Her 24-Hour Protector(39)

“What are you thinking?” asked Perez.

About who could have killed my mother, and why.

“Just can’t help wondering what happened to Tony Ciccone, you know?”

Perez twisted her thick, dark hair round a pencil and made it into a bun, the pencil sticking out the top. She did that when she was getting tired and needed to keep focus. “You think Epstein had Ciccone whacked or something?”

Lex shrugged. “A lot of people apparently thought so at the time. Ciccone was in Epstein’s employ, and when Ciccone started drawing too much federal heat to Epstein during the crackdown, it looks like Epstein tried to sideline him, send him back to Chicago. It appears Ciccone didn’t want to go home. He dug in, started trying to muscle in on some of Epstein’s Vegas business himself. Then, poof, suddenly he’s gone.” Lex snapped his fingers. “Just like that. And Epstein goes clean as a whistle.”

Perez got up, stretched her back. “I’m beat. Want some food? I’m going to get takeout.”

“Uh…yeah, sure. Did you manage to get those records on Mercedes Epstein I asked you about yesterday?”

Perez rummaged through the growing pile of papers on her desk, extracted a file. She slapped it down on Lex’s desk, reached for her jacket. “Pizza or Chinese?”

“Whatever,” Lex said, opening the file.

“Oh—” she stopped at the door “—that fire in South America, at Joseph Rothchild’s old offices? No record of it.”

“No surprise, either,” Lex muttered as Perez left the room. But what Lex saw when he opened the file did come as a surprise—Mercedes was not her real name. It was a stage name.

She’d been born Mary Roberts and had officially changed her name when she’d arrived in Vegas and started dancing. And what Lex read next chased a strange shiver over his skin.

Mary Roberts, aka Mercedes Epstein, originally hailed from bluegrass country, a Kentucky girl who’d run away from home at the age of seventeen. In the file that Perez had compiled were copies of newspaper stories about a distraught couple searching for their missing teenage daughter. But it was the next line that had chilled Lex.

The city Mary Roberts hailed from was Lexington, Kentucky.

He sat back, feeling vaguely shaky. Not many people had the name Lexington. Personally he didn’t know one. This meant nothing, of course, just another coincidence that a woman who had bid a fortune on him hailed from Lexington, Kentucky, and that she was the wife of a one-time mob man who had sacked his mother for being pregnant with him. And that she shared Lex’s passion for orphan-related charities.

He dragged his hand though his hair, cursed softly. Perhaps the Lucky Lady was right. Perhaps Las Vegas was rubbing off on him, and now he was starting to look for signs, for connections. For omens.

He thought again of The Tears of the Quetzal, of the legendary curse.

Of Jenna.

He shook it all off. Superstition was ludicrous. He was a cop. He dealt in cold hard facts. Logic.

Still, it felt weird. He felt off, and no matter how freaking nuts it all was, somehow it was all dovetailing. On impulse, he grabbed the phone, dialed the FBI’s financial crimes unit in New York, asked to speak to someone on the Epstein investigation.



It was late Sunday evening and Harold was still holed up in his study. Jenna paced impatiently outside her father’s door. She’d been trying to find an opportunity to speak to him all day, and now she was dressed up and due at Cassie’s big birthday bash being held at the Desert Lion.

But she couldn’t go without speaking to her dad first. She just could not leave this for another day. She stopped outside his door, sucked in her breath, knocked. Harold detested being bothered in his study.

Jenna waited impatiently, getting tense. She rapped again, harder.

“What is it?” her father barked from inside.

She opened the door. The lights were dimmed, and Harold Rothchild was sitting in his great leather chair with his back to her, feet up on an ottoman, whiskey tumbler balanced on the arm rest, as he listened to female vocals with the clear voice of a bird. He did this sometimes when he was brainstorming a particularly thorny problem.

He glanced round. “Jenna?”

“I need to talk to you.” She set her purse down, struggling suddenly for a way to broach the issue.

He studied her for a long moment. “Why don’t you take a seat and—”

“I don’t want to sit. I want the truth, Dad. You’re hiding things from me, and I want to know why.” She gestured in the direction of his desk drawer. “Why didn’t you tell me about the additional death threats to our family? Why did you keep those other five notes from the police? And what’s all that stuff about revenge for a past deed and The Tears of the Quetzal? What was it, really, Dad, that got Candace killed?”