“I…I’m fine.”
“You got a pretty bad bruise on your cheek there. Did someone hurt you?”
She swallowed, tensing, arousing Perez’s veteran instincts. Something weird was up. First Duncan. Now this woman. Acting odd. They were in on something, and Perez had a feeling it was more than just sex. Perez would do anything for her partner, even if it meant crossing the line, just a little. Because that’s what partners were for, right? They had each other’s backs. And Rita Perez was sensing something deep under the surface here. Something not so good. Something that maybe involved the Desert Lion.
“I…walked into a door,” she said, touching her bruise.
“Duncan says you were followed last night.”
Rothchild’s eyes flickered fast. She turned and looked as though she was about to hightail it out of the place, skittish as a damn deer. But then she wavered. “Is Lex maybe out investigating what happened with that psychic murder?”
“Psychic?”
“I…it’s nothing. Thank you for seeing me.” She spun and began to stride out the building.
“You want me to tell him you stopped by, Ms. Rothchild?” she called after her.
Jenna wavered, turned. “Could you tell me where he went instead?”
Perez chewed on the inside of her cheek, very curious now about a psychic, a little plot of her own hatching. “Yeah,” she said suddenly. “He went to the Desert Lion to see Frank Epstein.”
Jenna’s eyes widened for a moment. “Thanks.” And she was gone.
Perez returned quickly to her desk, snagged her phone and called the tail she had on Jenna. “Hey, you just cut a break, Savalas. I’m taking over your babysitting duties, okay?”
“All yours. Fill your boots, Perez.”
“Hey, Savalas—” she said before she hung up “—you hear anything about a psychic being murdered?”
“It’s an LVMPD case. Happened last night. A woman who owns the Lucky Lady psychic store had her throat slit. Guess she didn’t see it coming.” He chuckled at his own sick joke. “So much for being psychic.”
Or lucky.
“Careful you don’t choke on your lollipop there, Kojak.” Perez hung up and made for her vehicle. If Duncan wasn’t going to tell her what was up his butt, she’d find out herself.
“Men,” she muttered. “They need a damn mother half the time.”
Chapter 11
Frank Epstein was not in the building. Lex asked to see Mrs. Epstein instead. It was a personal visit, but he wanted results, so he showed his badge. The receptionist picked up the phone, spoke to Mercedes, then handed Lex a special key card and pointed to a private elevator on the far side of the bank of main elevators. “She’s in the penthouse apartment, thirty-third floor. She’ll be expecting you.”
Lex watched the lights blink as the car climbed to the top of the luxurious five-diamond casino hotel thinking that the little Lion King logo circa three decades ago, stuck onto the bumper of the pale-blue Cadillac might mean nothing. Anyone could have put that sticker on his car—it didn’t necessarily mean that the man who drove it worked for either the Frontline or Frank Epstein. Or had anything to do with killing his mother. And the man who regularly brought the money certainly had not been the one with the hairy hand and raspy voice.
But the sticker in conjunction with the fact that Sara Duncan did at one point work for Epstein, and then mysteriously packed her bags and left in the quiet of night for Reno after allegedly being sacked by Epstein, is what had now brought Lex here. He wanted to hear from Frank Epstein’s mouth the circumstances around the firing of his mother. And in Epstein’s absence, Lex planned to ask Mercedes flat out if she’d known Sara Duncan and who might have been visiting her in Reno once a month in a blue Cadillac convertible. With a brown envelope full of cash. And her husband’s Lion King logo on his bumper.
The elevator car stopped on the twenty-ninth floor, and two suits got in. Both sported Desert Lion name tags. The older man’s tag decreed him Roman Markowitz, security head. Lex judged him to be in his sixties, but still a powerful man with darkly tanned olive skin and a thick head of pepper-gray hair. He threw an odd glance at Lex, then pressed the button for the thirtieth floor. Hairy hands, Lex noted. The doors slid closed, and the car began to ride up again.
It stopped, and as the two men exited the car, the older one turned to the younger. “Should be a long night.”
The blood in Lex’s veins turned instantly to ice.
The voice!
The doors slid closed.
He stared at them in a moment of raw shock. He’d know that distinct sandpapery voice anywhere—a sound that had haunted his childhood dreams. And lived in his adult ones.