wasn’t seeing someone special in Vegas at the time?”
“Lexington, I loved your mother. We were close, real close. Like sisters. You need friends in a town like this, and she was mine. But not once did she talk about a special man in her life, and I never saw her with anyone who might be special to her.”
Lex was startled by her use of his full name. No one but his mother had ever called him Lexington.
“Sara broke my heart, you know, when she left? Took me almost a year to learn she’d actually ended up in Reno. By then you were born. I visited her a couple times, but she was different…distant. She was getting regular money from some place. I reckon she must’ve had a decent gig going because she bought her own house in a Reno suburb, never talked about Vegas.” She inhaled deeply. “Look, maybe she was seeing a married guy and he was paying her to keep quiet about his kid. Or maybe she was hooking again, high-class stuff.” She met his eyes. “I would tell you if I knew who your father might be, Lexington. It was terrible what happened to her. Just terrible.”
“You think my father might have killed her?”
“I don’t know. And that’s what I told the cops when they came to question me. They came because I was her friend.”
Lex leaned forward. “Marion, my mother used to get cash, once a month, delivered by some guy in a pale metallic-blue Cadillac convertible. The car had a little sticker on the bumper, like a logo. It looked like cartoon lion standing up, with a crown on his head? Do you recall anyone who drove a car with a sticker like that? Maybe from the Frontline?” It wasn’t something Lex had thought to tell the police when he was five. He hadn’t even remembered that bumper sticker until very recently when he’d gone to see a woman the FBI occasionally used as a forensic hypnotist to aid witnesses in recalling crime detail. He’d done it because there was this hole in his life—this need to know what had happened that day, thirty years ago, and why. Because not once since that horrific moment had Lex stopped searching for the man with the sandpapery voice who’d slaughtered his beautiful young mother.
It had become a driving force in him.
It was why he was back in Vegas. And while he was here, he was going to keep looking. Until he found that man.
Dead or alive.
And this time, if that killer was still alive, Lex would be able to move. Instead of being frozen with fear in a cupboard. He now had a badge, and he had a gun. And he had the power to take the man’s freedom. He was going to fix what he hadn’t been able to fix three decades ago.
But the woman’s face had suddenly shuttered at the mention of the Cadillac and bumper sticker. Her eyes grew flat. “That’s all I know.”
Lex sensed there was more. A lot more. He also sensed he wasn’t going to get it by pushing. He’d come back again in a few days, win her confidence in increments. He had time on his side now. As long as he held this Vegas post.
He jutted his chin toward the faded old poster behind the woman, the one promoting the sexy topless psychic act at the Frontline Casino. “Is that you?”
“Back in the day.”
“Nice.”
She didn’t smile.
Lex placed a wad of cash on the table. The woman stared at it.
“Please, Marion, take it. And thank you.” He placed his hand on the wad, pushed it closer to her.
She closed her eyes suddenly and slapped her hand down hard over his, on top of the wad of notes, making him jolt. “A diamond!”
“What?”
“I see a diamond…a big diamond. Tears.”
An ice-cold shiver rippled over Lex’s skin. Damn, this woman really was psychic. “What about a diamond?” His voice came out slightly hoarse.
“Very, very powerful stone…” She began rocking again, faster, harder. “Great danger…. No! Great love. A curse and a promise wrapped in…death…” Her voice started to fade to a thin papery whisper. “Death…buried in sands…sands of time…death to be avenged…” Her eyes opened. She said nothing more. Just stared at him, features a blank slate. It was as if the woman inside the body was gone.
Hiding his uneasiness, he got up. “Uh…thank you.”
“Be careful,” she hissed.
“I…I don’t believe in this stuff.” He felt compelled to say it. To convince himself, more than her. Being involved with that Mayan rock of the Rothchilds’ was getting to him.